565. Latent ImageFORMULA: Clues + Whispers + The Swarm + Retrospect + The Measure of a ManWHY WE LIKE IT: Some nice direction.WHY WE DON'T: The EMH is a toaster.REVIEW: It's Clues in reverse as the crew tries desperately to keep a disturbing moment out of the Doctor's memory, but he proves too resourceful for them. That memory: Given equal chances of survival, he unethically perhaps chose his friend Harry over another ensign for a life-saving operation. The conflict in his program had made him go mad and Janeway had ordered the event wiped from his databanks. So the first half of the episode plays like a conspiracy mystery, but it quickly turns into a study of ethics. The Doctor's, yes, but Janeway's as well. While the Doctor asks how anyone can make a moral choice given those circumstances, the deeper question of the episode is whether the Doctor has a soul.But while Data had the support of his captain when it came to his civil rights, Janeway still sees the EMH as a piece of software and nothing more. You wouldn't think twice about formatting your hard drive, right? Her arguments, however, are rather insulting (comparisons to a replicator, etc.) and Seven once again has to call her on her bullshit. I was happily surprised to see Janeway reexamine her views on the EMH and realize that he had grown beyond his original programming and was, perhaps, a person. She had been dodging a simple truth: A human doctor might also have suffered a breakdown after those events. Letting him work it out naturally might take time, but we know he'll get through to the other side eventually. I'm not sure about the Vita Nuova reference, but referring to Dante also conjures up the image of a lost soul walking through hell and purgatory to purge his sins.The girl not chosen to live, Ensign Jetal, was cute and sassy, so it's really too bad we never got to know her more (we couldn't, by the very premise of this episode), though the personality evident on screen makes her death more meaningful. And though the second half of the episode is where it gets heavy and important, the investigation that precedes it must also be commended. The Doctor's plans are clever, and Seven makes a natural ally, this time because she's the new girl.But what really puts this one over the top is the direction. There are a lot of moments with real flair one show: The rack focus between the Doctor's face and the memories being unlocked, the degraded holo images looking like bad Photoshop embossments, the creepy opening of doors when someone comes to sabotage the EMH, letting console surfaces tell the story in reflections and empty rooms... The most subtle - indeed, you practically have to be told about it - is Ensign Jetal's face being incorporated into the holo-camera's flash. Subliminal haunting.
Brilliant work by Mike Vejar.LESSON: 18 months prior, Kes took a vacation from nursing.REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: I'd have easily given it a High if it didn't participate in the destruction of Janeway's character. Despite her change of heart, she still comes at it from a morally weak position.
Since the dawn of time (or at least since they instituted the Comics Code), Man has been trying to get curse words under the wire in all-ages books. It's one of the great human endeavors. It's that pioneering spirit that eventually made the despotic Comics Code fall, gave rise to the great and bountiful Vertigo, and paved the way for the JLA becoming a T&A rag.Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.My favorite hidden curse word of all time is from Doom Patrol #32, which features the Pale Police, a Grant Morrison nightmare threat that only speak in anagrams. Now, tell me: What do these letters unscramble into?
Granted, Doom Patrol isn't a Code-approved book, but this is still well before it got labelled as "Mature Readers Only". In your usual Code-approved comic, a simple $%@! will do. The Code may be history, but comics are still marketed to different age groups. Marvel rates them like movies and video games, and a Rated T for Teen will give you plenty of $%@! for which to substitute your own favorite cuss word.For aliens or people from the future, there's the substitution of some weird word (often frag or frak) in lieu of the so much more human F-word. The Green Lantern Kilowog has been calling people "poozer" for decades now, and I really didn't think of it as a dirty word, but then he started using it with this phrasing:
To my knowledge, there's only ONE word that can be substituted for "pooz" in that one. Which makes "poozer" a lot more crass than I imagined. Seeing as this is from Justice League Unlimited #46, an ALL-AGES book, I have to say it's overstepped its bounds. Tsk, tsk. Where's the soap?What are your favorite and least favorite hidden cursing moments?
