Star Trek: Discovery - 'What's Past is Prologue'

"Come at me, bro."

This week on Discovery, shit gets real as Lorca makes his move and Saru leads a last ditch bid to save the universe(1).

Lorca frees his captive supporters from the agony booths, including Mirror-Landry, who has of course not been savaged to death by a tardigrade. Rallying secret supporters aboard the Charon, he captures Mirror-Stamets and turns his work - a nasty set of bioweapons - against the Emperor's supporters. Michael escapes from the Emperor and is able to warn Discovery that Lorca is a Terran, while the Emperor's attempts to subdue the rebellion prove less than successful, allowing Lorca to take the throne room. Having done all he can usefully do to aid Lorca, Mirror-Stamets is summarily executed as part of an episode-long campaign to remind us that Lorca is the bad guy.

"There may come a day when the principals of Star Fleet fail, but it is not thisday!"

Stamets-Prime explains to Saru and Tilly that the Charon's big ball of glowy power is in fact a mycelial reactor, drawing power from the network and, in doing so, killing it. If the damage is not checked, the network will die and take all other life in the multiverse with it, so that would be bad. The reactor is impervious to their weapons, thanks to a containment field, and even their most photonic torpedoes would barely scratch it. Saru declares against the existence of a no-win scenario and plans are drawn: Michael joins forces with the Emperor to retake the throne room and shut down the containment field, while the torpedoes are primed with spores to massively increase their yield. This means using up all of their harvested spores, however, leaving their only hope of getting home a mad attempt to ride the detonation of the reactor.

Aided by Lorca's obsession with destiny, and with making Burnham his Empress, Burnham and Georgiou make it to the throne room, where they are able to take down the guards. Burnham refuses to kill Lorca, because Starfleet, but Georgiou has no such qualms, running him through and dropping him into the mycelial reactor for good measure. The Emperor then offers to hold off Lorca's remaining supporters until Discovery can retrieve Burnham, but at the last moment Burnham opts to grab her, so that they are both beamed to relative safety as the reactor detonates, taking out the Charon and flinging Discovery into the network. An overwhelmed Stamets is once more guided to safety by Dr Culber's voice, leading him to 'the clearing in the forest' and bringing Discovery back to its own universe.

"This is fine."

Unfortunately, they are nine months into their own futures and it looks as if the Klingons have pretty much won the war. It's also entirely possible that the Terran ISS Discovery has been jobbing around for the last nine months, trying to find a tongue for Captain Killy to lick her boots with.

Discovery continues to dangle increasingly vain hopes - this time the potential timey wimey of the mycelial network, vs. the loss of the spore stock - as well as messing with our sense of continuity - no-one in the Mirror, Mirror episode knew anything much about mirror universes or creation-critical mycelial networks, and there was no sense of a Federation recovering from near-total collapse less than nine years later. I guess one of these suggests a solution to the latter, although I am increasingly, if not contentedly, resigned to the loss of Dr Culber. Prove me wrong, Discovery; please.

This episode didn't have Shazad Latif in it at all, which is quite a come down from two of him just a couple of episodes ago, but we have Michelle Yeo back and I am sure that nothing could possibly go wrong with trying to integrate the genocidal ruler of a fascist empire into Star Fleet. This is what I mean about trying to make sure we know Lorca is the bad guy, by the way. While he is obviously an evil, manipulative motherfucker out to seize personal power and cop off with as many women(3) as he could, his cause was against an oppressive regime and who is to say that he was any worse than Georgiou? We were shown a lot of the latter's honour, against Lorca's ruthlessness, specifically to create a false moral divergence between the established and incoming fascist overlords. Notably, Emperor Georgiou didn't eat any Kelpians this episode, but I can't help feeling that Burnham would have done better by everyone to let her go down in a blaze of glory.

(1) Yeah; the damage to the mycelial network constitutes a threat to all life in the multiverse. Way to bury the lede(2).

(2) It is entirely conceivable that I just got distracted last week.

(3) Revealed as our villain, he yet remains unabashedly cis-het and white.

The Librarians - '…and the Steal of Fortune', '…and the Bleeding Crown', '…and the Graves of Time', and '…and the Disenchanted Forest'

Time for another binge of Season 4 of The Librarians, and boy howdy do we have some excitement this time out. 

Fortuna channels Cassandra's 'Honey Bear' character.

We begin with The Librarians 'and the Steal of Fortune'(1), in which Jake takes Ezekiel to visit an old buddy who trains race horses. Unfortunately for the friend, his luck has turned bad, and he is in the process of losing his last horse to the owner of the race track and casino, Bernie Konopka. Investigating, the two learn that Jake's friend is not the only one to suffer a run of bad luck, as freak accidents abound and race after race brings no winners, except for the owner of the winning horse; Bernie Konopka.

