Star Trek: Picard -- Season 1 Episode 1 (Remembrance)

I know that one show alone isn’t enough for me to subscribe to CBS All Access.  Yes, the second season of Discovery was pretty good.  And yes, I know that they have other series.  However, I can get The Twilight Zone and the first five Star Trek series on Netflix and DVD, at least for the time being.

So, the addition of Star Trek: Picard isn’t going to get me to sign up.  I’m reviewing the pilot episode, but I’ll be waiting for the rest of the first season on DVD.  (For those that are wondering, I was able to get the first episode through YouTube.)

I’ve been curious about the show.  I know that it centers on Jean-Luc Picard, now a retired admiral.  It’s been years since the events of Nemesis.  (In fact, it’s now roughly in the future time frame of All Good Things….)

Picard meets a mysterious woman who feels compelled to find him after she’s attacked and her boyfriend is killed.  Picard is living with two Romulans after he led an aborted evacuation of Romulus.  (It’s not the kind of thing he likes to talk about, though.)

The scenes you see of Picard and Data are Picard’s dreams.  It’s been a while since synthetic life forms, such as Androids, have been banned.  How does Data figure into all of this?  He holds a key to the mysterious woman’s identity.  Also holding a key may be Bruce Maddox, who has gone into hiding.  (There’s no mention of the Holographic Doctor from Voyager…Yet.)

It would seem that Picard misses days gone by.  We get that he has his reasons, and they would seem to be valid ones, but this episode doesn’t go into all the details.  It would seem to be a bridge between Nemesis and the rest of the series.  We learn at the very end that a Borg cube is being studied, but it’s not yet clear who has claimed it or to what end.

The series credits have the show as being based on The Next Generation, rather than the original Star Trek.  There are a lot of references, notably the Captain Picard Day banner you may have seen in the coming attractions.  There will also be appearances from Troi, Riker, 7 of 9 and Hugh.

I was torn as to whether to review this now or to wait for the rest of the season.  I decided to review it now because I wanted to offer a perspective of someone who has decided to wait to continue.  It’s going to be a long wait.

Not much is offered in terms of the overall story line and I know that there’s more to it.  I don’t blame anyone for this.  I’d rather have things spread out so that I have something to look forward to.  I’d rather have it spread out than to have details come out unevenly.

I don’t think any of us wanted the game to end.  It had to.  It looks like this is going to be a whole new game.

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Knives Out (2019)

I remember hearing about the TV show Alias.  In it, the main character’s father works for the CIA.  Except he doesn’t.  Except he really does.  Knives out is sort of like that.

Harlan Thrombey is a mystery writer who is found dead in a locked room.  It appears to be suicide.  Except his family hated him, so it had to be murder.  Except it’s impossible to prove who.  Plus, he was found dead in a locked room.  So, the police have plenty of suspects, but no real evidence.

Benoit Blanc, a private detective who was hired anonymously, is convinced it’s murder.  He presses the investigation until he figures out what really happened.

I don’t see a lot of mystery movies.  I tend to find them all very similar.  We have a few plot twists.  Some, we see coming.  Some, we don’t.  We have a lot of people who stood to gain from Thrombey’s death and they all look guilty.

Then, there’s Marta Cabrera, who is acting guilty.  She knows something.  Did she murder him?  Does she know who did?  Why isn’t she saying anything?

We come to find out that guilt isn’t so clear-cut a thing.  It’s almost like that riddle where a man falls off a roof only to be shot on the third floor.  Is the shooter guilty?  Well, it’s more complicated than that.  Yes, mistakes were made.

My biggest complaint about this movie could have easily been the bad decisions made.  It’s always easier to come forward (or at least get a lawyer) first thing.  At least it wasn’t overdone.  We understand that Marta is in a difficult position.

The family also could have been overdone.  Most of them are easy to dislike.  We don’t really want to see any of them get their share of the estate.

It’s an interesting movie that’s got an interesting set of circumstances.  It almost appears to be written by someone who dislikes a lot of the clichés I dislike, but didn’t want to necessarily parody the genre.  I wouldn’t call it wish fulfillment, necessarily.  However, it does play out rather interestingly.

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Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 14 (Such Sweet Sorrow: Part 2)

WARNING:  I’m going to give away details, including the ending of the episode.

I’m accustomed to a 26-episode season for Star Trek.  Discovery’s first season was 15 episodes.  Here we are at the end of the 14-episode second season.  I’m also hearing that Star Trek: Picard is going to be 10 episodes.  I’m going to have to get used to a slightly shorter season.

That being said, having fewer episodes does seem to produce a higher quality of episode.  There is a cohesive narrative for this season and we get a decent setup for the third season.

Burnham is going to take Discovery into the far future.  She has a few more things to do.  It takes her a moment to figure out exactly what, but she does it, with an assist from Spock.

Speaking of which, Spock seems to think he’s going with Burnham.  We know he’s not.  If he did, it would mean that there’s a way back from the future.  Instead, he has to go with Captain Pike and be on that spinoff that everyone keeps talking about.

