74. Living Witness

"Please state the nature of the historical inaccuracies." — The Doctor

74. Living Witness, Voyager, Season 4, Episode 23

You could probably argue that this episode broke this blog. And you'd probably be right. It's been a while since I've written on this — nearly two years since I visited the Final Frontier in this fashion. A lot has happened since then, and I've been preposterously swamped with projects both personal and professional... But, that's just an excuse. The real reason I haven't been able to move forward on this list of the Top 100 episodes of Star Trek is this episode of Voyager. I've watched 'Living Witness' several times in preparation of this entry. I've started and stopped this article many times, and I keep coming to the same conclusion... 'Living Witness' isn't really a story. It's an hourlong premise told by a series of unreliable narrators, wrapped in a framing device inside another framing device, offers smorgasbord of 'what ifs,' and has an ending that feels less like a shocking twist and more of an oh-crap-we're-totally-out-of-time-and-need-to-wrap-this-up.

And that's frustrating as all get out, because it's a damn great premise.

The cold open of 'Living Witness' is just... well, it's nothing short of glorious. An Evil Janeway presides over a Super-Evil crew — the Doctor as a Soong-style android, Seven of Nine in full Borg-mode, Chakotay with an even craaaazier face tattoo. The crew of the Warship Voyager portrayed as amoral genocidal militant a-holes. They find themselves in an alien civil war between generic aliens species one, the Kryians, and generic alien species two, the Vaskans. And everything about this pointed to Voyager dipping their nacelle in the Mirror Universe, until the twist! It's not real! It's a holodeck historical recreation by the Kryians, showing the events of the war — and the villainous acts of the Voyager crew — from the vantage point of 700 years in the future!

The information about the holographic crew of the Voyager is pieced from fragments of knowledge taken from the historical records, filling the holes with that they needed to fit the historian's preconceived narrative. While poking around the artifacts recovered from the incident, they accidentally reactivates the a data module, and a backup copy of the Doctor materializes, believing himself to be still in the middle of the conflict. The Doctor is a living time capsule, who tries to correct the narrative of Voyager being Eeeevil, and tries to present them as unwitting participants in a civil war.

Just like on Earth, in space, history is written by the victors. I know this only because they hit me over the head so hard with this I was knocked out for the better part of two years (as far as you know). It's one of those afforisms that makes me more or less want to projectile vomit, it's so overused. But.. as much as I love snark, let's accentuate the positive, shall we?

"Say... something... nice." — Evil Janeway

Mulgrew is great as Evil Janeway. She's dark and menacing without ever falling into mustache-twirling-terrible territory. Evil Janeway takes morally questionable actions not because she's evil, but because it's the shortest distance between the two points of where she is and where she wants to be. She supports Generic Alien Species One because it gets her closer to her ultimate goal, the safe return of her people to the Alpha Quadrant. Evil Janeway has an ends-justify-the-means-mentality so pure she places herself above morality. Evil Janeway knows what she's doing is extreme, but sees the big picture. She'll use torture, Borg assimilation, and mass genocide if it means getting her crew — nay, her family — home. Mulgrew's Evil Janeway is so great, that when the Doctor presents Actual Janeway in the simulation,* Actual Janeway seems far less interesting.

And let's give a shoutout to Robert Picardo, who always shines as the Doctor, and has to sell the outrage of the portrayal of the crew of Voyager as villains and be the voice of reason correcting the annals of history. Picardo's an outstanding actor, and this episode rests squarely on his shoulder pads. He's the single reason the Doctor is elevated beyond a Data knockoff to being among the greatest characters in all of Star Trek.

What's astoundingly prescient about the episode — especially in a time when anything that contradicts the establishment is dismissed as fake new — is how resistant the powers that be are to truth. The Doctor's more accurate representation of the facts are dismissed as being overwhelmingly biased by those who are challenged. And maybe they're right. The Doctor admits to extrapolating some parts of his recreation based on what he knows about the players involved, and not objective truth. Because this episode is presented as a layer within a layer within yet another layer with unreliable narrator telling the story of another unreliable narrator, there is no truth. Only, certain points of view.

Like a lot of entries on the list, it takes a crew we know and places them outside their norm. And this seems to be a reoccurring theme on the list. One of the reasons that Evil Janeway (and evil Voyager crew) works is that Mulgrew (and others) have crafted such a well-defined and morally stalwart character that it's okay to see them out of that norm. 

This is the fourth entry into this list by Bryan Fuller. Now, I love Fuller's work. Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, American Gods, and was executive producer and creator of Star Trek Discovery. Heck, I even liked his reimagining of the Munsters with Mockingbird Lane.** He once cited the desire to write Star Trek as the reason he became a professional writer, and that's a thing that I can absolutley relate to. However, as much as I love Fuller's work, I feel one of the reasons I struggle with this episode, is that it feels incomplete.

Once the Doctor gives the impassioned speech about the importance of truth, justice and the Federation Janeway, we cut to another historian presenting another historical recreation set in the distant future. So everything we saw was a historical recreation about a historical recreation. And for that reason, it feels two steps removed from any actual events. Ultimately, there are no consequences, either for the characters or for the show. And without consequences the whole thing falls flat.