Suspecting a magical artefact, the Librarians turn out in force, but find themselves falling prey to the bad luck curse. Cassandra is sucked into playing roulette and Ezekiel the slots, losing time after time, until Cassie busts out her mega maths and Ezekiel gimmicks the machine to let him win. Ezekiel steals the suspected artefact, but it turns up a dud, while Cassie is abducted and accused of cheating. She and Jake realise at more or less the same time that Konopka's apparent arm-candy is in fact the goddess Fortuna, who has been stealing back her blessings of luck in order to return to her full power and - dare she say it - rule the world. The only way to beat her is to do as Cassie did and beat the curse, but how can you win when all luck is against you?

"It's like looking in a mirror..."

The Librarians 'and the Bleeding Crown' opens with the entire population of a small town becoming old overnight. The Librarians encounter Darrington Dare, a Librarian from the 1880s who was a huge inspiration to Flynn, and appears to have been pulled forward in time in pursuit of his nemesis, wizard and cloning pioneer Ambrose Gethick (played by The Musketeers' Howard Charles.) Dare is an effortlessly capable polymath, but has no time for friends and comrades, matching it to a secondary theme in '...and the Steal of Fortune', that Librarians can't have a normal life. Indeed, Dare tells Flynn that, with the extraordinary threat of Apep now past, it is his duty to dismiss the other Librarians lest a civil war break out, as once happened, resulting in the ignorance and superstition of the Dark Ages.

Dare and Flynn track down Gethick, who turns out to have captured Eve and the other Librarians in order to drain the Library's own power from them using the Bleeding Crown of Elizabeth Bathory to destroy Dare, who is impervious to all other magic. With the empowered Gethick too much for them, Flynn turns to his friends, getting the immortal Jenkins to overcharge the crown and causing Gethick to explode. Dare leaves and, contrary to prior history, connects with friends to live a long and happy life, but leaves a note for Flynn telling him he must still dismiss the other Librarians.

In an episode which might as well have been called The Guardians 'and the
Graves of Time'.

In The Librarians 'and the Graves of Time', Eve tracks down Nicole Noone, who is in pursuit of a group of Eastern European heavies who are breaking into her graves - she having been forced to 'die' from time to time in order to conceal her immortality - to steal artefacts. The rest of the team eventually join them, but then are split up, leaving Flynn and Nicole in pursuit of 'Koschei's Needle', a weapon which can kill anyone with a single wound, and even take the life of an immortal. The rest of the team wind up in the hands of the heavies and their boss - played by one-hit wonder Chris Heyerdahl - who tells them that he is the last descendent of the Romanovs, who were destroyed by Rasputin using sorcery taught to him by Noone.

The team go after Noone and Flynn, but it turns out that the supposed Romanov is in fact Rasputin himself, and that it was to kill him - not, as feared, Galahad - that Noone wanted the Needle. Noone is stabbed, but Eve and Flynn dummy Rasputin into stabbing a pipe full of radioactive waste, which the Needle - which turns out to be a kind of vampiric dagger - conducts into Rasputin until he explodes, which appears to be becoming a theme. To save Noone and make amends for misjudging her, Jenkins transfers his immortality to her, rendering him mortal once more. As if this were not enough of an upset, Flynn resigns from the Library, in order that there should be at least one fewer potential combatants in a Library Civil War. Of course, this upsets the planned binding ceremony between Flynn, Eve and the Library, and I wonder if Jenkins won't end up bound to restore his immortality and leave the others free(ish).

While '...and the Graves of Time' provided some important plot stuff, it felt
sooo good to get back to the ensemble after a Flynn-heavy couple of
episodes.

Anyway, all this melodrama leaves a somewhat shaken team at the top of The Librarians 'and the Disenchanted Forest'. With each one convinced that the others should step down if anyone has to, Eve takes them to a team building camp where weird things happen. The idyllic rural retreat proves to be rife with disappearances, and while Eve tried to ignore the potential cracks in her team, Jake becomes one of them. Cassandra tries to live out the summer camp pranks she has seen in movies, much to the annoyance of Ezekiel, but the come together - along with a team of DOSA agents - to seek out and rescue Jake, at least partially restoring their team mojo.

It turns out that the forest is at the heart of all forests. The tree spirits have been protecting it, while the owner of the camp has been covering up the disappearances as people quitting. Destroying the heart tree would doom all forests, but with Jake's linguistic gifts the tree is able to communicate this. It entrusts a 'zero seed' to Eve, and the DOSA agent in charge offers permanent 'Area 51 status'. Jake then shows a journalist he has become close to the Library and explains that she can't talk about it, and that he can't be with her, putting him at the top of the list if there is to be a singular Librarian at the end of this.

So, it's all change this season, and honestly there's an end of an era/series finale sort of vibe going on. No word on a fifth season yet, and there are two episodes as yet unaired anywhere, but I would not be surprised if this was it for out intrepid bibliophiles. If so, it's been a good run, and I'm glad it seems to be going out on a high, with some strong episodes in this run, and a strong thematic spine of renewal and change.

