Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 50
November 29, 2020
Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for November 2020
It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.
So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie and small press authors (as well as the occasional Big 5 book) newly published this month, though some October books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.
Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have urban fantasy, dark fantasy, paranormal mysteries, paranormal romance, time travel romance, science fiction romance, space opera, military science fiction, humorous science fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, dystopian fiction, biopunk, agripunk, steampunk, gaslamp fantasy, time travel, alternate history, horror, LitRPG, vampires, aliens, dragons, dinosaurs, gargoyles, alien invasions, interstellar wars, space marines, mercenaries, pirates, thieves, interstellar brides, crime-busting witches, crime-busting psychics, samurai barbers, ninja haristylists and much more.
Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.
As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.
And now on to the books without further ado:
The Trouble at Turtle Beach by Carrie Bedford:
ROMANTIC GETAWAY BUZZKILL:
DEATH NEVER TAKES A HOLIDAY!
Harried, overworked architect Kate Benedict has no sooner stepped off the ferry to a tiny, remote island in Seychelles, primed to de-stress and celebrate at a destination wedding, than she spots imminent danger – auras spinning above the heads of two people on the dock. One’s a stranger, but the other’s the groom!
Kate has a gift – or possibly a curse. Unfortunately for her, she can predict death. When she sees the spinning circle of air above someone’s head, her heart sinks. She calls it an aura, and unless she can locate the source of danger and intervene, the person is destined to die within a matter of days.
But since the potential victim must be convinced of the danger, usually there’s no way to intervene with a stranger. When the second man is found drowned, Kate knows she has to tell her boyfriend Josh that the groom, Josh’s close friend from college, has an aura.
It’s hard to convince Josh’s friends that a murderer is lurking among the gracious islanders, the chill tourists, and serene natural beauty – but with a suspicious fire and a third aura sighting, the evidence is mounting. Until they can find the murderer, Kate and Josh have to keep the groom safe and fend off the worst wedding crasher ever – Death!
Eric Folder has moved to Oregon to attend Portland State University when an automobile accident leaves him stricken with migraine headaches. The resulting visual effects—something medical professionals term an aura—render him virtually blind and defenseless when a gang of street thugs attacks him. Desperate to see and needing to protect himself, Eric reflexively tears at the luminous lines of light and finds they have become tangible. When he pulls them aside, his present reality folds away with them, leaving him in better circumstances with his enemies vanished. Attempts to fold his way out of successive perils leave him in increasingly strange situations until, eventually, his world becomes a nightmare.
Neutral Ground by Cora Buhlert:
Two old soldiers share a coffee and fight for their lives
The Republic of United Planets and the Empire of Worlds have been at war for eighty-eight years now. But nonetheless, Colonel Brian Mayhew, deputy commander of the Republican Special Commando Forces, meets with his Imperial counterpart General Roderick Crawford to discuss an incident that’s a problem for both of them. For two of their elite soldiers fell in love and ran away with each other, an embarrassment to the Republic and the Empire both.
However, this secret meeting is not as secret as the two men think. And so Mayhew and Crawford are soon fighting for their lives side by side…
This is a novelette of 9500 words or approximately 32 print pages in the “In Love and War” series by Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert, but may be read as a standalone.
Ballroom Blitz by Cora Buhlert:
Anjali and Mikhail go on a Valentine’s Day date. Trouble ensues.
Once, Anjali Patel and Mikhail Grikov were soldiers on opposing sides of an intergalactic war. They met, fell in love and decided to go on the run together.
Now Anjali and Mikhail are trying to eke out a living on the independent worlds of the galactic rim, while attempting to stay under the radar of those pursuing them.
It’s Valentine’s Day and so Mikhail and Anjali enjoy a well-deserved romantic dinner. But their date is rudely interrupted, when they find themselves caught in the crossfire of a turf war between two rival gangsters.
This is a Valentine’s Day novella of 23200 words or approximately 78 print pages in the “In Love and War” series by Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert, but may be read as a standalone.
Secrets of the Sword by Lindsay Buroker:
After helping my steady dragon Zav with his family problems, I thought life would get back to normal. As normal as it can be when you’re a hit woman responsible for hunting down bad guys.
That was before a strange artifact showed up in a bog and turned my ancient dwarven sword into a magical beacon. Now my enemies can sense it from hundreds of miles away. More than that, every club-toting, over-muscled orc, ogre, and troll who would like a magic sword can sense it.
Usually, fighting off opportunists wouldn’t be a problem (they don’t call me Ruin Bringer without reason), but even I can only handle so many attacks at a time. And Zav isn’t as much help as you’d think, since he’s busy on a quest for a ring.
No, it’s not a Lord of the Rings kind of quest. My boss put it in Zav’s head that since we’re mated in the dragon way, we should also be married in the human way. Now, he’s off to find the perfect engagement ring. Given his taste in human footwear, I may be in trouble for more reasons than my marked sword.
Not only is there no chance of my life getting back to normal any time soon, but if I can’t figure out how to fix my sword, I’ll be dead long before I can get married.
Leads and Lynxes by Rebecca Chastain:
Be careful what you ask for…
Kylie got into journalism to write important stories. Ones about gargoyles and dryads, elemental warriors, and thwarted magical attacks on her city. The bigger the story, the better. So when she lands the opportunity to ask an enchanted everlasting tree for the answer to any question she desires, she doesn’t have to think about it. She wants the story of a lifetime.
So does her nemesis, Nathan. If anyone is going to write a high-profile story, the senior journalist believes it should be him—and Nathan’s not above playing dirty to get his way. Kylie must work fast or risk losing control of her story.
But with every new lead forcing Kylie and her gargoyle companion, Quinn, deeper into a deadly maze of murder, warped magic, and monstrous beasts, rushing could prove fatal. Kylie is determined to publish her dream story, but she is beginning to wonder…will she survive long enough to write it?
Rika Destroyer by M.D. Cooper:
If the Nietzscheans want war…
…then Rika will bring it to their doorstep.
With the enemy embarking on a scorched earth withdrawal, Rika has few choices available. Either she spreads her Marauders out to protect the Genevian worlds, or she strikes at the enemy’s heart when they least expect it.
Even though her Marauders are fearless and have never been defeated in battle, they’ve also never faced off against the full might of the Nietzschean military. Rika’s plan doesn’t involve going toe to toe with the enemy—though she’s not above tricking them into thinking that by layering feints within feints.
Poised for victory, what Rika didn’t plan for is the internal machinations of Nietzschean politics and how far Admiral Hammond is willing to go to secure the empire for himself.
Aided by an old friend, Rika will push herself further than ever before in order to save her Marauders and the fledgling nation she’s pulled back from the brink.
Tales From a Scarygirl Two: Darkly Sinister by Marie Anne Cope:
THEY WALK BESIDE YOU. THEY SHARE YOUR BED. THEY EVEN KISS YOUR KIDS GOODNIGHT.
Are you SURE you know your friends and family as well as you think you do?
These Darkly Sinister tales will challenge your view of those closest to you as they delve into the minds of a selection of murderers; all calm and composed on the outside, but harbouring depths of depravity within.
When someone says, ‘I love you’, have you considered the small print if you were to sign? When you make a desperate call for help, can you trust the person who responds? And, when you chase that adrenaline rush, have you considered the price may be your life?
In Darkly Sinister, volume two of Tales From A Scarygirl, Marie Anne Cope takes you on a journey to discover the wickedness of the human psyche and how, when it comes to being scared, you should look at those close by.
If you enjoy spine tingling short stories that leave you unsettled and feeling uneasy, Marie Anne Cope’s latest collection, encompassing the darkness of Stephen King and the visceral gore of Jack Ketchum, is the very reason you will sleep with the lights on.
Samurai Barber Versus Ninja Hairstylist by Zed Dee:
Change is in the hair.
Ninjas are wreaking havoc by cutting people’s hair without their permission. Behind this follicular terrorism is a master ninja, the Ninja Hairstylist, whose chaotic hairstyle embodies the anarchy that is about to tear the city apart.
The Samurai Barber must step up and cut down the evil strands on the Ninja Hairstylist’s head. It is not just keratin that is at stake. The Samurai Barber must fight for one of the cornerstones of modern civilization; the freedom and self-determination to choose your own hairstyle.
Bugs and Loopholes by Rachel Ford:
A fully immersive virtual reality system. A beta testing opportunity that’s the stuff of dreams – or a nightmare that may never end.
Jack Owens is stuck in Marshfield Studio’s newest virtual reality videogame. To escape, he needs to win. He’s started assembling his team of heroes, which brings him one step closer to leaving the virtual world forever.
Until Jack finds the mother of all bugs: his companions vanish into thin air. The same companions he needs to have a chance at winning the game.
Luckily for Jack, there’s no rule against utilizing cooperative mode to finish the quest. Level developer and beta test supervisor Jordan Knight spins up her character, and jumps in.
The problem? Cooperative mode is even buggier than single player…
Humanity’s End is Upon Us
The Tigris have declared a Sacred Hunt against Earth. During the last battle Dryker’s daring plan turned back their vanguard, but now the entire fleet has arrived.
Thousands of Tigris vessels converge upon our world, with only a few dozen battleships, and our remaining orbital defense platforms to shield us.
Captain Dryker is placed under the command of the sadistic Doctor Reid, and sent to reactivate an ancient Void Wraith factory. Within this factory slumbers an army of Void Wraith, and a fleet of harvesters. But if he succeeds those forces will not work for Earth.
They will begin the Eradication, and wipe out everything.
[image error] Rebel Mate by Grace Goodwin:
A rebel alien roaming the far reaches of the galaxy. An Interstellar Bride on the run for her life. When her life crash lands into his on a remote planet, they’ll need each other to survive.
The Interstellar Brides Program guarantees it can match any female on Earth, even a cynical, street-wise, and very jaded Zara, who just wants to start over. But when she arrives on her new home planet… she gets more than promised:
Murder? Check.
Smugglers? Check.
A sexy as hell pirate who demands she follow his orders? Um, what?
Zara didn’t volunteer for this mess, but she’s a fighter. A survivor. She’ll work with a sexy–did I say bossy?–rebel to bring down the bad guys and take on a Rogue 5 legion in order to obtain what she wants, a white picket fence kind of life in outer space… if she can live long enough to get it.
Wicked Wedding by Lily Harper Hart:
You are formally invited to the wedding of Ivy Morgan and Jack Harker.
Before they walk down the aisle, though, there’s one more mystery to solve.
Ivy, who is finishing up the last days of her community service, inserts herself into a tense situation when the alarm at the domestic violence shelter she is working at sounds and she goes off to make sure all the women and children are accounted for. She expects a malfunction. What she gets is a violent man trying to remove his daughter from the facility. She reacts out of instinct … and magically thwarts the attempt.
Unfortunately for her, that’s only the beginning.
Because the man managed to escape, Ivy and Jack find themselves working together to track him down. On top of that, since the location of the building is supposed to be a secret, it appears an insider might be selling information.
More than anything, Ivy and Jack want to slide into happily ever after. However, neither of them can rest until they’re sure those most vulnerable are safe.
Ivy’s powers are growing. Her relationship with Jack was always destined to be. They’re both about to get everything they ever wanted … as long as they survive to make it down the aisle.
The big day is finally here.
An Enigma in Silver by Simon Haynes:
England, 1871. A quiet country village is rocked by murder. Police have no leads and no clues, apart from the grisly state of the victim’s body.
Evidence points to a supernatural killer, but Professor Twickham is curiously reluctant to lend his assistance.
Roberta, his daughter, has no such qualms, and she involves me in the case as well… only to turn around and abandon me for a sick friend.
Now I must unmask the vicious killer on my own, but had I only known the truth, I’d never have got involved…
This standalone novel is the second title in the Mysteries in Metal gaslamp fantasy series.
The Almost Good Witch by Erin Huss:
Abigail was your average evil witch, complete with the hat, the cat, the cackle, and the bad habit of turning people into slugs on a whim. Cursed with eternal life because of a hex gone wrong many centuries ago, Abigail spent her days exacting revenge on those she found to be the vilest of humans, from evil dictators to shoppers who didn’t return their grocery carts.
The line between good and annoying may have gotten blurred over the years.
Sick of spending immortality frozen at the age of twenty-five, Abigail does the only thing she can—turn herself into the Supernatural Crimes Department. Now she’s a member of Dark Magic Anonymous with a three year probation and a parole officer who is annoyingly powerful and more annoyingly cute.
Oh, and she’s traded in her broomstick for a Prius.
After centuries of being evil, Abigail struggles with entering the workforce and being good. But that pesky probation means one slip up will result in a life sentence. She’s not about to let that happen, and things are going well until her boss turns up dead with all evidence pointing to her.
Will Abigail be able to maintain her new good witch ways while she hunts a killer, or will she slip up and spend the rest of forever behind bars?
The Vampire Duology by Erme Lander:
“I do not require your eternal love or devotion Ms Johnson, merely what is inside your veins.”
When Tina Johnson, single mother, forty, wakes up in an isolated castle in Central Europe she simply wants to return to her daughter as quickly as possible. She doesn’t expect to find that she has been kidnapped and brought into a world where power is the key to survival and sanity is an optional extra.
Tina discovers she has been watched for many years, she has a rare genetic structure that makes her attractive to vampires and has the possibility of living for well over a century, if she allows herself to become infected. Kalmár has stolen her and intends to keep her captive, hiding her from both her family and other vampires. Normality becomes a frightening place as Tina struggles to escape those holding her and to fights to keep her daughter, her lover and her freedom.
Those wanting teenage kicks and thrills had better stand aside. This is a story of a woman held hostage with only her own exhausted brain to help. The slow seductive burn of sleepless nights. The nightmare of a horrific reality setting in and the endless patience of a dark being who has time on his side.
Sitting somewhere between Anne Rice and Bram Stoker this is perfect for fans of paranormal romance that want something different to savour. The Vampire Duology is a modern twist on the classic vampire tale.
Please note that this duology consists of “A Dark Inheritance” and “A Dark infection” both available on Amazon as single books.
The Witch Is Back by Amanda M. Lee:
Bay Winchester is living the high life. She’s engaged, owns her own business, and is undergoing a magical transformation, complete with growing powers at every turn. All that changes when a local teenager goes missing at a festival and nobody knows who took her.
The girl’s friends saw the abduction but the description they provide doesn’t match anybody in town. The only other witness is Marcus, her cousin Thistle’s boyfriend, and he was seriously injured in the attack and can’t provide additional information.
Bay is determined to solve the case, although she’s not sure where to look. On top of that, her normal partner in crime is otherwise engaged, which means her mother has decided to tag along for the ride.
Bay is the sort of witch who is willing to put herself on the line to save those who need saving. Unfortunately, this time around, the answers she finds only lead to more questions. On top of that, her great-aunt Willa and cousin Rosemary have arrived in town out of nowhere and they seem to be harboring their own secrets, and it’s something that could change the entire trajectory of Bay’s life.
The Winchesters are loyal, and it’s going to take all of them working together to solve this one. It seems new magic is afoot, and whoever is wielding it is deadly.
Magic, mystery and mayhem are about to collide. Batten down the hatches. The Winchesters are about to take you on a wild ride.
Tiny Planet Filled With Liars by Stephen M.A.:
So, a fussy ex-military amateur sleuth walks into a brothel and saves the world.
(Stop me if you’ve heard it.)
A comically tragic spectacle; a cathartic balm for our times; a cerebral pack of filthy lies.
A shuttle pilot once remarked to me, “You know, no one needs a monthly visit from an undying alien armada just to remember rent’s due.”
But you’d be surprised.
For generations, the Unified Fiduciary Dominion has relied on the military contractors of the Board to defend our planet (and its revenue streams) from Fleet Eternal. Now, those preening corporate punks have left us dangling.
Armed with exclusive investigatory powers, I’ve collaborated with Zhou—Ruby District madame—to scry the mysterious conspiracy unfolding over our heads.
Why are time-tested battle plans of the Alpha Vector Defense Corps suddenly failing? And why is the Board sitting idly by as casualties pile up in the Divisions? Does inventory attrition prevention mean nothing anymore?!
Not to belabor the many faults of these Incorporated scoundrels, but just know this: A few weeks ago—after I discovered they’re probably about to get us all boiled alive in orbital battle radiation—I’m pretty sure one of the fuckers ruined my best jacket by ordering a lackey to put a knife through it on a busy industrial boulevard. While I was still inside it.
My best jacket.
The verdict is clear. (ahem) That is—the verdict is clearish. Let this report serve as our collective judgment all the same.
Behold, fellow plebs; take heart in these dark days, and stand tall once again.
The Board may not fear Fleet Eternal, but it will fear The Interviewer.
Trust me.
When Luck Runs Out by Terry Mixon:
After years of battle, Kelsey Bandar and Jared Mertz are finally ready to face the master AI enslaving the Terran Empire. With just a bit of luck, this nightmare will finally be over.
Only luck can run out just when you need it the most.
Outnumbered and outgunned, they must salvage victory from certain defeat. Failure means extermination, invasion, and the loss of everyone they love. Can they beat the odds just one more time?
If you love military science fiction and grand adventure on a galaxy-spanning scale, grab “When Luck Runs Out” and the rest of The Empire of Bones Saga today!
Joining the fight for the Galaxy isn’t required. It’s a choice.
The United Galactic Government is mired in a decade-long war for control of a key planet. Weakened by overextension and political intrigue, they could lose everything.
When a child of privilege gives up everything to enlist and fight for what is right, he learns what it means to become part of a team. He encounters refugees, aliens he never expected to empathize with, and the loss of comrades. In the end he must develop the courage to stand up, not only to aliens and governments, but his own family.
Eight Cylinders by Jonathan Parent:
Sebastian “Seb” McAlister has run out of luck in Vegas. Cornered by a trigger-happy gang and shot through the stomach, he makes a desperate escape in his supercharged Hellcat. Fate guides Seb safely out of Sin City and into the desert, but as his wheels fade into the horizon, he fades into darkness.
He awakes among a tiny community in the middle of nowhere. A mountain range circles the hodgepodge of shacks like prison walls looming high. And the warden that resides in those mountains is big, ugly, and deadly—a creature straight out of a Lovecraftian nightmare.
If Seb hopes to escape that wayward way station, he’ll need enough cunning to outwit a force beyond comprehension… and a fast car. With a little luck and a ragtag group of would-be monster mashers racing alongside him, Seb just might have a shot of making it through the mountains alive.
Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.
The Impure by Kaitlyn Pennington:
Twenty-one-year-old Daniella Reilly always believed that her mother’s tales were nothing but fiction. But when she is taken to Seattle by her long-time friends, Madison, Derrick and Masen, Daniella meets people that she had been told did not exist. That is when she realizes that her mother’s stories of monsters and magic might actually be true. Vampires, Werewolves, Warlocks and Witches all exist among us, and Daniella finds herself launched into their world. She finds that not only does she have family in this strange, new world, but her mother is not who she believed her to be.Now knowing the truth of her childhood and family, Daniella joins Andrew, James, Amaelia, and Oliver on a mission to bring her mother’s work to a stop and to find a man that may not want to be found.Daniella’s main goal after discovering all that she has, is to make sure that her newfound family and herself all survive what’s coming and stick together despite the obstacles.