564. CounterpointFORMULA: The Enterprise Incident + The Raven + RelicsWHY WE LIKE IT: Playa gets played.WHY WE DON'T: Prime Directive blues. (Am I repeating myself?)REVIEW: Counterpoint is an episode with a strong hook (Janeway complacently lets the space gestapo ransack Voyager in search of telepaths they've hidden in a transporter beam to get through their space) that develops well, has memorable guest characters, and makes the cast look smart. It also has sizeable plot holes that I find incredibly distracting.What works: Kashyk provides a good romantic foil for Janeway. Has he really fallen for human culture or for Janeway? Or is he still working for the Devore Imperium? Maybe a little of both? He and Janeway get enough quiet moments to let you believe something could develop between them, and there's a really nice moment when a security guard notices their chemistry. You can hear the rumor mill start spinning its wheels. But of course, he IS playing her and it's all a grand con game, but as in the best con stories, the con men end up getting conned. Janeway covered her bets well, and screwed Kashyk out of his victory. Nice. I also want to mention my favorite make-up in all of Trek: Torat's. The inflatable nose bags aren't just funny, they also give him alien mannerisms.What doesn't work: First of all, what is this wormhole worth to Voyager? While it might seem (without being explicitly said) that it would take Voyager out of the Imperium and closer to home - reason enough to help the telepathic refugees - Janeway's endgame precludes them from ever using it. Even worse, they give up two shuttles and are left stranded in the middle of enemy space. How could she know her ship would then be spared? How far to the border anyway? And isn't Tuvok, a telepath, right there on the bridge when the Devore return? Questions, questions.And then there's the Prime Directive. Voyager keeps breaking it and to make matters worse, they keep mentioning it just so we notice. Here we do get an explanation however. Janeway admits to playing fast and loose with Starfleet Order #1 and usually letting the Board of Inquiry handle it. In fact, she infers she's been in front of the Board many times, as she's on a first name basis with those admirals. Knowing that she ends up as an admiral herself, the story paints the picture of a political animal. Get in good with the bosses, get yourself out of courts-martial, climb that ladder right to the top. I'm not against the characterization, but in light of other comments she's made about following Starfleet rules, it does make her a hypocrite.LESSON: Mahler knew his subspace harmonics.REWATCHABILITY - Medium: A strong episode for Janeway, but the refugees could have just escaped through that massive plot hole at anytime.
You know, no matter how hard I try, I can't figure out where Final Crisis will leave the DC Universe. If the original Crisis shrunk the multiverse to a single Earth, and Infinite Crisis+52 brought that number back up to 52, then in what state will Grant Morrison leave the multiverse post-Final Crisis?
One of the reasons I'm confused is that DC has been putting out a number of Year One series, admittedly few of which I've read (the wonderful Teen Titans and the underrated Huntress - I haven't seen anyone mention this one, but I'm really enjoying it). If Final Crisis will (like other Crises) reboot the universe, why waste time rebooting characters BEFORE that final reboot?
Presumably, facts established in Year Ones will be respected in the new continuity. Then again, we've barely even tasted the post-IC/52 continuity in the wake of which these books are coming out. So will there even BE a reboot? If there is, is it too soon? If there isn't, is it really worthy of being called Crisis? Or will the post-52 multiverse be simply tweaked to a) rewrite the rules for multiversal storytelling (with Hypertime or some such thing) and/or b) finally gel character histories into a final continuity?
After all, the Year Ones are arguably only featuring second-tier characters right now. And when they're not (Green Lantern), they're being written by people who are also handling aspects of the Crisis (Geoff Johns, in that case). Are more fundamental Year Ones waiting on those Final Tweaks?
Any theories?