(1) Actually the second episode of the series, but shuffled around to allow '...and the Christmas Thief' to be shown at Christmas.

The Punisher - '3am' and 'Two Dead Men'

Beards.

After the disappointment of Iron Fist and the frankly mixed results of The Defenders, I'm heading back to the streets of the MCU rather later than most, with Jon Bernthal reprising his dark horse role as Frank 'Punisher' Castle. I'm watching this with my partner's husband, and as he hadn't seen Daredevil Season 2 I got him to watch the graveyard monologue before we started, and it reminded me just how powerful that performance was.

After finishing off the last members of the gangs whose crossfire killed his family, Frank gets a job in demolitions, dulling the screams of his ghosts with the relentless crack of hammer on concrete. He rebuffs the friendship of new boy Donny and antagonism of the regulation-issue workplace bullies, only really opening up - and that barely - to Curtis, a former comrade who runs a group where veterans talk about their feelings of alienation and fears of the liberal oppression of the Christian right.

 

He's such a round-faced woobie that you want to trust him, which makes me
think even more that he's evil.

Homeland Security Agent Dinah Madani is assigned to the New York office after a stint in Afghanistan, where her local partner was killed. She believes that the killers were corrupt US military personnel; possibly Castle's old regiment under Colonel Schoonover. Her hard-ass boss tells her not to pursue this case, so he's probably involved, while her new partner, serially disgraced agent Sam Stein is supportive, so he's either involved or he's too honest for this world and things are going to go badly for him. He's not a goodhearted African-American of a certain age, so I'm leaning towards the former(1). She's pursuing Billy Russo, another former comrade, but unlike Curtis one actively connected to Castle's black ops days.

Frank comes out of retirement after Donny is sucked into a stick-up gang formed of the other construction workers. Totally inexperienced, he drops his driver's license in front of their mob targets, and Castle is forced to step in rather than let the others kill him, taking out first the stick up gang, and then the members of the mob poker game. Unfortunately, this brings him to the attention of a hacker going by the name of Micro, who contacts him with vague hints that the deaths of his family were related to his own actions in Afghanistan.

A world of beards.

To track down Micro, Frank enlists the aid of Karen Page, who points him at the family of a supposedly dead NSA analyst called David Leiberman. Leiberman gives Castle a disc containing footage of his unit torturing and killing Madani's partner in Afghanistan, which leads Castle to capture and question Madani's boss, learning that people do want him dead, and that the entire carousel massacre was just one of those attempts. Castle also spooks Micro by visiting his home, and is able to follow him to his base of operations and take him prisoner.

The Punisher continues to beat the odds for me, by making the Punisher not only a sympathetic character, but a compelling one, largely thanks to Bernthal's relentlessly intense performance. In this series, we have a chance to see the man before the Punisher, and to see that that man was also flawed, already wired for too much aggression for civilian life, and the series makes a strong attempt to portray the inner as well as outer effects of Frank's PTSD and brain damage(2). Unlike the other inhabitants of the MCU noir, I really can't see romance on the horizon for Frank, and I'll be more than usually disappointed if it shows up.

THE FEELS!

We've had relatively little action so far, but I expect that to change. In terms of new characters, Micro is an interesting contrast to Frank(3), having 'lost' his family not through their deaths but through his, and now separated from them by a computer screen and a persistent threat. Madani is a cookie cutter tough cop so far, a bit like Misty Knight with a few sliders moved around, but she's got a lot of room to grow and we're not really going to get to know her until she crosses paths with Frank.

(1) The pattern of previous shows, what I call the Urich-Clemons-Pops axis, bodes ill for Curtis, a good-hearted African-American, if a little younger than previous victims.

(2) It's easy to forget as he ably demolishes half a dozen opponents, or outfoxes a senior intelligence agent, but some of Frank's confusion - he has memory flashes which mix his wife's death with aspects of his black ops work - is due to having a bullet lodged in his brain.

(3) They are the 'Two Dead Men' referenced in the episode title, and compared to the predeceased duelists in the nonsense poem of the same name.

Star Trek: Discovery - 'Vaulting Ambition'

"Look at the size of that thing!"
"Yes, Jamie; it is a big one."

In the Mirror Universe, Burnham is summoned to bring Lorca to the Imperial Palace, a colossal starship called ISS Charon which is apparently powered by some sort of artificial sun (because apparently, despite having a fleet largely consisting of precise duplicates, decor notwithstanding, of the Federation Starfleet, the Terran Empire has made mad gains in the field of really fucking huge starships.) While the summons is their excuse, Burnham also needs to go on another data search to look for the original Defiant files, since the ones on the Shenzhou are heavily redacted(1). She gives Lorca a custom analgesic, designed to insulate against the effects of an agoniser, which is just as well. The Emperor welcomes her foster daughter, invites her to 'choose a Kelpian,' and sends Lorca to Cell Block C; the worst of all the cell blocks.

