Category: Editorials

SPOILER WARNING (OF COURSE)!

There’s a misconception out there that I never write blogs that have anything nice to say about STAR TREK: DISCOVERY.  To hopefully dispel this silly rumor, I would like to acknowledge publicly that the eighth episode, titled “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” (“If you want peace, prepare for war”) was MARVELOUS!  I enjoyed it thoroughly in ways that I haven’t enjoyed the previous seven episodes.  In short, this episode was true Star Trek.

And it wasn’t just I who thought that.  Many fans, including After Trek host MATT MIRA agreed…

The woman to whom they are referring is episode writer Kirsten Beyer, who has also written nearly a dozen Star Trek: Voyager novels and is working with Pocket Books on the Discovery novels and IDW Publishing on their Star Trek: Discovery comic book series.  In other words, she’s a true, long-time fan…something that I’ve felt has been missing from the writing of the other seven episodes.

To me at least, the Star Trek elements of this series to date have felt more like last-minute add-ons to their scripts rather than an intrinsic part of them…almost like hanging Hallmark Star Trek ornaments onto a tree at Christmas.  Underneath all those decorations, it’s still just a tree without any inherent connection to Star Trek.

Not so with this eighth episode!  It really did feel like Star Trek.

Interestingly, this episode was NOT loaded up with references to canon.  It didn’t need them.  While some other episodes have tended to squeeze canon Easter eggs in like sardines—as if to say, “Look at how Star Trek we are!”—this episode included only a couple: a reference to the Prime Directive and the good ol’ “Needs of the many…” quote from Vulcan philosophy.  But rather than being add-ons to the story, both were essential parts of it.

Really, though, here’s what made this episode feel like it had the  true spirit of Star Trek for me…

Continue reading “FINALLY…DISCOVERY does a STAR TREK episode! (editorial review)”

I really enjoyed the seventh episode of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY…

…until I didn’t.

Perhaps the title “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” forgives Harry Mudd’s descent into a bloodlust resulting in the repeated serial killing of Captain Lorca and the rest of the Discovery crew while stuck in a repeating time-loop.

Perhaps having that kind of “cosmic undo” power made Harry snap and become someone other than the lovable but conniving scoundrel we’d come to know and laugh at over the past 50 years.  And maybe that insanity was, in fact, only temporary—and ten years later, Mudd will return to just being, as Kirk said, a thief, swindler, con-man, liar, and rogue…and no longer a mass murderer.

As I watched this week’s episode, I actually thought it was a lot of fun.  As countless other fans noted, it was like the movie Groundhog Day, only told through the perspective of the other residents of the quiet hamlet of Punxsutawney, and where Bill Murray is replaced by a malevolent sadist who is out to kill all the townspeople and destroy the town itself.  And of course, the parallels to TNG‘s wonderful fifth season episode “Cause and Effect” are also pretty evident…except that the spatial anomaly is replaced by a homicidal lunatic who is out to murder the crew and obliterate the Enterprise-D.

But really, it was fun watching and re-watching and re-re-watching Lorca get murdered and the Discovery blow up time and again.  I’m not sure what that says about me—or about the writers on the show who came up with a script that included such scenes!—but perhaps because we all knew it was a time-loop and that nobody would die at the end, that makes it all okay, right?

Right???

As I thought more about the episode, though, I began to wonder…

Continue reading “HARRY MUDD – thief, swindler, con-man, liar, rogue…and SOCIOPATHIC MASS MURDERER??? (editorial review)”

SPOILERS AHEAD!  BIG, HUGE, MASSIVE, GINORMOUS, HULKING SPOILERS!!!  (Don’t say you weren’t warned!)

Last week, I commented on the fan theory that Captain Lorca of the USS Discovery isn’t from “our” universe but rather from the Mirror Universe.  At first, it sounded like a pretty wild theory.  Now, I’m pretty well convinced that it’s the truth.

Is that the “discovery” that the series is named for?  After all, these show-runners are all about things having multiple layers of meaning, like episode 5’s title “Choose Your Pain.”  Maybe Discovery is not just the starship’s name but also alluding to the crew’s discovery that their captain is from another universe…a much meaner and nastier universe, as it turns out!

What?  You don’t believe me?  (Well, actually, some of you probably do.  This theory is already spreading rapidly through fandom—at least those watching the show—and a growing number are, like me, getting on board with the idea.)

Here’s the clues…

Continue reading “Is STAR TREK: DISCOVERY getting TOO PREDICTABLE? (editorial review)”

Spoiler warning!   Beige Alert!

“Choose Your Pain.”

That was the title of the fifth and possibly best-yet episode of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY.  Like many of the strongest stories of literature and cinema, the title “Choose Your Pain” works on multiple levels.