One of the frustrating things about the episode is the unresolved nature of the story. Because the episode's rushed ending, the resolution and vindication of the Doctor's point of view feels unearned. The Doctor and we know that Janeway and crew are not Evil.*** Recorded history says otherwise. Obviously we side with the Doctor, but... would we? If we were only presented with the information in the episode, who's to say what we should believe. Okay, then, I'll say it, we might believe that the crew of Voyager were monsters. Horrible, horrible monsters.

Some with weird face tattoos.

Thanks for reading, and welcome back, dear readers.

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Next up, the Picard brothers get into shenanigans in 'Family.' And by shenanigans, I mean they yell at each other in one of the most poignant and powerful episodes of the franchise.

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*I know how absurd that reads, even as I type it. 

**Google that. It's fun. 

*** Boring sometimes, and overly reliant on technobabble, but not evil...

75. The Raven

Seven, don't panic, but there's a Borg spider on your hand. Seriously, don't panic. 

75. The Raven, Voyager, Season 4, Episode 6

As you may have noticed, I've strayed from my initial mission statement of reviewing the Top 100 Star Trek Episodes of All Time, as compiled by io9. There is a very good reason for that. I took a job in Japan and one of the many, many differences between the United States and Japan is that Japanese Netflix doesn't have any of the series. In fact, the only two pieces of Trek available to me are Abram's Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. While, I'll get to reviewing those films later, because I cannot stand the vacuum of Trek in my life right now, I wanted to get back on track, with at least this review that I started before I began my journey to the Land of the Rising Sun.

And now, without further ado, let's set course for the Delta Quadrant.

It's a common belief that Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, 'saved' Voyager. I'm not sure that's consistent with fact. I would say that that's more to the presence of the Borg than that particular character. And though the first episode in which she appeared had relatively high ratings, it was the part two of a cliffhanger that found Voyager in the clutches of the Borg. I understand the ratings for the show went back to normal, yet Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, remained pretty much the focal point of the show from the moment she arrived until the series finale.

"Excuse me, my ocular implants are up here." — Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One

Up until she arrived, the show had steered away from cheesecake. The show had three prominent female characters and none of them were overly sexualized. Janeway was, for all intents and purposes, Picard with better hair. B'Elanna was portrayed as a smart, strong, if sometimes cartoonishly angry character. And while there was a certain manic-pixie-dreamgirl quality to Kes, she was never really presented as a sex symbol. But Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, was front and center with her silver catsuit, Borg enhancements, and characters inexplicably falling for her despite her being a flat out horrible person. Seriously, Harry, Chakotay and the Doctor all fell hard for her despite her having nothing but contempt for pretty much anyone and everything that wasn't Borg.

I guess that I was supposed to find Seven of Nine sexy. I didn't. This is not because Jeri Ryan did not have a pleasing shape that was squeezed into a skintight catsuit. She did and it was. It was because the character was a terrible person. Arrogant. Rude. Entitled. Mean-spirited. Intentionally unlikable. She was interesting, but horribly unlikable.

Worst of all, her presence changed one of the greatest villains in all of Trek history into being a non-threat. Through her, the Borg became familiar. And that familiarity bred contempt. I'll dig into this a bit deeper when we get to episodes like, I, Borg or Best of Both Worlds, but the Borg were legitimately scary. They were partially scary in that their appearances were scarce. The were a shadow threat that loomed over the Next Generation crew. The creators of the show were wise to keep their appearances few and far between. That is, they were scary until Voyager defeated them left and right using their own technology as an intergalactic cure-all for seemingly every situation. I'd love to see how many episodes were resolved by modifying Borg nanoprobes, because there were a lot. The Borg went from being the embodiment of the loss of self through technology to an irksome nuisance.

While she may be an interesting character, Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One,  pretty much guaranteed that any chance Voyager ever had from getting out of TNG's shadow was nil. They essentially assimilated the Borg into their cast. Don't get me wrong, I do like Voyager, and there are some great episodes on this list yet to explore. But Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero One's addition to the cast was a fundamental shift in the show's dynamic, and I'd argue not for the better.  She became the show's new toy. Janeway was constantly trying to explore her humanity, and teach her about the importance of her free will outside the Borg Collective. I'll skip over the painful, painful irony of Janeway denying Seven's choice to rejoin the Collective because she's trying to get the former Borg to understand the concept of freewill. Over the next few seasons, their mentor-student relationship became tiresome and repetitive.

With the Raven, we get a little bit more about her backstory, and how as a child she was assimilated and raised by the Borg. A mysterious signal triggers something in her brain and she is driven to rejoin the Collective. As she traces the source of the signal what we find is the wreckage of her parent's ship, The Raven. This is where Anaka Hansen was filled with robot parts and had everything she was carved away and turned into a microscopic cog in the infinite machine that is the Borg Collective.

We're even robbed of the connection between Janeway and Seven in the resolution. And in the end, it's Tuvok, not Janeway, that shares the moment of her repressed memories of her assimilation being unleashed. Seven has a breakdown, and it reveals that Ryan's acting chops are far more suited to standing still and hating people while looking good doing it than trying to show a genuine emotion. She's clearly pushing herself as a performer, but the scene is awkward and forcing too much down our throats in terms of emotional connection to the character.

