No Party for Picard

The writing was so bad on the newest Star Trek: Picard I had to spend several days getting through the episode. But it had one line of the "so bad it's good" variety.

The second half of this season (spoilers) is a rehash of the Deep Space Nine premise of Changelings infiltrating the Federation. Our heroes are uncovering a plot revolving around Frontier Day, a Starfleet holiday in which the entire fleet will assemble near Earth.

The newest episode opens with Seven of Nine speaking with Tuvok (or a Changling pretending to be Tuvok) about the plot. In doing so, she says the immortal line: "The entire Frontier Day ceremony is in danger."

It seems screenwriter Jane Maggs thought the Changlings' endgame, the purpose of their vast conspiracy, their nefarious goal, was to ruin the party. Yes. The buildup of resentment and hostility over the decades since the Dominion War has come to this, a diabolical threat to the Federation's . . . merrymaking! There will be no jolly balloons, no ice cream or cotton candy for the kids! There will be no toasting of champagne! Starfleet's cup shall be filled with naught but tears! And everyone, everyone, will be obliged to go to bed early and face the next day without the promised respite of a grand galactic holiday! There may be other holidays, humans, oh, yes. But not this one! This one now belongs to . . . the Changlings!

So at least that put a smile on my face, I guess. The first four episodes of this season were good. They should've just quit then. A funny thing to say about a season that's only nine episodes, I suppose.

The Circles of Rote

Last night's Rings of Power was the best visually and the worst in terms of writing so far. I was finally able to really see the budget onscreen when Galadriel and Halbrand got to Numenor. It looks like a Pre-Raphaelite Ancient Greece, like a Lawrence Alma-Tadema painting.

Unfortunately, the Numenoreans turn out to be a bunch of broadly written twits whose slogan is "The sea is always right." Oh, boy. Are you sailors are bellhops?

Galadriel and Halbrand get to talk to the Queen Regent. Halbrand advises the Elven noblewoman hundreds of years older than him to kneel but the Queen Regent tells them no-one kneels in Numenor. There's a handy way to show your guests the disrespect of trashing their voluntary signs of respect. It makes the Queen Regent look like a jerk to me but I live in Japan, where everyone still bows to each other, so I think we're meant to think she's very wise and egalitarian.

The real disaster on this show is Galadriel who seems to despise everyone she speaks to. And there was a really strange, slow motion, horseback riding scene that lingered on her unflattering facial expression.

Some of this might be intentional. I noticed a few of the people working on this show also worked on Outlander, which also features a female protagonist who is abrasive while also being constantly in the right among groups of men who are persistently wrong for no logical reason. This is a staple of women's pulp fantasy. Mind you, not feminist fantasy, but the cheap wish fulfillment kind. I think that's the genre and target audience the makers of this show are aiming for. It shows with the Harfoots, too, where Nori is quickly being established as the Lone Troublemaker Woman heroine type amid a community of proto-hobbits who apparently abandon their weak for dead in a somehow traditional migration.

The show is riddled with many other logical problems and bad dialogue but this is all beside the point. A lot of money was spent to make this a cheap indulgent fantasy. It actually makes a bit of sense, it may even turn out to be a sound investment if the right kind of viewer is attracted to this fluff. I find it difficult to believe anyone working on the show likes Tolkien's books, though.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The Power of Rings: Of Sovereign Rings: The Rings of Rings: Ringo la Bingo is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1620

The swirling dust was trapped above the room.
The whisp'ring guests began to fear the dark.
No shadow jumped but told the souls of doom.
Eleven strikes then softly burned the mark.
The odd appendage burst the brick and stone.
A crimson glow defined a graven cage.
The safest house became a brittle bone.
A stalking threat condemns the holy base.
The standard goblin snarl was lacking blood.
Eternal rage consumed the swimming elf.
The withered hands of paper soaked the mud.
A broken skull observed from lofty shelf.
Above the fragile roots are cotton skies.
In cakey veins the cherry river lies.

Time Loops Require Multiple Drafts

Wow. The Doctor Who New Year special this year is kind of a masterpiece of bad writing. I mean, it's so bad, it's kind of implausible. I'm tempted to think Chris Chibnall intentionally wrote a bad episode. There are no excuses about a cramped production schedule this time, he had plenty of time to cook this up. I doubt anyone watching this could enjoy it on the level of a work of fiction but it's kind of a fascinating wreck.

I actually kind of liked the opening scene at first. We meet two new characters at a storage facility--the proprietor, Sarah (Aisling Bea), and her customer, Nick (Adjani Salmon). Sarah is in a foul mood, being forced to come to work on New Year's Eve at the place she owns while she receives texts she can't mute from friends partying. But she has to be there, I guess, because Nick always comes by on New Year's Eve to drop off stuff. Why does she have to be open for one customer? Maybe because he's her only customer. That is what she says, that he's her only customer. Except later in the episode we find out there's a customer named Jeff who's stored a bunch of explosives on the fifth floor.

