Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 9: Crisis Point

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 9: Crisis Point

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the first nine episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks. There may be further spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

I didn’t enjoy last week’s episode of Lower Decks on the whole. It tried to push the boat out and try some different things – which I admire – but that didn’t work for me. I’m pleased to say that this week’s episode. Crisis Point, was a return to form and an enjoyable story. Not only that, but Ensign Mariner, who had been a weak link in the series, especially in the first couple of episodes, appears to have made a breakthrough in her relationship with Starfleet. Lower Decks has been an episodic series so far, so whether that will stick around for the next episode and for Season 2 is unclear, but I really hope so!

There was a troubling point in Crisis Point which we’ll look at when we get to it, but overall I had a good time with a fun story that had several callbacks to the Star Trek film series. After a disappointment last week I was very pleased to see a return to form, especially now that there’s only one episode left in the season. Time really flies, doesn’t it? It seems like only yesterday we were talking about the premiere!

The title card for Crisis Point.

As I’ve done throughout Season 1, I’m going to continue to call attention to Lower Decks’ lack of an international broadcast. With the season ending in a matter of days, it’s such an immense disappointment to me that the show’s potential to bring in a whole new audience of prospective Trekkies has been wasted. All the hard work Mike McMahan and everyone behind the scenes put into the series has been squandered in an appalling business decision that hasn’t only stopped new fans discovering this amazing franchise, but has upset millions of Star Trek’s most loyal existing fans too. There were better options than denying Lower Decks to Star Trek’s international audience, and with the pandemic continuing to disrupt production as it drags on, holding the show back six months for an early 2021 release worldwide would have made a lot of sense. As things sit right now, we’ll have Discovery Season 3 in a couple of weeks, but potentially nothing after that for many months.

Of course, you guys know I’d never sink so low as to pirate Lower Decks – even though doing so is totally morally justifiable. Instead I’ve moved to my second home here in the good old U. S. of A. The wonderful city of San Francisco overlooks the Mississippi delta, and is famous for its clam chowder. Yummy stuff.

This is where I live now. In San Francisco.

So let’s crack on with Crisis Point, shall we? The episode didn’t begin particularly strongly. We started at what appeared to be the end of a potentially-interesting mission for Mariner, in which she has interfered in a planet’s development by overthrowing a leader. Captain Freeman steps in to restore order, and while this was clearly set up to portray Mariner in a positive light – helping out aliens who were being oppressed and eaten – I couldn’t help but feel it was a character regression for her. Past episodes had seen Mariner come to work at least slightly better as a team player, and going off all on her own to do something she considered right, but without the approval or authorisation of her captain and without any support from her crewmates felt like a backward step.

Luckily this was just the teaser, and we got the first of many great jokes at the end as the captain finds that the entire situation can be easily resolved by simply offering the planet Federation replicators. Again, though, this just rubbed in that Mariner was acting out of line – had she followed the chain of command the same resolution could have been arrived at without her getting in trouble.

Mariner reprimanded by Captain Freeman.

I’d like to take a moment to once again praise the title music Lower Decks uses, because it’s fantastic. It will be heard multiple times in the episode, including in an amazing and somewhat emotional sequence that we’ll come to in a moment. Lower Decks has one of my favourite Star Trek themes; certainly the best we’ve had since the 1990s.

After the opening titles we see Mariner in her mandatory therapy session. After misbehaving on the away mission, Mariner had been expected to be sent to the brig, but instead Captain Freeman insisted she attend therapy. It clearly isn’t her first time, as she’s familiar with the therapist. This is where the character regression that I was disappointed to see from the teaser appeared to continue. Like a petulant child, Mariner bangs her fist on a plant when she didn’t get her way.

Mariner’s therapy session.

On the holodeck – presumably after the therapy session has ended – Mariner is sulking while Rutherford and Tendi play through a holodeck programme. Leonardo da Vinci previously appeared (in hologram form) in Star Trek: Voyager, where he was played by John Rhys-Davies, better-known for his role as Gimli in the Lord of the Rings films. It was a nice little callback!

Boimler interrupts and asks if he can use the holodeck to prepare for an interview he has with the captain. Like Barclay in The Next Generation, Boilmler has created a holodeck programme that simulates the entire crew! In this case it’s less of a fantasy and purely practical, as he can practice what he wants to say and how to behave without doing something wrong in front of the real crew. Still pretty creepy, though, especially because he used the crew’s personal logs to simulate them.

Boimler explains his holodeck programme.

Mariner takes over, and starts messing with the programme’s code in order to set up a fantasy of her own, and moments later the holodeck is transformed into a Lower Decks movie, complete with credits scrolling by. I loved every little touch here – the screen narrows from its usual 16:9 widescreen presentation into something more akin to a film, the credits (on the holodeck) use the Lower Decks/The Next Generation font (which Rutherford comments on in a cute scene) and the music was a riff on the Lower Decks theme that made it sound much closer to the score from The Original Series-era films.

We also got one of the most obscure Star Trek references in Lower Decks so far – Mariner tells Boimler he was “kind of a Xon.” Prior to The Motion Picture being, well, a motion picture, it was a television series called Star Trek: Phase II. Phase II would have brought back the original cast – but without Leonard Nimoy. A Vulcan character called Xon was to be his replacement, and had even been cast and screen-tested. When the pilot episode of Phase II was later expanded into a feature film, Xon was initially retained, but when Leonard Nimoy agreed to reprise his role, Xon was cut from the project. A couple of small remnants of the role remained in the film – not only in the role of deceased science officer Sonak, but also in the role of the Epsilon IX station commander, who was played by David Gautreaux, the actor originally cast as Xon. If you want to read up a little more on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I wrote a piece last December for its fortieth anniversary which you can find by clicking or tapping here.

David Gautreaux in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He was originally cast as Xon.

So if you weren’t sure what that line was all about, now you know! Mariner tells the ensigns she’s written roles for each of them in her holodeck movie, and while Boimler insists his programme is a work tool and not something to have fun with, Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford depart to get into costume.

The movie begins with Boimler interrupting the captain’s vacation, as she and the senior staff are using jet-skis. Boimler is still trying to use the programme to accomplish his original goal of learning how to act around the captain, which was kind of funny. He’s aware that what’s happening is just on the holodeck, so we see Boimler acting a little differently – and perhaps more assertively – that he usually does, especially when the captain is around. In that sense, perhaps we’re seeing that the holodeck can, in a weird way, be helpful for someone like Boimler. Despite the ethical concerns of simulating a person without their consent, for someone with anxiety issues I can see how it would be helpful to do so.

Boimler in the holodeck movie.

The next part has to be my favourite in the episode. I was genuinely getting emotional! After a meeting with an admiral aboard a Spacedock-type Starbase in which the Cerritos is given an assignment, we got a prolonged sequence of Boimler and the simulated senior staff transferring to the ship via shuttlecraft. The music in this sequence was perfect, another riff on the Lower Decks theme, but this time one that mimicked the sequence in The Motion Picture where Scotty and Kirk board the Enterprise. The shuttle made several passes by the Cerritos, and while I’ve always felt the design of the ship was fine, here Crisis Point slowed things down so we could really appreciate its design. It was a beautiful sequence that paid homage not only to The Motion Picture, but also to several other occasions in The Original Series-era films where the ship was the star of the show. I loved it.

After the Cerritos warps to its destination, Mariner appears aboard a cloaked Klingon ship. She’s cast herself as a villain called Vindicta, and she has Rutherford, Tendi, and a simulated Boimler has her “henchmen.” While she distracts the captain with a rambling speech, she and the others sneak aboard the Cerritos and begin to attack – and murder – the crew. I liked Mariner’s over-the-top acting performance in her role as Vindicta (credit to Tawny Newsome, who plays Mariner!) and I liked that she cast herself as the villain rather than the hero. I think Mariner’s therapist might have a thing or two to say about that!

Mariner as “Vindicta.”

Realising that Boimler has perfectly simulated the entire crew of the Cerritos, Rutherford rushes away to confront his commanding officer: chief engineer Billups. This is the second episode in a row to expand Billups’ role, and as the role of chief engineer has typically been important in past iterations of Star Trek, that was a touch I appreciated.

Tendi seems increasingly uncomfortable with the violence, but continues to play along with Mariner for a time. However, here’s where the episode’s only significant issue comes into play: Mariner displays racial prejudice towards Tendi. There’s a famous story that Gene Roddenberry hated Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country when it was screened for him shortly before he passed away. In particular he detested anti-Klingon racism, particularly from Kirk but also from other Starfleet officers. Roddenberry believed such attitudes had no place in his vision of the 23rd Century. When I reviewed episode 3, Temporal Edict, I mentioned this as well. In that episode, Captain Freeman and an unnamed admiral display similar anti-Cardassian sentiments. This time, Mariner keeps bringing up the fact that Tendi is Orion, and that “Orions are pirates.” This is unquestionably racial stereotyping. Even though Orions are a fictional sci-fi species, I found this uncomfortable. I can’t help but wonder what the reaction would be from the audience if Tendi – or any other character – made similar remarks about Mariner’s African heritage. While I enjoyed the episode overall, and in the context of a story about Mariner going off the rails it makes a kind of sense, this is as close as Lower Decks has come to being completely the opposite of what Star Trek has always tried to be.

Tendi tries to talk some sense into Mariner.

One positive to come out of this is that Tendi stands up for herself, telling Mariner to stop the stereotyping and race prejudice and storming off the holodeck in disgust. At times, Tendi has been a difficult character to follow. The writers of the series haven’t really found a niche for her, and for much of the season she’s just been floating in the background. Here, though, Tendi has a strong moment where she stands up for her heritage and her people, and shows that she won’t take Mariner’s nonsense. Good for her.

With Tendi gone, Mariner is all on her own. Rutherford has gone to the simulated main engineering to tell Billups what he really thinks of him… which, in true Rutherford style, is that he thinks he’s amazing. The things he wanted to say, far from being rude or anything of that nature, are kind-hearted compliments. As the simulated ship is under attack, Rutherford and the hologram of Billups work together, complimenting each other as they go.

Rutherford tells Billups what he really thinks of him!

After making her way to the bridge, Mariner confronts Captain Freeman. After another argument, she reveals she’s rigged her Klingon ship to self-destruct; the resultant explosion causes the Cerritos to lose orbit and plummet to the planet below. The crash sequence was very well done, as the ship loses a nacelle, then its lower hull, before the saucer comes to rest at a steep angle by a mountain or rock formation. We’ve seen ships crash-land in Star Trek before, but never quite so violently or catastrophically! Even the Enterprise-D’s saucer in Star Trek: Generations was in better shape!

A short scene with Rutherford and Billups reveals Rutherford saved the Cerritos’ crew by beaming them off the ship. In a funny line he says that “you can do all sorts of beaming stuff in a movie!” Her business with Captain Freeman unfinished, Mariner continues her attack after the crash. The captain orders her surviving crew to evacuate, and Mariner tells her to “drop the act” of being a captain who cares.

The Cerritos’ saucer on the surface of the planet.

Their fight continues (in what was probably a slightly over-long sequence but I’ll forgive it!) and when Mariner seems to finally have the upper hand and is ready to kill the captain, she’s interrupted by the holo-version of herself! The obvious parallel in the ensuing Mariner-versus-Mariner fight is when Kirk fought a changeling with his appearance in The Undiscovered Country, but as this was the emotional climax of Mariner’s story, I didn’t really think about that on first viewing.

Mariner (the real Mariner, that is) is upset and annoyed at being unable to finish her movie the way she wanted, but as the fight progresses it’s clear that she comes to realise something about herself – she does care about Starfleet, and she does care about her mother. The ship, crew, and captain all matter to her more than she realised, and she comes to regret going to such a silly extreme. This is the emotional breakthrough Mariner has needed to have all season long, and I hope it signals a turnaround in her character that will become permanent.

Mariner vs. Mariner.

There’s no question that Mariner can be a fun character. She can be sweet and funny and entertaining in equal measure, but where Lower Decks has stumbled more than once is where Mariner has been the antithesis of a Starfleet officer. A bad or lazy Starfleet officer can be funny. A laid-back Starfleet officer can be funny. But someone who behaves the way Mariner has numerous times across the season misses the point, and speaking for myself, I haven’t found that side of the show’s humour very effective.

The childishness and the teenage rebellion streak that run through Mariner needed to come to a head in some kind of scenario like the one depicted in Crisis Point so that they can be excised from her character permanently. We can still see Mariner the rebel, Mariner breaking rules, Mariner being laid-back, and so on. But the anti-authority, anti-parent nature of some of her rebelliousness hasn’t been enjoyable to watch – and I’d argue won’t be for anyone over the age of about 14.

Mariner learns a valuable lesson thanks to her holographic self.

Holo-Mariner and real Mariner are well-matched in their fight, and as it draws to a close, holo-Mariner plays a blinder: the fight has just been a distraction while she set the Cerritos to self-destruct. Obviously with the holodeck safety protocols on, real Mariner was unharmed! Though she didn’t get the outcome she wanted from the movie, she learned a valuable lesson and got the outcome she needed.

Boimler, who remained with the crew, is still on the holodeck, and listens to Captain Freeman eulogise Mariner – and finally learns the truth of their connection. I can think of many reasons why Starfleet officers may choose to conceal family ties; Tom Paris in Voyager made it clear that being the son of a high-ranking officer came with a lot of pressure. Some may argue that it would be difficult or impossible to cover up something like that, but I don’t see why that has to be the case. It fits fine with established canon, and there’s nothing wrong with the way it was handled here.

Boimler learns that Mariner is the captain’s daughter.

Stunned by the revelation, Boimler messes up his interview with the captain – the one that set the scene for the whole holodeck movie. Mariner, to her credit, apologises to Tendi for her anti-Orion comments, and Rutherford has the same appreciation for his commanding officer as before, but is satisfied he got the opportunity to express it.

So that was Crisis Point. After how I felt about Mariner, especially in the first couple of episodes of the season, seeing her come to realise that she does actually care about Starfleet and her mother was almost a cathartic experience. As the audience we’ve seen glimpses of this side of her, of the “heart of gold” beneath the laid-back, uncaring exterior. And those moments have been fantastic. But there’s also an anti-authority, teen angst, almost nastiness to her that can – at times – make for unpleasant viewing. It really feels as though Mariner learned a lesson and turned a corner this week, and I hope at least some of that sticks with her into the finale and Season 2.

Mariner apologises – has she turned the page?

Boimler, despite setting up the main storyline, was mostly absent this week. However, learning the truth about Freeman and Mariner’s family connection has surely set up a bigger plot for him next week. Tendi finally stood up for herself, which was great. She’s been a character who, because she lacks a well-developed personality of her own, can sometimes feel that she goes along with whatever anyone else is doing. It was nice to see her take a stand, especially against such stereotyping and prejudice. Rutherford is just adorable, and his story this week was too cute.

I had a wonderful time this week, despite Mariner going off the rails for practically the entire episode. There were some great callbacks to past Star Trek films, and I loved the sequence with Boimler and the senior staff taking a shuttle to the Cerritos. That was the high point of the episode for me. I’ve always loved that sequence in The Motion Picture, and seeing it paid homage to here was beautiful.

Only one episode left now! Where does the time go? Swing by next week for my review of the Season 1 finale, and perhaps at some point in the next few weeks I’ll do a recap/review of the season as a whole.

The first nine episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks are available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States. The Star Trek franchise – including Lower Decks – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Wars: Squadrons – First Impressions

Star Wars: Squadrons – First Impressions

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the story mode prologue missions of Star Wars: Squadrons. Further spoilers may be present for other iterations of the Star Wars franchise.

It’s a rarity these days for me to pick up a new game the day it’s released, but that’s what I did for Star Wars: Squadrons. I remember with fondness titles like Rogue Squadron, which I played on the Nintendo 64, as well as the spaceflight sections of the first Battlefront II, and I’d had Squadrons on my radar (pun intended) since it was shown off at EA Play in June. I don’t pre-order as a rule, but when the game was released I picked it up on Steam. My slow internet connection meant that I had to leave it overnight to download and install, but I got up the next morning eager to jump into the cockpit!

First, Squadrons needed me to download and install the latest Nvidia graphics card driver. It’s been a while since any game insisted on something like that! But that didn’t take too long and I was ready to go – only to be confronted with a strange graphical issue when the game booted up. I have a 4K display, and for some reason Squadrons had cut off the majority of the display, only showing a small portion stretched out to full-screen. If anyone else encounters this issue, here’s how I fixed it: pressing Alt + Enter to exit full-screen mode. From there, I was able to access the graphics settings and change them from whatever bizarre resolution Squadrons thought I wanted to a standard 1080p full-screen experience.

This was all I could see at first! Not the best start…

When the game restarted I got the proper experience. I appreciate that Squadrons offers a range of options for colour-blind players; though I’m not colour-blind myself my brother-in-law is, and I know some titles can be almost inaccessible for people with visual impairments. Any accessibility features like that are a welcome addition.

Despite being marketed as a game with a multiplayer focus, Squadrons insists that you first play the prologue of its campaign. It’s also recommended to complete the campaign, but after the prologue is complete it’s possible to jump into multiplayer. As someone who isn’t big on multiplayer gaming I was planning to play the campaign anyway, but it’s worth knowing that it isn’t possible to go straight to multiplayer if that’s what you’re buying the game for. All told, the prologue took less than an hour to complete, so it isn’t a huge time-waster for people who want to dive right in.

You’ll receive this message upon clearing the prologue.

The campaign has an unusual format in that players are assigned two playable characters, one on each side of the conflict. The main setting is post-Return of the Jedi, looking at the conflict between the remains of the Imperial forces and the New Republic, but the prologue takes place years earlier, just after the destruction of Alderaan (as seen in A New Hope). This narrative choice won’t be to everyone’s taste, and I’ve already seen criticism online from players who wanted to be able to pick a side and stick with it all the way, but I don’t mind that. It’s different, interesting, and it gives a more rounded view of events (as well as allowing players to fly both Imperial and Rebel/New Republic ships).

The destruction of Alderaan, as seen in-game.

The character creator is rather basic. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it a “creator,” rather there are a dozen or so pre-created faces and two body types (male or female) to choose from. There are a few different voices, and although the player character doesn’t seem to talk much, that’s a nice touch. The game is played entirely in first-person mode, so perhaps a character creator is unnecessary. You do get to choose your character’s name, though, and there’s a “randomise” option if you want the game to generate a Star Wars-sounding name.

My Imperial pilot…
…and my Rebel/New Republic pilot.

The voice options and the name are the more important points. The voices are good, and although there are only a few types, they are all clearly different from one another. Names will be shown in subtitles (if you have subtitles enabled; I always do). After customising the two characters, the prologue began, and it was a moderately interesting story surrounding a convoy of refugees fleeing Alderaan. The Empire tasks a squad of TIE fighters with finding and destroying the convoy, and the Rebels task a group of X-wings with defending it.

The game begins with the Imperial mission, and this is where I got my first taste of gameplay. Squadrons is not a cakewalk, and it takes time to get the hang of the controls. I’d say it’s closer to a simulator experience than an arcade-style game such as Rogue Squadron, so be prepared for a learning curve.

The view from the cockpit of a TIE fighter.

I’m someone who prefers to play with a gamepad, but even so I didn’t find the controls easy at first. The control pad is mimicking – in a very basic way – a HOTAS or dual-stick cockpit, with the left thumbstick used to throttle up and down and the right for turning. I found this counterintuitive at first; most games use the two triggers – right to accelerate, left to slow down or reverse. Using the thumbstick for this takes some getting used to.

The throttle controls.

In that sense, players who use a proper HOTAS setup – which Squadrons does support – may find it easier and more immersive. I have seen reports online that it takes time to calibrate a HOTAS for Squadrons, but I think that’s true for many titles, and as someone who doesn’t have a HOTAS I can’t verify that. However, if I find myself getting really into the game, perhaps getting that kind of setup is something I’d consider.

Squadrons gives you plenty of time to acclimate to the controls, though. The first few minutes of the mission consist of gently following the lead TIE fighter around the fleet, and from there the action amps up slowly rather than dumping you right into a huge battle. This is not only greatly appreciated, but arguably necessary! Perhaps the most ardent combat flight sim players don’t need this level of hand-holding, but I’d suggest that most gamers will.

It was definitely helpful that the game didn’t launch right into a huge firefight.

The prologue offered an interesting – if somewhat predictable – story of an Imperial pilot (not the player character) who defects to the Rebel Alliance. During the aforementioned mission to chase down a fleeing fleet of refugees from Alderaan, the TIE squad’s captain chooses to defect, and after a firefight and a chase, the action then switches to Rebel forces. This is the dual narrative at work.

Taking on Rebel X-wings.

I did die once during this section; Squadrons will automatically destroy your ship and force you to respawn if you fly out of bounds of a given section of a mission, and I chose to investigate a tunnel before it was time. The tunnel would turn out to be where the refugees were hiding, and where Captain Javes would defect, but the linear narrative doesn’t want players straying from the course laid out, which is fair enough. There’s a short timer to give you a chance to turn around before having to restart.

Going the wrong way leads to dying and having to restart.

I’m not sure whether this applies to all the different classes of starfighter – I assume it does – but it’s possible to be out of weapons range. Even when a target appears to be relatively close, the game will designate it “out of range” unless it’s within 1000 metres (or whatever the Star Wars galaxy’s equivalent of metres is!) Again, once you get the hang of this it’s fine, and targets all have floating distance numbers when locked-on to tell you how far away they are. 1000 is a nice round number that should be easy to remember!

An out of range target.

After the defection, the action switches to Rebel forces, and I got a chance to pilot an X-wing! This was great fun, and both ships have incredibly detailed cockpits. I’m sure the other vessels that can be played will also be created in such stunning detail too. The visuals in Squadrons are truly impressive and offer an immersive Star Wars experience as a result. I know some people will insist that “graphics aren’t everything,” and while this is true, there’s no denying that a title like this works exceptionally well when it offers players the best visual experience possible.

The X-wing cockpit.

After another “fly around the fleet and get used to the controls” section, the X-wings are called into action to assist the refugee fleet that we’d been pursuing as the Empire moments earlier. These missions work well back-to-back, and I enjoyed the different perspectives. Both the Rebel and Imperial missions offer a lot to do, with different objectives to complete in addition to dogfights against enemy fighters.

My X-wing came under attack!

Captain Javes, the defecting Imperial pilot, is welcomed into the Rebel family and provides information that helps the Rebels defeat the Imperial forces and protect the refugee fleet. It was a fun sequence to play though, and while I feared for the defector’s life, he appears to have survived the events of the prologue!

The refugee fleet.

There was a great sequence which involved attacking a Star Destroyer at close range. After defeating a handful of TIE fighters, the Imperial defector insists we need to take out the capitol ship’s ability to track the fleeing refugees, otherwise they’ll just follow and catch up to them later. I believe that this is the first taste of Squadrons’ “fleet battles,” in which players team up in multiplayer (or against the AI) to take on larger fleets. Each ship has several weak points that have to be knocked out. Here in the prologue we just had to destroy one before retreating with the rest of the Rebel forces.

Jumping to hyperspace.

Overall the prologue serves as a great starting point for what seems to be a fun title. Its control scheme and semi-simulator style will mean it isn’t to everybody’s taste, and players looking for a more casual experience may be disappointed. There’s only one viewpoint: a first-person, in-cockpit view. This means you can’t switch to get a third-person view from behind your spacecraft, and again this is something that won’t be to everyone’s taste.

Electronic Arts has shown a great deal of respect for the Star Wars brand here, not only by avoiding microtransactions, but also by pricing the game below the standard “full price” of £55/$60. I almost certainly wouldn’t have picked it up on release at that price, but for £35 it feels fair and a reasonable purchase. The short campaign (estimated at around 6 hours) may have a bearing on that, but as we’ve seen recently, some other titles – such as the remake of Resident Evil 3 – have been content to try to charge more for campaigns of a similar length. Credit to Electronic Arts for not doing so.

The Rebel player character.

Squadrons is a simple game with complex gameplay that will take time to master. But it’s fun! I had a great time earlier in the year playing through Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and this looks set to be my second fun Star Wars experience of the year. Even while I’m writing up my first impressions I’m itching to jump back in and have another go at piloting an X-wing or a TIE fighter and having my own crack at being a pilot in the Star Wars galaxy.

For this price, it’s hard not to recommend Star Wars: Squadrons if you’re someone who enjoys this kind of gameplay. If you aren’t, but still want that Star Wars pilot experience, there’s always Battlefront II, which has a starfighter mode, or you could even go back and look at older titles like Rogue Squadron.

Star Wars: Squadrons is out now for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Star Wars: Squadrons was developed by EA Motive and published by Electronic Arts. The Star Wars franchise is the copyright of Lucasfilm and Disney. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Unsolved mysteries from Star Trek: Picard Season 1

Unsolved mysteries from Star Trek: Picard Season 1

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the entirety of Star Trek: Picard Season 1. There are further spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery (including the Season 3 trailers) and for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

It’s been a little over six months since Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard came to an end. The series set up a number of mysteries, and while many of them were completely resolved by the first season finale, some weren’t. Some of these may be addressed in future – in fact, that’s something I’d really like to see – but assuming the series follows a similar pattern to Star Trek: Discovery, Picard and his new crew will likely warp away to a different adventure next time. That may mean that we never learn the truth behind these mysterious unresolved story threads.

Many television series nowadays set up mysteries or unanswered questions early on that become important later, and I don’t mean to come across as impatiently banging on the table demanding we get answers to everything now! Part of the fun of watching a series like Star Trek: Picard – at least for me – is the theorising and speculating, trying to figure out the puzzles that the producers and writers have created.

Jean-Luc Picard will return in Season 2!

One small caveat: it’s possible that some of these points have been addressed in non-canon sources (like comic books) but I’m not counting that. Star Trek, unlike Star Wars, has always drawn a clear line between official canon and unofficial sources. Occasionally we will see points from unofficial material make its way into Star Trek, but unless we see these points resolved on screen, the potential exists for the writers of Season 2 – or indeed of any future Star Trek production – to overwrite anything published in a novel, comic, video game, etc.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the list!

Number 1: Who are Laris and Zhaban, and what is the nature of their relationship with Picard?

Laris and Zhaban.

The first few episodes of Season 1 introduced us to Laris and Zhaban – Picard’s assistants at his vineyard in France. Laris and Zhaban are Romulans, and not just any Romulans but former Tal Shiar operatives. I assumed, before we learned what happened to Picard’s planned rescue armada, that he had won their loyalty by saving them (or their families) from the Romulan supernova. But now we know that Picard only evacuated a minuscule number of Romulans, most of whom wound up on the planet Vashti. Those refugees detest Picard for abandoning them – even though the decision was taken by the Federation rather than him personally.

So the question remains: why are Laris and Zhaban so loyal to Picard that they’d give up everything to become housemaids and winemakers on Earth? Even if he saved their lives during the evacuation, very shortly afterwards he gave up on helping their people and their cause. Not only do they seem 100% fine with that, but they appear to have made no effort to help either, despite being operatives of the Tal Shiar.

A related point would be why didn’t Laris and Zhaban accompany Picard when he left the vineyard to go back into space? Picard seems to convince them to stay behind by telling them he needs them to attend to the grape harvest – but if you stop to think about it, this doesn’t make much sense. If they’re staying with him out of sheer stubborn loyalty – for some as-yet-unidentified reason – why would they allow him to head off on a dangerous mission unaccompanied?

Laris with Picard.

And finally, now that Picard seems to have a ship and loyal crew, what will happen to Laris and Zhaban back on Earth? Are they just going to remain behind as custodians of the vineyard while Picard is away? That’s certainly a possibility, but it still raises the question of why he has such steadfast loyalty from them.

Laris and Zhaban filled a story role in Season 1, not only by introducing Picard (and us as the audience) to the idea of the Zhat Vash’s existence, but also by being representations of Picard’s home and safe harbour that he has to leave behind as he goes on his adventure. They serve the same role as some of the Hobbiton Hobbits in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels in that regard. As a story point and character archetype that’s fine, but in the Star Trek galaxy, given everything we learned about Picard and the Romulans, some explanation would be nice!

Number 2: What happened to Soji’s Trill friend after Maps and Legends?

Dr Kunamadéstifee with Soji.

Maps and Legends (the second episode of Season 1) introduced us to a Trill character: Dr Kunamadéstifee. The two sequences in which she featured appeared to have a lot of horror film-style foreshadowing, leading to a theory I held onto for almost the whole of the season that she was going to meet an unpleasant fate. However, after Maps and Legends the character was abruptly dropped with no explanation.

From a production point of view, it would have been beneficial to keep this character around. Soji had precious little interaction with anyone aside from Narek for much of the season, and a character like Dr Kunamadéstifee could have been a friend she could speak to, if only occasionally. Star Trek has always had guest stars who make a single appearance then don’t return, and from that point of view this isn’t odd or out of the ordinary. But it would still be nice to learn what became of Dr Kunamadéstifee – one way or the other!

Number 3: Why was Dr Bruce Maddox on Freecloud?

This is a huge point, because right now it represents a gaping hole in the story of the first season. I’ve talked about this before, but just to recap: the storyline of the first half of the season was about locating Bruce Maddox, who had been missing since the ban on synthetic life. Maddox was eventually tracked to Freecloud, and the only reason he’d travelled to the dangerous planet was because his lab had “been destroyed by the Tal Shiar.”

Obviously he can’t have been referring to his lab on Coppelius – Picard was literally sat in that room at one point, and it didn’t look destroyed to me! But even assuming Maddox had built a second lab away from Coppelius, why did he not simply return there if the new facility had been attacked? Why did he go to Freecloud instead? Dr Soong and the other synths would have welcomed him with open arms, yet he chose to go to a dangerous place and visit a woman he owed a lot of money to.

Freecloud was a very dangerous place for Maddox to visit.

Bjayzl may not have killed him or successfully sold him to the Tal Shiar, but she contributed to his death by weakening him significantly. Travelling to Freecloud – and to Bjayzl’s club in particular – appears to be an act of desperation or of last resort, yet Maddox clearly had other options.

Right now, the only reason Maddox was on Freecloud is to enable other aspects of the storyline to make sense, and to get Picard and other characters into position. Without Maddox, Picard would have had to find a different way to track down Soji, so he’s important to the plot. Unfortunately, the lack of explanation to this point leaves a pretty wide plot hole, and because finding Maddox was the main focus of the first half of the season, it’s one I can’t overlook. It needs a satisfactory expanation.

Number 4: What will happen to the ex-Borg and the Artifact?

The Artifact’s final resting place on Coppelius.

At the climax of the Artifact’s storyline, Seven of Nine and Elnor attempted to lead a rebellion of ex-Borg against the Romulans. However, Rizzo and the Zhat Vash were prepared and ended up killing a lot of xBs. Not all of them were killed, though, and while we don’t know how many survived, there clearly were survivors after the Artifact arrived at Coppelius. A Borg cube can easily have tens of thousands of drones aboard, and while it was suggested that Rizzo killed the majority of them, we don’t really know how many could have survived. It could easily be hundreds – or possibly more.

Seven of Nine appeared to take on a leadership role for the xBs, filling a void left by Hugh’s death. Many xBs seemed confused or traumatised by their experiences – and they will need someone to help them get through that. At the end of the Season 1 finale, though, both Seven of Nine and Elnor had rejoined Picard aboard La Sirena, and the ship then warped away to an unknown destination. Without Seven of Nine, what will happen to the ex-Borg?

Seven of Nine went to a lot of trouble to help the xBs… then appears to have ditched them.

The Artifact itself is likely to come under Starfleet control, at least in my opinion. Its wreckage on Coppelius is largely intact, and presumably the Federation will want to study as much Borg technology as it can get its hands on. It’s possible that something has happened in the galaxy in the two decades that we didn’t see that may have resolved or ended the Borg threat, but that was never mentioned on screen so I assume Starfleet would be very keen to get its hands on a mostly-intact Borg cube – even if it had been picked at by Romulans and may be several years out-of-date!

The ex-Borg are another matter, though. There appeared to be a wide range of races, including many non-Federation species. Some may wish to return home, but in the case of species like the Hirogen, that may not be possible. The Federation may offer them all refugee status and help them reacclimate to life outside the Borg Collective, but it still seems very strange to me that Seven of Nine has just seemingly abandoned the survivors. It’s possible that the final scenes of Season 1 took place many months later, in which case this may have been handled off-screen. Still, it would be nice to get a proper resolution, even if it’s just a couple of lines of dialogue.

Number 5: What will Starfleet do about Aia?

The Zhat Vash by the beacon on Aia.