Longshot by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant
While Las Vegas burns, John Abbot is on fire.
What’s a Gambler to do when the kind of winning streak he’s only ever dreamed about hits just as aliens invade and it looks like the world is coming to an end?
Even while Las Vegas catches fire all around him, John Abbot decides to let it ride. For the first time in his life it feels like he can do no wrong. But it’s gonna take more than a boatload of chips to survive the alien apocalypse. It might even require him to pull together the motley crew of left-over lowlifes and Vegas vagabonds to embark on a high-risk crusade.
In order to get a dying alien to Area 51, and hopefully save the world, John’s only hope is a disillusioned showgirl, a snarky comedian, a cynical slot maching junkie, and the rest of the Las Vegas leftovers.
Unless they die, and destroy the universe along the way.
It’s a race against time as the aliens arrive in this new stand-alone book in the Invasion universe by masters of story Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, authors of The Beam, Robot Proletariat, The Dream Engine, and more.
[image error] Ascendant by Joyce Reynolds-Ward:
WHAT DOES ASCENSION TO POWER REALLY COST?
Six months after the triumphant collaborative conclusion of the AgInnovator Superhero game show, Ruby Barkley and her ex-husband Gabriel Martiniere still struggle with the professional and personal fallout from their victory. The Superhero money allowed Ruby to launch her line of agricultural biobots. But one of the RubyBot spinoffs, the Defender, leads to unsettling revelations about crop tampering using body-modified indentured workers. Their son Brandon uncovers even more disturbing information about the abuse of indentureds as he campaigns to end it. All of these disclosures lead back to the Martiniere Group, the family corporation controlled by Gabe’s malevolent uncle, Philip Martiniere.
Meanwhile, Ruby and Gabe wrestle with what form their resumed relationship will take, as Ruby contemplates whether she wants to take on the role of a Martiniere wife. The revelation that Gabe’s father is not who they thought, and Philip’s attempt to force Ruby away from Gabe once again confirms her decision. But the need to rescue one of Brandon’s valued indentured informants turns celebration into catastrophe. Will Ruby and Gabe be able to recover from this disaster—or will Philip triumph yet again in his campaign to destroy Gabe?
Realization by Joyce Reynolds-Ward:
THEY’VE ALMOST REALIZED THEIR DREAMS…BUT CAN THEY REMAIN THEMSELVES?
The indentured labor wars heat up as Ruby Barkley and Gabriel Martiniere struggle with medical complications that interfere with their fight to stop the sinister goals of Gabe’s father Philip. Discoveries by their son Brandon about the degree to which Philip and the family corporation, the Martiniere Group, are involved in unethical, interdicted human experimentation push them into accepting a questionable treatment to speed their recovery.
Philip’s direct challenge initiates Gabe’s final push to take over the Martiniere Group. Ruby and Brandon consolidate family support behind Gabe. When a high-profile assassination attempt at a political banquet reveals the existence of cyborged Martiniere descendants and clones of Philip intended to provide him with replacement parts, Ruby and Gabe must take action. One clone—Michael—still survives.
Along with their bid to win control of the Martiniere empire, Ruby and Gabe now face the dilemma of what is to be done with Michael. Can they save both the family and Philip’s clone—or should they even try?
The realization of their dreams is within Ruby and Gabe’s reach. Can they fulfill it while still remaining true to themselves?
Raven’s Course by Glynn Stewart:
Old friends have turned to foes
Old oaths have shattered
But old ties still promise redemption
Amid the ruins of a fallen empire, humanity fights to secure the fates of once-enslaved worlds. Captain Henry Wong and Ambassador Sylvia Todorovich of the United Planets Alliance have mustered force and diplomacy alike to drive their former allies in the Kozun Hierarchy back from their invasion.
With their superiors unwilling to fight a war this far from home, Todorovich leans on the Drifters, old allies of both the UPA and the Kozun, to broker a peace summit that could bring peace to a dozen worlds—if she can trust anyone.
Fearing treachery, Captain Henry Wong and the battlecruiser Raven accompany Todorovich to the summit. Even among former friends, he can trust no one—not the Drifters and, most especially, not the old friend in command of the Kozun delegation!
A modern girl. A door to the past. No way back.
When Sophie Arundel falls through a hidden portal into 1925, she assumes she’s dreaming.
Except she isn’t.
Then the portal disappears.
Mysteriously invited to stay in a grand house, Sophie must navigate high-stakes rules to find a wealthy suitor. But that’s the least of her problems.
History is unfolding differently in this England. Millions are starving, desperate and angry. When Sophie’s soulmate is attacked by a baying mob and his life ebbs away…
Can Sophie save him?
Stranded is the first book in the Shorten Chronicles romantic fantasy series. If you like time travel, adventure and heroic dogs, you’ll love Stranded.
The Diamond Device by M.H. Thaung:
After diamond power promises to replace steam, an unemployed labourer and a thieving noble unite to foil an international plot and avert a war.
Alf Wilson resents the new technology that cost him his factory job, especially as his clockwork leg bars him from army enrolment. He daren’t confess his unemployment to his overbearing mother. Desperate over the rent, he ends up in a detention cell with a hangover.
Impoverished Lord Richard Hayes maintains his expensive parliamentary seat by a mixture of charm and burglary. During a poorly planned break-in, he inadvertently witnesses a kidnapping. To cap it all, the police arrest him for the crime. At least he’s using a fake identity. The real criminals make off with not just the professor who discovered diamond power, but her plans for a diamond-fuelled bomb.
When Rich encounters Alf in the neighbouring cell, he sees an opportunity to keep his noble reputation intact. He persuades Alf he’s a secret agent who needs an assistant. This chance association will take them to the oddest locations. But law-abiding Alf’s first assignment? Break Rich out of jail.
Within the Fog by Charles Welch:
The same ancient evil that killed 115 people at Roanoke, Virginia in the late 1500’s has arrived in a small eastern Colorado town. A fog covers the small town and closes in on Tom Benton and his family. The evil that lurks within the fog feeds on humanity but has special plans for those with anger deep inside. Tom Benton’s son Bobby has seen the face of evil outside his bedroom window in the darkest hours of the night. The man who appears at his window offers a veil of redemption to those holding onto anger and rage. As the fog wraps around the Benton family home there will only be a narrow chance at survival. Can Tom Benton and his family escape the issues of their past in time to save themselves from Croatoan?
[image error] Wearing Skin by Simon Paul Woodward:
None of us are what we seem to be on the outside. We are all pretending. We are all wearing skin.
The Angel of Loughborough Junctions: An amoral filmmaker experiences the horror of the world through an angel’s eyes.
Children of Ink: A living tattoo breaks one of the Five Laws of Ink and suffers the terror of life away from flesh.
Wearing Skin: Bigotry conquers true love in a blood-splattered tale of body swapping, sex and immortality.
American Sexual Lobster: A seafood chef loses his mind and body on a night of shellfish slaughter.
Manny & the Monkeys: An egotistical writer’s life is ripped apart by escalating, and increasingly bizarre, coincidences.
These 12 unsettling short stories include the British Fantasy Society award-winning Manny & The Monkeys.
If you’re a fan of Stephen King, Joe Hill or JT Lawrence you’ll love these dark stories with a twist. Get ready to stay up all night with award-winning horror author Simon Paul Woodward.
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November 28, 2020
The Mandalorian finally finds “The Jedi” and Baby Yoda finally gets a name
Now I have this week’s Star Trek Discovery review out of the way, it’s time for my episode by episode reviews of season 2 of The Mandalorian again. Previous installments may be found here.
Also, since Star Wars is a Disney property now, may I remind you once again that Disney is not paying the royalties due to Alan Dean Foster and possibly others as well.
Warning: Spoilers under the cut!
Our favourite Clan of Two has spent the past four episodes looking for the Jedi and since The Mandalorian is a show that likes to take its time, it’s certainly something of a surprise, when a Jedi shows up in the very first scene of episode five.
That Jedi is Ahsoka Tano (played by Rosario Dawson), the very Jedi Mando is looking for. Though she has her hands full at the moment, because she is attacking a fortified city on the forest world of Corvus (which seems to be suffering from a bad case of forest dieback). A gong is rung and people inside the city quickly retreat into their houses, while a spear-wielding female magistrate named Morgan Elsbeth (played by Diana Lee Inosanto) and her henchman Lang played by Michael Biehn (who like Carl Weathers is one of those actors so associated with science fiction movies of the 1970s and 1980s that you think we was in Star Wars, even though he wasn’t) appear on the ramparts. Lang orders some gasmask wearing guards in protective suits, who look a lot like Chernobyl liquidators (hmm, apparently some kind of environmental disaster struck Corvus) to go out and get her. Ahsoka, however, makes mincemeat out of them, slicing and dicing the liquidators with her dual lightsabres. Ahsoka’s lightsabres are white, so there’s yet another possible lightsabre colour in addition to the ones we’ve already seen.
Now I vaguely know who Ahsoka Tano is – Anakin’s former padawan turned Jedi knight turned rogue, who appeared extensively in the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series. Tor.com reviewer Emmet Asher-Perrin gives some of her backstory here. However, I have never watched either series, because CGI animation makes my teeth hurt, so I’ve never seen Ahsoka in action. Based on the introduction we get in “The Jedi”, she’s certainly impressive.
After Ahsoka has made mincemeat out of the liquidators, she confronts Morgan Elsbeth up on the ramparts. We later learn that Morgan Elsbeth’s home planet was destroyed during the Clone Wars, likely by the Republic, so she sided with the Empire and helped them build up their Navy, becoming wealthy and plundering planets in the process. So maybe Elsbeth is the cause of the obvious environmental problems on Corvus. We also learn that Elsbeth is essentially holding the townsfolk hostage. She has one of them dragged up on the ramparts and tells Ahsoka she will kill the man, unless Ahsoka surrenders. Ahsoka doesn’t surrender and Elsbeth orders the man locked in a cage.
The scene now shifts to the Razor Crest, where Mando approaches Corvus, while Baby Yoda uses the Force to reach for his favourite toy, the spherical knob from the Razor Crest controls that Mando really does not want him to have. Mando confiscates the knob, lands the Razor Crest just outside the fortified city, puts Baby Yoda into a shoulder bag and walks right up to the city gates. When the liquidator guards ask him what he wants, Mando replies that he’s on a trail and looking for someone. Since he’s a Mandalorian, the guards naturally assume he’s a bounty hunter and let him in.
Mando’s attempts to talk to the townspeople and ask about Ahsoka remain without success, because the townspeople are clearly terrified. However, the guards quickly show up and inform Mando that the magistrate wants to see him. So Mando is ushered into Magistrate Elsbeth’s fortress to meet the magistrate herself. Just outside the fortress, there are several prisoners, including the man we saw on the ramparts earlier, locked up in electrified high tech gibbets.
The town, the fortress and the courtyard where Mando meets Elsbeth are give of a certain Japanese vibe and immediately reminded me of Akira Kurosawa’s historical movies like The Hidden Fortress, which have long been considered one of the sources from which Star Wars grew. I’m not the only one who noticed the Kurosawa influence either, both Guardian review Paul MacInnes and also make the connection.
Elsbeth is pleased that a Mandalorian bounty hunter just happened to walk into her city, cause she has a job for him. For Elsbeth has a spot of bother with a Jedi. If Mando will agree to eliminate that Jedi for her, she will give him a spear of pure beskar. The otherwise astute Elsbeth doesn’t notice that Mando never actually agrees to take the job, but just asks where he can find that Jedi. Armed with that information, Mando goes off to see Ahsoka.
The first meeting between Din Djarin and Ahsoka Tano goes about as well as you’d imagine. The two fight, deploying lightsabres, beskar armour (which happens to stop lightsabres strikes, which is neat) steelwires and flamethrowers, until Mando manages to blurt out that Bo-Katan sent him. That persuades Ahsoka to stop long enough to notice Baby Yoda, who is sitting on a tree stump, watching the show. “And I bet it’s about him”, she says.
What follows is Ahsoka using the force to communicate with Baby Yoda and get his story, while Mando paces up and down like a nervous parent in the pediatrician’s office. Ahsoka tells Mando that Baby Yoda’s real name is Grogu. He used to live at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, where he was trained by several Jedi masters. During the events of Revenge of the Sith, little Grogu was taken from the Jedi Temple (thus escaping Anakin’s child slaughter spree) and hidden away. Grogu doesn’t remember much of what happened afterwards. He was alone, he was scared and he had to hide his abilities to protect himself. Going by the timeline, Grogu probably was on his own for twenty-five years. Even by the standards of a longlived species like his, that’s a long time.
I’m not sure how I feel about the name Grogu. Based on what little we know about Yoda’s species (and Ahsoka doesn’t know more about them either, since the only other member of his species she met was Yoda himself, which makes me wonder about the female Jedi Yaddle. Did Ahsoka just never meet her?), Grogu fits in with their naming patterns. Grogu does sound a little bit like “Groko”, the German abbreviation for “Große Koalition”, which is used to designate the current German coalition government. And let’s just say that the “Groko” is not very popular and that everybody’s feeling about it are very opposite of how people feel about Baby Yoda. Nonetheless. it’s good that the little one finally has a name, though The Mandalorian is a show that’s slow to reveal anybody’s name. After all, we didn’t learn Din Djarin’s real name until the last episode of season 1 and we didn’t learn Kuuil’s name until the penultimate episode, which also was the episode he died.
Ahsoka also asks Mando whether Grogu still knows how to use the Force. Mando still isn’t quite sure what the Force is, but replies that he has seen the little one do things he cannot explain. Ahsoka agrees to test the little one, but in the next morning, because Grogu is still a baby and needs to sleep.
The next day, Ahsoka tests Grogu by using the Force to float a stone to the little one and asking Grogu to send it back. Grogu, however, doesn’t want to play and just throws the stone away. “He doesn’t understand”, Mando says. “Oh, he does understand”, Ahsoka replies and asks Mando to try it, because maybe he’ll have more luck. Mando is willing to try it, but points out that Grogu never listens to him anyway and that if he were to listen, that would be a first. “I like firsts,” Ahsoka replies, “Good or bad, they’re always memorable.”
Mando and Ahsoka do get their first, because Mando knows just the enticement the little one needs. And so he holds out the shiny control knob from the Razor Crest that Grogu likes to play with so much. And Grogu promptly uses the Force to grab it, making Mando beam like the very proud Dad he is, because his baby has just passed the entrance exam to the Jedi Academy. Or so he thinks.
Because Ahsoka flat out refuses to train Grogu, cause she senses that the little one is scared and also very attached to Mando, though you don’t need the Force to see that. And separating kids from their parents and caregivers was a large part of what caused the Jedi to fall down the last time around, as Ahsoka should well know, since she had a front row seat. And after what happened to Anakin, that’s not a mistake she’s willing to risk again. Better if Grogu never becomes a Jedi than risk losing him to the dark side.
I was impressed by Ahsoka’s fighting skills before, but this was the moment where I really began to like her. Because of all the Jedi we’ve met so far, she’s the one who is not willing to repeat the mistakes of the past, but break the cycle. In fact, I strongly suspect that the reborn Jedi Order would have fared much better and many of the events of the sequel trilogy could have been avoided, if Ahsoka rather than Luke Skywalker had been in charge of the new Jedi Order.
Because Ahsoka is right. Separating kids from their parents and caregivers (and at least Anakin never saw his mother again for ten years or so) and then not fulfilling their emotional needs, but blathering something about attachment and emotions being a bad thing, is a large part of what keeps going wrong with the Jedi and why they keep failing. Because what the Jedi are doing is institutionalised child abuse. Not that individual Jedi don’t care about their padawans, they obviously do. Qui Gon cared about Obi-Wan and Anakin (and I still maintain that if Qui Gon had lived, none of the events from Attack of the Clones on would ever have happened) and Obi-Wan cared about Anakin and Luke, but was woefully unprepared for dealing with an emotionally troubled teenager with superpowers.
I still remember how shocked I was when I first watched the prequels and saw that the padawans were not teenagers, as I had assumed, but little children. And at least Grogu’s experience shows that the kids the Jedi are taking are not just the six to nine-year-olds we saw in the prequels, but even younger. Grogu is not human, but developmentally he is about at the stage of a human one-year-old. Which implies that when the Jedi started training him, he was closer to a newborn. And taking babies from their parents and leaving them in the questionable care of the Jedi Order, who may be great warriors, but are completely unable to deal with emotions, either their own or anybody else’s, is child abuse, plain and simple.
Little Grogu likely never had the chance to form a healthy attachment to anybody, not even while he was still in the relative safety of the Jedi temple. And then he spent half of his young life alone and scared, because whoever spirited him away to safety (and I still suspect it was Yoda) thought that a fortified compound and armed mercenaries were totally sufficient to care for a small child. No wonder that the little one is deeply traumatised. Grogu always elicits the wish to cuddle him in me, but usually that’s just because he’s so cute. After this episode, however, I wanted to cuddle him, because I felt sorry for the trauma this little kid had to endure.
Ahsoka gets this, which is more than you can say for pretty much any other Jedi we’ve ever seen. She sees that she’s dealing with a deeply traumatised kid here and that separating Grogu from the one person he has ever developed any attachment to (and note how Grogu beams when Mando calls him by his real name) would be a huge disaster. Besides, as io9 reviewer James Whitbrook points out, it’s very obvious that Mando loves this child, even if he won’t admit it to anybody, least of all himself. There’s a sweet scene where Mando just sits with a sleepy Grogu, unwilling to wake the little one up, since he thinks he’s about to hand him over to Ahsoka for good. Also, if there’s one person who knows about trauma and how to get through it, it’s Din Djarin. After all, he was a traumatised child himself, as we saw in season 1. These two can help each other more than Ahsoka or anybody else can.
But there’s still an evil magistrate who locks up prisoners in electrified gibbets to deal with, so Mando and Ahsoka proceed to do just that, leaving Grogu in the safety of the Razor Crest. And so Ahsoka just scaled the city walls, makes mincemeat out of some more liquidator guards and finally throws Mando’s shoulder pad – the one with the mudhorn signet – onto the ground outside Elsbeth’s fortress. And since Mandalorians are normally never separated from their armour except in death, Elsbeth naturally assumes that Mando failed and Ahsoka killed him. So she opens the doors to the fortress to deal with Ahsoka herself, which leads to an impressive duel of lightsabres against beskar spear.
Meanwhile, Mando frees the gibbeted prisoners and gets them to safety. He then faces off against Lang in a typical High Noon type shoot-out scene, except that no one is shooting yet, because they’re listening to the sounds of Ahsoka and Elsbeth fighting. Lang points out that he doesn’t think that Elsbeth’s cause is worth dying for and that he’s willing to walk away. He even lays down his rifle to show his peaceful intentions, only to try and shoot Mando with his back-up blaster. But Mando is a quicker draw and kills him.
Elsbeth holds her own against Ahsoka quite well and even manages to divest her of one of her lightsabres. But in the end, Ahsoka prevails. “Where is your master?” she demands, “Where is Grand Admiral Thrawn?”
Now I’ve never been a particular Thrawn fan, as I explain here, but I still squeeed a little, when Ahsoka dropped that name, if only because I’d like to see him portrayed in live action.
