Dave Walsh's Blog, page 11

Alright, Fine, Let’s Keep Talking About Star Trek: Discovery

Somewhere along the way, Star Trek: Discovery went from a show that I thought was doomed, was a little bit better than it was prior, but would probably never get past the usual growing pains that Trek shows have to being almost like an actual Star Trek series. Crazy, right? I’m actually pleasantly surprised that at least for now I’ve been wrong about this series.

What exactly happened?

The last two episodes happened, where the focus hasn’t been so laser sharp on this big story arc and endless explosions, but instead the characters and their relationships with each other. Hell, this last week’s episode saw an ancient sphere in space spitting out tons of knowledge and throwing off the ship’s computer because of the overload of knowledge, even put the empathetic Saru onto his deathbed.

If it’s been said once, it’s been said a million times: Star Trek series tend to start off pretty bad and end up getting a hell of a lot better. Be it meddling TV executives that think that they know best, attempts to do “new things” that simply don’t work or anything else on the spectrum. Star Trek: Discovery began as a carbon copy of the JJ Abrams films, which means heavy on action, fill in the gaps with exposition, establish only a select few characters and then start going and never look back.

These last few episodes have looked back, all while still pushing their story forward, showing that you can do this big story arc while still keeping the usual Star Trek charm that helps make memorable characters. Tilly was haunted by the ghost of a friend from her past while doing drills for the command program, which helped to push her to work harder, but also mentally break down, only for the realization to come that she wasn’t insane, it was a new form of life reaching out. It was a spore from the mycelium network, which the spore drive takes full advantage of.

This last episode expounded on that idea further, by showing the lifeform/spore break free and take over Tilly once again, but this time it lays out what it actually wants: for them to leave the mycelium network alone, the spore drive was disrupting life there. All of this while the ship’s systems are in disarray over this big, crazy, dying sphere. This is classic Trek if there ever was such a thing. All of this while still keeping tabs on how Discovery fits into Star Trek canon, stuff like the communicators, the uniforms, Spock’s weird story that they’re trying to push and the relationships between the Federation and the rest of the galaxy.

Sure, a lot of this is finding a way out of the corners that they’ve written themselves into, you could see from a million miles away that this uber cool spore drive was going to have to fail miserably at some point for ships to rely solely on dylithium warp engines again, especially knowing that in later series those drives came under fire for the temporal damage done by exceeding warp 5.

But this is classic Star Trek through-and-through, living up to the promise seen in those short episodes released prior to this season.

Even the stuff with Saru being ill, Michael caring for him and him being given the gift of overcoming his species’ life in fear was the kind of character building that a show like this needs to keep trudging forward. We already like these characters, but we need to know more about them, we need to see them struggle not just in battle, but together, with personal issues and to forge bonds to make those moments when they are in a life-or-death situation more valuable.

Yes, I get it, a lot can be implied by showing emotional reactions to battle, but it errs into the territory of simple exposition to tell and not show. Showing Michael caring for Saru, showing Saru pushing past his sickness to help the crew, even when he discovers that his illness is fatal (I mean, it wasn’t in the end, but you know) has way more impact than Michael telling Saru that she loves him like family without actually showing more of their formerly contentious relationship.

These two episodes have easily been the best of the series and give me hope that the show will continue to grow into itself and shed the trappings of being pure genre, popcorn fare and instead a valuable addition to the Star Trek story.

Let’s Talk About Star Trek: Discovery Season Two

For season one of Star Trek: Discovery I did my best impression of a television writer for a moderately popular blog if they weren’t hired to simply fawn all over everything to make readers feel like returning to see their beliefs affirmed. Somehow I find myself in the unenviable position of neither being the target audience for Star Trek: Discovery or a raging conservative asshole upset at the progress in the show. Instead I’m simply a person that enjoys Star Trek and happens to also be a writer who enjoys dissecting stuff that I like or dislike because it helps me to better understand my own taste and shortcomings as an artist.

If it makes you feel better we’ll just call it criticism.

Anyway.

I was both critical of season one’s pandering and “Peak Television” shortcomings, and praised the actual, strong characters, the acting and the good intentions of Star Trek: Discovery. The characters are all pretty good! Michael is an interesting character even without the dumb links to Spock and his family, Tilly is an absolutely believable, chipper-but-nervous ensign that you know we’ll follow and watch grow, Saru is a dynamic character that is always learning more about himself and his capabilities, Stamets was an asshole that was slowly humanized over the span of the season and so forth.

Now, there were also a bunch of really shitty characters, but that’s to be expected, right?

My main issue with Discovery is essentially the same as it was for the first season: knock off the obtuse links to the Original Series, cut out the PEAK TELEVISION OOOOH STORY ARC ONLY stuff and slow the fuck down. The magic of Star Trek wasn’t the big ship battles or the gun fights. Those occasionally happened, but were usually cheesy and due to budget constraints much was left to the imagination. The thing is, that was always sort of the charm of Star Trek. The big budget, JJ Abrams blockbuster brand of Star Trek is a lot closer to… JJ Abrams Star Wars and it is more than just the slick, modern designs, the lens flares and convoluted plot twists.

The other day someone on Twitter succinctly summed up what Discovery is: Star Trek with only the action episodes, the one-offs are cut off because of the short seasons. This is, well, pretty much true. Star Trek has always had long story arcs, but the show was able to divert its focus on what I guess would now be called “filler” episodes. You know, the ones where they actually explore the characters in settings beyond war and typical action cliches?

You know why characters like Worf, Data, O’Brien and others are legendary Trek characters? Not just their longevity, but their respective shows’ ability to show them exploring other aspects of their lives outside of at their jobs. Throughout Worf’s time on screen we got to see his struggles as the first Klingon Starfleet officer, his battles with identity being raised by human parents, his attempts to re-integrate with his Klingon family and ultimately creating his own, hybrid family. Viewers got to see him love and lose, to figure himself out, to be a single parent, to falling in love with a damned Trill, then having to agonize over the Trill parasite moving to another body after his wife died.

There’s a whole world of stories to be told about the crew of Discovery and the show is instead opting for being a run-of-the-mill action-sci-fi show. We already have the Expanse out there for big budget space opera PEAK TELEVISION.

The first episode of season two was literally everything about the first season that I both enjoyed and hated wrapped into one, which means that the show will not change or evolve any time soon. First seasons of Star Trek can be a pretty bumpy ride, with virtually no Trek series having a really stellar first season. There’s always a feeling out process before the show settles into itself, but the issue with PEAK TELEVISION is that the structure of presenting a show as a well-crafted, absolutely always intentional show that always knows exactly where it’s going while giving subtle winks and nods at the viewer underneath the slick veneer of special effects, production, dramatic lighting and camera angles doesn’t allow for this exploration process.

I get it, producing Star Trek is expensive, but the thing is, smaller, more intimate stories don’t have to be. There don’t have to be big explosions, breathtaking scenes in space dodging asteroids and everything else. That’s not what Star Trek has to be to impress its viewership. This isn’t Star Wars where if fans aren’t treated to the Skywalker family saga with lightsaber fights and THE FORCE that viewers won’t stick around. Star Trek was always the ying to the yang of the major popcorn competitor in Star Wars.

What’s frustrating is that this team could clearly hit this out of the park, which is demonstrated by the few “Short Trek” episodes that came before this season. Those were, excuse me here, fucking incredible and exactly what I want out of Star Trek. I’m even willing to forgive the TOS fanservice of Harry Mudd’s continuing existence in this prequel timeline because his episode was fun! These shorts were the heart and soul that Discovery was missing and they’re just fun little things that were released as hype for the second season.

Fuck Captain Pike, fuck Spock, fuck all of this fanservice nonsense and constantly redesigning the Klingons to look cooler, the constant war and need to make Trek all about pew pew and not the sense of discovery, awe and exploration that made Star Trek the franchise that it is today. So no, trade disputes in Star Wars may be obnoxious and stupid, but that kind of stuff in Star Trek has always been the backbone beyond the Klingon wars and Borg invasions.

