Star Trek: Lower Decks “No Small Parts”

Wherein I watch episode 10 of Star Trek: Lower Decks, entitled “No Small Parts”.

The CBS Synopsis: “Season finale. The USS Cerritos encounters a familiar enemy. Tendi helps a struggling recruit find her footing.”

Pre-Show Thoughts:

• It’s the season finale already? Isn’t this episode ten? Maybe ten is the magic number nowadays — ST:Picard was similarly short.
• A familiar enemy? I recall no enemies on this show, unless we’re broadly referring to “the Romulans”, or “those crystal-worshipping cavepeople with starships”. Certainly no one that would give me a Khan! moment.

The Good:

• Not only does this week’s guest appearance offset any negative… it’s so awesome it even makes me forget about 1/5th of the stupid things from earlier in the series.
• Captain Freeman(?) and Ensign Mariner seem to have come to understand one another, and look like they’ll actually work together.
• Boimler ends the episode with some confidence and respect.
• There’s no point continuing to mention the steady flow of continuity nods in the show — these are clearly part of the Lower Decks identity.

The Bad:

• Even though they’ve gone easy on the Mariner-Boimler pairing in recent episodes, seeing them together in this episode is instantly annoying.
• An otherwise great ending sequence is marred by a very dark gag. (At least, I assume it was a gag.)

Post-Show Thoughts:

On the whole, Star Trek: Lower Decks went out on a surprisingly good sequence of episodes — unexpectedly good when judged against its abysmal beginning.

I’ve said before that “Lower Decks” seems less like canon Star Trek, and more like a goofy holodeck adventure the real Starfleet officers might enjoy while off-duty. This episode still feels cartoonish, but there’s nothing in the storyline that couldn’t have happened in the “real” Trekverse.

For a spoiler-heavy summary, keep reading.

How I Thought ST:Picard Would End

It’s been a few months since Star Trek: Picard ended its first season. Though the show started off promising (in my opinion), the second half of the season disappointed.

But it’s easier to criticize than create, so I thought I’d look at the season finale, with a view toward what I would have done differently.

(This will obviously include spoilers for the first season of Star Trek: Picard.)

Scott Pilgrim’s Seven Exes

Scott Pilgrim. All images from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 2010, Universal Pictures.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. That classic 2010 Edgar Wright movie based on the graphic novel by Bryan O’Malley.

If you’ve never seen this visual feast of a movie (and I highly recommend that you do), its plot revolves around the titular loser Scott Pilgrim (played by Michael Cera), a ladykiller wannabe and bassist for the band Sex Bob-Omb, trying to win the affections of Ramona by battling her seven evil exes.

In battling these evil exes, Scott must face uncomfortable truths about his would-be girlfriend’s past — and his own inadequacies. But I don’t want to talk about the seven exes of Ramona in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Instead, I want to talk about the seven exes of Scott Pilgrim himself, because while Scott repeatedly makes a fuss over Ramona’s “seven evil ex-boyfriends”, he conveniently overlooks the fact that he has as many exes as Ramona.

(For anyone wondering, I’m referring only to the film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and not to the graphic novel series on which the film is based.)

Star Trek Picard: 5 Big Questions

We’re now five episodes into Star Trek: Picard. I’ll admit the show is darker and more murdery than I would like, but we’re now deep enough into the new show’s mythology that some big questions have been raised.

In my mind, here are the five biggest questions that may (or may not) be answered by the end of the season.

Star Trek Picard: O Captain! My Captain!

Star Trek Picard, episode 1, is free to watch on YouTube (for US customers) for a limited time. If this image is broken, it’s probably already gone.

The first two episodes of Star Trek: Picard are now out (on CBS All Access for US viewers, elsewhere for the rest of the world).

And from the first moment of the first episode, we loyal, long-time fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation are treated to the warm amber glow of nostalgia… yet also a strange new world.

Warning: Indiscriminate spoilers for Episode 1 “Remembrance”.

Top 5 Star Trek TNG Episodes

(That miss most top 10 lists.)

Lately I’ve been nostalgic for the Star Trek series of my childhood, that is, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Maybe it’s the recent announcement of the new Star Trek: Picard series. Or perhaps because of The Orville, a TV series that is a spiritual successor, loving homage, or blatant ripoff of TNG. (Opinions vary.)

Whatever the reason, I’ve been rewatching some old favorites of mine, and noticed a few that fail to make the top lists. So here (confusingly) is my list of top Star Trek TNG episodes that don’t make the top lists.

Four Rules of Phaser Safety

Or, Are Star Trek Phasers Sentient?

Anyone who has handled firearms in the modern era is probably familiar with the four rules of gun safety. But as our technology gets smarter, will the rules change?

Star Trek: The Next Generation showed us a future with warp drives and transporters, androids, replicators, and all sorts of futuristic technologies. In the midst of these technological advancements, what does their weapons-handling tell us?

4 Ways to Save the World from an Alien Invasion

It’s the end of the world as we know it. Martian war tripods have been spotted just outside of Surrey. In New York and Washington, enormous saucers 15 miles wide hover menacingly over the Independence Day holiday preparations. A Dalek fleet approaches from one direction; a Borg Cube from the other.

In short, we’re so screwed. The super-advanced civilization that could stomp us out like ants appears poised to do just that.

In last week’s episode of The Orville (spoilers follow)…

A Year of VSS365

A little over a year ago, my New Year’s resolution was to write more. And in particular, I challenged myself to participate in VSS365 every day in 2018.

The outcome? I did it. 2018 is over (hooray), and I posted a VSS365-tagged tweet each day. Not all of them were good, and I may have cheated a couple times early-on by doubling-up after missing a day, but…

Assuming on average I filled up half a tweet (140 of 280 characters), then for an average word length of 5 characters, I wrote 10,000+ words. While that’s not terribly impressive (only a fraction of what a NaNoWriMo winner writes in a single month), it’s a good start.