There are two things that I noticed.  Both stem from the fact that control was defeated.  The first is that Burnham goes into the future anyway.  Since Control was defeated, it should be unnecessary for Discovery to make the time jump.  Burnham’s mother should also have come back.

This leads me to my second point.  It’s not stated that she didn’t.  She may have wound up on some distant planet.  However, it’s also not stated that Discovery is going so that they can look for her, either.  Maybe it’s destiny.  Maybe the writers are hearing all the complaints about retcons.  I don’t know.

Part of the finale seems contrived.  There was no reason for Cornwell to put herself in mortal danger, for instance.  Why would the crew even let her?  We also find out that everyone left in the 23^rd century agrees never to talk of Burnham or the spore drive ever again.  So, there’s that.

Either way, it was a pretty solid second season.  It was better than other second seasons that I’ve seen.  It will be interesting to see what a third season holds.  We’ve gotten a few glimpses.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a date more solid than sometime this year.

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Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 13 (Such Sweet Sorrow)

I’ve had my complaint about Star Trek: Discovery so far, but I will say this:  I’ve spent the second season wonder what its end game is going to be.  There were seven red signals, a sphere with a vast amount of data and an artificial intelligence bent on getting that information.  We also find out that Burnham’s mother isn’t really dead and that she’s been working against the AI from 930 years in the future.

So, how does this all work out?  The data can’t be erased.  Once it’s in Discovery’s computer, it won’t let Discovery be destroyed.  The only option is to go through with the original plan of sending the information into the future.  The difference here is that Burnham will take the entire ship into the future.  Yes, they’re going to build another angel suit and let Burnham use it.

This raises a lot of questions, some of which I’ve asked before.  Will it work?  Does it even make sense?  Will Burnham’s mother be there or will she even be allowed to leave the future?  Will Discovery make it back to the 23^rd century or will Discovery be 930 years in the future for the rest of its run?

However, we now know what the time crystal was for.  A new red signal even leads Discovery to a planet where the inhabitants might be able to help.  We learn that it will probably be a one-way trip for Burnham and Discovery, as the crystal will burn out.  (That doesn’t mean the 32^nd century won’t have some other means of time travel.)

The entire episode is buildup.  It’s setting us up for what Burnham has to do to save humanity and all life in the galaxy.  She has a lot of figuring out to do and a need to accept her fate as The One.  Yes, she’ll have help and various characters will vow to go with her.  (I suppose it’s better than assembling a new bridge crew in the future.)  I guess we’ll have to wait for Part II to see how it plays out.

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Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 12 (Through the Valley of Shadows)

Having a huge franchise can be a blessing and a curse.  If you don’t draw on it, you are wasting potential.  If you do use it, it can come across as namedropping.  So far in Star Trek Discovery, we’ve seen Amanda, Sarek, Spock, Pike, Number One and the Talosians, not to mention The Enterprise and Boreth.

On the flip side are Control, which is a Skynet wannabe, and the Spore Drive, neither of which was mentioned in any other series or movie.  And there’s Michael Burnham, Spock’s foster sister.  That’s at least understandable, as Spock didn’t mention his parents or half-brother to Kirk.

What can I say?  It’s been a busy season.  Speaking of which, after this episode is the two-part season finale.

So, yeah.  This episode serves as a setup.

Control is bent on getting that Sphere data.  To do that, they need a Time Crystal, which means a return trip to Boreth, where the Chancellor will put in a good word so that Pike can beam down.  It’s not clear exactly what the plan is yet, but it’s got to be big.

Meanwhile, Spock and Michael check out a Section 31 ship that has gone silent.  That’s because Control killed everyone except for one person.  Coincidentally, that person served with Michael on the Shenzhou.  There’s no way that control took that person over.  Right?

By episode’s end, it’s determined that the only rational course of action is to evacuate Discovery to Enterprise and destroy the ship.  Given that a third season has been ordered, it can’t be that easy.  Even if we didn’t know that, there are still two episodes left.

I know I keep on about this whole Control/Skynet thing.  It’s not that farfetched.  Both are AI systems that become self aware and wipe out all known organic life.  Time travel is involved and there’s a parent/child team trying to stop them.  The child is seen as a threat to the AI and the mother has undergone a major personality shift trying to stop the AI.

So, part of the story is trying to change fate.  There’s also a part of the story that involves accepting your fate.  Pike has to accept his if he wants the time crystal.  Michael will also have to accept hers in the two-part finale.  So, there’s that.

It’s not clear what Pike intends to do with the time crystal, exactly.  He can’t get it to Michael’s mother.  It would seem that he has no plans yet to build another suit.  He’s doing this not really knowing why.  However, the alternative is letting everyone die.

The second season is almost as smooth as I’d have hoped.  There are a few parts, like here, where it seems like maybe it’s a victim of one too many rewrites, but I can forgive that.  It took me the entire season, but things are starting to make sense.

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