From her facial expression, I'm pretty sure Ryan can smell the clunkiness of this scene. 

This is supposed to make her sympathetic, but I felt it was too rushed. Like we're checking off a box with Seven's origin, rather than getting to a place where her origin mattered. I would have much preferred to see her explored a bit more and see a bit of her PTSD creep in over the course of a season before we rush to her origin story. This was just a few episodes after her debut, and if Janeway and crew had a better chance to care about her, her drive to rejoin the Borg would have had more weight. This would also have given the audience to better understand Janeway's drive to maintain Seven's humanity. If she cared about her as a person rather than as an intellectual and ethical exercise in preserving one's individuality. 'Assimilated as a child' is all we really needed to know about her backstory, and while this episode fills in the gaps to her tale, it doesn't have the emotional resonance that I would have expected from one of my favorite Trek and TV writers and personal heroes, Bryan Fuller.

As she evolves and develops her human side, there are great moments with Seven of Nine throughout Voyager. This is just felt too much too soon.

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Next up, we take a trip to a museum dedicated to the most ruthless villain in Trek History, Katherine Janeway, with 'Living Witness.'

Star Worries

With the release of The Force Awakens, I've been thinking about Star Wars a lot. Because, I can. I've been riffing on some left-of-center questions about Luke, Ben, Vader and Jedi in general on social media, but I've collected my thoughts here.* These are the questions that keep me up at night and annoy my friends who wonder if I have something better to do with my free time. For the record I do, but I'd rather be doing this.



The Kenobi Conundrum

Was Ben Kenobi really Obi Wan? What if he's not? What if he was an imperfect clone of the original Jedi General? There has always been the speculation that Obi Wan was a code for a clone designation OB-1, but what if the opposite was true? If Ben's cloned memories weren't exact, it would explain a lot as to why he got many of the facts wrong about his past with Vader, Anakin, Yoda, and even Artoo. It would explain why he has to seemingly stop and think every time before he speaks, sometimes just making stuff up. Then he has to justify his inaccuracies with that 'certain point of view' nonsense later. 

An imperfect clone of Obi Wan would also explain why he seems somewhat confused about the amount of time the Jedi have been around (he says a thousand generations, and it's later established that the republic has only stood for a thousand years). And it would explain his incorrect information on the accuracy of Stormtrooper blaster fire at the Jawa massacre, as we all know they can't hit crap. Ben being a clone of Obi Wan would also explain why Vader is kind of taken aback to feel the presence of his old master again... Think about it...


Use the Force, Luke, Because I Said So

Was Luke mind controlled into becoming a Jedi? Before he sets off on his hero's journey, Ben Kenobi looks long and hard at Luke and says, "You must learn the ways of the Force, if you're to come with me to Alderaan." Watch that scene again. Was the old wizard using his Force powers on Luke to put that suggestion into his head? Kenobi knows he can't do the mission alone. His next line in that scene is that he's too old for this sort of thing. For the sake of the Rebellion, did he control Luke's mind? We've already established that Luke will cave to authority, when his aunt and uncle deny him his application to the Academy and his trip to Toshii station. Luke being under Kenobi's control might explain why Luke so quickly turned from seeing the people who raised him burned to a crisp by Stormtroopers and wanting to become a Jedi under Kenobi's guidance without so much as shedding a tear. It also might explain why he had a much stronger reaction to Kenobi's death than the death of Owen and Beru. From that moment on, Luke's driving need through the trilogy is to become a Jedi. Even at the Battle of Yavin, What if he didn't have a choice in the matter? What if Kenobi made that choice for him?



Dark Luke of the Sith

Which brings up the question, was Luke Skywalker really a Jedi? On Tatooine, he's a selfish, (sociopathic?) braggart who wanted to join the Imperial Academy, presumably to be a TIE Fighter pilot, instead of help his family farm. On Dagobah, he willfully and repeatedly ignores his master's instructions; a master with eight centuries of Jedi training experience, mind you. He gives into anger and fear on Cloud City when he confronts Vader, taking the quick and easy path. Gets mauled, maimed, and a cyborg hand, (most Sith we have seen seem to have some, if not all, of these qualities). Force chokes, threatens, and kills indiscriminately at Jabba's Palace while dressed in all black. Has zero qualms about murdering anyone who opposes him with the possible exception of his father. He taunts the Emperor, gleefully promising his death. He then gives into his hate in the presence of the Emperor, twice. 

Only in the final moments of his conflict with Vader does he really seem to understand that he's already lost the battle for his soul. In truth, he may only have one moment when he's not being truly evil, then the Emperor blasts him with wizard stuff. Afterwards, despite living in a universe with batca tanks and medical droids, just pulls the plug on his dying father. If he truly is a Jedi like his father before him, then the dark side will forever dominate his destiny.


Darth Until Death

What if at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke didn't save Anakin, but instead Vader completed Luke's turn to the Dark Side? I've already argued that maybe Luke wasn't really a Jedi. According to Yoda, a Jedi uses his powers for knowledge and defense, never for attack. By that criteria, Luke was far from being a Jedi. And in watching the films, it seems that all Sith ascend to power by turning on their master. Betrayal is a running theme with their Order. When Vader grabbed the Emperor and threw him down the shaft, maybe his motivations weren't to save his son, but he simply saw his shot and took it. 