Sooo awkward.

Over a meal of tasty, tasty Kelpian(2), the Emperor tells Burnham that she knows she was Lorca's accomplice, forcing Burnham to come clean about the whole 'parallel universe' thing. This triggers the Emperor, who knows what the Federation is, to murder basically her entire ruling council. She reveals that the Defiant files wouldn't be any use to Discovery's crew on account of interphasic space throwing them through time and driving them all completely insane(3), but offers to trade the spore drive specs for the files and the freedom of the entire crew. Nevertheless, the Emperor keeps Lorca stuck in an agoniser booth.

Back on the Discovery, Tyler/Voq is literally tearing himself apart. Saru puts him in the cell with L'Rell to break through her warrior stoicism about sacrifice and prompt her to don a pair of laser mind-fuck gauntlets(4) to fix his persona, although as his last words before lapsing into unconsciousness are a Klingon prayer in English, I guess the jury is out on which way he's fixed; perhaps a blending of the two?

Also in brain-fix city, the two Stamets compare notes. Mirror Stamets was trapped in the mycelial network while working on a project aboard the Charon, but obviously not a spore drive. When Stamets accessed the network, Mirror Stamets was able to contact him, giving him flashes of the Mirror Universe, and now wants his help to get out of the network, before he is consumed by a toxic element sweeping through it. Culber appears, sadly not trapped in the network, but somehow preserved there, past death, to warn Stamets that his Mirror double is responsible for the damage and the toxic element. With Culber's support, Stamets wakes up, causing his double to wake on the Charon, and discovers that the fungus forest is dying.

He is evil, after all. That's... slightly disappointing.

Lorca is double-tortured by a Terran officer who is pissed that he seduced and abandoned his sister. He's demanding that Lorca say his sister's name, but of course he doesn't know it, except OH FUCKING SNAP! Emperor Giorgiou reveals that lighting is all muted and sinister in the Mirror Universe because Terrans are more sensitive to light(5), just like Lorca, who busts out and kills his torturer even as Burnham realises that he has been the Mirror version all along, and that his whole deal has been aimed at getting her to the Mirror Universe, in order to use her to get into the Imperial Palace.

Now, I admit, I didn't see that one coming, but it does make perfect sense, so props for that. Presumably, he must have been working with Mirror Stamets to have escaped through the mycelial network to the aftermath of the Battle of the Binary Stars, although I wonder if Mirror Stamets wasn't working on either the Tantalus field from Mirror, Mirror, or an attempt to duplicate it, which would explain his introduction of a destructive element into the mycelial network.

"And then I will kill all of you with a fidget spinner."

On the question of Culber, I'm still mad, and saddened that it looks like he won't be returning, save perhaps in the network. I'm on the fence whether this is a case of burying the gays, since Discovery's push for diversity makes it pretty much a given that significant deaths will be of minorities (especially now that the sole cishet male of note turns out to be an evil Mirror Universe wannabe despot whose reasons for choosing Saru as his first officer are now highly suspect(6),) but I am pretty pissed off that Culber has been shoved in the fridge; killed off not as part of his story, but of Stamets', and his ghost moved into the magical negro mould. On the other hand, I'm a cishet white guy, so I'm not going to be laying down the law about what's wrong with this death of gay African American Hugh Culber.

To finish on a more positive note, as I appreciated that Captain Killy did not owe her position in any way to sex or wiles, based on past use of the Mirror Universe, it was pleasing to see the relationship between Burnham and Giorgiou very definitely one of mother and daughter. Yes, Mirror Burnham was both Lorca's protégé and lover, but the sleaze factor is way down from DS9's cavalcade of glamorous lesbians(7), and the focus very much on the ruthless political machinations.

(1) So glad we had a week and a half looking for those.

(2) This is going to make for some awkward conversations.

(3) Time well spent.

(4) LMFGs for short.

(5) Which is some snarky metahumour right there.

(6) Although this ought not to be seen as a reflection on Saru, who is being pretty awesome as acting captain.

(7) This was literally the cleverest phrasing I could come up with. It's been a long week.

Star Trek: Discovery - 'The Wolf Inside'

Between a Voq and a head case.

Since everyone else probably watched the latest episode of Discovery last night, I'd best review the second part of the Mirror arc, 'The Wolf Inside', before I hit 'Vaulting Ambition' tomorrow.

Dr Culber was still dead, to begin with. I'm still not happy about that.

Burnham is also in a pickle, being forced to spend days swaggering about the ISS Shenzhou, banging Tyler, getting bathed by Mirror Saru, and presiding over executions which seem so routine that it's amazing the ship has any crew left at all, while she looks for a way to get the data on the Defiant to Discovery. It's established that she can't transmit it, because it would take up too much bandwidth, and can't decrypt it locally without tipping her hand. I'm pretty sure they had a plan to get them off the Shenzhou, which could presumably be expanded to include, you know, a thumbstick, but that might be giving them too much credit at this point.

