Tag: TV
SNW 410: Tomorrow's Enterprise
The finale episode for Strange New Worlds' troubled fourth season dropped today, and if we're grading on a curve, it was pretty decent. That said, I was still yelling at the screen and metaphorically tearing my hair out (to do so literally would just be speeding nature along) at the abominably bad science and the misuse of words and the clunky story structure and the hand-waving away of inconsistencies and all the other frustrating stuff common to an episode of SNW in seasons three and four.
There was fun stuff too, and as usual the performances were good. I just wish, again, that this series (a) had bothered with a science adviser and (b) had someone in the writers' room who would call out structural problems and say, "OK, I like what you're going for here, but there's too much surrounding it. We need to bring the focus in some. Also, we don't need this reference or that mention and we can't have this other thing because it's inconsistent with that other thing."
Instead we have Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman running the show for Alex Kurtzman. It's too late to fix anything for next season, it's already in the can, but when the studio's internal politics are settled they need to put new people in charge of Star Trek. Preferably people who know what words mean as well as how allegorical storytelling makes Trek work best.
Let's get into it.
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Posted on September 24, 2026 at 11:59PM | Permalink | 
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SNW 409: Once La'an a Time
Is this Anson Mount playing Sir Rauth or is this Anson Mount imagining the audience reaction to yet another gimmick episode?
At this point I have to ask if anyone on the writing staff of Strange New Worlds has now or ever had any interest in writing for Star Trek. Because they have done their damnedest to avoid it all season. They've apparently preferred to write anything, anything other than a thought-provoking science-fiction story about Captain Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise.
The latest installment of this failed season is a swords-and-sorcery type fantasy lark that is ostensibly about paying off a season-long character arc but is actually just an excuse for the cast to act goofy and out of character. Again.
Why? Why are they wasting their time on this stuff? Season three was chock full of lazy writing and bad execution from start to finish, but at least most of the episodes had something resembling a point, however hidden behind lousy structure it was. Here we get another one that pursues very little substance in the name of a gimmick that is thought to be stronger than it could ever be.
Let's get into it.
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Posted on September 20, 2026 at 12:55AM | Permalink | |
Pro-nouns, pro-verbs, pro- whatever gets your point across
Here's a little something that amused me, and since amusements are infrequent down here I thought I'd share. From the latest episode of Ted Lasso, wherein Ted sets up a dating profile with assistance from Keeley.
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TV,
Ted Lasso,
Posted on September 17, 2026 at 5:23PM | Permalink | |
Round and round we go
Starting week three down here in the scorching desert, which thankfully is somewhat less scorching right now ("only" 97°F outside). Marty is off trying to get info on the camper trailer he and Dad own and want to be rid of, I've investigated easy ways to take care of that; between the two of us we may well be able to get rid of both that and the giant truck they have that's been sitting unused in their driveway for who knows how long.
Meanwhile, the home-care nurse was just here giving Dad a once-over; he's dizzier today than he has been for a while, but otherwise he checked out well. Yesterday a physical therapist paid a visit (a distractingly attractive one, if I'm being candid); she was great, put Dad through the motions with some minor exercise and gave Marty some attention as well. The day prior, we took Dad in to see his neurologist, who seemed to be far more concerned with Dad's mobility than his cognition. That surprised me, but then she has a context to work from that I don't. Dad was pretty cogent for that visit, only failing the "name the months in reverse order" exercise and showing reasonably good immediate recall.
I don't really know what to make of it all; having observed all this for a couple of weeks now, I've seen the swings, the marked difference between well-rested Dad and tired-minded Dad. I've got a better sense of things than what I had from just primarily reports from Marty and my sister (which always differ, sometimes wildly). I've gone from believing Dad was looking at just a few more months maybe to thinking this is going to stabilize and persist in this fashion for a while longer.