Remember he had this grand vision of ruling the galaxy as father and son, and completing Luke's training. With the Emperor distracted, Vader finally had an opportunity that was just too good to pass up, a chance to destroy his mentor and finally graduate from apprentice to master. Maybe he was just seeking to fulfill his destiny of overthrowing the Emperor and ruling with his son at his side. I mean he was beaten, but his life support was still fully functional. Perhaps, he didn't anticipate the feedback from the force lightning, and was mortally wounded. His last chance to complete Luke's turn to the Dark Side was by manipulating Luke into being an active participant in his death. By asking Luke to remove his mask, he's essentially asking Luke to kill him before his body shuts down. Knowing that this is the way of the Sith, he's essentially fast-tracking Luke to Dark Lord status. 

Maybe that's why Lucas changed Anakin's force ghost vision at the end of RotJ to the younger Anakin, because that's the last time in is life that Anakin was a servant of the light. If we take Lucas at his word that the Special Editions were the way he always envisioned them, then I can only conclude that this change was because Vader was still a Sith at the time of his death. And maybe, just maybe, so was Luke.


The Frauds Will Be With You, Always

Did most people believe the Jedi were just fakes? In all of the billions of billions of sentient beings in this galaxy far, far away, there were only four known force-trained individuals in existence at the time of A New Hope -- Kenobi, Yoda, Vader and Palpatine. The latter two hadn't even been revealed yet. That's a hell of a small percentage of people. Mace Windu states two telling things in the prequels. There are not a lot of Jedi (at least not enough to fight an army), and their powers over the force have greatly diminished. Han claims to have traveled from one end of the galaxy to the other and have never seen anything that would make him a believer in the Force, yet the fall of the Jedi and the rise of the Empire would have happened in his lifetime. Jabba is openly dismissive of Jedi powers, and he lived in a time when being a Jedi meant something. 

So, did the general populous just not believe that the Force was really a thing? Did years of Palpatine inspired propaganda turn the people against Jedi so much so that they had become just a footnote in history? Was 'may the force be with you,' just a polite thing that people said without any real spiritual weight behind it? Were the Jedi so rare as to be considered charlatans using magic tricks?

Until next time...

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*While it's entirely possible others have reached similar conclusions about Star Wars, all of this was done from memory and not intentionally ripping anyone else off...

The Force Awakens Some Complex Reactions to Star Wars

Star Wars review, so, locking S-Foils in attack position...

I know that the bulk of these posts have been about Star Trek. Sure, I've thrown in some BvS:DoJ, and some D&D, and some photoshop fun. But I wanted to talk about the thing that everyone is talking about and that's Star Wars. Does the internet need another opinion about Star Wars? For the record, no, it does not. However, this review is not really for you. It's for me.  I'm writing this because I need to process what I saw. Because it stirred a very complex reaction in me, and I am very conflicted about it.

Star Wars is not a thing that I take lightly. Like many of my generation, it was part of my formation as a human being. The original film blew apart my limited concepts of how the world worked. At the age of five, I was not able to process a good guy dying. It messed with my myopic concept of religion, seeing a world where Christianity didn't even exist, and everybody was surprisingly okay with that.* It began my love affair with the fantastic. Parents aside, I'm trying to remember anything that I loved before Star Wars and I'm not sure that I can. I am simply not capable of being objective when it comes this subject matter.

Such is the nature of love.

The prequels just crushed me. I came to understand that not only did Lucas not really understand or respect the legacy of his own creation, but also that as a fan, I was now entirely irrelevant. The EU frustrated me. I bought terrible books, suffered through awful games, watched horrible films and television, all because it bore the brand. There are gems of course — the Thrawn Trilogy, Tartakovsky's Clone Wars, Knights of the Old Republic — but it was an abusive relationship between Star Wars and this particular fan.

So, when Disney announced Abrams was announced, I was skeptical. I find him an uneven filmmaker. I dropped Lost after the first season. Alias and Fringe were hit or miss for me, though I preferred the latter. I thought Mission Impossible 3 was interesting, Super-8 was a colossal mess. I'm sure I'll get into this in another post down the line, but I have an absolute love-hate with his Trek films. But could he do it? Maybe. One consistent thread about his work is that his films look fantastic, and the action sequences are well done. He at least had a big-budget science fiction franchise reboot in his filmography.

I tried to avoid as much of the media surrounding the film as I could. I never watched the trailers beyond the first teaser.  Han and Chewie hit me like a ton of bricks, and the shadow of the Phantom Menace loomed over the franchise. And through social media, a few crumbs leaked in. Starkiller base. Fan theories of Luke Skywalker being the man behind the mask. Han professing that things were true, all of it. I went into The Force Awakens with the intent of having as pure of a moviegoing experience as possible. The truth is, I went into The Force Awakens with my arms crossed and daring JJ Abrams to make me love Star Wars again.

