Article Content
Reviews
Mando’s shortest, possibly laziest adventure
"The Foundling" clocks in at just about 26 minutes, if you excise the recap and end credits, making it the shortest episode of The Mandalorian to date. The svelte runtime is a good fit for the void of content. I’m all for fun episodic adventures, but this outing is painfully slight, even for this series. When you only have eight episodes every year or two of a series as high-profile as this, is it too much to ask for more meat? I don’t think so.
I’m growing more concerned over how seriously we can take Grogu as Mando’s ward. During the opening training scene, he faces off against another foundling (who asks, not unreasonably, why his opponent doesn’t wear a helmet; can you picture Grogu with a Mando helmet?), and it’s a pretty hard scene to swallow. At least Yoda could talk in backward riddles with 900 years of wisdom before pulling out a lightsaber. With Grogu, it’s like fighting a teddy bear; you look ridiculous for getting beat, even with his high-jumping Force advantage. There’s a major tension brewing here: How can Grogu continue as a cute, endlessly nonplussed mascot while also becoming a fierce Mandalorian warrior? These two things are not a fit, to put it mildly.
‘Mandalorian’ takes a major urban detour
And now for something completely different.
First, let’s cover the stuff that’s the same.
After leaving the mines on Mandalore (no follow-up to the Mythosaur or whatever was in the water), Din and Bo-Katan return to Bo’s palace, which is currently being attacked by Imperial fighters and bombers, who destroy the palace. After an exciting, rip-roaring chase and dogfight through the skies of Kalevala, Din and Bo escape to the world where the Children of the Watch are holed up. Din announces he has bathed in the waters of the mines on Mandalore. The Armorer confirms this, and announces he has been redeemed. Furthermore, because Bo-Katan has also bathed in the waters, she is also welcomed into the tribe (presumably making her the titular "convert"), provided she does not remove her helmet from this point forward.
‘Picard’ reopens a 30-year-old wound with an unexpected reunion
"Imposters" is a tight and effective little thriller that serves as a package to reunite two characters and resolve long-simmering feelings that suddenly boil to the surface. Many of those feelings were conveyed with the final shot of Picard’s grim, wordless face in TNG‘s penultimate episode, "Preemptive Strike." The reunion here is between Picard and Commander Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes in a surprise appearance and standout performance), who famously abandoned Starfleet to join the Maquis in that episode after she became sympathetic to their plight. It’s something Picard took as a deep, personal betrayal and never got over, we learn.
Ro appears after the USS Intrepid rendezvouses with the Titan, ostensibly to take Picard and Riker into custody for their unauthorized commandeering of the ship. Make no mistake, these two have strong, unresolved feelings about each other concerning that betrayal, which, for Ro, was not a one-way street. There’s also the complication that Changelings are apparently everywhere, and Picard begins to suspect Ro herself may be one.
‘Picard’ delivers a top-tier outing with ‘No Win Scenario’
"No Win Scenario" hits the sweet spot between old-school Berman-era Trek and current-generation Kurtzman-era Trek. Old-school Trek was all about the professionalism, the procedure, and the problem solving. New-school Trek weaves in the human failings and the penchant for everyone bringing their emotional baggage to work. (This is most notable on Discovery, where it’s frequently taken way too far, but it has also been the case on Picard, where everyone is grappling troublingly with their past.)
In this episode, we get the best of both worlds (if you’ll forgive the expression), as the two aspects are blended together into a cohesive and emotional whole that works pretty much from beginning to end. Yes, there are the usual mild annoyances that pervade this series, but I can easily get past them within this contemplative life-or-death premise that manages to get so many things right.
Spelunking goes sideways on ‘Mandalorian’
"The Mines of Mandalore" is a solid and focused course correction after last week’s scattered and tepid season premiere. The title says it all: We are getting on with things, arriving at Mandalore, and entering those mines. If this were a serialized Star Trek episode under the current leadership, the advancement to this stage of the plot probably wouldn’t happen until the season’s fifth or sixth episode.
Ironic, then, that "The Mines of Mandalore" almost at times plays like a classic Star Trek episode, with the planet-side exploration and the scanning of atmospheric properties on what is a Strange New World. There’s first a brief detour back to Tatooine so Mando can acquire a cowardly droid from his pal Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris) to help scout what’s rumored to be a poisoned world, but the bulk of the episode is on Mandalore, as we see what the destruction at the hands of the Empire has wrought. The depiction is appropriately cold, barren, and harsh. Later, as we get underground, we see what was once a thriving city is now entombed beneath ash and rock. (Why does everyone think this planet is toxic when that’s so easily disproved here by one person?)