Once Elsbeth, Lang and the liquidators have been dealt with, the rightful magistrate is restored and the city can live in peace again. Mando still thinks that Ahsoka will take in Grogu in return for him helping her deal with Elsbeth (Come on, Mando, you know you would have done it anyway.), but Ahsoka still refuses, because Grogu is much better off where he is. “You know, you’re like a father to him,” she says.
However, Ahsoka also gives Mando his next destination. She tells him to take Grogu to the planet Tython, where there is an ancient Jedi Temple. If he puts Grogu on the seeing stone at that temple, he can use the Force to reach out and maybe another Jedi will hear him and put in an appearance. Of course, that’s not all that likely, because there aren’t very many Jedi left (Luke is the only other one we know of at this point and you don’t want Luke in charge of anybody’s kid). Still, it’s Grogu’s choice, if he wants to reach out.
This is another reason to love Ahsoka, because she’s the only person we’ve ever seen in the Star Wars universe who actually thinks that kids should be able to decide for themselves who and what they want to be. This is revolutionary, because no one in the Star Wars universe is ever given the choice who and what they want to be. And no, false choices like Qui Gon giving little Anakin the choice to become a Jedi or remain a slave don’t count. And the truth is that Anakin, Padmé, Luke, Leia, Rey, Finn, Poe, Cassian Andor, Jyn Erson, Din Djarin, Obi-Wan and every other Jedi we ever saw never had a real choice to decide who they want to be. They were all pushed into becoming the people they are by circumstances and outright manipulation. Han Solo is the only exception. He became an outlaw by necessity, but he joins the Rebellion by choice, even if it means putting his own life at risk.
I also strongly suspect that Grogu already made his choice – and in fact, Grogu already made his choice at the end of the very first episode – and that he also communicated this very clearly to Ahsoka. He wants to stay with Din Djarin and Ahsoka respects that choice. Only Mando is a bit slow on the uptake, but then what else is new?
Much as we love the action, the effects, the creatures and the worlds, Star Wars has always been at its best, when it focusses on the characters, their friendships and found families. That’s the main thing that the original trilogy has (and the sequel trilogy partly has) that the prequels are missing, namely the found family aspect.
The Mandalorian, on the other hand, has it in spades. For in spite of all the aliens and worlds and fighting action, it’s at heart a story about two traumatised loners learning to be a family and that’s why it’s such a delight.
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Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for November 2020
Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.
So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some October books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.
Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, holiday mysteries, historical mysteries, Victorian mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, paranormal mysteries, Steampunk mysteries, hardboiled mysteries, noir, police procedurals, crime thrillers, legal thrillers, psychological thrillers, domestic thrillers, action thrillers, spy thrillers, horror thrillers, police officers, FBI agents, amateur sleuths, private investigators, lawyers, spies, thieves, terrorists, organised crime, heists, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting seamstresses, crime-busting psychics, murder in Scotland, Belfast, Wyoming, Virginia, Los Angeles, Australia, the Seychelles and much more.
Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.
As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.
And now on to the books without further ado:
[image error] Murder After Midnight by Liam Ashe:
Notorious profiteer Gustafson Graves has everything a man with great wealth could expect—a lavish estate, a king’s ransom in precious metals and too many enemies to count. With the Great War now just a memory, he hides from his past behind the closely guarded doors at River’s End. Justice, however, will not be denied. As the clock strikes twelve, Graves’ past comes calling with brutal results.
A bloody corpse, a houseful of suspects, a missing fortune and a locked room. Sleuth and former spy Mafalda Marchand claims nothing is beyond her legendary intuition, but in this impossible murder has she finally met her match?
A Fraying of Schemes by Blythe Baker:
Forced to stay at a local hotel while their home undergoes repairs, Iris and Lily Dickinson find themselves uncomfortably close to a violent crime. Risking a potential stain upon their reputations, the sisters delve into the deadly secrets of the hotel’s inhabitants.
With the guilty party determined to evade capture, will the Dickinson sisters uncover the truth – or be buried with it?
Two women’s husbands are murdered on the same night in the same way–and their investigation uncovers a terrifying connection.
Two men from vastly different backgrounds are murdered one after another on the same night, in the same fashion with two bullet wounds: one in the head, another in the heart. The two slayings sends their wives on a desperate search for answers–and a desperate attempt to save their families’ lives.
Grief takes a heavy toll on northern Virginia freelance editor Deb Linh Thomas when she learns of her husband’s murder. And utter dismay sets in when, just a week after the funeral, she discovers that he had been the subject of an FBI investigation after withdrawing a large sum of money from their shared accounts.
Elsewhere, Baltimore bartender Cessy Castillo is less bereft when her abusive husband, ex-cop Hector Ramirez, is killed. But it turns out that he was deep in hock–and now Cessy’s expected to pay up.
Deb and the FBI agent assigned to her case start digging into her husband’s murder and learn that he had been the target of criminals. As Deb and Cessy join forces to learn the truth, their investigation reveals an ever-darker web of clues, but if they’re not careful, they may just end up like their husbands
The Reluctant Witness by S.L. Beaumont:
In the weeks leading to Christmas, Liam McArvey, lead singer of The Fury, falls for enigmatic Bella, a waitress at his local café. However, little does he know that she is hiding a dangerous secret. After a photograph of the couple, taken outside a London recording studio, surfaces on the internet, Bella panics and prepares to move on.
But Liam enlists his friend, and sometimes sleuth, Stephanie Cooper, to help Bella unravel events in her past. Together, they uncover a crime within a crime, and Bella must decide where her loyalties lie.
The Reluctant Witness introduces new characters into the Carlswick world along with some old favorites and can be read as a standalone.
The Trouble at Turtle Beach by Carrie Bedford:
ROMANTIC GETAWAY BUZZKILL:
DEATH NEVER TAKES A HOLIDAY!
Harried, overworked architect Kate Benedict has no sooner stepped off the ferry to a tiny, remote island in Seychelles, primed to de-stress and celebrate at a destination wedding, than she spots imminent danger – auras spinning above the heads of two people on the dock. One’s a stranger, but the other’s the groom!
Kate has a gift – or possibly a curse. Unfortunately for her, she can predict death. When she sees the spinning circle of air above someone’s head, her heart sinks. She calls it an aura, and unless she can locate the source of danger and intervene, the person is destined to die within a matter of days.
But since the potential victim must be convinced of the danger, usually there’s no way to intervene with a stranger. When the second man is found drowned, Kate knows she has to tell her boyfriend Josh that the groom, Josh’s close friend from college, has an aura.
It’s hard to convince Josh’s friends that a murderer is lurking among the gracious islanders, the chill tourists, and serene natural beauty – but with a suspicious fire and a third aura sighting, the evidence is mounting. Until they can find the murderer, Kate and Josh have to keep the groom safe and fend off the worst wedding crasher ever – Death!
Silver Bells and Murder by Beth Byers:
December 1926
Violet and Jack take the train to Scotland with their friends for the holidays only to arrive and realize that the village has been exposed to scarlet fever. Given the delicate babies in their family, they determine to insulate themselves at the lodge they’d taken.
Nearly desperate for some peace and holiday cheer, they intend nothing but lolling by the fire, diving into cupfuls of eggnog, and feasting.
Only, once again, they discover a body. The worst of it is that they were alone at the lodge when the crime was committed. Is it possible that one of them is the killer? Join Vi and friends as they determine their loyalties and hunt a murderer.
Sam Johnstone was hoping for renewal when he took a job at a boutique law firm in rustic Wyoming. The mountains and streams of the west would be a refreshing, quiet place to start over after years of war and turmoil in his personal life.
But after a local woman is brutally murdered, Sam realizes that things aren’t so quiet in this rural American town. The accused is one Tommy Olsen, a known delinquent who had been sleeping with the victim. Sam is repulsed by the crime and wants nothing to do with the case, but meets with Tommy to make sure he has legal representation.
Yet things are not as they seem.
What begins as a cut-and-dry case becomes infinitely more complicated as new facts are uncovered, and Sam agrees to serve as Tommy’s defense attorney.
With the killer’s identity still unknown, Sam is enveloped in the small-town politics and courtroom drama of a murder investigation that keeps getting more shocking.
But if Sam can’t uncover the truth, an innocent man might be punished…while the real killer watches from the shadows.
Tales From a Scarygirl Two: Darkly Sinister by Marie Anne Cope:
THEY WALK BESIDE YOU. THEY SHARE YOUR BED. THEY EVEN KISS YOUR KIDS GOODNIGHT.
Are you SURE you know your friends and family as well as you think you do?
These Darkly Sinister tales will challenge your view of those closest to you as they delve into the minds of a selection of murderers; all calm and composed on the outside, but harbouring depths of depravity within.
When someone says, ‘I love you’, have you considered the small print if you were to sign? When you make a desperate call for help, can you trust the person who responds? And, when you chase that adrenaline rush, have you considered the price may be your life?
In Darkly Sinister, volume two of Tales From A Scarygirl, Marie Anne Cope takes you on a journey to discover the wickedness of the human psyche and how, when it comes to being scared, you should look at those close by.
If you enjoy spine tingling short stories that leave you unsettled and feeling uneasy, Marie Anne Cope’s latest collection, encompassing the darkness of Stephen King and the visceral gore of Jack Ketchum, is the very reason you will sleep with the lights on.
Tooting Moon by Brigid George:
A Dusty Kent mystery by an Amazon Best Selling author!
In one of Brigid George’s most ingenious mysteries, Dusty Kent must expose a killer of women.
Beautiful Tiri Welsh and her husband Blake Montgomery were iconic Hollywood stars adored by millions around the world. All that changed one dark night in the Indian Ocean, when Tiri drowned under mysterious circumstances. The truth behind her death was never uncovered.
For seventeen years, Tiri’s sister fought tirelessly to expose Montgomery as his wife’s murderer. Finally, she turns to Dusty Kent
Dusty travels to Broome, Western Australia where the actor now lives aboard his private yacht. She is immediately suspicious of Blake Montgomery, suspecting his urbane charm hides a sinister side. However, to get to the truth, Tiri’s is not the only mysterious death Dusty will need to solve.
Wicked Wedding by Lily Harper Hart:
You are formally invited to the wedding of Ivy Morgan and Jack Harker.
Before they walk down the aisle, though, there’s one more mystery to solve.
Ivy, who is finishing up the last days of her community service, inserts herself into a tense situation when the alarm at the domestic violence shelter she is working at sounds and she goes off to make sure all the women and children are accounted for. She expects a malfunction. What she gets is a violent man trying to remove his daughter from the facility. She reacts out of instinct … and magically thwarts the attempt.
Unfortunately for her, that’s only the beginning.
Because the man managed to escape, Ivy and Jack find themselves working together to track him down. On top of that, since the location of the building is supposed to be a secret, it appears an insider might be selling information.
More than anything, Ivy and Jack want to slide into happily ever after. However, neither of them can rest until they’re sure those most vulnerable are safe.
Ivy’s powers are growing. Her relationship with Jack was always destined to be. They’re both about to get everything they ever wanted … as long as they survive to make it down the aisle.
The big day is finally here.
An Enigma in Silver by Simon Haynes:
England, 1871. A quiet country village is rocked by murder. Police have no leads and no clues, apart from the grisly state of the victim’s body.
Evidence points to a supernatural killer, but Professor Twickham is curiously reluctant to lend his assistance.
Roberta, his daughter, has no such qualms, and she involves me in the case as well… only to turn around and abandon me for a sick friend.
Now I must unmask the vicious killer on my own, but had I only known the truth, I’d never have got involved…
This standalone novel is the second title in the Mysteries in Metal gaslamp fantasy series.
The Almost Good Witch by Erin Huss:
Abigail was your average evil witch, complete with the hat, the cat, the cackle, and the bad habit of turning people into slugs on a whim. Cursed with eternal life because of a hex gone wrong many centuries ago, Abigail spent her days exacting revenge on those she found to be the vilest of humans, from evil dictators to shoppers who didn’t return their grocery carts.
The line between good and annoying may have gotten blurred over the years.
Sick of spending immortality frozen at the age of twenty-five, Abigail does the only thing she can—turn herself into the Supernatural Crimes Department. Now she’s a member of Dark Magic Anonymous with a three year probation and a parole officer who is annoyingly powerful and more annoyingly cute.
Oh, and she’s traded in her broomstick for a Prius.
After centuries of being evil, Abigail struggles with entering the workforce and being good. But that pesky probation means one slip up will result in a life sentence. She’s not about to let that happen, and things are going well until her boss turns up dead with all evidence pointing to her.
Will Abigail be able to maintain her new good witch ways while she hunts a killer, or will she slip up and spend the rest of forever behind bars?
When terrorists attack a black site, they burn it down and kill everyone, except for two CIA operatives who disappear. Were they kidnapped, killed, or complicit?
As the CIA’s foreign liaison, spymaster Justin Hall is called in. He’s not in the best physical or mental state, a fact he’s hiding from almost everyone.
A fact that could dangerously affect the entire mission.
Alone, with no evidence, no leads, and enemies on all sides, Justin must find out what happened. All before the terrorists use the ill-gotten intel to attack other black sites and free the detainees the agency has worked so hard to capture. Fighting on all sides, including his own, will Justin survive the overwhelming odds against him?
Behind Closed Doors by Phillip Jordan:
A VIOLENT KILLING. A SUSPECT OFFERING NO DEFENCE. AN OPEN AND SHUT CASE?
Detective Inspector Veronica Taylor is summoned to assist in the aftermath of a horrific domestic incident.
With the suspect offering no opposition to the charges and with witness testimony and his own violent history stacking up against him, the charge officer deems the case open and shut.
As the victim’s influential Mother pressures her police contacts for a quick resolution and with only one lone dissenting voice speaking out, Taylor guided by her own intuition must uncover the circumstances leading up to the tragic events that played out BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS is an introduction to Detective Inspector Veronica Taylor and the gripping Belfast crime series.
Explore the historic yet infamous city of Belfast in this lightning-fast police procedural from a new voice in British and Irish crime fiction that will keep you hooked until its shocking conclusion.
Eggnog, Extortion and Evergreens by Tonya Kappes:
Welcome to Normal, Kentucky~ where nothing is normal. A Campers and Criminal Mystery Series is another brainchild of USA Today Bestselling Author Tonya Kappes. If you love her quirky southern characters and small town charm with a mystery to solve, you’re going to love her new cozy mystery series!
Mae West is busy this Christmas season. She’s running around Normal getting the town ready for the first Winter Festival, which she hopes will become an annual event for the tourist town.
The freshly fallen snow sure does make the Daniel Boone National Park beautiful and ready for Santa’s arrival, but it also makes the curvy roads through the forest very slick. Unfortunately, Mae finds out just how slick the roads are after her car slides off the road and hits a tree, putting Mae into a deep coma.
Mae is one of the lucky patients who does wake up and happy to celebrate Christmas with family and friends.
One of the patients in the emergency room with Mae didn’t die that night of natural causes, and Hank Sharp has himself a new homicide case on his hands.
Mae starts having memories about the fire that took her family and a memory of a murder plot that she thinks happened when she was in her coma. Only, she’s having a hard time distinguishing between the two memories and the clues seem to have blurred lines. There’s one thing she does know for sure, both incidents come with clues that neither were accidents.
Once again, Mae West with the help of the Laundry Club Ladies put on their ameatur sleuth cap to help solve the mystery of the murders before the killer sends her Christmas gift she can’t return.
The Witch Is Back by Amanda M. Lee:
Bay Winchester is living the high life. She’s engaged, owns her own business, and is undergoing a magical transformation, complete with growing powers at every turn. All that changes when a local teenager goes missing at a festival and nobody knows who took her.
The girl’s friends saw the abduction but the description they provide doesn’t match anybody in town. The only other witness is Marcus, her cousin Thistle’s boyfriend, and he was seriously injured in the attack and can’t provide additional information.
Bay is determined to solve the case, although she’s not sure where to look. On top of that, her normal partner in crime is otherwise engaged, which means her mother has decided to tag along for the ride.
Bay is the sort of witch who is willing to put herself on the line to save those who need saving. Unfortunately, this time around, the answers she finds only lead to more questions. On top of that, her great-aunt Willa and cousin Rosemary have arrived in town out of nowhere and they seem to be harboring their own secrets, and it’s something that could change the entire trajectory of Bay’s life.
The Winchesters are loyal, and it’s going to take all of them working together to solve this one. It seems new magic is afoot, and whoever is wielding it is deadly.
Magic, mystery and mayhem are about to collide. Batten down the hatches. The Winchesters are about to take you on a wild ride.
Murder on Holiday Lane
by London Lovett:
It’s a warm and sunny Christmas season in Los Angeles. Things are slow at the Starfire Detective Agency, but Poppy is sure things will pick up after the holidays. When a pretty young starlet who works part-time as an elf at Santa’s Workshop on Holiday Lane is murdered, Poppy’s close friend, the up and coming director, Wyatt Blaze, becomes a prime suspect. Wyatt needs Poppy’s help to find the real killer. Gossip travels fast in Tinseltown and an arrest, even a false arrest, will destroy Wyatt’s career for good.
Now Poppy must start from the very beginning to find out just who had it out for the elf. Is it possible Santa himself is behind the diabolical deed?
Pounding on the door. My seven-year-old son shaking me awake. My head fuzzy with sleeping pills. The hallway flashing with blue light. This morning my life will change forever.
Alex Kendrew is juggling single parenthood, work and dating; with a wild, impetuous streak that’s hard to keep in check, she struggles to find a balance and feels perpetually guilty for the choices she makes.
In K.A. Masson’s domestic noir thriller, Alex begins a passionate affair when an old flame gets in touch. But one morning, the police arrest her for his attempted murder. Someone is framing her; can she prove her innocence as the evidence mounts against her?
Eight Cylinders by Jonathan Parent:
Sebastian “Seb” McAlister has run out of luck in Vegas. Cornered by a trigger-happy gang and shot through the stomach, he makes a desperate escape in his supercharged Hellcat. Fate guides Seb safely out of Sin City and into the desert, but as his wheels fade into the horizon, he fades into darkness.
He awakes among a tiny community in the middle of nowhere. A mountain range circles the hodgepodge of shacks like prison walls looming high. And the warden that resides in those mountains is big, ugly, and deadly—a creature straight out of a Lovecraftian nightmare.
If Seb hopes to escape that wayward way station, he’ll need enough cunning to outwit a force beyond comprehension… and a fast car. With a little luck and a ragtag group of would-be monster mashers racing alongside him, Seb just might have a shot of making it through the mountains alive.
Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.
Has former FBI-profiler Eva Rae Thomas finally gotten herself in deeper than she can handle?
When the body of Nancy Henry is pulled out of the water of Sykes Creek by two local fishermen, they soon realize she’s not dead.
Not yet.
Before she disappeared, Nancy Henry appeared to have everything: a successful husband who adored her, two beautiful children, a modeling career, and a charming home in south Merritt Island with a heart wreath on the door.
Now that she is back five years later, everything has changed. Her husband is with another wife, and her children are almost grown.
Everywhere she turns, people are telling her the same thing: We thought you were dead.
What happened to her?
Nancy claims she doesn’t know where she has been. She remembers nothing after a blow to her head. She doesn’t want to talk to the investigation team lead by former FBI-profiler Eva Rae Thomas, who has agreed to help with this bizarre case.