Oh, yeah, I said I kind of liked the first scene. Well, director Annetta Laufer does a decent job at pacing and after the hazy jumble of "The Flux", it was kind of refreshing.

The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Dan (John Bishop), and Yaz (Mandip Gill) show up in the basement. The TARDIS is doing some kind of reset and they can't be inside while it's happening. Unbeknownst to them, there's a Dalek (Nicholas Briggs) on the premises exterminating Nick and Sarah. Or I guess I should say "executing" since these are apparently new Executioner Daleks. Which means they kill people so they're basically like the other Daleks.

Maybe they're not as well armoured since Dan is able to tap the eye stalk of one without any ill effects. He's also able to evade its laser by running circles around it. Remember how the Ninth Doctor episode "Dalek" made one Dalek seem like a nightmare machine? Remember when the first Thirteenth Doctor New Year special tried to remake "Dalek"? We're a long way from that, aren't we?

This is a Groundhog Day style story so everyone gets exterminated multiple times. Which you'd think would make the Daleks seem more effective except we get shots of a Dalek completely missing the whole group of people when they're stuck in a hallway together. Not even Imperial Stormtroopers are so imprecise. Anyway, everyone's constantly getting killed about seven minutes to midnight and each time they start off with one minute less. Which Sarah reasons at one point means that Nick soon won't be able to escape. There's no explanation for her rationale. He manages to escape once when two Daleks shoot each other accidentally. After that, his inability to escape due to the time window shrinking is never mentioned again.

They can't leave the building because Sarah discovers there's a forcefield covering the front door. This forcefield is never explained. Sarah says there isn't one over the back door but doesn't explain how she knows this. Surely she could only know it by going out through the door but that would mean we'd have to show her deciding whether she should go get help or try to get everyone out of the building herself. Or just run in terror.

After they're all killed the first time, the Doctor wonders why they don't come across dead Nick even though we didn't see them come across him the first time. She also mentions there are only two other people in the building and doesn't explain how she knows this. This may be because this isn't in fact the second time loop and we weren't shown the real first few loops. Except Dan has a line where he says they're getting killed a "second" time and the Dalek says, "Correct." Which means, though the Dalek says that they're "learning", it wasn't from an earlier loop that the Dalek can remember. No-one seems to have any trouble remembering previous loops in any case.

Maybe Chibnall was feeling completely unmotivated and just thought, "I know. I'll do a Groundhog Day story. Everyone does those now and it seems easy." Except it's not easy, is it, Chris? Though, once again, I'm reluctant to put too much blame on him. I noticed the opening credits, which for so long used to only include the names of the stars and the writer, now prominently features the producer credit, for Sheena Bucktowonsing, ahead of the director and writer. What the hell, at this point you might as well throw all the credits up like any other series. Introduce us to your army of executive producers squeezing their fingers into this pie. Or maybe they're not so eager to show their names at this point.

They're really making up for lost time casting Irish characters and actors, which is kind of nice. Though Aisling Bea is extremely unpleasant, though not as bad as her standup comedy (she's a comedienne).

Oh, I almost forgot the best part. It turns out Yaz is in love with the Doctor. When Yaz and Dan are alone together he brings it up. She says, "Is it that obvious?" at which point I heard every viewer in the world collectively say, "NO." He mentions being able to see it clearly in the four years they spent together. You know, off screen. Which is apparently where all the chemistry is between Yaz and the Doctor.

I mean, it's not even half-baked. It's barely dough. It was so bad and so out of place that it was genuinely hilarious. Especially on top of all the other problems with the episode and the Thirteenth Doctor era as a whole. I guess I'd like to see Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill make out. They don't have as much chemistry as the two anonymous bikini babes Howard Stern brought on Jay Leno back in the '90s. But whatever, I'll take what I can get. Though if the idea was to present positive LGBTQ+ representation, this is just possibly not the best way to accomplish it.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer.

Twitter Sonnet #1508

So what to make of chunks of ice ahead?
The jagged, bobbing shapes like broken glass.
We stand beside the cat we put to bed.
Amid the snows of quiet years to pass.
A tiger chased a cow behind the clock.
A dancing team adopted rusty skates.
Olympic records bust the busy dock.
Across the day, a cherry year awaits.
With thoughts of foxes phones were shipped abroad.
Excessive salt consumes the gentle cake.
Construction paper hands can now applaud.
To-morrow's wind instructs the roving rake.
Another glowing box arrives to-day.
Returning champs avenge the slight delay.