Snape kills Dumbledore #starwarsspoilers

The film is fun, but far from perfect. It's gorgeous, but leans too heavily on the imagery of the past. It is a fantastic mix-tape of just the good parts of Star Wars, but isn't really anything new. Kylo Ren is far more interesting and complex than any Star Wars villain we have yet to see. The cross arcs of Ren and Rey embracing their destiny is great thing to behold. Fin and Poe are fantastic. The search for Skywalker is a wonderful macguffin.

Much like his Star Trek films, Abrams is far more interested in painting with broad strokes than getting into the minutia of the mythology. This is where my if-only-they-had-done-blank fanboy nerdism gets in the way of me being able to let go of the past and embrace the film wholly. Fin should have gotten slaughtered in his lightsaber duel with Kylo Ren. It undercut him as both a villain and the importance of the Force and its wielders in the universe. Rey discovered her powers far too easily. And the parallels between the Artoo's stolen data tapes and BB-8's map to the first Jedi Temple, and the Death Star and Starkiller Base were too much. The last one was my biggest disappointment. It felt both calculated and lazy. It hammered the nail in the coffin of this as a remake of A New Hope. There are many, many other parallels, too many to go into here. Are these just fanboy nits or fundamental flaws in the film? Well, to be honest, they're both, which is why I'm having such a hard time reconciling my feelings about the movie.

The Force Awakens cannot be judged on its own merits. Because if taken on its own merits, it's a fun, if derivative, action movie. However, movies, particularly this one, do not exist in a vacuum. This is not just a sequel in a decades-spanning, multi-gazillion-dollar franchise, but a both a celebration of and an apology for its predecessors. Did I recognize that the Tie fighter chase of the Millennium Falcon was a blatant ripoff of the asteroid chase in Empire? Of course I did. Did I love it anyway? Of course I did. Did I recognize that blowing up Coruscant and other unnamed planets was a metaphorical eradication of prequels? Of course I did.

This isn't a black and white situation. I should be raging against it. I should be fawning over it. It's lazy and terrible, and glorious and wonderful. I should look it as an action-space-fantasy, yet it has a connection to the core of who I am that I cannot just dismiss it as the big-budget, mega-studio blockbuster popcorn fun it is. I wish it were that simple. It's not.

To say that The Force Awakens is a soft-reboot of the franchise, or a remake of A New Hope, dismisses what it has accomplished for me. This film is the emotional equivalent of a grand romantic gesture. And while some have cynically seen this as the calculated ploy it is, it has simply given me hope that I can love Star Wars again.

Star Wars began as a love letter to the cheesy sci-fi serial films of Lucas' youth. And what the Force Awakens is Abrams' love letter to the films of his youth, which happens to be Star Wars. The circle is now complete. The learner has become the master.

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*As a five-year-old, I was not well versed in comparative theology. 

In D&Defense of 4th Edition

For those about to dice, we salute you. 

Among the things I do is play Dungeons & Dragons. Telling stories is a thing I enjoy, and collaborative storytelling with good friends and snacks is a win-win. I play 4th Edition rules in one game as a player and another as the dungeon master.  D&D was instrumental in me wanting to be a writer. Not because it was a well thought out and polished game, but because getting together with my friends and fantasizing about dragons and undead was escapist fun. It's a system that has evolved and changed over time, through forty years of play testing and adjustment.

I grew up on AD&D and remember not liking 2nd Edition, though I don't think I could remember why. I missed 3rd and 3.5 entirely, having tried the latter once. It took me hours to make a character and was bored before we ever started to adventure. A friend and game designer fell in love with a new 4th Edition system. After a 15-year hiatus, I picked my dice again and rolled for initiative when the lizard men attacked. And it was awesome. It combined the group story I loved with a fun combat board game. I was hooked. Again.

Since, I have come to learn that 4th Edition was very divisive. Much of the following came from conversations last summer at ComicCon, while Wizards of the Coast rolled out the new edition with play tests from their newly released Starter Kit. Having bought the Starter Kit and read the rules, I was dubious. With play tests happening at Nerd Prom, I was looking forward to see the new ruleset in action. I was, in the end, not compelled to purchase the new system.

Balance of the Forth

Some of the arguments against 4th Edition, I understand. Like, combat can be slow. Okay, fair enough. 4E does have a learning curve for new players and the combat can run long, especially the first few encounters as you learn the system, and get to understand your character's powers. But it's a fantastic tactical tabletop game. It forces the players to work together against the creatures on the board. But the speed of combat is a solvable issue with a few house rules.*

Another argument I understand is the rules for combat require miniatures, and therefore more money shilled out to the publishers. Again, fair point. It's Wizards forcing us to buy supplements to play their game. Welcome to the 21st century. However, having never used miniatures as a kid, I actually found it helped with visualizing combat, and made it more visceral. Thought it's considerably less fun, a fellow gamer pointed that the game still be played using coins or dice in lieu of miniatures if you don't want to spend money.

Other arguments, I just have to scratch my head at. Like, it's too much like an MMO, and catering too much to the World of Warcraft crowd. To which, I say, so? See the aforementioned fantastic-tactical-tabletop-game comment. And it's not like assigning rogues as dps, clerics as heals, and fighters as tanks isn't an intuitive leap for players.