This is all a long-winded way for me to say that I’m gonna keep watching, but not going to bother writing about the show anymore. It is what it is, you’ll either love it or hate it, but it’s not going to change or evolve much. In fact, it feels sort of doomed at this point considering CBS will be launching the Jean-Luc Picard show at some point in the near future and the next installment of the JJ Abrams films was put on hiatus. It won’t take long for CBS to notice that nostalgia for The Original Series is rooted more in the film series that followed the cancellation of the show, not the show itself, or that TNG was not only a better show, but connected more with a more diverse audience thanks to airing in the 90’s, being put into syndication and then getting a third life on streaming services like Netflix.

So while I’m glad that there’s more Star Trek right now, that the franchise continues to move forward with social issues, diverse casts and crews and reaching modern audiences, I just don’t see the point in getting too invested in a show that feels both doomed and like it’ll never live up to its full potential. Sorry, Michael.

The Transmigration of Joe Rogan

The Champion, Jon Jones, stood victorious inside of the ring, the buzz inside of the earpiece from the producers told Joe to get ready. He knew the drill by now, knew to grab the microphone and be waiting inside of the ring to interview the winner. They had done this literally thousands of times, to the point where Joe was unable to recollect just how many times he had stepped into the ring amidst the flood of production crew and fighter entourages that littered the ring after a fight like this.

In a flash there was a dull tone filling the arena, it made him cringe, standing in place with the mic in hand. Joe opened his eyes to what was an eerily quiet arena, too quiet. With this many people and as much commotion that he had just been a part of, the arena had dropped dead silent. It made zero sense to Joe, an avid fan of conspiracy theories and the lesser-explored phenomena in the world.

“What the fuck is going on?” He turned to his broadcast partner, Mike, wearing his signature plastic smile, staring blankly up at him.

“Jon Jones has done it!” Mike was turning forward, towards the monitor, shouting now.

“Mike,” Rogan looked around, noting that everyone was frozen in place, that the ring was empty outside of Dana White’s facade, the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship in his grasp. “Mike!”

“What a fight, huh pardner?” Mike looked up at Joe, his unblinking eyes throwing him off.

Joe reached out at Mike, who kept his eyes fixed onto him, his lips moving but the words not coming out. His fingers brush against Mike’s jacket, almost like they were passing right through him. Joe’s eyes bugged out wide, his head starting to shake. He pushed his hand into Mike’s chest, first his fingers, then his knuckle, down to his wrist, engulfed in Mike’s chest.

“Jonny Bones Jones!” Mike shouted with enthusiasm, Joe’s hand felt cold, like he had placed it inside of a cooler full of ice on a warm day.

“Mike, buddy,” Joe muttered. “My fucking hand is inside of your chest and, Mike, I, I don’t know, it’s cold!”

“Corn Nuts! Corn to the core!” Mike shouted.

“No, Mike!” Joe tugged, his hand slowly coming free from Goldberg’s chest, sliding out from his white button-down shirt like it was made of liquid metal. His hand emerged from Mike’s chest covered in a green goo, his fingers stuck together. Mike’s dead gaze continued until a sound roared throughout the Baltimore Arena.

It sounded like waves crashing, when Joe looked around and saw that everyone in the stands had liquefied, that they were all combined as one, rolling down the stands like a biblical flood. Joe quickly scurried up the steps, stumbling into the ring, watching the flood roll down throughout the bottom level of the arena. Chairs, cameras, cups and debris slammed into the side of the UFC Octagon(R). Joe watched while Mike continued shouting throughout it all, starting to slowly melt into the rest of the flood.

“It is allllll over!” He shouted, only his torso and his head left, slowly liquefying themselves, the UFC Fan Ocean(R) swallowing Goldberg whole, just like he had never existed, like he never was his own entity, just a part of the whole that was the UFC. Goldberg’s eyes melted out of his head, before his head was consumed by the flood.

“Dana!” Joe tried to catch his breath, watching while the water lapped up against the side of the Octagon, splashing over the side. “Dana this is fucked up! We gotta get out of here, man.”

Dana was unmoving, the lights reflecting off of his polished, lumpy, reddened head. The smirk he wore was one that Joe knew all-too-well. That meant that he knew a way out, that he understood it. Dana always had an understanding, a way to reason with the criticism that the world launched at the UFC, at all of them. Tonight had been spectacular, but now it was all being washed away, Joe and Dana the lone remnants of the night.

Who would report of the world of Jon Jones overcoming Glover Teixeira? Did they see it? Did they see the art that was Jon Jones in the ring? It all had felt like a waste now. Joe’s eyes scanned the arena, more water was rushing from the entrances to the stands. Jon Jones was nowhere to be seen, was he even still here? Were any of them?

Joe’s mind immediately raced to this being an alternate universe. Maybe the fabric of space and time was disrupted by the performance that Jon Jones put on for the world on April the 26th, the year of the lord 2014. The only possible answer was that it was too much for the world, that the world, unable to handle an auteur like Jon Jones who was not only ahead of his time, but too much for his time and space to be able to handle.

He reached out for Dana, his large grin unwavering in the face of their surroundings. Mike had been taken, reclaimed by the flood that was the UFC Fan Ocean(R), but Dana would always be different, always be on a different level from Goldberg. Be on a different level from everyone else. He was Dana White.

“Dana,” Joe said, feeling his head starting to overheat. “What is happening?”

“The convergence,” he uttered, taking a firm grasp onto Joe’s shoulders, Joe relieved that Dana was solid, that he was a corporeal being in this universe where Goldberg was sludge, transformed into another part of the whole. “The synthesis of brand and marketing. The UFC. This is your transmigration, Joe. The UFC.”

“I don’t understand,” Joe shook his head, only to feel the firm grasp of Dana’s hand upon his chin. He had felt it once before, years previous, before this whole thing took off like this. Dana was a firm, but gentle man, not many had known that, but he had to play the tough guy. He was known by those in the know not only to be a man of passion, but a man of sincerity and humility. “Where did everything go?”

Dana took a hold of Joe around the back of the neck, pulling Joe’s head forward, their foreheads touching. Dana’s head felt warm, then the rush came over him. It was unlike any high that Joe had ever experienced, a full mind and body high that he had read about, but never experienced. It was salvia but transcending the confines of space and time. The lights were reflecting off of their equally chromed-skulls, fueling the final stage of the convergence.

There was a slight dull pain in Joe’s forehead, followed by a rush of strong emotions. Like watching a film, Joe was watching the world through Dana White’s eyes, from his youth to his days as a Boxercise instructor to the man that stood there, melding physical and mental capacities with Joe. The greatest mind in the fight business was becoming one with Rogan, an experience unlike any other.

The arena was shrinking, Dana and Joe’s fusion continuing while either they grew or the arena shrunk, it was unclear which was which. Their hands clasped together, Joe feeling Dana’s hands becoming one with his. They were becoming something else, something different, beyond understanding. The water had engulfed them up to their ankles now, feeling calming while their head breached the top of the arena. The world had stopped moving originally, but was now moving in fast motion, the Dana/Joe hybrid the size of a skyscraper, face-to-face with a slightly taller Jon Jones.

Joe peered down at his left hand, only to see that the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship was in his — their — hand still. Jones lifted a foot, only to set it down onto a bus, the muffled screams from inside juxtaposed over his mighty roar at his toe, the size of a Smart car, becoming disjointed from his oversized foot. Joe/Dana held the title in both hands, Jones turning his back to them, beginning the ceremony for Joe/Dana to slide the belt around his waist, snapping one, two, three, four snaps into place before Jones let out a mighty roar that made the earth shake.

The Baltimore Arena burst open from the top, twisted steel, glass and debris spilling out along with the waters. The waters would not stop, they had begun and will continue, the flood of the UFC was unstoppable. Joe/Dana stared in awe at Jones, belt around his waist, severed toe in hand, understanding that tonight Jon Jones had done something that no man had ever done before; he had fused together two worlds. This was not the reality that existed before UFC 172, it was the convergence.

