Yeah, I guess my issue with Lumic is that I feel like he should either be more charismatic, or far less - a real Zuckerberg type. As it is, he strikes me as something in between.
I came in to this one expecting to hate on it a little bit, but it's not really bad - it's just doing too much.
This two-parter is basically all table-setting for the finale, and this one in particular is stuck (re-)introducing the Cybermen and establishing this parallel universe, which could (or should) each be a separate story on their own. It's a lot of heavy lifting, all in service of an episode we won't see for another month.
But there's a lot to like! The Doctor's dismissiveness toward Mickey is awful, but I find it funny every single time. The aspects of the story that are a pseudo-sequel to "Father's Day" work very well - it's always fun to see Pete again, and this version of him really does seem the-same-but-different - ditto for Jackie. Noel Clarke - scandal noted - also does a good job when it comes to Mickey's sudden backstory.
That said, Clarke is really not good as Ricky - I don't know if he was directed to play the character the way that he did, but it was a bad choice. And John Lumic is a bland and forgettable villain. Since the Cybermen are rather bland by their nature, you'd hope that their creator would have personality and charisma to spare, but it's just not the case here.
I'm not a big fan of Cybermen stories in general - a bunch of emotionless killing machines aren't the most compelling, though from what I can remember, the next episode wrings some good drama out of the body horror of it all. Like the Borg, I find them to be a bit of a dead end, made interesting only by what's going on around them. In this case, the themes of the people of Pete's World giving themselves over to an omnipresent app and wearable technology is better now than it was 20 years ago.
Yeah, I think I remember thinking the same thing.
I suppose that it would be sensible to keep someone with the shuttle Just In Case, though, and the Doc would certainly be more welcome on Kasq.
A dreamer. I like it.
"The Enterprise crew encounters a phenomenon that forces them to face their innermost fears" is very well-trodden ground for this series, but this is probably one of the best examples. It coasts on a very well-executed horror story, and I thought it did a very good job in not tipping its hand as to which characters were real, and which were hallucinations.
Unfortunately, I don't think the stories of our two main characters were advanced much, if it all. La'An is still afraid there's a monster within her, and Spock still has issues with his duality, though this episode could mark the shift of his return to a more "Vulcan" way of being.
I thought the episode handled Kirk really well, though. From the moment they acknowledged that David was going to play a role in the series going forward, I had pretty high hopes - there are a lot of blanks to be filled in, since he was retconned into Kirk's backstory in 1982. Kirk's fears of being an absentee father, and of dying in some forgotten corner of space, feel very real, and I think they would feel real even if you didn't know how it's all going to turn out for him.
I thought the scene between Kirk and Uhura at the end was very...interesting. Not sure what to say about it, but it was interesting.
I saw it. It was enjoyable!
"High art"? Probably not. But it's unique, which is a rarity these days.
Edit: And yeah, Ejiofor is always worth watching. He's always been my go-to dream Trek casting, and now that it's happened in SFA, I don't quite know what to do with myself.
The only solution, of course, is more Ejiofor.
I haven't seen any reporting on it in quite a while, but full coast-to-coast electrification is a pretty challenging issue, and doing it piecemeal would also be complicated, since you'd likely have to switch locomotives frequently (though I think hybrid diesel-overhead wire locomotives do exist).
And then there's the question of interoperability with the US rail network, which will likely always be important.
I think Shatner is complicated because (a) he's 95 years old, and can't be expected to be fully "in touch," and (b) he has definitely had some questionable people handling his social media over the years.
Oh cool, GFR has finally gone mask-off.
This has always been the case, but I'm going to take this opportunity to state that links to that site are not allowed here, and will be removed on sight.
I think this is an extremely lousy headline, but the content is good.
Firstly, the headline slightly misquotes what Matalas actually said (emphasis added):
“We wrote nine episodes at one point and the network was like, ‘No, we don’t really understand this, it’s a bit too sci-fi, it’s a bit too in-Star Trek.’”
I think a story being a little too "inside baseball" and reliant on stuff from decades ago is a perfectly valid note, especially when we're talking about ideas like this:
The idea was that Guinan’s bar was presented as a normal bar in Los Angeles, but if you knew the right thing to do, you could go into the back through the telephone phone booth and that was Rick’s Café and it was a stopping point for all these different species that were actually there on Earth with a ‘Do not interfere’ thing happening.
The stuff about COVID messing with the writing and shooting schedule is understandable, and created problems that can be seen in many TV shows filmed around that time. All the same, it makes me wish they had decompressed the schedule and not rushed through things as much as they did.
The comments about there being a lot of different ideas in season two are interesting, since I think she overall series' biggest flaw is that it crammed a lot of ideas, many of which I like quite a bit, into only 30 episodes, with few (none?) of them being fully explored.
And regarding the Jurati Borg...I don't know, I never found that confusing in the slightest. I think their intent came through just fine.
My expectations for this one were high, but I'm really impressed with how well they pulled it off. Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid did a great job of dialing their performances back just enough, and the SNW cast went just a little bit broader.
For sure - he made the most of that role.
But you've gotta have the handles!
That's...a very interesting point that I hadn't considered.