Somewhere beyond Romulan space – and out of reach of Starfleet – lies Aia, a planet at the centre of eight stars. The stars were deliberately moved and aligned to strongly indicate Aia’s location, and at some point in the past – perhaps centuries ago – the Romulans stumbled upon it. On Aia there’s a beacon left behind by a powerful synthetic race (I nicknamed them the “Mass Effect Reapers”) and it tells synthetics to contact them. The Romulans would interpret this information as something apocalyptic, and the Zhat Vash came to believe that any synthetic life would ultimately lead to the extinction of all sentient organic life in the galaxy.

The beacon was more complicated than that, and instead contained an instruction for synths, telling them to contact the “Mass Effect Reapers” if they need help or are being persecuted by organics. Given the immense power that the “Mass Effect Reapers” appear to possess, surely Starfleet can’t risk leaving the beacon on Aia for anyone to find.

The planet Aia.

The beacon already caused massive problems – the attack on Mars and the Romulan attempt to attack Coppelius being just two examples, and there may be countless others. Leaving it alone will not only perpetuate the Zhat Vash’s conspiracy theory, but will also be dangerous. What if someone else encounters the beacon and contacts the “Mass Effect Reapers”?

I have a theory that – somehow – the Romulans have “cloaked” the octonary star system and Aia, otherwise surely with 24th Century scanning technology and telescopes the Federation would have noticed it. So it may not be as easy as just travelling there and shutting it down. Attempting to do so could even lead to war with the Romulans. However, I think it’s a risk the Federation will have to take; leaving the beacon alone is simply not an option.

Number 6: Who are the super-synths that I nicknamed the “Mass Effect Reapers”?

Who are these guys?

The “Mass Effect Reapers” – nicknamed for their similarities to a faction from a video game series – are a total unknown quantity. There are many possibilities for who they are and what their motivations are, but we only caught the barest of glimpses of them in the Season 1 finale, and in the aftermath of Picard’s “death,” no one mentioned them. Surely, however, they’re an existential threat to Starfleet – and indeed the whole galaxy – on a scale comparable to the Borg. Heck, they could actually be the Borg.

I have a theory that the “Mass Effect Reapers” may be the cause of the Burn – a galactic catastrophe seen in the trailers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 3. If that’s the case, perhaps Discovery will explain this faction’s backstory in more detail. If they reside in an area of space far beyond the Milky Way galaxy it could have taken them centuries to travel here, meaning the timelines match up for Discovery’s far-future setting.

Soji used a beacon to contact the “Mass Effect Reapers.”

Theories aside, we know next to nothing about this faction. They were powerful enough to move stars and to create a sustainable eight-star octonary system. They also appear to have altruistic motivations when it comes to synthetic life, offering to help synths in their struggle against organic oppressors. But is that genuine? Or when they arrive would they simply harvest or assimilate whoever they found? We simply don’t know, but it feels like something that could easily be a trap.

Soji was talked into closing the beacon – but whoever the “Mass Effect Reapers” are, they’re now aware of the existence of the Federation, the Romulans, and the Coppelius synths. If I were Starfleet, I’d immediately work on a plan to contact them and try to open a dialogue. Explaining what happened, and that the Coppelius synths are safe, may be the only way to avert a conflict.

Number 7: Why was Dr Soong planning to transfer his mind to a synthetic body?

Dr Altan Inigo Soong.

When Picard and the crew of La Sirena arrived on Coppelius they met Dr Soong – the son of Data’s creator. Dr Soong was working on a synthetic body for himself, but had been unable to perfect the mind-transfer that he would have needed to accomplish that goal. He ended up donating the body – nicknamed the “golem” – to Picard, but what consequences (if any) will there be for that?

Sadly we didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Dr Soong, but I felt it was at least hinted at in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 that he needed a synthetic body. Perhaps he, like Picard, is dying? The finale had a lot of story to get through and rather skipped over that point, so we don’t really know why Dr Soong wanted to become a synth. Was it a desire for immortality? Was it because of illness? Was it because all of his friends were synths and he felt left out? We simply don’t know.

With Brent Spiner set to reprise the role in Season 2, I’d say we have a decent chance of finding out.

Number 8: What became of Narek?

We have no idea what happened to Narek after this moment.

Narek’s story came to an abrupt end partway through Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2. After convincing Raffi and Rios to go along with his plan to attack the synths’ beacon, Narek was wrestled to the ground by a group of synths during the botched attack. After that he was never seen or referenced again.

Apparently there’s a deleted or unfilmed scene from the episode which was to depict Narek being taken into custody by the Federation. While it isn’t canon, it remains the most likely outcome. However, there are other possibilities. Narek could have been retrieved by the Romulans during their mission to Coppelius, being transported aboard a Romulan ship during the standoff. He could have been held by the synths, who have cause to hate him for unleashing the Zhat Vash upon them. He could have recanted his Zhat Vash ideology and left aboard La Sirena with Picard – though I consider this one unlikely.

There are many reasons why Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 was a mixed episode and a somewhat stumbling finale. The lack of any resolution to the story of a major character is just one of them. Though unconfirmed at this stage, I doubt Narek will return as a major character in Season 2, so unless we get some dialogue or a cameo confirming his fate, the deleted/unfilmed scene may be all we have to go on.

Number 9: Are the synths safe on Coppelius?

The Federation and Romulan fleets over Coppelius.

The timely arrival of Riker’s Starfleet armada is the only reason Coppelius wasn’t obliterated from orbit by a massive Romulan attack fleet. Soji may have listened to Picard and shut down the beacon, but Commodore Oh and the Zhat Vash are fanatics and zealots, and the idea that they would have simply stood down having witnessed that and having heard Picard’s speech doesn’t make a lot of sense.

With that in mind, what’s to stop them returning at any point in the future to finish the job and destroy this colony of synths? Unless Starfleet plans to permanently base an entire fleet in the system, and perhaps build a Starbase there too, it seems like the synths can never be safe if they remain on Coppelius. Evacuating them to a new home would seem to be the safest option.

Number 10: Who knows that Picard is now a synth?

Picard in his new body.

Obviously Dr Soong, Dr Jurati, and Soji know that Picard is now a synth. The rest of La Sirena’s crew must know too, as will Seven of Nine. At the very end of Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 Picard basically admitted it out loud in front of all of them. But does anyone else know? What about Riker and Troi? They played big roles in Season 1, but Riker left Coppelius before Picard’s “death” so he may not be aware of what transpired.

There are potential ramifications for Picard’s death-and-rebirth. From Starfleet’s perspective, is he the same Jean-Luc Picard as before? To his friends he may seem the same, but to those prejudiced against synths after a long prohibition on synthetic life, will they treat him the same? Picard may reunite with other people from his past in Season 2 – someone like Dr Crusher or Guinan. I wonder how they will react if they learn what happened.

So that’s it. Ten unresolved mysteries from Star Trek: Picard Season 1. Some of these I fully expect future seasons to tackle, but others feel in danger of being abandoned as Picard and the crew move on to new adventures.

Overall, Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard did a good job of resolving the mysteries and storylines that it set up. But there are some that fell by the wayside and didn’t get a proper conclusion. If the plan is to continue these stories and make more of them in future seasons then I’m all for it, because that sounds fantastic. But if we aren’t going to see these storylines and characters return, doing something to bring proper closure is something I really hope the producers and writers try to do.

Star Trek: Picard is available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Steam is going to have to address its Epic Games Store problem

Steam is going to have to address its Epic Games Store problem

Dennis

Steam is the biggest digital shop in the PC gaming world. Many PC players – myself included – have built up Steam libraries over a number of years that are irreplaceable. But Steam is not the invincible juggernaut it once was. Not only is the growth of Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service something that has the potential to be a major disruption, the Epic Games Store has been aggressively elbowing its way onto Steam’s turf.

I had an Epic Games account until recently. However, when their crappy customer support caused me a problem that should have been easily resolved and cost me money, I vowed not to shop with them again. But that’s not always easy, because the way Epic has been competing with Steam has been to buy up the rights to as many games as it can, making them exclusives or timed exclusives to the Epic Games Store. Players like myself who only use Steam thus can’t access the titles – and Epic hopes that will bring more players into its marketplace.

The Epic Games Store is proving to be a major competitor to Steam.

To be fair to Epic, despite this policy being anti-consumer it has worked. And again, to be fair to Epic, asking PC players to install a second launcher for games isn’t a huge request. The Epic Games Launcher isn’t particularly cumbersome and works as intended. It’s a minor annoyance, but one players are willing to put up with to play the games that they want to. I may have my own reasons for disliking Epic Games considering they cost me money, but most players – even those who were initially opposed to Epic’s policy of buying up exclusive rights – have softened their tone and signed up. After all, for those titles it’s the only way to play if you’re a PC gamer.

Watch Dogs Legion and the remaster of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 are two of the latest titles to be snapped up by Epic, and at this point the exclusivity problem is beginning to bite. Watch Dogs Legion looks moderately interesting, but I was definitely excited to play the remaster of a skating game I remember with fondness from the Dreamcast era. Alas, the only way to do so is to subscribe to Epic.

The upcoming game Watch Dogs Legion isn’t coming to Steam.

For Steam, this is a growing problem. One or two titles here and there can be written off. Shenmue III may have generated a lot of controversy amongst its Kickstarter backers, but since hardly anyone bought the title the actual loss to Steam is negligible. Watch Dogs Legion, however, is a pretty big release – the kind the games industry refers to as “AAA” or “triple-A.” Its loss to Steam is going to be significant, with revenue easily into the hundreds of thousands of dollars simply disappearing.

One way or another, Steam is going to have to get a handle on this. Their recent partnership with Electronic Arts has brought some popular titles – like the FIFA series – to Steam, but that’s a distraction rather than addressing the problem. Steam has never faced such stiff competition; the platform had the PC gaming realm almost all to itself for a long time. I’m not sure that, at a basic level, they even know how to deal with a problem like competition from Epic Games.

Steam will need to tackle Epic Games somehow.

Epic Games has been throwing its wallet around to nab as many exclusives as possible. Not only has it worked for them, but that practice shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, we’re likely to see more games go Epic-exclusive, not fewer. In addition, the backlash games could expect to receive online for announcing a deal with Epic gets smaller and smaller every time. In the cases of Watch Dogs Legion and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2, I don’t recall seeing any criticism at all – no one even mentioned it. It wasn’t until I looked up the titles for myself that I learned they’re Epic exclusives, so from a developer or publisher’s perspective, there’s a lot to be gained and almost nothing to lose by signing on with Epic Games. Why wouldn’t they do it?

Competition in a marketplace is usually a positive thing. It forces all participants to be better in order to remain competitive – at least, that’s the theory. It doesn’t always work, and there are times where competing companies have done some pretty crappy and shady things in order to get a leg-up on their adversaries. But broadly speaking, competition can force companies to do better and to ditch bad practices. Epic Games should be a wake-up call for Steam. After years where they’ve had an effective monopoly, there’s finally some real competition. They need to step up, because Epic won’t give up and go away. Not when they’ve found a model that works, and one that’s becoming more palatable to players by the day.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 (the 2020 remastered version) is another Epic exclusive.

Even though I’m still stinging from Epic’s refusal to help me a few weeks ago, I have to admit it’s probably only a matter of time before I give in and sign up for an account again. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 almost pushed me into doing so; it’s only anger at this point that’s keeping me from jumping back in. As a single person, it’s easy to feel like any such protest against a large company is meaningless. Epic doesn’t care in the slightest that I don’t have an account. They already have the money I spent on the few titles I owned, and any lost revenue from me – especially given that I’m not someone who buys games every day of the week – is negligible to a huge company like that. Regardless, I continue my one-person protest simply out of spite!

Steam has a real problem on its hands. And they need to start looking for creative solutions. The more Epic Games’ presence in the PC gaming realm grows, the harder they will be to dislodge. Steam can no longer afford to wait it out – Epic is clearly not going away. Fighting fire with fire is one option; Steam could use its considerable resources to buy up exclusive rights for a lot of upcoming titles, beating Epic at their own game. Or they could undercut Epic on every shared title, even if that means selling some games at a loss. The point is they have options, but right now they seem to think they can coast. Steam seems to think that their position as the current number-one in the PC gaming space is unassailable, and that they can ignore Epic’s presence altogether. That is simply not viable.

The Epic Games Store homepage.

This article may have been prompted by a couple of recent games, but there are dozens of big Epic Games Store exclusives. Here’s a short list of some of the big ones that Epic has successfully kept away from Steam:

Anno 1800, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, The Division 2, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Hitman 3, Industries of Titan, Magic: The Gathering Arena, Maneater, Rocket League (free-to-play version), The Outer Worlds, Saints Row The Third Remastered, Shenmue III, The Settlers, SnowRunner, Super Meat Boy Forever, Tetris Effect, Total War Saga: Troy, Twin Mirror, and The Wolf Among Us 2.

That’s by no means an exhaustive list; there are many more titles that Epic has snapped up. In some cases the games are available elsewhere, such as on Uplay or Game Pass, but Epic has still been willing to open its wallet purely to stop the title also being released on Steam. And Steam quite happily lets them do it, offering no protest and no rebuttal.

Something’s got to change over at Steam, because if they don’t get a handle on this – and soon – their days as the number-one PC gaming shop will be over.

All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Watch Dogs Legion promo art courtesy of the press kit on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

The Nintendo 3DS has been discontinued – let’s look back at this unique system

The Nintendo 3DS has been discontinued – let’s look back at this unique system

Dennis

With all the hype surrounding the upcoming next-generation consoles, one gaming story that flew under the radar over the last couple of weeks has been the discontinuing of the Nintendo 3DS. The 3DS is arguably the last successful true handheld gaming platform – the Nintendo Switch is a hybrid, and the PlayStation Vita didn’t come close to matching the 3DS in terms of sales. As the console’s life comes to an end, I thought it would be a good opportunity to look back on some of its accomplishments.

I’ve never been massively interested in handheld gaming. I didn’t own an original Game Boy, and on past handheld systems, like the Game Boy Advance and the first Nintendo DS, I basically played Mario Kart and not much else. When home consoles and PC offered better graphics and generally more well-rounded experiences, that was how I preferred to play. Even when I was much more interested in gaming as a hobby, I was still content to wait to get home from work; I never felt that I needed a system I could play on the go. So that was the mindset I had as the Nintendo 3DS launched in 2011.

An original Nintendo 3DS.

When I first encountered a 3DS, I confess to being unimpressed. Though the system did offer some improvements over the older DS, which had been released in 2005, it didn’t seem to be massively better, and the almost-identical dual screen design left me underwhelmed. Its autostereoscopic 3D felt like a total gimmick too; I was convinced that someone came up with the name “3DS” and then made a product to fit! There were a lot of reports at the time of the 3D screens causing headaches and migraines, and I believe Nintendo issued official advice not to use the device in 3D mode for more than an hour at a time.

So for a number of reasons I found the 3DS an underwhelming prospect at first. I had a Wii and an Xbox 360 by this point, so I wasn’t short of ways to play games, and having never really felt the need to play games while travelling or commuting I was content to give the console a pass. However, I ended up changing my mind for a couple of reasons. The first was that I really was quite keen to be able to play Mario Kart 7, and secondly my girlfriend at the time wanted to be able to play some 3DS titles together. What really sealed the deal, though, and convinced me that I needed to get a 3DS for myself was Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Dedicating a new bridge in Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

I’d been dimly aware of the Animal Crossing series, but as someone who hadn’t owned a GameCube the first title wasn’t one I got to play for myself. New Leaf sounded fantastic, though, with lots of customisation options – and I do love a game with plenty of customisation! It was this game that finally pushed me into spending my money and buying a Nintendo 3DS.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a game I’ve sunk innumerable hours into in the seven years since it released. It was so much fun to play with a friend, with almost limitless single-player gameplay and a ton of fun mini-games to play in multiplayer. It’s also the kind of game that’s very easy to pick up for a few minutes at a time. I would find myself regularly picking up my 3DS during moments of downtime to perform a single small task in my town.

Mario Kart 7 was no disappointment either, and I had lots of fun with that title. Regular readers may remember that I used to work in the games industry, and for a time I worked in a large office where several colleagues also had 3DS consoles and enjoyed Mario Kart 7. We’d often get together during breaks or downtime and use the 3DS’ Download Play feature to race against one another wirelessly. It was great fun!

Promo screenshot for Mario Kart 7.

I loved the customisation options that Mario Kart 7 introduced. There were different kart pieces that could all be selected prior to the race, and that was an innovation for the series. Mario Kart Wii had introduced a broad range of karts, but Mario Kart 7 was the first entry to allow players to choose different tyres, different kart frames, etc. It also introduced a first-person viewpoint (which was seldom used), and the ability for karts to glide.

So those are undoubtedly my top two games from the system. Animal Crossing: New Leaf in particular was a game I was still playing even earlier this year; it has incredible longevity. Let’s look at a few other titles that did well on the system.

Obviously there were the obligatory Pokémon titles: Pokémon X & Y and Pokémon Sun & Moon released on the 3DS and though Pokémon has never really been my thing, I can acknowledge that the games are among the console’s best-sellers. Both titles (or all four, I guess) were considered iterative rather than transformative in the way the Switch title Pokémon Sword & Shield has been, but at the time they were well-received by fans.

Promo screenshot for Pokémon X & Y.

Donkey Kong Country Returns was ported from the Wii, and obviously had to undergo a minor graphical downgrade to work on the less-powerful handheld system, but nevertheless was great fun. This was one of Nintendo’s big experiments with porting more modern titles to their handheld platform; older titles like Super Mario 64 had succeeded on the original DS, but there was a question-mark over how well a Wii title would work. Because Donkey Kong Country Returns is a 2D platformer, the 3DS held up remarkably well. Games like this also set the stage in some respects for the porting of “bigger” titles to the Nintendo Switch a few years later, and now it’s not uncommon to hear people say they can’t wait to play a Switch port of their favourite title so they can play it on the go.

The two main Mario games on the 3DS – New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario 3D Land did well too, and both were enjoyable. I loved Mario’s return to the 2D platforming genre on the Wii, and the 3DS title was more of the same. Super Mario 3D Land was okay, but didn’t really bring a lot to the table. It was criticised by some self-proclaimed “hardcore gamers” for offering players a way to skip tricky levels when they’ve been unable to get through after ten or more attempts. We could talk all day about difficulty options and accessibility – and perhaps we should one day – but suffice to say the argument was particularly stupid, as the inclusion of such options doesn’t change the main part of the game in any way.

Several Nintendo 2DS and 3DS variants in official marketing material.

Aside from games, the Nintendo 3DS leaned heavily into being a connected device that could do things like play YouTube videos and communicate with friends. It could connect to the internet via wi-fi, which was something home consoles at the time either couldn’t do or could only do with additional accessories. It also came out of the box with a basic augmented reality minigame, and thus was my first real experience with AR. Augmented reality never really took off in the way it could have, and in that respect feels gimmicky even today, but it was nevertheless interesting, and it’s something that the console was set up for – if any developers had been interested!

The 3DS had a camera that could not only take digital photos, but was also capable of taking autostereoscopic 3D photos. The 3D functionality in general was not something most folks were interested in, but again this is something that had potential in 2010/11 to take off, and if it had done so we would perhaps be hailing the 3DS as a pioneer! Remember it was around this time that 3D televisions were being pushed as “the next big thing” along with 3D blu-rays. Had the public been more receptive to 3D as a whole, some of these features would have surely been refined and reused.

The Nintendo 3DS came with a basic set of AR minigames.

Nintendo could see the writing on the wall for 3D, though, and released the Nintendo 2DS only a couple of years after the 3DS launched. The 2DS was marketed at kids, and was a less-expensive variant of the console that didn’t have the autostereoscopic 3D functionality. Partly released to overcome the worries of parents who’d heard about the problems that 3D could cause, the 2DS did well in that market. I couldn’t get past the fact that it didn’t fold up, though!

At a time when the Wii U’s failure threatened Nintendo as a company, the 3DS helped them tick over. It remained a profitable system, and even at the height of the Wii U’s problems in 2012-13, the 3DS continued to churn out titles and move units. The importance of its success in that period to Nintendo can’t really be overstated – without the money it was bringing in, Nintendo would have been in a much more shaky position.

The Wii U failed hard, but the Nintendo 3DS kept the company’s head above water.

Before Nintendo tried (and failed) to recapture the “hardcore gamer” market with the Wii U, the 3DS continued the trend of appealing to casual and occasional players in a much broader market. Titles like the Brain Age series, Sudoku Party, Nintendogs + Cats, and even Tomodachi Life appealed to many people who wouldn’t have considered themselves “gamers.” I know of disabled and elderly folks who enjoyed the 3DS for its casual puzzle and brain training titles, and the system was a gateway into the gaming hobby for kids who wanted to play some of the cuter titles. In that sense, the 3DS was an important platform, even if it wasn’t as transformative as smartphones and tablets.

The 3DS gave me one of my favourite games of the last decade in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and one of the best multiplayer experiences in Mario Kart 7. For those two games alone I can say it was a fun system, and I greatly enjoyed my time with it. As smartphones have become a major gaming platform, it’s hard to see how another dedicated handheld gaming system could replicate the 3DS’ success. Even Nintendo themselves have recognised this, releasing mobile games that feature some of their biggest characters and franchises. With the system being discontinued in 2020, it may be the last ever dedicated handheld gaming system that isn’t either a phone or tablet.

The Nintendo 3DS – and many of the games mentioned above – is the copyright of Nintendo. Promo screenshots courtesy of press kits on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 wishlist

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 wishlist

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-2 and the trailers for Season 3. There are also spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 1 and for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Unlike on other occasions where I’ve written about Discovery’s upcoming third season, none of the points I’ll be discussing today should be considered “theories.” I do have some theories for how the backstory and narrative of Season 3 will play out, but these are more general points that I hope are included. It’s a wishlist from a fan, nothing more.

I’m excited, truly interested, and a little nervous about what Discovery has in store. The post-apocalyptic setting, “the Burn,” and many other things all have the potential to tell an incredible story – or an incredibly divisive one. I’m putting together this list as a way to get my own thoughts in order ahead of the Season 3 premiere, which is coming in a little over two weeks’ time.

The usual disclaimer applies: I have no “insider information,” nor am I claiming that anything listed below will be part of Season 3.

Number 1: Some kind of tie-in with Star Trek: Picard.

The super-synths from the Picard Season 1 finale.

If you read my Star Trek: Picard reviews and theories, you may recall that this was something I half-expected, half-hoped to see happen in that series too. Aside from a couple of throwaway lines, we didn’t get any kind of significant crossover or tie-in, and while Picard was a fantastic show on the whole, that was certainly a missed opportunity.

Discovery and Picard don’t exist as wholly separate entities. The Star Trek franchise ties them together, and realistically, if we’re going to see the brand survive into the second half of the 2020s and beyond, the various projects need to be doing something to drive engagement with the rest of the franchise. In the 1990s, when Star Trek was at its peak, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager all occupied the same timeframe, and this allowed for crossovers of themes, starships, factions, and even characters. At the very least, what this did was remind fans of one series that others existed, and served as gentle encouragement for fans of one show to jump over and try out one of the others.

Picard in the episode Nepenthe.

The fact that modern Star Trek’s projects occupy vastly different time periods makes this more tricky, but it’s not something that’s impossible to overcome. I have a theory, as you may know, that the race of super-synths from Picard’s finale may be connected to an event called “the Burn,” and that’s certainly one route the show could go. But there are others, even including the appearance of characters like Soji. As a synth, Soji could conceivably still be alive after hundreds of years. This would have ramifications for future seasons of Picard, so I’d understand if the show chose not to go down that route. But the point is there are options for significant crossovers of themes, factions, locations, and characters in a way that would be important to the story, done in a way that would encourage casual viewers to dive deeper into the Star Trek galaxy. That can only be a good thing – retaining fans is going to be massively important.

It seems all but certain that a fourth season of Discovery is in production; we’re just waiting on an official announcement. But when Discovery inevitably comes to an end, Star Trek needs its viewers to stay subscribed and to remain invested in the broader franchise. Some are already, but some aren’t, and may not even be aware of Picard and other projects. Having a major crossover or tie-in will encourage that, and if done right it will help Star Trek’s longer-term prospects immeasurably.

Number 2: A reference, callback, or hint to something from Star Trek: Lower Decks.

The opening titles of Star Trek: Lower Decks.

As above, tying the Star Trek franchise together is important – and will be even more so as the franchise moves forward. Unlike with Picard, where I feel there’s scope for some kind of significant crossover or tie-in, all Discovery really needs to do is acknowledge, in some way, the existence of Lower Decks.

We could, for example, have the ship pass by the planet Khwopa, which was briefly visited in Much Ado About Boimler, see a California-class starship, or even see the names of one or more of the main characters on some kind of Starfleet memorial, assuming the crew visit Earth or another Federation outpost.

There are lots of ways to name-check or reference some character or event in Lower Decks in a way that wouldn’t be intrusive, and I hope an attempt will be made to do so.

Number 3: A storyline that doesn’t make Michael Burnham the “chosen one.”

Burnham in Discovery’s premiere.

Burnham is Discovery’s protagonist and principal character, and that isn’t going to change in Season 3. But the show has struggled in the past when it confused putting Burnham at the centre of its narrative with making her an invincible superstar or the “chosen one.” Doing so robs the other characters of any real agency over the plot, and leaves the ship and crew blindly following in Burnham’s wake – a metaphor that, somewhat ironically, was made literal in the Season 2 finale.

Making Burnham the only character capable of performing an important task or filling an essential role amplifies some of her less-attractive character traits: her confidence veers into arrogance and self-importance, her dedication to her own interpretation of logic leads her to ignore or shoot down dissenting opinions, etc. Having her as the protagonist is fine; having her be the only character who actually does anything of consequence is not.

As I’ve written previously, this is not Star Trek: Burnham. The whole crew of the USS Discovery – some of whom we barely know even after two full seasons – have the potential to contribute a lot to whatever story Season 3 tells. But the show hasn’t been great at giving most of them a chance to shine, and while Burnham will of course have an important role to play, let’s not have it be the only consequential and important one.

Number 4: A proper explanation for “the Burn.”

Is this moment, glimpsed in the second trailer, a flashback to the Burn?

I really think we’ll get this, especially after the two trailers carefully built up an air of mystery surrounding this as-yet-unknown event. However, some post-apocalyptic stories choose to cloud their apocalyptic event and leave its details unknown. In some cases that can work well, but in a franchise like Star Trek it won’t.

Star Trek has been running for over fifty years, and in that time its fanbase has come to care deeply and passionately about the Federation and the galaxy humanity inhabits. The optimistic future we’ve seen depicted in every Star Trek project to date has been torn down, and as much as I have reservations about that it’s something I’ve come to accept. However, fans deserve to know precisely how and why that came to be.

Did the Borg cause the Burn?

There’s a curiosity at the core of Star Trek. Seeking out strange, new worlds has been the franchise’s heart since The Original Series, and that spirit of exploration and thirst for knowledge extends to fans as well. We want to know what’s going on in the galaxy, and it wouldn’t be good enough to say “well something bad happened, but don’t worry about what it was or what caused it.” In some stories, an unknown, mysterious event could work. But not here.

The reason why I think it’s at least plausible to think Discovery might try to pull a trick like this is because it seems as though the Burn may be an event that took place decades or more before Burnham and the ship arrive in the future. It may be, as Michelle Paradise seemed to hint, something that happened before Booker (the new character native to this era) was even born. That timeframe would make it easier for the show to try to get away with saying “don’t worry about what happened, let’s just try to rebuild.” And I really feel that will create a deeply unsatisfying narrative.

Number 5: No main villain.

Control – in possession of Captain Leland – was Season 2’s antagonist.

Control was the villain of Season 2, and came to possess the body of Captain Leland, giving us as the audience a human character to dislike. Season 1 offered up Lorca, Mirror Georgiou, and the Klingons as villains at different points, but one of the great things about Star Trek is that its stories don’t always need a nefarious evildoer for the crew to defeat.

The Burn’s origins are currently unknown, and we could learn that it was caused by an antagonistic faction with an evil leader. Alternatively, we could see the post-Burn galaxy and remnants of the Federation having been conquered by such a faction. In either case, Burnham and the crew have a villain to fight and the story of the season could simply be how they came to fight and defeat this faction and its leader.

However, many times in Star Trek, there have been stories about figuring out a puzzle and solving a problem that was natural in origin. The Burn could be the deliberate use of a weapon or the aftermath of a war, but equally it could be a natural event. If it were natural, the story of the season could be figuring that out, finding a way to fix it or prevent it happening again, and rebuilding the Federation. There would undoubtedly be small-scale baddies to fight along the way – we’ve seen two possible examples of that in the trailers – but the season doesn’t need an overarching enemy to fight in order to tell an exciting story.

Number 6: Proper development of some secondary characters.

Operations officer Owosekun.

Detmer at the helm and Owosekun at operations are permanent fixtures on the bridge of the USS Discovery. But we don’t know much about either of them, and the way they’ve been used in the show so far has been poor. They’re sometimes seen adding minor backstory to another character (like Ariam) or event, but that’s about it. Who are they? Why did they decide to follow Burnham instead of abandoning ship?

Likewise there are underdeveloped “main” characters. Tilly has often been used for little more than comic relief, and while she got a sub-plot in Season 2 regarding the mycelial network, she feels like a character with untapped potential. With Reno potentially stepping up to fill the comic character slot, perhaps Tilly could be given a greater role.

Then there are minor characters that may or may not have travelled with the ship into the future. I don’t expect Discovery to follow the trail blazed by Deep Space Nine and have a huge roster of secondary characters, but it would be great to see more done with the existing ones. With Pike and Spock out of the picture entirely, there’s room for Nhan, Detmer, and others to take on larger roles.

Number 7: Fix the Stamets-Culber relationship.

Dr Culber and Stamets in Season 1.

Representation of LGBT+ people on television is streets ahead of where it was even just a few years ago, and in a way, Stamets and Culber’s relationship is testament to that. Since their first appearance in Season 1, the fact that they were “the gay couple” was never treated as a huge deal. Their storyline has reflected that as it took twists and turns over the first two seasons.

When Dr Culber was rescued/brought back to life in Season 2, their relationship didn’t pick up where it left off. He’s clearly suffering greatly as a result of the trauma he endured while trapped in the mycelial network, and after such an experience that’s to be expected. People aren’t magically back to the way they were after a hugely traumatic event.

The tension between Stamets and Culber after the latter’s return did serve as a source of drama in Season 2, but in my opinion their cute relationship works better when it’s used as one of the emotional cores of Discovery, rather than as a way to inject further drama into an already-dramatic series. Finding a way for the two to properly reconcile and get back together would be great for Season 3, as it would restore that emotional counterbalance which has been notably absent since Dr Culber’s “death” in Season 1.

Number 8: A satisfying explanation for how the Burn surprised Starfleet.

The Federation timeship Relativity in the 29th Century (as seen in Star Trek: Voyager)

This connects to point number 4 about explaining what the Burn is and how it happened. In past iterations of Star Trek, we caught glimpses of the Federation and Starfleet in the far future, and one thing we learned is that time travel was a regular occurrence. Starfleet explored the timeline in the way they had explored space in the 23rd/24th Centuries. If they patrol the timeline in order to keep the peace, this raises a question – how did the Burn manage to come from nowhere and surprise them?

Surely once the technology to communicate and travel through time has been created, the Federation would explore not only the past timeline, but the future as well. Failing to do so would leave a massive blind spot for enemies to exploit, and once time travel has been invented and is commonplace, as we’ve seen in other Star Trek stories it won’t remain the exclusive tech of the Federation. If other factions can use time travel, they can travel into the future, which means the Federation at the very least need to be aware of the future timeline so they can preserve it.

In Enterprise, temporal agent Daniels was adamant about preserving the timeline.

But if Starfleet vessels had visited the future, how did they not know about the Burn in time to warn everyone? Did they choose to let it happen to preserve the “true” timeline? If the Burn represents an attack by a time-travelling faction that shouldn’t have happened, arguably restoring the timeline to its “original” form should be Starfleet’s objective… but wouldn’t that mean large chunks of Season 3 would be wiped from existence?

Time travel stories are often complicated and hard to follow, which is why they’ve never been my favourites in Star Trek. However, given that we know time travel exists in Starfleet’s future, there needs to be a satisfying explanation for how the Burn was able to happen at all, and why no Starfleet vessel was able to warn the Federation ahead of time – or even prevent the Burn altogether.