Joe could see with his own eyes again, the knowledge and understanding from his own time, his own place, a place before UFC 172, all contained within him. His wings felt caged, his talons tied down. He pushed his beak into the walls, pecking through the window. It split open, creating a path. Joe pushed forward, erupting from Dana’s right eye, a trail of blood, chains and reason in his wake, taking flight. The view from on high showed the world to be an Octagon, trapped within another Octagon.

He cawed, flying around the head of Jon Jones, the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, before taking flight to the next Octagon, to find the titan that was Ronda Rousey. He had never felt this free, even with the chain around his talon, even knowing the confines of the Octagon. He was free, at last.

This is a short story that originally ran on MiddleEasy on April 27, 2014.

B5: We Failed; Also, Dead, Dead, Dead, Dead, Dead, Dead

The second season of Babylon 5 was a story of a show that found itself, finally flipping the switch on a lot of long-simmering plot threads to allow them to come to fruition, or at least to begin blossoming. In my last write up I talked about perhaps one of the best episodes of the series ever, where the Centauri once again defeated the Narn and the aftermath of that. That could have easily served as a season finale, yet there were two more episodes to follow.

“Comes the Inquisitor”

When telling a long story, much like with a long piece of music, the idea is tension and release. This episode was very much a “release” after the last episode served as a very tense exploration of some of the future plotlines and the characters that will inhabit them. The basis is Delenn being visited by a Vorlon inquisitor, who’s shadowy purpose is to essentially torture Delenn to see if she’s worthy of the Vorlon’s help.

There’s good and bad with this. The Vorlons are seen as mysterious beings, if not a bit imposing, but have been lulled into having Kosh as a purely background character to help push the plot forward. He’s the Vorlon representative and he’s just there to put his stamp of approval on everything moving forward, so pumping the brakes while he does his due diligence makes sense, sort of. If the Vorlons are really some of the “First Ones” that date back billions of years, the viewer would be led to believe that they weren’t morons and would do this in advance of getting into bed with individuals and whole races. Whatever, we’ve got time to fill, right?

So the inquisitor is human, from London, in the 1800’s, and sort of a prick. The historical tie ends up being that he’s Jack the fucking Ripper, which is just, c’mon. Not only is he an uninspired character, but the whole drilling over destiny, chosen ones, self-doubt and whatever is just sort of boilerplate stuff. That’s fine. Delenn gets into trouble, Sheridan comes to save her, gets imprisoned and zapped himself and their “will they, won’t they” bullshit and talk of self-sacrifice for each other passes Jack the Ripper’s test, which apparently 500 people before have failed. The Vorlons must really suck at picking chosen ones. This is very much all about pushing the plot forward and tying up loose ends, which, once again, totally fine. It also paints some doubt on the Vorlons and their ability to see and know everything.

The shining moment of this episode comes from an interaction between G’Kar and Vir on an elevator. Not only does it provide interesting foreshadowing to a G’Kar elevator incident in the future, but it shows two of the best characters in a really weird situation. The episode began with G’Kar in the Zocalo giving an impassioned speech (does he do anything else?) about the Centauri attacking other races after being unchallenged in committing atrocities against the Narn. All of that while Vir watched from a walkway above, rapt with attention. While Londo’s conscious is all about being conflicted but not acting upon it, Vir is the heart and soul of Londo.

So when Vir steps into an elevator, doing his best to avoid Centauri beggars who now know that he exists and want a piece of his power, his relief is dampened by bumping into G’Kar, the two involved in a staring contest that Vir easily loses.

But, you see, Vir isn’t always a meek, meager man. Vir truly cares and absolutely opposed everything that Londo and his people did. He did try to stop it, he did everything that he, a man with no power at all, could try to do through the channels available to him and he failed. He failed miserably because nobody took him seriously. The irony being that people do take him seriously now. So he apologizes. Without anything else he can say or do he says “I’m sorry.”

What does G’Kar do? Brandishes a knife, cuts a slit on his hand and lets the blood drip down from his hand all while not breaking eye contact with Vir. While the blood drips, drip-by-drip he accompanies each droplet with the word “dead.”

“How do you apologize to them?”

“I can’t,” Vir answers honestly.

“Then I cannot forgive.”

If you yourself are an honest, caring human being of any privilege then you too probably know this feeling. Watching helplessly as horrible things happen around the world and in your own country, knowing that these things probably won’t happen to you and that deep down inside there’s some responsibility towards this within you or the people that you associate with or represent you is an oppressive feeling. Maybe you did do something, maybe you did try, but did you really? Were you fighting with the damned? Were you standing with them and showing your support? Of course Vir is culpable, he works for Londo, he’s done Londo’s deeds and Londo’s deeds led to this path of history. Vir knows that he could do better, but he was afraid to. We’re all afraid to do this and we’re all fucking Vir sometimes, because we can probably do better. We’re just afraid of failure, or losing our own comfort.

Essentially, Vir is every white person in America in 2018 who sees other white people marching in the streets, chanting about Jews, crying about “white genocide” and chanting about building a wall. It’s our uncles, fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, aunts and everyone else and god damn if we don’t feel uncomfortable with it, god damn if we don’t want these people to go away, but we look at our system that led us to this path and say “well, this is just how it is.” Secretly, there’s a shame, because there has to be, whether we admit it or not is another thing, but there’s a shame in knowing that these people can even attempt to speak for us and no matter how hard we shout that they don’t, there’s always these nagging doubts that maybe that’s not enough.

Fuck.

“The Fall of Night”

So while the last episode has me equating the Centauri to the Alt-Right, that probably won’t end any time soon. Damnit. Anyway, this is the season finale. The big, fat, beefy season finale and once again humanity is absolutely disappointing. The Centauri expand their grip on the galaxy, because one victory is never enough, which brings out the Earth brass to… make a treaty with the Centauri, because history has shown that’s what we do. Sheridan, of course, is opposed to this, especially with a broken-down Narn warship in B5 space asking for sanctuary while it gets repaired.

All of this while the Night Watch expands its sphere of influence on the station with poor old Zack in his ill-fitting uniform wearing that damned armband and realizing that a shop owner blowing off steam at the expense of ever-expanding Earth regulations is apparently a punishable offense to these jackbooted assholes and that he’s gotten himself into bed with some questionable people. The Narn ship causes some problems and the Centauri come looking for blood, which leads to a tense face-off between B5 and the Centauri and, ultimately, the Centauri ship being blown up by B5 when it was about to attack a civilian station over just wanting to kill a few more Narn.

Sheridan is forced to, hat in hand, give a forced apology to all of the ambassadors on the station in the garden for some reason, most likely because it’s humiliating and if he doesn’t he’ll lose his command. There’s too much at stake for him now with him being in control of the Rangers, knowing about the Shadows — oh yeah, which Keffer finally uncovers, gets video of a ship and jettisons the video before he’s killed, so there’s that — and the coming war. So Sheridan has to apologize, the only problem is that the Centauri aboard the station are angry and looking for revenge.

Sheridan, the chief officer on B5, is forced to take public transportation by the way of a tram car over to the ceremonial garden where he’s met with a timely explosive aboard that doesn’t kill him because he tosses himself out of the car at the last second. Because the station works via spin gravity he was able to toss himself out of the grasp of that gravity where he was before, but he was moving towards the other half of the station which would suck him right back down. Delenn begs Kosh to do something, because now was clearly the time for him to unveil himself to the galaxy.

Before I get into this more, I want to preface this with how this could have been really, really fucking bad. The idea of aliens as religious figures is not a new one, but it’s one that when it’s done is usually done really poorly. Was this done well? Let’s talk about it.

Kosh reveals himself to be a literal fucking angel. That’s right, the Vorlons are angels, at least to humanity. To every race he appears as something different. What this does is paints that all of the religions in this galaxy were indeed just based upon the benevolence of the Vorlons, who helped each race along to being advanced, modern beings. Sheridan is at first in awe, while Delenn talks about how the Vorlons helped everyone, then reverts to anger and how they manipulated and controlled everyone.