The balanced classes make it too much of a level playing field and it doesn't matter what class you choose. To which I say, what? Seriously, what? An addendum to that complaint, the mechanics get in the way of the role-playing. I wholly disagree. A level playing field keeps you from wondering if one race or class is so much better than the other and lets you play the type of character you want instead of second guessing your choices. In the old game, wizards were useless-to-terrible at lower levels, and all other classes were the opposite.

The rules for 4E were presented very mechanics heavy, assuming that players wouldn't need a lot of handholding to know how to role play. The new edition does the opposite. It gives the players tools to develop flavor text, and hides the more complicated mechanics of the game in semantics (more on that below).

In the three core rulebooks for 4E, the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual, there were a number of complaints that revolved around changes and omissions. Gnomes and Half-Orcs weren't listed as playable races in the initial edition of the Player's Handbook. Instead they got Dragonborn and Tieflings. Outrage! But in the appendix of the Monster Manual, there were stats for making the Gnomes, Half-Orcs and a number of other humanoid monsters into playable characters.

Seriously, though. Dragonborn are dumb. 

Druids, Monks and Bards weren't playable classes. Instead they got Warlords, a new class who directs others on the battlefield. Again, outrage! But it was only a matter of time before those classic classes were introduced in later editions. To include everything in the first edition of the Players Handbook would have been overwhelming to new players, and, as a player of old, I appreciated the inclusion of new races and classes.

In the end, 4th Edition's biggest crime was being different. Too different from previous editions for existing players. The mythology, of a world emerging from a dark age after the empires of the Dragonborn and the Tieflings fell, was not well received. Probably because they were in the Player's Handbook and Gnomes were not. As DMs can create whatever world they want, I find this a hollow complaint. Breaking attacks into classes of at-wills, encounter powers, and daily powers (small, medium, and large) was too far removed from editions past.

Revenge of the Fifth

5th Edition was the system that was to 'fix' all that. And according to their marketing, the designers looked at all of the editions of D&D and chose the 'best' of each edition. Wizard spell books are unnecessarily complicated, just the way they used to be. Fighters have nothing to do in a fight other than swinging their sword, just the way it used to be. Rogues are slightly better balanced, being able to do more damage. But it looks like as the game progresses, Wizards are still ridiculously overpowered just the way it used to be. The combat in the play test at ComicCon was both horribly unbalanced and, worst of all, boring. All the while the DM was spitting vitriol about 4E and how this was 'much better.'

However, the new edition also does an excellent job of hiding some of the more complicated concepts with simple semantics. Minor actions in 4E become bonus actions for classes that need them. The four types of defenses in 4E (Armor Class, Reflex, Fortitude, and Will) is streamlined to one. Kind of. Defenses Fortitude and Will are hidden as saving throws for various creature attacks and spells. Reflex are is rolled into Armor Class, just the way it used to be. Not eliminated, hidden in semantics.

And the rules are presented so that miniatures are optional as a grand return to the Theater of the Mind. But the play test at ComicCon used maps and miniatures to help provide some context to the combat. So, improvement? Or more semantic shenanigans?

There are some nice things about the new edition. The concept of Inspiration is straight up stealing the Benny system from Savage Worlds, which is a system I like a lot. So that I approve of. I've tinkered with it as a reward and it works well for players.

The character background elements are interesting, too. And to their credit, the structure of ideals, bonds, and flaws is nice. However, at the end of the day, it's just a framework for flavor text. Both of those elements I may incorporate in future games, but that doesn't mean I need to buy any of their new product to use them.

As a kid I gravitated to the storytelling aspects of the game, in hindsight, possibly because the combat aspects of the game were so broken and boring. The new system attempts to be like D&D of old, and, for good or ill, it is.

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*Now, for those looking for a faster 4th Edition game here are a few quick suggestions. Pick the person with the highest initiative and then go clockwise in order, so they know who's next. Group like monsters by initiative and rolling all their attacks and damage at once Give players a +1 bonus if they're ready on their turn. Instigate a 'shot clock' and if they fail, they can only use at-wills. 

Are Sharknado and Downton Abbey the same thing? Surprisingly, yes.

Skarknado and Downton, two halves of the same whole. Much like this shark is about to be.

Let's start this off by saying that I’ll acknowledge this is a preposterous premise. And, in fairness, I think I need to give a little context for how I came to this conclusion. I began this exercise while my wife was binge-watching Season 5 of Downton Abbey. I’d watched the previous seasons with her, but I wasn’t getting into this one. So, I posed the question to social media, "what's the opposite of Downton Abbey?” An innocent enough question with no agenda, right? As people started chiming in with suggestions, I started finding reasons why they were somehow connected, however tenuously, either directly or thematically with Downton.

No, Duck Dynasty wasn't the opposite of Downton Abbey because it dealt with a wealthy family resisting the social change of a new century. Major League Baseball was too similar because it was both slow-moving and featured lots of rich people (far richer than I, anyway). Weeds has a brunette, whose romantic endeavors caused complications for her family unit. This is what I was doing. It was harmless fun. Then, Sharknado screenwriter, Thunder Levin, threw down the gauntlet and I accepted his challenge. 