Is that good or bad? My mom's third husband, the one she was married to the longest and at the end, he also had Alzheimer's but it had not progressed terribly far before he died. At that time, I thought it was a good thing that he didn't have to go through the later stages. On the other hand, due to some pretty fucked up international/intercultural family dynamics, he'd been stuck living in a place and situation he didn't want to be in and had no control over anything, while Dad is living at home (even if he sometimes thinks otherwise) with Marty and—other than dealing with some vertigo (which we''re still trying to treat, and may have some therapy for shortly)—is coasting along relatively comfortably, even when he's confused.
On balance, I'll go with "good thing." Though he did just ask me what I did with the dog. He had a dog when I was a kid that he loved, but it's been decades. Marty had a dog while they were traveling in their fifth-wheel nomad days, but that too was some time back. I don't know which of those, if either, he was thinking of.
I don't think I could handle this if it was just me and Dad here. Even while Marty is gone for a few hours (like now) it gets frustrating/difficult in a way that it doesn't if Marty is here too. Part of that is a comfort level for Dad, I'm sure, but it's also that we can trade off helping him get up and around and use each other to deflect a difficult topic of discussion that's outside reality.
But part of why I'm here is to allow for Marty to get out now and then, so I persevere. Next thing on my agenda is to reposition and alter the bed rail thing as much as can be done. Dad detests it, which isn't all that surprising, but he also doesn't get what it's for and is only focused on it as an impediment. I'm hoping that some placement tweaks will help make it actually useful and not a waste of space.
My wrist is improving bit by bit, so that's good. And I bought a mosquito trap gadget to lessen my daily blood loss to the hated bugs' massive appetites—there seems to always be some part of me that itches; feet, hands, back, arms, fingers, even my face is getting bitten at night. Looks like I'm going to be here a while longer, so might as well make it as nuisance-free as possible.
I miss my cats. I hear from my neighbor that they are fine, but I still worry about them. Fortunately, cats tend to live in the moment and won't be keeping track of just how long I've been away from them, but I still expect to be reminded when I get home that I didn't get their permission to leave.
For distraction, I've been enjoying the new season of Ted Lasso and catching up on Lanterns, which is surprisingly good; Green Lantern is such a goofy superhero concept that I didn't have great hopes for a TV adaptation, but they're doing a good job making it gritty and not outlandish.
I'd written a much longer post about how things are going here last night, but before I posted it my laptop decided to glitch and everything froze up; in the end it crashed and I had to reboot, losing everything I'd written over a couple of hours. When oh when will I learn to save as I go? Sometimes I feel like Bart Simpson sticking his finger in the AC socket over and over. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. I'm not going to bother trying to reconstruct last night's writing, if I recall correctly it was mostly angst. But I will(?) learn the lesson to save every now and then.
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Dad,
Health,
TV,
Posted on September 16, 2026 at 3:57PM | Permalink | |
SNW 408: Orders of Magnitude
Don't get too comfortable in that chair, Admiral, it'll be mine in a couple years
The latest episode of Strange New Worlds is a departure from the rest of the season. Which is to say, it's not a departure from the basic Star Trek concept. There's no blatant gimmick being built on for the first time since the season premiere (which had its own subtler gimmick, if you can call dinosaurs subtle).
It is, however, derivative as hell in drawing heavily on Crimson Tide and other films, not to mention the trope refined in The Next Generation of the Bad Admiral (or "badmiral"), in attempting to tell a story about people in a chain of command resisting illegal orders and the suspect motivations of military leaders.
There's plenty of potential here, to be sure, but like many entries of seasons three and four of SNW, this episode went to production with a script that needed heavy rewrites but the writers' room and showrunners didn't recognize that they had an unfinished product. I continue to be profoundly disappointed that the people currently in charge of my beloved Star Trek do not understand why it has the fanbase it does and do not know how to write well. To be fair, they do write character reasonably well; the failings tend to be in the areas of story structure, plot details, building up to a climax and satisfactorily resolving the action. All of that is on display in this one.
Let's get into it.
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Posted on September 15, 2026 at 7:36PM | Permalink | |
SNW 407: Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass
Trelane has successfully brought humans to the attention of the Q. Thanks a lot, Trelane.