The sheriff’s office soon wants to give up on the case, but Eva Rae doesn’t quite believe in quitting. She sees fear in Nancy Henry’s eyes that makes her think she is lying to them, maybe to protect herself.
What secrets is she carrying?
To get to the truth, Eva Rae must get to the bottom of what really happened on that night five years ago when Nancy Henry disappeared from her home in what looked like a home intrusion. But the past isn’t always easy to dig up, especially not when someone wants it to stay hidden and will go to great lengths to make sure it does.
Someone obviously tried to kill Nancy Henry. Will they come back to finish what they started?
The Diamond Device by M.H. Thaung:
After diamond power promises to replace steam, an unemployed labourer and a thieving noble unite to foil an international plot and avert a war.
Alf Wilson resents the new technology that cost him his factory job, especially as his clockwork leg bars him from army enrolment. He daren’t confess his unemployment to his overbearing mother. Desperate over the rent, he ends up in a detention cell with a hangover.
Impoverished Lord Richard Hayes maintains his expensive parliamentary seat by a mixture of charm and burglary. During a poorly planned break-in, he inadvertently witnesses a kidnapping. To cap it all, the police arrest him for the crime. At least he’s using a fake identity. The real criminals make off with not just the professor who discovered diamond power, but her plans for a diamond-fuelled bomb.
When Rich encounters Alf in the neighbouring cell, he sees an opportunity to keep his noble reputation intact. He persuades Alf he’s a secret agent who needs an assistant. This chance association will take them to the oddest locations. But law-abiding Alf’s first assignment? Break Rich out of jail.
The Boy in the Gutter by John Triptych:
1947: While Los Angeles is mesmerized by the sensational Black Dahlia murder, an Asian boy’s mutilated body is found in a back alley of Chinatown. With the thoroughly corrupt LAPD unwilling to devote their already strained resources to cracking the case, it seems this grisly crime is destined to remain unsolved.
Tommy “Dapper” Luoo, a Chinese American college student, has dreams of becoming a private detective. Incensed and frustrated by the police’s lack of concern, he decides to help his community by finding out what truly happened.
But all is not what it seems as Dapper is drawn into a web of deceit and danger at every turn. For the City of Angels hides a dark underworld, where devils prey upon the damned and the desperate. Dapper is undaunted however, and he’ll keep on digging for answers, even if it kills him.
If you like hardboiled detective fiction with equal helpings of James Ellroy, Walter Mosley, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Dashiell Hammett, check out this newest crime noir novel by John Triptych. CAUTION: mature themes.
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November 27, 2020
Star Trek Discovery visits the planet formerly known as Vulcan in “Unification III”
It’s time for the latest installment in my ongoing episode by episode reviews of season 3 of Star Trek Discovery. Reviews of previous episodes may be found here.
Warning: Spoilers behind the cut!
So far, season three of Star Trek Discovery has oscillated between episodes that are very typically Star Trek and episodes that deploy space opera tropes that Star Trek has rarely played with. Last episode was one of the latter, so it makes sense that the following episode would be an example of the former. And indeed, “Unification III” is the most Star Trekky of Discovery episodes, which not only resolves its central conflict in a courtroom drama cum dissertion defence (Camestros Felapton calls it “an ancient Earth ritual called ‘defending your phd thesis’ but with space elves and more apostrophes” in his review) but which also refers back to earlier seasons of Discovery, the original series, The Next Generation and Star Trek Picard. Even the title is a reference to the Next Generation two-parter “Unification” and indeed implies that this episode is a direct sequel, albeit one that is set 800 years after the original. Honestly, you couldn’t find a more typical Star Trek episode, if you tried.
However, “Unification III” also engages in one of the most annoying things about Star Trek Discovery, namely the continuing humiliation of Michael Burnham. Season one was pretty much all about humiliating Michael, season two was much better in that regard, but season three falls right back into the bad old habits again. And so episode starts off with an extended flashback of Michael getting humiliated and demoted (not without reason) in the last episode without recapping any of the bits about “Scavengers” that were actually fun. And then, the Michael humiliation porn continues this week with almost no interruption. It’s too much even for AV-Club reviewer Zack Handlen, who doesn’t particularly like Michael.
But before we get to the humiliation porn, we get a very nice scene of Michael beaming aboard Book’s ship (which still has no name and is still parked inside Discovery‘s shuttle bay) looking for some comfort, which leads to Michael and Book having sex (which is very tastefully handled, probably because Sonequa Martin-Green’s pregnancy was already showing at this point) and some candid pillow talk afterwards. Michael confesses that she is no longer sure, if Discovery is where she belongs, and Book, who feels not welcome aboard Discovery, tries to persuade her to just quit and travel through space with him and Grudge. He also tries to tell Michael that no, the fate of the universe does not rest upon her shoulders (though in Star Trek Discovery, it usually does) and that someone else will figure out the Burn thing eventually. And indeed, part of me just wanted Michael to say “yes” and “Screw Starfleet”. But she’s still Michael Burnham, and so she must not only suffer, the fate of the universe also really does rest upon her shoulders.
In the next scene, we get Michael reuniting with Tilly, after Tilly basically tattled about her unsanctioned absence to Saru. Okay, so Saru would have noticed Michael’s absence anyway sooner or later anyway (and why does the Discovery‘s computer not alert Saru, if someone is leaving the ship?), but tattling on your friend is not a nice thing to do. Tilly also wants to know why Michael didn’t tell her about her plans, whereupon Michael says that it would have put Tilly into an even worse position with Saru. Tilly, however, insists that she still would have liked to know. Though I full understand why Michael didn’t tell Tilly. Because much as I like Tilly, she is about the last person aboard Discovery I would trust to keep a secret.
Michael and Tilly also analyse the black box/flight recorder Book and Michael found last episode and find that the Starfleet ship to which the flight recorder belonged also exploded at a slightly different time than the other two Starfleet ships from which they have flight reocrders. So the Burn really did spread from a certain location. Michael tries to triangulate the location based on the information from the three flight recorders, but Tilly reminds her that space is three-dimensional (finally someone remembers) and that they need more data. Tilly also has an idea where to find that data. For all through the galaxy, there are scattered sensors belonging to a classified experiment known only as SB-19. Those sensors may well have recorded useful data.
Saru and Michael promptly inform Admiral Vance about these findings and ask for the SB-19 sensor data. Whereupon Admiral Vance informs them that procuring the data might be a problem, because SB-19 wasn’t a Federation experiment. It was run by Ni’Var.
Since Michael and Saru both react with a blank look, Vance corrects himself, “Oh yes, you probably know that planet better by its former name Vulcan. This leads to another barrage of questions and Vance offering some catch-up of 900 years of galactic history. For starters, Vulcan changed its name, because it’s no longer inhabited only by Vulcans, but the Romulans also live there now (Jean-Luc Picard would be very relieved to hear that someone has finally agreed to take in the homeless Romulans).
“But aren’t the Romulans enemies?” a disbelieving Saru asks, whereupon Vance explains that the Romulans are actually a Vulcan offshoot (a fact that was not known until the original series episode “Balance of Terror”, which takes place after Discovery jaunted into the future) and that Ambassador Spock worked hard to reunite the two people and that his efforts succeeded (sort of), even though it took centuries. “Spock did what?” Michael exclaims, since she has no idea what her little brother has been up to since she left.
But Michael has barely time to deal with those revelations, when Vance drops another bombshell. Because Ni’Var left the Federation about a hundred years before, shortly after the Burn. Which is something of a shock, because Vulcan was a founding member. On the other hand, Earth also left the Federation and they were another founding member. And indeed, Michael insists that the Vulcans would never leave the Federation – it must have been those Romulans. “No, actually the Romulans wanted to stay”, Vance replies. He also reports that diplomatic relations with Ni’Var are difficult, because Ni’Var doesn’t trust the Federation and won’t hand over the data.
However, Vance also has a brilliant idea. Since the people of Ni’Var venerate Spock as their uniter, they might just listen to his sister (whom no one was supposed to ever mention again, but maybe the Vulcans just ignored that bit and the Romulans never agreed in the first place), when they won’t listen to anybody else. Saru points out that he demoted Michael, but Vance won’t hear anything about that. And so Discovery is off to Ni’Var a.k.a. the planet formerly known as Vulcan.
En route, Michael – and Book, since they’re together at the time – catches up on Spock’s remarkable history, accessing the files of one Admiral Jean-Luc Picard and treating us to a clip of Leonard Nimoy as Spock in the original “Unification” two-parter. I suspect it was not just Michael who got misty-eyed at seeing Spock again (and nothing against Ethan Peck or Zachary Quinto, but for most of us, Leonard Nimoy still is Spock). Though Michael is also a very proud big sister. Book laughs and tells Michael that she and Spock are both such overarchievers (and Michael hasn’t even mentioned her other brother yet, the one who wanted to talk to God). But Book also likes Spock, at least what little he’s seen of him.
When Discovery arrives at Ni’Var, they are greeted by a hologram of President T’Rina. Tasha Rosling, the Canadian actress playing T’Rina, looked very familiar, , there was no role which really stuck out to me. Finally, I realised that the actress reminded me of Swiss singer and TV personality Paola Felix, who was a staple of German TV, when I was a kid.
T’Rina is happy enough to see Michael, though a tad miffed, because Discovery just popped up without triggering Ni’Var’s long-range sensors. She also refuses to hand over the SB-19 data, because that subject is still sensitive more than a century later. Cause it turns out that SB-19 was not just a bunch of sensors, but a system of stargates (wrong franchise, folks), which the Vulcans developed as an alternative to dilithium, since the Federation was running out of dilithium even before the Burn, because they overstretched themselves. The Federation pushed the Vulcans to develop the SB-19 system faster than the Vulcans were comfortable with. Then the Burn happened and the Vulcans believed that the SB-19 experiment was the cause, so they shut down the experiment and left the Federation, because 900 years of putting up with humans was enough for them. Coincidentally, that huge Vulcan flounce also proves that the Romulans are not the only drama queens living on Ni’Var.
Michael points out that while she and Tilly haven’t been able to fully pinpoint the origin of the Burn, they do know that Vulcan a.ka. Ni’Var was not it. But T’Rina remains adamant. She’d love to help, but the situation is just too politically volatile. After all, Ni’Var is the planet of drama queens.
Saru is willing to leave it at that. Michael, however, isn’t. And being Michael, she comes up with a brilliant plan, which she unfortunately neglects to discuss with anybody else beforehand. To be fair, it was probably a spur of the moment idea, but it might still have been a good idea to run her plan past Saru first. On the other hand, Saru probably would have said no. And so Michael asks T’Rina, if they still follow the old ways. “Of course,” T’Rina declares, “We’re Vulcan, after all.” Whereupon Michael informs her that as a graduate of the Vulcan Science Academy (and we wonder how much Michael enjoyed dropping that tidbit, considering that how the Vulcans treated her on her graduation ceremony) she invokes the T’Kal-in-ket, an ancient Vulcan ritual that is part trial and part PhD thesis defence.
T’Rina is not at all pleased, because Michael just forced her hand, while Saru is just exasperated that Michael once again made a move without informing him about it first. Michael, however, is confident. After all, she has scientific proof that Ni’Var was not the source of the Burn. T’Rina warns her that proof alone won’t help, because things have changed a lot in the past 900 years.
One of the things that have changed is that the challenger at a T’Kal-in-ket now gets assigned an advocate, a member of the Quowat Milat, the order of Romulan warrior nuns who speak with absolutely candour and only support lost causes, whom we first encountered in Star Trek Picard. T’Rina also informs Michael that this particular Quowat Milat sister has taken an interest in her specifically.
I have to admit that I was halfway expecting a distant descendant of Spock’s to show up. He might well have decided to further his unification project by marrying a Romulan. After all, that’s what Sarek did with Amanda. However, when the Quowat Milat sister lifts her veil, it’s none other than Gabrielle Burnham, Michael’s long lost mother whom we last saw in “Perpetual Infinity” last season. Michael has been searching for her mother on Terralysium, but instead Gabrielle somehow ended up on Ni’Var (to be fair, her adopted home planet is a logical place to look for Michael) and wound up joining the Quowat Milat. Michael is of course overjoyed to see her mother and also confides in her that she isn’t sure if Discovery and Starfleet are still right for her. This proves to be a mistake.
But first, we get the T’Kal-in-ket, which turns out to be a very Vulcan affair with torches, gongs, an audience of Discovery crewmembers as well as random Vulcans and Romulans (the way to tell them apart is that Vulcans still wear the same silly hairstyle they’ve always favoured, while Romulans have regular hairstyles) and a quorum of three whom Michael has to persuade of her cause. The quorum are V’Kir, an extremely arrogant and snotty Vulcan, who’s likely a latter day version of the Vulcan logic extremists we’ve seen in previous seasons of Discovery (and am I the only one who finds it problematic that Vulcans of colour are inevitably jerks), N’Raj, a Romulan who’s the most likeable of the bunch, and Shira, who represents those who are descended from both Romulans and Vulcans (though aren’t they the same species anyway?) and doesn’t say much.
Though the T’Kal-in-ket is almost oever before it began, because V’Kir, who is the chairvulcan, wants to dismiss Michael’s cause, because she has no new information to answer. The people of Ni’Var already know that the Burn spread and where it originated. Michael insists that they don’t know everything and that her data proves that the source wasn’t Ni’Var. N’Raj points out that if there’s a chance that Ni’Var wasn’t the source after all, they should maybe listen, but V’Kir won’t hear any of it. His mind is made up. Ni’Var is responsible for the Burn and the Federation made them do it.
Now we know that Michael has the tendency to literally consider herself responsible for the fate of the whole universe, a card she even plays during the inquiry. “Hey guys, I travelled through time to save all life in the whole fucking universe and this is how you thank me?” However, considering yourself responsible for the fate of the whole universe isn’t just a Michael thing, it’s a Vulcan thing. And the Vulcans have spent the past hundred years thinking they were responsible for the end of the Star Trek universe as we know it. And now they would just like to wallow in guilt undisturbed. Like I said, they’re all drama queens.
V’Kir points out that even if Ni’Var should not be responsible for the Burn, they still don’t trust the Federation. And since Michael speaks for the Federation, how shall they trust her? Michael declares that she’s from Vulcan, too, and Spock’s sister, so they can trust her. And no, the Federation is not manipulating her, even though it totally is.
At this point, Gabrielle Burnham decides to make a last-minute play for the coveted 2020 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Oustandingly Horrible Fictional Parents by basically stabbing her daughter in the back. And indeed Dr. Burnham a.k.a. Sister Gabrielle might have had a chance, if I wasn’t already 99 percent sure who this year’s winner will be. So nice try, Gabrielle, but the other candidate was simply more horrible. Keep trying.
Gabrielle informs the quorum that Michael is not telling the truth and proceeds to lay Michael’s painful history in great and exhaustive detail, telling everybody present that Michael tends to defy orders again and again, that she got prime Philippa Georgiou killed, that she started the war with the Klingons and that she defied orders again to get the Burn data and was demoted in the process. Oh yes, and Michael doesn’t even know, if Starfleet is still the right place for her.
All of those things may be right, but it’s still a dick move by Gabrielle and if she were my mother, I have told her to get lost and never come near me again. But this is still Star Trek and so Gabrielle’s dick move only triggers an impassioned speech from Michael how she travelled 900 years into the future to save all life in the universe from the evil AI Control (that should work with N’Raj, since we know that Romulans hate AIs) and that they could just be fucking grateful, cause without her sacrifice, their whole shitty future wouldn’t even exist. All right, so Michael swears a little less, but that’s more or less the gist of it. “Now she speaks the truth”, Gabrielle declares triumphantly.
Now in Star Trek, particularly from The Next Generation onwards, passionate speeches frequently save the day. However, Ni’Var is still the planet of the drama queens and so the quorum instead descends into internecine squabbling, as old enmities and disagreements between Vulcans, Romulans and hybrids come to the fore. Whereupon Michael decides to out-drama-queen them all. She bangs the gong, declares that she won’t undo the good work that her brother has done to reunite Vulcans and Romulans and that she withdraws her request. Then she walks out in an epic flounce.
And that epic flounce is successful, too, for T’Rina is so impressed by Michael (and Saru, since she quite seems to like everybody’s favourite Kelpian) that she hands over the data anyway. She also informs Michael that she now understands how Spock became the man he was. Because he was clearly influenced by his big sister. T’Rina might even be right, because Spock and Michael are very similar characters. They both do what they feel is right, orders and consequences be damned. They’re also both willing to sacrifice everything to protect the people they care for. And they’re both overarchievers who think that the fate of the entire universe rests on their shoulders. Finally, Spock’s decision to reunite Vulcans and Romulans was exactly the sort of unsanctioned maverick action that Michael keeps getting in trouble for. Which makes the fact that quite a few people dislike Michael but adore Spock so hypocritical. Because they are very similar people in different packages.
Afterwards, Gabrielle visits Michael in her quarters. Amazingly, Michael does not kick her out, but they even reconcile. Michael’s ordeal has shown her that she still wants to be part of Starfleet and Gabrielle tells her that she doesn’t have to change the new person she’s become, but can remain with Starfleet as her new self.
That’s all nice and well, except that I don’t agree that Starfleet is a good fit for Michael and likely never was. The only reason she joined was to prove something to Sarek and the Vulcan Science Academy. But she doesn’t have to prove anything to them anymore, so maybe going off on her own with Book would be a better choice for her. However, as io9 reviewer James Whitbrook points out, Michael is the protagonist and the series is so focussed on her that only does everything have to revolve around her, but there was only ever one outcome for her dilemma.
The fact that Discovery is more focussed on a single character than any other Star Trek series except for Picard lies also at the heart of the B-plot of this episode, namely who will be Discovery‘s first officer now that Michael has been demoted. Saru has clearly made his decision and approaches Tilly. If you think that a) Tilly is an ensign and there are plenty of people on board who are more experienced and outrank her, b) Tilly never even completed the command training program and c) this is the second time Saru picks a first officer just because he likes them and look how well that worked the first time around, then you’re not alone. Tilly makes all of these points herself.
Saru gives her time to consider, so Tilly talks to Stamets, which gives Anthony Rapp to show off some of his marvelous facial expressions. Stamets also isn’t entirely sure how he feels about Tilly of all people being his boss. However, he enlists the bridge crew who all tell Tilly how much they love her and that they want her to do the job for which several of them likely were in line themselves. So Silvia Tilly is now the Discovery‘s new first officer.
Tor.com reviewer Keith R.A. DeCandido is okay with this decision, even though it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and his wife is thrilled. And yes, Tilly is a very likable character and a fan favourite. However, making Tilly of all people Number One also illustrates a huge issue with Discovery, namely that the show is so focussed on Michael that many of the other characters are criminally underdeveloped. Michael is out for obvious reasons, Stamets and Culber both have jobs already, Jett Reno, who would have been a fantastic choice, is only recurring but not a regular character, Georgiou is a psychopath from the mirror universe. And the bridge crew, who would have been the most likely pool of candidates, are so underdeveloped that only Dettmer and Owosegun have anything approaching personalities. So Tilly is really the only person listed in the opening credits who can take the job. Season 3 has done a lot to remedy that and give the bridge crew more to do, but the intense Michael focus of the show is still a problem, even if Michael has now decided that her place is with Starfleet and Discovery after all.