563. Thirty DaysFORMULA: The Ambergris Element + The Chute + Home SoilWHY WE LIKE IT: The underwater environment. The Delaney Sisters.WHY WE DON'T: Prime Directive blues.REVIEW: Told as Tom's confession during 30 days of incarceration - though it breaks its own rules by sometimes going to other characters - Thirty Days will perhaps be best remembered for its gorgeous special effects. The ocean planet, its underwater city, all the marine action... It's very, very pretty. And an unusual environment, which we haven't nearly gotten enough of in Trek.The story itself is more usual however. Thirty Days is an ecological fable about respecting the oceans, and a warning that Man can upset its balance and cause untold disaster. Scientists good, politicians bad. The sort of thing we see all the time. Perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that the center of the sphere didn't house its "true inhabitants"(TM).Of course, the real focus is Tom Paris who remains unconvincing as the bad boy, and indeed, doesn't do anything here that's truly objectionable. Plus, he was goaded into it by his girlfriend! Bad boy indeed. At least there are consequences this time, and one could imagine a solitary cell with a revolving door on Voyager if one wanted to. The show is so wildly inconsistent on such things that it's doubtful such punishment is doled out with any regularity, but it's interesting to see it at least once. Gonna have to get used to thinking of Paris as an ensign, but as an ex-con, he probably shouldn't have gotten better from day 1.And speaking of being inconsistent, the episode would be loads better if the writers actually understood the Prime Directive. You can't trot it out as a plot element and not know what it is. In Thirty Days, it's plainly wrong for Paris to shut down a refinery or two, but giving the aliens information and technology that will most likely change/save their culture seems fine. I remember the days when you couldn't help any more than you could harm, but the Moneans here get handed the same technology Janeway wouldn't give to the Kazon only just 4 years ago.The episode does score extra points for a Captain Proton sequence starring the Delaney Sisters, twins mentioned throughout the first season, but never seen.LESSON: Day 10 is when you crack.REWATCHABILITY - Medium: By all means, watch it for the Emmy-nominated effects. The story's a little limp, but the show looks so good, you hardly mind.
Buys
Found a pretty incredible deal on the Six Feet Under DVD boxed set, and having enjoyed the first couple of seasons before my schedule took me away from it, I jumped on it. Plus, I've got a friend who desperately wants to borrow it and I do so love acting like my inner circle's library. There's a grassy cemetery plot on top of the box that's either supremely silly or wicked cool, but I can't decide which."Accomplishments"
Books: Finished Douglas Coupland's Generation X, his first and best known book. I must say that it captured lucidly the particular quirks of my generation (I'm tail-end, to be sure, but GenX nonetheless). On numerous occasions, I was surprised to read something that I thought was unique to my world view (or at least, non-generational). If there's a theme to be drawn from the novel (and thus, the group of people it depicts) it's that of impermanence. For GenXers, relationships, jobs, families are not permanent and not expected to be so. We half accept this, and half scurry after pieces of nostalgia to make permanent. A kind of idealistic cynicism permeates the book. And my apartment.
DVDs: Flipped The Wire Season 2, or "the one that takes place on the docks". It's an environment you don't see often, and held my interest with the usual deft direction, sparkling writing and fine acting. A break from the projects, but keeping tabs on those as well. One character I really loved from Season 1 bites the dust, so that's a minus, but on the whole, a thumbs up. Two episodes have commentary tracks, and I have to say the first is marred by atrocious sound mixing. They've got Dominic West (McNulty -whom I wouldn't have pegged as a Brit!) real loud, and Michael K. Williams (Omar) lower than the episode soundtrack. It's too bad because they're pretty entertaining.
RPGs: Finished off the spy game I was running on Role-Playing Monday, and I can now admit to having used the You Only Live Twice scenario from the James Bond 007 (didn't before in case my players took it upon themselves to rent the film). Lots of differences anyway, so it wouldn't have worked out for them. In fact, it didn't anyway. It was going along real well there, and then they failed to destroy the volcano and let a deadly virus out into the ocean, killing millions and bringing the USA and USSR on the brink of armageddon. Can't win 'em all!New Unauthorized Doctor Who CCG cards: 20, all from Logopolis.GTA4 completion: 65.60%. Addiction Level: Buying in Bulk.Someone Else's Post of the Week
Mark Engblom is celebrating Superman's 70th birthday all month long over on Comic Coverage, and each new day brings new Superman-related material, and not just from the comics either. Mark manages to make everything look so pretty too. I'm just going to grab a random post from this week, but do try to browse the entire month. I can't really decide, so how about Part 3 (of 5) of the Kryptonite Chronicles?
I don't believe a word of it. That's just a cover story for people who don't have the Reality Check power. No, he's been around...
Became spokesperson for a beer company.
Went on the HeroClix circuit.
Palled around with fellow 90s humor outcast Lobo.
And tried to get extra cash by appearing in sketchbooks...
...before getting into the subversive cameo racket.
But that's all over now. Proper appearances. A proper mini-series. A proper place in the DCU pantheon.