Strange New Worlds delved into yet another gimmick this week. Are we sick and tired of gimmick episodes yet? Yes, I dare say everyone not on staff in the SNW writers' room is well and fully sick of them and would like for once if the gimmick they chose was to write a Star Trek episode.
The gimmick this time is soap operas. And in the midst of this silly, deliberately overdramatic, parodic sendup of soap opera tropes, there is a real story trying to get out. And while using the soap conceit is a way to get to it, I doubt it's anywhere close to the best way.
Let's get into it.
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Posted on September 7, 2026 at 4:51PM | Permalink | |
Status report
There isn't much to report in terms of updates from down here. I'm getting a much better sense of what Marty had been living with regarding my dad's condition, I'm finding things frustrating but also manageable, but then I've only been here a short time. There are things in motion to get some help here, but as with any bureaucracy it will take time to further.
Meanwhile, I'm helping out where I can, keeping Dad company so Marty can go out and do things that have been put off for a while, and trying not to be too frustrated when Dad asks the same questions over and over or insists he needs his shoes before we go wherever he thinks we're supposed to go. It's so weird. Everything I've been reading on the subject of relating to dementia patients suggests that contradicting them is counter-productive, so I've yet to figure out how to respond to queries about when we have to leave, how far is the walk, how big is this campus of buildings that he thinks we're in, when do I have to pick up Marty (he left on his own with his car), and so on. I try to keep it short and redirect, but that's anxiety-inducing for me.
Anyway. The wrist is worse today, probably because I strained it supporting the weight of a full dishwasher rack that came loose from its rails earlier. That's on my list of things to fix now. (The dishwasher rack, not my wrist, which I can only refrain from using to help it fix itself.) I also want to assist Marty in disconnecting their expensive satellite TV service and replacing it with a leaner, less expensive internet-based service; try and organize some decent meal options; whatever other small conveniences I can facilitate. Otherwise, I have once more become a mosquito buffet here and need to find a drugstore and get some hydrocortisone. Dad never gets bitten by mosquitos; I think it's because biter mosquitos are always female and they can tell he's not their type. I, however, remain tasty.
For distraction, I watched tonight's season finale episode of Silo, which just served to create more mystery even as it answered other questions while moving the various plots along.
I'll get to a review of the latest SNW soon, but I'll have to watch it again to form more coherent thoughts on it and it's mostly a dud, so I'm not motivated yet. There's a kernel of something worthwhile in it, but it's surrounded by silliness, and not the good kind. Maybe it's not a bad thing there's only one truncated season left after this one.
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Dad,
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Posted on September 4, 2026 at 12:48AM | Permalink | |
WTF, SNW?
I just watched this week's episode of Strange New Worlds. Unlike with the rest of this season's episodes, I don't have questions. I have question. Singular. With variants. To wit:
Why was this even made?
Who thought this was a good idea?
Was there a point in its development in which it was at all funny?
Or relevant to the series?
I will do a real review later. It will not be favorable.
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Star Trek,
TV,
Posted on September 3, 2026 at 1:42AM | Permalink | |
SNW 406: Off-Hour
This week's Strange New Worlds episode is more like Star Trek than anything since the season opener has been, and it may well be the best episode of the season thus far. That said, it's also another empty-calorie episode that doesn't leave us with anything to think about after it's done, at least not in a big-picture kind of way. The stuff we have to think about after is more like, why was that guy there, or is the macguffin of this story plausible, or can we accept the implausibility of the macguffin.
The gimmick of the week—what, you thought they were done with that? If only—is real-time countdown. It's a disaster/action movie, one part The Poseidon Adventure one part Speed, one part 24 (the TV show). Trek homages to other stuff is nothing new, of course; nothing inherently wrong with doing a riff on another film if done well. And this one is better than just OK.
Let's get into it.
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Posted on August 30, 2026 at 9:23PM | Permalink | |
SNW 405: Level-Five Transporter Accident
The writers of Strange New Worlds just can't help themselves. They get a nutso idea in their heads and go at it with no hesitation, no filters, no pesky need to respect what came before. In a way, that's admirable—take chances; "risk is our business," and so on. In another, it's frustrating as hell—know your subject matter, keep its values, don't throw it all out for a gimmick. In the case of this week's episode, it's both admirable and frustrating.