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November 22, 2020
Two New “In Love and War” Stories Available: “Neutral Ground” and “Ballroom Blitz”
I have another new release announcement to make. This one is for the two latest stories in my In Love and War space opera romance series.
Now I don’t always write in chronological order and I’m in good company there, since Lois McMaster Bujold and Fritz Leiber didn’t do it either and they’re both highly acclaimed multiple award-winning authors. And so, both new stories slot into an earlier place in the In Love and War chronology. Besides, the In Love and War stories largely stand alone anyway, though you’ll get more out of the series, if you read them all.
The first of the two new stories is another one to come out of the 2020 July Short Story Challenge, where the aim was to write a short story per day during the month of July. It’s something of a side story, set just before Collision Course and featuring Mikhail’s former commander, Colonel Brian Mayhew of the Republican Special Commando Forces.
It’s been established throughout the series that Mayhew has contacts in the Imperial military. In this story, we finally get to meet one of those contacts, General Roderick Crawford, who’s basically Mayhew’s Imperial counterpart or rather the counterpart of Mayhew’s boss General Honold. Even though they’re theoretically sworn enemies, Mayhew and Crawford get along really well with each other. Unlike Mikhail and Anjali, they don’t draw any conclusions from this at all.
In this story, Mayhew and Crawford meet over tea, coffee and pastries to discuss the very embarrassing matter of Mikhail and Anjali running away together. And yes, there are recipes in the Author’s Note.
So accompany Brian Mayhew and General Roderick Crawford, as they meet on…
Neutral Ground
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Two old soldiers share a coffee and fight for their lives
The Republic of United Planets and the Empire of Worlds have been at war for eighty-eight years now. But nonetheless, Colonel Brian Mayhew, deputy commander of the Republican Special Commando Forces, meets with his Imperial counterpart General Roderick Crawford to discuss an incident that’s a problem for both of them. For two of their elite soldiers fell in love and ran away with each other, an embarrassment to the Republic and the Empire both.
However, this secret meeting is not as secret as the two men think. And so Mayhew and Crawford are soon fighting for their lives side by side…
This is a novelette of 9500 words or approximately 32 print pages in the In Love and War series by Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert, but may be read as a standalone.
More information.
Length: 9500 words
List price: 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP
Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, Google Play, Scribd, Smashwords, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, Vivlio, 24symbols and XinXii.
The second new In Love and War story originally came about, when I was putting together my annual round-up of Valentine’s Day themed science fiction, fantasy and horror stories and thought, ‘You know, you ought to write another Valentine’s Day story, because holiday stories usually do well.”
So I wrecked my head trying to come up with an idea and finally thought, “Why don’t I write a Valentine’s Day story for the In Love and War series?” After all, it’s space opera romance set in a universe where everybody is descended from people who originally came from Earth, so it makes sense for there to be a Valentine’s Day in that universe. And so the idea was born to send Anjali and Mikhail on a romantic date that’s rudely interrupted by people with blasters.
Unfortunately, it was maybe two weeks before Valentine’s Day 2020, when I had the the idea to write a Valentine’s Day themed adventure in the In Love and War series. Besides, what had been supposed to be a short story turned into a fully fledged novella instead, so the story was not finished in time for Valentine’s Day. And then the pandemic happened and I found myself rather unexpectedly nominated for a Hugo Award and so the story ended up on the backburner for a while, until I picked it up again in the fall of 2020. However, I didn’t want to hold a finished story back until next February either, so instead of being released in time for Valentine’s Day, the story now comes out closer to Christmas.
Anjali and Mikhail celebrate their first anniversary in The Taste of Home. The Valentine’s Day story happens at an earlier point in their relationship, so I rearranged the series order yet again and slotted it inbetween Bullet Holes and Dead World.
Romance, action, crime, food, gratuitous destruction of property – this story has it all. So follow Mikhail and Anjali, as they get caught up in a…
Ballroom Blitz
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Anjali and Mikhail go on a Valentine’s Day date. Trouble ensues.
Once, Anjali Patel and Mikhail Grikov were soldiers on opposing sides of an intergalactic war. They met, fell in love and decided to go on the run together.
Now Anjali and Mikhail are trying to eke out a living on the independent worlds of the galactic rim, while attempting to stay under the radar of those pursuing them.
It’s Valentine’s Day and so Mikhail and Anjali enjoy a well-deserved romantic dinner. But their date is rudely interrupted, when they find themselves caught in the crossfire of a turf war between two rival gangsters.
This is a Valentine’s Day novella of 23200 words or approximately 78 print pages in the “In Love and War” series by Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert, but may be read as a standalone.
More information.
Length: 23200 words.
List price: 2.99 USD, EUR or 1.99 GBP
Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, Google Play, Scribd, Smashwords, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, Vivlio, 24symbols and XinXii.
The title Ballroom Blitz is a reference to the eponymous 1973 song by the British glam rock band The Sweet by the way. I chanced to hear it on the radio one day, while writing the story, and thought, “This is the perfect title for the up to then untitled story.”.
This covers for both stories are by the hyper-talented Tithi Luadthong. In the case of Ballroom Blitz, the cover actually came before the story, because I liked that image so much that I modelled the club where Anjali and Mikhail go for a night of romance and dancing after the image. And yes, that giant chandelier plays an important role in the story.
If you want to give the In Love and War series a try before buying, Double-Cross, another adventure of Anjali and Mikhail, is this month’s free story, which you can read right here on this blog.
And if you want to read the entire series of sixteen stories, the cheapest way to do so is via this handy series bundle, which is available exclusively at DriveThruFiction.
There’ll be at least one more new release announcement for 2020, maybe two, closer to the holidays. But for now, stay safe and healthy and have a happy Thanksgiving and/or First Advent, if you’re celebrating.
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November 21, 2020
Tha Mandalorian and Baby Yoda meet up with old friends and enemies in “The Siege”
Now I have this week’s Star Trek Discovery review out of the way, it’s time for my episode by episode reviews of season 2 of The Mandalorian again. Previous installments may be found here.
Also, since Star Wars is a Disney property now, may I remind you that Disney is not paying the royalties due to Alan Dean Foster and possibly others as well.
Warning: Spoilers under the cut!
Mando’s quest to find the second-to-last Jedi Ahsoka Tano will have to be postponed for a bit, because the Razor Crest simply can’t go any further after the beating she’s taken. Mando’s attempts to enlist Baby Yoda’s help for repairs inside the Star Wars equivalent of a Jeffries Tube fail, because the instruction are too complicated for a toddler and Baby Yoda also manages to cross two wires in spite of Mando’s urgent appeal to do anything but that and gets himself electrocuted in the process (Don’t worry, he’s fine). In many ways, that scene calls to mind a similar scene in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, where everybody’s other favourite alien baby Groot also fails to understand instructions regarding a detonator. What is it with Disney-owned space opera characters and trying to make toddlers do electrical repairs?
We are now treated to a sweet scene of Mando and Baby Yoda eating some soup. Mando lifts his helmet just enough to be able to drink the soup (spoons are apparently not a thing in the Star Wars universe) and Baby Yoda tries to take a quick peek. Which makes me wonder if the fundamentalist Mandalorian “Never take of your helmet in front of others” rule also applies to family members and children in one’s care and if Baby Yoda has really never seen the face of his Dad. Now I have no idea about the development of Yoda’s species, though Baby Yoda behave very much like a human toddler. And as the so-called “still face” experiment proved, human babies need to see their parents’/caregivers’ facial expressions to develop and thrive. So now I worry about Baby Yoda’s emotional and psychological development. Honestly, Mando, you’re a clan of two. You can take your helmet off in front of the kid.
Mando decides that he’ll need to have the Razor Crest repaired, so he heads to his old familiar stomping grounds in Nevarro. Except that Nevarro has changed a lot since Mando was last there (And how long has it been since the end of season 1 anyway? Weeks? Months?). The central town (cause all planets in the Star Wars universe only have one town, even Coruscant, only that the city covers the entire planet there) has cleaned up nicely, the market looks much more inviting and the various lowlives that used to hang out in town have largely gone underground (quite literally in one case). There is even a statue of the heroic droid IG-11 in the background, which was a nice touch. And it’s all due to the new magistrate Greef Carga (whom I suspect wasn’t elected democratically) and the new marshall Cara Dune, whom we see in action early on, taking out some alien bandits and adopting their supposed dinner, a meerkat like creature. As Tor.com reviewer Emmet Asher-Perrin points out, the aliens are of the same species a member of which harrassed Luke Skywalker in the Mos Eisley cantina in A New Hope, before losing an arm to Obi-Wan’s lightsabre.
Greef Carga and Cara are happy to see Mando, even if they can’t quite suppress a few smirks and jabs about the state of the Razor Crest, which is so badly damaged that Mando can’t even fully lower the ramp and instead has to hop down. Baby Yoda gets some cuddles and Greef Carga even insists on carrying the little one around. Cause ever since Baby Yoda saved his life back in season one, Greef Carga is his number one fan.
While the Razor Crest is being repaired (by his best people, Greef Carga declares), Cara and Greef Carga show Mando around town. We meet another familiar face, Mythrol, the blue gilled alien that Mando captured in the very first scene of season one, well before we even met Baby Yoda. Nobody seems to know whether Mythrol is the name of the character, as Guardian reviewer Paul MacInnes believes, or of the species, as AV-Club reviewer Katie Rife thinks, but since we have no other name, I’ll go with Mythrol for now. Last time, we saw Mythrol, he was frozen in carbonite. Greef Carga thawed him out (though Mythrol still complains about vision problems in his left eye) and put him back to work as an accountant, though he will have to work of his debts (Mythrol made the bad decision to steal from Greef Carga) for 350 years. I hope his species is that long lived.
Greef Carga and Cara Dune also have a proposition for Mando. Since it will take a while for the Razor Crest to be repaired, they’d like his help with a mission. For it turns out that even though Greef Carga and Care Dune have cleaned up and control most of Nevarro, there is an old Imperial base on the far side of the planet that they’d like to be rid of. The base is still active, but should only have a skeleton crew. “Piece of cake”, they assure Mando.
Mando decides to go along on the mission, because Greef and Cara are his friends and besides, Greef Carga promised him the much needed repairs on the Razor Crest for free. But first Mando reluctantly drops off Baby Yoda at the local school – formerly the bounty hunter guild headquarters – which Greef and Cara assure him is safe. Coincidentally, this school with a battered protocol droid serving as teacher is the only school of any kind we’ve ever seen in Star Wars. The closest thing to a school we’ve had previously was a clone indoctrination facility in Attack of the Clones. Of course, Baby Yoda is still too young for school and by far the smallest kid there. But he has the Force, which he promptly uses to steal some blue macarons from another kid, though to be fair, he does ask first. Still, somehow I don’t think that this is what Yoda had in mind, when he said, “Use the Force.”
The bulk of the episode is given over to Mando, Cara Dune, Greef Carga and Mythrol (who initially is only there as a driver, but eventually gets a lot more to do) trying to blow up the Imperial base, which is not nearly as deserted as they initially assumed. For starters, the supposed skeleton crew are a whole lot of Stormtroopers, who fare about as well against our heroes as Stormtroopers usually do. Mando literally throws one from the landing deck to the ground far below. There are technicians and other Imperial personnel as well. Our heroes quickly deal with them.
The base is drawing geothermal energy from Nevarro’s everpresent lava flows, so Mando and the gang decide to cut the cooling lines, which should lead to the lava overflowing and destroying the base. It’s a solid plan, but unfortunately the controls for the cooling system happen to be right above a lava shaft with no railing and some angry Stormtroopers firing at our heroes. In the end, Mythrol is the one who deactivates the cooling system, while Mando, Cara and Greef cover him.
The Imperial base looks very much like any Imperial outpost in the Star Wars universe, down to the very retro looking switches and data sockets we’ve seen first in A New Hope. It’s also notable that the Empire still doesn’t give a shit about even the most basic of safety precautions. Platforms have no railings, trash compactors have no emergency shutdowns, reactors can be accessed via entirely unprotected shafts, control systems are located above bottomless chasms, again with no railing. Even though railings and emergency shutdown systems were commonplace in the real world even in 1977, when A New Hope came out. It seems as if technology progressed very differently in the Star Wars universe. Emmet Asher-Perrin has a theory why that might be so.
On their way to escape the base that’s about to blow up, Mando, Greef, Cara and Mythrol come across a lab with deformed humanoid beings pickled in blue liquid. They also fine a holographic message from Doctor Pershing, the scientist we saw doing strange things to Baby Yoda in season one, to Moff Gideon, which contains some very worrying information. For Doctor Pershing regrets to inform Moff Gideon that the experiment failed, because the subject rejected the blood transfusion they were given. And unfortunately, Doctor Pershing doesn’t have any more high M-count blood left, because he was only able to take a little from the donor, since the donor was still a young child. Mando knows what this means. The reason Moff Gideon (whom our heroes didn’t even know was still alive) wants Baby Yoda is to use his blood in his experiments. Which means that Baby Yoda (and a whole school full of kids) is in mortal danger.
There are a lot of speculations about what precisely the experiments Doctor Pershing is perfoming for Moff Gideon are about. Is Moff Gideon trying to create his own Force-sensitive supersoldiers, as io9 reviewer Germain Lussier and AV-Club reviewer Katie Rife suspect? Is he trying to clone Palpatine, as Emmet Asher-Perrin suspects? Whatever it is, it’s certainly bad news for our heroes.
And so Mando takes off on his jetpack to rescue Baby Yoda (a scene which sadly happened off screen), while Cara, Greef and Mythrol have to fight their way out. When their way is cut off, Cara commandeers an armoued and armed Imperial ground transport and the three of them escape, pursued by Stormtroopers on speeder bikes and later TIE-fighters. The action scenes in this episode – which was directed by Carl Weathers, who also plays Greef Carga – are truly impressive, particularly the lengthy chase scene in the canyon.
Just as a TIE-fighter is about to blow up the transport, Mando comes to the rescue in the newly repaired Razor Crest and proceeds to take out the remaining two TIE-fighters (Greef Carga had shot one of them down) with some impressive flying manoeuvres, while Baby Yoda sits in the passenger seat, munching macarons and cheering. The little one clearly loves fast movements of any kind. But anybody who has ever ridden a rollercoaster on a full stomach knows that this is not a good idea. And so Mando blows up the last of the TIE-fighters only to be rewarded with some blue vomit, which he manfully tries to clean up, though personally I don’t think a cape is at all suitable for cleaning up baby puke.
The episode ends with Greef Carga getting a visit from Captain Teva of the New Republic, whom we last saw in “The Passenger” two weeks ago saving Mando, Baby Yoda and the Frog Lady from the monster spiders. Captain Teva wants to know just why an Imperial base suddenly exploded (you’d figure the New Republic would be grateful, no matter what the cause) and if a wandering Mandalorian was involved, but Greef Carga isn’t telling. Neither is Cara Dune, even after Captain Teva brings up her past as a Rebel shocktrooper and tries to re-recruit her. He even leaves her some kind of badge. But Cara wants nothing to do with the New Republic, at least for now, and Teva asking her if she lost someone on Alderaan doesn’t help either. After all, it’s obvious that every survivor – and so far we’ve only met two, Leia and Cara – must have lost not just their home, but their families and friends as well. Talking of which, Alderaan certainly breeds impressive women, even if there is something of a backlash against Cara Dune because of some unfortunate remarks actress Gina Carano made on Twitter.
The scene then shifts to what looks like a slightly redesigned Star Destroyer, which is introduced in perfect New Hope manner. Aboard that ship, a female Imperial officer – the first and only female Imperial soldier we’ve ever seen, though the First Order did have several women in its ranks – receives a message from one of the mechanics who repaired the Razor Crest. The tracking device has been installed, the mechanic reports. Thrilled, the young officer reports this to Moff Gideon. So Mando and Baby Yoda are not just in danger, they’re also bringing that danger to the doorstep of the second-to-last Jedi in the universe.
This episode was almost pure action. For once, it also contained more callbacks to Star Wars itself, particularly A New Hope, than to other genres. However, unlike some of the other action heavy episodes, “The Siege” also moves the story forward, because we now know just why Moff Gideon is after poor Baby Yoda.
There have been some complaints about the meandering and episodic nature of The Mandalorian, but then the show follows (and has followed from the very first episode on) the old “a stranger comes into town” pattern that lies at the heart of anything from The Fugitive and Route 66 via Doctor Who and the original Star Trek (and The Next Generation, since Star Trek only had longer arcs from Deep Space Nine on) via the 1970s Incredible Hulk and The A-Team to Jack Reacher. It’s a very old pattern that goes back to the pulp era (Conan and Eric John Stark and pretty much every pulp series character are variations of “a stranger comes into town”) and likely even further to the dime novel era. It’s also a pattern that works, which is why it has been used for so long.
It seems to me as if the complaints mainly come from younger viewers who are used to the heavily serialised storytelling style of many TV shows of today. Indeed, a commenter somewhere said that they had problems adjusting to the episodic style of The Mandalorian, because the more serialised style of e.g. Game of Thrones was much more common, which made me think, “Uhm, how old are you exactly?” Because serialised TV-shows were not at all common until the 1990s. Twin Peaks is the first US TV-show that was heavily serialised, soap operas like Dallas or Dynasty notwithstanding. And even well into the 2000s, the majority of TV shows still used the episodic “case of the week” format or were hybrids that had a few arc episodes and a lot of standalone cases of the week. It’s only very recently that fully serialised shows became more common, probably because of the lower episode counts of streaming series. And The Mandalorian has a lot more internal continuity than e.g. The Fugitive or The A-Team, which can usually be watched in any order.
Now I’ve said before that I quite like the “a stranger comes to town” approach and use it for several of my own series. And I’m happy that there are still TV shows which use that time-tested approach, because while fully serialised TV shows can be a lot of fun, you also can’t watch too many of them at the same time.
Even though The Mandalorian is a brand-new show using cutting edge technology, it feels very retro. And so a more retro approach to storytelling is certainly appropriate.
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November 20, 2020
Star Trek Discovery goes on an unsanctioned mission in “Scavengers”
It’s time for the latest installment in my ongoing episode by episode reviews of season 3 of Star Trek Discovery. Reviews of previous episodes may be found here.
Warning: Spoilers behind the cut!
Now that Discovery has successfully rejoined Starfleet, the ship gets a technology update. The nacelles are detachable now, the consoles have been retrofitted with programmable matter and the crew get new badges, which double as communicators, personal transporters, tricorders and holographic emitters. Everybody geeks out about the cool new future science except for Dettmer, who’s still not herself, and Linus whose personal transporter keeps taking him to the wrong location. Poor Linus seems to be the designated comic relief in this crew. Not that Discovery doesn’t need the occasional comic relief, but maybe someone else could do the butt of the jokes once in a while?