The big bombshell here is the implications of the Vorlons being religious figures means that they knowingly helped to craft these religions, which splintered off and became regionalized, factionalized and divided people as much as it brought them together. There could be different ways of viewing this, but that would mean that humanity’s ugliness was helped along by the Vorlons to their own end. But it could also mean that they only were responsible for their own actions, what humanity and other races chose to do with the knowledge and power that they bestowed upon them was their own choices and failings.

Regardless of any of that, the Vorlons kind of look like assholes in this. The same excuse that the Centauri made for invading the Narn in the first place, which was to “bring culture and civilization to a lesser race” was the exact same thing that the Vorlons had been doing for perhaps millions of years. The only key difference is that the Vorlons didn’t subjugate these races, but truthfully, that cannot be honestly answered just yet, can it? If the Vorlons are as advanced as they claim to be, if they are the puppet masters, if Kosh had “always been there” with Sheridan, the extent of their control hasn’t been revealed yet.

When a few aliens are discussing what they saw at a bar later on, Londo is sitting there, alone, at a table mulling over everything that had happened. When they casually ask Londo what he saw, understanding that everyone saw something different, Londo’s response is symptomatic of his own existential crisis and him realizing that his beliefs, his world and everything that he knows is complete bullshit.

“Nothing, I saw nothing.”

Ivanova closes the season out by amending the monologue from the beginning of each episode to be more ominous, that Babylon 5 was the last best hope for peace and, I quote, “We failed.” Now it’s their next best hope for… victory?

Babylon 5: No Dictator, No Invader Can Hold An Imprisoned Population By Force of Arms Forever

“No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once, we will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.”

The impassioned, yet measured speech by a shellshocked G’Kar in episode 20 of Babylon 5’s second season is one of the many that was uttered by the character, delivered with force and gravity by Andreas Katsulas, as his people, the Narn, fell to the Centauri once again. The interplay between ambassadors G’Kar and Londo Mollari is perhaps one of the true, driving forces of the series as a whole. So while Sheridan, Delenn and the rest are waging a war of light vs. dark, these two are occupying the very important shades of gray that help to fill in the entire image that comprises the series.

B5 does this thing where they tend to drop a bombshell on the audience, then follow up with an episode that is perhaps more subdued or two. I tackled three episodes since my last blog, with one focusing on a religious race suffering from a near-extinction event of a plague impacting its people, but believe it to be an act of their god, thus refuse to do anything substantial about it. While I won’t call it a throwaway — because it’s not — it’s more character-building and world building, which the show never ceases to do. Truthfully, while the audience may have a good grasp on the universe that Babylon 5 inhabits already, the fact that the show never stops showing the characters learning what little they actually know about the universe serves as a theme that echoes throughout the series.

“Confessions and Lamentations”

Doctor Franklin is also shown, once again, abusing stims to keep himself awake and on duty. Only this time Ivanova wasn’t there to browbeat him into taking a nap and eating for a bit. The give-and-take between Franklin and the alien doctor is one of trust, acceptance and humanity’s need to feel like constant saviors. Franklin had to know exactly what was happening, just like he had to find a way to fix it. Of course, he did, because he’s that snooty, brilliant-but-flawed doctor that these sci-fi shows love to present, but he did it after the race had gone extinct. If anything, it was a way to beat into that character that no matter how brilliant, how driven and how hopped up on stimulants he is, he can never do it all, nor can he always understand. These people died willingly for their beliefs, not their ignorance.

“Divided Loyalties”

The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father. That’s the line that the shadowy Psi Corps instill in its members through their propaganda material to bring latent telepaths into the fold. The return of Lyta Alexander, the telepath from the pilot episode who helped to save Ambassador Kosh’s life by entering his mind to search for his assailant, returned and she’s a bit battleworn compared to before. This episode is a bit exposition-heavy in pushing forward the story that the Psi Corps are probably evil and have implanted one of the crew of B5 with a false personality, leaving their true one latent and bent on sabotage. Ivanova once again heavily protests the idea of any sort of scan, in this case one where Lyta would send a “password” to wake the sleeper and not read any memories, but then reveals to the Captain that she, herself is actually a latent telepath and has fought her whole life to hide it. Lyta sees this, apologizes after the scan, and then the woman that Ivanova was cozying up to — the telepath that replaced her in Talia Winters — is revealed to be the saboteur, thus once again swapping the women’s roles as the telepath aboard the station and Lyta goes to visit Kosh to tell him that she never told anyone. Oooh, spooky.

“The Long, Twilight Struggle”

Finally, we’re getting somewhere. This somewhere is not great for these characters, but the road is one that they were always going to travel.

Well, at least for all of the characters in the show that we’ve grown to know and love. The fall of Narn is imminent all while Londo watches from an observation window of one of the Centauri destroyers levying banned weapons with brute force to force the Narn once again into subjugation. This wasn’t what he wanted, you can see it on his face. There was a lot of talk in this episode about “light” and “shadows,” because good vs. evil will always be the draw, but a bulk of the episode was actually spent on the in-between of those extremes.

So while a cursory watch of this show would make you walk away thinking you saw bad guys vs. good guys, there’s something to be said in the fact that the bad guys barely exist as much more than spider-shaped starships and weird, alien bugs that can only be seen on occasion when the lighting is right. Because the struggle of the show is always internal, be it Sheridan’s self-doubt, Delenn’s struggle with her people’s believed superiority and her findings that they should all be equal, Ivanova’s hatred for telepaths, thus herself, Garibaldi’s struggles with being a doofus, and, of course, G’Kar and Londo’s struggles with freedom, right, wrong and their roles in the universe. Yeah, the episode ends with Sheridan finally meeting the Rangers, with their command being transferred to him, him giving a rousing speech about being on the side of the light and even the dude on that planet in that weird machine pledging to help both of them, it was still the little things that mattered most.

Londo’s return to Babylon 5 to gloat about the victory that he only imagined that he wanted, but didn’t really want, was bittersweet. The man who was usually flouncing around the station in a drunken stupor was now flanked by honor guards and wore a grim expression. Garibaldi greeted Londo in a cold manner, with his look explaining everything. They had spent a good deal of this season focusing on the relationship between Garibaldi and Londo, with them being the two sides of the same coin. They were both damaged men with a habit of imbibing until the point of making horrible mistakes, but Garibaldi was the guy that was following the program, getting his life together and trying to do things the right way. Londo was the guy that took the shortcut and found that happiness still wasn’t waiting for him when all of his wildest dreams of being a heroic conqueror came true. He lost his best friend, he lost the respect of his friends and peers and had to watch while Vir, that lump of a ball of anxiety, had grown into his own with a newly-found hardened shell to deal with all of the bullshit that Londo made him go through.

While inexplicably Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi) would go on to be a right-wing pundit on Fox News and try to start his own web outlet before his demise, the character of Garibaldi is sort of the antithesis of that. It was a guy that had to believe in something, which meant choosing goodness and believing in people instead of turning a cold shoulder to those suffering in the universe because he himself had been hurt. He might still be a creep, but damnit, he’s a creep with a Daffy Duck poster above his bed, signifying that his childlike innocence never truly left him and perhaps kept him from becoming what the actor portraying him ultimately became.

G’Kar has suffered through just about everything a character in his position could suffer from, but the ultimate sign of his pride being thrown out the window was asking Sheridan for sanctuary when his planet fell, at the behest of the Narn leaders, then sitting in while Londo made his outrageous decree to the League of Unaligned Nations. G’Kar, usually having a seat at the big table, instead sat quietly in a chair next to it, listening, head down, while Londo talked about being a mighty conqueror and how the Centauri would once again subjugate his people. When demanding for G’Kar to stand trial we saw the true awfulness of Londo at play. These men were, indeed, always arguing, always at each other’s throats, but what predated this atrocity of a war was G’Kar speaking to the Centauri emperor who promised him peace. G’Kar offered his hand to Londo and promised to work towards a friendship, which warmed Londo to the point of trying to turn back, only finding it impossible.

Fueled by his indignation, Londo wanted G’Kar to finally submit to him, perhaps even beg him for his life. While Londo could have really gone through with it, there was always this sense of doubt that Londo would ever be willing to pull the trigger on him. Here, well, it seems like he was really going to do it, which prompted the speech above. That speech, well, I won’t say I didn’t tear up on this viewing a little bit, even though I’ve seen it before and will see it again.