• “Choose your pain” is what the Klingons say to the captives on their prison ship before beating the living crap out of one of them.
• Michael Burnham is, arguably, choosing her pain when she holds onto the loss of Captain Georgiou and wallows in her seemingly endless morass of un-Vulcan-like self-pity and guilt.
• Saru, likewise, is holding onto the loss of Captain Georgiou but also to his pain at having not been chosen to be her first officer and thereby not being able to learn from her experience and wisdom in the same way Burnham did.
• Captain Lorca can and should get his eyes fixed, but he chooses not to.  He holds onto the pain the light causes him and lives in mostly dark places, a harsh reminder of the heartrending decision he made during his previous command of the USS Buran.

(Please note, there’s a theory currently making its way around fandom that the Lorca we’ve seen so far is actually a Mirror Universe counterpart of the “real” Lorca.  The reason the Buran was destroyed was to eliminate any witnesses—including the “good” Lorca—and that the whole interchange was orchestrated by Section 31 in order to acquire a captain who knew how to be ruthless in fighting the Klingons.  The reason that Lorca refuses to get his eyes fixed—a problem stemming from being transported to this universe—is that he doesn’t want the doctors to discover what he really is.)

Obviously, my blog today assumes that the above theory is NOT the case.  Instead, let’s just assume that Lorca is merely a man who was forced to make a tragic decision to destroy his ship and kill his crew to save them all from slow, painful deaths on Qo’Nos.  For this, Lorca has chosen to keep his pain as a reminder…and potentially as self punishment for what he did.

Like Lorca, I and many other Trek fans who are either not watching the show or frequently complaining about it are choosing to hold onto our “pain.”  We simply can’t seem to let go of our issues with the new series and  enjoy Star Trek: Discovery for everything it gives to us as fans.  Like Lorca, we choose to continue living in our dark places.

In short, WE ARE LORCA! Continue reading “Are YOU a CAPTAIN LORCA? Am I??? (editorial review)”

WARNING – some spoilers from the fourth episode of  Discovery.  Read at your own risk.

It seems that I’m now doing weekly reviews/ editorials about this show.  Not sure how long I’ll keep it up, but with each new episode, I realize something else that I want to share with you guys.

But before I do that…!

I AM ENJOYING STAR TREK: DISCOVERY!!!  It’s a very well-written and well-produced show with strong visual effects, amazing production values, fast-paced editing, interesting characters, fantastic music, and a very compelling story line.  It’s excellent television, and I am truly entertained when I watch it.

But it’s still not Star Trek to me.

Star Trek doesn’t make me feel sad about the present and possibly the future as well.  Star Trek doesn’t remind me of how much the world has changed (for the worse) since the terrorist attacks of 9-11.  Instead, Star Trek gives me hope for a BETTER future than what we have now.

Star Trek always made me believe that human beings can and will achieve something better for ourselves and for others.  Want to make America great, or better yet, make the world great?  Then make HUMANITY better, and the rest of what we do will follow.  Star Trek used to demonstrate those possibilities to me…episode after wondrous episode.

So why does Star Trek: Discovery make me feel sad?  And why the heck do I have pictures of a Pakled, Hugh the Borg, the USS Voyager alongside the USS Equinox, and the Tardigrade creature from this week’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery?

Because I’d like to make a point about this new series—one of many, I admit, but continuing on with my central theme that, as good as this show is, it isn’t “my” Star Trek…and why that makes me sad.

Continue reading “Why STAR TREK: DISCOVERY makes me sad… (editorial)”

Captain’s blog, supplemental.  While I’m going to try to keep this follow-up review less spoiler-y than my last one, a few minor spoilers might creep in.  Consider this your official warning.

My STAR TREK: DISCOVERY review from last Thursday certainly hit a lot of nerves, but it also gave a lot of people an incorrect impression that I didn’t like the new series and that I wanted CBS to fail.  What I actually said was that I didn’t feel like Discovery was “my” Star Trek—the Star Trek that I have held in my heart for these past five decades.

And yes, when it comes to imagining what a war with the Klingons would have looked like a decade or two before Kirk, my “head canon” will remain with Axanar, and I’ll think of Discovery as some kind of alternate universe like the JJ Abrams movies.

But that doesn’t mean that think Discovery is a bad show or that I won’t be watching it.  In fact, last night at a friend’s home, I had a chance to see the third episode of the new series, “Context Is for Kings.”

So, is Discovery STILL not “my” Star Trek…or did they manage to change my mind?

Continue reading “My real problem with DISCOVERY – the ship is full of D*CKS! (editorial / supplemental review)”