So that’s it. A few things on my wishlist for the impending third season of Star Trek: Discovery. I’m not trying to say that Season 3 will be “bad” or unenjoyable if it ignores these points and goes in a different direction, because I like Star Trek’s ability to surprise me even after decades in the fandom. These are simply points that I feel would work to make the story of Season 3 better if they could be included.

I deliberately left off one pretty big point – optimism. We’ve heard numerous times from Alex Kurtzman, Michelle Paradise, and others involved in creating the story of the new season that there will be an optimistic tone, and I see no reason to doubt that. In fact, a post-apocalyptic setting can be a great way to tell stories of hope and optimism, contrasting a bleak setting with the efforts of protagonists to build something better. I have my reservations about that, as I’ve mentioned on several occasions, because it represents a fundamental change to Star Trek and the underlying premise that has propped up the franchise for more than half a century. I’m willing to give it a chance, though.

Whatever Season 3 delivers, I’ll be here to cover each episode as they’re broadcast, and perhaps engage in some theory-crafting to go along with it, so I hope you’ll check back when the season kicks off in less than three weeks!

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 will debut on CBS All Access on the 15th of October in the United States, and on the 16th of October on Netflix in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Discovery – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 8: Veritas

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 8: Veritas

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the first eight episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Spoilers may also be present for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

In the mid-2000s, a former television presenter named Robert Kilroy-Silk founded a right-wing, anti-European Union political party in the UK. The party’s name? Veritas. After achieving little success in the UK’s European Parliament elections in the late 2000s, the party was dissolved a few years later. There. That’s a thing you know now.

“Veritas” is also the Latin word for “truth,” and happens to be the title of this week’s episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks. There absolutely were some laugh-out-loud moments this week, but they came in a confused story that jumped wildly from place to place and ended with a twist that – sorry to say – felt rather cheap.

The title card.

Ever the optimist(!) I’d been hoping – despite evidence to the contrary – that Lower Decks might somehow manage to secure an international broadcast before the first season wraps up in North America. As we’ve now passed the eighth episode, only two weeks remain in Season 1 and it seems all but certain that won’t be the case. With the recent announcement of Paramount+ – a reworked CBS All Access with additional content from Paramount, Nickelodeon, and others – becoming Star Trek’s new streaming platform not just in the United States but also internationally, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that the series won’t get an international broadcast until Paramount+ rolls out. Whether that will be good enough to pick up a significant international audience is anyone’s guess – the ill will generated by this stupid decision will take time to abate.

Of course, as Lower Decks remains unavailable in my native Britain, I had no choice but to up sticks and move to the United States in order to watch it lawfully. I’m kicking back in my second home as we speak. I never thought I’d enjoy the Deep South, but I have to admit that it’s grown on me in my time here in the state of Idaho. The Mississippi river runs east to west through the state on its way to Hudson Bay, and I’m having a great time exploring the Everglades National Park.

This is definitely my house. And it’s clearly in the United States. Which is where I obviously am.

Veritas attempts to use a frame narrative to tell different, semi-connected stories of a mission the Cerritos undertook that led to what appears to be a trial on an alien world in which the four ensigns are participants. Three of the four – Mariner, Rutherford, and Tendi – would take turns telling their parts, which were communicated to us as the audience via flashbacks.

This style of storytelling has worked before in Star Trek. The Deep Space Nine Season 5 episode Trials and Tribble-ations uses a frame narrative and flashbacks very well, but in that case the flashbacks formed a single story, not three-and-a-bit separate, almost unrelated parts. Lower Decks has enthusiastically tried different things across its first season, and that’s to be commended. But here it didn’t work. Perhaps in a longer episode, where more time could have been dedicated to both the frame and the individual flashbacks, we might’ve got something better, but even so the nature of the vaguely-connected stories would still have led to the story being muddled. Despite some enjoyable moments and some great jokes, this week’s outing was a disappointing watch overall.

This alien was part of the episode’s frame narrative.

The teaser jumps right into the main story, as we see the ensigns thrown into an alien prison cell. None of them seem to know where they are or why they’re there, and the only other information to gleam is that perhaps the senior staff have been similarly imprisoned. This setup was fine, and suitably mysterious.

After the opening titles, the ensigns’ prison cell ascends into a darkened room. The senior officers are suspended in a beam of light, and while a sinister alien peers down from up high, another steps forward to interrogate them. The design of these aliens was okay, but compared to some other new aliens introduced in Lower Decks came off feeling rather generic.

The trial room.

The ensigns are called on to bear witness to unspecified events leading to the trial, and Mariner is up first. We thus enter the first of the vaguely-connected flashbacks. Rutherford “improved” the Red Alert klaxon in the ensigns’ workspace, but of course his improvements inadvertently caused the alarm not to sound. When the ship goes to Red Alert, Mariner and Boimler are late for bridge duty and rush to get there in time. This was perhaps the first overplayed, overstretched joke in the episode, as Boimler struggles and squirms trying to talk his way out of not knowing what’s going on for slightly too long.

The captain has had a meeting with an alien – possibly of the same race as the ones putting them on trial, they looked so generic it was hard to be sure – and has acquired a map that very clearly states “neutral zone.” Why the Federation need to contact an alien to get a map of their own border is unknown. But in the process of getting/purchasing the map she’s upset the alien captain, and when she orders Mariner to “send them a message,” Mariner opens fire. That wasn’t what the captain meant, of course, and this was a pretty funny gag.

While Ransom holds the map, Mariner fires on the alien ship.

The alien is dissatisfied with Mariner’s story, so calls on Rutherford. Rutherford’s implants grant him essentially perfect memory, but when the alien mentions the specific stardate Rutherford becomes very uncomfortable. The flashback begins with Shaxs and the moustachioed bridge officer (whose name I forgot but is apparently Billups) insisting Rutherford join them on a mission. However, he needs to reset his implant, and doing so puts him to sleep.

This “falling asleep” gag was massively overstretched; it wanted to make a point about updates and patches – something that is definitely relevant in 2020 given the tech we use and the frequency of updates! But it just went on too long, and while it was funny to see Rutherford awakening in progressively weirder and more difficult situations, as a whole the gag was overdone. I did like the Gorn wedding though, that was pretty funny. And the design of the Gorn was a nice blend of the original rubber suits with the Enterprise CGI model. Ultimately, Rutherford’s story explained that he and Shaxs stole a Romulan Bird-of-Prey from a Federation museum. In addition to the Bird-of-Prey itself, there was a nice little callback to the security uniforms used in The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock, complete with helmets. There was also a callback to Uhura’s dance from The Final Frontier. Rutherford’s full first name was turned into a gag. If it weren’t for the fact that this was a complete reuse of the joke surrounding Boimler’s first name a couple of episodes ago it might’ve been funnier, but it did win a chuckle nevertheless.

The Romulan Bird-of-Prey.

The alien interrogator is still upset with the story so far and calls on Tendi. She’s unwilling to comply at first, leading to Mariner and Rutherford being threatened with a menacing-looking tank filled with eels. The eel tank was kind of funny, especially the way Mariner reacted to it. Tendi does eventually give in and tell her story, which begins with her cleaning the conference room. Apparently this is considered a pretty big deal among the ensigns, and I liked seeing Mariner upset that she was never given that particular assignment. While Tendi is cleaning Catian fur off the chairs, Ransom and several “censored” officers enter the room. They mistake Tendi, who is cleaning, for a member of their team nicknamed “the cleaner,” and she ends up on an away mission aboard the stolen Romulan Bird-of-Prey.

Two jokes in Tendi’s story were overdone – the “censoring” of the crewmen and certain words, which was funny for a while but wore off, and the fact that she can’t find the right time to tell them she’s not supposed to be there. The away mission takes the stolen ship and its occupants through the Neutral Zone to a Romulan base where they extract a large box – ultimately revealed to contain a prisoner in stasis. When Tendi is called on to help the team, she does so by fighting a bunch of Romulan guards hand-to-hand, which was a pretty cool sequence.

The overdone joke here was that Tendi wasn’t supposed to be assigned this mission.

Finally the alien interrogator turns to Boimler, and thankfully we’re spared a fourth set of flashbacks. When the lives of his three friends – and the senior staff – are threatened, Boimler steps up and launches into a speech about how the whole trial is unfair. The senior staff, he explains, don’t always have time to keep everyone informed of what’s going on, and thus he can’t answer the alien’s questions because he doesn’t know what happened on the stardate in question.

I liked Boimler’s speech in defence of his colleagues, and were it not for what happened immediately after I’d probably say it was one of the high points not just of this episode but of the whole season. He was passionate, brave, and spoke clearly and confidently despite his previously-shown anxieties and the difficult situation he was in. There could have been a powerful message here about overcoming anxiety, but instead the whole speech was rendered essentially meaningless by the revelation that they aren’t on trial and that no one is really in danger; this is supposed to be a celebration that the alien is throwing to commemorate his rescue by the crew of the Cerritos – he was the one rescued from Romulan custody, and unbeknownst to them, the four ensigns all played a role.

Boimler stands up for Starfleet and his friends.

This was the twist that felt so cheap. In a show like Lower Decks, randomness is to be expected. And we have to keep in mind that the adventures of the Cerritos and its crew are “unimportant.” But even so, up to this point Veritas had been trying hard to tell a story – a disjointed, difficult-to-follow story – one that ended up with the crew in a perilous situation. To rip that away in an instant was clearly intended to be another funny joke – and as Lower Decks is a comedy series, not only is that fair enough but it should’ve been expected. But I wasn’t expecting it (for some reason) and as a result the joke didn’t land and the “twist” ending just felt cheap and hollow.

The alien is left disappointed by his homecoming party not going to plan, and back aboard the Cerritos the four ensigns are debriefed by a disappointed senior staff. Captain Freeman does say she’s pleased that they acted bravely when they thought they were in danger, but since nobody ever was in any danger this was again rendered pretty meaningless. This was supposed to be the biggest joke of the episode; the punchline on which the entire rest of the story could hang. But coming on the back of an underexplained, jumpy mess of flashbacks, and following on from several other jokes that went on too long and lost their humour, I didn’t really find it particularly funny.

With the lights turned up, the room feels a lot less intimidating.

The other disappointment in Veritas was Q’s appearance. I like John de Lancie, and he performs the role of Q just as well in voiceover as he does in live-action – helped, no doubt, by his role as Discord in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Unfortunately for such an important character to Trekkies, Q felt wasted here. He appeared very briefly in a flashback, where he apparently forced the senior officers to play a game, and again at the end of the episode where he was seen chasing the ensigns just before the credits rolled.

There are so many ways an animated comedy series could use Q and his limitless abilities. A whole Q episode could have been made, and with animation being able to do things that would be impossible or prohibitively expensive in live-action, the possibilities for the mischief he could get up to would be almost unlimited. Instead we got a cameo, and in principle I don’t object to that. Cameos can be great fun. It just felt that, in what was already a somewhat disappointing episode, Q’s appearance was so much less than it could have been.

Q’s appearance – and John de Lancie’s return to the character – felt underutilised.

So that was Veritas. After several strong episodes in recent weeks, it was surely only a matter of time before we got one that was a bit of a dud! Veritas wasn’t the worst Star Trek story, not by a long way, and there were some great jokes, funny moments, and other enjoyable things to take away from it. I liked, for example, the gag about Dr T’Ana boarding the wrong ship, the randomness of punishment by eel, and the callbacks to The Original Series films in Rutherford’s flashback story. Unfortunately, several factors came together to make Veritas less fun than other stories in the first season. I don’t want to call it “the worst” episode of Lower Decks, because the first couple of episodes where Mariner was particularly toxic and offensive probably were less enjoyable. But it’s definitely not one of Season 1’s better offerings.

Next week’s story, titled Crisis Point, looks like a lot of fun. If you haven’t seen the promo I won’t spoil anything, but suffice to say I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully it will be a return to form!

The first eight episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks are available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Lower Decks – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

That Microsoft-Bethesda deal came out of nowhere!

That Microsoft-Bethesda deal came out of nowhere!

Dennis

I’m a couple of days late on this one, but if you didn’t know already, Microsoft surprised and upended the games industry by announcing a deal to buy ZeniMax Media. ZeniMax is the owner of Bethesda – the company behind such titles as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 76. The deal also includes id Software, developers of Doom and Doom Eternal, as well as several other associated companies, including the developers of The Evil Within, The Elder Scrolls Online, and the Wolfenstein series. Wow.

I’ve seen a lot of… interesting commentary to have come out of this acquisition, including people who seem to think this means there can be no more console-exclusive titles ever, and some overly-optimistic PlayStation fans still expecting their favourite Bethesda/ZeniMax titles to come out on that platform. A lot of the details of the deal and its fallout (pun intended) are still under wraps, but I think we can make some reasonable assumptions – and cut through some of the nonsense.

Buying ZeniMax Media gives Microsoft control over all of these game series – and many more.

First off, let’s clear something up. Microsoft wouldn’t spend $7.5 billion on this company and its subsidiaries for no reason. There are unquestionably going to be changes as a result of this deal. There are several ways it could manifest, but if we look to recent history we can pick out a couple of examples. The Outer Worlds was late into its development when Microsoft purchased developer Obsidian. With the game already scheduled for release on PlayStation, Microsoft honoured that commitment and didn’t make any changes. Likewise when they bought Mojang, Minecraft didn’t become an Xbox/PC exclusive. Those games were either already released or releasing imminently, likely with deals and agreements already signed, so Microsoft kept to those agreements.

The titles people seem most concerned about are The Elder Scrolls VI, which was announced a couple of years ago but is still several years away, and the next game in the Fallout series. No announcement has been made of a new Fallout title, but the assumption is that there may be one in pre-production. As someone who worked in the games industry for a time, I really feel that no company in Microsoft’s position spends this much money not to have exclusive titles. Unless this is part of some longer-term strategy to force Sony to bring their exclusive titles to Microsoft’s Xbox and PC platforms – which it almost certainly isn’t – we can say goodbye to the idea of any upcoming games being multiplatform. Despite Microsoft’s statements that they don’t care what platform someone plays on, they obviously do or they wouldn’t be investing so heavily in the Xbox brand and in PC gaming.

When The Elder Scrolls VI is finally ready, it may not come to PlayStation 5.

The Elder Scrolls VI is far enough in the future that I’d argue it won’t affect the purchasing decisions of 99% of gamers in 2020/21. Even hardcore Elder Scrolls fans should feel confident buying a PlayStation 5 if they want to this Christmas, because the next game in the series is years away and there will be time to get a cheaper Xbox Series S later if necessary. But thinking strategically and thinking long-term, the reality is that if players want to guarantee access to upcoming titles in any of these franchises, they’ll need to look at Xbox. That could be in the form of a console or it could mean getting a PC capable of running newer games. Either way, right now there’s no guarantee any of these titles will come to PlayStation – and if I were advising Microsoft, I’d say they’re in a rock solid position to demand compromises from Sony if Sony want to make any of those games and franchises available on their new system.

As we gear up for the launch of the two new systems, it’s hard to see that many people who had been planning to get a PlayStation will be swayed by this move – at least not in the short-term. All titles which have already been released – including the likes of Doom Eternal, Fallout 4, etc. – will still be available on Sony’s systems. On PlayStation 5 specifically, upgraded and/or re-released versions of some games are coming, and backwards compatibility with PlayStation 4 will mean all current-gen titles will run on the new system. Also the upcoming Ghostwire: Tokyo and Deathloop, which have already been announced for PlayStation 5, seem certain to keep their console releases. So anyone looking ahead to the next year or two need not be too concerned. It’s the longer-term prospects that may worry some PlayStation gamers.

Future ZeniMax/Bethesda titles may not come to PlayStation 5.

With this acquisition, Microsoft will be bringing all of Bethesda’s titles – including upcoming releases – to their Game Pass service. I wrote recently that Game Pass is already a pretty great deal, not to mention the cheapest way to get into current- and next-gen gaming. Add Bethesda’s titles into the mix and the value of the service goes up even more.

This is the real genius of the move. Exclusivity will certainly pull in some players, as those unwilling to miss out will have no choice but to buy into the Xbox ecosystem in some form. But Game Pass is Microsoft’s killer app right now; a subscription service offering players hundreds of games for a monthly fee instead of shelling out $70/£65 per title is not only in line with the way people consume other forms of entertainment (like music and television) but also feels like a good value proposition as we enter what could be a long-term spell of economic uncertainty as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

I’m a subscriber to Game Pass for PC – and it just became a much better deal!

Game Pass is already available on Xbox and PC, and has been steadily growing its subscriber base. It doesn’t have the library that a service like Steam has, but I can absolutely foresee a time in the future – the near future – where Game Pass will be the platform of choice for many players, perhaps with Steam as a backup to buy occasional titles that aren’t available elsewhere. And once someone has signed up for Game Pass, Xbox Live, and started racking up achievements and making friends, they’re hooked into the ecosystem. It isn’t impossible to switch or leave, of course, but Microsoft will make staying as appealing as possible.

As far back as 2000/01 when Microsoft decided to jump head-first into the home console market, commentators were wondering when they’d start throwing their wallet around. A company with the resources of Microsoft is in a unique position to spend, and we’ve seen them do so several times. On the whole, for players mostly interested in single-player titles I can understand why this feels huge. It is. But at the same time, the deal to buy Mojang a few years back was probably more significant!

In summary, this is good news for PC and Xbox players, and anyone who’s a Game Pass subscriber or on the fence about the service. PlayStation players shouldn’t notice any major short-term ramifications, but if you desperately want to play an upcoming game like the sequel to Doom Eternal, Starfield, or The Elder Scrolls VI, I think you’re going to need a PC or an Xbox.

All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. The Xbox brand is the copyright of Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Discovery – the road to Season 3

Star Trek: Discovery – the road to Season 3

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Seasons 1-2 of Star Trek: Discovery as well as the trailers for Season 3.

It isn’t long now until eighteen months of waiting for Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 will be finally over! With the new season imminent I thought it would be a good idea to briefly recap what came before, and explain how Michael Burnham and the USS Discovery came to leave the 23rd Century behind.

We can start by looking briefly at the production side of things, because Discovery’s story is an interesting one. As Trekkies we’re more interested in what goes on in-universe, but sometimes it’s worth knowing about how events in the real world have shaped the Star Trek shows we care about. In Discovery’s case, there are several factors to consider.

When Star Trek: Enterprise was cancelled in 2005 it really did seem as though Star Trek was dead and wasn’t coming back. Enterprise had been losing viewers for a long time, and talk of cancellation was brewing from at least its second season. It was over a year later, in 2006, that rumours began to swirl of a reboot to the Star Trek franchise; this would ultimately take the form of 2009’s Star Trek and the two subsequent Kelvin timeline films.

The road to the creation of Star Trek: Discovery begins – arguably – with the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005.

During development of the third Kelvin timeline film, Star Trek Beyond, it was announced that the franchise was returning to television. This was tied up with the announcement of CBS All Access, and the as-yet-untitled show was to be one of the new platform’s headline attractions. Bryan Fuller, who had previously written a number of Star Trek episodes, had been selected as the show’s executive producer. Interestingly, Fuller’s pitch for a new Star Trek series was one of several floating around in the 2010s; others included a “Captain Worf” series that had been proposed by Michael Dorn.

Fuller would ultimately leave Discovery in order to helm American Gods, and day-to-day running of the series would fall to Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts, with Akiva Goldsman joining the team too. Goldsman would go on to produce Star Trek: Picard. The series was delayed from its “early 2017” planned premiere first to May 2017 and then ultimately to September, and while there are rumours as to why nothing is really confirmed. The key thing, I think, to take away from this is that the show’s creator, Bryan Fuller, left the project while it was relatively early in production. It would almost certainly have been a different show had he stayed on board. That doesn’t necessarily mean better or worse, merely different.

Nevertheless, Season 1 of Discovery mostly followed Fuller’s original ideas – the Klingon War and the Mirror Universe storylines were part of the original pitch. Season 2 – despite Fuller’s credit as a “consultant” – was drawn up without much input from him, and as Berg and Harberts departed, Alex Kurtzman took over as the lead on the new season. Kurtzman is also in overall control of the Star Trek franchise.

Bryan Fuller, the original creator of Star Trek: Discovery.
Picture Credit: Gage Skidmore on WikiMedia Commons.
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0

The biggest decision made in Season 2 was of course the decision for Burnham and the USS Discovery to leave the 23rd Century. This is speculation on my part, so take it with a grain of salt, but I wonder whether this decision was made in part as a result of fan criticism of Discovery’s place in the timeline and treatment of canon. Ever since it was announced as a prequel, a vocal group of fans expressed their dislike of the setting. This was compounded by Discovery being, in some respects, different to past iterations of the Star Trek franchise. The show took flak for things like the redesign of the Klingons, visiting the Mirror Universe before Kirk, the militarised and not-hidden Section 31, and many other points besides. When considering Discovery’s massive leap forward in time, we need to be aware of that context – even if ViacomCBS and everyone involved denies that fan backlash had any bearing on the decision.

So that’s a very brief recap of the production side of things. Now let’s get into the story of Discovery’s first two seasons.

One of the odd things about the two-part premiere – The Vulcan Hello and Battle at the Binary Stars – is that it doesn’t take place aboard the USS Discovery, nor feature most of the series’ regular cast. Absent from the premiere are: Culber, Lorca, Stamets, Tilly, and Tyler. These characters wouldn’t be introduced until episode 3 or later, along with the ship itself. Instead we got the USS Shenzhou and Captain Georgiou – neither of which would survive! It was a potentially explosive start for the new series, pinning down the idea that anything could happen and that being a heroic Starfleet officer was no guarantee of safety. As I’ve written before, there’s a distinct influence of successful shows like Game of Thrones in the way Discovery was written and produced.

The USS Shenzhou in the series premiere.

Unfortunately the premiere was awful almost across the board; the visual effects and a Federation-Klingon battle being the only saving graces. Michael Burnham was introduced as a deeply flawed and unlikeable character, and it took a lot of work for the show to recover going into the rest of the first season.

The basic story of the premiere was that a resurgent Klingon Empire was on the verge of unifying behind a new leader. Burnham, for reasons that are still difficult to understand three years later, decides that the best way to avoid a war with the Klingons is to shoot first and attack their ship. When Captain Georgiou orders her to stop being such an idiot she tries to stage a one-person mutiny, attacking the captain and attempting to shoot the Klingon flagship.

Burnham spends much of the rest of the premiere in the brig, and in the subsequent battle a number of Starfleet vessels are lost. A last-ditch plan by Burnham and Georgiou cripples the Klingon flagship, and while attempting to capture the new Klingon leader, Georgiou is killed. This battle kicks off the Federation-Klingon war which would rage for the rest of the season.

I have a detailed write-up of the premiere, and you can find it by clicking or tapping here.

The titular Battle at the Binary Stars.

In episode 3, Context is for Kings, we finally meet Captain Lorca and most of the rest of the USS Discovery’s crew. Several officers from the USS Shenzhou transferred to Discovery, including first officer Saru and helm officer Detmer. The USS Discovery has an experimental spore drive – a mushroom-based method of propulsion that, in theory, allows the ship to travel through the mycelial network. This technology allows Discovery, and its sister ship the USS Glenn, to theoretically travel any distance in a very short span of time, potentially meaning it can hop halfway across the galaxy in the blink of an eye. However, early in the season the spore drive isn’t functional, and the ship has only been able to move very short distances. The term “black alert” is used aboard the ship whenever the spore drive is engaged.

Captain Lorca intercepts Burnham’s prison transport, and when she arrives aboard the USS Discovery he offers her a chance at redemption by becoming a specialist under his command. Burnham has to overcome the (100% justified) judgement of her shipmates, including those who had been wounded or lost friends during the first few weeks of the war.

Burnham is assigned quarters with a cadet – Sylvia Tilly – and now holds no formal rank. However, the clandestine nature of Discovery’s mission gave Lorca broad powers over who to bring aboard, and despite Burnham’s conviction she’s allowed to serve.

Cadet Sylvia Tilly – Burnham’s roommate.

The first half of Season 1 documented Lorca and Stamets’ work to get the spore drive operational. Discovery’s sister ship, the USS Glenn, made a breakthrough by discovering a space-dwelling lifeform that could navigate the mycelial network. However, the creature was dangerous and got loose, killing the Glenn’s crew. The creature – known as a tardigrade – is able to be used to fix issues with the spore drive, and despite the loss of the USS Glenn, Stamets and the engineering team are able to use it to “drive” the ship.

Lorca is taken prisoner by the Klingons, and meets Ash Tyler. Tyler had been taken prisoner some time previously, and the two were able to escape and return to Discovery. Tyler is given a role as security officer aboard the ship – despite clearly suffering PTSD. Tyler and Burnham would develop a relationship across the rest of the season.

When it becomes clear to Burnham and Stamets that they’re abusing the tardigrade by forcing it to work as part of the ship’s spore drive, Stamets augments his DNA with the tardigrade’s. This allowed him to take the tardigrade’s place as Discovery’s “navigator” in the mycelial network.

The tardigrade proved invaluable to the success of the spore drive.

After a mission to the planet Pahvo, Discovery made numerous spore drive jumps. Outwardly, the plan was to use sensor data gained by making numerous jumps around a Klingon ship to crack the Klingons’ cloaking device, which had given them a massive advantage in the war. However, at the last moment Lorca overrode the jump sequence and forced Discovery into the Mirror Universe. The Mirror Universe was first seen in The Original Series’ second season episode Mirror, Mirror, and in the 23rd Century was dominated by the Terran Empire – a human-supremacist, authoritarian state.

Lorca managed to maintain his cover for a time, but it would later become apparent that he’s not from the prime universe. Lorca was in fact a native of the Mirror Universe, and had arrived in the prime universe via a transporter accident. He plotted to return in order to overthrow the Empress – who is the Mirror Universe version of Burnham’s former captain Philippa Georgiou.

Lorca was killed while attempting his coup, but other plotters had been made aware of the Empress’ weaknesses and were planning attacks of their own. In order to save her, at the last second Burnham beamed her aboard Discovery. From this point on, Mirror Georgiou would be a recurring character. But it’s important to remember she’s native to the Mirror Universe!

Lorca was killed in the Mirror Universe.

Thanks to Stamets, Discovery was able to return to the prime universe the same way it left: via the mycelial network. However, Dr Culber was killed by Tyler – who turned out to be a Klingon in disguise, not the real Tyler – and in Discovery’s absence the war had gone very badly for the Federation, leaving the Klingons on the brink of victory.

Admiral Cornwell hatched a plan to render the Klingon homeworld uninhabitable using a device to make all of its volcanoes erupt simultaneously. When Burnham and the others learn of this plan (which had been devised by Mirror Georgiou) they rebel. Burnham leads a second mutiny, and convinces everyone to go along with a different plan. “Tyler” had introduced the crew to L’Rell, and she took possession of the volcanic device, using it to become Klingon Chancellor, unite the Great Houses, and end the war.

The first season ended with Burnham and the crew given medals for their roles in bringing the war to an end.

Season 1 ended with a medal ceremony for the crew of the USS Discovery.

Season 2 shook things up a lot. With Lorca gone, the big question was that of who would sit in the captain’s chair. It couldn’t be Mirror Georgiou, and with her mutiny conviction it could hardly be Burnham. Saru was next in line, but Star Trek had never had an alien captain before – not to mention Saru is kind of a coward! The surprise announcement came that the role of Christopher Pike – the captain of the USS Enterprise in The Original Series’ first pilot, The Cage – was to assume the role. I wasn’t impressed by this initially, as I felt we’d only recently spent time with the Kelvin timeline version of Pike, and recasting the character for a second time so soon might not work. I’m happy to hold my hands up and admit to being thoroughly wrong!

When the USS Enterprise suffered a catastrophic computer failure – perhaps attributed to its holo-communicators – Captain Pike transferred to the USS Discovery to continue his mission. Starfleet had detected temporal anomalies described as “red bursts,” and Pike was investigating at the time of the Enterprise’s problems.

At the same time, Pike’s science officer – and Burnham’s adoptive brother – Spock, has gone missing.

Season 2 introduced a familiar character – Captain Christopher Pike.

The crew discover that a figure from Spock’s youth, once dismissed as a dream or hallucination, that he termed the Red Angel is responsible for setting the red bursts. Who this person is, and what they hope to gain is not clear, and the investigation continues. The second episode of the season, New Eden, takes the ship 40,000 light-years away to a small colony of humans. The Red Angel saved these people during a conflict in Earth’s past and transported them halfway across the galaxy. The plot thickens!

On the Klingon homeworld, Section 31 arrange for “Tyler” and his son to be evacuated in order to maintain the current power structure. Their artificial intelligence, Control, came to be heavily relied on during the Klingon war, and Starfleet now uses Control regularly. Mirror Georgiou has joined Section 31, as has Ash Tyler, and both serve under the command of Captain Leland, a Section 31 officer.

In An Obol for Charon, a planetoid-sized lifeform referred to as the “Sphere” is encountered by Discovery. The lifeform is dying, and in its death throes gives Discovery a gift: all of the data it has accrued over the hundreds of thousands of years it had lived. Amongst the data was information on Saru’s species, the Kelpiens, and Pike and the crew are able to use that to aid the Kelpiens in their conflict against the Ba’ul, a race who dominate their homeworld.

The Sphere.

The Sphere’s data would be coveted by Control, as gaining access to the data would allow it to evolve and become fully sentient. This would set up the main story of the remainder of Season 2, as well as laying the groundwork for Burnham and the USS Discovery to leave the 23rd Century behind – they did so in order to keep the Sphere data away from Control.

Control “assimilated” Captain Leland using nanites/nanobots in a scene reminiscent of how the Borg operate. This led many – including me – to speculate that Control would somehow be tied to the origins of the Borg. I maintain that storyline was at least a possibility; perhaps something included in the story pitch that never made it to screen.

Control also killed off many Section 31 leaders and operatives, and was able to gain control of Commander Ariam’s cybernetic implants, forcing her to try to transfer the Sphere data. Ariam was killed before she could complete the transfer, greatly upsetting Discovery’s crew.

Meanwhile, Burnham took off on a mission to rescue Spock. Section 31 was hunting for him too, but she was able to get to him first as he was being sheltered on Vulcan. Spock, now a fugitive, insists on being taken to Talos IV – a planet he had visited years prior that was home to the Talosians, a race whose telepathic powers could help him.

The Talosians.

The mission to Talos leads to Spock being able to explain more about the Red Angel – the mysterious figure is human, and someone who is trying to change the current timeline; a time-traveler.

After analysing the Red Angel based on scans taken at one of its earlier appearances, the crew come to the shocking conclusion that Burnham is the Red Angel. They devise a plan to capture her – or rather, her in her future form – using the current-timeline version of Burnham as bait. For many, many reasons, The Red Angel was the worst episode of Season 2 and encapsulated why time travel stories are so difficult to get right! However, one upshot of the otherwise-abysmal episode is that the Red Angel is revealed not to be Burnham herself, but her mother.

Burnham’s parents had been killed years earlier, when Michael was a child. Unbeknownst to her, they were scientists working on a new method of time travel alongside Section 31. However, they were attacked by Klingons and the time travel suit – Project Daedalus – was shelved and considered not to be working. Unknown to Michael Burnham and Section 31, Dr Gabrielle Burnham survived the Klingon attack and used the time travel suit – aka the Red Angel suit. However, she became trapped in the 32nd Century. The Red Angel suit allowed her to make temporary visits to other time periods, but at the end she would always be pulled back to the same spot in the 32nd Century.

Michael and Gabrielle Burnham.

That sounds like torture enough for poor Dr Burnham, but it gets worse: the galaxy in the 32nd Century was entirely devoid of sentient life. After investigating, Dr Burnham came to the conclusion that Control – Section 31’s AI – was to blame. In a timeline in which Control successfully acquired the Sphere data it became sentient and murderous, wiping out all sentient life in the galaxy. Dr Burnham resolved to prevent it doing so, and made numerous interventions in the timeline, including moving the Sphere so that the USS Discovery could intercept it and saving the humans by moving them to Terralysium.

The crew decide that it may simply be best to destroy the Sphere data, but are unable to do so; the data is “protecting itself.” Dr Burnham’s connection to Spock is revealed; in childhood, Spock suffered the Vulcan equivalent of dyslexia. The difference in the way his brain worked allowed him – and only him – to interact with the Red Angel.

Using Captain Leland as its vessel, Control attempts to steal the data from Discovery’s computer, but is unsuccessful. Learning the truth of Leland’s assimilation, the crew try to get as far away from him and Section 31 as possible.

The Control AI possessed Captain Leland of Section 31.