Then orders come down from the Emperor in person, instructing Burnham to saturation bomb a planet where the Klingon leader of the resistance, known as the Fire Wolf, is hiding. Instead, Burnham opts to go special ops with Tyler, ostensibly to get the intel which will let the Empire eradicate the resistance, but actually to tip their hand and let the rebels escape, while also learning how such an alliance of different races could be possible. They let themselves be captured and are taken to meet the Fire Wolf, an albino Klingon called Voq, son of None. Voq preaches a creed of acceptance to survive; his followers fight together, since the alternative is to die apart. This finally sparks off the core of Tyler that is still the regular universe version of Voq, to whom it is better to die if that is the only way to remain Klingon.

Behold, the goatee!

Back on the Discovery, Tilly tries to use the spores to regenerate Stamets' misfiring brain. It fails, and Saru pulls the plug when the rest of Stamets' body starts to shut down, but something happens and Stamets appears to connect with his mirror duplicate in the forest of his own brain.

Thanks to Voq's 'prophet' - Mirror Sarek - Burnham is able to win his trust, but Tyler lashes out at his alternate, precipitating a confrontation in which he admits to being a Klingon infiltrator. Burnham wants to believe that he was brainwashed, but then he drops the bomb that he murdered Culber - a fact Saru was hiding from her - and only the intervention of slave-Saru saves her. Tyler is condemned to be transported into space for incompetently attempted assassination(1) and Burnham manages to get him picked up by the Discovery in order to use him as a mule for the thumb drive (and to prove that Star Fleet is still above summary execution, at least when Lorca is still in the agoniser.

And then the Emperor shows up and nukes the planet from orbit - it's the only way to be sure - before the resistance have time to evacuate(2). Oh, and the Emperor is Philippa Georgiou; with a sword(4).

"I will space walk over there and cut you."

So, this week was a proper kick in the head for Burnham, who lost her tether to humanity when the only man she has ever loved turned out to be a Klingon zealot, but I admit I was struggling to care after last week's slap in the face. I'm still hopeful that something will come up - Tilly explicitly referred to the spores bridging life and death - but it would be hard to actually bring Culber back from beyond without taking all the sting out of death. The other thing to remember is that, although they have basically buried 50% of Trek's out gay characters in a single blow, it would be hard to kill of anyone in Discovery without hitting a minority. There was rage that tough, female POC characters were being introduced just to be killed, but at the time they were all the tough characters there were. I'm not saying that there isn't a problem - burying the gays has been a serious issue for many, many years - but at least Discovery has enough representation that we can say that it's complicated. There really is just the one cis-het white man in the series, and I can't help but feel that it's significant, and deliberate, that he's the morally dubious, Teflon-coated authority figure.

(1) I am really not sure what distinguishes a culpable act of mutiny from a legitimate promotion opportunity in the Imperial Star Fleet, besides success.

(2) Possibly? I mean, if I were the resistance, I would not be looking to get out on the dot at the moment agreed with a Terran officer, however many goateed(3) Vulcans said she was okay.

(3) It's often overlooked, but the one with the goatee in the original 'Mirror, Mirror' episode was Spock, who was relatively speaking a decent bloke.

(4) Fun fact: Michelle Yeo basically designed her own sword, because no-one else on the production crew knew as much about swords.

The Librarians - '... and the Dark Secret', '... and the Christmas Thief' and '... and the Silver Screen'

I don't think proper priests do like this.

What's that you say? A new season of The Librarians? I don't mind if I do.

We begin this series with 'The Librarians and the Dark Secret', in which a group of bad, bad Catholics(1) calling themselves the Order of Shadows, and devoted to destroying the Library in order to snuff out reason and learning, and bring about a new Dark Age. They have found a map which shows the locations of the four cornerstones of the original Library of Alexandria, which can be used to tear down the current incarnation of the Library. The Librarians' only hope is a secret Jenkins has been keeping from everyone; a prisoner held in the Library after seeking to destroy it. That prisoner is Nicole Noone, Flynn's first Guardian, thought dead but actually displaced in time. Can they trust Noone now, or is she pursuing a grudge of her own against the Library - and perhaps the Librarian - that never came to bring her back?

It's possible some of the Joneses may be adopted.

There might be some mucking with the order of episodes again, as we seem to have skipped '...and the Steal of Fortune' to get to 'The Librarians and the Christmas Thief' in time for the season. In this episode, we meet Ezekiel's family of thieves. Devotees of a figure called the Saint of Thieves, they celebrate the holiday of Thankstaking, and all look down on Ezekiel for his failure to steal anything worthwhile, since his dedication to moral thievery and now to his Library commitments prevents him doing the kind of stealing that they respect. As with many episodes focusing on this most superficial of the Librarians, it is one of the deeper and most emotional episodes, as any time you scratch the surface of Ezekiel the hidden depths just gush out and smack you in the feels.

