Missed Treks

There have only been two Trek series I bailed on, “Deep Space Nine” and “Enterprise” (“Lower Decks” was a challenge, but once I got it, I really enjoyed it).   But -- in moving forward, it seems nearly every series, including massively time-jumping “Discovery”, kept referencing the two series I skipped.  

And so.

With an empty DVR and way too much time on my hands, I plunged in.

And I’ve come to realize why I never finished them. (Spoilers ahead)

DS9 -- It's bleak.  Really bleak.  The first series where the light levels are low and the connections between the characters are loaded with doubt, insecurity, mistrust and grief.  

I came to like some of the characters a good bit.  Kira, Odo, Dax, Garak, and Nog were favorites.  Even bad guys, like Weyoun, played by chameleon actor Jeffrey Combs.  I grew to like Quark although the similar storylines with him became irritating.  It was great to see an expanded background on O’Brien but I felt like Worf, when brought in, was an opportunity wasted.  A big hole, however, was that I didn't love Sisko.  He's ... broody.  Comes off like a Shakespearean actor who wrings depth out of every word.  Clearly, it was a stab at replacing Picard.  But Picard was a leader who was still part of the group, he set a tone which made you understand why his crew followed him.  Sisko, from the beginning, was "apart".  The group dynamics here are just ... fractured.  Yes, Sisko's family life warmed him up.  Yes, there are various love triangles or whatever.  And there are interesting bad guys with layered motivations.  But it never gelled.  Each episode became a stand-alone.  Oh, let's focus on this character this week and this other character next week.  It turned into -- "this is a comedy, no, it's a historical show, no, it's a murder mystery ..."  And let's not go into the same establishing shot of Cardassia Prime in, like every … single … episode.

The biggest issue, of course, is that there is no ship.  No unknown worlds (exactly …).  DS9 is a way-station -- anchored in space.  Instead of a bridge, which has iconic moments (anyone up for Next Gen's Locutus reveal and Riker's reaction?) you have the equivalent of "The Office" with workers in a pit and Sisko ensconced in a walled office above them.  New characters come in and out for guest appearances but the series is weak on exploration and surprises.  (Oh!  Let’s cause a thing and bring in Klingons.  The Trek audience loves Klingons, right?)  The producers attempted to fix things with the USS Defiant ship, but, in the end, the characters always went home -- and the idea that they are forever changed by their experiences in space was muted.

The ending was … Yeah.  I guess Avery Brooks really didn’t want to keep going with the franchise.  In any case, I get all the references now, but would I go back and rewatch it, as I have the other series?  No.

Enterprise -- ~sigh~  It started … slowly.  Pace, and energy, was a factor throughout much of the series.  But that wasn’t my big issue.  The sexualization of women, particularly the T’Pol character, was unrelenting.  And exhausting.  I had hoped they would back off of that as the show progressed.  They never did.  Near the end of the series, in the Terran universe, comments and treatment of the T’Pol and Sato mirror characters is sickening.  Talk about tone deaf (the first #MeToo showed up less than a year after the show was cancelled).  “Enterprise” struggled mightily, particularly when it came to introducing new species unseen in any other Trek.  Their one shining moment, in my humble opinion, was creating a clever answer as to why TOS Klingons look different.  But character development was weak.  Anthony Montgomery gets an award for most under-used actor for four years straight.  He was clearly a token but made the most of it.  Unlike DS9, the show not only didn’t grow on me, but became a struggle to watch.  People say they didn’t like “Voyager” because of the stolen storylines, but the ripped-off tales here dwarf those of “Voyager”, and were often done proudly (“Mirror, Mirror” anyone?)  And don’t get me started on the “massive” number of time travel stuff.  The first two seasons, which were tolerable, show a certain amount of naivete and clumsiness of humans as the newest members of the galaxy travelling community.  No Prime Directive, no United Federation of Planets, a deep distrust of this newfangled transporter thingy.  Crew cabins are so small the actors had to duck under beams (which got old, fast).  It could have been interesting.  If it had been portrayed with a sense of urgency I might have bought in more, but instead it was like watching a toddler trip over his own feet.  A lot.  And a bunch of time in “shuttle pods”.  They started to lose me with season 3.  The first Trek to be made after 9/11, the whole season, like DS9, was committed to war.  Without any of the humor and love which can exist in the darkest of circumstances, the entire season was just … depressing.  It is a real sign of poor writing when you start using the phrase “I had no choice” multiple times in every episode.  In drama, characters must have choices.  That’s what makes it interesting.  By the time we got to the fourth season, there were no more stand-alone episodes.  Everything was 2 or 3 episodes with “to be continued”.  It was tiring.  I would have given up there and then if not for my pledge to “watch it all”.  When I finally was done, I felt relieved and a tad angry.  A major loss in the final minutes?  Observed by outsiders, so it is as if they wanted to separate the viewers from the emotional tsunami.  Why?  And why say it out loud before it happens so you spend the whole episode in mourning, knowing it is coming?  Prequels often stumble – you know the characters, who is going to live, the big picture of how things end.  “Strange New Worlds” is pulling it off for the most part.  “Enterprise” does not.

