Star Trek: Voyager

Returning to Voyager after some months away from it, right back at the beginning of the series where I left off. Captain Janeway seemed strained to find her character, over showing emotions and the episodes still felt as if they were getting the series going, until Episode 7.

Season 1, Episode 5 – Phage

This episode centers on Neelix and Voyager’s quest for a source to replenish their power. At the beginning of the episode, we find Neelix has created the kitchen on Voyager (in the Captain’s dining room to Janeway’s dismay) then it shifts as a power source is found and Neelix goes on the away mission only to get into more trouble by having his lungs stolen by the Vidiians. The Vidiians are a clever race who play a large role in the Series (I believe, relying partly on my memory and largely on their prevalence in the Star Trek CCG Voyager Expansion). They have a disease called the Phage that eats their organs and so they must harvest organs from other beings. Interestingly they can steal someone’s lungs by firing a weapon at him, but cannot use their technology to grow them from their own stem cells. This episode was rather unremarkable aside from the introduction of the Phage. Also it begins the relationship between the Doctor and Kes who continue to be seen in sick bay throughout the next two episodes as well.

Season 1, Episode 6 – The Cloud

This episode was completely forgettable. Again searching for an energy source Voyager flies into a nebula and get temporarily trapped only to find out that it isn’t a nebula it’s a living organism and when they blast their way out the first time they harmed the creature and so they go back in to repair their damage. Captain Janeway continues to seem to act far too rashly, the ship is already stuck in the Delta Quadrant, these introductory episodes could have had lower stakes plots to introduce the characters and life on the ship. And this episode seems low stakes but I don’t think it was meant to be, the way Janeway acts. Also introduced are the animal guides by Chakotay which will be featured in the show, but they could have been introduced in a much more natural way, it felt as if they were just forced in there. Finally, Tom Paris takes Harry Kim and then the rest of the bridge crew into the Holodeck for his recreation of France, which even in the 2300s seems a lot like France in the 1950s or thereabouts. How come Paris gets to use the holodeck in the middle of the shipwide energy crisis while Janeway can’t even use the replicators for coffee?

Season 1, Episode 7 – Eye of the Needle

Now we really get into it. The discovery of a wormhole has the crew thinking they might get home just like that (which would have been incredible in only 7 episodes!) but the wormhole is so small they can’t even fit a shuttlecraft in it. It turns out it does indeed lead to the Alpha Quadrant and they contact a Romulan scientist there. They figure out how to transport through the wormhole but it turns out this is a wormhole through space AND time so the scientist is really 20 years in the past. This was the most interesting episode of the trio, the right mix of science and failure to get home but it didn’t feel like the same old same old. At the end of the episode, having built up his relationship with Kes, the Doctor asks the Captain for a name.

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The Descendants (2011) +

Another movie where George Clooney plays a lawyer but all of the edge and darkness of Michael Clayton is exchanged for the sunny, laid back Hawaii. Clooney’s character, Matt King, narrates a lot of the film from his point of view. I found this a bit distracting at first because George Clooney’s voice can be associated with so many other things and I wasn’t sure Clooney was convincing me he was his character. By the end of the film I was convinced by all the emotional scenes the characters had gone through together, but I still think of the character as George Clooney. The movie is about him struggling to take care of his two daughters while his wife is in the hospital in a coma. There are funny moments but the film is definitely not a comedy. It is a very emotional picture with frequently uncomfortable scenes. The movie feels every minute of its 1 hour and 55 minutes with what feels like a very purposely slow pacing. In the middle of all this is the feeling of seeing Hawaii for a little more than the classic beach photos. I haven’t seen the other Alexander Payne movies, namely Sideways, so I can’t compare, but this is a very solid film filled with emotion.