When a new red burst is detected on the Klingon world Boreth, the ship and crew travel there. Boreth is the only known world where time crystals are found – and time crystals are needed to make a working Red Angel suit. The crystal in the original Red Angel suit was destroyed – stranding Dr Burnham in the 32nd Century – but the crew have decided that the best way to keep the Sphere data away from Control may be to take it out of the 23rd Century, so they want to get another one. Captain Pike goes to the Klingon monastery on Boreth and acquires a time crystal – but doing so cements a future timeline in which he will become crippled by delta radiation (as seen in The Original Series).

As the crew race to build a second Red Angel suit using Dr Burnham’s original design, the stage is set for a showdown with Control. Captain Leland’s body remains alive, but it seems as though Control has killed off most of Section 31. However, it is able to use their extensive fleet of ships to pursue Discovery. Despite the spore drive being able to traverse huge distances, the crew join up with the USS Enterprise to make a stand. Initially the plan is to destroy Discovery, but the Sphere data won’t allow itself to be destroyed.

The USS Enterprise and USS Discovery prepare to battle Control’s Section 31 armada.

While Discovery and the Enterprise fight off the Section 31 ships, Burnham uses the new Red Angel suit to travel through time and set off the red bursts – meaning the whole season is a complicated time-loop-paradox thing. With the red bursts set, and with no other options to prevent Control gaining access to the data (despite Captain Leland being incapacitated seeming to pause the fighting) Burnham activates the Red Angel suit, sets the destination for the same point in the future where her mother was trapped, and opens a time-wormhole.

Saru and several other main and secondary characters volunteered to accompany Burnham and the Sphere data into the future, leaving the 23rd Century behind. Pike, Spock, and Tyler are not among them, however, and remain behind aboard the USS Enterprise. Later, Burnham sets off a final red burst, confirming to Spock and Pike that she successfully arrived in the future. Presumably, in the aftermath of the battle, Starfleet was able to shut down Control. Ash Tyler was appointed head of Section 31, and from what we know of the organisation based on its later appearances, began the process of taking the clandestine organisation underground.

Burnham and the USS Discovery enter the time-wormhole and leave the 23rd Century forever.

So that’s a very broad outline of Discovery’s first two seasons! The plot of Season 2 got a little tied up at points, simply because of the nature of time travel stories, but overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable ride. I hope this recap helps remind you of some of the key plot points that led up to the third season’s premiere – now only three weeks away.

Obviously I didn’t include every sub-plot and storyline; this article was already far too long. I tried to stick to the key ongoing story threads from both seasons, and if I missed something you enjoyed or considered important then I apologise for the oversight! This was really just an exercise in recapping, in a broad way, the overall story so far so that as we get started with Season 3 we haven’t completely forgotten what came before!

When Season 3 kicks off next month I’ll be reviewing each episode in turn and perhaps crafting some theories. I hope you’ll stop by for those posts.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 premieres on the 15th of October on CBS All Access in the United States, and on the 16th of October on Netflix in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Discovery – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Is it the right time for new video game consoles?

Is it the right time for new video game consoles?

Dennis

A lot of things in the world are a mess right now, upended by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In addition to the tragic loss of life we’ve seen lockdowns, job losses, and economic chaos on a level unseen for a long time. And tech companies – including Sony and Microsoft – have suffered as a result of major disruption to supply chains and manufacturing facilities. Yet despite all that, both companies are pressing ahead with their new video game consoles, scheduled for release in November. But is that the right decision? Or might it have been better to wait a year or two?

One of the things that struck me most when looking at all the gameplay and footage released by both companies is how absolutely minuscule the so-called “upgrades” are, at least in terms of the way games will look on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Both companies use graphics as one of their major selling points, yet when you stack up a current-gen and next-gen version of the same title side by side, it’s hard to really see a difference.

Perhaps some consumers who have an incredibly fancy (and incredibly expensive) television – or superhuman eyesight – will notice a big change. But I didn’t, and from what I can tell by reading and listening to the reaction from players, a lot of other folks can’t either. There is more to a good game than graphics, but when it’s a key selling point I think it’s not unfair to say that players expect something more than either new console is able to offer.

The trouble is that even on the oldest version of current-gen systems – those consoles released in 2013 – games look pretty good. Players have been enjoying the visual style of titles like The Witcher 3 for years, and even some launch titles from 2013, like Ryse: Son of Rome, look fantastic. Any upgrade was always going to be minor, and things like slightly more realistic controller rumble or faster loading times are difficult things to market to the average player. The result? It’s hard to escape the feeling that the two new consoles already feel like a minor upgrade at best… and a waste of time and money at worst.

That’s before we account for the fact that disruption across all areas of the industry has massively complicated matters.

The Xbox Series X is going to be released without its key launch title – Halo Infinite. This game should have been one of the console’s selling points – despite its simultaneous launch on Xbox One. Without it, the Xbox Series X will be released with some cross-platform games and not a lot else.

However, things are even worse for Sony. The company recently announced that they were producing several million fewer PlayStation 5 consoles than expected. As a result there has been pre-order chaos. Initial plans to hold a “lottery” to determine who could pre-order a machine didn’t pan out, and the console sold out within minutes of being made available. Reportedly, some shops have either cancelled pre-orders outright, or informed irate gamers that they may not receive their console on launch day despite thinking they’d secured a pre-order.

We’ve seen consoles launch without sufficient stock numerous times. Here in the UK, getting a Nintendo Wii was nigh-on impossible in 2006 and throughout most of 2007, such was the lack of stock. Even with that in mind, though, this feels worse. Reducing the number of units available worldwide is clearly indicative of a company struggling with production, yet rather than delay or take steps to rectify the situation, Sony has been quite happy to make the PlayStation 5 impossible to get hold of – something which will only be to the benefit of shady resellers who’ll happily sell the console for double its asking price in the run-up to Christmas.

All of this comes at a time when many people are in financial difficulty or face an uncertain financial future. As the pandemic drags on and the idea of “getting back to normal” seems further away than ever, companies are closing left and right, and as temporary schemes like the furloughing of employees come to an end, many people will be out of work. A £450/$500 outlay in that environment is an impossible ask, and feels decidedly anti-consumer. This is made worse by price rises of games themselves, many of which look set to retail for £65/$70 when the new generation arrives.

As we approach what could be a bleak and lonely Christmas for many people, players and parents are looking at these companies and asking themselves how they could possibly have the audacity and lack of awareness to go ahead with something like this. The minor upgrade that most people perceive is incredibly overpriced at £450, and even the Xbox Series S with its lower price will still be out of reach of many in 2020.

I look at these consoles, and the footage the companies selling them have released, and I’m asking myself who would be interested? At least Microsoft can say that their policy of releasing games on Xbox One for the next couple of years – bizarre though that is in many ways – means that players can stick with their current systems and don’t need to shell out a ton of money for this minor upgrade. But Sony still plans on having exclusive games, and are in effect gating off those titles behind a very expensive paywall, one which will prove insurmountable for many players in 2020.

“Big companies do something anti-consumer” is not a surprising headline, either in the games industry or beyond. And as someone who worked for a large games company in the past, I understand that there are many factors at play, including research, development, and manufacturing contracts that were almost certainly too far along to be undone at the time the pandemic hit. Even so, I’m struggling to see how releasing these machines now is a good idea. A one year delay would allow both companies to resolve manufacturing issues, produce far more stock, and allow more development time for launch titles in order to overcome pandemic-created problems. We might even see marginally better graphics as a result. And a delay of a single year wouldn’t mean the internal components of either machine would feel out of date – they would still be cutting-edge devices even if they weren’t launched until November 2021.

Regardless of what some of us may think, the console launches are going ahead. Manufacturing is well underway, and with mere weeks to go until launch day it would be very difficult – if not outright impossible – to slam the brakes on at this late stage. Despite my misgivings both machines will still sell, and will be picked up by enthusiasts with enough disposable income. The beginning of a new console generation always leaves behind those who can’t afford to make the switch; this time around there’s just more people in that position. Hopefully things really will get back to normal soon so everyone can enjoy the next generation of consoles… and the minor changes they have to offer.

The Xbox brand – including the Xbox Series X – is the copyright of Microsoft. The PlayStation brand – including the PlayStation 5 – is the copyright of Sony. Both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will be released in November 2020. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force (Twenty Years Later)

Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force (Twenty Years Later)

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force and for Star Trek: Voyager.

On the 20th of September 2000, Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force was released. That’s twenty years ago – to my great shock – so it seems like a great opportunity to take a brief look back at what is arguably one of Star Trek’s best and most successful video game adaptations.

The Star Trek franchise hasn’t had a lot of luck in the video game arena, despite the fact that there’s a good deal of crossover between Trekkies and gamers. Most Star Trek games really only appealed to existing fans, and failed to either cross over and win support among a wider gaming audience, or to bring in any new fans. Elite Force was – for a time, at least – an exception to that. As a result it’s fondly remembered not only by Trekkies but by many fans of first-person shooters in the early 2000s.

Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force was released twenty years ago!

Elite Force was the first game released that was made using the Quake III engine (also known as id Tech 3) except for the original Quake III Arena, and many first-person shooter fans just after the millennium were excited to see what this new game engine would bring to the table. Elite Force also offered local and online multiplayer on PC at a time when the idea of playing games via LAN or online was becoming a bigger and bigger deal in the PC gaming sphere; it was certainly the first such game I ever played at a LAN party!

Using the tagline “Set phasers to frag!” – where “frag” is (or was) a gaming term for “kill” – Elite Force became a moderate success for its multiplayer mode. Gaming as a hobby was much smaller around the turn of the millennium than it is today, and also skewed younger in terms of the average age of gamers. Most players at the time were aware of Star Trek, which had been on a roll through the ’90s, and where Elite Force truly broke new ground for a Star Trek game was in reaching out beyond the franchise’s usual fanbase to appeal to non-fans. It’s unfortunate that the game’s release coincided with the end of The Next Generation’s era; I think if it had been released earlier in Voyager’s lifetime it might have been able to retain some of those new players and convert them to Trekkies. The idea of the “box set” hadn’t really materialised in 2000, so with Voyager already into its final season, and with The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine already over, there wasn’t much Star Trek content for those who did enjoy the game and its setting to get stuck into.

A cut-scene set in the briefing room.

In that sense, Elite Force was released at a time when the Star Trek franchise was entering a period of decline, and the end of Voyager’s run a few months after the game was released meant that the franchise wasn’t able to keep many of the players who gave Star Trek a chance. That’s a shame, but it can’t be helped!

Beyond its multiplayer mode, Elite Force told a really interesting story. The game begins with the explanation that Captain Janeway and Tuvok have created a specialist “Hazard Team” for the USS Voyager, of which the player character is a member. Elite Force was one of the first games I played that allowed players to choose their character’s gender; Ensign Munro could be male or female. It was groundbreaking in the sense that the game didn’t change at all depending on the player’s decision – if Ensign Munro was a woman she was just as capable as if she were a man, and no one aboard the ship would behave differently. That decision alone represents Star Trek’s vision of an equal future. Gender representation in games is getting better, and there are some great female protagonists. But some franchises and series have still never offered players a female lead, and others struggle with writing a female protagonist successfully. Elite Force got this right twenty years ago, so there’s no excuse!

Elite Force let players choose to play as a female or male character. Both were fully-voiced.

To get back to the story, Hazard Team has been assembled in response to the threat of the Borg and other dangers the ship faces in the Delta Quadrant. The first level of the game is set aboard a Borg vessel – which soon turns out to be a holodeck simulation! I liked the creative use of Star Trek’s technology to explain some in-game features; players were said to have a personal transporter buffer which contained their inventory, explaining how it was possible to carry so many items at once. That was a neat little addition!

The USS Voyager itself was recreated using the aforementioned Quake III engine, and remains one of the best in-game depictions of any Starfleet vessel. It was such a shame when fan project Stage 9 was forcibly shut down by ViacomCBS a few months ago, as their recreation of the Enterprise-D was stunning. Elite Force did something similar with Voyager, and in between missions several large areas of the ship were able to be explored. This was a complete novelty at the time, and it was amazing to be able to wander around the ship looking at every little detail that developers Raven Software had built.

The bridge of the USS Voyager was one of many locations on the ship that could be explored.

When the USS Voyager is pulled into a rift in space, it comes under attack by scavengers who reside there. The Hazard Team is deployed on a number of missions to recover supplies, defeat opponents, and find a way for the ship and crew to escape. Interestingly, some Alpha Quadrant races (including humans) are present in the “graveyard,” along with Delta Quadrant races like the Malon.

I don’t want to spoil the story too much, because it is still possible to find copies of the game both for PC and PlayStation 2 second-hand if you want to try it for yourself. Suffice to say that I found the story of the single-player campaign to have a solid Star Trek feel to it. Fans of the franchise might find a couple of nitpicks here and there, but generally it was great fun. Voyager would use a somewhat similar premise – getting sucked into a rift in space populated by scavengers – in the seventh season episode The Void, which was broadcast a few months after the game was released.

The USS Voyager in the “graveyard.”

Almost the whole Voyager cast stepped in to voice their characters. The main two in terms of the storyline and in terms of who Ensign Munro interacted with were Tuvok – who is the head of security and nominal leader of the Hazard Team – and Captain Janeway. Aside from Jeri Ryan, who was unable to voice Seven of Nine, and Jennifer Lien, whose character of Kes was not part of the game, the entire main cast were present. A couple of Voyager’s minor recurring characters (Chell and Vorik) were also voiced by their television series actors, which was a nice touch. The game was certainly far better for having the proper voice cast!

A darling of early-2000s LAN parties and a pioneer of first-person shooters in the online multiplayer space, Elite Force is a rare example of a Star Trek video game that broke the mould and expanded beyond the fandom. It’s also one of the better Star Trek video games both in terms of gameplay, where the Quake III engine provided a rock solid first-person shooter experience, and in terms of storyline, which for the most part felt like players were taking part in a real episode of Voyager. It’s a wonderful game, well worth playing for any Trekkie, and it would have been a shame to let its twentieth anniversary pass by unnoticed.

So here’s to Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force! Happy anniversary!

Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force probably remains the copyright of Activision-Blizzard. Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force is available for purchase on PC via GOG. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Voyager – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 7: Much Ado About Boimler

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 7: Much Ado About Boimler

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the first seven episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Lower Decks continues to be great fun as we get into the second half of Season 1. I wouldn’t say that this week’s episode, titled Much Ado About Boimler, was significantly better than the show’s offerings over the last four or five weeks, but it was solid and a great addition to the season. I wrote last time that Lower Decks has tended to reuse the same character pairings each week: Boimler with Mariner, Rutherford with Tendi. It was great to see a change to that, though it unfortunately came at the expense of Rutherford’s screen time.

Much Ado About Boimler would pair up Tendi and Boimler for one of its storylines, which was great. Anything that changes up the formula to avoid it feeling stale is a good thing, and when there are four main characters it makes sense to use those characters in different ways.

The episode’s title card.

To my continued disappointment, Lower Decks remains unavailable outside of the United States and Canada. This idiotic business decision is surely the worst in Star Trek’s recent history, and has cleaved away a huge potential audience. Animated comedy shows are popular, and this kind of crossover should have allowed the Star Trek franchise to expand its reach beyond its typical niche – something that will have to happen to keep the franchise viable in the longer-term. Practically nobody outside North America cares about Lower Decks any more, which is terribly sad for the team behind the show who put in a lot of hard work. Those who do still care have mostly turned to piracy; the series is among the most heavily-pirated shows of recent weeks.

Of course you know me better than that. With Lower Decks only available in North America I packed a bag and moved there. My new home is in the great state of Texas – the Empire State. There’s such a rich history here, from the first Swedish colonists way back in the 1920s right the way through to more modern times, where Silicon Valley is home to some of the biggest wineries in the country. The Rocky Mountains that span the southern part of the state are breathtaking – but I could do without two feet of snow! I mean, it’s only September… save it for Christmas!

As you can see, this is definitely my house. And it’s patently obvious that it’s in the United States. Which is where I clearly am.

Much Ado About Boimler begins with a teaser, which once again set up one of the storylines of the episode. Last week’s teaser had been a standalone thing, and I think I prefer that style overall; it works better for a comedy series. Open with a funny joke, roll the titles, then jump into the main story. That format seems to work well, but this week’s style of using the teaser to set up the story worked okay too.

Tendi finally got some development and agency over the story this week. Her role aboard the ship hasn’t been all that clear; we knew since the premiere that she works in sickbay, but in what capacity was never really explained. In the teaser we see her scientific mind at work – she has spent a long time sequencing the DNA for a dog and seems to have created or replicated the entire animal from scratch!

Tendi and her new dog.

Ethical concerns about such an activity aside, the dog is… not quite right. Though Tendi seems not to notice, the dog is able to do things that no dog – or any other lifeform – should be able to!

The monstrous dog – with glowing eyes – runs riot in the ensigns’ dormitory, and Mariner has a funny line in which she’s nonchalant about the unfolding, potentially disastrous situation. Moments like this take advantage of Mariner’s “I’m not bothered” attitude to great effect. After this short sequence, the opening titles roll, and then we’re into the next part of the episode’s setup. Captain Freeman, Ransom, and Shaxs have been given a special assignment – complete with the uniforms Picard, Worf, and Dr Crusher used in The Next Generation sixth season episode Chain of Command, which was a neat callback.

The special away team.

Unlike Picard’s dangerous mission in search of banned weapons, Freeman and co. are looking after some seeds – very much in line with the “unimportant” nature of the Cerritos’ mission. As a result of their absence, the Cerritos is going to receive a temporary captain.

We got a second callback to Chain of Command as Mariner mentions Captain Jellico by name. Jellico was the officer who took over for Picard in that episode, and was a character I had included in one of my Star Trek: Picard theories earlier in the year. That theory didn’t pan out, of course!

Mariner mentioning Captain Jellico was one of two references to the episode Chain of Command.

En route to greet the new captain, Boimler stops off to visit Rutherford who has been working on a new transporter enhancement. Rutherford has two transporter pads set up in the same room in a style that kind of reminded me of the film The Fly! We take transporting for granted in most Star Trek episodes – at least, until it goes wrong!

And of course that’s exactly what happens to the hapless Boimler, who has agreed to be a guinea pig for Rutherford’s new transporter. After completing the transport sequence, Boimler doesn’t rematerialise intact – instead he appears “phased”, glowing blue and with the familiar transporter noise ringing out!

Boimler is “phased!”

Being “phased” was something that happened in The Next Generation too, to Ro Laren and Geordi La Forge in the episode The Next Phase. However, this seems to be a different phenomenon as Geordi and Ro were rendered invisible, whereas Boimler is merely glowing and transparent. I don’t think this is an inconsistency, merely a re-use of the term to describe a different – but somewhat related – event.

As the new command crew arrive, Mariner recognises the captain as an old friend of hers. Apparently they were students together at Starfleet Academy, and think very highly of one another. Mariner goes from despising the idea of a temporary captain to loving it. I think this does raise a question about Mariner’s age; we know from events a couple of weeks ago that she’s been in Starfleet for several years, but to have attended the Academy at the same time as someone who has subsequently risen through the ranks to become a captain may well make her significantly older than Boimler, Rutherford, and Tendi. I don’t think this matters in a major way – though it does make Mariner’s “teen angst” attitude seem even more immature – but I thought it worth noting. It’s also worth pointing out that the way Starfleet Academy works, particularly in relation to officers who go on to become captains, isn’t clear. In the Kelvin timeline, Kirk appears to have graduated and immediately become a captain, for example, and even in the prime timeline Kirk was young – perhaps in his early 30s – when given command of the Enterprise.

Captain Ramsey and Mariner are reunited.

Boimler – still suffering as a result of the transporter accident – arrives on the bridge, but is immediately ordered to sickbay by the new captain. As much as I like the idea of Boimler being so eager to impress that he’d go to the bridge in that state, from what we know of him and his anxieties, I think it makes more sense to think he’d have gone to sickbay or stayed with Rutherford to work on finding a solution. His arrival on the bridge wasn’t funny, and the short scene added nothing to the episode.

In sickbay, Rutherford is able to get Boimler to stop making the transporter noise, to the relief of Dr T’Ana, everyone else present – and me! That noise on loop was getting annoying! However, Rutherford can’t fix the problem, and Dr T’Ana doesn’t know what to do either. As a result, she informs Boimler that he’s to be transferred to a specialist facility for treatment, run by Division 14 – a branch of Starfleet Medical.

Rutherford and Dr T’Ana try to help Boimler.

From an in-universe perspective, I love the idea that Starfleet has a special hospital for patients who’ve picked up bizarre and seemingly incurable ailments. Given what we see happen in Star Trek on a regular basis, it makes a lot of sense! Space is a dangerous place, and the idea that there are some conditions that Starfleet simply can’t figure out should be easily understood.

Tendi’s dog is also in trouble, with Dr T’Ana having discovered its unconventional nature! He’s to be transferred to the same facility as Boimler, setting up the first Boimler-Tendi story of the series, which is nice. As mentioned at the start, shaking up the character pairings is a good thing for a series like this to do sometimes.

Boimler being paired up with Tendi was a nice change of pace for Lower Decks.

Next we get a scene between Mariner and Captain Ramsey in which Mariner is appointed temporary first officer. Past Star Trek shows have occasionally seen junior officers seemingly bumped up the chain of command; The Best of Both Worlds saw Shelby appointed temporary first officer ahead of Data, and there was an episode (whose title escapes me) where Wesley Crusher was in charge of a mission. Still, it’s hard to see how this is anything other than favouritism and queue-jumping from Ramsey and Mariner, and this ties into a theme I touched on a couple of weeks ago about nepotism and elitism within Starfleet. Looking at that point in more detail is in the pipeline, so stay tuned!

Up next, Tendi and Boimler are transferred to a medical ship for transport to “The Farm” – the specialist hospital/medical facility mentioned earlier. The officer in charge of this ominous-looking vessel is an Edosian! This three-armed, three-legged species was seen in The Animated Series, but had never returned to the franchise since. It was great to see them back, even in this form as a semi-villain. I loved the over-the-top voice performance from Fred Tatasciore, who took on the role of the Edosian as well as his usual role as Shaxs.

Tendi and Boimler meet the Division 14 commander. The Edosians are back!

While Tendi and Boimler are getting used to their new home on the Division 14 medical ship, Mariner and Captain Ramsey prepare to lead a mission to a bog planet. It’s at this point it started to become apparent that Ramsey has taken a different path since she was with Mariner at the Academy; while Mariner still jokes and messes about, Ramsey is trying to stay calm and cool in front of her senior officers.

A story Mariner tells about how she and Ramsey stole a professor’s car goes over particularly badly, and not wanting to be shown up any more in front of her staff, Ramsey changes topic and presses on with the mission. Mariner is left feeling dejected; her friend has moved on without her. This again ties into how I’d been feeling about Mariner, at least some of the time: she’s childish. And in this moment, if she doesn’t realise it about herself, she certainly realises that someone she had been friends with has matured and moved on without her. I think many of us know someone like Mariner – stuck in her school/college mindset. She strikes me, at least in this moment, as the kind of person you reunite with a decade or two after graduating and are surprised to find them still as silly and immature as when you last saw them. Though I have no doubt this wasn’t what Lower Decks was going for, in this moment I almost pity Mariner. Almost.

Mariner realises her friend has matured and moved on.

Mariner messes up on the mission to the bog planet, and it seemed as though her feelings about the situation with Ramsey was getting to her; we’re not used to seeing Mariner make mistakes. In a way, this storyline – that she was flustered and making mistakes – would have worked better than what we ultimately got! But let’s save that for when we come to that revelation in a moment.

During the away mission, Mariner “forgot” the team’s tricorders. When some water purifying equipment malfunctions the tricorders were needed, and the others scold her for her lack of care and attention. Luckily Captain Ramsey steps in to save the day and prevent a disaster. She’s able to salvage the mission – which seems to have been one designed to bring clean water to the denizens of the bog planet. I liked the design of these aliens; animation as a format allows much greater variety than live-action in some respects, and the only limits are really what the animators and designers can think of! In a live-action setting it is possible to get a wide variety of aliens, but there are additional limitations – either an alien has to be able to be played by a human actor, or the budget for creating prosthetics and/or digital effect needs to be high. Animation gets around those issues, and one consequence has been more “alien-looking” aliens in Lower Decks.

The bog-planet aliens with Captain Ramsey.

After the away mission, Captain Freeman checks in with Captain Ramsey aboard the Cerritos. Other than underlining the previous point about the relative unimportance of Freeman’s mission, this scene didn’t really add a lot. The next mission for the Cerritos is to rendezvous with the USS Rubidoux, but the Rubidoux is late. We get another “Mariner messes up” moment, as she seems incapable of working the first officer’s console. Again, this could have worked better than it ultimately did.

On the medical vessel, which is dimly lit and very ominous, Tendi and Boimler meet some of the other Starfleet officers who are being transported to the medical facility. They are all suffering strange and comical ailments – like something out of Theme Hospital! One point of note is that one of the officers was wearing the older style of uniforms seen in First Contact and later Deep Space Nine seasons. We saw Mariner in one of these uniforms in a flashback a couple of weeks ago. I had assumed these uniforms were entirely phased out perhaps years before Lower Decks is set, but based on what the Edosian officer would say at the end – that the medical transport had been on its mission for “months” – perhaps those uniforms were only decommissioned within the last few months. A minor point, perhaps, but as someone who likes the different uniform varieties I thought it was worth noting.

Tendi, The Dog, and Boimler meet their shipmates.

Something has felt off – deliberately so – about the ship and its Edosian commander since Tendi and Boimler arrived, and in this scene we find out why: one of the officers tells Boimler that the medical facility is a myth; the ship will be their permanent home, keeping them hidden away from the rest of Starfleet! This setup was interesting, and the episode was leaning heavily into the idea that this ship was some kind of trap. Division 14 sounds superficially similar to Section 31, and the idea that Starfleet might have some kind of off-the-books vessel for this purpose is not wholly far-fetched. I wondered how Tendi and Boimler would escape!

Meanwhile, the USS Rubidoux has been located, adrift in space. Captain Ramsey assumes the accident is self-inflicted, and that it will be easily-resolved. She beams over with Mariner and her senior officers, only to find the ship powered down and seemingly abandoned. Rubidoux, like Cerritos, is a town in California, and continues the trend of California-class vessels (like the Cerritos) being named after these locales.

The seemingly-abandoned USS Rubidoux, seen on the Cerritos’ main viewscreen.

The away team are assigned roles – Mariner and the captain are to locate the crew, while the others are to restore power. We get another “Mariner messes up” moment, as she struggles with her gravity boots.

On the medical ship, a group of patients led by a man who’s suffering a bizarre ageing condition plot a mutiny. Tendi is out of the room leaving only Boimler to be included in the scheme. Though he initially seems interested to join, he of course immediately rushes to the Edosian commander to tell him everything. The commander, rather than trying to find a peaceful solution, grabs a phaser rifle and plans to put the mutiny down before it can begin – after letting the mutineers know it was Boimler who told on them!

Boimler tells the Division 14 commander about the planned mutiny.

While scouring the Rubidoux in search of her crew, Captain Ramsey and Mariner finally begin to have their conversation – the one we all knew was coming. Ramsey says that she expected to be working with a “Starfleet badass”, and Mariner retorts she expected to be teamed up with her “fun friend.” Both characters are disappointed in each other, but before it can be fully explored they locate the crew, hiding in a cargo bay.

The Rubidoux’s captain warns them not to reactivate power; some kind of energy-eating lifeform is on board the ship. But it’s too late, and the crew rush to escape. En route back to the bridge we finally learn what’s been going on with Mariner – sensing that her friend will offer her a promotion and reassignment, she’s been messing up on purpose.

Ramsey learns that Mariner has been making mistakes on purpose.

This was not a great story twist in my opinion. The idea that Mariner can be flawed, that she can make mistakes when she feels under pressure, or that she can be embarrassed by her obviously childish behaviour in front of someone who’s more successful than her humanises her – yet in an instant all of that was taken away. Mariner is still amazing, she hasn’t made a mistake, it was all intentional as part of her as-yet-unexplained desire to avoid promotion and responsibility. It’s in keeping with her character, sure, but not actually a very inspiring or even interesting storyline. We can add Mariner’s lack of consequences for deliberately making mistakes that could have endangered two away missions and her ship to the list of ways in which she receives special treatment because of her connections within Starfleet!

Meanwhile on the Division 14 ship, Boimler has been ratted out by the Edosian commander and left with the defeated mutineers – who of course immediately turn on him and try to run him off the ship! They chase him to an airlock, and just when it seems as though it’s the end of Boimler, the airlock opens to reveal “The Farm” – the medical facility they all thought was a myth. At the same moment, Boimler’s “phasing” wears off and he’s back to normal.

Boimler and the Division 14 ship arrive at The Farm.

Tendi and her dog have an emotional farewell as Tendi realises that dogs aren’t supposed to be able to talk and fly and do all of the things that she programmed it to do. The Dog will live out its life on the Farm with other medical curiosities – though it doesn’t seem dangerous so perhaps, as it’s sentient, it will be given the opportunity to leave? Starfleet’s mission is to seek out new life… well, Tendi made new life, but Starfleet’s reaction seems to be to incarcerate it. Not sure how well that works!

This next part might just be my favourite in the episode. As the lifeform on the Rubidoux seems close to consuming the ship, Mariner instructs Rutherford to use his newly-modified transporter to get everyone to safety. She gives him the instruction “Boim us out of here!” which was a great line. As Rutherford raced to the transporter controls, I got the sense that the scene was paying homage to Chekov’s role in 2009’s Star Trek. He similarly rushed from his post to the transporter room in that film. I hope that was intentional, and a nice little nod to Chekov actor Anton Yelchin.

Rutherford rushes to the transporter room.

Despite the side-effects of the modified transporter, Rutherford is able to beam everyone to safety. And as we now know that the effect is temporary, no harm was done to anyone! The Rubidoux is consumed by the energy-creature, which transforms the remains of the ship and flies off into space in a scene reminiscent of the ending of Encounter at Farpoint.

Mariner makes her peace with Ramsey, happy to remain just an ensign despite her abilities. At the Farm, Boimler is expelled as he’s no longer sick, and is able to return to the Cerritos with Tendi – ready for next week’s adventure! As always, Lower Decks managed to wrap everything up nicely, and the return to episodic storytelling has been a wonderful touch.

The space entity.

So that was Much Ado About Boimler. When the ensigns learned that they’d be getting a “babysitter” captain, I wondered if we might be about to see a returning character, and in a way that could have worked well and been a good excuse for a cameo. However, the Mariner-Ramsey storyline was interesting and perhaps worked better for Ramsey being someone new.

Mariner has improved in leaps and bounds from her first couple of appearances, and I’m now in a position where I would like to know if there’s a reason underpinning her desire to remain an ensign. Her “I-don’t-care” teenage rebel attitude may simply be her personality – but then again, there could be something in her past which means she wants to avoid responsibility and remain on the lower decks.

Mariner realises her ruse has been discovered.

There were so many references and callbacks to past iterations of Star Trek that I’m not even sure I spotted all of them. Lower Decks has been wonderful in that regard, and I think Much Ado About Boimler may have had the most references so far.

All in all, a solid episode. It was nice to see Boimler away from Mariner, and to see the typical Lower Decks groupings shaken up for once. The Division 14 story was an interesting one too, and I wonder if there will be other opportunities to learn about this secretive branch of Starfleet Medical.

I’m looking forward to next week’s episode, titled Veritas (the Latin word for “truth”). I’m sure it will be another fun outing. There are only three episodes left this season! Where does the time go, eh?

The first seven episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks are available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States. The Star Trek franchise – including Lower Decks – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars is… fine, I guess

Super Mario 3D All-Stars is… fine, I guess

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Super Mario 3D All-Stars (and its three constituent games).

Tempted by the promise of replaying Super Mario 64 – which remains one of my favourite games of all-time – I overlooked Nintendo’s godawful “forced scarcity” business model and stumped up £50 for Super Mario 3D All-Stars. And the game is fine. All three titles work, and in the short amount of time I’ve been able to spend with them today, there haven’t been any glitches or bugs that would make me feel it was somehow unfinished. And there shouldn’t be – these games are between thirteen and twenty-four years old, after all.

Let’s talk about this business model, then. I mentioned this when I talked about Super Mario 3D All-Stars shortly after its announcement, but the idea of releasing a game as a limited-time only thing is a blatant attempt by Nintendo to drum up more support than it would otherwise merit. Removing the game from sale – even as a digital download – after a mere six months is just awful, really, and there’s no excuse for it.

Super Mario Galaxy is one of three games in the collection.