"Ballard"

I watched this because of Maggie Q.  I will watch anything with Maggie Q (the rest of the cast ain't bad, either).  It's your basic hard-boiled detective tale.  A grisly crime, a slightly depressed person with a troubled background trying to solve the unsolvable, a few fisticuffs, yada yada.  Yes, it's a bit predictable (I called every one of the twists).  But.  It's beautifully written, or, should I say, nicely reserved in the writing.  In one scene, a difficult one where a character needs to share information with a family member, hardly a word is said.  Two women take hands and look into each other's eyes.  We get it.  Words are not necessary.  It's well-produced.  Not overly slick, some violence and darkness but some light as well.  And, thanks to Amazon Prime, the first 10 episodes all dropped together (THANK YOU).  All of which makes it very bingeable.  SPOILER ALERT  There is a massive cliff-hanger at the end, so I'm thrilled there will be a season two.  I'm likely going to be able to guess the plotlines, but that's not the point.  It's a show that lets you see the layers within the characters, particularly the female protagonists.  Again, thank you.  It's about time. 

"Wonderwell"

This had potential.  There was an interesting, somewhat unique premise and some key players (it was the final role for Carrie Fisher).  But it just didn't come together.  As a fantasy, it included some fairly dark reality.  Wanting a storybook location, they picked Italy but had a lot of British actors doing Italian accents (this did not go well).  At 96 minutes it was actually a tad short -- there were too many threads (pun sort of intended) leaving too many questions.  The ending didn't have all the necessary notes.  Yes, there are some neat moments and I found it very watchable at the time, but as a whole it just went flat.  Ironically, the best part of the film were the two immortals -- played by Carrie Fisher and Rita Ora.  For a story which was supposed to focus on the kids, these top actors really stole the spotlight.  That's a director thing, putting the emphasis in the wrong place.  Maybe someone will come along and remake the tale into what it should have been.

"Superman"

Clearly one of the blockbusters of the summer, it's good.  It deserves summer blockbuster status.  But it's not great.  It's not going to go down as a pillar of the canon.  It's not "the next new chapter" (although many in Hollywood may disagree ...)

SPOILERS AHEAD

It gets Superman right.  He's wholesome.  Legitimately.  And that alone makes this better than most of the Superman films which came after Christopher Reeve (that being said, I do have a soft spot for Brandon Routh).  It's dark, but not as dark as the last few films.  The politics, which were reported as "subtle" is anything but, and since it's my politics, I appreciated the digs.  Nathan Fillion makes a delightful turn as a corporate shill superhero.  Rachel Brosnahan, who I love, is rightly perky and determined as unstoppable Lois Lane.  The dog is adorable.

But.  

There is a lot of action.  Like, a lot.  Like every superhero film these days, it is battle after battle after battle.  Even my stepfather, who loves Superman and was the reason we entered a movie theatre for the first time in a very long time, said it was too much.  Perhaps at the expense of story.  