The nutso idea this time is "what if the crew of the Enterprise were muppets?"
This season alone we've seen Enterprise crew fights dinosaurs, Enterprise crew boards a haunted ghost ship, Enterprise crew gets high and loses their shuttlecraft, and Enterprise crew does black-and-white film noir, so why not Enterprise crew does The Muppet Show?
One reason why not is that it's so much more absurd than anything else they've done, but it ... kind of works? And when it works it's mostly for non-puppet reasons?
Let's get into it.
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Posted on August 20, 2026 at 9:29PM | Permalink | |
SNW 404: A Case of Chiaroscuro
You're looking a little ashen, Number One, are you feeling OK?
T
his week's episode of Strange New Worlds brings to mind this exchange from the 1967 Star Trek episode "The Squire of Gothos":
KIRK: You don't find this unexpected, Mister Spock?
SPOCK: That his food has no taste, his wine no flavor? No. It simply means that Trelane knows all of the Earth forms, but none of the substance.
Substitute "Myers/Goldsman" for "Trelane" and "Star Trek" for "Earth" and Spock would be accurately describing this fourth season (and the third) of SNW.
The latest episode is yet another gimmick-of-the-week installment that fumbled along through its runtime without actually delivering anything significant. The gimmick: Film noir. Sort of.
The entire episode is shot in black-and-white and the bulk of the story takes place on a Klingon-occupied subject planet that looks like Fritz Lang and Tim Burton designed it. It's also home to people who are not only for all intents and purposes humans, but humans with a 1940s sense of style. It's a Star Trek version of Casablanca, without the romance and with the doppelgänger plot of Hollow Triumph thrown in.
It could have done something interesting. I mean, our characters find themselves wrapped up with the resistance movement of a society under the thumb of an authoritarian occupying force—seems like there might be some good allegory to be had if a little thought were to be put into it. The film noir movies generally involve not just mysteries and capers, but characters navigating moral grey areas and hard-choice dilemmas; all of that is here, but only at a surface level—nothing resonates. Once again, the SNW writers' room thought the gimmick was enough, the underlying structure could just be phoned in.
Let's get into it.
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Posted on August 17, 2026 at 8:51PM | Permalink | |
SNW 403: Human Best Friend
Does anyone know what I had tattooed on my face?
This week's episode of Strange New Worlds actually isn't terrible. Part of me does hate it, but it's the part that has been disappointed by the writing in so many streaming era and 21st century film installments of the Star Trek franchise; here we again have an episode that has little to no depth to it, another junk food meal of empty calories. On the other hand, I did find it entertaining despite my qualms. It's very much like last season's "Wedding Bell Blues" in that regard, though not as steeped in the series mythology and a whole lot more derivative.
Had I known in advance what they were going for with this one—it's a stoner comedy that borrows heavily from lowbrow films The Hangover and Harold & Kumar Go Wherever They Went; it could be titled "Dude, Where's My Shuttlecraft?"—expectations would have been lower than low given what came last season, in which case this post would be about how I was pleasantly surprised by the not-terribleness of it. But even though I kind of liked it, it does nothing to assuage my fears that the rest of the series is going to be frustrating. Especially knowing that both this season and the abbreviated next season was all either in production or the can before any of the flawed and troubling season three had aired (dropped? What is the proper terminology for the release of streaming internet TV?). I suspect that no one in this writers' room ever came to any realizations that last year had real problems before it was too late and all was completed. Thematic depth? Nah. Ethical quandaries? Meh, we might touch on them vaguely. Dumb humor? Oh, yeah, that's our jam, and if we can cheapen what comes later in the timeline, so much the better.
There is plenty of dumb humor and cheapening what comes later in this one, to be sure, but in large part—not entirely—I am choosing to overlook it because there's some fun to be had.
Let's get into it.
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Culture,
Posted on August 8, 2026 at 8:32PM | Permalink | |