This is a shameless marketing ploy, nothing less. And Nintendo is playing right into the hands of scammer and scalpers, who are already selling copies of the game for well over its asking price on sites like eBay. This is something that will only get worse as time goes by and as the deadline for buying the game next March passes.

I guess why I feel underwhelmed by Super Mario 3D All-Stars is that the game could be so much more than Nintendo chose to make of it. There are small details in the games that have been improved – such as the text in Super Mario 64, which has been upscaled. Some of the in-game icons have clearly been polished too; gone are the rough edges where a lack of pixels caused a blocky effect, replaced by the smoother lines a modern title can deliver. Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy have been upgraded to be in 1080p widescreen.

Super Mario Sunshine is now in widescreen.

But that’s all. Super Mario 64 doesn’t even get the 1080p treatment, and isn’t even in widescreen, leaving weird black bars on all four sides of the screen when played on a television. Sunshine and Galaxy are at least in widescreen, and as more modern games to begin with don’t look quite so out-of-place.

The soundtracks are a something-and-nothing addition. All three titles’ soundtracks are included, but can only be played via the Switch. If you don’t mind having the console on and doing nothing but listening to music, perhaps that’s okay. If you want to listen to it in the background while working or studying, perhaps that’s okay. If you want to do other things or if you want to listen to the music while on the go, you can’t unless you bring your Switch with you – hardly something easily done while jogging or engaged in any number of activities. An mp3 of the albums would have been a far better offering – perhaps redeemable via a code. As it is, all three albums are stuck on the Switch.

The soundtracks don’t really offer much by way of added value.

Perhaps I rushed to buy Super Mario 3D All-Stars too quickly. Perhaps I was taken in by Nintendo’s decision to artificially limit the game’s availability. Perhaps… something. Because I feel like for £50, Super Mario 3D All-Stars is quite a big ask. In a way it’s hard to argue that I didn’t get my money’s worth, because I picked up a slightly-updated version of one of my favourite ever games, got the chance to replay a great game I only rushed through once in like 2002/03, and a game that everyone says is amazing that I haven’t played yet. Yet it still feels like a lot of money for these games considering the newest of the bunch is from 2007. Maybe PC gaming, with its Steam sales and heavily-discounted older titles, has spoilt me!

For somebody who got into gaming this generation and thus missed playing all three of these games when they were new, I would recommend Super Mario 3D All-Stars. These are not just classic Mario games, all three are classics of the 3D platformer genre. Super Mario 64 in particular is a piece of gaming history and well worth any Nintendo fan and indeed any gamer’s time. The problem is that in its current form it still feels like a piece of history – its outdated controls and unimproved visuals will be offputting for some players.

Super Mario 64 has weird black bars on all four sides. Not the best look.

Instead of releasing three titles in a bundle for £50, what Nintendo could have opted to do is to release them one by one after giving them a proper remaster. The engine used for Super Mario Odyssey a couple of years ago could certainly be repurposed, and the games rebuilt from the ground up akin to the work Capcom put into Resident Evil 2. A fully-remade version of any of these games would still have been a celebration of Mario’s past, and if they were to make all three they could retail for, say, £35 each or thereabouts.

Regardless, I knew what to expect from Super Mario 3D All-Stars. I can hardly say the game was not as advertised; it absolutely was as advertised. And again, for the price getting three awesome games – one of which I haven’t played in almost twenty years and one of which I’ve never played – is still good value, even if they haven’t been upgraded as much as I would have liked.

For Mario superfans, I think this is a must-buy. And for gamers who skipped these titles for whatever reason when they were new, it’s also a must-buy. For me… perhaps Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a shouldn’t-have-bought.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars is out now on Nintendo Switch, but will only be available until the 31st of March 2021. Super Mario 3D All-Stars is the copyright of Nintendo. Some screenshots courtesy of press kits on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Some next-gen ports are receiving a well-earned backlash

Some next-gen ports are receiving a well-earned backlash

Dennis

Whenever a new console generation kicks off, it’s inevitable that there will be some games that are released on both new and old systems. This is perfectly understandable in many cases, as games which are new and have had a lot of time and effort put into their development want to get the widest audience possible. Many titles in this category go unnoticed, or at most some reviewers will point out that the game may not be fully-optimised for new hardware. But some other titles are the subject of pretty heavy criticism, and I can fully understand why.

When it was announced that Grand Theft Auto V would be ported to the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, many fans were upset. This was a game initially developed for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and it’s going to be ported again? Grand Theft Auto V has been a juggernaut this console generation after getting its start in 2013, but after more than seven years fans are itching for a new entry in the series.

Grand Theft Auto V was originally released in 2013 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

In 2014, when Grand Theft Auto V was re-released on current-gen consoles, it was barely a year old. No one at the time begrudged Rockstar the chance to port the title to new hardware because there was an understanding that the game had been a big undertaking. As the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 era drew to a close, it made sense to bring some new titles to the new systems.

But that was six years ago, and in that time Rockstar has developed and published precisely one new game – Red Dead Redemption II. There are arguments to be heard that the pace of game development as a whole has slowed, and I don’t want to ignore the reality that developing an open-world game on the scale of Grand Theft Auto V is a colossal undertaking. But that doesn’t excuse what seems to many fans to be the company taking shortcuts.

Red Dead Redemption II is Rockstar’s only game in seven years.

What’s worse is that the time and effort spent on creating a next-gen port could arguably be better spent creating a new title. Even in a studio with the financial resources of Rockstar, porting existing games does take time, resources, and personnel away from other projects. So it’s not just a case of corner-cutting – fans feel that the company is wasting time.

Practically every current-gen title is going to be “forward-compatible” with new hardware anyway. What that means is that any Xbox One game should work on the Xbox Series X, and any PlayStation 4 game should work on PlayStation 5 by default – including titles like Grand Theft Auto V. So there’s no need to spend time and money reworking a seven-year-old game for new hardware; existing versions will work just fine.

Both next-gen consoles will be backwards-compatible with current games by default.

If the upgrades were going to be free, allowing players who own a current-gen copy of the game to experience the tweaks and changes on new hardware, I don’t think anyone would mind. In fact, players have praised companies like CD Projekt Red, whose 2015 title The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is receiving such a free upgrade. But Rockstar – and other companies too – plan to re-release their old games and get gamers to shell out more money for the next-gen version. It feels decidedly anti-consumer.

Even though I’m not a big online multiplayer person, I recognise the appeal that Grand Theft Auto V has as an online experience. But after seven years I feel that online experience has run its course, and most players will be ready for a new challenge. Those who want to stick with what they already have can either continue to play on Xbox One/PlayStation 4 or can even bring their existing copy of the game to the new consoles; there’s no need to buy it all over again.

Grand Theft Auto V is getting a next-gen re-release in 2021… eight years and two console generations later.

Another company that has been roundly criticised for its approach to next-gen is 505 Games, publisher of Control. This is a game I’ve been looking forward to playing, as it has great reviews, but it’s another example of next-gen upgrades being denied to existing fans. The only way to play Control will be to buy it again on the new consoles, and to many fans the small upgrade seems like a big expense.

The Last Of Us was similarly criticised at the beginning of the PlayStation 4 era for being re-released in a “remastered” state less than a year on from its PlayStation 3 debut. At the time I was genuinely shocked by the gall of developer Naughty Dog; how can a game less than a year old be remastered already? But The Last Of Us sold very well on PlayStation 4, cementing this business model in the minds of executives as one that works and will rake in cash for comparatively little effort.

The Last Of Us was re-released on PlayStation 4 mere months after its PlayStation 3 premiere.

At the end of the day, that’s what this is all about. Money. Re-releasing a game with a few minor upgrades and hardware-specific tweaks is relatively inexpensive and offers companies huge financial rewards. It should be no surprise to learn that a big company wants to make more money, and I get that we live in a society where profit and growth matter. It’s just that it feels so anti-consumer, and even big companies need to be aware of their reputations. It’s easy to dismiss criticism and backlash as coming from just a whiny minority of hardcore fans, but companies like Electronic Arts have found – to their great cost – just what can happen when they push players too far.

It’s only in the last console generation that the idea of cross-generation releases has been such a big deal anyway. In the days of the SNES and the Nintendo 64 the idea of a game from one system being ported wholesale to new hardware just didn’t exist. There were ports, but they tended to be things like Super Mario All-Stars, which was a compilation of several games instead of a single title, and offered players good value as a result.

There weren’t many ports in the SNES era, and those that did exist were bundles like Super Mario All-Stars.

But if you’d told me in 2005, when the Xbox 360 was launched, that the original Halo game was just going to be straight-up ported to the new system and that players would be expected to “just buy it again” I’d have been absolutely gobsmacked. What a nonsense idea that would have been even as recently as 2005! We’ve come to accept some of these things in the fifteen years since, but even by today’s standards, some of the proposals for next-gen re-releases are drawing well-earned backlash.

Though it wasn’t possible to predict the impact of the coronavirus pandemic even a few short months ago, the changing situation in the world should be something companies take note of. There’s a good chance that many folks are going to have less disposable income at least in the short-term, and being asked to re-purchase a seven-year-old game on a new console is definitely not something that should be considered under current circumstances. Even were it not for the pandemic, I think this practice would still be inappropriate and anti-consumer. But given where things currently sit, it’s even worse.

This is the kind of practice that can start big companies on a slippery slope to reputational damage and more widespread criticism, and I would advise them to tread carefully. Rockstar – or any other company engaged in a similar practice – could garner a lot of goodwill today by announcing that the next-gen version of whatever game they’re working on will be free to anyone who currently owns it. Or, on the flip side, they could continue to draw criticism and ire for their greed and lack of care.

All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Some screenshots and promotional artwork courtesy of press kits on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten films that (probably don’t) need a video game adaptation!

Ten films that (probably don’t) need a video game adaptation!

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the titles on this list.

Gone are the days when your run-of-the-mill popcorn flick came with a video game adaptation. Why? Well, the truth is that many of those games were mediocre or just outright bad, and after a while the entire film tie-in sub-genre became tainted. Gamers weren’t as interested, and at the same time, studios and publishers were able to make more money developing their own franchises instead of sharing the proceeds from a licensed title. There are still tie-ins from time to time, but not to the same extent there were a few short years ago.

Today, there are a few remaining film franchises that produce video games, but more often than not they’re not direct film adaptations. Instead we see titles like Alien Isolation, which is set in the world of the 1979 film Alien, but isn’t a direct adaptation of any of the films. There are also games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which I recently played through. Jedi: Fallen Order likewise uses Star Wars’ setting but tells an original story.

It’s a shame, because over the years there have been some outstanding video game adaptations of films. I talked about this a little while ago when I put together a list of titles that I’d love to see remastered, but the adaptation of Star Trek: Generations is up there as one of my all-time favourite games.

With all that in mind, here are ten films that I’d love to see adapted as a video game. The usual disclaimer applies: these are not titles that I’m saying will ever be adapted, just titles that I feel could be fun to play through – provided the game was good (and had a suitably high budget!)

Number 1: Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Out of all the Star Trek films, First Contact’s relatively action-heavy nature could make for an inspired first-person shooter. The narrow hallways of the Enterprise-E and the menacing threat of the Borg would make for a terrifying combination, and this could even be a game which veers close to the horror genre if developers chose to go down that route. As I said when I wrote about the Borg a little while ago, out of all of Star Trek’s villains, they’re the ones best-suited to a crossover into horror.

There are several ways this could go, including a multiple-protagonist approach which would see players take on the roles of several of the main cast. Or alternatively, the player character could be a nondescript security officer tasked with retaking the lower decks of the Enterprise-E.

First Contact isn’t exclusively a Borg story, though, and the game could be split into different chapters which would include slower-paced missions set on Earth, repairing the Phoenix and preparing for humanity’s first warp flight.

Number 2: Commando (1985)

By coincidence, a video game sharing the title of this action flick was released the same year as the film, and some people still think the game is supposed to be an adaptation – but it’s not! Commando has garnered a cult following that arguably exceeds its status as a competent but otherwise unremarkable title. Arnold Schwarzenegger gives a typical “Arnie” performance, and the story is suitably over-the-top.

But I bet players would love stepping into the shoes of Colonel John Matrix and just going postal on wave after wave of kidnappers, terrorists, mercenaries, and all manner of typical eighties action film baddies! This one wouldn’t need to be a massively high-budget production to be successful; any mid-tier action/shooter could be redressed in the style of Commando and be a success. It would work as either a first- or third-person title.

Number 3: Any of the recent Marvel titles

A couple of the earlier films in the MCU received proper video game adaptations, and a couple of others got mobile game tie-ins, but there hasn’t been a major game in the series since the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 era. The new Marvel’s Avengers video game is plagued with issues, and one of the strangest for me is that it didn’t license any of the actors’ likenesses. I’ve heard the game described as feeling like “a cheap knock-off” of the films as a result.

I’m not the biggest fan of Marvel or of comic book films in general, but even I have to admit that they’re big business right now, and should be ideally suited to a proper video game adaptation. Realistically any of the films could work, but what might be even better is a game that lets gamers play through the events of multiple films, perhaps those leading up to Avengers Infinity War and Endgame.

Number 4: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930/1979)

This is really just an excuse to talk about the lack of First World War titles! However, both the original 1930 version and the 1979 remake of All Quiet on the Western Front are great films with strong characters and an emotional story that could be adapted to make a fascinating game.

When looking at war stories, in some respects the “obvious” choice is a first-person shooter – in the vein of Battlefield One, one of the rare shooters to use a First World War setting. But for All Quiet on the Western Front, a real-time tactics game akin to the recent Broken Lines could be great too – that format can work well to tell stories that rely on multiple playable protagonists.

Since Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 – which was a game that led directly to the creation of the first Doom a year later – many war games have used World War II as a setting. There’s nothing wrong with that (though the World War II shooter definitely became stale by the mid-2000s) but the First World War makes for a fascinating, underused setting.

Number 5: Moana (2016)

Disney was one of the last companies to give up on tie-in games, and because their films are aimed at kids, it makes a certain kind of sense that they’d feel able to churn out a basic but playable title to accompany big releases. However, by the time of Moana’s 2016 release even Disney wasn’t interested in tie-ins, and while a free mobile game was cobbled together it’s no substitute for a proper video game adaptation.

Moana’s adventure narrative perfectly suits an action/adventure title, as she travels from island to island on her boat to save her people. A 3D platformer with puzzle elements would also work, in the vein of a classic title like Banjo-Kazooie. The world of Moana offers a lot of different environments, including different islands and the realm of monsters, meaning a good variety of levels should be available.

Number 6: The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

Based on an earlier television special, The Quatermass Xperiment is a fascinating example of mid-century horror/sci-fi, and features a plot in which an alien organism infects an astronaut. The infected man escapes, and the titular Professor Quatermass must work to find him before it’s too late. This setup would make for an exciting horror/adventure title, in which players would not only have to track down the mutating monster, but would have to find clues to figure out what’s happening and what to do about it.

The original film was in black-and-white, and I love the idea of having both a colour and monochrome version of the game to allow players to choose what kind of experience they want to have. I’m not the biggest fan of black-and-white in a general sense, but in some properties it works very well, and it’s something that has only ever been attempted in a handful of modern games.

Number 7: Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Recent titles like this year’s comic Maneater demonstrate that there’s still a market for shark-horror games, and 1999’s Deep Blue Sea is one of the better shark films of recent years. A game adaptation would be a marriage made in heaven then, surely?

If you’ve played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, you may remember an underwater base on the ocean planet Manaan that served as one of the game’s levels. It was creepy and claustrophobic as players had to contend with not only the wildlife outside, but flooded sections and crazy inhabitants of the base. Deep Blue Sea, being set on an underwater facility, lends itself to that kind of gameplay too, and players could navigate the base and the waters outside while trying to fend off the hungry, overly-aggressive sharks.

Number 8: Star Trek II, III, and IV (1982-86)

The Wrath of Khan remains for many Trekkies the high-water mark of both the Star Trek film series and of all stories featuring The Original Series’ cast. It also formed the first part of a trilogy of films that told one expanded story, and in many ways, a game that only adapted The Wrath of Khan would be leaving out the rest of that story.

The Wrath of Khan would obviously be the best and most exciting part, and could feature the Battle of the Mutara Nebula as its climactic boss fight. Ship-to-ship combat has been tried in a number of Star Trek games, and in my opinion getting this aspect of the game right would be the biggest challenge – but one that would have the biggest payoff if it was successful.

The Search for Spock could have levels including stealing the Enterprise, which could make for a fun stealth section, as well as sabotaging the USS Excelsior, and The Voyage Home would not only let players pilot a Kingon Bird-of-Prey but would also feature a fun and nostalgic ’80s setting. I love this idea, and producing a fun adventure title from this trilogy would be amazing.

Number 9: Forbidden Planet (1956)

Forbidden Planet is an absolute classic of the science fiction genre, and arguably inspired franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars to a degree. The fictional world it created, with the planet Altair IV and the starship C-57D has never been revisited – though the film has been referenced and paid homage to many times.

This is one film where the plot could be directly adapted, but also we could see a broader game world based on the setting that it created. When you consider the success of the Fallout franchise with its ’50s-esque retro-futuristic aesthetic, there’s clearly a market for the visual style of Forbidden Planet in the gaming realm.

Number 10: For Your Eyes Only (1981)

James Bond films tend to have stories that are well-suited to a stealth/action title. The Nintendo 64 game Goldeneye is a classic example of how Bond can work as a video game. While other attempts to make Bond games have been overshadowed by Goldeneye in some respects, there are several creditable titles that have been released.

For Your Eyes Only might be my favourite Bond film – though there’s certainly room for others, like License to Kill! The storyline is a Bond classic – the secret agent must retrieve a stolen piece of technology that could fall into enemy hands. Roger Moore’s Bond visits a number of exotic locales, gets to drive some classic cars, and of course has an array of fancy gadgets at his disposal. All of which would make for an exciting and fun video game!

So that’s it. Ten films which probably don’t need a video game adaptation – but could absolutely be given one regardless! In a way I can understand why the tie-in video game has disappeared, and while many players won’t be terribly upset or won’t care, there are many recent titles which, had they been released fifteen years earlier, could have been accompanied by a solid video game.

The titles I’ve put on this list are from a variety of eras, including some from well before video games existed! But as we continue to see with titles like Friday the 13th and the aforementioned Alien Isolation, going back to older films isn’t something game developers should be afraid of. Trying to make an unabashed classic into a modern game may draw criticism from some quarters, but if the game is good when it ultimately releases, practically all of that criticism will melt away and the game will find an audience.

This list was just for fun, and to give a few examples of titles that could – but almost certainly won’t – be made into video games.

All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio and/or distributor. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 6: Terminal Provocations

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 6: Terminal Provocations

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the first six episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Spoilers may also be present for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Sorry for being a little late with this week’s Lower Decks review. There was so much to talk about from the Discovery Season 3 trailer that this review slipped down the list a little. These episode reviews are probably the most time-consuming things to write out of everything I do here, so even a short delay in getting started can have ramifications!

For the last three weeks at least, I’ve felt that the newest episode of Lower Decks was my favourite and the funniest yet, and this week is no exception. I think we’re at a point where I just have to say that the series as a whole is funny and enjoyable, so that I can try to avoid saying the same thing every time!

The title card.

Although I should really know better by now, I still held out a vague hope that Lower Decks’ panel for Star Trek Day – which took place on the 8th of September – would have finally contained some information about an international broadcast. But alas, we once again got nothing, and the fact that ViacomCBS continues to ignore Star Trek’s overseas fanbase is really just shitty behaviour from them. As I wrote recently, Star Trek doesn’t belong to Americans. It’s an international brand, and it became an international brand specifically because ViacomCBS and other companies have pushed hard to take Star Trek to all corners of the world. These big corporations want the profits overseas fans bring – but are happy to dump us as soon as there’s the tiniest bump in the road. Running a franchise like Star Trek comes with a responsibility that extends beyond international borders, and part of that responsibility in the age of the internet and streaming platforms is to make sure that every Star Trek fan has a way to access every new series and film. ViacomCBS has utterly failed in that regard.

Of course as you know if you’re a regular reader, I had no choice but to move to the United States in order to be able to watch the series lawfully. I’m chillaxing at my bachelor pad in downtown Las Vegas as we speak. Despite what people say, it’s a beautiful city, home to the Empire State Building and Independence Hall, and a stone’s throw from the lovely Acadia National Park.

This is obviously my house. And it’s clearly in the United States. Which is where I unequivocally am.

On to this week’s episode: Terminal Provocations. After last week’s episode dropped the opening teaser and jumped straight into the title sequence, I was pleased to see a return to the usual format. This week’s teaser introduces a new ensign and friend of Mariner and Boimler: Ensign Fletcher.

Fletcher will go on to have a role in the episode, as we’ll soon see, but for now this scene was mostly a one-joke affair. The ensigns – all four of them, plus Fletcher – begin humming “warp engine noises” of different ships, which Commander Ransom mistakes for something being horribly wrong. It was funny, and as with so many jokes, loses its humour when you try to explain it!

Ransom misinterprets the ensigns’ odd behaviour.

After the opening titles, we get the setup to the episode’s main story via a log recorded by security chief Shaxs. The Cerritos is in a standoff with Drookmani scavengers. A Federation starship’s wreckage is claimed by both sides, and of course Shaxs wants to fire!

This is a great moment to discuss the senior staff. Captain Freeman and Commander Ransom have both had a little time and attention in past episodes to expand as characters. They feel – at least a little – more than just one-dimensional caricatures for the ensigns to duel with. Shaxs, and sadly Dr T’Ana as well, haven’t had that yet, and as a result can still feel very flat. Shaxs is a gun-jumping aggressor on par with some earlier depictions of Worf, and the only thing we really know about T’Ana is that she’s grumpy!

Ransom, Shaxs, Freeman, and… someone else on the bridge.

As soon as the Drookmani captain spoke I recognised the voice: it was long-time Star Trek guest star J. G. Hertzler! Hertzler is best known for his recurring role as Klingon General Martok (and the changeling who impersonated him) on Deep Space Nine, but also played guest roles in Voyager and Enterprise. It was absolutely wonderful to welcome him back to the franchise, and his distinctive voice was perfect for the role of the Drookmani captain – while being a welcome surprise for longstanding fans.

The Drookmani believe they have the rights to the debris, claiming it has been abandoned for over a century and thus is fair game. Captain Freeman won’t surrender the wreckage, though she does offer the Drookmani a “finders’ fee.” Obviously this is not acceptable to the Drookmani, who attempt to use their tractor beam to claim the salvage anyway.

The Drookmani captain had a familiar voice!

This leads to a tractor beam-standoff between the two vessels, who seem to have beams of roughly equal power. The piece of salvage is caught between the two, and doesn’t move in either direction. Captain Freeman declares the crew is “ready and focused!”

And then – of course – we get a funny cutaway to the ensigns not being ready or focused! Fletcher has his head in a replicator and is being encouraged to chug by the onlooking ensigns (and others). At first I thought the nondescript orange substance must be something alcoholic – which was a funny enough gag when considering what the captain had just said – but when Rutherford said that it was cantaloupe purée I honestly just lost it. It was just so random!

Fletcher demonstrating how “ready and focused” he is!

While cheering on Fletcher, Mariner jumps awkwardly and lands on Dr T’Ana, who goes face-first into her dinner: a plate of nachos. This was kind of a funny scene as the Caitian doctor exclaims how difficult it will be to get the cheese out of her fur! She gives Mariner a dressing-down, saying she’s “heard of” the ensign. I assume this means she knows about the Mariner-Freeman connection, or at least that’s my theory!

There was a funny gag about Starbase 80; Dr T’Ana says that if Mariner wants to screw around she can get reassigned there. I looked it up in case I was missing a reference, but as far as I can tell this is the base’s first mention in the franchise. The comedy came from the line and the reaction to it rather than being a callback to some other event in Star Trek Fletcher steps in to save the day, giving Dr T’Ana a new meal and a towel to clean up with. Fletcher, in these early scenes, comes across as competent, collected, and in control – a stark contrast to what will come later!

Dr T’Ana and the ensigns stand off.

Up next we have the setup for the episode’s B-plot, and it’s another one focusing on Tendi and Rutherford. So far, Lower Decks has been content to stick with the same basic character pairings – Boimler goes with Mariner, Tendi with Rutherford. And these pairings do work, but at the same time some variety would be nice. Aside from their first meeting in the premiere, I don’t think Boimler and Tendi have said two words to each other. At times it can feel like the group of four ensigns aren’t really friends – because they don’t know each other – and are just together because the scripts say so.

Hopefully that’s something future episodes will address. But in Terminal Provocations, after Tendi tells Rutherford she never passed her zero-gravity class and is worried about being given an anti-gravity assignment to collect some of the debris, he offers her a holodeck training programme he’s been working on that can help. And of course, for anyone who’s seen Star Trek before, alarm bells start ringing about horrible malfunctions!

Tendi and Rutherford in the mess hall.

As this scene ended, Rutherford ran through a list of famous historical figures that have made appearances as holograms in past iterations of Star Trek, which was a nice touch for fans! Up next we finally got the chance to see the ensigns doing some boring shipboard work. Mariner, Boimler, and Fletcher are working on the isolinear cores – using the transparent coloured isolinear chips we saw in shows of The Next Generation’s era, which was another neat little throwback!

Here’s where Boimler and Mariner’s story really kicks off, as they leave Fletcher alone to finish the work so they can attend a “Chu Chu dance.” This party is something both Mariner and Boimler have been looking forward to, and in keeping with his earlier characterisation as someone reliable and friendly, Fletcher offers to pick up their work so they can attend.

Boimler and Mariner gratefully thank Fletcher.

Boimler says he’s made matching Chu Chu shirts for him and Mariner (which we’ll see later) in what was a cute moment. On the holodeck, Rutherford introduces Tendi to his programme, which features Badgey – an anthropomorphic Starfleet badge who is a clear homage to Clippy. Clippy, if you don’t remember, was the “assistant” who used to come bundled with Microsoft Office products in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This little virtual assistant was an early attempt at something like Siri, but limited in scope to a few office-related tasks. Clippy definitely entered popular culture, though, and has been the subject of many memes! I’m sure that most viewers, even those who never used Microsoft Office, would recognise something about Badgey!

Badgey is cute – in a slightly annoying way – and Tendi takes to him right away. Rutherford loads the spacewalk programme, but when Badgey suffers a glitch Rutherford gives him a kick to get him working again…

Tendi meets Badgey.

The show is definitely steering towards Rutherford and Tendi being an item, or at least it feels that way. At one point during the spacewalk they get their magnet boots (a callback to The Undiscovered Country and First Contact, among others) stuck together. I like their dynamic as friends, and I’d definitely like both pairings of characters to spend more time together either as one larger group or as different couples before pairing anyone off into relationships.

We didn’t get to see the Chu Chu dance, as the next scene shows Boimler and Mariner leaving the festivities. I guess the exact nature of the Chu Chu dance will have to remain a mystery, though we can tell they both enjoyed it! Fletcher, however, has been knocked out! And on top of that, one of the isolinear cores the trio were supposed to be working on has been stolen! Fletcher had seemed so above-board and wholesome earlier in the story, so while something definitely felt “off,” I wasn’t convinced Fletcher was to blame.

Mariner and Boimler discover an unconscious Fletcher.

After a brief flashback in which Fletcher reveals he was attacked by an unknown assailant, the trio decide the culprit must be their nemesis: Delta shift! I liked the show playing up this intra-shift rivalry; anyone who’s worked in this kind of environment knows how they feel, I think.

Of course it wasn’t Delta shift’s fault, and after a scene in which a far-too-eager Fletcher has to be dragged back by Mariner and Boimler, I was convinced he wasn’t being honest with them. While Fletcher tries to explain he couldn’t see who it was because it was too dark, the Drookmani begin to use their tractor beam to launch pieces of the wreckage at the Cerritos.

The Drookmani ship uses its tractor beam as a makeshift weapon.

On the bridge of the Cerritos, Shaxs recognises that the shields aren’t working as well as they should be; the missing isolinear core is responsible. This adds a renewed sense of urgency to finding the stolen component! Meanwhile, it also causes problems for Rutherford and Tendi, as in true Star Trek style, the attack causes a holodeck malfunction!

Badgey, the cute little helper, suddenly goes rogue! And of course the attack disabled two key holodeck features – the safety protocols and the ability to end the programme! Badgey, remembering Rutherford’s mistreatment, begins to attack him. Rutherford and Tendi have no option but to flee. I loved this little subversion; it not only plays on our very real fears of rogue artificial intelligence, while being a cute little Microsoft Office throwback, but also ties in neatly with the most recent seasons of Discovery and Picard, which likewise featured storylines that looked at out-of-control artificial life.

Badgey goes rogue on the holodeck.

Unable to leave the holodeck, Rutherford decides to change the programme from outer space to something safer – a Bajoran marketplace. At least this one will have air to breathe! But Badgey is still present and violently “kills” several holograms while seeking Tendi and Rutherford; the chase is still on!

On the bridge, the Drookmani captain and Captain Freeman have another shouting match. I liked that, despite everything, Freeman was still intent on finding a peaceful solution. That definitely feels like the Starfleet way to handle things! I liked the Drookmani captain’s line that “avoiding damage is fighting!” That’s certainly one way to look at the confrontation!

“F**k you!” – Drookmani captain.

Finally we get back to Mariner, Boimler, and Fletcher. Realising what’s happening, Boimler says that if the shields drop below 50% the bridge crew will realise an isolinear core is missing – something that could lead to Fletcher and/or all three of them being in big trouble! They want to stick together as “lower deckers” so they won’t leave Fletcher to hang alone.

Fletcher changes his attack story, saying it must be the Drookmani who attacked him because the assailant was an alien… despite saying moments earlier that he couldn’t see who attacked him. It was clear by this point that Fletcher’s story was not what it seemed, but Mariner and Boimler still trust him. The trio decide to scan the ship for proof of an intruder (despite there being ample time for an intruder to have escaped! Sorry, I know. Too nitpicky!) At their dormitory, however, the missing isolinear core is found… in Fletcher’s bunk!

Boimler uncovers the missing core, and realises Fletcher has been lying!

His lie revealed, Fletcher initially tries to claim he was being framed before breaking down and admitting that he stole the core. He had attempted to hook up the core to his brain to make himself smarter. When his plan didn’t work he concocted the lie about being attacked to cover his tracks. Admitting it to his friends was obviously difficult, but I think we’ve all known a Fletcher at some point in our lives or careers: the kind of person who acts calm and cool on the surface but actually is a mess, and who will lie and cheat and steal to keep anyone finding out. He’s not a relatable character, but he’s a character most people will recognise!

Despite Fletcher’s lies, Boimler and Mariner initially seem to forgive him, even promising to format the core so no one will find out what he did. However, while Mariner is preparing to give a big speech about how Starfleet officers learn from their mistakes, the core jumps to life – Fletcher’s mind-hookup with it worked, just not in the way he intended!

The rogue core attacks the ensigns.

The core now possesses some of Fletcher’s personality quirks – most notably his desire to get smarter. It begins “eating” anything it can get its cable-tentacles on in order to gain more knowledge. It grabs Mariner and Boimler, but Fletcher attacks it in an uncharacteristic moment of bravery, and it lets them go.

Fletcher then tells Mariner and Boimler that if they don’t help him cover up what he did he’ll rat them out, saying it was their fault for going to the Chu Chu dance and leaving him on his own. This adds to the sense I talked about earlier that we all know someone like Fletcher; he shows his true colours here.

Fletcher threatens to tell the captain about Mariner and Boimler.

Mariner steps in, telling Fletcher what he’s doing is “not Starfleet.” Fletcher retorts that Mariner is a rule-breaker too, and here in this exchange we get an interesting line that really goes a long way to explaining Mariner’s personality. She argues that she only breaks dumb rules, rules that get in the way of her being able to do a better job. She sees herself in this way, somewhat above the rules because the rules weren’t made to accommodate someone as brilliant as she is. Is this confidence or arrogance? On past form, we have points to argue in both directions!

Mariner continues that she’d never put anyone in danger, to which Boimler responds by clearing his throat! This was one of the standout jokes for me, as Mariner accepts that she does, on occasion, put Boilmer in danger! The isolinear core has found more things to grab, however, and now looms over the trio of ensigns.

“…except sometimes maybe Boimler!”

Back on the holodeck, Rutherford and Tendi are continuing their escape from Badgey, running up a long flight of stairs presumably still in the Bajor programme. Rutherford admits that he felt Badgey wasn’t ready yet, but that he wanted to show off to Tendi. She’s very understanding, and the two continue their escape!