'...and the Dark Secret' is arc led, but '...and the Christmas Thief' is character driven, and the better for it. As ever, John Kim digs deep to convince us that, for all his smarts, he would be willing to risk everything by showing his mother the Library. He does also get the chance to be recognised as one of the greatest thieves in the world, to defeat the Saint of Thieves, and make his mother and Santa Claus proud. The Librarians also have to 'borrow' Santa's sleigh to retrieve the magic door from Ezekiel's mother, which is really the sort of thing that lies at the heart of how much I love this series.

Also,I love noir.

Similarly, '...and the Silver Screen' does one of my favourite things and traps our heroes in a work of fiction. Eve and Flynn's date ends up with them trapped in one of her favourite noir classics. They try to follow the plot along to the end in order to escape - because this is The Librarians; of course they have protocols for this sort of thing - but it doesn't work, leading them to wonder if the film actually ends the way it was supposed to. That's a fascinating exploration of authorial intent right there. 

Also, the junior Librarians get trapped in a western trying to help, then wind up in a scifi B-movie, both of which are huge fun, before stumbling into the noir thriller to save the day with lassos and rayguns.

I found '...and the Dark Secret' to be a bit of a wobbly start, but the stand-alone episodes - in as much as The Librarians have actual stand-alone elements; traditionally, everything links in the end - were superb, not least because they moved Flynn back out of the limelight to let the junior team do their stuff. I don't hate Flynn, but I've grown to love the team, and our opener this year was very much about Flynn and his relationship with Noone. It also took out John Noble's dubious monsignor a little too quickly - few things are better for losing John Noble, although Sleepy Hollow certainly got worse, if not for keeping him around too long then for reasons relating to it - which means that the Order of Shadows and the Keystones probably aren't the arc plot. Which does beg the question what, if anything, is?

Oh, right! Flynn and Eve marrying the Library.

(1) No real priest would go around stabbing construction workers, or being played by John Noble(2).
(2) It is entirely possible, even likely, that John Noble would play a brilliant priest.

Star Trek: Discovery - 'Despite Yourself'

"You are walking through a red forest and the grass is tall. It’s just rained.
Most of the blood has washed away."

And we're back, with the first post-break episode of Discovery.

Following up on last episode's cliffhanger, the crew of Discovery realise that they are where they should be, but sans starbase and surrounded by wrecked Klingon vessels. After they are attacked by a Vulcan ship, they come to the realisation that they are in an alternate universe; the mirror universe, where the Terran Empire is the dominant power in the alpha quadrant and Star Fleet promotion is via dead men's boots(1). Fortunately, they are able to grab a data core and learn before things get embarrassing and/or lethal that in this universe, Lorca is a fugitive after apparently murdering Burnham, who was the captain of the Shenzhou, and that the Discovery is commanded by none other than Sylvia 'Captain Killy' Tilly.

The first half of the episode is pretty light, as the crew redecorate the ship to look like its MU counterpart - assumed to have been transposed into the regular universe when Discovery accidentally unlocked the interdimensional axis of the mycelial network(2) - and Tilly taps into her inner bitch queen from hell. Unfortunately, all is not laughs and light, as Culber struggles to treat Stamets, whose over-exposure to the spore drive has left him pale-eyed and largely unresponsive. In addition, Tyler's fugues are not helped by L'Rell using a Klingon prayer to try to help him 'remember who he really is.'

"She's like a twisted version of everything I've ever aspired to be.
I'm gonna have nightmares about myself now."

Finding references to the visit of the USS Defiant, Burnham suggests that details of that visit could give them a clue how to get back without the spore drive. To get these records, she plans to board the Shenzhou, announce that rumours of her death were greatly exaggerated in order to allow her to capture Lorca, present him as a bounty and retake command. Then she can access the secure files aboard the Shenzhou and it's home for tea and crumpets (and to hand over the critical anti-cloaking equations.) Tyler will act as Burnham's bodyguard, since he has no known MU counterpart - funny that - and he desperately tries to get Dr Culber to find out what was done to him without getting pulled from duty. Alas, Culber learns that Tyler has undergone extensive bone reshaping, and Tyler kills him.

Not going to lie to you, I am not happy about this. There's been a lot of backlash against Culber's death, since he's both an excellent character and one of the few who straight up butts heads with Lorca over his dodgier decisions, and one half of what is a) the franchise's first on-ship gay couple, and b) the most adorable couple on the Disco(3). I'm not happy for both these reasons, although I will allow that the high level of representation on the series - there are only one and a half cishet white men in regular speaking roles and one of them is an alien - means that minority characters will catch a fair percentage of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune(4). Now, After Trek insists that he is 'not 100% dead', so since they've ruled out his mirror version I'm thinking some sort of fungus-based or even tardigrade miracle cure for a snapped neck, but I guess we'll find out.