There are all the elements.  The characters we have come to love (including Cat Grant??? and a somewhat more world-wise Jimmy), the fortress (inexplicably set in Antarctica, not the Arctic, which creates a moment of disbelief which is hard to swallow ... do these people not realize that the Arctic is solid ice and Antarctica is a land mass???  I digress ...)  But few of the characters outside of the leads get more than a line or two of dialog.  There is no fleshing out of, well, anyone.  Including Lex Luthor.

And that's a problem.  I'm a fan of Nicholas Hoult, and first picked up on him in the brilliant and underrated series, "The Great".  But he's not ... "it".  The character is just a self-obsessed bully.  And not only is that hard to play, it doesn't make for a good foil.  Lex is best when actors bring humor to the role, add in levels.  Gene Hackman let Lex really enjoy it all.  John Shea played it with such a level of class that you ~~almost~~ could see the attraction.  This Lex is either not written, or the actor directed, to do much more than snarl and yell and direct his minions and his robot.  It's like a sad version of a dark Ironman.  And so, without a great enemy ... well, you get it.  

There are also minor irritations.  Ma and Pa Kent are played like country bumpkins, and this is the second time in a week I've seen rural people portrayed that way.  Also, does Supergirl really have to be a drunk social media influencer?  Of course, the female superhero is dismissed as a joke.  Not cool, Hollywood.

There will be a sequel.  There are a million unaddressed threads.  And, a possible enemy worth fighting.  Maria Gabriela de Fabria makes for a creepy-as-hell adversary and there are some real questions about a message left by Jor-El and Superman's Kryptonian mom.  We'll see.  Probably takes a couple of years for another film to be put together.  I'm mildly interested in where they go from here, but would love more story, more development of the characters.  It's okay to have big fights.  But maybe less???

"Where We Belong" by Hoda Kotb

Much like the other book I read of success stories, this one rang hollow.  Success stories are nice.  They can be inspiring.  The essential flaw I see when I read these, however, are they are books of 20/20 hindsight.  These are successful people.  They had a moment of clarity, changed their lives and did something different, and big, from what they did before.  Again, these are (mostly) white people, people of faith, people with means.  The story of Laila Ali was one such story.  She apparently pulled herself up by her own bootstraps because her famous father was a distant figure for most of her life.  But no one explains how she owned her own beauty salon by the time she was 20.  And that's the problem.  What about the people who also have dreams, who work hard, who fight to suceed ... who fail?  Where are their stories?  Are they unlucky?  Did they not hold the faith of those who made it?  Could they have worked 10% harder?  It's a mystery.  Making your dreams come true is great.  It's just not a reality for most.  And I have yet to read that book, the one about two people -- one who succeeds and one who doesn't, and what the difference was.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi"

"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope ..."

And the problem is this.  Disney keeps grabbing fairly minor phrases or characters out of the original films and building whole mini-series out of them.  But we know what is going to happen.  It is not a spoiler to say that Vader survives, Obi-Wan survives, Leia, Luke, etc all survive.  Because this is a prequel.  It takes a lot of the edge, the "what's going to happen next" out of the equation.  Yes, we now understand why Leia loves Kenobi like a father.  But there isn't a lot of room for creativity.  The bad guys are the same bad guys, the good guys include some lovable droids.  There are a host of planets, various blaster and light saber battles.  Some of the dialog is actually lifted from Episode IV.  There is a kind of Star Wars playbook and this series sticks heavily to the canon.  It doesn't help much to see a 44 year old Hayden Christensen playing the young man he played 22 years ago.  Vivian Lyra Blair is engaging as the young Leia, and Moses Ingram knocks it out of the park not only by playing an impressive villain but by having levels upon levels of emotional depth.  Other than these little sparks, it is pretty much same old, same old.  I prefer "Mandalorian" and "Skeleton Crew", as they are new stories with new characters, and are far less predictable.

"The Batman" (2022)

Oh dear.  So this is where DC has gone.  No humor, no light, no joy.  Just violence and depression and depravity and overly thin women in teeny tiny, inappropriate clothing.  Watched it on a plane and quickly forgot I had seen it.