Stamets is also not all that happy with his engine room being rearranged, though he does like the improvements Adira has made to the spore drive interface, which also allow him to ditch the implants he needed to operate the spore drive. Stamets also notes that Adira seems to be lonely and that they are talking to themselves. Though we know that Adira is really talking to their late boyfriend Gray whom they can see, even if no one else can. Stamets asks Adira what’s going on and actually gets them to open up to him, which leads to a sweet scene of Stamets and Adira bonding over the shared loss of a loved one who wasn’t fully gone after all. This is only the B-plot of this episode, but it’s very sweet one and gives Stamets, Culber and Adira some extra character development, too. And yes, I’d love to see Stamets and Culber adopting Adira (and Gray).
Even though Discovery has a lot of cool new tech and the only functioning drive in the galaxy that can cross large distances in the blink of an eye, Admiral Vance, who appears to be a new recurrent character, keeps them in reserve for emergencies, because Starfleet is having trouble with an Orion crime syndicate called the Emerald Chain.
More trouble is coming, when Discovery suddenly finds herself hailed by a ship from outside the Starfleet headquarters distortion field. When they answer the call, the bridge crew find themselves faced with none other than Grudge, Book’s very large and very fluffy cat.
It turns out that Book sent his ship and Grudge on autopilot to find Discovery, which begs the question how he knows where to find them, since the location of Starfleet headquarters is supposed to be secret and even Discovery herself took three episodes to find them. Also, with dilithium so rare and long range trips extremely difficult, how exactly did Book get enough dilithium to send his cat to Michael? It’s a question that’s never really adressed, because “Scavengers” has other things to do. Because the ship (Did it ever get a name?) carries not just Grudge, but also a holographic message from Book.
Book tells Michael that he found another black box – yes, flight recorders are still called black boxes in the 32nd century – of a Starfleet ship destroyed in the Burn on some planet and that he’ll get it for Michael. If he doesn’t come back in a week, he’s setting the ship on autopilot to bring Grudge to Michael. Since Book’s ship and Grudge are now here, Book obviously did not come back and is very likely in trouble.
Michael of course wants to go after him. For starters, she owes Book (and she also likes him, though she doesn’t want to admit it). And besides, Michael really needs that black box to find out what caused the Burn. Because if the Burn destroyed all dilithium using ships in the galaxy at the same time, all flight recorders should have stopped recording at the same time. However, the two surviving black boxes of Starfleet ships Michael found during her year in the wilderness both stopped recording at different times, which suggests that the Burn didn’t happen everywhere at once, but that it started somewhere and then spread. Michael believes that if she can find a third black box, she can triangulate that starting point and hopefully find out how the Burn happened.
Michael explains all this to Saru to convince him to let the Discovery go after Book. However, Saru responds that they are on call and have to be ready to take off anytime within 48 hours to deal with the Emerald Chain problem. Saru also thinks that a single holographic message and a cat won’t sway Admiral Vance, albeit without asking him first.
So Michael, being Michael, does what she always does and goes off to rescue Book and retrieve the black box anyway. Though she at least takes along Philippa Georgiou who tells her, “You had me at unsanctioned mission.” However, unbeknowst to Michael, Philippa is still suffering from occasional blackouts, which are accompanied by flashbacks (flash forwards/flash sideways?) of someone getting stabbed and someone screaming. Those visions are brief and there is some debate about what exactly Philippa is seeing here. Is it a traumatic memory of the mirror universe? Is it a premonition of things to come? Is she experiencing the death of her prime universe counterpart?
That said, when Philippa Georgiou is not having blackouts and weird visions, she is still the Empress Philippa the Merciless we all know and love. And so she and Michael borrow Book’s ship to fly to the planet where Book was last headed, posing as dilithium dealers. Meanwhile, Philippa teases Michael mercilessly about her feelings for Book (of course, Michael denies that she has any) and her questionable taste in men (Michael basically goes for hot bad boys, first the secret undercover Klingon Ash Tyler and now space outlaw Cleveland Booker). She also calls Book “the blob whisperer” and when Michael counters that transworms are not blobs, Georgiou replies that she was referring to Grudge.
Upon approaching the planet, Michael and Philippa are hailed by an Orion named Tolor who runs the local salvage operation (and is the nephew of an Orion crime boss, it turns out) who tries to keep them from beaming down and instead points them to the exchange where all deals are handled. Georgiou, however, bullies him into letting them beam down anyway and then continues to give her best Galactic tyrant cum crime lord impression. Michelle Yeoh is clearly having a lot of fun in these scenes.
The planet (if it ever gets a name, I don’t recall it) is a scavenging operation portrayed by some kind of quarry or sandpit. The actual work is done by slaves who are kept in line by an implant at the back of their necks which makes their heads explode (demonstrated quite gorily on an unfortunate Bajoran slave). The guy who is forced to install the implants is an Andorian named Ryn. Ryn is a former member of the crime syndicate. When he tried to incite a slave rebellion, he had his antennae chopped off for his trouble and was given the job of installing the discs, which makes all slaves hate him and thus reduces the chance of further rebellions.
Book, of course, has been captured and also turned into a slave. He and Michael cast longing looks at each other that thankfully escape Tolor, but not the antennaless Andorian Ryn. Georgiou sends her supposed employee Michael off to inspect some salvaged equipment with helpful slave Book, giving them some time to catch up. Book and Michael hug, Book tells Michael that she shouldn’t have come and should just forget about him, Michael tells him that she’ll free him and everybody else. Book tells her that he did manage to hide the black box away (they’re about the size of a ball pen in the 32nd century) and also that they’ll have to make whatever move they’re going to make in 45 minutes, before the shift ends and the slaves are sent back to their living quarters.
Georgiou figures out where Tolor is keeping the controller for the slave implants, namely in his pocket. She also manages to assemble a weapon from some scrap and then provokes Tolor to have her and Michael arrested, so they can get to the command centre. Meanwhile, Book and Ryn are rallying the slaves and telling them to be ready for the great escape.
At first, everything goes as planned. In the command centre, Georgiou and Michael show off their martial arts skills and take out the guards. But then, Philippa Georgiou experiences another blackout/flashback at the worst possible time and briefly passes out, while Michael is having an unexpectedly difficult time dealing with Tolor. Meanwhile, the slaves are trapped between a rock and a hard place, when the perimenter fence does not go down in time, while the Andorian guards are in hot pursuit. Tolor has his hands on Michael’s throat and all seems lost, when Georgiou finally recovers, knocks out Tolor, grabs the controller and switches off the perimeter fence. The slaves leg it for a convenient transport vessel, while Georgiou and Michael use Book’s ship to blast the slavers and their base to smithereens.
Tor.com reviewer Keith R.A. DeCandido is a bit bothered by this, because blowing up things and people is not the Star Trek way and who knows how many of the other guards were hapless conscripts like Ryn? I’m not a huge fan of the indiscriminate slaughtering of random guards and henchpeople myself and try to minimise it in my own fiction. However, I also am not particularly sorry about some slavers getting blown up (and in true Hollywood action movie style, we don’t actually know if they’re dead). Not to mention that the wholesale slaughter of Stormtroopers over in Star Wars, whom we know are either brainwashed and conditioned clones or forcibly conscripted and conditioned child soldiers, is much more problematic and yet attracts comparatively little criticism. So in short, occasionally it’s okay to blow up the bad guys, especially when they’re happily shooting at the good guys and are much better shots than Stormtroopers on average.
One of the Andorian guards takes aim at Book, but Ryn throws himself in front of book and takes the blast in the chest. He’s near death, when Michael beams Book and Ryn aboard the ship, but luckily Ryn gets better due to the miracles of 32nd century medicine. We don’t actually learn what happened to the liberated slaves, though I hope that Starfleet either sent them home, if they have one, or found a place for them to settle somewhere, if not.
In his review of the episode, Camestros Felapton points out that the whole slave liberation plot seems rather familiar, a story that has been told dozens of times before. And indeed, it is. However – and that’s the interesting thing – it’s not a story that Star Trek has told particularly often before and certainly not with lots of explosions and bad guys getting blown up. Indeed, “Scavengers” is Star Trek doing a 1940s Leigh Brackett style planetary romance. In fact, Leigh Brackett wrote several stories about evil corporations – including everybody’s favourite, the Terran Exploitation Company (Recruitment slogan: “Why work for the lesser evil, when you can work for us?”), and the barely more likeable Terro-Venusian Mining – kidnapping and enslaving people and aliens to work in mines. The 1945 Retro Hugo winnes for Best Novel Shadow Over Mars has a slave uprising and prison break scene, as does the 1944 Retro Hugo finalist for Best Novelette “Citadel of Lost Ships” and the 1949 Eric John Stark adventure “Enchantress of Venus”. All three stories feature depicable villains, heroic sacrifices and space rogues who are the distant granddaddies of Cleveland Booker.
Even though Leigh Brackett’s influence on today’s space opera genre is huge, it is far more notable in Star Wars and latter day works like Firefly or Guardians of the Galaxy than in Star Trek, probably because Gene Roddenberry still bought the old chestnut that “the space opera and planetary romance of the golden age was forgettable trash and just westerns in space” hook, line and sinker and so the original Star Trek was far more influenced by the sort of serious business science fiction found in mags like Astounding or Galaxy.
But even though season 3 of Discovery has been a lot more consistent than previous seasons, it does seem to alternate between episodes that are very typically Star Trek (“People of the Earth”, “Forget Me Not”, “Die Trying”) and those which draw on space opera tropes which have not been explored in Star Trek a whole lot (“That Hope Is You”, “Far From Home”, “Scavengers”). I for one like this approach, because it gives Star Trek Discovery a chance to spread its wings a little rather than rehashing plots that have already been done ad nauseam in the original series, The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise. “Scavengers” was Star Trek Discovery doing a Leigh Brackett type story and I for one enjoyed it a whole lot.
However, Michael is not a character in a Leigh Brackett story of the 1940s, but in a 21st century Star Trek series. And so there must be consequences for her behaviour, because we can’t possibly have Starfleet officers running around liberating slaves that Starfleet couldn’t be bothered to help (to be fair, Starfleet is busy and overstretched as it is). Therefore, Tilly goes to visit Michael in her quarters and finds only Grudge. After having ascertained that Grudge has not eaten Michael and being used by Grudge as a convenient cat toy/climbing aid in a delightful scene (and Tilly stresses that she is not a cat person), Tilly alerts Saru that Michael is missing. Saru is very disappointed, his trust in Michael as severely damaged as it hasn’t been since the last hours of the Shenzhou. Saru also wonders whether he should inform Admiral Vance and Tilly, who’s supposed to be Michael’s best friend after all, tells him that he should, because otherwise all of Discovery will be blamed for Michael being Michael.
I don’t blame Saru for being more cautious and rule-following, because that fits his character. And Saru is a very good captain, even if he is not James T. Kirk. However, Saru has known Michael for years. He should know by now what she’s like and that she’ll always do what she thinks is right, chain of command and consequences be damned. If that’s such a problem for him, then why the hell did he ask her to be his first officer in the first place? Also, Michael did come to Saru first and he turned her down, even though he should know her well enough to know that she’ll do it anyway, because that’s who she is. And in fact, if Saru or Tilly or Stamets or even Linus or any member of the bridge crew ever found themselves in trouble, Michael will move heaven and Earth to rescue them, consequences be damned, because that’s who she is. I would have thought that Saru knows this by now. I also wonder just why it’s such an issue that Discovery might have to go into action without a first officer, because Saru has handled Discovery without a first officer lots of times by now and he always pulled it off, because he is good at his job.
Anyway, once Michael gets back with Georgiou, Book and Ryn, she gets a dressing down courtesy of Admiral Vance, though at least she gets to snog Book in the turbolift first, even though they are briefly interrupted by Linus, who still hasn’t figured out how his transporter works. Though Vance is a fair person by the admittedly low standards of Starfleet admirals and so he tells off Saru, too, for not even bothering to tell him about Michael’s plan, but just assuming the Admiral would have said “no”. Though he makes it very clear that he would have said “no”, because Starfleet doesn’t have the resources to determine the reason for and source of the Burn. Michael points out – quite rightly – that if they don’t know what the hell happened and how to prevent it from happening again, they will never be able to rebuild the Federation, but Admiral Vance isn’t having any of that.
What follows is an awkward scene of Saru demoting Michael to science officer again, though he at least admits that Michael made it clear that she didn’t really want the job in the first place. AV-Club reviewer Zack Handlen and io9 reviewer James Whitbrook, neither of whom are big Michael Burnham fans, both quite like this development and some of the commenters are pissing themselves with joy, because Michael finally experiences consequences for her actions. Meanwhile, I found the last ten minutes or so of the episode actively unpleasant, because I hate “military person gets dressed down by superior” scenes in general. And the one time I wrote one (in the final chapter of Honourable Enemies) I wrote it from the POV of the person getting dressed down and made it very clear that the superior doing the dressing down is an awful person.
There’s even a third “Michael gets dressed down/humiliated by an authority figure” scene in “Scavengers”, when Michael confronts Philippa Georgiou about her blackouts. Georgiou confesses that they have been happening with increasing frequency and when Michael asks her why she didn’t tell anybody, not even her, Philippa replies that there was another Michael Burnham in the mirror universe who asked Georgiou to trust her and then beytrayed her. Of course, Empress Philippa the Merciless not trusting anybody makes sense for the character. But why bring up the betrayal of Mirror Michael (if that’s what it was, since we have only Lorca’s word for what happened and he’s not exactly trustworthy), considering Mirror Michael is supposedly dead and Prime Michael a very different person? In fact, those parts of the episode feel very much like, “Hey, remember season 1. Cause we sure do.”
That said, Michael getting demoted is a much more reasonable response to her behaviour than throwing her in a slave prison (maybe that’s why the Federation isn’t particularly bothered by the Orions using slave labour, because they used to do it, too) for life. And unlike season 1, I sympathise with the POVs of Saru and Admiral Vance as well here. All of these people (and Kelpians) are just trying to do their best. And a large part of the problem here is that these people just don’t talk to each other, because a lot of trouble could have been avoided that way (and indeed note how much better the Stamets and Adira subplot went, because these two decided to trust each other and talk to each other). Discovery was only on call for 48 hours and Book and the other slaves would likely have survived another two days. Not to mention that Starfleet could have sent another ship to rescue Book, liberate the slaves and acquire the black box. Which is why this whole duty versus personal loyalty conflict feels a bit contrived, because it didn’t need to be a conflict.
Also, Star Trek does have a long history of maverick captains and officers, including Michael’s brother Spock, ignoring orders to do what they feel is right. And all of those maverick captains and officers have almost never gotten in trouble for their actions (and they did, e.g. “The Menagerie”, it was very clear that Starfleet was in the wrong), even if those actions were truly questionable or flat out wrong like Sisko’s in “In the Pale Moonlight”, an episode that is ironically beloved, though I always disliked it. So why the Michael hate in certain quarters, when she’s only doing what pretty much every other Star Trek captain or first officer before her has done as well? Not to mention that other filmic space operas like Star Wars or the original Battlestar Galactica (not to mention Raumpatrouille Orion) were full of characters who flat out ignored orders (in the case of Apollo and Starbuck in the original Galactica with the tacit approvement of Commander Adama and Colonel Tight) at times.
Now growing up in postwar (West) Germany, blindly following orders was never a good thing. Indeed, we saw plenty of elderly Nazis and not so elderly border shooters play the “But I was just following orders” card and largely not get away with it. Of course, there was also the underlying message of “Well, the Nazis and Communists gave evil orders, but our orders are good, because we are a democratic state, not that we allow you to vote, because you’re too young and can’t be trusted.” However, I and many others were sceptical and decided that nobody’s orders should be followed blindly.
People in the US and the UK don’t have that socialisation and they also grow up with a much stronger glorification of the military than we do. And in this light, it’s notable how many maverick heroes US pop culture has produced in spite of this. Though Star Trek has its roots in the 1960s, which were extremely critical of authority figures everywhere, while Star Wars has close ties to the anti-Vietnam War movement and the counterculture of the 1970s. Battlestar Galactica grew out of this same milieu, though it’s much more pro-military (and very much anti nuclear disarmament, which went completely over my head as a kid). However, as I’ve noted here, maverick heroes seem to be in decline and even General Leia Organa now insists on others following orders, when she never much bothered with that sort of thing herself.
I have said before that my ultimate yardstick for the moral behaviour of spaceship captains is not “What would Kirk do?” or “What would Picard do?”, but “What would Commander MacLane do?” And Michael’s actions in “Scavengers” absolutely pass that test.
That said, I am beginning to believe that Starfleet maybe isn’t the right place for Michael and probably never was in the first place, especially since it’s obvious that she only joined in the first place to impress Sarek. And season 3 does a good job of showing Michael’s ambivalence towards Starfleet, especially after a year of being free of orders and admirals.
However, I’m not sure where the series is going with this. Because even if Michael is probably better off outside Starfleet, i sincerely doubt that they’ll have her quit, since she’s the star (unless Sonequa Martin-Green, who just had a baby after all, wants out). Of course, Star Trek doesn’t necessarily have to tell only stories that involve Starfleet, just as Star Wars doesn’t only have to tell only stories that involve Jedi and people named Skywalker. But while Star Trek: The Adventures of Michael, Book and Grudge – Space Rogues and Star Trek Discovery would both be fun shows, a single show can’t really be both.
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November 18, 2020
Two Articles in One Day
I’m blogging elsewhere yet again and I had not one but two articles go up today.
The first article is at Galactic Journey. It’s a follow-up piece to last month’s article about East and West German comics in the 1950s and 1960s and focusses on the wide and wonderful world of French, Belgian and Dutch comics. There are a lot of samples of the various comics discussed as well as some historical photos of Brussels and Antwerp in the 1960s.
Why Brussels and Antwerp? Because that’s where I originally discovered and read many of the comics in question as a kid in the 1980s. In retrospect, I should have included some photos of Rotterdam as well, because that’s where my Dad worked in the 1980s and where I discovered and read a lot of those comics as well, almost always in the store, because Franco-Belgian-Dutch comic albums were pricier than US comic books and my reading appetite was more voracious than my pocket money plentiful. I’m also still grateful to the nice booksellers who just let me read in peace, even though they probably knew that I only bought something, when I had saved up enough money.
But even though I’m familiar with all of the comics featured in the article and consider many of the characters childhood friends, the article nonetheless required more research than I initially assumed. For starters, I only read the comics in album form, mostly in the store, so I had no idea where which strip had originally been published. In many cases, I didn’t know the names of the creators either, not to mentioned that many French and Belgian artists work under one word pseudonyms. And if that wasn’t confusing enough, many comics have a French and a Flemish title. Furthermore, most of these titles have never been out of print since they first appeared in the 1950s or 1960s. However, publishers, logos and covers change and therefore a 2020 copy of e.g. Astérix et Cleopatra does not look like a 1965 copy of the some album. Luckily, there are some excellent French and Belgian comic databases and websites. Even better, I can read French and Flemish well enough to navigate them
Finally, I had little idea for how long many comics had been going. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that the sword and sorcery comics I enjoyed as a teen clearly dated from the 1970s and 1980s, but sword and sorcery comics just weren’t a thing in the 1960s. But several strips I thought originated in the 1960s – particularly those with female protagonists like Yoko Tsuno, Comanche, Franka and Natacha – turned out to date from the 1970s and beyond. The Franco-Belgian comics world of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s was very much a boys’ club with few female characters other than Wiske and Aunt Sidonie of Suske en Wiske fame and Bianca Castafiore of Tintin fame. Though the original Barbarella just slipped in, since her adventures first appeared in 1962. So did Lieutenant Blueberry, the western series Jean Giraud drew before he became Moebius for good, which debuted in 1963. Meanwhile, Valérian et Laureline just missed the boat, since they won’t appear until 1967.
Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun writing that article and revisiting a lot of old friends. It also makes me wonder why the Franco-Belgian-Dutch comics are not more appreciated in the English speaking world beyond some staples like Tintin (and note that Tintin lost the 1944 Retro Hugo to a not very good and racist Wonder Woman comic) and The Smurfs, because the sheer variety and quality of Franco-Belgian-Dutch comics is just amazing.
The other article of mine that went up today is on a subject that immensely important, though not nearly as enjoyable as Franco-Belgian-Dutch comics. For it turns out that Disney has not been paying royalties to Alan Dean Foster for his novelisation of the first Star Wars movie (which would subsequently become known as A New Hope), Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, the first ever Star Wars tie-in novel, as well as the novelisations of Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 since they bought up Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox. Today, Alan Dean Foster and Mary Robinette Kowal, president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, went public with the issue and held a joint press conference. I covered the press conference for File 770 and wrote an article about it. My fellow Best Fan Writer Hugo finalist Adam Whitehead also reports about the issue at The Wertzone.
Basically, Disney claims that they purchased the rights to sell the novels in question, when they purchased Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox, but that they did not purchase the obligations to pay Alan Dean Foster royalties, as required by the original contracts. This flies in the face of every contract law in the world. As I said in the File 770 article, I translate a lot of contracts for my day job and every single one contains a clause that in case of a merger or buyout, any rights and obligations are transferred to the legal successor of the company that signed the contract. So what Disney is doing to Alan Dean Foster is flat out illegal.
I own a copy of the original Star Wars novelisation, which has the distinction of being the first English language science fiction novel I ever read, as well as Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. My battered paperback copy of Star Wars, purchased in 1988 at an import bookstore at three times the cover price, proudly states on the cover “5 Million in Print”. I can only imagine how many more copies must have been sold in the thirty-two years since.
As Mary Robinette Kowal said in the press conference, the potential implications of Disney’s behaviour are huge. Hundreds of Star Wars tie-in novels have been published since Alan Dean Foster wrote Splinter in the Mind’s Eye, not to mention comics and other media. Disney also purchased the rights to 81 years worth of Marvel Comics, a whole lot of X-Files tie-in novels which came out in the 1990s and early 2000s, lots of Muppets and Simpsons related books and other media, novelisations for all sorts of other movies and TV shows, etc… And Disney isn’t the only huge media conglomerate out there. There are others who may be just as bad. Alan Dean Foster’s case may very well be just the tip of the iceberg.
Two years ago, I wrote that Disney gobbling up media companies like potato chips was cause for concern, even if they had largely been benevolent so far, though there were signs of that changing. Disney’s behaviour in the Alan Dean Foster case is far from benevolent and I hope that they will come around and pay the outstanding royalties soon.
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November 14, 2020
The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda get their bacons saved by “The Heiress
Now I have this week’s Star Trek Discovery review out of the way, it’s time for my episode by episode reviews of season 2 of The Mandalorian again. Previous installments (well, actually just two and an aggregate review of season 1) may be found here.
Warning: Spoilers under the cut!
“The Heiress” starts off with the Razor Crest – badly beaten up after last week’s icy adventure – finally making it to Trask, which turns out to be a watery world that is home to several amphibian species. After a perilous descent and near-crash, Mando does manage to land the Razor Crest on a floating landing platform, only for the ship to promptly tumble into the sea to the sighs of several watching Mon Calamari (that’s Admiral Ackbar’s species).
Luckily, the Mon Calamari have what looks like an AT-AT Walker that has been retrofitted with a crane (and looks incredibly cool) and can fish the Razor Crest out of the water, but Mando’s poor ship is beaten up even worse now, not to mention covered in kelp. Mando pays the local harbourmaster to repair and refuel the Razor Crest. A strange hooded woman watches them and Frog Lady is finally reunited with her husband in a remarakbly sweet scene. The Frog People still look like escapees from Wind in the Willows to me, but I like them. Not to mention that they are the only aliens (or humans for that matter) on Trask who don’t try to double-cross Mando.
Can I take a moment to say how much I adore the grungy industrial look of Trask with its walking cranes (so cool) and fishing trawlers? Trask very much looks like Bremerhaven or Cuxhaven on a typically grey North German winter day and I for one love the idea that the Star Wars universe also has a planet (moon actually) that looks like the area where I grew up. Even the people match and so we get Mon Calamari wearing cable-knit sweaters and Quarren (apparently that’s the official name of the species, though I remember that the action figures were called “Squid Head” back in the day. I even had one, because it was the only Star Wars figure my Mom could find) in oil cloth jackets and southwesters. All that’s missing is someone wearing a fisherman’s shirt. Trask clearly is the Bremerhaven of the Star Wars universe and while that may not be a compliment, I still love that a place like this exists.
As promised, Mr. Frog points Mando to where he may find other Mandalorians, which turns out to be the local inn. Not that Mando really needed Mr. Frog to tell him that, since the local inn is always the logical place to find anybody in the Star Wars universe. But it means that we do get to see the Star Wars equivalent of a harbour bar, which looks very much like the typical rougher kind of harbour bar (i.e. the kind of harbour bar and restaurant where actual sailors, fisherman and dockworkers go, not the seafood restaurants that cater to tourists) you can find in harbours everywhere. The Croaking Foghorn from the Hallowind Cove series is a typical example. Though the Trask harbour bar serves seafood chowder via hoses dangling from the ceiling. Mando orders a bowl of chowder for Baby Yoda, only to find that it comes with an extra helping of live squid/facehugger, which promptly attached itself to Baby Yoda, so that Mando has to rescue the little guy. This never happens at Cap Horn in Bremerhaven.
Mando greases the palm – pardon, fin – of the Mon Calamari landlord, who points him to a Quarren fisherman who supposedly knows where to find the Mandalorians living on Trask. However, this requires taking a cruise on a Trask fishing trawler, which looks remarkably like an Earthly fishing trawler. Mando and Baby Yoda stand at the railing, looking out at the sea. It becomes very clear at this point that Mando is very much a landlubber, because anybody who knows anything at all about fishing will find the modus operandi of this fishing trawler very strange. And I’m not talking about the blatant disregard for safety regulations such as “Make sure that there’s nobody standing (or sitting or floating) under suspended loads.” No, the nets employed by the Quarren fishermen are suspiciously small, as is their catch. In commercial fishing, nets and catches are much bigger.
However, the Quarren captain then informs Mando that the fish they just caught are not the catch at all, but just fodder for a monster (according to iO9 reviewer Germain Lussier it’s called a mamacore) that they keep in the hold. Which begets the question: Why do the Quarren keep a monster in the hold, if they only just set out on their trip? If the monster is the cargo and mamacore a delicacy for the people of Trask, why wouldn’t they have unloaded it, while in port? And what sort of fishermen are these that they feed their catch to a monster that lives in their cargo hold?
The answer is: The Quarren are not fishermen at all, they’re pirates. And the true catch they’re after is Mando’s shiny beskar armour. So the Quarren inform Mando that they’re about to feed the mamacore and ask him if he and Baby Yoda want to watch. And when Mando and Baby Yoda in his float cradle step close to the water-filled cargo hold, the Quarren captain throws Baby Yoda’s float cradle into the hold. The monster promptly gobbles him up and Mando just as promptly jumps in after him. This is what the Quarren were waiting for. All of a sudden, steel bars close over the cargo hold, trapping Mando and Baby Yoda. Mando managed to hold on to the steel bars, but the Quarren stab at him with pikes and harpoons.
Things look very dire for our favourite duo. But lucky for Mando and Baby Yoda, a trio of Mandalorians in blue armour – two women and a man – show up and make fish food out of the Quarren. They also rescue Mando and Baby Yoda, though the float cradle gets damaged again. It turns out that Mando didn’t need to look for his fellow Mandalorians – they found him.
It’s interesting that this is the second time in as many episode that Mando and Baby Yoda were rescued from a very likely fatal trap by a third party, namely the X-Wing pilots last week and the mystery Mandalorians this week. What makes this even more interesting is the American storytelling convention (which I violate a lot) that the protagonist must always save themselves and not rely on others to save them, otherwise they are passive characters. So for the protagonist of an American TV series not to save himself (and this is not the first time either – there were several instances in season 1 where Mando needed the help of someone else to save him) is extremely unusual. But then, the show consistently stresses that Mando may be a mighty warrior, but he’s not invincible or invulnerable. He needs help and he needs it quite often. Personally, I like this, especially since I’m not a huge fan of protagonists who always save themselves, because it has become a cliché by now.
However, nearly getting drowned and eaten by a monster is not the last shock in store for Mando, for no sooner have they dispatched of the treacherous Quarren that Mando’s three rescuers take their helmets off. And as we’ve seen in season 1, Mandalorians never take their helmets off. And indeed, Mando promptly accuses his three rescuers of not being real Mandalorians and demands to know where they get the armour from.
The leader, a woman named Bo-Katan Kryze (played by Katee Sackhoff, who is best known for playing Starbuck in the new Battlestar Galactica, but we will not hold that against her) replies that she was born on Mandalore and that the armour has been in her family, which is one of the oldest families on Mandalore, for generations. This must feel like a sting to Mando, since we know that he was adopted and not born a Mandalorian. “Well, then why did you take your helmet off?” Mando wants to know. Bo-Katan and her comrades exchange a telling glance. “Oh dear, you’re one of them”, she says.
For it turns out that the Mandalorians who adopted and raised Din Djarin are actually a fundamentalist splinter group named “The Children of the Watch” who are determined to make Mandalore great again or some such thing. This explains why other Mandalorians we’ve seen have no problems with taking off their helmets, since Jango Fett definitely walked around helmet-less in Attack of the Clones. It also explains why Mando and his clan wear their armour in shiny natural beskar, while other Mandalorians, whether the Fetts or Bo-Katan and her group (apparently, they’re called the Nite Owls), paint theirs. Finally, it explains why Mando doesn’t know about a lot of things, e.g. what Jedi are and what the Force is, that the Mandalorians should theoretically know.
This is certainly an intriguing development and not just because it allows the writers to explain away some obvious plot holes such as why did Jango Fett take off his helmet, when it’s supposedly such a big taboo. No, the revelation that Din Djarin was taken in and raised by a group of religious zealots also upsets his whole identity. For it turns out that “the way” is actually just one of several possible ways. It also turns out that there is a lot the Mandalorians who raised Din Djarin never told him. Not to mention that Din was never even given the chance to make his own decisions – he was traumatised child indoctrinated by religious fanatics. Bo-Katan calls them terrorists, which is a bit hypocritical, because according to Guardian reviewer Paul MacInnes she used to be a member of that group herself, before she decided that she doesn’t want to wear a helmet all the time. I wonder how this will play out in future episodes. Will Din Djarin begin to question “the way” and find his own? Will he call out the Mandalorian armourer from season 1 and ask her some hard questions? Will he actually take that bloody helmet off once in a while?
But for now, Mando decides that since those are not the Mandalorians he’s looking, he doesn’t want to talk to them either. And so he grabs Baby Yoda, activates his jetpack and takes off, while Bo-Katan and her comrades blow up the fishing trawler/pirate ship. On the docks, more trouble is waiting for Mando in the form of the very pissed off brother of the Quarren pirate captain. The Quarren and his friends are itching for a fight, because they believe Mando has killed his brother. However, before a fight can erupt, Mando has his bacon saved once again by Bo-Katan and her comrades.
Once the Quarren are dealt with, the four Mandalorians retire to the harbour inn. Bo-Katan and her people take their helmets off and enjoy the seafood (though the chef really should make sure the food is dead first before selling it), while Mando sits there sullenly with his helmet.
Now we also get Bo-Katan’s story. For Bo-Katan is not only the member of a very old and prominent Mandalorian family, she’s also the heiress to the throne of Mandalore, hence the title. Though I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed that the Mandalorians have a monarchy, too. Why is almost every planet in the Star Wars universe a monarchy of some kind, unless it’s a hellhole ruled by criminal clans like Tatooine?
As AV-Club reviewer Katie Rife and Tor.com reviewer Emmet Asher-Perrin point out, the character of Bo-Katan Kryze originally appeared in the Star Wars: Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels cartoons, also voiced by Katee Sackhoff. Both reviewers also fill in some backstory about the character. Now I have to admit that I never watched the Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons. I tried, but I just cannot abide CGI-animated cartoons. So I have no idea what happened in those cartoons. However, you don’t really need to be familiar with the cartoons, because “The Heiress” tells you everything you need to know about Bo-Katan.
Bo-Katan wants reconquer Mandalore and regain the throne and she wants to enlist Mando’s aid, religious zealot or not, because Mandalorian warriors are in short supply. Mando, however, wants nothing to do with Bo-Katan and her mission. First of all, his people told him that Mandalore is cursed and that they can never return there (I now wonder whether they were simply kicked out). And besides, Mando already has a mission. He has to deliver Baby Yoda to the Jedi. “What do you know about the Jedi?” Bo-Katan asks him. Mando confesses that he doesn’t know anything about the Jedi, just that he must find them. Luckily, Bo-Katan knows where to find one of the few surviving Jedi. She’ll give Mando the location, if he helps her with a little job.
For Trask is a smuggler hub (now there’s a surprise) and an Imperial freighter full of smuggled weaponry just happens to be standing on a landing field, ready to take off. Bo-Katan and her people want to raid that freighter and steal the weapons for their quest to reconquer Mandalore. After all, it’s not as if the Imperial leftovers can run to the New Republic to complain. However, Bo-Katan and her people could use an extra pair of hands and a jetpack. So Mando drops Baby Yoda off at Mr. and Mrs. Frog’s, not without admonishing Baby Yoda to behave himself and not eat his babysitters’ future children. Then he joins Bo-Katan and her Nite Owls for their heist.
The Imperial freighter has to fly at a low altitude in the harbour area, which gives our Mandalorian quartet a chance to sneak aboard. The Stormtrooper guards are no match for them, because – as one of the Mandalorians puts it – they couldn’t hit the flank of a bantha. Is it me or is The Mandalorian making a lot of fun about the Stormtroopers’ lack of marksmanship skills? Of course, I know that the bad shooting abilities of the Stormtroopers are something of a standing joke among fans, but normally it’s not a joke made in the movies/TV shows themselves. Never mind that random guards or troopers are never good shots in any books, movie or TV show. Because if they were, the protagonists would be dead and the story over.
And so the Captain of the Imperial freighter only realises that something is off, when a Stormtrooper lands on the windshield of the freighter. The Captain is played by Titus Welliver, who plays Harry Bosch in the eponymous crime drama and who also was in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. He’s well cast here, because the actor seems to specialise in playing unlikeable officials. And yes, I know that Harry Bosch probably wasn’t supposed to be unlikable, but I stopped watching in disgust when Harry Bosch shot an unarmed suspect about ten minutes into the first episode. Coincidentally, Titus Welliver is not the only Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. veteran to appear in this episodes. Simon Kassianides, who plays the male member of the Nite Owls, also was in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as a Hydra agent.
The Captain orders the pilots to pull up the freighter now and then contacts the guards in the cargo hold telling them to hold off the intruders by all means psosible. And indeed the guards manage to close the doors in time to lock the Mandalorians out of the cargo hold. Unfortunately, they also lock the Mandalorians into the cargo control room, which turns out to be a very bad idea, when the Mandalorians just open the cargo ramp and dump the Stormtroopers out of the ship. The look on Titus Welliver’s face, when he hears about this, suggests that he wishes he had the power to force-choke someone.
Mando tells Bo-Katan, “Well, you got your weapons, so let’s go.” Whereupon Bo-Katan informs him that she has no intention to take off with the weapons, but that she wants to take the entire ship, because the Empire stole something from her she desperately wants back. Mando wants nothing to do with any of this, but unfortunately he can’t leave either.
Meanwhile, the Captain now calls his superior, who turns out to be none other than Moff Gideon who very narrowly managed to kill Mando, Baby Yoda and the rest of the gang at the end of season 1. We also learn that the object that Bo-Katan so desperately wants back is the darksabre, i.e. the cool purple lightsabre Moff Gideon was wielding in violation of its intended use to free himself from a crashed TIE-fighter at the end of season 1. Apparently, the darksabre may only be wielded by the ruler of Mandalore or some such thing, do Bo-Katan really needs it back to gain the throne.
The Captain asks for reinforcements, but Moff Gideon declares that it’s too late for that and that the Captain knows what he has to do. So the Captain shoots the pilot and co-pilot (who look as if they really didn’t see that coming, even though you’d figure any Imperial soldier would know that they are expendable by now) and takes the ship into a nosedive, intending to crash it.
I have to admit that I do wonder about the motivations of those Imperial holdouts. Yes, the likes of Moff Gideon and Grand Admiral Thawn (I assume he exists somewhere in this universe) probably hope for the chance to crown themselves Emperor – a pity Palpatine isn’t actually dead. And the Stormtroopers may not actually have a choice due to their conditioning. But what do mid-level officers like the freighter captain, the loadmaster (I assume that’s what he was supposed to be, though he apparently had no idea how the controls of the cargo hold work) or the two pilots get out of remaining loyal to the Empire? They’ll never be Emperor and most likely they’ll just get to die for the cause. I also wonder whether Moff Gideon and his people are the group that will eventually become the first order or if there are multiple Imperial holdouts.
So now our Mandalorian quartet really has to get to the cockpit to save the ship and themselves. However, a squad of Stormtroopers stands between them and the cockpit and they seem to have rediscovered their marksmanship skills in the face of impending death. Heroically braving blaster fire, Mando takes them out with a grenade and the quartet storms the cockpit. Mando and one of the others try to get the ship back under control, while Bo-Katan tries to get the location of her misplaced darksabre out of the Captain, who tells her that what Moff Gideon will do to him will be infinitely worse than anything Bo-Katan can do. Then he kills himself with an electrical suicide capsule, which really seems like overkill, considering plain old cyanide will do just as well.
Bo-Katan once more asks Mando to join her in reconquering Mandalore, but Mando insists that his mission to deliver Baby Yoda comes first. And so Bo-Katan tells him where to find one of the last remaining Jedi, a woman named Ahsoka Tano, who was an important character in the Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons, where the two of them crossed paths. I have to admit that I initially assumed she was going to say Luke Skywalker, since he should be attempting to rebuild the Jedi around the time. Though considering what happened with Kylo Ren, I wouldn’t entrust any child to Luke Skywalker. That said, if there was another surviving Jedi all the time, I wonder why Obi-Wan or Yoda never sought her out (Luke probably doesn’t know about her existence). Did she not want to be found? Did she tell Obi-Wan and Yoda to take a hike? Or is that good old Jedi sexism coming to the fore again?