Damnit.

Anyhugh. Tilly threatens to rip a man's tongue out and use it to lick her own boots, and thus Burnham is placed aboard the Shenzhou, where she is forced to allow Lorca to be placed in an agoniser booth and then to kill her replacement as captain(5) when he tries to protect his promotion. What with one thing and another, she's kept super busy until late in the day, at which point she retires to her cabin to get all The Bodyguard with her bodyguard(6), while Lorca frankly languishes.

So, it would appear that we were right about Tyler. Shazad Latif is a good enough actor and a big enough woobie that you still feel bad for his confusion and pain, just a lot less bad than you do for Culber suffering the fate of those who are too clever for their billing. I wait to be convinced on that one, because right now it felt like a shock for shock's sake, which is a bad reason to kill anyone, let alone to traverse the perilous waters of killing your gays.

For the future, we have the aftermath of Cuber's death to explore, the way back to the main universe, whatever damage the Witch of Wurna Minor may have done, and the mystery identity of the Terran Emperor, the anonymity of which has been referenced so often that we can't possibly go home without a shocking reveal.

(1) Or dead women's boots, because thankfully there are no 'captain's women' in this incarnation of the MU, just captains and women, often both at once. Possibly this is a result of the Constitution-class USS Defiant making a time-slipped journey to the MU and encountering the Enterprise NX-01, and Hoshi Sato subsequently overthrowing her male colleagues.

(2) I'm starting to realise why no-one ever replicated the spore drive.

(3) A title they were unlikely to lose so long as Tilly remained single, and even then with anyone currently on the ship.

(4)My next essay on fan reaction is totally going to be called 'The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fandom.'

(5) A fresh-faced youth whose alternate she had to watch die in the brig in the two-part opener.

(6) Apparently this too is time she couldn't be spending retrieving the information from the secure terminal which, presumably, the captain has in her cabin.

Watch with Father: Julie's Greenroom

Sometimes, a series comes along that is pretty much just what you want your child to be watching, and then sometimes a series comes along that is what you never knew you needed your child to be watching. If you'd asked me what I wanted Arya to be watching a month ago, I probably wouldn't have shot for a diverse group of Muppet children and a duck attending an all-star series of performing arts workshops led by Julie Andrews(1), and yet here comes Julie's Greenroom, and it is glorious.

Ms Julie and her stage manager, Gus, run a performing arts centre with a prestigious youth 'Greenroom' workshop. When a burst pipe destroys the prop collection, the latest workshop group set out to create their own original musical using what they learn in a series of masterclasses given by the Greenroom's alumni. The latter group includes Idina Menzel, Glee! alumnus and author Chris Colfer, baritone Josh Groban(2), Alec Baldwin, ballet dancers Robert Fairchild and Tyler Peck(3), Sara Bareilles, Ellie Kemper and Tituss Burgess, violinist Joshua Bell, and David Hyde Pierce. There are also appearances from Stomp, Cirque de Soleil and a visit to the set of Wicked.

The 'Greenies' are performed by veteran Henson puppeteers, including Stephanie D'Abruzzo, John Tartaglia and Jennifer Barnhart, three of the four Sesame Street performers who originated the puppet roles in Avenue Q(4). The characters are diverse in many ways, including: Hank, a paraplegic pianist and sports fan; Peri, a theatre buff and drama queen from a rich family; Fizz, a young Hispanic girl; Spike, an African-American linguaphile; and technophile Riley. Riley is most interesting for what she isn't quite. She is identified, when unavoidable, as female, but lacks any distinctive gender coding. With production crew suggesting that Riley is likely to self-identify as non-binary at some point, I'm not sure why they didn't just go for it.

There's also Hugo. He's a duck.

Through their workshops, the Greenies learn about various aspects of the performing arts, including technical skills like costume design and harmony singing, as well as more personal lessons, such as the importance of practice, or that ballet isn't just for girls and waterfowl. In episode 2, when Spike feels unequal to the task of being a writer because he's never seen a writer who looks like him, everyone sings a song about the importance of diverse voices. Peri learns that being cast as the ogre instead of the princess isn't a slight, and Fizz learns the importance of practice. Hank learns to dance, and Riley learns that the technical and creative are not mutually exclusive.

You know what it is? It's like if Julie Andrews took over the Muppet theatre and ran a class for Sesame Street characters, and exactly as awesome as that sounds. The only problem is that there are only thirteen half-hour episodes and no sign of a season 2, alas.

(1) Who is also credited as creator of the show. I also imagine it didn't hurt when it came to attracting guest stars. "You've had an offer to do a show with Julie Andrews and Muppets," probably isn't a tough sell.

(2) I may have to forgive him for his butchering of 'Evermore' in the end credits of Beauty and the Beast.

(3) They make a lot of their 'fairytale marriage', so I imagine a lot of parents may end up having tricky conversations about how they separated a few months after the show came out.