But, see, Londo really believes that he has some modicum of control here. He believes that his deeds will indeed make everything better. Sure, he gets his jollies and his time to puff out his chest and feel important, but he believes that this will better his people and their collective soul. Just like that, he believes that they’d conquer the Narn and call it a day, only for his story in this episode to close out with him watching the news and seeing that the Centauri had seized nearby worlds and that the true nature of Imperialism is what everyone says it to be: a never-ending quest to quench an insatiable thirst for power.

Watching this in 2018 is a bit difficult. The Centauri were depicted as a very clearly “western” culture throughout the series, from their formal, 18th century British-nobility-style clothing to their cavalier attitude towards imperialism and creating an empire with no end. Much like the modern west — dare I say the United States — the Centauri have a vision inside of their own minds of them bringing their own brand of civilization to the galaxy not as conquerors, but instead generous saviors. Humanity’s first contact with an alien species was the Centauri, who gifted to Earth many advanced technologies, such as jump gates (which are still my favorite way to dealing with faster-than-light travel in sci-fi) and more. This truly noble gesture helped them to continue feeling superior, but giving without sacrificing their position in the galaxy, if anything hoping that Earth would be indebted to them in the future as an ally.

At the same time, their view of the Narn as savages and the Narn homeworld as merely resources for them to control and strip-mine, not because they needed those resources, but they needed control over them, reflects a lot of America’s current ideas towards the rest of the world. Then, even after their war was over and the Narn had retaken their homeworld, the Centauri still viewed it as their own property that was taken from them, not something that they stole by force and refused to let go of. This, of course, predated the 2003 Iraq War (also hilariously known as Operation Iraqi Freedom), which is one of the more grievous examples of modern, western imperialism under the guise of “spreading Democracy and freedom” while mostly looking to control resources and ideology in the region. With our current president, Trump, looking to relive the glory days of American imperialism by butting heads with Iran, North Korea, Russia, Mexico and even allied nations it serves as a stark reminder that our own history always feels doomed to repeat itself, much like the Centauri’s thirst for glory dooms everyone around them to a vicious cycle of bloodshed with no true purpose.

G’Kar’s powerful speech, followed by Sheridan’s promise to dedicate his own resources towards helping G’Kar and his people retake their homeworld, was almost entirely carried by the fact that G’Kar is such a great character. His measured, profound words that come from the near-endless amount of time he spends studying ancient texts is always contrasted by his quick temper and hasty actions. Even while shaking Sheridan’s hand, he pauses first and notes that the last time he shook a man’s hand he found himself embroiled in a war with him a day later. Perhaps he hasn’t learned his lesson yet, or maybe he’s just desperate for someone to be a true friend to him. Maybe even he’s searching for something to hold onto during these dark times. We know Sheridan to be the paragon of virtue, but G’Kar has been so wrapped up in this conflict that he truly hasn’t gotten to know the man since his arrival on the station, making this both a leap of faith and an act of desperation.

This is the second in my Babylon 5 retrospective. The first can be read here. Please consider signing up for my email list if you enjoyed this article and want to be kept up-to-date on my upcoming stories and novels.

If You Go to Z’Ha’Dum, You Will Die; or, Rewatching Babylon 5, Remembering Harlan Ellison

“If you go to Z’ha’dum, you will die.”

Never throughout any of the television that I’ve watched in my 35 years has one line taken a really good show and marked it’s departure from just being a really good show to one of the greatest shows of all time. Does that sound like conjecture, because it’s not. Babylon 5 is a sci-fi series from the 90’s that suffers from the fact that it was a basic cable show on TNT, produced by Warner Bros. and featured some awful special effects. From a cursory glance, Babylon 5 looks dated, perhaps more dated than any Star Trek from the 80’s forward and definitely worse than shows like StarGate SG-1 that were its contemporary.

Yet Babylon 5 was incredibly special. What’s funny to me is that the showrunner, writer and visionary behind the show was J. Michael Straczynski, who, for the life of me, I can’t enjoy anything else that he’s produced in his long run as a writer outside of maybe his credit in being one of the people that tackled the story in the first Thor movie in Marvel’s hilariously bloated Cinematic Universe. What that means is something that seems timely, because I’d pinpoint what made Babylon 5 so special by making an outrageous claim that it was the now-late Harlan Ellison’s involvement. What that involvement was always seems murky, to say the least. His official credit was as a “Conceptual Consultant,” with only a few of the scripts to his credit while most are credited solely to JMS.

An old B5 information site lists a role for him that is nonsensical at best: “Harlan Ellison is the conceptual consultant for the series. He has written a “manifesto” for the show that explains to other writers how to write science fiction for television and Babylon 5 in particular. On a day-to-day basis, he has no preassigned duties (though he plans to write a script or two) but is something of a generalist, helping refine many aspects of the production, from writing to sets. JMS refers to Ellison’s position as ‘a free-roaming agent of chaos.'” What I’ve been able to glean from my research into what exactly Harlan did has brought up that he created a “bible” for the show that everyone referred to throughout the show. This guide was him wanting to avoid the pitfalls of most science fiction on television, from camera angles, lighting, dialogue, character development and everything else in between. People have talked about how he did everything from script doctoring and editing to being on set and being incredibly vocal throughout.

The reality of Harlan Ellison is that he wasn’t known for being a nice, easy-going guy. He was sort of a dick, but his work has stood the test of time and it feels like, at least from an outside perspective, that his influence working with JMS on B5 helped to create the most incredible science fiction series of all time. If this feels like a rather long preamble to me just talking about stuff that was happening in the show, it probably is, but I feel like it’s valuable information. Harlan Ellison died on June 28th of this year and the show made its way to Amazon Prime, finally having wide distribution in the digital era, on June 1st. Naturally, I dove right into it, having forgotten that the first season was indeed very good, but at times tedious.

The first season worked to establish the characters, setting, the struggles, the factions and everything else that a grand science fiction drama could need. Also in that first season was a leading man that was replaced in the second season due to health reasons, which turned out to be a godsend as Jeffrey Sinclair was a rather wooden character played by an actor that perhaps made him that way, although it was revealed later that he was suffering from debilitating psychological issues throughout filming, which led to his departure. Anyway, this led to the introduction of Captain John Sheridan, who is perhaps the perfect example of the “captain” archetype found in science fiction that can be a hard-nosed military leader who finds himself caring more about the people and the world around him than following orders. There’s a lot of stuff that happens, but it isn’t until episode 16, “In the Shadow of Z’Ha’Dum,” until the show really takes off.

So, if you’re reading this and you haven’t watched the show before, or you want to and haven’t gotten that far yet, this is probably all going to be sort of worthless to you. This is my blog so I’m not going to backtrack and write about the entire series, instead I want to document watching from this turning point forward because it’s so goddamned good. This is more for myself than anything else.

When Ambassador Kosh finally reveals the mystery of Mr. Mordin to a distraught Sheridan, the sense of weight is almost immediate. This is the moment where the stress of knowing that Earth’s president was murdered in a coup that was linked to shadowy organizations was the least of his troubles out on the frontier in a space station that serves as a convergence for alien societies. After being emotionally drained questioning Mordin about what happened to their ship and if his wife had somehow survived, he’s still laser-focused on the fact that these “Shadows” took her ship and was able to subjugate a few of the passengers, such as Mordin, to be agents for them. Sheridan’s desire to immediately head there is met by Kosh’s cold warning that if Sheridan goes to Z’Ha’Dum he will die.

Eventually, Sheridan decides that he wants to learn how to fight them, without forgetting that his true purpose is to go there and try to rescue his wife. We also see Vir struggle with the fact that Londo is so closely associated with Mordin, who Vir considers to be a monster. There’s one of those truly incredible, rare moments where Vir shows the character that he’ll turn into in the future when he confronts Mordin and when pressed with the same question that was posed to Londo and led to the beginning of a new Centauri/Narn war, all that Vir wants to see is Mordin’s head on a pike.