I'm going to show that not only can we draw connections between Sharknado and Downton Abbey, but at their core, they're the same thing. Both are somewhat cultural anomalies. Both know exactly what they are. Both are about keeping family together, while navigating extraordinary circumstances. Lord Grantham and Fin Shepard are mirror images of each other. Likewise, Lady Mary and Nova are the same person. Lady Crawley is April. The forthcoming social change in the 20th century is the non-sensical storm of swirling, angry sharks. 

Still dubious, old chap? Let’s do this.

"Yes, let's, old chap." — Lord Grantham

First, look at the familial patriarchs of the two series, Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, and Fin Shepard, ex-surfing champion and restauranteur. Both are men whose glory days are well past them. Lord Grantham has seen war as an officer in the British Army. He was decorated for his efforts and returned home to run his familial estate and the community that surrounds it. His life is, by comparison, rather tedious. Lord Grantham’s only responsibility is to make sure that Downton doesn’t go broke, and he’s kind of failing at it.

Fin, meanwhile, is a sports hero, whose celebrity is known only to a niche group. He now ekes out a meager living running a dive bar in Santa Monica. His life has fallen into a rut and he has no idea what to do about it. Fin is a bit lost, aimless. His life has become routine as he doles out beers and burgers to a handful of regulars. He needs something more in his life, and when the shark hits the fan, he finally has something to bring focus to his world.

By their own standards, both men are ‘just getting by.’ As both series begin these men have stagnated in their development, and are preoccupied by the needs of their families. Crawley is looking to secure the future of his estate. Both men have similar flaws. Both men are obsessed with responsibility. With no male heirs, Lord Grantham must do his best to ensure his family’s security by making sure his daughters marry well. Fin, meanwhile, despite being told numerous times that his ex-wife is not his responsibility anymore, responds to danger with an instinctual need to ensure the safety of his family. His only driving force in the first Sharknado is to get his family to a safe place.

It’s arguable that Fin’s flaw is he has no flaws. He’s constantly being referred to as ‘too good.’ The truth is, Fin doesn’t listen to anyone around him. He’s stubborn, selfish, and so desperate to reclaim his ‘hero’ status that he’ll do anything to get it. He doesn’t listen when Nova and Baz suggest safer courses of action throughout the first film, he doesn’t listen to his wife when she tells him she’s not his responsibility any more, and he doesn’t listen to science when it comes to exploding sharknados with bombs thrown from a helicopter. Sure, Lord Grantham is painted with more subtle strokes, but his flaws are eerily similar. He’s very hard to dissuade once he’s set his mind on something, and recognizes that his responsibilities extend far beyond his immediate family. As leaders, both men know that if they show signs of cracking, everyone around them will crumble and succumb to chaos.

"I'm sorry, I don't really care for sharks." — Lady Mary

Sharknado doesn’t quite have the depth of regular characters that Downton Abbey does, but there are significant overlaps. Lady Mary and Nova are both strong characters who are unsatisfied with their lives. Both seek romance in the wrong places. Both characters are restless. Both are conflicted, completely at odds with their base needs. While Nova struggles between seeking affection from and willingness to do anything for the series patriarch, Fin, Lady Mary is torn between rebellion against and devotion to both her father and her duty. Also, both ultimately come to the conclusion that they have to concede their own needs to serve the greater good. Nova steps aside so that Fin can reconnect with his true love, April, and Mary accepts her duty and recognizes that her initially loveless marriage to Matthew will save her home and community. Plus, Nova hates sharks almost as much as Lady Mary hates her sister, Edith. 

As for Lady Cora, the Countess of Grantham, and Fin’s ex and future wife, April, we have matriarchs with a unique, and somewhat anomalous characteristic as an identifier. Lady Cora is an American living among English nobility, and April has a robot-hand that’s also a secretly a chainsaw. Am I saying being an Amercian is equal to a robot-chainsaw hand? At the risk of editorializing, I am. This makes them curiosities in their respective worlds. As characters, however, both are just kind of there. Both are without any real needs or desires beyond family, and are completely defined by their relationships to others. They seem there more to serve plot than character. If either April or Lady Grantham were to die, neither series would really suffer from their loss. I’ll also point out that April does also share a very important characteristic with the wizened Lady Violet in that they represent the past. Meaning, Fin and Lord Grantham will do anything to please them.

Nobility, thy name is April.

As for their cultural significance, the fact that Downton Abbey, a melodramatic soap opera delivered with critical levels of British stiff-upper-lipped-ness, has reached pop-culture status is kind of a miracle. It’s a BBC show shown on PBS. Two things many Americans may not have heard of. Considering the first season arc revolved around the drama of whether Lady Mary would end up indescribably wealthy or just incredibly wealthy, it’s amazing it appealed to anyone who wasn’t of noble birth themselves. The fact that I watch it, having grown up on a steady diet of Spielberg films and 80s cartoons, says something to its appeal. It’s also absolutely not afraid of wholly embracing its overly-melodramatic soap opera roots for shock value (Matthew’s motorcar death in Series Three) or stunt casting for ratings (George Clooney in the Downton Abbey Christmas Special). And if there’s one thing that Sharknado can do well, it’s over-the-toppedness shock and stunt casting.  