Mando picks up Baby Yoda from Mr. and Mrs. Frog who have welcome a little tadpole into the world. Baby Yoda actually behaves himself for once and does not try to eat the tadpole, but instead plays with it. And so Mando and Baby Yoda are off to find the second-last Jedi. To bad that the Mon Calamari harbourmaster thought it was a great idea to decorate the interior of the Razor Crest like a cheap tourist trap seafood restaurant, much to Mando’s chagrin. One of the facehugger octopus creatures also snuck aboard and thinks that Baby Yoda looks very tasty, but luckily Mando is on the case and so it’s Baby Yoda who gets to enjoy a seafood snack.
“The Heiress” was the shortest episode of the season so far, only 36 minutes long, but it feels longer, because it’s packed with both action – and the heist was truly thrilling – and information. We learn a lot more about the Mandalorians and Din Djarin’s place in their society, which is not what he thought it was.
That said, I don’t trust Bo-Katan and I don’t think we’re meant to trust her either. According to the people who’ve watched the cartoons, she actually does have a claim to the throne of Mandalore, though I don’t think she’s the best person for the job. Because Bo-Katan not only lies to Mando, she also clearly uses her knowledge of his fraction of Mandalorians and their beliefs to manipulate him.
Also, while Bo-Katan and her people may think that the Children of the Watch are religious zealots and terrorists, they actually seem to be the most palatable fraction of Mandalorians we’ve seen so far. For Bo-Katan is a manipulative liar who is trying to gain the Mandalorian thrones by violence and the Fetts are mercenaries who has no problems cozying up to the Empire, even though the Empire attacked and nigh exterminated their people. Meanwhile, the Children of the Watch may be a bit extreme about the need to never take off their helmets, but they also take in orphaned children, thus doing something about the massive orphan problem in the Star Wars universe, and actually seem to care about the welfare of those children, even if they indoctrinate them into their beliefs and turn them into child soldiers. But then, that’s no different than what the Jedi do, only that the Jedi don’t just take orphans. It’s also notable that the Children of the Watch were willing to risk their lives to help Mando and Baby Yoda, because it was the right thing to do. Besides, Din Djarin actually turned out a good person, which is more than you can say for Bo-Katan, let alone the Fetts.
Even though a lot of fans idolise the Jedi, the narrative itself actually portrays them critically from the original trilogy on. The Jedi are directly responsible for the fall of the Republic due to a series of unforgiveable blunders, then the few survivors spend twenty years doing fuck-all. Yoda and Obi-Wan manipulate Luke and everybody else for that matter and when Luke attempts to rebuild the Jedi Order, it turns into an unmitigated disaster. Luke himself realises in The Last Jedi that the Jedi just don’t work and that maybe it’s time for them to end.
But while the Star Wars narrative has always been critical of the Jedi, the case isn’t quite so clear with regard to the Mandalorians, maybe because most of what we know about them does not come from the movies, but from ancillary media like tie-in novels, cartoons, TV shows, etc… Particularly, The Mandalorian has done a great job in fleshing out what was initially just a bunch of (well, actually just two) fearsome warriors in really cool armour. And the fact that there are multiple fractions of Mandalorians isn’t really surprising, because all religions tend to develop schisms over time. In fact, it’s more surprising that the Jedi didn’t develop schisms and fractions, unless you consider the Sith or the Knights of Ren the results of a Jedi schism.
I’m not sure where the show is going with this, but what I hope to see is Din Djarin decide for himself what it means to be a Mandalorian and what the way is. I also think Baby Yoda is infinitely better off with Din Djarin than with the Jedi, because the Jedi are actually terrible at raising children.
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November 13, 2020
Star Trek Discovery is determined to fulfill its mission or “Die Trying”
It’s time for the latest installment in my ongoing episode by episode reviews of season 3 of Star Trek Discovery. Reviews of previous episodes may be found here.
Warning: Spoilers behind the cut!
So far, the overarching plot of season 3 of Star Trek Discovery has been the search for what remains of the Federation and Starfleet. Thankfully, the writers are less determined to draw out that plot as long as the search for Spock in season 2, let alone the search for a direction for the show in season 1. And so the Discovery arrives at Starfleet headquarters at the beginning of “Die Trying”, since Adira finally remembered the coordinates now she has been reunited with the memories of the Tal symbiont.
If there has been one overarching theme this season, it’s that Discovery is never actually welcome wherever it goes. “Die Trying” does not break that trend, for when Discovery finally reaches the new cloaked Starfleet headquarters in deep space they’re not exactly given a warm welcome. Though at least no one is shooting at them this time, which is an improvement from Discovery‘s arrival in Earth orbit. Furthermore, the Discovery crew and the audience get to geek out over the various advanced Starfleet vessels, including a Constitution class vessel with detachable nacelles, a future Voyager, a USS Nog in a tribute to the late Aron Eisenberg who played Nog, the first Ferengi to join Starfleet, in Deep Space Nine, and a flying rain forest (shades of Silent Running, whose ship famously reappeared in the original Battlestar Galactica). Camestros Felapton calls this scene “starship porn” and that’s very much what it is. But we’re science fiction fans and we love ourselves some starship porn.
Saru, Michael and Adira (since she has Admiral Tal’s symbiont and memories) are beamed aboard the new Starfleet headquarters, where they are met by one Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr, looking very handsome indeed). Vance is harried and stressed out, trying to keep what’s left of Starfleet running. He tells Adira point-blank that while he was friends with Admiral Sanna Tal, he doesn’t know Adira from Adam and sends them to a medical evaluation. Vance listens to Michael and Saru’s story, but he doesn’t trust them. For starters, Starfleet records indicate that the Discovery was destroyed in the 23rd century and also make no mention of the spore drive. Saru and Michael explain that Starfleet likely erased all traces of the Discovery‘s time leap, the spore drive, the info dump sphere and Control from its archives. And indeed, the viewer knows that this is exactly what happened from the “We shall never speak of this again” scenes in the season 2 finale.
Another issue is that the Discovery and her crew are time travellers and that time travel has been outlawed in the 31st century following the Temporal Cold War we encountered (via one of its agents) in Star Trek: Enterprise. Now I would have understood, if they had never decided to mention that particular plot point again, considering Enterprise was not very good. Though it’s still nice to see it referenced here. However, since time travel is illegal now, Michael, Saru and the Discovery crew are theaoretically criminals. Saru points out that they had no way of knowing any of this (It seems Captain Archer really did never speak of his encounters with time agents a hundred years before Discovery again) and Michael also reminds Vance that she and the Discovery crew risked their lives and left everything they knew behind to save all life in the galaxy, but Vance is unmoved. After all, he has no way of knowing if Michael and Saru aren’t time agents after all.
And so Vance orders Michael, Saru and the Discovery crew to undergo an in-depth debriefing to make sure everybody’s stories match up. These debriefings are conducted by sophisticated holographic AIs (who shockingly do not turn out to be evil – yet) and lead to a lot of funny scenes. Tilly babbles, Jet Reno asks the hologram for nachos and Nhan just repeats her name, rank and serial number over and over again. When the hologram asks Stamets, if he considers himself essential personnel, he replies, “You haven’t been talking to Dettmer, have you?”
“You were dead?”, a hologram asks Hugh Culber, “Do you mean clinically?” “No, emotionally as well”, Culber, who gets a lot of great moments in this episode, replies, “Oh yes, and I was murdered. But I get along with my murderer now.” Honestly, I can’t even fault 32nd century Starfleet for being sceptical about the claims of the Discovery crew, because if you try to sum up the first two seasons of Discovery, the events really do sound insane.
However, the best holographic interrogation – pardon, debriefing – is that of Michelle Yeoh’s Empress Philippa Georgiou. The 32nd century medical scans quickly reveal that she’s from the Mirror Universe and so the holograms of course want to know what she’s doing aboard Discovery. However, Empress Philippa the Merciless is not talking to holograms, though she does reveal that she had an affair with Leland who eventually became the evil AI Control. And so she throws them off balance by blinking several times in rapid sequence and finally causes them to fizz out, whereupon the man behind the curtain (quite literally) reveals himself, a white-haired gentleman wearing thick-rimmed glasses who looks as if he wandered onto the set from a later season episode of Mad Men. Throughout the episode I kept wondering why the actor looked so familiar (Camestros Felapton initially suspected it was Ted Danson), until the end credits revealed the truth. That was David Cronenberg, legendary director of avantgarde horror films, who is about as unlikely to appear in an episode of Star Trek as Werner Herzog was to appear in Star Wars.
The verbal sparring between Philippa Georgiou and David Cronenberg’s character is a pure delight and Cronenberg’s character is probably the only person in two universes who ever won a verbal duel with Philippa Georgiou. For Cronenberg’s character, who knows a lot about the Mirror Universe, not only correctly deduces that Philippa the Merciless – the woman who cares about nothing and no one except power – clearly cares about someone aboard the Discovery, he also drops the bombshell that the Terran Empire fell centuries ago (well, Mirror Spock predicted that it would) and that the Mirror and the Prime Universe are drifting further apart and that crossings haven’t been possible in more than 500 years (which suggests that Deep Space Nine‘s Mirror Universe shenangigans may have been among the last contacts), so Philippa is all alone and cannot go back. This clearly affects Philippa much more than you’d think, as evidenced by the fact that she sort of zones out, when Michael wants to talk to her.
The question now is who is David Cronenberg’s shadowy character with a fashion sense that’s more than a thousand years out of date? Is he Section 31? Cause I bet that they’re still around in the 32nd century. Is he from the Mirror Universe himself and is that why he knows so much about it? Is a time traveller or time agents wandering around in front of Starfleet’s very noses? I really hope we’ll see him again and find out.
Admiral Vance eventually comes to the conclusion that while the Discovery and her spore drive are useful, the only person they need to operate it is Stamets. They don’t really need the rest of the crew, especially since they are all traumatised and not exactly trustworthy from Vance’s POV. And so Vance plans to reassign them to other duties. Both Saru and Michael are obviously not at all happy about this, though Michael is a lot more blunt about expressing her displeasure, much to Saru’s chagrin.
This leads to one of several conversation between Saru and Michael throughout the episode, where Saru berates Michael for her impulsiveness and her tendency to talk back to superior officers. Which makes me wonder why exactly is Saru surprised by Michael’s behaviour? After all, Michael has always been a maverick who does what she thinks is right, often without even informing others about her plans first, and for whom order are only optional suggestions. And no matter how often Michael gets in trouble for it – which Saru actually reminds her of – she’ll keep doing it. And Spock is exactly the same, someone who also does what he thinks is right, orders, regulations and laws be damned. I do wonder from which parents Michael and Spock got it, from Sarek or Amanda. Or did Spock copy Michael’s behaviour, because he privately idolises his older sister and wants to be just like her, even if he is no longer allowed to talk about her in public?
I always find it fascinating how different people – both in the show as well as viewers and critics – react to Spock and Michael, even though they’re very similar characters. But while everybody loves Spock, even those who find themselves at the receiving end of his behaviour, Michael gets a lot of criticism. See AV-Club reviewer Zack Handlen who calls her an insensitive idiot for her behaviour towards Vance, while iO9 reviewer James Whitbrook wonders whether it’s Michael’s year in the wilderness that makes her behave as she does.
Personally, I think that while Michael’s year in the wilderness may have exacerbated her maverick tendencies, but they have always been part of the character from day one. After all, Michael had pretty much the same discussion with Saru and the Philippa Georgiou from our universe way back in the very first episode and we all know how that ended. However, what Michael’s year in the wilderness has done is cause her to loose some of her illusions about Starfleet. Because even though Starfleet never really lived up to its ideals and has personally screwed Michael over several times, Michael has always believed in the ideals of Starfleet. Now, however, she basically tells Saru that to her, Starfleet is the people and not so much abstract ideal, which actually matches how I view Star Trek in general. I’ve always viewed Starfleet and the Federation critically and the reason I keep watching Star Trek, unless it gets too bad (later seasons of Enterprise and Deep Space Nine), are the characters. Saru, on the other hand, still believes in Starfleet’s lofty ideals and uses a very simplified example of comparing the so-called “Dark Ages” (which we now know is a misnomer) to the Renaissance to explain why. Though I won’t quibble with Saru’s rather simplified view of history, because he’s after all an alien, the first and only of his species, who was rescued by humans representing Starfleet, and thus swallowed human and Starfleet propaganda hook, line and sinker. And indeed Saru’s joy on hearing that his homeworld joined the Federation (as did Nhan’s, who is similarly overjoyed about this) is touching.
That said, while I applaud Michael for finally viewing Starfleet a bit more critical, Admiral Vance is actually one of the most likeable Starfleet admirals we’ve ever met. Yes, he’s sceptical of Discovery, her crew and their motives, but then he has a good reason to be. And unlike most other high-ranking Starfleet officers we’ve met, he’s not an arsehole or an isolationist or xenophobic jerk or – heavens beware – a traitor, which is actually a refreshing change, as Tor.com reviewer Keith R.A. DeCandido points out.
Which brings us to the actual plot of the episode. And yes, there is one. For it turns out that the Discovery is not the only problem Starfleet headquarters are dealing with. They have also been hit by an influx of alien refugees, who are all infected with some kind of disease that’s slowly killing them. And because the refugees passed through many different planets on their way to Starfleet headquarters, no one knows where they picked up the disease, let alone how to cure it.
Michael is determined to solve this mystery and also show Vance what Discovery and her crew can do. And so she decides to pilfer the list of planets that the aliens visited, before Saru reminds her that maybe asking would be a better approach. Vance insists he doesn’t need help, though he does hand over the list. And indeed, Michael and Saru use their 23rd century knowledge to pick out on which planet the disease originated. For one of the worlds on that list has been flagged by Starfleet in the 23rd century as badly polluted, which caused the local plant and animal life to mutate. This knowledge was lost over the centuries and when the refugee aliens landed, they unwisely ate the plantlife and became ill.
In order to develop a cure, Starfleet needs an uncontaminated and unmutated sample of the plantlife from the plague planet. Luckily, the Federation created a flying seed vault (modelled after the real world Svalbard Global Seed Vault), which contains samples of all plantlike from all worlds in the Federation. Even more luckily, that seed vault was not destroyed by the burn, but is still around, though inaccessible to Starfleet, because it’s too far away. However, Discovery can travel anywhere in the universe nigh instantly due to its spore drive. And so Michael takes Discovery – with the entire crew plus two of Vance’s security officers as watchdogs – to the seed vault, while Saru stays behind as a hostage. I wonder what Vance was going to do with him, if Michael had not reappeared with Discovery? Fed him to Georgiou?
The seed vault ship is trapped inside an ion storm, so Discovery has to fly in and pull it out with her tractor beam. Dettmer’s PTSD flares up, but gets under control soon quickly enough to allow her to pull off that dangerous operation. Meanwhile, Vance’s aide, one Lieutenant Willa, gets a first hand example that though Discovery‘s methods are very unorthodox (“Your relationship is not very professional”, Willa remarks, when faced with Stamets, Jet Reno and Tilly bickering, while solving problems), they get things done.
Now “Red-blooded person/people from the past end up in a bloodless future and show them how things are done and rejuvenate said bloodless future” is a very old science fiction trope that goes back at least to Buck Rogers and Philip Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D. in 1928. The 1993 movie Demolition Man is a latter day example. Again, this is a trope which Star Trek has never really done. It will be interesting to see how they handle it.
The seed vault has caretakers, which rotate at regular intervals. And the current caretakers just happen to be a scientist and his family from Nhan’s homeworld, which wasn’t even part of the Federation when Discovery left – Nhan was the first and only one of her kind to join Starfleet. So Michael, Doctor Culber (in case someone needs medical attention) and Nhan beam aboard the seed vault, where Nhan can finally ditch her breathing apparatus. Aboard the seed vault ship, they find a jungle, which suggests that some of the seeds got out and sprouted, but otherwise the place seems deserted. They finally find the family enjoying some quality time, but they’re only holographic projections. And when they finally find the real family, the mother and the two children are in cryostasis, though Hugh Culber determines that they’re already dead. The father is missing, though he does show up when Michael beams into the seed vault and attacks her. He also seems to be having problems, because he phases in and out of existence.
Aboard Discovery, Stamets, Reno and Tilly determine that the seed vault ship was hit by a coronal mass ejection – or a solar burp, as Tilly calls it – and that the resulting radiation killed the mother and the children. The father survived, because he was in mid-transport, when it happened, but was knocked out of phase. I can’t be the only one who wonders what the radiation did to the seeds and the plants and if the seeds are even still usable, but the episode never adresses it. The Discovery crew manage to put the grieving father back together, but he’s basically catatonic and unable to help. Too bad that his voice print is needed to retrieve the seeds. Nhan and Michael try to comfort him and Nhan explains that her culture values family extremely highly and would basically do everything for their children. Meanwhile, Culber points that there is nothing that can be done for the man’s family – they’re dead. Which makes me wonder how he can know that 32nd century medical technology can’t revive those people. Especially considering that Doctor Culber himself was very definitely dead and still got better.
Michael eventually does get through to the grieving father by telling him that the antidote synthesised from the seeds will save other families. Culber wants to beam the man aboard Discovery for treatment, but he refuses. He’ll stay with his family, even if that means death by radiation sickness. Michael and Nhan want to honour his wish, but there is one problem. With the caretakers dead, who will watch over the seed vault? And so Nhan volunteers to stay behind to take the caretaker’s place. It’s a decision that literally comes out of nowhere, because until this episode, we knew next to nothing about Nhan. Which is very reminiscent about the way Airiam was written out last season – in an episode which also featured Nhan more than usual – where we also only learned more about the character in the episode she was killed off. And now that we finally learn a bit more about Nhan and her background, she is written out as well, which is even more of a surprise, since actress Rachel Ancheril has only been promoted to the opening credits this season. Of course, Wilson Cruz was only promoted to the opening credits after his character was already dead, so we may see Nhan again. Though I am very worried about Kayla Dettmer now, because finally getting some character development is apparently dangerous to your health in Star Trek Discovery. As is being promoted to security chief, because Discovery has gone through three of them already (that horrible woman who was eaten by the tardigrade, Ash Tyler and now Nhan).
The Discovery returns to Starfleet headquarters in triumph – and sans Nhan. The aliens are cured and Admiral Vance finally accepts that yes, Discovery can help him put Starfleet and the Federation back together. And so things end on an optimistic note – or do they? For Michael has noticed a mystery. Cause Adira played the very same melody on her cello that the caretaker family sang aboard the seed vault ship, even though the characters lived in different sectors of space and should never have encountered each other, let alone the same melody. Even more intriguing is that everybody in the future seems to know that song. Of course, there are plenty of melodies in our world that almost everybody around the world knows – “Happy Birthday”, “Ode to Joy”, “Silent Night”, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “The Blue Danube”, “Yesterday”, etc… – that a time traveller from nine hundred years in the past would not recognise. Maybe the mystery song was simply the hottest viral pop hit in the galaxy just before the burn. Still, it does plant a new mystery for the Discovery crew to resolve.
This is another episode of Discovery that’s perfectly fine and entertaining (and gorgeous to look at), even though it’s not exactly a standout. As Camestros Felapton points out in his review, the quality of season 3 of Star Trek Discovery has been consistently good with not a bad episode among them. It seems Discovery has finally found its feet after one and a half seasons, which is a very good thing. And next week, we apparently meet Book again, who is my favourite of the new characters introduced this season (sorry, Adira and Gray).
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