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War Horse (2011) O

Steven Spielberg is at it again. I went into this movie with absolutely no expectations and some fear as it is over 2 hours long. The first 45 minutes or so are a complete pain, stereotyped Irish people fill the screen, a boy gets a horse and the Black Beauty and National Velvet storyline begins. Can the boy tame this wild animal when obviously the whole reason for the movie is that they are meant to be together? The first twist came when the boy was riding the horse heading for the jump and they didn’t leap over it in a moment of cinematic triumph (scored by John Williams in this film) but the horse stopped short and the boy flew over. Now it is time for the horse to go to war and part with the boy. This part interested me because Benedict Cumberbatch (the new Sherlock Holmes) was the commanding officer of the mounted division and was great, except for the fact that he got his entire regimen killed or captured in their first battle. Swords are no match for guns, as Spielberg previously taught us in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then the movie proceeds and you know what is coming. Obviously this is a movie for kids but I don’t know why you would want to take kids to see a grisly movie about WWI. Eventually we get to the scenes in the trenches and a long shot for shot Saving Private Ryan version of a charge out of the trenches (vs a landing on the beaches). So Spielberg has betrayed this supposed children’s story with his real desire, to make a visually stunning war movie and I don’t think those two genres are compatible. The children who would be young enough to not find the boy/horse relationship cheesy shouldn’t be seeing a war movie, especially with rats in trenches crawling over dead bodies. And the adults interested in Spielberg’s take on WWI won’t want to sit through the first 40 minutes. The only thing that could save this is the decisive message about how stupid of a war WWI was in the first place but instead we just get the message that through anything, the love between a boy and his horse endures.
I am aware that this was previously a hit play in Britain and before that a children’s book and knowing nothing more than that assume that Hollywood must have taken something decent out of the story. Spielberg did use quite a few shots that evoked the theatre and I found myself, probably for the first time ever wishing I could have seen the play instead of the movie.

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The Adjustment Bureau (2011) +

When I first saw the trailer for this movie I thought, cool John Slattery is in a movie, but then he looked pretty typecast with his hat and man in a suit with skinny tie look. Also I like Matt Damon, but how many movies can we have where he runs around like Jason Bourne with mysterious people after him? Well this one at least, I guess. The cinematography is sharp and Terence Stamp is good. Matt Damon is his usual self, running away and then yelling tough questions, like the thinking man’s Nicolas Cage.

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Another Year (2010) +

This was an immensely enjoyable film. I had heard it was good and really enjoyed the first (and only) Mike Leigh film I’d seen so far, Happy-Go-Lucky. This film seemed aimed a little deeper and slightly less of a comedy than that film but most of all it was brimming with brilliant acting, especially by Jim Broadbent. With the most hair I’d ever seen him with in a film, he was a character you always looked to on the screen, the way the other characters in the movie looked to him. This film follows a couple through a year of their life, deeply focused on how different people react to events good and bad. It made me realize that some people are just better at life than others and it can sometimes come to them to shepherd the less fortunate through difficult times with a grin and sometimes with a grimace. This is one of the best films I’ve seen in a while and also one of the most emotional.

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Luther, BBC Series

Series 1, Episode 1

Available to instant watch on Netflix, what could be better than Stringer Bell as a ‘good’ guy, speaking in his native tongue. DCI John Luther is a detective with problems, some of them existing at the beginning of the episode and others that unfold as the episode progresses. As it is a detective show, I don’t want to give away plot points. The writing and acting are great as you’d expect from a BBC show and the filming is the same cold, sharp style used in the BBC’s Sherlock. Idris Elba proves he’s good in nearly everything, save the horrible movie Takers, and this show is no exception based on the first episode, it is great to see Elba as the single leading man.

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Star Trek: Voyager

Season 1, Episode 3 – Parallax

After merging the two crews with seemingly no problems in the first episode, the focus is squarely on the differences in the second episode, along with a good old space time conundrum. B’Elanna Torres who has her name in the credit sequence of the show so you can bet she’s gonna get a cushy job on the ship is having problems with the Federation crew, especially the Chief Engineer. She’s a better engineer AND she has a Klingon temper. Chakotay tells Janeway she should be the chief engineer and they argue about this but then she and Captain Janeway have a girls night out on a shuttle craft while saving the ship from a quantum singularity and she win’s the Captain’s trust and the chief engineering job. This is despite the fact that she is wrong and Janeway is right about which ship is which at the climax of the episode. The crew is starting to gel and we’re on to episode 3 (production episode 4).

Season 1, Episode 4 – Time and Again

After last episode’s bonding between Torres and Janeway, this episode puts Paris and Janeway together in a sadly similar time distortion type of dilemma as the last episode. Voyager does encounter a new society on a planet that has already exploded, Captain Janeway and Tom Paris get sucked backwards in time and have a chance to fix things while also trying to figure out a way back to their time. This episode also introduces Kes’ supernatural/psychic ability and the Doctor’s moodiness. The best part is probably Tom and Harry Kim’s discussion of the Delaney Sisters.

