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Will Jammer ever review ‘Babylon 5’?
The question has come up many times. It has come up for years — decades, really. I know for a fact it came up when the show was still airing in first run, which, as I write this, ended more than 20 years ago. The reason I am writing this post is because the question continues to come up, and I want to have a handy link to send people with my answer.
Jammer, why haven’t you reviewed Babylon 5? Didn’t you like it?
The answer to this question is simple. I never watched Babylon 5 when it was on, and to this day I still have not watched it. Believe me, I’ve heard from many, many, many people over the years that it is great. I do not doubt them. But I cannot speak to it myself because I haven’t watched even one full episode of the series. (Read more…)
Addressing the gravity of the situation
"Home" is an effective goodbye episode that writes out Alara Kitan in a dignified and poignant way. It might’ve worked better if she — or anyone on this series, for that matter — had been on the show longer. I’m not sure why Halston Sage is leaving the series already (there seems to be no "official" line on the matter; various rumors are out there), but the writers have given her a way to exit that fits the character as we’ve come to know her in this short time.
She’s forced to return home when Dr. Finn discovers Alara’s physical strength is diminishing because prolonged exposure to lower gravity has induced an atrophy that, if she doesn’t return home, may become permanent, making it so she can never return home. How long she will need to remain home to recover is an open question. Varied case histories suggest it could be weeks, months, or forever.
‘Primal Urges’ explores where one goes to town
"Primal Urges" is an episode in need of a good script doctor. Maybe Dr. Finn should add "script doctor" to her resume. After all, she adds "marriage counselor" to it here (where apparently an MD and a psychology PhD fall under one umbrella), in an episode that bounces around like a haphazard mess. This is an ambitious episode prone to frequent tonal and narrative whiplash, and boy does it not work.
In it, Bortus suffers from holographic porn addiction, which has negative consequences for his marriage to Klyden. Bortus lies about what he’s doing (claiming to work long hours when he’s really in the EV simulator), they haven’t had sex for a very long time, and they argue frequently in terse shouts. It’s exactly like if you took two Klingon dudes and gave them dialogue from some sort of self-help video about a failing marriage. The dialogue itself is banal and cliched; it’s the fact that it’s happening between two Moclan tough guys in Worf-like laconic deadpan that’s supposed to give it an ironic twist. That is something, I suppose. It is not enough.
‘Orville’ returns with a show about nothing
As a season premiere airing on a Sunday night right after football, “Ja’loja” plays almost like a radical act of counter-intuitiveness. The conventional thinking is to have a big or major episode as a premiere. “Ja’loja” takes the exact opposite approach. It is deliberately low in stakes, is character-driven, and is a bottle show to boot. It is a “hangout episode” where we spend time bouncing around various subplots that allow us to basically catch up with each of the regular characters. I respect the deliberate lack of ambition. I unfortunately can’t get on board with some of the actual material.
Here is the reviewing plan for 2019
The Orville returns this Sunday, followed by Discovery on Jan. 17.
The first quarter of 2019 is going to hurt me. Either that, or there will not be as many reviews as I hope there will be.
The Orville premieres this Sunday (followed by a second episode on its regular night four days later), and then Discovery starts up on Jan. 17. I was able to somehow keep the wheels on in fall 2017 and early 2018 with my schedule and turn reviews out mostly on time (within a few days of episodes airing). Whether I can do that again remains to be seen. Finding time to write is not easy. I can already say it’s not going to be as easy to do this year as it was last year. I have more going on.
So here is the plan, until such time that the plan changes, which is always a possibility. I will continue to put up weekly placeholder posts for comments (with no review) that will go up with each new airing of each episode the night it airs. I will then double back and post a review as soon as possible (hopefully within a few days) after the airing.
There’s a good chance these reviews will not be as long, detailed, or thought out this time around. Almost certainly not as long or detailed, at least. I may have to sacrifice quality and completeness for my own sanity. I hate saying that, but it may be the truth. We’ll see. I predicted that last time around and I can happily say I think the reviews turned out better than I had envisioned at the outset. Maybe that will happen again. But it very well may not, so please be forewarned. Time is the fire in which we burn. I expect to get singed pretty good in the next few months.
We’ll see how it goes…
Review: ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’
There’s nothing wrong with Solo: A Star Wars Story, except maybe that it comes across as completely and totally routine. It plays everything safe. Nothing really unexpected happens here. This is a competent, entertaining, well-paced and reasonably plotted space adventure. It is not bold or inventive or subversive or anything else. As so-called Star Wars "anthology movies" go (all two of them), this is a step down from Rogue One in terms of vision and ambition, even if it is inherently more fun. This is comfort food, plain and simple.