If anything, it’s cold, colder than we’ve ever seen Vir before, but also more passionate and less anxious about being his own person. Londo had finally decided to give Vir a pat on the back for his service and friendship through all of these tough times, demanding that Vir stay as his attache and not be replaced by the Centauri government. In Babylon 5 it’s a rare case where the main characters themselves are very good, but the real meat of the series rests on the secondary characters a lot of the time. The growth of Londo, Vir, G’Kar, Lennier and others is the driving force of the show and what really pushes it into greatness. These characters are all faced with incredible personal, professional and cultural struggles throughout the series and most of the time make very poor, but relatable decisions.

The next episode, “Knives” is a great example of this, as the focus is on Londo Mollari and his newfound fame and respect on his homeworld. His good friend and former sparring partner, Urza, makes an appearance, which causes the two men to reminisce about the good old days only for it to be abundantly clear early on that Urza considers the new war against the Narn — the war that Londo started to gain favor — to be absolutely bullshit. He was one of the few that knew of the now-deceased Emperor’s intentions to make a lasting peace with the Narn, even apologize, only for Londo to be the willing pawn of Lord Reefa to ensure that the Emperor’s message didn’t get out before he died before Reefa took over the government.

Peter Jurasik is perhaps not the most attractive actor in the world and the character design on the Centauri is downright laughable at times. I mean, they’re dressed like British aristocrats but have this weird hairstyle that is like if a monk that was bald on top grew their hair out and fashioned it into a wrap-around mohawk. It’s absolutely ludicrous. The thing is, Peter Jurasik is an amazing actor and everything that he does in this absurd role makes it not just believable, but one of the best characters in television history. Hard stop. There’s an actual feeling that these men were best of friends and the look of shame that washes over him when he hears his good friend say out loud what he already knew about his own decisions it’s impossible not to feel for this despicable, awful man.

When Urza shares with Londo that he was looking for help against the government essentially banishing him and shaming his entire family, Londo proudly beats his chest because of his untapped power, until Urza’s excitement isn’t about Londo backchanneling, but instead to go public, which Londo refuses to do, knowing that it would be the end of his power within the republic. Even knowing that Reefa was to blame, Londo still goes to Reefa for assistance, only to understand that this man was not his friend, but he was linked to him because of his poor decisions and couldn’t escape it.

The duel that ensued between Urza and Londo, which was, of course, to the death, was nothing but a ploy by Urza to have Londo murder him and assume control over Urza’s family. Their shame would be erased and Londo has this realization that his decisions have truly awful consequences to them. He never did find love in his life and dedicated himself to accruing power, but never considered the cost of it. This episode was Londo realizing all of the errors that he’s made and that turning back would mean the end of his life. Urza knew that by dying he’d secure the fate of his family in Londo’s hands and perhaps it was always the plan B that he had with him when heading to Babylon 5.

By all accounts Londo is a villain. The deaths of so many were on his hands, as was the re-emergence of the Shadows. Granted, if it wasn’t Londo that Mordin had gone to, there would have been someone else. The power that Mordin offered was unrivaled and difficult to resist. Yet, Londo remains a sympathetic character throughout the series, with that sympathy waxing and waning along with his decisions. There are times when he owns up to his mistakes and will do something truly noble, while there are other times where his lust for power or fear of being obsolete push him to do truly reprehensible things.

Damn, I’m happy that I’m watching this again.

I Wish You Could See This ‘Cause There’s Nothing to See

I’m a great deal of things, but somehow remembering to update my site and talk about myself becomes a distant, far off concept that I lose a grasp on when I’m, myself, sort of aimless. Because that’s where I’m at right now: completely aimless as a creative mind and trying to figure out my next move.

That doesn’t mean that I’ve not been writing, because I have been writing. Not as much as I’d want to, but at the same time, life can get in the way sometimes. Not even just life, but my own mind can be my own worst enemy.  I’ve written a few sci-fi short stories and have been chipping away at another project, but I’m still not entirely sure what I should be doing.

Redundancy might be my motif on this blog, because there are countless posts on here about how I’ve been grappling with the idea of commercial writing and just writing for myself. For most people it seems like a simple concept: you want to do something, just go ahead and do it, there’s nothing to lose. For a writer there’s something almost comforting about the constant stream of rejections.

They suck, that much is for sure. For someone like me you end up in a strange in between world where the groundwork has been done through workshops, school and writing a lot of stuff that was bound for a heap, never to be read by more than a few people. At times I mull over the idea of going back to school for a master’s degree, or to try writer’s groups and whatever else, but it doesn’t click for me. Not that I’m averse to continue to learn and grow or anything, it just feels like most of the work at this point is just to write.  So, yeah, those rejections suck and are incredibly discouraging, but they aren’t without their silver lining.

My friend James sent me this Ira Glass video about “the gap” what feels like a million times (in hindsight, it was probably just twice), to the point of, well, redundancy. That’s my theme for tonight. I’ve been mulling over the idea of making music again to have another outlet for the time being. In part because music always feels like a safe place for me. I’m comfortable with music. I’m comfortable both playing it and writing it, as well as I’m okay with my skill level.

While I’m still not sure that I’ll delve back into music or not, it got me to thinking about what my influences were in music, what my taste was. It was an eclectic mix of things, because, that tends to be what I gravitate towards. I was always prone to enjoy the Axl-heavy Guns N’ Roses stuff, like Use Your Illusion II’s second half, Chinese Democracy and whatever else, just like I was a big fan of Roger Waters, Neil Young, Prince, Bowie and a few others. A lot of those things don’t neatly fit together, when it dawned on me that my taste in books is perhaps a lot like that as well, which is why writing sort of straight-forward stuff was as frustrating to me as writing and playing straight-forward metal music was.

I’m not really a metal guy, although I was as a kid. When it comes to music, I’m a lot more mellow now than I was before, which isn’t a surprise, but I still gravitate towards darker music at times. When it comes to literature it’s not that different. I grew up an obsessive Isaac Asimov fan, which makes one of the reviews I read for Terminus Cycle a while ago ring true when someone said it reminded them of early Asimov. We’re talking everything, right down to the books published after his death that branched off from the Robots series and were kind of sort of canonical. Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, Haruki Murakami, NK Jemisin, Dan Simmons, Donna Tartt and Thomas Pynchon are probably, at least for right now in this turbulent mind, my favorite authors. Maybe Frank Herbert. Maybe, because I loved Dune and my love for the series dropped off with each additional book.

That list meanders between genres, skill and ideas, but that right there is my core. Getting over that fear of actually writing what I want to write is perhaps my biggest struggle right now, as is finding the consistent time to work on a project without losing focus, then trying to go back to it only to find that my enthusiasm as disintegrated into dust.

Just don’t ask me to write about Westworld. My god, I hate Westworld.

Star Trek Discovery Season One Finale: Eye-Rolls on Top of Eye-Rolls

Here we are, with one full season of Star Trek: Discovery in the books. Finally, after far too long, Star Trek returned to the smaller (and this time even smaller) screen and the verdict is mixed, at best. Star Trek: Discovery was an attempt to bring Trek into modern times, which meant marketing of really selling the diversity featured on the show, only for the showrunners to find themselves backed into a corner because they worked so hard at selling the diversity aspects of the show that, inevitably, they would fail because their intentions couldn’t quite live up to the story that they wanted to tell. First Trek gay couple! Oh, right, one dies in a throwaway scene. A character with realistic PTSD! Oh, right, he was really a double agent! There’s more, too, but the thing is, Star Trek has always been a forward-thinking franchise, which is one of the things that has helped it endure the test of time (albeit, older episodes still wouldn’t live up to modern standards, but they were trying), but Discovery’s big push on it ended up feeling like smoke-and-mirrors.