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The Tree of Life (2011) +

This film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2011. It’s an epic in terms of scope but when it ends it still feels like a very intimate movie. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain both do a fine job, I think Sean Penn’s character could have been played by nearly anybody, and that wild look that’s always in his eyes might detract just a bit from it. There isn’t much of a way to explain this movie, just go see it, and be glad you saw it on a big screen.

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Star Trek: Voyager

Now that all of the Star Trek series’ aside from DS9 are on Netflix for streaming I can move on from The Next Generation to Voyager. I will still be watching TOS occasionally but I don’t have the stamina to sit through those episodes one after the other. Since DS9 isn’t available yet, I went to Voyager which I’ve been wanting to watch again for awhile, having originally seen most if not all of the first 3 or 4 seasons when they originally aired and probably not more than one or two episodes since. I got pretty upset when they brought Seven of Nine on because of the obvious way they were trying to sell the show, though they did a few redeeming things with her character if I remember correctly. Tom Paris was always my favorite character before. It will be interesting to see how far into it I get until I don’t remember any of the episodes. Obviously it is no TNG but I think it has enough redeeming qualities to watch it all the way through. It’s a Star Trek show, right? Without further ado, my thoughts on the first episode:

Season 1, Episode(s 1&2) The Caretaker

If you remember the second to last episode of TNG was set up as a precursor to the focus on the Maquis to tie in with DS9 and provide the jumping off point for Voyager. I remembered most of the episode for obvious reasons but it surprised me to see how weakly the plot was deployed upon viewing again. Janeway is the (FEMALE!) captain of the U.S.S. Voyager and her first officer Tuvok is spying on the Maquis ship captained by Chakotay. Janeway has to go after Tuvok when the Maquis ship disappears in the Badlands a weird pink ribbon part of space that you never hear about in TNG. Since it is dicey flying a ship there, she goes to get Tom Paris out of the penal colony he is in to be a pilot. He’s in the penal colony for doing something disgraceful and getting someone killed, basically he’s his own character Nick Locarno from the TNG episode The First Duty. The Maquis ship was gone because it had been transported to the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker who was looking for another Caretaker to replace him in sending energy to the Ocampa(Kes’ people). So Voyager gets transported there too and then we have our series. A female captain with a ship 75 years from home at Warp 9 or thereabouts. Then the episode kind of falls apart with things being crammed in. The show almost has a pre-Lost Lost feeling when the crew arrives aboard the Caretaker’s array and they find themselves at a farmhouse complete with hillbillies having a party. Harry Kim and B’Elanna Torres are missing so they have to find them. During this whole mess, the Maquis ship is used as a ram to destroy a Kazon vessel and now we only have one ship for the two crews. They might have to work together!! Literally, within 30 minutes they will all be wearing Federation uniforms as part of the crew of Voyager. So anyway, the Caretaker is dying, if Voyager uses his array to travel back home, the Ocampa will be left unprotected from the Kazon who will use the array for evil purposes. So, Captain Janeway decides to destroy the array, protecting the Ocampa and stranding her crew in the Delta Quadrant. This is directly against the Prime Directive, they shouldn’t be destroying anything, because they aren’t supposed to get involved, but Janeway has to do it, otherwise she won’t have an acting job. Next thing you know, the two crews are one, the Maquis seem to have no trouble putting on Starfleet uniforms and joining the crew, even though this would be the equivalent of US Marines telling members of the IRA to join them and fall in line, apparently the distance from home makes it bearable. So if the Maquis, who were criminals in the Voyager crew’s eyes at the beginning of the episode get to wear uniforms, how come Neelix and Kes don’t get to?

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Somewhere (2010) O

A Sofia Coppola film, with very little talking like most of her films. Enjoyable, but not a must see by any measure. Stephen Dorff is a movie star living in a hotel, driving a really nice Ferrari around L.A. His daughter comes to see him and they hang out, take a quick trip to Italy. The cinematography is quiet and wandering just like the main character, it is definitely the most appealing aspect of the film. There isn’t too much to say about this, I assume it draws some from Sofia’s own life with her father. It’s a little disappointingly cliché at the end, almost too dramatic for the nice quiet pacing of the rest of the film and took away from what had been happening throughout.

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