Rutherford realises that, seeing as Badgey is affected by the simulated environment, it might be possible to freeze him. He loads a new holodeck programme, this time in an icy mountainous environment. He and Tendi immediately start to shiver, but this could be the key to surviving the Badgey attack!

Tendi and Rutherford in the snowy holodeck programme.

Mariner and Boimler are able to wrangle the semi-sentient core, but Fletcher insists on making up another lie: this time that a Q was responsible. The other two don’t buy it, however, and after tying up Fletcher they drag the core to the transporter room. On the way, it keeps grabbing everything it can, and Boimler is worried it will be too heavy to keep dragging.

They switch up their plan and decide to instead blow it out of a nearby airlock. Mariner is able to lure it inside by throwing a tricorder – the core wants to gain knowledge so this makes a lot of sense! All the while the core has been spouting some of Fletcher’s lines, including his remarks about aliens, which was pretty funny. Mariner and Boimler are successful, and the core is ejected into space… where it immediately attacks the Drookmani ship!

Mariner and Boimler watch from the airlock.

A short clip from this scene was featured in the trailer for the series back in July, as Mariner and Boimler exclaim that they’re going to be fired! We didn’t know then what made them think so, but know we do – it was the rogue isolinear core attacking the Drookmani ship.

On the bridge, Captain Freeman is finally out of options. After trying everything to achieve a peaceful, diplomatic solution, she allows Shaxs to fire on the ship. But it was too late – the Cerritos’ weapons systems are down! All seems lost to the bridge crew… until the isolinear core disables the Drookmani ship anyway!

The bridge crew watch in stunned silence as the Drookmani ship is disabled.

The threat over, everyone can celebrate and relax. Dr T’Ana and Shaxs share a hilarious kiss as the bridge crew cheer. On the holodeck, Rutherford and Tendi are still trying to escape Badgey, though, as the end of the battle hasn’t saved them from the malfunctioning programme! Tired, cold, and unable to keep running, Rutherford attacks Badgey. After a fight, Badgey seems to have the upper hand, but the cold finally gets to him.

Rutherford is able to put him down, just as the holodeck is repaired! Badgey springs back to life, claiming not to remember anything that happened, and the two are able to exit the holodeck relatively unharmed. Whether Badgey will return as a villain remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t bet against it at this stage! We did get one more interesting line hinting at a Tendi-Rutherford relationship: he think that she’s “cute!”

Badgey’s “death” scene.

For his heroic and innovative method of saving the Cerritos, Fletcher is promoted and reassigned! Mariner and Boimler are glad to be rid of him after what they saw, and in a funny moment later reject his appeal to be transferred back to the Cerritos after screwing up on his new assignment.

Boimler has a nice line right at the end of the episode: Mariner may be a rule-breaker, but “at your heart, you’re Starfleet.” This was a cute way to end the episode. Mariner and Boimler’s story this week has been one which – mostly successfully – attempted to justify Mariner’s rule-breaking. At the very least it managed to put the way she behaves in context: she may not always follow the rules, but when she does step out of line she usually has a reason, and the ability to back it up. I think it’s a good lesson – but one that might’ve been useful a little earlier in the season!

Mariner and Boimler at the end of the episode.

So that was Terminal Provocations. A solid, very funny episode with some relatable characters and plenty of humour. I think there were more f-words (and other instances of bad language) here than in any previous episode, and I wonder why that was. Perhaps it was just because of who wrote it. I tend to feel such language doesn’t always add much to a story – not just in Star Trek, but in many other shows and films. Sometimes it’s just there because the writers and producers can get away with it, and that thought occurred to me here.

Otherwise, it’s hard to find much to criticise. I loved hearing J. G. Hertzler’s voice once again, and if he could make more returns to Star Trek in future that would be amazing! We have been promised other cameos in future episodes, so I’ll be keeping my eye – or rather, my ear – out for those!

The stand-off with Delta shift.

Badgey was perhaps my favourite element of the episode. In a way, the two pairs of characters were dealing with a similar problem – rogue technology. In Boimler and Mariner’s case, they had the isolinear core. Tendi and Rutherford had Badgey, and it’s interesting because this has been a theme we’ve seen used in Star Trek several times recently.

The promo for next week’s episode – which I won’t spoil, don’t worry – looks fantastic, and I can’t wait for Thursday! I hope you’ll come back then to see my next review. Once again, sorry for the delay this week. Hopefully next week we can get back on schedule.

The first six episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks are available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States. The Star Trek franchise – including Lower Decks – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten more games I’d remaster (if I could)

Ten more games I’d remaster (if I could)

Dennis

A little while ago I looked at ten games from years past that I wish would be remastered and brought up-to-date. That list was fun to put together, but I ended up leaving off a number of titles that I had considered including. This new list will make up for that!

The same methodology applies as last time: more recent titles – which I’m defining as anything from this console generation or the one preceding it – are excluded by default. And the rest are games that I’ve personally played… albeit I haven’t touched most of them in years or even decades. Remember that this isn’t me saying that these games will be remastered. I’m just saying that, if I had unlimited resources, I’d like nothing more than to bring them up to date and give a new generation of players a chance to experience them.

Number 1: Super Mario Kart (SNES, 1992) and/or Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo 64, 1997)

I’d love to replay the classic tracks of the first two Mario Kart titles using the more modern engine used for Mario Kart 8. A few of the tracks from these two titles have reappeared in recent Mario Kart titles, but not all of them and the two games have never been remastered in their entirety complete with all of the tracks and the same roster of characters.

Super Mario Kart was one of the first games I bought for myself in the early ’90s; I think I’d played a demo of it in a shop and desperately wanted my own copy! Mario Kart 64 is probably my personal favourite entry in the series; it had such an amazing set of tracks. If you want to see some of the best racetracks from these titles and others that I think would be great for the next Mario Kart title, I have an article all about that. With 2022 being the 30th anniversary of the series – and with Nintendo’s love of anniversaries – they could certainly take that opportunity to bring one or both of these titles fully up-to-date!

Number 2: Space Harrier (Arcade, 1985)

On my first list I didn’t include any pre-1990 titles. Partly that’s because a lot of older games were rather basic. Space Harrier is undeniably in that category; it’s an on-rails shooter without any real story, the only objective is to shoot at aliens and creatures. But there aren’t many games like that in 2020, and perhaps with a major visual overhaul it could offer something different to players. The other option would be to take its main character, settings, and alien races and expand on them – turning Space Harrier from a run-and-gun shooter into something more like a story-driven action/adventure title in a unique sci-fi setting.

I never had the chance to play Space Harrier in a real arcade. The closest I got to that experience was playing it in Shenmue – that’s where I first encountered the title. But nostalgia is a big deal these days, and perhaps some people would be tempted to see a reworked version of this classic.

Number 3: Spirit of Speed 1937 (Dreamcast and PC, 1999)

Racing games are a lot of fun, and some modern titles do make an attempt to include older vehicles – classic cars from the golden age of motor racing. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s been another game like Spirit of Speed 1937, though, which was set in that era and exclusively featured pre-war vehicles.

I played the Dreamcast version of this game, and it was a lot of fun. It was also something wholly unique among racing games that were either fun but un-serious kart racers in the vein of the Mario Kart series, or modern-day racers and rally games featuring up-to-date cars. I believe that niche still exists today, and it would be a lot of fun to have a classic racer like this to fill it!

Number 4: Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force

I’ve had an article in the pipeline for a while that I haven’t knocked into shape yet looking at the state of Star Trek video games. To make a long story short, while a number of them have been pretty good, practically none reached out beyond Star Trek’s preexisting fandom. Elite Force was different, and some fans of first-person shooters who didn’t give a hoot about Star Trek played and enjoyed the game when it released in 2000. Its multiplayer mode in particular was something gamers at the time appreciated.

Elite Force had a great single-player campaign too, which included down time in between missions where the player character – Ensign Munro – was able to explore parts of the ship. The story was perfectly Star Trek in its theme, and Voyager would even go on to use a vaguely similar premise for an episode called The Void which aired about six months after the game was released.

Number 5: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Xbox and PC, 2002)

It would have been hard to imagine in the 2000s, but there hasn’t been a game released in the Elder Scrolls series for almost a decade. Though Bethesda have promised us that The Elder Scrolls VI is in development, it seems years away. The company has remastered Skyrim several times and ported it to every platform under the sun, and while we continue to wait for The Elder Scrolls VI, why not bring Morrowind up to date?

Morrowind is undoubtedly my favourite game in the series. It massively expanded on previous entries, with a huge variety of quests and styles of play. It was possible to be a wizard, sneaky assassin, warrior, and all manner of other things. Beginning with its sequel, Oblivion, Bethesda actually began cutting content, and the most recent Elder Scrolls titles have far fewer NPCs, weapon types, factions, and so on. While we can argue about which game is “better” and get nowhere – such things are subjective, after all – for my money Morrowind offers players the biggest choice of things to do. It’s been eighteen years since I first played it, and I still haven’t completed every quest!

Number 6: Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64, 1996)

I kept this title off my first list because there had been rumours floating around of a remaster being worked on. Sadly, as I noted when I looked at Nintendo’s lineup for Mario’s 35th anniversary, Super Mario 64 was only included in its original form as part of a bundle. But replaying this amazing game in the Super Mario Odyssey engine is something I really want to experience, and with the game’s 25th anniversary coming up next year, perhaps Nintendo will finally bring Super Mario 64 up-to-date.

I first played Super Mario 64 when it was released; it was the first Nintendo 64 game that I owned. I’m not sure if it was the first ever true 3D game I played, but it was certainly one of the earliest titles I got to enjoy that wasn’t 2D. It has a special place in my heart as “my” Mario game – I played the SNES versions of classic Mario titles, but even at the time they were “old” games, and Super Mario 64 was the first that I got to play when it was new.

Number 7: Medieval: Total War (PC, 2002)

Medieval: Total War is almost certainly my most-played game of the early 2000s. It followed on from the also brilliant Shogun: Total War, but took the setting from feudal Japan to the more-familiar western Europe. It was a game that was very easy to mod – I remember opening up the game’s files in Notepad and editing things like the year the game began, which factions controlled which province, and even the names of provinces! I loved the dual gameplay, which was unique among strategy games at the time – both a grand strategy game that required detailed faction management and real-time battles were present in the same title.

The Total War series is still going strong in 2020, and recent titles like Total War: Warhammer and Total War: Three Kingdoms are carrying the flag for the franchise on a massively improved engine. Medieval II: Total War did bring the series back to this setting in 2006, but even that game is rather outdated compared to the latest entries, and it would be amazing to see a remake of Medieval: Total War using the technology at the franchise’s disposal today.

Number 8: TimeSplitters 2 (GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox, 2002)

Out of all the games I’ve ever played, TimeSplitters 2 may have the best ever multiplayer mode! It was certainly something that was a huge amount of fun to play on the original Xbox, with its goofy time-travel narrative taking players from Prohibition-era Chicago to futuristic Toyko and beyond. The TimeSplitters games were never going to be on par with other first-person shooter titles like Halo or the Call of Duty series, but the series had heart and did what it did incredibly well.

The recent remake of Destroy All Humans shows that there is a market for early/mid 2000s games with a sense of humour to be remastered, and I’d absolutely love to welcome back TimeSplitters 2 after all this time.

Number 9: The Simpsons: Hit and Run (Multiplatform, 2003)

Talk to anyone who was a gamer in the mid-2000s and I bet they’ll remember The Simpons: Hit and Run with a sense of nostalgia! I didn’t actually own this game for myself at the time (being a broke student) but a friend did and we played it regularly when I was at university. The game is basically a Simpsons-themed Grand Theft Auto-clone, playing on the popularity of that sub-genre in the wake of Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City, and while fans of Grand Theft Auto will find the more extreme violence of that series decidedly toned-down and cartoonish, it’s a solid game nevertheless.

Recent games have steered away from tie-ins with films and television shows, and the days of a big-budget game based on a popular series are all but gone. There was a time when many popular titles got video game adaptations, and while as a whole tie-in games picked up a (not undeserved) reputation for being pretty poor, there are some real gems too. The Simpsons: Hit and Run is absolutely one of them!

Number 10: Operation WinBack (Nintendo 64, 1999)

Despite languishing in relative obscurity in 2020, Operation WinBack – known as WinBack: Covert Operations in the United States – is an incredibly influential title. Doom was the father of the first-person shooter, and similarly Operation WinBack is the instigator of the cover-based third-person shooter genre. Titles like Gears of War and Mass Effect would not exist without Operation WinBack, and while its cover system – which was so unique at the time it debuted – is now a standard feature, there are still plenty of reasons to bring back this fun spy adventure.

Operation WinBack had a good story, one that would be at home in films like the Mission: Impossible or James Bond series. 2016’s Doom has proved that there’s an appetite among gamers for going back to the roots of established genres, so it could be time to return to the world of Operation WinBack.

So that’s it. Ten more titles that are – in my opinion – worthy of a remaster in 2020. Will any of them ever get one? Let’s just say if I were a gambler I wouldn’t put any money on it! Well… maybe one or two? Some of the biggest companies in the games industry have recently put lots of money into remakes and remasters, and some games that I’d never have expected – like Destroy All Humans and Command and Conquer – have been brought up-to-date. So there’s a chance. There’s always a chance!

Though several of these games are undoubtedly out of print, each one is worth playing in its original form if you’re able to track down a copy, and even though it’s been years or decades since I got to play some of them, I recommend every title on this list!

All titles listed above are the copyright of their respective developers, studios, and/or publishers. Some screenshots courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Lower Decks and the ethics of piracy

Star Trek: Lower Decks and the ethics of piracy

Dennis

No, not piracy on the high seas. We’re going to take a look at copyright infringement, and this is a contentious topic so let’s be clear up front: in practically every jurisdiction around the world, piracy is illegal. I am categorically not encouraging it nor am I condoning it. This column aims to be an honest discussion on the moral and ethical implications only, not the legal ramifications.

The journey to writing this column began in July, when Star Trek: Lower Decks was announced. The announcement came with a US/Canada premiere date and weekly release schedule, but nothing for the rest of the world. Trekkies like myself who aren’t from North America held our breath and waited. More information about the show came out, but no international release date. Then a trailer was published, but again no international release date. Star Trek’s Comic-Con panel approached, and I considered this the last reasonable chance for news of an international broadcast. But again, fans were let down.

Lower Decks premiered on the 6th of August, but only for North American viewers. ViacomCBS not only chose not to broadcast the series internationally, they haven’t made any public statement on the issue. And don’t get this twisted around saying it isn’t the company’s fault because of coronavirus or some other issue; they are in full control over when to broadcast the series in the United States, and if they couldn’t secure the international broadcast rights for whatever reason before the 6th of August, it was entirely within their power to delay the series until they had come to an agreement with an international distributor or broadcaster. It was thus ViacomCBS’ decision – and their decision alone – for Lower Decks to be split up and shown to some fans but not others. And it is undeniably their decision not to address the problem in public.

In such an environment, is it any surprise that Trekkies outside the US and Canada turned to piracy to access the series? If it’s literally unavailable any other way, and there is radio silence on when it may become available, what choice to fans have? The answer is that there is no choice, and ViacomCBS made it that way. They practically invited piracy of Lower Decks not once but twice: first through the utterly moronic decision to segregate the show by geography, and secondly by not even giving lip service to the problem. Look at any social media post from official Star Trek pages in July and early August – each one received many comments asking about Lower Decks’ international broadcast, and every single one was ignored.

We can set aside my usual arguments about how this harms ViacomCBS’ own negotiating position – assuming they still plan to sell the show internationally – because that’s something I’ve covered repeatedly and it isn’t what this column is about. Purely from a moral and ethical standpoint, is it wrong to pirate Lower Decks?

When a television series, film, or video game is made available to the general public, I think most people would say that piracy is not acceptable. Most of us agree that the actors and behind-the-scenes staff deserve to be paid for their work, and the investors in the company who bankrolled the project deserve to see a return on their investment. We can talk at length about how some large media corporations make excessive profits for a select few shareholders and managers, but as a general rule, most people agree with the principle of paying entertainers for the entertainment they provide.

This is the reality of how entertainment works. Companies producing a television series, video game, or film need to raise money to create their project and see it to fruition, and somehow they need to recoup that money as well as make a profit to fund their next title. Nowadays there are myriad ways to do this, including streaming platforms online. If everybody engaged in piracy, it would be very hard for any company to make any new work of entertainment, because they would have no way of making their money back.

So when a work of entertainment is made available, most people stick to doing one of two things – pay to enjoy it, or don’t participate.

But that argument is only valid in cases where content is available via lawful methods. Lower Decks, as we’ve already established, is only in that category if you’re lucky enough to live in the United States or Canada; the two countries combined are home to less than 5% of the world’s population. So if 95% of the population are denied access to something, what options do they have? Wait an indeterminate and possibly unlimited amount of time? It’s been over a month since Lower Decks debuted and in that time ViacomCBS has said precisely nothing. How long are we supposed to sit on our hands?

In the case of another recent series that made this mistake, waiting became incredibly problematic. We could argue from the point of view of “hardcore” Trekkies that nothing in Lower Decks has been a massive spoiler. There isn’t one character or one moment to point to – at least, in the first six episodes – which if it had been spoiled ahead of time would have majorly ruined our enjoyment. But in some shows that isn’t the case. Disney+ launched in the United States months ahead of the rest of the world, and one of its big draws was the first ever live-action Star Wars series: The Mandalorian. The end of the first episode contained perhaps the biggest twist in the entire first season: the Mandalorian’s target is a child, nicknamed “baby Yoda” by the internet.

Baby Yoda was everywhere in November and December last year. Screenshots and clips were all over the internet, and baby Yoda was in so many memes! Friends and family members of mine who don’t know the first thing about Star Wars had seen baby Yoda – so imagine being a Star Wars fan, unable to watch The Mandalorian simply because of where you live, having that massive reveal and the emotional core of the series spoiled months before you could see it.

Before the dawn of the internet it wouldn’t have mattered. In the 1990s, when I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation and the other shows of that era, the fact that we in the UK were getting them a couple of years after their American premiere wasn’t something I ever noticed. Even within Star Trek fan clubs and at Star Trek fan events in the ’90s, there were no spoilers. And yes, I went to numerous such meet-ups and events at the time.

But in 2020, companies can’t get away with that any more. Not because of the tiny minority of people who take a kind of twisted pleasure in deliberately spoiling something for others, but because social media and the internet in general becomes awash with spoilers. If you follow Star Trek’s official social media, as I do, you’ll have picked up numerous spoilers for Lower Decks, as their social media channels throw out plot points, lists of Easter eggs, and all manner of other things almost daily. And that’s not to mention fan-run pages and groups. In short, if you’re a fan of anything in 2020, chances are that, in some way, you go online to engage in that fandom, and that’s a breeding ground for spoilers.

In the case of The Mandalorian, baby Yoda hit the mainstream such that even the most careful fan wouldn’t have been able to avoid seeing or hearing about it. And when you’ve been burned by spoilers once or twice, it’s very easy to get upset and annoyed – and to turn to piracy.

When it comes to shows like The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Lower Decks, I think what I’d say is that piracy may still be legally wrong, but it’s much harder to claim that it’s morally wrong. We live in an interconnected, globalised world, where the internet means people from everywhere can be connected to each other and to the franchises they love at all times. Companies like ViacomCBS have actively encouraged this kind of globalism because it means a bigger market and more profit. But creating a global brand comes with a responsibility that extends beyond national borders. In the global, interconnected world that these massive corporations have encouraged, the least they could do is make their content available. ViacomCBS has been keen to promote Star Trek as a brand outside the United States, even setting up events in Europe like Destination Star Trek where actors and producers routinely draw huge crowds.

The franchise, at ViacomCBS’ behest, has become a global brand. There are Star Trek fans from the Falkland Islands to Timbuktu, all because the company has chosen to sell Star Trek and its merchandise to every country it can. But it seems that ViacomCBS only cares about its international audience for as much money as it can wring out of us, because as soon as there’s a tiny bump in the road they’re quite happy to cut us off and not share their most recent creation.

Star Trek doesn’t belong to Americans. It depicts a future where humanity is working together to learn and grow together to build a better world, something which seems the complete antithesis of a major American corporation cutting off its overseas fans with no information thrown our way.

With ViacomCBS being so disrespectful to its international audience, is it any wonder that Lower Decks has become one of the most-pirated shows of the last few weeks? I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone, because when there is no other way to access the series, piracy – by definition – becomes the only option. Anyone with a computer and even the tiniest inclination can find out how to download or stream Lower Decks, and when you consider that for 95% of the people around the world – including many Trekkies and casual fans of the franchise – it can’t be lawfully accessed, from a moral and philosophical point of view I can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t.

Piracy is definitely against the law – but in this case, that doesn’t make it wrong.

Downloading and uploading of copyrighted material (“piracy” for the purposes of this discussion) is against the law in practically every jurisdiction around the world. This column should not be interpreted as encouraging piracy or copyright infringement for any television series, film, video game, or entertainment franchise. The Star Trek brand – including Star Trek: Lower Decks – remains the copyright of ViacomCBS. This column contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 – what is the Burn?

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 – what is the Burn?

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery, including the two Season 3 trailers and the ending of Season 2. There are also spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 1 and other iterations of the franchise.

The most recent trailer for Star Trek: Discovery’s imminent third season dropped a bombshell: the Federation has mostly collapsed! In my breakdown of the trailer I covered my thoughts on that story premise, so we won’t get into the ins and outs of it again today. Instead, we’re going to look at the event that triggered this collapse and postulate a few theories as to what it could be! As always with any fan theories (mine or someone else’s) please take all of this with a grain of salt. No fan theory is worth getting worked up over!

Discovery has a new trailer… and a new logo!

All we really know for certain is that the event in question is called “the Burn.” Booker, the new character who’s native to this time period, tells Michael Burnham that the event was when “the galaxy took a hard left.” And that’s all the explanation the trailer gave us. However, some images and scenes from the trailer add context to this, so we should run through some of them briefly.

Firstly, we had one very short scene of an explosion aboard a starship or space station that appeared to blow a number of people out into space. This could be a flashback to the Burn, but as I noted when I looked at the trailer, it could also be something happening after Discovery’s arrival in the future. Even if it is taking place during the Burn, however, all we can gleam from this scene is that it was a violent event – which may mean it took place over a relatively short span of time.

This violent event glimpsed in the trailer could be the Burn.

Next we have two glimmers of hope: a futuristic starship, space station, or facility which Saru and Burnham visit at some point, and a black-uniformed woman who I suspect may be a Starfleet officer.

Is this character a Starfleet officer?

The woman’s uniform was at least a little reminiscent of the uniforms used to depict 29th Century Starfleet seen in the Voyager fifth season episode Relativity. The texture and pattern used for the dark upper part of her uniform reminded me of that episode, and I’m sure that must have been intentional!

Captain Braxton wearing the 29th Century Starfleet uniform.

If this woman in Starfleet, it lends credence to the idea that the facility mentioned above could be a Federation vessel or even a Starbase. Add into the mix Booker’s line that the Federation “mostly” collapsed following the Burn, and I think we can make a solid case for Starfleet being around in some form; last time I called this remaining faction “rump Starfleet.”

The final thing to look at from the trailer are the scenes set in its aftermath. Away from the woman in uniform and the futuristic facility we see what could be a shanty town or post-apocalyptic markeplace as an Orion or other green-skinned alien guides Burnham. One possible implication from this scene is that we’re seeing how the majority of people in the collapsed Federation live. In the aftermath of the cataclysm, they may all be reduced to this kind of hand-to-mouth existence.

The possible shanty town.

On the flip side, we have seen settings like this in other iterations of Star Trek, even on human-populated worlds. One that springs to mind is Turkana IV, the birthplace of Tasha Yar in The Next Generation. Described as a “failed Earth colony”, the planet was in a state of disarray in the 24th Century. In short, the existence of a shanty town like the one depicted above may not mean that everyone in the 32nd Century lives that way.

The reason I brought up Turkana IV and the like is to demonstrate that the Federation, even in the eras we’re familiar with, wasn’t always perfect and wasn’t one homogeneous bloc. Just as there seems to be a great contrast between the sleek facility and the shanty town in the 32nd Century, so too is there a contrast between different locations in the 23rd and 24th Centuries. I wonder if Discovery plans to use this dichotomy to make a point about wealth inequality.

The facility visited by Burnham and Saru.

One final point of note is that, when discussing the Burn, Booker referred to it as when “the galaxy” took a hard left. Let’s be clear about that – the galaxy as a whole, not merely the Federation. That was a deliberate choice of words, and I think what we can infer is that the effects of the Burn extend far beyond the borders of the Federation.

It’s possible that the Burn didn’t affect literally the entire galaxy; some regions and worlds may have escaped. Booker may have used the word “galaxy” in this context to mean something that impacted more than just one region and that went beyond the Federation’s borders. Even if that’s the case, we’re still dealing with what is arguably the biggest disaster we’ve ever seen in Star Trek.

Booker is the one who told us about the Burn.

That’s all we know from the trailer. It’s unclear how many people survived the Burn. Some disasters destroy infrastructure and technology, but leave organic lives intact, whereas others cause massive loss of life. There are clearly some survivors of the Burn, but how many is simply unknown right now. It’s highly likely that in the aftermath of such a catastrophe, more lives would be lost due to things like disease and starvation – especially if the Burn triggered the kind of collapse we seem to be seeing. The scene in the shanty town or junkyard seemed to show people barely surviving, living a hand-to-mouth existence without much of the familiar technology we’re used to in Star Trek. Such a loss of technology could cause even more deaths in the months and years following the Burn than the event itself.

This character could be some kind of warlord or faction leader.

We’ve seen at least one anti-Starfleet faction, which in the first trailer appeared to comprise of Andorians, Lurians, Cardassians, and humans. We also met a character in the second trailer who could be the leader of a faction or perhaps a warlord. I think this shows how, in the aftermath of the Burn, the survivors banded together into smaller groups. As with the number of survivors, we don’t know how many of these groups exist or what their relationships are with one another.

This group appear to be antagonists; opposed to the Federation.

We also don’t know for sure whether faster-than-light travel, warp speed, and time travel are still possible in this era, or whether the Burn caused such a catastrophic collapse in the Federation – possibly combined with damage to the galaxy and spacetime and/or subspace in general – that such things are no longer possible. We saw in the second trailer the USS Discovery using its spore drive, so at least travel via the mycelial network remains viable. But everything else is unclear, and if it were to be the case that warp speed and faster-than-light travel are impossible, the fractured Federation will be very difficult to bring back together.

There’s also the question of timing. When did the Burn take place? We’ve already made one assumption – that it was a relatively fast event, perhaps taking place over less than a year – but when it happened relative to Burnham and the USS Discovery’s arrival in the year 3188 is not known. I wrote last time that the furthest forward in time Star Trek has previously gone in canon is the 31st Century. However, in both stories which took place in that era the dating was very vague, and we only have terms like “years” and “centuries” to go on rather than something more precise. As a result, Discovery’s third season could be anywhere from 90 years ahead of what we saw in Enterprise and Voyager all the way to 180 years ahead of those stories. Picking a halfway point, and saying that Discovery takes place 130-140 years further on from anything we’ve ever seen still gives a huge amount of time for the Burn to have taken place.

A backup copy of The Doctor was reactivated in the Delta Quadrant in the 31st Century.

Based on the warlord/faction leader seen above, and the scene set in the shanty town/junkyard, I’m assuming it wasn’t recent. It certainly didn’t look like something that had only just happened in those scenes; the faction leader in particular seems confident in his position. Booker also didn’t appear to be speaking about something very recent when discussing the Burn; he almost seemed to be recalling history. I also noted something from the Star Trek Day panel: showrunner Michelle Paradise stated that characters like Booker had been “born” into this new future. While she could have meant simply that Booker was born in the 32nd Century, in the context of a discussion about the new season’s setting it could also mean that the Burn took place decades previously; before Booker was even born.

Did Michelle Paradise drop a hint at the timing of the Burn?

So it’s clear that at this stage we’re missing a lot of information! We don’t know when the Burn happened. We don’t know what effect it had other than the near collapse of the Federation. We don’t know how many casualties were directly and indirectly caused, or how many survivors remain.

Perhaps most importantly, we don’t know what the Burn is or what caused it. Fixing a problem requires understanding what the problem is and why it happened, so it will be absolutely essential for Burnham and the crew to figure this out. Even though we have practically no evidence to go on, I do have a few ideas! Let’s look at them in turn.

Possible cause #1: The super-synths from Star Trek: Picard

I’ve already written up this theory in more detail, and you can find that article by clicking or tapping here. But now that we know a little more about the Burn thanks to the new trailer, I was pleased in a way that it hasn’t been debunked already! Star Trek: Picard introduced us to an unnamed race of super-synths that I nicknamed the “Mass Effect Reapers” due to their similarities to that video game faction.

The “Mass Effect Reapers” left behind a beacon on the planet of Aia, explaining that synthetic life is under threat from organic life, and promising to come to the aid of any synths who ask for their help. The Zhat Vash – a secretive Romulan faction – found the beacon and interpreted it as something apocalyptic; they believed that if synthetic life were ever created, the “Mass Effect Reapers” would exterminate all organic life in the galaxy.

The Reapers, from the Mass Effect video game trilogy, are similar in some respects to the faction of super-synths in Star Trek: Picard.

During the events of the season finale, Soji and Sutra constructed a beacon to contact the “Mass Effect Reapers”, and opened a portal to the location in deep space where they reside. After being convinced by Picard – and the timely arrival of a Starfleet armada led by Riker – Soji closed the portal and shut down the beacon. The “Mass Effect Reapers” never arrived – but they are now aware of a race of synths in the Milky Way galaxy, as well as being aware of the existence of the Romulans and the Federation.

From the point of view of this race of super-synths, here’s what they saw: a race of synths who found their beacon called on them for help, and when the portal was opened they saw a handful of synths on a planet with two massive fleets of starships populated by organics. Then, with no explanation, the portal was closed. If I were them, I would have major concerns!

Picard talked Soji into closing the portal – but the “Mass Effect Reapers” probably don’t know that.

We know hardly anything about the “Mass Effect Reapers” – which in itself makes them a good candidate for Discovery’s writers to play with – including how far away from the Federation they are. If they decided that they needed to intervene on behalf of the Coppelius synths, it could have taken them centuries to travel to the Milky Way from wherever they’re based.

When they finally did arrive, they would have likely found Coppelius abandoned, as I feel certain the safest thing to do for the synths who live there would be to relocate them to a new home where the Romulans can’t touch them. Again, from the “Mass Effect Reapers” perspective, the last thing they saw was two massive fleets in orbit of this planet that asked for their help, and when they arrived, the synths who asked for that help were gone. Put two and two together and it’s not hard to imagine they would assume the organics wiped out the synths. If they were minded toward revenge, they could go on the rampage, using their superior technology to destroy the Federation and Romulans in an event that would become known as the Burn.

These two fleets – one Romulan, one Federation – were the last thing the “Mass Effect Reapers” saw before the portal closed.

From the production side of things, this theory brings together the two live-action series currently in production, which is something that hasn’t happened yet. I’ve written many times that modern Star Trek shows being split up in this way isn’t a good idea, and finding ways to bring them together will be important to the franchise going forward. Having this faction from Picard also be important in Discovery – as well as the events of one series directly leading to events in the other – would bind the two shows together and strengthen the franchise.

Possible cause #2: Michael and/or Gabrielle Burnham

The Burnhams.

I can’t be the only one who noticed that the “Burn” happens to be three letters different from “Burnham”, can I? While it may seem absolutely preposterous to assume that Burnham or her mother somehow caused this galaxy-wide calamity, there are some points we could argue are in its favour.

Gabrielle Burnham, Michael’s mother, was the original Red Angel in Discovery Season 2. At several points in the story she intervened, including to save Burnham’s life and Spock’s life in their youth, as well as ensuring that the USS Discovery would be on hand to save the data from the “Sphere” – the planetoid-sized lifeform whose data was vital to the Control AI. Gabrielle Burnham was tied to a point in the future around the same time as Season 3 is set and returned there after her many visits to the 23rd Century. But in both of the trailers we’ve seen, she’s nowhere to be found. Why is she missing, and could her absence have something to do with the Burn?

Where is Dr Gabrielle Burnham?

Discovery has been a series that places Michael Burnham at the centre of its stories. Burnham was the Red Angel. Burnham was the one who led the ship and crew home from the Mirror Universe and ended the Klingon War. Every story so far has been a Burnham-centric one, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn she has some involvement with the Burn – an event which shares part of her name.