Likewise, Sharknado is a glorious fluke. In a world of Mansquitos, and Sharktopuses, and Mega-Piranhas, there was no real reason to predict that Sharknado would have the cultural impact it has received. It caught the pop-subconsciousness and has yet to let go. It wasn’t any more special or absurd than any of the other Asylum projects at the time, but it took hold in a way that has yet to be replicated. But not for a lack of trying. Since then, they’ve been trying to recreate or force the phenomena again. My dear, Lavalantula, you can’t force virality, you can only hope to reap the benefits from it. 

Ah, you say, but there are zero sharks in Downton Abbey, so shut up. And as much as I think we’d all like to see sharks fall on Downton, I don’t think we’re ever going to get it, sadly. (But we can all quietly hope for Sharknado 4: I Said, Good Day, Sir!)

In the films, sharknados tear through the landscape without logic or reason. The first film made some effort to somewhat justify sharks in a storm. The later films, not so much. They are entropy incarnate, taking the form of weather anomalies and bitey sharks destroying everything in their path. Just like the slow chaos that threatens to eat at everything around Downton. This may seem like a thin argument, but, everything that Downton represents is tradition. History. Nobility. A man’s place at the head of his house, and a woman’s role in society. All of these things are challenged throughout the series. New thinking, new technologies, new social norms, indeed, a new Century, are all set to upset the status quo and force the inhabitants of Downton to adapt (or not) to their new conditions. Consider the pace at which Downton moves, and the challenges come at the house for all intents and purposes at machine gun — nay, tornado — speed. 

In the end, Lord Grantham, like Fin Shepard, just does his best to weather the storm with his family in tact. That universal understanding connects us all. 

76. A Wolf In the Fold

Subtlety, thy name is Star Trek

76. 'A Wolf in the Fold,' The Original Series, Season 2, Episode 14

I had almost no memory of 'A Wolf In The Fold' when I started watching it. This episode doesn't hit my list of my personal favorites from the Original series and it hasn't risen up though the ranks of pop culture consciousness in the way that, say, one with the Gorn or the Tholian Web have. So, I was able to come into this episode with relatively fresh eyes. And what we see here is the TOS taking a stab at psychological thriller with a scifi twist. Pun intended.

On an alien pleasure planet, Argelia, where Scotty is accused of murdering women. He's literally caught red-handed with a dead body in one hand and a bloody knife in the other. He has no memory of the crime, and professes his innocence. We have here a haunting coming from the mind of the man who wrote Psycho, Robert Bloch. If that is a pedigree for exploring psychological horror, I don't know what is.

As Scotty maintains his innocence despite ridiculous evidence to the contrary, the true murderer reveals itself to be an energy being that hops from host-to-host killing women and feeding off their fear to sustain itself. Scotty was just its latest vessel on the planet at it hacked it's way through the populous. It revealed itself to be an entity that has traveled from system to system, and took credit for countless murders, and had even visited earth in the past, and that's pretty much where this passable mystery to just third-act nonsense.

You see, I've been doing my best to review the Original Series for what it is, but that's not always easy. This episode had great potential. It had a great setup, flamboyant guest stars, an interesting (and edgy for the time) alien culture that mixed hedonism with mysticism. My issue here isn't with any of the usual low-hanging-fruit complaints about the series — the stylized acting, or the limitations of the budget, or the undercurrent of blatant sexism that permeates the 60s — but the inclusion of Jack the Ripper.

Seriously, every Argelian looked as if they stepped right out of a victorian-era magician's poster.

When the alien entity reveals itself as Jack the Ripper, it lost me. It's weirdly out of place, and seems only to exist to give the audience some kind of context for the entity. But it misses the mark. It's forced. And when the entity leaves its host and takes control of the Enterprise, it goes from weird to worse. A being that lives on terror and fear takes over one of the greatest military weapons ever built by human hands. But what should be terrifying comes across as silly. McCoy gets the crew so doped up to keep them from feeling fear and feeding the entity they sway and giggle at their stations. At that point, I'm just waiting it for 'A Wolf in the Fold' to end.

This is supposed to be about Scotty, but it's not. For an episode focused on the chief engineer, all we really learn about the character is that he can creepily leer at women, and doesn't really give a fig about local customs. We learn that Kirk is fiercely loyal to his crew. We learn that Spock has some weird opinions on the emotions of women. We learn that McCoy has a metric f-ton of drugs aboard the Enterprise, and is not afraid to use them.

"Hey, man, an alien murder thing has, like, control of the ship? Like, groovy, man." — Sulu

Now, I feel like I've just been bashing the Original Series in my last few reviews on this list* and I want to acknowledge that that's not really my intent. They just haven't connected with me.  I have great respect of the Original Series, its creators, its vision, its legacy, and the fictional world it created. The character dynamics of Kirk, Spock and McCoy are among the strongest, and smartest in the history of not just television, but all of storytelling.

But for this adventure, what's the message here? Trust each other? Kirk's always right? Scotty objectifies women? I'm not sure. For me, 'A Wolf in the Fold' lacks a strong central theme that elevates other classic episodes above the limitations of the show.

There are adventures of The Original Crew I love with all my heart. This just wasn't one of them.

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Next up, Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, faces her past in 'The Raven.'

*A reminder, that this isn't my list, but io9's Top 100 Episodes of Star Trek of All Time.