The original directors of the film, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, helmed The Lego Movie, which was inventive and subversive. They were fired well into production of Solo under the catch-all Hollywood headline of "creative differences." Franchise torch-bearer Kathleen Kennedy and writer Lawrence Kasdan — among the most grizzled Star Wars veterans still in the game — apparently did not agree with the style of the young whippersnappers.
Enter Ron Howard, who came in to replace Lord and Miller. Howard delivers a straightforward Star Wars action-adventure that fits right into this universe. He disappears as a hired pro. Aside from the obligatory cameo by his brother Clint, you wouldn’t even know he was there. John Williams is notably absent (aside from lifting key themes from Williams’ past compositions, John Powell’s score doesn’t sound as Williams-esque as Michael Giacchino’s work in Rogue One), but this movie otherwise feels like all the rest.
Pondering Patrick Stewart’s return to the franchise
Twenty years later: Short of timeline shenanigans more convoluted than Stewart’s role in the X-Men movies, the chances of seeing a future Picard that resembles the version in “All Good Things” are probably zero.
This past weekend at Star Trek Las Vegas 2018, Patrick Stewart made a surprise appearance and gradually built to the announcement that he will return to the Star Trek franchise to reprise his role as Jean-Luc Picard for an upcoming series to be produced for CBS All Access.
After telling a story about how he had encountered fans for which Star Trek had greatly affected them, and how that played into his mind about returning, he went on to offer up some details of what is currently known about the new endeavor — which is to say, not much so far.
“We have no scripts as of yet,” Stewart said, adding that the show’s developers have so far just been talking in terms of broad story outlines. “He may not be a captain anymore,” he said of Picard. “It may be a very different individual, someone who has been changed by his experiences. Twenty years will have passed.”
He added, “It will be — I promise you, I guarantee it — something very, very different.” But, he said, the new show will come with the same passion and love of the material as The Next Generation.
So what should we make of this? (Read more…)
Review: ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’
I didn’t set out to post my long-delayed review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi on May the Fourth. It actually was a complete coincidence. But I’ll take the coincidence in the spirit of appropriate fun nonetheless.
What is most striking about Star Wars: The Last Jedi, is that it has larger themes and aspirations that venture outside the space opera roots typically explored in this franchise. In that regard, it goes above and beyond perhaps any Star Wars movie to date and, in its very Star Wars way, moves into the thematic realm of — well, Star Trek. And, for that matter, also Battlestar Galactica.
Taken in its broad strokes, this entire film is a series of Star Wars takes on the Kobayashi Maru no-win scenario. It’s not clear until the very end of The Last Jedi, but this entire film is actually about what heroes do when faced with a number of limited options that continues to shrink until there are almost no options at all. These scenarios force impossible decisions that are born from utter desperation, huge individual sacrifices for the greater good, and pyrrhic victories that are crucially symbolic — because otherwise, in practicality, they are crushing defeats.
The ‘Discovery’ season finale is doggedly shaggy
Ah, to be a fly on the wall in the writers’ room of Star Trek: Discovery. What really happened there? How much of this show grew from Bryan Fuller’s original ideas, and how much of it was scrapped or retooled? Did the writers change the fundamental course of the season midway through, and were they justified in doing so? Did they have to fix things on the fly and figure out ways to fit a patchwork narrative together into something supposedly coherent? Or was this the plan all along? I’m somehow guessing not the latter, at least for some of it.
I ask these questions after having watched "Will You Hold My Hand?" take a season-long arc about Starfleet’s war with the Klingons and solve it in five minutes with a plot device that brings new definitions to the word "contrived." I had hoped this finale would be more resolution than cliffhanger. It was. That’s a blessing, albeit a very mixed one.
Starfleet is desperate in ‘War Without, War Within’
“The War Without, The War Within” ends with the Mirror Universe version of Philippa Georgiou being named the captain of Discovery by Admiral Cornwell as an act of desperation to try to turn the tide of the war with the Klingons, which Starfleet is badly losing. It’s yet another episode-ending WTF moment in a season awash in them.
The problem with always dialing up the crazy to 11 is that the audience becomes conditioned to the environment until an 11 just starts to feel like a 5. Making MU Georgiou the captain — in a scene that goes out of its way to make clear that none of the other characters were aware this was happening until it happened (for no good reason except to keep it hidden until the final reveal to the audience) — is surprising, sure. But it’s surprising for perhaps the wrong reasons. We’ve reached the point where we expect some sort of last-minute episode-closing “shock” and the number of available variables in this episode seems to inevitably bring us to this conclusion. Rather, the reason it’s surprising is because it’s so ridiculous that this is alleged as the solution to Starfleet’s war problem.