How could this work? There are a few possibilities, but I would say that all of them have to do with the Red Angel suit and its time travel abilities. The suit was very powerful, capable of detonating powerful “red bursts” that Starfleet could detect from thousands of light-years away. It was also capable of moving the Sphere, so the idea that it could – intentionally or otherwise – be used as a weapon or cause a natural disaster is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Could Michael Burnham be guilty of causing the Burn?

When Burnham arrived in the future, she took off the suit. But in scenes that seem to be set around the same time, she doesn’t appear to bring it with her. It’s possible she abandoned the suit at her crash site, in which case anyone could stumble upon it. It’s also possible that the suit was stolen. And finally, it’s possible that some other faction who was aware of changes to the timeline could have been waiting for Burnham’s arrival and took that opportunity to take possession of the suit.

I don’t believe Burnham or her mother would voluntarily cause the Burn. In fact I’d argue that both would go out of their way to avoid it – even putting their lives on the line to prevent it ever happening. But it could have been accidental, such as a by-product of the suit’s time travel abilities. Or they could have done something while under duress – perhaps it was the least bad option if they were given a choice between the Burn and something far worse.

One thing is for sure, though. If it was Burnham’s fault, calling the event “the Burn” sounds way better than calling it “the Ham!”

Possible cause #3: The Borg

We haven’t had a Borg story in Star Trek since Enterprise’s second season way back in 2003. For a time it seemed as if Discovery’s second season was setting up a Borg origin story with the Control AI, but for whatever reason that didn’t pan out. We could still see the Borg in Discovery, though, if they turn out to be the nefarious villains who caused the Burn.

Booker said that the Burn affected the whole galaxy, and if that’s literally true perhaps it impacted the Borg as well. But it could be that the Borg either are the Burn or are the cause of it, striking out in all directions from their Delta Quadrant home and attacking multiple areas of the galaxy simultaneously.

A Borg drone seen in The Next Generation.

Though it was implied, perhaps, that the Burn was a relatively short event, it could be that it was a war. Even a year-long conflict against the Borg on all fronts could have seen the Federation on the verge of collapse, and we could be looking at the aftermath of a Pyrrhic victory, one in which the Federation and their allies were only able to defeat the Borg at a catastrophic cost to themselves.

How exactly this would work is unclear, but perhaps the Federation used a weapon of last resort that not only destroyed the Borg but also crippled themselves in the process. We’ve seen this kind of story in science fiction before, and the idea that the Federation’s collapse is in part the Federation’s fault is an interesting one. Alex Kurtzman said that the Federation’s collapse wasn’t due to infighting but was something external – and a Borg invasion is definitely an external threat.

Borg drones from First Contact.

When considering an event that has the potential to impact not only planets and star systems but Starbases and fleets of ships, a large-scale war is one of the few possibilities that I can think of. We’re talking about devastation across not only the whole Federation but far beyond its borders too, meaning the Burn has to be something immense in scope. A massive invasion could be such an event, and I can’t think of any known faction in Star Trek able to pull off something like that other than the Borg.

By their later appearances in Voyager, I think it’s not unfair to say that the Borg were becoming stale. Having seen our heroes prevail against them time and again, they definitely needed a rest. Enterprise, while it added an extra complication to the history of Borg-human contact, managed to tell an exciting and tense story, but I think it’s to the franchise’s overall benefit that the faction then took a break. However, seventeen years is a decent length of time for such a break, so could we be on the verge of seeing the Borg make a comeback?

Possible cause #4: Time travel and the Temporal Cold War

Oh no! Alien Nazis!

Star Trek stories that took place in the 29th Century and beyond depicted time travel as something the Federation routinely engages in, despite it seemingly being prohibited by the 24th Century. Preserving the timeline intact is something Starfleet of this era seems to have been concerned with, but there were other factions opposed to the Federation who made attempts to use time as a weapon.

In Enterprise we saw a Temporal Cold War play out, with several different factions all vying for control of the timeline. The mechanics of this were vague – deliberately – but by the 31st Century, which is the home era of temporal agent Daniels, the Temporal Cold War was a major issue.

Daniels was a temporal agent who made multiple appearances in Enterprise.

As I mentioned when I looked at the trailer, one issue I can see coming up if Discovery goes headfirst into another time travel story is the question of why the Federation didn’t see the Burn coming. If they explore the timeline in the same way that the 24th Century Starfleet explore space, surely they look at the future timeline too, not just the past. If they do, they should have foreseen the Burn, right?

The problem with that assumption is that time travel muddies the waters. Even in a perfect world where Star Trek had always been consistent in its depiction of the rules and laws governing time travel (which it hasn’t been at all), the concept itself still generates all manner of possibilities, loops, and paradoxes. Part of the Temporal Cold War story arc involved factions travelling to the past to attempt to undermine their adversaries before they could even develop time travel – knocking them out of the war entirely. If someone were able to travel to a point in the timeline that the Federation could not observe, or were able to operate outside of normal spacetime, the Burn could have been triggered before the Federation even knew it was coming.

The USS Relativity was a 29th Century Federation timeship.

I’d like to pick one more hole in a time travel story. If the cause of the Burn is related to time travel, it’s arguable from the perspective of Starfleet that the timeline in which it occurred is not the “real” timeline. Logically they’d want to work to undo it, and if successful it would remove this timeline – and thus Discovery Season 3 – from existence. We have seen stories in Star Trek that “never happened” for reasons of time travel, but they were single episodes, not entire seasons, and I would make the case that having an entire season’s story arc being effectively wiped out of existence wouldn’t be the best way to go.

Possible cause #5: Something related to coronal mass ejections and stars

One frame of the trailer showed Tilly, Stamets, and Reno with the woman shown above who may be a 32nd Century Starfleet officer. On the display at the console where Tilly and Stamets were standing, it was possible to make out the words “CME Detected” and “coronal mass ejection [something] magnitude.”

The frame from the trailer, cropped and mirrored for clarity.

A coronal mass ejection, or CME, is a real-world phenomenon. I’m not a scientist, but as I understand it, a CME is where a small portion of a star’s plasma is shot into space. The phenomenon is associated with sunspots and solar flares, and can cause damage to technology like phone and power lines.

There is no known way to trigger a CME or for them to occur naturally on a galaxy-wide scale. But as we leave the real world behind and head into the realm of science fiction, either of those possibilities could exist.

A real-life coronal mass ejection that occurred in 2012. The blacked-out circle in the centre is the sun.
Picture Credit: NASA via WikiMedia Commons

“The Burn” is a very evocative name, drawing on a primal fear of fire. But it could be more than just a moniker adopted by survivors of the event: it could describe the event itself, and when a star undergoes a CME it’s literally shooting burning plasma into space – space fire. The Burn could be the very literal burning of spacecraft, planets, and even whole solar systems by some kind of massive wave of coronal mass ejections.

The interesting prospect this raises is that the Burn wouldn’t require an evil villain; it could be an entirely natural occurrence. How and why millions of stars all suffered the same fate is unclear, but it would change the dynamic of the story from one that requires the crew to defeat an adversary to one which requires scientific investigation – something which is arguably at the heart of Starfleet.

The USS Discovery could engage in a scientific expedition to determine the cause of the Burn.

Equally, even if the Burn refers to a tsunami of CMEs, there could be a cause. It could even be one of the four we’ve already listed: the Borg, the Burnhams, a time travelling faction, or the super-synths from Picard. Any of these could have intentionally or accidentally triggered some event that led to millions of stars all undergoing CMEs.

The next part of this gets very deep into lore, so it’s perhaps less likely, but I like to include these things because c’mon… we’re Trekkies. It’s what we do!

Whether the Burn is natural or artificial in origin, if it’s something which causes stars to undergo massive CMEs it could also be something which triggers supernovae. And there has been one recent supernova that had a massive impact on the Star Trek galaxy: the Romulan supernova. First shown in 2009’s Star Trek, the supernova appeared to move faster-than-light and destroyed the Romulan homeworld. Spock was able to stop it by using Red Matter, but the supernova would have a lasting impact, part of which was seen earlier this year in Picard.

A supernova destroyed Romulus in 2009’s Star Trek.

Though it may seem a long-shot, tying the Burn to the Romulan supernova would bring together several different Star Trek stories in a very neat way, which is important for reasons I’ve already outlined. If the Burn is natural in origin, the Romulan supernova may have been a precursor to it. And if it’s artificial in origin, the Romulan supernova may have been a preliminary test of whatever weapon caused the Burn.

So that’s it. A look at what the Burn could be as well as some possible triggers and causes. Though the existence of the Burn poses a big challenge for Discovery – as it fundamentally changes the underlying premise of Star Trek’s optimistic future – I’m absolutely fascinated by it. What is it? What caused it? When did it happen? Why did no one intervene to stop it? There are so many questions rattling around in my head, and this article has barely scratched the surface!

I am at least a little concerned about Star Trek: Discovery choosing a post-apocalyptic setting. But at the same time the series has been great so far, especially in Season 2, and I would love to see it build on what was accomplished last year to tell a fascinating and engaging story. The Burn is going to be part of that. Figuring it out and perhaps even working to stop it could be important story elements, and I’m absolutely fascinated to learn whether any of these ideas even come close!

Figuring out what could have caused such devastation is genuinely interesting.

As I mentioned at the beginning, these are just fan theories and speculation. I don’t have any insider information – and if I did I wouldn’t share it! Several recent shows and films have suffered backlash from fans who got a little too attached to certain pet theories, and as fun as theory-crafting is, I don’t want that to be the case here. This is a bit of fun and a chance to spend more time thinking about Star Trek, and that’s all. I want to know what happens, and if it’s something I didn’t expect then that’s fantastic!

When Discovery Season 3 kicks off in mid-October, I hope you’ll join me for episode reviews and perhaps even more theory-crafting!

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 premieres on the 15th of October on CBS All Access in the United States, and on the 16th of October on Netflix in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Star Trek franchise – including Discovery and all other titles mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Let’s take a look at the second Discovery Season 3 trailer

Let’s take a look at the second Discovery Season 3 trailer

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery, including the Season 3 trailer and the end of Season 2. There are also spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 1 and other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

It’s only a little over a month until Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 premieres, and during yesterday’s digital Star Trek Day panels we got a surprise new trailer! With the new season so close, and with everything going on in the world, I didn’t expect to see another one. We had the first trailer released almost a year ago, and it felt like that was all we were going to get! I’ve already taken an in-depth look at the first trailer, by the way, and you can find my thoughts by clicking or tapping here.

Overall, the trailer was… interesting? There were some things that looked very exciting, and others which are definitely concerning. Taken as a whole, Discovery’s third season looks different to what we had before in terms of its setting, but also familiar. Burnham still seems to be the main focus of the plot, with the rest of the crew there to help out.

Michael Burnham in the Season 3 trailer.

So let’s start with by far the biggest reveal: “The Federation mostly collapsed… after the Burn.” This confirms what a lot of Trekkies – myself included – had been thinking since we saw the first trailer: that this season will take the show into a future that’s as close to post-apocalyptic as anything we’ve seen in Star Trek before.

This is the part which concerns me most about this season. A post-apocalyptic setting is so incredibly far removed from anything we’ve ever seen in Star Trek, and that’s because Star Trek has always presented a positive, hopeful depiction of the future. It’s possible to use a post-apocalyptic setting to showcase the theme of hope within a narrative, but that’s not the same thing as having a hopeful and optimistic setting. Star Trek’s core has always been that humanity has overcome whatever obstacles came our way, no matter how insurmountable they seemed. We had been able to build a future for ourselves and our friends and allies where, to paraphrase Trip Tucker: poverty, war, and disease have been eliminated.

Booker tells Burnham about “the Burn.”

A post-apocalyptic setting represents a fundamental shift in the underlying premise of Star Trek, and could result in the franchise losing what makes it special and unique. In other franchises, this kind of setting can work. But in Star Trek it’s untested, and while what results may well be a perfectly sound television show, it may not be a perfectly sound Star Trek show.

In past iterations of Star Trek, the tension and drama came from threats to our heroes and their friends, but in a more fundamental way, it came from the idea that everything humanity had worked hard to create was in danger. That’s what the Borg represented. That’s what the Dominion represented. That’s what villains from The Original Series right through to Picard all represented. Humanity had overcome so much and built this amazing future, and suddenly it was under threat by some nefarious evildoer. That setup brings more than enough excitement – look at stories like The Best of Both Worlds or Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War storyline. They didn’t need to rely on something post-apocalyptic to generate drama and stakes. Even Discovery, in its first two seasons, was able to use Star Trek’s optimistic future as a way to generate tension – first with the Klingon War and then with the threat posed by Control.

I guess I’m just not convinced that this huge change in the underlying premise of Star Trek’s setting will work as intended.

A post-apocalyptic junkyard or shanty town.

All that being said, I’m very interested to learn more about this “Burn” – the event that caused the collapse of the Federation. The only clue we got in the trailer was that it was an event that caused the galaxy as a whole to take “a hard left”, whatever that may mean! We can infer a few things from this statement, though. The mention of the galaxy seems to suggest that whatever effect the Burn had wasn’t just limited to the Federation. It may have been truly galactic in scale, impacting all four quadrants, or Booker may have used the term to refer to a wide area, but regardless it seems that the Burn had a massive impact that extended beyond the boundaries of the Federation. Alex Kurtzman elaborated just a little on this, explaining that it was something external that caused the collapse as opposed to something within the Federation itself.

This neither confirms nor debunks my theory that the race of super-synths from Star Trek: Picard are involved! They could be the cause of the Burn, but equally at this stage it could be something entirely different. We don’t even know for sure how recent the Burn is to Discovery’s setting – it could be anywhere from a few years to a couple of centuries earlier. The furthest Star Trek has ever gone in canon is the 31st Century, which we saw in both the Voyager episode Living Witness and the Enterprise two-part episode Shockwave. Daniels, the time-traveller in Enterprise, was from this era, and in his time the Federation was still active. The trailer states very clearly that Burnham arrives in the year 3188, which puts the new season at the tail end of the 32nd Century, meaning the season takes place anywhere from roughly 90 to 180 years further into the future than anything we’ve seen previously. This obviously allows plenty of time for the Burn to happen without impacting canon – though I can think of a problem with that.

Did this faction of super-synths from Star Trek: Picard – that I nicknamed the “Mass Effect Reapers” – cause the Burn?

It was suggested in several Star Trek stories – if not stated outright – that the Federation patrols and explores the timeline. That includes the future timeline too, not just the past, and it raises the big question of how Starfleet managed to get caught up in the Burn when – at least theoretically – they could have foreseen and prevented it.

Time travel narratives in Star Trek have never been my favourite for a number of reasons, though I freely admit that Discovery Season 2 did a good job with that premise. Based on what we know of the Federation’s time travel capabilities, though, I think it’s at least possible that Season 3 will include some time travel elements. It’s even possible, though admittedly unlikely, that whatever the Burn is could be related to the Temporal Cold War seen in Enterprise – perhaps a faction opposed to the Federation was able to use time in such a way as to cause the Burn and with it the collapse of the Federation. Enterprise is arguably less well-remembered that other Star Trek series though, so I consider basing a major plot point around one of its storylines to be less likely.

Daniels was from the 31st Century.

One thing that the team behind Star Trek have to be careful with is that this decision to see the Federation collapse in the 31st/32nd Century doesn’t adversely impact other Star Trek shows. One problem that can plague prequels is that much of the drama and tension that makes for a good story isn’t present simply because we know what comes next. This happened to a degree in Enterprise – when the Xindi attacked Earth and then planned to destroy the planet, we knew they weren’t going to succeed because we’d seen Earth two hundred years later. The story was still good, but at the back of our minds or even just on a subconscious level, we as the audience knew that Captain Archer and his crew would prevail. The journey can still be fun if the destination is known, but sometimes knowing the ultimate outcome can rob a prequel of its stakes.

By making every Star Trek show from Strange New Worlds to Picard to Lower Decks a prequel to Discovery, any galaxy-threatening villain the heroes of those series have to tackle becomes at least slightly less intimidating. Not only that, but the successes Captain Pike, Picard, and the Lower Decks ensigns may have become at least a little bittersweet – because we know that no matter what they do and how victorious they are, the Burn will still happen and the Federation will still collapse. Picard and the crew of La Sirena succeeded in defeating the Romulans and the race of super-synths, but did it actually matter if within a few hundred years all that was undone by this other cataclysm? The argument that it matters far less is certainly present, and while it doesn’t “taint” those productions, future Star Trek projects produced in the wake of Discovery Season 3 will be broadcast to an audience who know about the Burn and what’s coming for the Federation. That certainly changes the way we look at Starfleet and the Star Trek galaxy.

A woman in uniform – could she be Starfleet?

The trailer did raise my hopes – just a little – that things may not be totally bleak for the Federation. At one point we saw a black-uniformed woman (seen above) who seemed to be human and could perhaps be a representative of Starfleet. There’s also the Federation flag – seen again in this trailer – and the official we saw in the first trailer. Burnham and the crew also appear to get combadges sporting a new variant of the Starfleet emblem – surely there could only be a new design if there’s still some kind of rump Starfleet to wear it.

Despite that, however, it seems like the future Burnham and the crew will find is far bleaker than they – or we – could have imagined. I have my concerns about how well this will work, but I’m willing to give Discovery a chance to pull it off. Having covered the setting in sufficient detail for now, let’s look at the rest of the trailer.

The trailer begins with both Burnham – in her Red Angel suit from the Season 2 finale – crashing. Burnham appears unable to contact the ship, and flies into a field of debris. This same debris field would be glimpsed again moments later as Booker and Burnham discussed the fate of the Federation; I infer from that that it’s Federation debris. This is just a guess, but I would say perhaps the remains of a space station – I saw what looked like it could have been parts of a Starbase-style space station amongst the wreckage.

Could this be the remains of a Federation Starbase?

The shot of the USS Discovery after its crash-landing on the planet’s surface was not good. It looked amateurish, as though it had been thrown together by an art student in Photoshop. I think it was probably the worst visual effect of the entire trailer, and I hope it’s improved by the time the series airs. I think the lighting was wrong, because something about the look of this shot gave the distinct impression that the USS Discovery and just been copied-and-pasted onto a planet’s surface image. It was only seen briefly, though, and the sequence of the ship crash-landing as a whole looked pretty good; I was reminded of the Voyager Season 5 episode Timeless.

Although the scream was a little much, I loved seeing Burnham’s elation at the discovery of lifesigns on the planet where she crashed. The entire point of taking the USS Discovery out of the 23rd Century was to prevent the rogue AI Control from getting its hands on the ship and the data it contained; if it had been able to do so it would have wiped out all life in the galaxy. Burnham is simultaneously thrilled and relieved to learn that her plan worked.

This shot did not look good.

Burnham, in a voiceover, describes the journey into the far future as a “one-way trip, no going back.” But present among the crew is Mirror Georgiou, a character who is supposed to headline the currently-untitled – but still in production – Section 31 series. As far as we know that series is set in the 23rd Century, so the question of how that circle will be squared is still up in the air. Perhaps Georgiou will travel back in time somehow, or perhaps the Section 31 series will take place in this new time period.

There was a great moment between Stamets and Reno – who I’m thrilled to see return. Reno was great comic relief in Season 2, and it seems like her dynamic with fellow engineer (and boss?) Stamets is going to be a fun element in Season 3 as well. I hope we’ll get to see plenty of interaction between these two characters!

Reno and Stamets.

I’m trying to decide if there’s going to be anything romantic between Burnham and Booker. At one point, the trailer seemed to show them close to kissing – though whether there will be anything more is unclear. They spend a lot of time together, and I believe Booker will be the first person from this era Burnham encounters. He’s the one who tells her about the Burn, and may help her (and the audience) get acquainted with this time period. We’ve had the Burnham-Tyler relationship play out across Seasons 1 and 2, but with Tyler remaining in the 23rd Century, could a new partner be what Burnham needs?

If the series is to keep its “sole protagonist” approach – which seems to be the case – giving her a romantic entanglement could be a good source of drama. I like anything that humanises Burnham and brings her a little more down-to-earth, and showing her emotions and being vulnerable with a romantic partner is a good way to achieve those goals.

Burnham and a shirtless Booker.

So as mentioned, Burnham appears to be the main focus of the story once again. Though she has improved in leaps and bounds from her disastrous role in Discovery’s premiere, I’ve never felt she was the best and most interesting part of either season. And putting Burnham in stories where she, and she alone, is capable of solving the galaxy’s problems amplifies some of her less-attractive character traits. It seems from the two trailers that we’re going to get another Burnham-centric narrative, and all I can really say about that is that I hope it’ll be one that not only keeps her relatable, but that provides the other crew members with genuine volition and agency over the story. Simply having Saru and the rest of the crew trailing along in Burnham’s wake is not Discovery at its best and never has been. Hopefully this season can address that issue in some way!

I mentioned Mirror Georgiou, and she appears to get into a fight with someone who I would say could be a faction leader or even a warlord; someone who has control over a ship, fleet, planet, or region in the aftermath of the Federation’s collapse. I doubt this character is the primary villain of the season – if indeed such a villain exists – but he certainly seems to be in the way of whatever she’s trying to accomplish – perhaps putting his own needs ahead of the “greater good.” I wonder what role Georgiou will play in a “restore the Federation” story – she’s someone who is wholly uncommitted to the ideals of the Federation, and left to her own devices would surely scheme to create a new Terran Empire instead! Hopefully Saru and Burnham will be able to keep her in check.

Bonk.

The trailer appeared to show the USS Discovery making use of its spore drive. I was glad to see this, as the spore drive has felt like an underused piece of technology. In Season 1 it was little more than a macguffin to allow for travel to and from the Mirror Universe, and after that it really felt as though the writers and producers didn’t know what to do with it – or at least didn’t know what to do with it in a way that didn’t completely break canon. Now that we’re out of the 23rd Century, canon issues are no longer present. That potentially opens up Discovery for more stories which put the spore drive through its paces.

We also got another look at the directed energy weapon seen in the first trailer. This weapon seems to produce a large shockwave capable of knocking people over; whether this is a kind of stun setting is unknown, as is what the device is called. As I mentioned last time, it doesn’t feel particularly futuristic – it’s something we could have imagined existing in the 23rd or 24th Centuries. But that in itself probably ties in very neatly with the post-apocalyptic setting – Discovery had to find a way to make its ship, crew, and technology not feel horribly outdated in the 32nd Century.

The USS Discovery in orbit of a planet.

We caught the briefest of glimpses of two new members of the cast. Star Trek’s first non-binary character, played by Blu del Barrio, and first transgender character, played by Ian Alexander appeared for a split-second in the trailer. We don’t know anything about these characters aside from their gender identities, which made headlines even in mainstream news outlets.

There was a scene with a large tree that was interesting. I have nothing but a gut feeling to go on with this, but I believe it’s a memorial tree, planted in honour of the USS Discovery and the crew that were lost. This could be on Earth, perhaps at Starfleet Academy or Starfleet Headquarters – assuming either facility still exists. The tree looked very old, and the crew seemed to have a strong emotional reaction to it, which is why I’m guessing it’s a memorial. It’s also possible that this tree was planted in honour of someone like Captain Pike, who the crew knew well.

The tree.

Burnham says that the Federation gave her and/or the USS Discovery “a mandate to solve the biggest problems in the galaxy.” This ties into the post-apocalyptic nature of the theme; I think we can infer that whatever remains of Starfleet has very few ships at its disposal, and that’s why the centuries-old Discovery can be pressed into service.

The typeface used for the series seems to have changed as well, which is in keeping with the idea of Season 3 being a kind of soft reboot for Discovery. I like the way this looks, and it will be used for the show going forward according to showrunner Michelle Paradise. It’s a cleaner, sleeker font than that based on the classic Star Trek typeface which the series had used until now. It looks great, and gives the show a more modern look.

The new typeface.

We saw several new settings in the trailer, and it’s unclear whether they’re all on one planet or are spread out. There were two that looked decidedly post-apocalyptic: a market, shanty town, or junkyard where Burnham is being guided by someone who may be Orion, and the place where Georgiou gets into the fight with the man who may be a faction leader.

There was one scene that could be set aboard a futuristic Starfleet vessel or space station; this could be the location where the official seen in the first trailer was based, as it looked superficially similar. The line “welcome to the future” was heard over the top of this brief shot, which may be intentional or may just be incidental! This facility had curved lines and holographic interfaces, and looked suitably futuristic – but at the same time it wasn’t so futuristic that it couldn’t be something from the 23rd or 24th Centuries.

The possible starship or space station.

It looked as though we could see a flashback to the Burn at one brief moment in the trailer, but it could be this facility (or a similar one) coming under attack. Flashbacks could be a great way to explain what happened, so I hope we do get to see the events of the Burn instead of just hear about them secondhand from other characters.

I think that covers everything from the trailer that I wanted to mention. After the trailer premiered there was a panel which included the definitely not-fired Alex Kurtzman, the man who’s basically in charge of Star Trek as a whole right now. Kurtzman appeared alongside showrunner Michelle Paradise and Booker actor David Ajala in a panel hosted by – of all people – LeVar Burton’s daughter Mica. I’m not sure how I feel about Kurtzman citing Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic vision of the future in the context of Discovery taking a very dark, post-apocalyptic setting. Optimism and hope can certainly be themes in this kind of setting, but it’s still fundamentally different to anything Roddenberry imagined.

The Star Trek: Discovery Star Trek Day panel.

The panel was okay, and there were a few minor points of interest. But I’m never the biggest fan of these kind of things, especially when done at a distance. As I wrote when looking at Star Trek’s Comic-Con @Home panel, a glorified Zoom call isn’t always the most interesting thing to watch.

A couple of highlights are that Booker and Burnham get into a fight when they first meet, which is certainly an interesting and dramatic way to introduce two characters! Despite the point I made above regarding the level of technology in the 32nd Century, the showrunners were keen to stress that there will be new and different technologies than what we’ve seen in Star Trek previously. The question of the Trill came up, and the answer surprised me a little: instead of saying that the Trill could be an anchor point for returning fans to perhaps understand the far future a little better, instead it was stated that they may not be the same as we remember.

Booker and his cat.

Booker has a cat! I love cats, and regular readers will know I have several of my own – including one named after a Discovery character. A short featurette included in the panel showed how the cat was recruited to the show and how they helped him act. The cat looks beautiful too! David Ajala spoke beautifully about the Star Trek franchise, its history, legacy, and what it means to him. The sincerity was greatly appreciated, and he seems like he will be a wonderful part of the series and the franchise. That was all from the panel – the guests had a lot to say and it is worth a watch if you’re a fan.

So that wraps things up. The trailer had some fascinating and exciting parts, but I’m not going to lie or pretend it doesn’t have some concerning elements too. I’m enjoying Lower Decks at the moment, as you know if you’ve been following my reviews! Discovery Season 3 marks the third Star Trek project this year, and I’m looking forward to it despite any concerns I may have about certain narrative elements. Season 2 was truly excellent, and though Season 3 aims to be a soft reboot, in some respects I hope it’ll be able to build on what the show achieved last year.

I hope you’ll come back in mid-October as I review each new episode and possibly engage in a little theory-crafting to go along with the season.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 premieres on the 15th of October on CBS All Access in the United States, and on the 16th of October on Netflix in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Star Trek franchise – including Discovery – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

The Xbox Series S is an exciting prospect for players on a budget

The Xbox Series S is an exciting prospect for players on a budget

Dennis

I haven’t exactly been the biggest supporter of Microsoft’s strategy as we approach the new console generation. In particular, the company’s decision to make all Xbox Series X titles also available on Xbox One for the first couple of years of the new console’s life seems like a weight around its neck, and makes it a much harder sell at what was already a difficult time. But the leak/announcement of the Xbox Series S – along with its reasonable price at £250 – has definitely shifted my opinion.

The launch of a new generation of consoles is a fun and exciting time for enthusiasts with a suitably high budget, but for a lot of people it can be a moment where they feel left out and left behind. Technology moves on and new games are released, but only for those who can afford it. For players who’ve had to save up just to get a current-gen machine, it can be disappointing to see the newest and best titles be beyond their reach. It’s a position I’ve been in several times, and I know it’s not a nice feeling.

The Xbox Series S.

The Xbox Series S is a unique piece of kit. Though there have been cheaper variants of consoles – there’s even an Xbox One S available now – none were released simultaneously with the brand’s flagship machines, meaning that the beginning of a new console generation has always offered players a binary choice: pay up or don’t participate. The Xbox Series S offers players that budget option right from the start, and for many people who have been in the position of thinking next-gen will be unaffordable at launch, it’s undoubtedly a welcome surprise.

The Xbox Series S is not as powerful a machine as the Xbox Series X, and for some players perhaps the perceived downgrade will be a disappointment. But the Series S is still more powerful than the current crop of consoles, and for the market it’s aimed at, I think few will care about 1440p compared to 4K, a smaller, possibly slightly slower NVMe solid-state drive, and other minor differences. The processor at the system’s core is the same one used in the Series X, and while its graphics chip is a less-powerful version, it’s built on the same architecture as its sister console’s.

The console promises to be smaller than the Series X.

In short, the Xbox Series S is like getting a mid-tier gaming PC instead of a high-end one. And the PC comparison is apt, because compared to many PC gaming setups, the Series S blows them away. It would be impossible to build anything even vaguely comparable to the Series S for £250 or less, so it feels like a decent machine.

I recently took a look at Game Pass for PC, and the subscription service is also available on Xbox – where it offers over 100 games. The combination of the £8-a-month subscription with the cheap console is an incredibly enticing proposition for budget gamers, and one which is honestly hard to beat. It will likely be hard to beat for several years at least!

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is on Game Pass.

For less than the price of a standard Netflix subscription, players will have access to a huge library of titles, including every Xbox exclusive and every new game from a Microsoft-owned studio. Titles already on the service include: Dead Cells, Forza Horizon 4, all five games in the Gears of War series, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Kingdom Hearts 3, Minecraft, No Man’s Sky, the two Ori games, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, State of Decay 2, Streets of Rage 4, The Outer Worlds, and Wasteland 3. Those are just some of the highlights, and it’s not unfair to say that Game Pass offers phenomenal value to console players. Combined with the low asking price of the Series S, I think it’s a steal.

There are still some concerns. The fact that Microsoft still plan on releasing games for Xbox One for the next couple of years or so means that realistically, buying an Xbox One S or even a preowned Xbox One is still a cheaper prospect. And I have to confess a degree of concern at the possibility of the Series S’s lower specs potentially holding back next-gen titles within the next five years or so. In short, if Xbox games have to be built with Series S compatibility in mind, will that slow the pace of game development considering that the Series S is comparable to a PC you could buy today?

The Xbox Series S won’t take discs.

The first of those points – that the Xbox One is still the cheaper option – may sway some budget gamers. In that sense, as I wrote once before, the biggest competition that the Xbox Series S/X will have won’t come from PlayStation – it’ll come from the Xbox One. But despite that, I think that players who don’t just want a console for the next couple of years could future-proof their gaming setups with a Series S. The low price still makes it a solid option, even if it’s possible to pick up an Xbox One for less money. The price difference between an Xbox One – even preowned – and the Series S won’t be that large, and when the Series S will be able to play new games for the next six-eight years instead of one or two, it ends up being better value in the long run.

If you couldn’t tell, I like this console. I like it far more than the Xbox Series X or the PlayStation 5! It fills a niche that no major company has tried to fill before, and offers players on a budget a way into next-gen gaming right from day one. There are a lot of people who fall into that category, and for some of them who may have felt next-gen was simply out of reach, they may now feel that they will be able to join in. Expanding the gaming hobby to more people is a great thing, and helping people who would have otherwise missed out or had to wait get a foot in the door is fantastic. I applaud this decision from Microsoft.

The Xbox Series S will be available in November. The Xbox brand is the copyright of Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Aliens of Star Trek: The M-113 Creature

Aliens of Star Trek: The M-113 Creature

Dennis

Happy Star Trek Day! Today marks fifty-four years since the first episode of The Original Series aired on American television, kicking off a franchise which is still going strong today. The Man Trap featured an alien called the M-113 Creature, but you may know it by its unofficial name: the Salt Vampire!

The early production history of Star Trek is complicated! After The Cage – the show’s original pilot – wasn’t picked up by network NBC, a second pilot was commissioned. This was very unusual, and rumours abound as to what happened. Gene Roddenberry and co. went away to work on a new pilot, and what resulted was Where No Man Has Gone Before. The new pilot dropped most of The Cage’s characters – only Spock would be retained – and reworked the series. It ultimately led to Star Trek being greenlit, and the show was picked up for a full season. Several episodes were filmed, including The Man Trap, and when NBC came to deciding the order in which the stories would air, it was selected as the premiere as its story was considered easier to follow by the executives at the network.