‘Mandalorian’: New season, same old tricks
Just about every episode of The Mandalorian, even as the show got slightly more serialized in the second season, has benefited from a streamlined sense of episodic purpose. Stories were lean, straightforward, and had great momentum. With "The Apostate," the series’ third-season premiere, we have an outing that is surprisingly scattered, lackadaisical, and inconclusive. As we step into the mythology of Mandalore and whatever that may hold for Din Djarin, we’re going to need to have a sense of purpose far clearer than what we get here.
The episode opens with the coastal ceremony of a foundling as he becomes a Mandalorian among the Children of the Watch — which is violently interrupted when a massive gator creature emerges from the sea and begins eating people. It’s a set piece that might be more exciting if I weren’t constantly asking myself why these warriors with jet packs don’t immediately fly out of the danger zone and attack with tactics befitting intelligent soldiers with flight technology, or just retreat. Din Djarin comes in to save the day (hoping to be forgiven for removing his helmet, I guess?), but is later informed by the female Armorer that there is but one (impossible) way to redemption: bathing in the waters of the mines on Mandalore, which were supposedly all destroyed. That’s gratitude for you. So Mando embarks on a mission to actually go there and see the mines for himself.
Picard, Riker and a difference of tactical opinion
If nothing else, Star Trek: Picard has finally learned in its third season that the primary action of this series should be on the bridge of a starship. "Seventeen Seconds" is a tactical cat-and-mouse game between two starships where one has a massive advantage and the other must try (although they fail) to outthink the other to level the playing field.
The series may even have learned the lesson too well, as we’ve now spent three episodes arriving at or being inside this nebula. Some variance to the settings of where all this happens and a faster advancement of the macro plot might take this from "passably good" to "substantially better."
‘Picard’ does the tried-and-true with ‘Disengage’
Jack Crusher asks Picard, "Is there anyone you know who is still the person you knew?" It’s a question central to this season — and perhaps this series — that I think is especially useful to consider as we catch up with characters whom we haven’t seen in over 20 years. I’ve heard complaints that Picard and Seven are unrecognizable compared to who they were 20 years ago. I don’t necessarily even agree with that, but to a certain degree, isn’t that the point?
The question is asked about halfway through "Disengage," which is an efficient, straightforward, tried-and-true Standoff Situation. In this scenario we have the heroes and villains in close proximity, and the villains provide a deadline that, if not met, means the unleashing of firepower that promises annihilation. It’s certainly not the newest or freshest idea on the block, but as a way of establishing the core conflict with the key players, it does so with an adequate amount of interest and tension.
Renewed optimism for ‘Picard’ with ‘The Next Generation’
"The Next Generation" is an intriguing title, because it cuts to the very heart of the matter. This is an episode singularly devoted to refocusing our attention on the idea that this final season of Star Trek: Picard will be about the Next Generation characters. It does this when these characters would be more accurately described with a title like "The Previous Generation" or maybe even "The Old Guard." If there’s an actual next generation to be established in this final season of Picard, that’s not yet apparent (unless the man accompanying Beverly Crusher offers a clue).
No, the title is about looking back rather than forward, and in doing so, this episode provides reason for optimism — at least as much, if not more so, than "The Star Gazer" did at the beginning of last season. Naturally, no one can blame us for being cautious, even suspicious, after season two burned us badly by trapping its characters, and us, for eight episodes in an uninspired and plodding 21st-century time-travel plot, immediately after teasing us with what seemed to be the absorbing atmosphere of the early 25th century. But now we have a storyline that promises — for real this time! — to be just that.
Year-late review: ‘The Book of Boba Fett’
The Book of Boba Fett is a series that was probably better in theory than it turned out to be in practice. Its biggest problem is that its main character, played ever-so-seriously by Temuera Morrison, ends up being one of the least engaging figures among a cast of colorful supporting players and guest stars who consistently upstage him, pull the focus away from him, and suggest that their stories are more important than his. The book may be named for Boba Fett, but there are entire chapters that aren’t about him at all.
This isn’t a problem per se, especially since those later chapters (five, six, seven) are devoted, in a rather compelling way, to following up the events of The Mandalorian‘s second season finale in a grand effort to undo its most significant final scenes. Indeed, episodes five through seven of this series are essentially season 2.5 of The Mandalorian and practically required viewing heading into its third season.