They just didn’t deliver on those promises at all, which shouldn’t detract from the show, but it does. The other fault of a modern Trek is trying to appeal to the Peak Television audience that is looking for really long story arcs as opposed to taking the traditional Trek route of telling smaller, more intimate and personal stories. Back when I wrote for Uproxx, I remember writing up stories about how they were touting that Discovery would be different because the show wouldn’t focus on the captain — oh no — it would focus instead on one of the officers instead. At the time, it was all well and good. Write it, nod along that it’s a fine idea, but really, why is that a radical concept? Was The Original Series the Captain Kirk Show? Not really. Was The Next Generation the Picard Show? No way at all. Was DS9 the BENJAMIN SISKO Show? I mean, no, although I’d watch the hell out of that. Was Voyager the Janeway Show? Was Enterprise the Archer Show? It’s no, to all of the above. While the captain may have been a big focus, these showrunners and producers somehow missed the point that Star Trek was never about one, singular character. Star Trek has always been a collection of characters that you learn to know and care for.

Enterprise, long thought to be the ‘worst’ of all the Treks, featured not just Captain Archer, but T’pol, Trip, Malcom, Phlox, Travis, Sato and others that were each given a spotlight. The most engaging characters ended up being T’pol and Trip and I’m not sure that there’s another way to view it. How many Voyager episodes were about Harry figuring out who he is, or Tom fucking around in the Holodeck, Neelix trying to help the crew, the Doctor coping with being a hologram, 7 of 9 grappling with her humanity and a whole bunch more that I’m missing?

Discovery decided to play up like it was a premium cable show that belongs on HBO, following the ten-episode format, being gritty and casting big names like Michelle Yeoh, but continually missed the mark in focusing on any of the characters at all. After ten episodes I’m not sure that I can name anyone on the bridge crew outside of the nicknames I came up with in my head for them. Does it really matter, anyway? They’re set dressing, but instead of the interchangeable extras that we saw on previous series, they kept the same actors throughout. So while a show like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad will have multiple point-of-view characters, Discovery sorta just stuck by Michael throughout the whole thing. Every episodes saw detours into other characters, but Michael was always where they went back to. The problem was that a few episodes into the series Michael’s story stopped mattering. Her redemption, her guilt and her proving herself to everyone was just a formality so the story could move at a breakneck pace.

What better place to talk about pacing than in this last episode? Throughout my own writing I’ve found myself making mistakes, obviously, but it’s frustrating to see these mistakes made by someone still trying to really nail what his style should be being made by people at the wheel of one of the biggest and most beloved franchises in science fiction history. The resolution for this giant fucking war was, in a word, hilarious. None of it was in any way believable. At all. Let’s recap here: Michael accidentally starts a war with the Klingons because she was wild and curious, Phillipa sorta let her be that and encouraged her to be just a bit wild. Michael sees the Klingon threat and decides that Phillipa’s refusal to take action could get everyone killed, so she stages a failed mutiny. Her beloved captain dies while Michael is silently redeemed and forgiven, but nobody can see this. Michael is being transported on a secret ship and is just kinda let out and everything is forgiven because Captain Lorca is insane and willing to do anything to win the war. Okay.

From there we fall into bullshit about the mycelium network, Lorca is a madman by Starfleet standards and then the Mirror Universe happens. By now, nobody doubts Michael and it seems like she’s not just in the clear, but right on track to be second-in-command again as soon as the dust settles. Her story is pretty much over, although a love affair with Ash Tyler — A SECRET KLINGON~! — is trying to keep us interested in her. Now she’s just there, driving the plot forward for the rest of the show, with little flourishes here and there, until the end, where she needs to learn her lesson and recite it in front of everyone like a kid giving a fucking book report. The lesson she learned was that humanity needs to keep its humanity or else what’s the point of winning?

So EVIL PHILLIPA was going to blow up Qo’Nos to save humanity and win her freedom because conveniently being a genocidal maniac from a different universe meant that everyone could wash their hands of genocide, except Michael saw the folly in it and realized they had a Klingon on board the Discovery! You know, the one they kept there for THE WHOLE SERIES and only really served to be the adversary to Ash, as well as the one that was able to save his life later? Talk about a deus ex machina! Much to no one’s shock, she’s once again the machina needed, beamed down to the cave where EVIL PHILLIPA and Michael are debating ethics and told to basically take a detonator to her species extinction and threaten her entire race to rally behind her as the great leader and end the war. Why? Because Michael made a rousing speech to the Admiral, who apparently said, hey, fuck it, let’s do this instead of secure our existence?

But this plan doesn’t just work, it works within a matter of minutes. The whole big build of the first season of Discovery was to a Klingon with a finger on a button — not even explaining what the fuck it was or what would happen — and the Klingons immediately giving up on a sure victory to say “oh wow, we better just give up and listen.” The idea was that the Klingon houses were fractured by the war, all searching for their own glory over the glory of the Empire and that this move would unify them… But… why? There was no tension, it was just another convenient set of plot elements and twists to forgo telling an actual, compelling story.

Oh, and apparently Michael still needed to get pardoned at the end. Because they were letting her run around and do all of this shit while still a condemned criminal wearing a Starfleet uniform with a position on their best starship. What the hell.

I didn’t even get into how this show is supposed to be so much more progressive and how that means that Captains will now fuck scantily clad alien women AND men, not just women like in The Original Series.

Star Trek Discovery Episodes 13 and 14: The Overuse of the Plot Twist and Underuse of Good Characters

A good plot twist is enough to keep an audience on their toes, to keep them guessing and wanting more, but the thing about plot twists is that they need to be used sparingly. A part of what makes plot twists effective is that they happen when you either least expect it or when you most dread them. A good plot twist has been foreshadowed, either discreetly or directly, depending on the story being told. When a plot twist is pulled off properly it can feel overwhelming, exciting or even rewarding. So why do people, like myself, complain about them?

Watch Star Trek Discovery and you’ll see why. The sheer amount of plot twists that have been thrown at the audience in the span of just a few episodes is not just overwhelming, it’s downright ridiculous. Much like the early portions of the season, nothing in this series ever really gets a chance to breathe or take shape, instead it’s just a mad dash to the next plot point without concern over anything beyond BLOWING FUCKING MINDS~! Blowing minds is cool and all, but it can also feel cheap when overused, which is what we have here. I didn’t write about episode 13, What’s Past is Prologue, because, in my mind, it was going to be one line and one line only:

Another fucking plot twist.

I’m trying not to be too down on everything here, so it felt like a waste of time to just do that and post it, plus I didn’t watch it until Wednesday night or so. Stuff happened, it pushed the plot along, but there had to be another fucking PLOT TWIST at the end of the episode and this is bordering on parody at this point. Guess what? They came back, but it’s nine months in the future and the Federation is almost destroyed by the Klingons! This alone is a good plot point, but the whole Mirror Universe diversion was nothing but a series of plot twists to the point where I can’t imagine giving a shit about this. It’s an easy and cheap way (both storytelling-wise and production-wise) to escalate the Klingon War without having to actually show any of it. They want to convey a sense of being overwhelmed, of desloation and loss, but instead it’s just another amped-up way to tell this story and commit the biggest sin of fiction: telling and not showing.

I am aware of this because I’ve always had a proclivity of telling and not showing in my own work. Look, I kinda like exposition dumps sometimes, the same with skipping key action to get to the good stuff, but there’s a time and a place for it. Other times it’s just sort of lazy storytelling (myself included) and the same thing can be accomplished by being creative. This brings us directly into episode 14, The War Without, The War Within, which is perhaps one of the best episodes of Discovery and shows just what this series is actually capable of.

Star Trek Discovery boasts a great cast that works well together, amazing special effects and the Star Trek name. Those things alone are enough for most, but what really makes this show work when it does is just how well these characters interact with each other. The cast just gel and, for the most part, feel natural with each other. It’s the kind of thing that you usually don’t see in a Star Trek series for a season or two. Granted, we’re at the tail-end of this season, but still. This episode takes time to stop and let the characters interact with each other, to react to their circumstances and actually figure stuff out instead of dashing headlong into another quandary only to find things COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN EXPECTED WHOOOOOA.