(4) A poster for which appears in the greenroom itself.

Doctor Who - 'Twice Upon a Time'

"A life this long – do you understand what it is? It’s a battlefield, like this one… and it’s empty. Because everyone else has fallen."

This review will contain spoilers

The Doctor has fall, which means that it is time to rise again. But what if it isn't? What if this time it's the end?

In the frozen landscape of the Antarctic, the Doctor comes face to face with his past, and with his future. Time stands still - literally - and a dead man walking enters the field. What is the Testament? Is that really Bill Potts? Could it be time for a Dalek to do something productive? And is the universe finally big enough and old enough to look after itself?

The Good

Once more, the show displays the grasp of who (if you will) the Doctor is that has been eluding it since the regeneration into Capaldi.

David Bradley is a superb First Doctor, complete with horrendously outdated attitudes and pre-heroic grumpiness.

Both Bradley and Capaldi get a more dignified sort of end than Tennant ever did, even if Twelve does manage to wreck the TARDIS up as badly as Ten did during his Regeneration.

I love the fact that the villains turn out to be anything but, and also the fact that they didn't resurrect Bill.

The Bad

I know it was Twelve who wrecked the TARDIS, but you just know people are having a field day with the Thirteenth Doctor starting her innings by crashing the vehicle (like no Doctor every did that before(1).)

Oh, yay; it's Clara. I mean, not actual Clara, but now I have to remember that she's still out there, Mary Suing her way around the cosmos.

I wasn't convinced by Ben and Polly.

The Ugly

Nothing to report.

"Oh, brilliant!"

Theorising

Okay, so Thirteen seems to be starting the same way Eleven did, with a crash and presumably a period of recovery. I look forward to seeing how she handles whatever the world below has to throw at her.

Top Quotes

First Doctor: Well. I assumed, I'd get... younger.

Twelfth Doctor: I am younger!

"Technically, that is your TARDIS. It’s about 70 feet that way, see? Always remember where you parked, it’s going to come up a lot." - The Twelfth Doctor

First Doctor: What’s so important about one captain?

Twelfth Doctor: Everybody’s important to somebody, somewhere.

First Doctor: You’ve saved him!

Twelfth Doctor: Both of them. Never hurts – a couple fewer dead people on the battlefield.

First Doctor: So that’s what it means to be a doctor of war.

Twelfth Doctor: You were right, you know. The universe generally fails to be a fairy tale… but that’s where we come in!

"Don’t die. Because if you do, I think everybody in the universe might just go cold." - Nardole

"Oh, brilliant!" - The Thirteenth Doctor

Verdict

Yep; I'll take this. The interplay between Bradley and Capaldi is perfect, and I have far more respect for these two Doctors' determination not to regenerate than I did for the Tenth Doctor's.

I wish this was a longer review, but it's been almost a fortnight. Christmas turns out to be a busy time with a family.

Rating - 8/10

(1) Three began by being dropped on Earth with a TARDIS that didn't work at all. Five's innings began with jettisoning most of the interior dimensions, including the critical Zero Room. Seven was dragged out of the TARDIS unconscious by the Rani's Tetraps. The War Doctor Regenerated after crashing on Karn. Ten wrecked the TARDIS for Eleven pretty much exactly as Twelve did for Thirteen. And that's ignoring intra-Regeneration crashes.

Watch with Father: The Highway Rat

It's been a couple of years since the mind-shattering horror of Stick Man, so it must be time for another Julia Donaldson/Axel Scheffler adaptation. This time, it's Donaldson's take on Alfred Noyes much-studied-at-GCSE poem 'The Highwayman', The Highway Rat.

The mean and selfish Highway Rat steals food from travellers, fattening himself at the expense of the other animals, even on food that he doesn't really want. At last, with the entire country suffering, a brave duck risks all to trick the villain and reclaim what has been stolen. The story borrows its tempo and rhyming scheme from the Noyes verse, but omits a lot of the death, gun violence, sex, assault and suicide in favour of rapier flourishing, food theft and some subterranean soul-searching (the latter primarily added, wordlessly, in the adaptation.) The TV version features the usual cavalcade of star voices, with Rob Brydon on narrative duty and David Tennant in native Scots mode as the titular thief.

For my money, The Highway Rat lacks the charm of The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo's Child, the warmth of Room on the Broom, and the soul-shattering horror of Stick Man. Perhaps because it is so closely modelled on 'The Highwayman', it lacks a certain vitality that marks Donaldson's work out from the crowd(1). It's still good fun, and even second tier Donaldson/Scheffler animation is a Christmas treat, but I'm hoping for Tabby McTat or A Squash and a Squeeze in two years' time.

My daughter, on the other hand, loved it, which is probably what matters.

(1) I find the same with her The Further Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat, which is technically excellent, but still feels more like superior fan fiction than its own thing.