The Ash Tyler twist was predicted well in advance, mostly because of IMDB snooping, not because of actual in-story clues, but whatever. Part of the annoyance of the reveal was that they had worked pretty hard to push that he was surviving with PTSD and trying to cope with life afterwards, only to say, “nope, he’s just a secret Klingon and didn’t know it! HA!” Thankfully, they didn’t stop there and are going to explore matters with him further, although it was alarmingly easy to get him all fixed up, wasn’t it? There are tense moments with Stemets and Michael, as well as getting to watch Saru seem to grow into his role as a commanding officer by believing in himself and his crew more. There’s also Tilly who learned by playing Captain in the Mirror Universe more about herself, her ambitions and the realities of war. This kind of stuff is indispensable, just like the Michael and Tyler interaction near the tail-end of the episode.  This is what this show should be and what this show has mostly failed the live up to. Star Trek is never about the adventures, the bad guys, the war or the action, it’s about the people and how they interact with the universe around them. That’s what this show has failed to embrace while trying to reach a broader audience and why people like myself get so frustrated with the show.

A show like DS9 took the idea of the super-advanced Federation, void of racism, sexism, inequality and poverty and explored why that isn’t always easy. The show placed a grieving commander in charge of a station that was once a mining prison for a group of people that were being oppressed by another group of people, who now all had to interact and live together. The show explored why there was a bad side and a good side, but that the good side had some really evil portions and the evil side was being defined by the evil actions of a few, not defining a race as a whole. We also saw Sisko reflect on the past numerous times and how humanity wasn’t always “good,” which helped to give further perspective into the ongoing struggles, I’d even argue with those episodes helping to frame DS9 as whole.

The Mirror Universe in Discovery was supposed to show the crew what humanity was capable of if it gave in to its darker urges, but it was perhaps a bit too over-the-top. We’ve seen the Mirror Universe utilized in the past, but the best applications were usually deeply personal to the characters involved and exploring their own duality, instead of trying to make an overarching point about humanity’s problems. Michael, out of her own conflicted feelings, saved Phillipa the Emperor and brought her back to the original universe, with her now playing a key role in the fight against the Klingons. The struggle that we’re supposed to be focusing on is how desperate times lead to desperate measures and how someone like Michael, who opened up the series by making a call that started a war out of desperation, now sees that humanity needs to hold onto that very humanity in how we conduct ourselves otherwise there’s nothing left after the fighting is done.

The Federation installing Emperor Phillipa as Captain Phillipa, claiming her to be found after being lost at sea — not actually an evil version of herself from another dimension — was totally fine. It was another twist, but at least this one had some build to it. Like I said, I mostly liked this episode and found it to be one of the best of the series, but mostly because it gave everything room to breathe and helped to pay off some lingering story threads that were left dangling while there was a lot of shooting, stabbing, kicking and probing going on.

Star Trek Discovery Eps 11 and 12: Hail the Emperor and Also I Am Son of None

I missed out on writing about last week’s Discovery because life can sometimes get in the way of writing something just for the sake of writing it. Truth-be-told, I sorta enjoyed last week’s episode and felt like the show was really starting to hit its stride. Sure, the show had a really rocky start and is still pretty rough around the edges, but at least they’re trying to work within the sandbox that they’ve built for themselves.

Spoilers ahoy.

So Ash Tyler is absolutely Voq, Son of None. All of the obnoxious fan theories said it would be true and yeah, they did an atrocious job of hiding it. Part of what was annoying about the whole series is the marketing and PR push behind it. They try to find all of these delightful ways to describe what they’re doing in the series, but most of it tends to fall flat in the execution. First on-screen homosexual couple? Yeah, one’s in a fucking mushroom coma and the other one was unceremoniously killed by a fucking Steven Seagal neck snap by the guy that discovered that he was actually a Klingon and can sometimes fight being a Klingon, but apparently not when it comes to people knowing his secret.

Okay.

I know that I’ve railed on this whole idea of “peak television” in the past when talking about Star Trek, but I stand by it: I hate the concept of PEAK TELEVISION and all of the ceremony that comes with it. I remember watching a YouTube clip from Sons of Anarchy where the cast shaved Opie’s beard after he was killed off on the show and it was shot in this manner of “oh wow this is such an emotional moment for the cast and crew, oh my god we’re losing a brother, but wow was a special fucking journey this was and what a grand story we are telling.” If you liked Sons of Anarchy, that’s cool, I get it, but man, it was fucking Dukes of Hazzard with a biker gang that tried to relate itself to Shakespeare early on, only to abandon it for convoluted plot twists and folk rock covers of classic rock songs to use during action montages to skip to the good stuff near the end of the episodes.

Last year I railed on Westworld for being so amazingly hollow and devoid of anything of value and, believe it or not, I stand by that. They tried so hard to establish an ensemble cast in the span of ten episodes while spinning up a complicated, dense story without doing much storytelling that when things finally happened it all felt so cliche, forced and ridiculous. A large part of it felt like pandering to a crowd of fans that love to theorize online, to wonder what the next plot twist will be and which trail of breadcrumbs they should be following in the show itself.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with foreshadowing your plot points, in fact, you should do it, but the problem comes when you’re writing just to make these big moments. Not everyone reading is going to have a background in wrestling, but it reminds me a lot of modern pro wrestling where wrestlers put on matches that are all about escalation of moves until they finally do something bigger and crazier than they have before, all of it to make the live crowd go nuts.

That sort of wrestling is exciting, but ultimately candy because it’s not about making the viewer emotionally invested in what they are doing, instead it’s about making them excited and getting that feedback loop with the crowd where you feed them something, then they feed you right back with applause. It’s definitely a method of storytelling, but it’s become so pervasive that wrestling itself is sort of bland. Maybe I’m just an old man yelling at a cloud right now, because I’m pooh-poohing these darned kids these days and what they like, I don’t know, but I’ve also got a lifetime of enjoying a lot of stuff and over that period of time have built up something that we call a “taste profile.” I’m not saying if it’s right or wrong, just that I do have it and this stuff feels pretty off.

So much of Star Trek: Discovery feels like they’re pandering to this crowd and not delivering on their promises. I’m not sure if these promises weren’t there if this would somehow be more enjoyable or not, but the Ash Tyler story isn’t a look at PTSD and the impact of it on a person, it’s a fucking double-agent story masquerading as one. The Stemets/Culber relationship wasn’t to show gay people in a different light in the Star Trek universe, it was to rope in viewers and then yank the rug out from under them and say, “see, don’t you feel something?”

Are we that fucking desperate to just feel anything that we’re willing to accept something this cheap as our emotional payoff on the stuff that we consume?

I guess the problem with me reviewing two episodes at once is that I liked the first one and now the actions of the second episode have bled into the first one, painting it in a different light. Because the last episode I didn’t particularly mind, but at the same time, fucking plot twists. Apparently this was also a big ole’ fan theory as well: Lorca isn’t the real Lorca! He’s the Mirror Universe Lorca! They have to spoon feed it to you so much that when it’s revealed that in the Mirror Universe humans have a negative reaction of bright lights they literally fucking blink to a clip of him reacting to a bright light from earlier in the season for Burnham to put it all together.

Lorca wasn’t a character that really fit in with the Star Trek universe, but instead of doing something mildly interesting with him by having him be different, perhaps even a dynamic character that grew and morphed, he was just a Mirror Universe baddie masquerading as the ‘other’ Lorca.

Stemets is lost in the mycelium network in a dream where he meets Mirror Stemets who is, of course, eeeeeevil. How evil? He’s corrupted the mycelium network to the point where the whole fabric of reality could be destroyed! Oh my! Good Stemets discovers this because good Culber is an apparition that appears to him in corporeal, mushroom form, to share good memories, to give a pep talk and tell him that to fix everything he needs to just open up his eyes.

They have a truly touching, human moment — one of the few in the series thus far — only for it to feel sorta cheap within the context because Culber died for absolutely no reason without being that developed of a character just to shock the viewer.

In theory I don’t mind Ash being Voq or Lorca being Mirror Lorca, it’s just when stacked upon each other like this it begins to feel like a bit of a slog. The show is setting itself up that nothing really matters outside of the plot twists and looking for meta-narrative on IMDB or in interviews with the writers or cast, which is a bummer. Michael was starting to feel like an interesting character and the crew of the Discovery was finally starting to grow some personality. They can still be saved, but damnit.