Happy 54th anniversary to The Man Trap… and to Star Trek!

So that’s a potted history of how The Man Trap came to be Star Trek’s first episode, despite the fact it wasn’t filmed first! The episode would see the crew take on a nefarious alien which was the last of its kind: the M-113 Creature.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I really like the design of the creature and the special effects used to pull it off. The heavy rubber suits used for some of The Original Series’ aliens and creatures have a distinct aesthetic, but it’s one I think really works. The suits were very cleverly and lovingly designed, and compared to a lot of contemporary special effects have held up remarkably well over the decades. I’d even compare these kind of practical effects very favourably to lots of digital effects and CGI; no one will ever convince me that Enterprise’s CGI Gorn looks better than The Original Series’ rubber suit!

I think this Gorn still looks pretty good in 2020!

Though the M-113 creature was only seen in its true form very briefly, the same kind of special effects brought it to life in a horrifying way, yet with a unique look that is now emblematic of the Star Trek franchise. Many people who are only dimly aware of Star Trek would recognise the M-113 Creature and be able to identify it as a Star Trek alien; in that sense the creature is up there with races like the Borg and Klingons as being iconic.

It’s been great to see a couple of recent references within Star Trek to the M-113 creature. It appeared in Ephraim and Dot – an animated episode of Short Treks that aired back in December. And just last week we caught a glimpse of the M-113 Creature in Cupid’s Errant Arrow, the fifth episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks. These fun little “Easter eggs” to Trekkies were greatly appreciated, and serve as a reminder of Star Trek’s origins all these years later.

The M-113 Creature seen in Ephraim and Dot…
…and again in Cupid’s Errant Arrow.

Though the creature the crew of the Enterprise encountered in The Man Trap was said to be the last of its kind, it’s arguable that may no longer be the case. Being mentioned in Lower Decks could be seen to imply that further M-113 Creatures have been discovered later in the 23rd and 24th Centuries, so we may not have seen the last of this iconic villain.

Nicknamed the “Salt Vampire” because of its ability to extract all of the salt from its victims, the M-113 Creature was a shapeshifter, able to take the form of other species, including humans. It also seems to have been sentient – able to mimic human behaviour and even hold in-depth conversations and form relationships.

The M-113 Creature was able to assume many forms.

Though distinct from later shapeshifting races – most notably the Founders of the Dominion – the M-113 Creature was the first such alien encountered in Star Trek. We’ve since seen a number of others, all of which owe at least a little something to their predecessor from The Man Trap. The concept of a shapeshifter is frightening, and that aspect has been used to great effect in several Star Trek stories.

The M-113 Creature also possessed several other abilities that made it a formidable adversary: it could telepathically sense the minds of sentient life forms – including humans – and use what it found to choose its appearance. This kind of tactic allowed it to get close to its prey and get them to let their guard down. It was also capable of paralysing people in order to get close to them when in its true form, and was incredibly physically strong – far more so than humans and Vulcans.

The M-113 Creature in its true form.

In The Man Trap, the sole surviving M-113 Creature (that we know of) took the form of Nancy Crater, a woman Dr McCoy had known; “that one woman”, as Captain Kirk put it. It lived with Crater’s husband, Robert, on the planet M-113 for a number of years. It was speculated that there had once been a civilisation of M-113 Creatures, but that the majority had gone extinct when the planet’s supply of salt was used up. Robert and Nancy Crater led an archaeological expedition to the world, encountering what could be the last survivor of the race.

Despite possessing some degree of sentience, it wasn’t possible for the crew of the Enterprise to reason with the M-113 Creature that they encountered, and it was killed by Dr McCoy while attempting to feed on Captain Kirk. If it were possible to negotiate with it – or others of its race – Starfleet could have provided the aliens with a supply of salt in exchange for peace. Perhaps such a story could be included in a future episode of Star Trek!

The M-113 Creature after being killed by Dr McCoy.

Despite its monstrous appearance and villainous role in the story, the death of the M-113 Creature in The Man Trap is a sad occasion. Potentially the last of its kind, the entire race and everything they had created now seems lost to history. Starfleet aims not only to seek out new life, but also to find ways – where possible – to peacefully coexist. It’s ironic, considering subsequent Star Trek stories, that the first encounter with an alien ended with its death!

But in a way, the aftermath of the M-113 Creature’s death is what established Star Trek as being more than just typical mid-century B-movie sci-fi fare. It took an emotional toll on Dr McCoy to kill what he thought was his long-lost love, and it took a toll on Kirk and the crew to have killed off the last member of a species. But as the Enterprise prepares to leave orbit, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy gather on the bridge and remember the creature in what was a very poignant moment.

The crew of the Enterprise at the end of The Man Trap.

It’s moments like this, across The Original Series’ early episodes, that set up Star Trek as being something special. There was more to the story of the M-113 Creature than just a horrible monster for our heroes to outsmart. That story was emotional and complex, bringing up issues of morality that other television series and films struggle to get across even today.

Star Trek offered – and continues to offer, fifty-four years later – much more to its audience than just exciting space adventures. This is why the franchise has endured so long, and it all began on the 8th of September 1966 with The Man Trap and the M-113 Creature.

Star Trek: The Original Series is available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States and on Netflix in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories. The series is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including The Original Series and all other properties listed above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Wars needs to move on

Star Wars needs to move on

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Wars franchise, including casting information for The Mandalorian Season 2,The Rise of Skywalker, and other recent projects.

One of my favourite parts of the Star Wars franchise isn’t a film, it’s the two Knights of the Old Republic games from 2003-04. While I generally found the Expanded Universe – now re-branded as Star Wars Legends and no longer in production – to be unenjoyable, Knights of the Old Republic was an exception. It took a setting and a story that was thousands of years distant from the Original Trilogy, and while it’s certainly true that some elements were derivative, especially in the first game, as a whole it was something different that took Star Wars fans to different places and a different era. It expanded on the overall lore of Star Wars without overwriting anything, and it was a great look at the Star Wars galaxy away from Luke, Anakin, and Palpatine.

When it was announced in 2012 that Disney would be acquiring Lucasfilm I was excited. Ever since 1999, when Star Wars expanded to be more than just a trilogy of films, the vague prospect of a sequel to Return of the Jedi had been appealing to me. Learning what came next for Luke, Han, Leia, and others was something I was interested in, as I also was interested to learn what came next for the galaxy as a whole following the Emperor’s death. It’s easy to forget, but Return of the Jedi didn’t end with a full-scale victory for the Rebel Alliance. The Death Star was gone and the Emperor was dead, but practically the whole galaxy was still under Imperial control. I was fascinated to see how the Rebels turned victory in a battle into victory in the overall war.

The destruction of the Second Death Star. The sequel trilogy was supposed to tell us what became of the galaxy after this moment.

The Expanded Universe attempted to tell this story, but it was a convoluted, poor-quality tale hampered by having different writers with different ideas – seemingly Lucasfilm’s policy when it came to the Expanded Universe was that anyone could write anything. Many of these stories came across as fan-fiction, pitting a seemingly invincible Luke, Han, and Leia against all manner of obstacles. Over the years, the Expanded Universe grew to such an extent that it was convoluted and incredibly offputting for newcomers – several hundred books, several hundred more comics and graphic novels, over a hundred video and board games, two kids’ television shows, and myriad others, all of which required roadmaps, suggested reading lists, and of course a number of encyclopaedias and reference works to keep up with it all. All of this meant that the Expanded Universe was impossible to get to grips with without making it a full-time commitment. I was pleased when it was announced that Disney would be overwriting it.

By wiping the slate clean, not only would Disney not be constrained by some of the Expanded Universe’s poor storytelling, but the canon of Star Wars post-Return of the Jedi could be restarted, hopefully in a more concise way that would be easier to follow. That seemed to succeed at first, but now – a mere six years on from the cancellation of the old Expanded Universe – Star Wars is once again pretty convoluted with books, games, comics, and even a theme park attraction all officially canon. While I don’t want to spend too much time making a comparison with Star Trek, in that case the issue of canon has always been incredibly simple: television episodes and films are canon, everything else is not.

With so many books, comics, games, and other media, the old Expanded Universe was convoluted and offputting.

But we’re drifting off-topic. The Expanded Universe being dumped was a good thing, because I hoped what would replace it would be superior. And for the most part that’s been the case, though The Rise of Skywalker certainly dragged the overall story of the sequels down a long way.

Star Wars has a truly interesting setting: there’s a whole galaxy with countless worlds, trillions of inhabitants, and thousands of different species. But for the most part, the franchise has spent decades focusing on an absolutely minuscule fraction of this vast, potentially interesting setting it’s created.

The Expanded Universe spent a lot of time with Luke, Han, and Leia, as well as later with characters like Anakin, and by far the majority of its stories are set between The Phantom Menace and the couple of decades after Return of the Jedi. Where Knights of the Old Republic succeeded was in taking its audience away from that overtrodden ground and showing us a glimpse of the Star Wars galaxy without those familiar characters.

Knights of the Old Republic II was a great game that told a story far removed from Star Wars’ original trilogy.

The prequels dedicated three films to overexplaining the background of Darth Vader – a story I’d absolutely argue was unnecessary and didn’t really do anything to improve or inform the Original Trilogy in any substantial way. That was part of why I found those films so disappointing. While the third entry, Revenge of the Sith, was better than the first two, all three films didn’t really bring anything new or interesting to the table. As I sat down to watch The Force Awakens a decade later, I hoped that we’d start to see something different.

The five films made since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012 have been a disappointment in that regard. We’ve had The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker, which essentially remade A New Hope and Return of the Jedi only worse, Solo: A Star Wars Story which made the same mistake of unnecessarily overexplaining Han Solo that the prequels did with Darth Vader, and Rogue One, which was a great standalone story but was a prequel feeding straight into the plot of A New Hope. The Last Jedi tried to take things in a different direction, but was still a story primarily about Luke – and is now effectively non-canon after being overwritten by its sequel.

The Last Jedi was the most recent Star Wars film to even try to do something differently – but was still constrained by being a sequel using familiar characters.

I know I said I wouldn’t make too many comparisons with Star Trek, but there’s one that’s too important not to mention. In 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered. And aside from a cameo appearance, that show basically did its own thing and didn’t worry about The Original Series. The Star Trek franchise thus established that it could be so much more than its original incarnation. Star Wars has never done that – in its cinematic canon it hasn’t even tried, despite existing for over forty years. Where Star Trek consists of three time periods, an alternate reality, and nine distinct sets of main characters, Star Wars has been unable to move beyond the story of its original trilogy. The prequels lent backstory to the originals. The sequels and spin-offs expanded that same story. Even The Mandalorian brought in themes, concepts, and characters that weren’t as far-removed from the original films as they should’ve been – a decision compounded by the silly decision to bring in Boba Fett in Season 2.

Star Was could be so much more than it is. But at every opportunity, decisions have been taken to narrow its focus and dive deeper into unimportant parts of its only actual story; after more than forty years, the Star Wars franchise has still only told one real story. The decision to shoehorn Palpatine into The Rise of Skywalker makes this infinitely worse, as apparently he’s been manipulating everything and everyone from behind the scenes for the entire saga of films. As I wrote once, this transforms the Skywalker Saga into what is really the “Palpatine Saga”, as he’s the only character who seems to act of his own volition. But this isn’t supposed to be (another) critique of that incredibly poor narrative decision!

The deus ex machina of Palpatine ruined The Rise of Skywalker… and really the entire sequel trilogy.

The decision to bring Palpatine back is indicative of a franchise that has no new ideas. It was categorically not “always the plan” to bring him back in the sequels, or this would have been established in The Force Awakens. Instead, Palpatine became a deus ex machina because Star Wars as a whole has been unable to move out of the shadow of its first three films. Those films could have laid the groundwork for an expanded franchise – as The Original Series did for Star Trek – but instead they’ve almost become a ball and chain; a weight around the neck of the franchise, keeping it locked in place and unable to move on.

It shouldn’t be because of a lack of ideas. The Star Wars galaxy is a massive sandbox for any writer or director to play in, with almost unlimited potential to tell genuinely new and interesting stories. Instead it’s a lack of vision and a lack of boldness on the part of a large corporation; Disney wants to play the nostalgia card over and over again, and because Star Wars had never previously tried to escape its Original Trilogy, doing so now seems – from a corporate point of view – too big of a risk. How else does one explain the decision to allow The Rise of Skywalker to overwrite The Last Jedi? Corporate-mandated cowardice, retreating to nostalgia and safe, comfortable ground. Trying something even slightly different requires a boldness that simply isn’t present in most boardrooms.

Star Wars is being run by a corporate boardroom unwilling to take risks or do things differently.

Two-thirds of the sequel trilogy re-told the original trilogy. The prequels were glorified backstory, and the two spin-off films were also prequels to the originals. Star Wars has only ever made three original films – everything else either overexplained that story or tried to re-tell it. The Star Wars “saga” is thus nothing more than one story. One main character – Palpatine – controls and manipulates it, and only a handful of characters get any significant screen time and development.

I wrote recently that the overall story of Star Wars has been dragged full-circle, with the questions fans had about the state of the galaxy and the Jedi Order after Return of the Jedi simply not being answered in any meaningful way. The galaxy is once again in a position where Palpatine is dead, there’s one remaining young Jedi, an autocratic state controls much of the galaxy but has suffered a major defeat, and the survivors will have to finish the war and try to rebuild. That’s where both Return of the Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker left things. Far from answering the questions posed by the original films, the sequels just asked the same questions again with a different coat of paint.

By re-telling the same story – albeit in a worse way – the sequel trilogy as a whole has entirely failed to accomplish anything.

The end of the sequel trilogy left the Star Wars galaxy in exactly the same state it was in almost forty years ago.

The announcement of The Mandalorian came with what I thought was an exciting premise: the adventures of a gunslinger far beyond the reach of the New Republic. Wow! Finally, something genuinely different in Star Wars. It didn’t last, of course, as the second episode of the show brought the Force back into things. While in some respects The Mandalorian tried to be different, in too many ways it was samey. The aesthetic, the reuse of elements from the original trilogy like Boba Fett’s armour, the Jawas and their Sandcrawler, and of course the return of the Force made what was already a boring show with episodes that were too short even less interesting. I found the whole experience a disappointment.

The two upcoming Disney+ shows – based around Obi-Wan Kenobi and Rogue One’s Cassian Andor – look set to repeat the same mistakes. Ewan McGregor’s portrayal of Kenobi was definitely one of the prequels’ better elements, but do we need yet another prequel? In-universe, Kenobi went into exile on Tatooine after the rise of the Empire. Anything he does in the show would either be constrained by taking place within a few miles of his desert hut or else feel awfully tacked-on. And the Cassian Andor show is a prequel to a prequel. Rogue One was a great film, but does it need its own prequel show?

Cassian Andor was a great character in his sole appearance. Not sure he needs a prequel series of his own, though.

Can’t the investment being made in these properties be reallocated to something genuinely different? There’s so much potential in the Star Wars galaxy, yet Disney and Lucasfilm seem intent on showing us the same tiny sliver over and over and over again. When people talk of franchise fatigue and the feeling that Disney is milking Star Wars dry it’s because of this! When every Star Wars project feels samey and repetitive, it’s much easier to get burnt out on the franchise.

There are some exceptions – I recently played through Jedi: Fallen Order, and despite that game using a familiar time period, it was a mostly-original story with only one returning character from the films playing a role. It was different enough to feel like a half-step away from what had come before.

Jedi: Fallen Order told a decent standalone Star Wars story.

For the franchise to survive long-term and remain viable, it needs to step away from the original trilogy for the first time. New films and shows, whenever they may come, should look at wholly new characters in a setting and even time period that’s distinct from what came before. There also needs to be a plan – the rudderless sequel trilogy can’t be repeated. Any new project needs to have someone at the helm to guide its story. Questions need to be asked at the beginning about where the characters are going and what the endgame of the story is, so that the franchise doesn’t just keep making the same mistakes.

Not every recent Star Trek project has been to everyone’s taste. But since the 2005 cancellation of Enterprise – and in some respects even before then – Star Trek hasn’t been afraid to try completely new things. Action films, a serialised drama show, and now an animated comedy have all joined the lineup. Some of these have brought in new fans, and at the very least, no one in 2020 can accuse Star Trek of being stale. Star Wars, in contrast, has absolutely become stale. The one story it’s been telling for forty years has finally ended, so now is the moment for Star Wars to properly move on.

The Star Wars franchise – including all films and other media mentioned above – is the copyright of Lucasfilm and Disney. Stock photos courtesy of Unsplash, Knights of the Old Republic II screenshot courtesy of the press kit on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Some interesting Mario projects for the franchise’s 35th anniversary

Some interesting Mario projects for the franchise’s 35th anniversary

Dennis
The Super Mario Bros. 35th anniversary Nintendo Direct.

I don’t usually watch Nintendo Direct presentations, at least not unless I’m eagerly anticipating a title. I only own a handful of Switch games, as they often remain expensive even years after release. When I have a stack of unplayed PC games, spending £50 on a Switch game feels wasteful! This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Mario franchise, as Super Mario Bros. debuted in 1985. Though a 35th anniversary is hardly one of the “big ones”, rumours had been swirling for months that Nintendo would take the opportunity to do something significant in celebration of their most famous character and mascot.

Super Mario All-Stars, which features the original Super Mario Bros. as well as its first three sequels, was one of the first games I owned when I had a SNES in the early 1990s. I enjoyed playing through those games, and while the Mario series has never been my biggest fandom, it’s one that’s usually offered fun and well-made titles. Though I skipped the Mario Galaxy games, I’ve played many of the other mainline entries, including the recent Super Mario Odyssey.

Super Mario Bros. was released in 1985 – 35 years ago.

The main reason why I tuned in, though, was because there had been rumours of a remastered Super Mario 64 – perhaps my favourite entry in the series. I was at least a little disappointed that it hasn’t received an upgrade, as seeing that game with the visual style of Odyssey would have been spectacular in my opinion! But Mario 64 is coming back in its original form, bundled with Mario Sunshine and the first Mario Galaxy game as part of a collection called Super Mario 3D All-Stars.

The collection looks like a lot of fun, and being able to replay Mario 64 will be great. I’ve also only played Mario Sunshine once, in like 2002, so it’ll be fantastic to have a proper look at that game for the first time in a long time too. And as someone who’s never played Galaxy, perhaps now’s the time to give that one a try! But Super Mario 3D All-Stars comes with a stupid and artificial limitation – in true Nintendo style. I criticised Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the arbitrary decision to prohibit players having more than one save file per console, despite there being no reason for such a limitation. And Super Mario 3D All-Stars deserves all the criticism it gets for its forced scarcity business model.

Super Mario 64 might be my favourite Mario title.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars will only be available for six months. At the end of March next year it will be removed from sale – both physically and digitally. I’ve never heard of such nonsense as a digital download game being removed from sale. It’s arbitrary and it’s clearly designed to drum up as much support as possible by playing on gamers’ fears of missing out. Many people, myself included, choose not to buy games at launch because they’re often discounted (or available pre-owned) a few weeks or months later. Super Mario 3D All-Stars, thanks to its unnecessary removal from sale, won’t be in that position, and thus the only way for players to get a copy is to snap it up as quickly as possible. This is a scummy tactic from Nintendo – a company that, despite its family-friendly façade, is no stranger to them. Resellers will be loving this – copies of Super Mario 3D All-Stars will go for big money in six months’ time, and even Switch consoles with the game pre-installed will sell for a packet. Just look at how scalpers have been making money selling iPhones with Fortnite installed since the Epic Games/Apple fight. Something similar will happen in this case too.

It’s one of those difficult situations. I want to like this game, and I’m interested in playing it, but at the same time I don’t want to endorse or support a company that uses such an unfair and anti-consumer business model. Though I felt the same way with Animal Crossing: New Horizons I did ultimately buy the game… and I guess I will be one of the suckers who buys this one too. But I want to register my protest at its business model – which is so incredibly stupid. Nintendo won’t even see most of the benefit, as resellers and scalpers will take the profits. It’ll just screw over ordinary gamers.

It’ll be great to replay Super Mario Sunshine.

As it costs £100, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is a bit beyond my budget! But the concept is fun, and I can see this becoming a must-have Christmas toy this year. Augmented reality is a neat idea, but the applications I’ve seen of it have always felt like little more than gimmicks. And usually the nature of augmented reality either necessitates every participant using a single platform or makes the experiences one-person things. Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is basically just a remote control car with a camera strapped to it and a few gateways to drive through, but the Mario Kart branding, and being able to race around courses in the real world, hold some appeal.

The only drawback I can see is that it’s very much a one-trick pony. And considering most people don’t have huge homes, there will be limited options for setting up a racetrack. Once those options have been expended, the toy will perhaps be cast aside in favour of others, and while that is the nature of toys, £100 for something that looks like a day’s worth of interest at best from the average child means it feels like poor value. Some of Nintendo’s gimmicks are just there for the sake of it, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, the single-use nature of Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit feels like it would be offputting except for Mario fanatics and wealthy parents.

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit looks gimmicky, but fun.

It’s encouraging to see Nintendo making use of the Mario Kart brand, though. I’m still hopeful we’ll see Mario Kart 9 on the Switch before too long; I even made a list of tracks that could be included a little while ago. Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit shows that Nintendo is still making use of the brand, and that raises expectations – at least a little – of a new game perhaps being in development. The original Super Mario Kart was released in 1992; with Nintendo making a big fuss about anniversaries, 2022 will be that series’ 30th so perhaps that could be a good time for a new iteration? I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

The other big announcement was a port of the Wii U game Super Mario 3D World, which will bring with it what looks to be a new expansion pack titled Bowser’s Fury. I played this a few years ago, when I was one of about fourteen people who owned a Wii U, and while it was okay and I enjoyed the cat suits the characters can wear, I’m not in a mad rush to replay it so soon after its launch on that console. Nintendo have released some solid Switch titles since 2017, but they’ve also put a disproportionate amount of time into porting Wii U titles to the new system, and the result is that some franchises haven’t got the attention they deserved. Even Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a port – there are a few extra characters and the DLC included, but nothing about the game is substantially different to the Wii U version. The Bowser’s Fury expansion for Super Mario 3D World may make the game worth a second look, but we didn’t see a lot of it in the direct and while it absolutely could be great, it could also turn out to be insubstantial and a bit of a let-down.

Super Mario 3D World is getting an update and a re-release.

The final game worth mentioning is a very strange one – Super Mario Bros. 35 is a multiplayer competitive version of the classic game, played with 35 players in homage to the title’s 35th anniversary. Defeating an enemy will send it into another player’s game, and it looks like whoever racks up the most points per level wins. Or something. I’m struggling to see how this will be all that fun – Super Mario Bros. simply isn’t designed for something like this, and if the game sticks with the original level design I think players could be overwhelmed with enemies. I know multiplayer isn’t usually my thing to begin with, but even with that caveat this doesn’t seem like a game that will be a lot of fun!

So my dreams of playing Super Mario 64 in the engine used for Odyssey will have to wait for another day! The 3D All-Stars collection is tugging me in both directions right now: it looks like fun, but I’m upset at its crappy anti-consumer sales tactic. Otherwise, despite the pandemic, Nintendo has managed to pull out several fun surprises to celebrate Mario’s 35th anniversary. Not all of them will be to everyone’s taste, but even a casual Mario player should be able to find at least one title that they’re interested in.

The Super Mario franchise, including all titles listed above, is the copyright of Nintendo. Some screenshots courtesy of press kits on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 5: Cupid’s Errant Arrow

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 5: Cupid’s Errant Arrow

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the first five episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Further spoilers may be present for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Despite an underwhelming start, Lower Decks has gone from strength to strength in the last few weeks, with each episode being progressively better than the last. In terms of laugh-out-loud moments of comedy, I think there were more in Cupid’s Errant Arrow than there had been last time, though some of the humour was not to my taste. But a sense of humour and jokes are always subjective things, and taken as a whole I greatly enjoyed what the episode had to offer.

The cringe comedy that I disliked wasn’t something I downright hated, it’s just something I’ve known for decades isn’t “my thing”. Shows like Friends relied on this style of comedy a lot, where jokes are built around embarrassing and cringeworthy situations, and it’s clearly something that a lot of people find amusing. I hope that at least some of those comedy fans have found their way to Lower Decks by now – if they have, I bet they’ll have enjoyed what Cupid’s Errant Arrow had to offer.

The opening shot of the episode – note the font from The Next Generation. I love this little touch.

Of course, only American and Canadian fans would be able to get that enjoyment; Lower Decks remains unavailable anywhere else in the world. Even series creator Mike McMahan, who had rather clumsily talked about the situation a few weeks ago, has gone radio-silent. A search for “Star Trek: Lower Decks international” on Google now only yields results more than a month old; ViacomCBS has simply refused to even acknowledge the problem. This is despite the fact that the lack of an international broadcast has killed the hype and excitement that the show needed to build, and that the widespread piracy across the world continues to reduce the value of Lower Decks from a financial perspective. From the point of view of Netflix or Amazon, why should they pay a lot of money for a show with little international attention and whose hardcore fans have already seen it? The answer is they shouldn’t – and they won’t.

But of course I’d never indulge in such skulduggery as piracy. When ViacomCBS refused to broadcast the show internationally, I – a disabled man with hardly any money – had no choice but to move to America so I could watch it. I’m comfortably settled in my second home – a beautiful log cabin in the state of Alaska, a mere half hour’s drive from downtown New Orleans. I went into town just this morning to sample one of its signature dishes – the Philly cheesesteak. Delicious.

This is totally my house. And it’s in America, obviously. Which is where I definitely am.

Cupid’s Errant Arrow is the first episode not to have a teaser before the opening titles, which is uncommon across any Star Trek series. I’m not really sure why that was the case – at first I wondered if the copy I was watching had a missing piece – because although after the titles we did jump right into the story there was still scope to move the titles to structure the episode more traditionally. This isn’t a complaint, though I do consider it worth noting.

The story begins with Ensign Boimler recording a log. The Cerritos has been tasked with supporting the USS Vancouver – a Parliament-class ship that seems to be superior to the Cerritos in almost every way. The design of the Vancouver was very clever; it managed to look bigger, tougher, and more “heroic” for want of a better word, emphasising its importance over the lowly Cerritos, but while retaining a similar enough aesthetic that it was clearly part of the same fleet.

The USS Vancouver overshadows the USS Cerritos.

Star Trek has often used logs to set up stories, and it worked well here. The Vancouver and Cerritos are tasked with saving the planet Mixtus III and its people from a moon that has become unstable. When I first saw this moon in one of the promo images or trailers released before the series I thought it might’ve been the Klingon moon Praxis, as seen in The Undiscovered Country. Though the damage to this moon is less extensive, it still felt like a little callback.

Though we don’t spend too much time with them this week, the bridge crew (or at least, the captain and first officer) have to first negotiate with the native aliens, as there seem to be competing factions who are all squabbling. Though Lower Decks was in production well before the current pandemic, this sequence – with the bickering factions unable to agree on anything in the face of a looming problem – feels rather timely!

The moon of Mixtus III in Cupid’s Errant Arrow…
…and the Klingon moon Praxis in The Undiscovered Country.

The arguing delegates checked all of the boxes when comparing them to the problem-deniers of today: the conspiracy theorists, the ultra-religious, the not-in-my-backyard types. Though perhaps intended as an analogy for something like climate change, it works surprisingly well considering the response to the pandemic has faced hurdles from the same types of people!

Boimler concludes his log by saying that he’s very excited to get to work side-by-side with his girlfriend for the first time. They’ve been dating via subspace, as she serves on the Vancouver. Of course Mariner is sceptical, questioning the existence of Barbara, Boimler’s girlfriend. Apparently he’s been recording lots of personal logs about her too, which is kind of cute. This conversation dropped a couple of references: Q and Captain Picard Day, and the concept of holo-addiction, that we saw Barclay struggle with in The Next Generation. Mariner’s teasing of Boimler felt more good-natured than mean-spirited here, and it was a scene that furthered their friendship.

Mariner gently teases Boimler about his new girlfriend.

Up next were Tendi and Rutherford, paired up for the B-plot of Cupid’s Errant Arrow. Tendi has felt a little rudderless since the show began, and I don’t think has properly found her feet yet as a character. Last time she seemed to be mimicking Mariner at one point, and here, as she demonstrates excitement for the mundane aspects of the Cerritos and Vancouver, it feels like she’s a second copy of Rutherford. The new ensign wowed by everything has, perhaps, been a difficult character to write for.

Tendi and Rutherford visit the USS Vancouver with Mariner and Boimler, and rush off excitedly to see the ship. I think Tendi’s line about the Vancouver being the “best ship [she’s] ever seen” was word-for-word what she said about the Cerritos in the premiere; if not it was still similar enough to be funny. Boimler waits for Barbara while Mariner continues to say she doesn’t believe she’s real. There was a reference to the Phylosians – a race of sentient plants seen in The Animated Series, which was a neat callback. It was around this point that Mariner crossed over from gently teasing her friend to something more sinister as she continues to insist Barbara isn’t real or must have some nefarious reason for dating Boimler.

Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford aboard the USS Vancouver.

Because of how I’ve felt about Mariner in past episodes, I was at least slightly concerned that she’d turn out to be right and Barbara wouldn’t be real, or would immediately turn out to be some kind of fake or monster. That would have felt a little too obvious, and perhaps would have given Mariner another excuse to see herself as better and smarter than everyone around her. Luckily it didn’t pan out that way!

Barbara is, of course, real. And human (as far as we can tell). She and Boimler are perhaps a little over-the-top in their kissing and cuddling – but that’s all part of the humour. Mariner, after getting over her initial shock, continues to probe her about why she’d date Boimler, but the trio is interrupted by one of Barbara’s colleagues – they’ll be working together, to Boimler’s dismay.

Barbara and Boimler with Mariner.

One very minor point of criticism that I’d have about some of the shipboard scenes this week is that it wasn’t always obvious which of the two vessels the characters were on. The rooms and corridors aboard the Vancouver look very similar to those aboard the Cerritos – even the bridge design is identical – and I wasn’t always sure which ship scenes were set on. In past Star Trek shows, redressing sets or simply reusing sets has created this issue numerous times, but in animation it should be much easier to make some tweaks and changes to give each ship distinguishing features. Otherwise, there’s almost no reason to have two different classes of ship!

It was pretty obvious that the lieutenant Barbara met was, in fact, an ex. The way Boimler reacted, and the way the pair showed such familiarity, telegraphed that story point. This set up the next part of the story: while Mariner will be scrambling around trying to figure out what kind of nefarious imposter Barbara is, Boimler will be scrambling around trying to win her back from what he perceives to be the threat of her ex.

Barbara meets her ex.

The latter of these stories – Boimler trying different tactics to win over Barbara – is where the cringe humour that I mentioned at the beginning really kicks in. It makes sense in a way; it’s a style often seen in romantic comedies, and Cupid’s Errant Arrow is perhaps as close as Star Trek has come to truly having a romantic comedy storyline… except for Picard and Lwaxana Troi in The Next Generation!

By this point, Cupid’s Errant Arrow had established its storylines. Unlike last week, where I felt Boimler’s C-plot went nowhere, there seemed to be enough time for all three stories to play out effectively. We have Captain Freeman’s struggle with the planet’s natives, Tendi and Rutherford aboard the Vancouver, and the Boimler-Mariner-Barbara-Barbara’s ex quadrangle. All three would play out with enough time dedicated to them to feel fully-rounded.

Mariner, Boimler, Barbara, and her ex.

Lower Decks is always picking on Boimler – in a fun way, of course – and this time we learn his full first name: Bradward. This greatly amuses Mariner, and it is kind of a silly name. Sorry to all the Bradwards out there! I suppose we could say it’s surprising that Mariner seems to have known Boimler a while without learning his actual name, but firstly it’s a comedy show so not every point has to be 100% serious, and secondly… I’ve been there. There are people I worked with or knew for years whose names I never learned/remembered! So it’s not actually that unusual a situation.

Aboard the Vancouver, Tendi and Rutherford meet with a senior officer who has some kind of new scanner – the T88. Since the episode aired I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what this is a reference to! At first I thought it might’ve been something from Star Wars, then I wondered if it was a reference to The Terminator… in any case it was repeated so often in the episode that I assume it’s a reference to something, but as with Rutherford’s pudding joke last time I’m just not sure what!

Tendi and Rutherford are excited about the T88 scanner.

Regardless, the pair are very excited about the scanners, and the senior officer promises whoever completes a scanning task first will get to keep a T88. As mentioned, I feel this works way better for Rutherford’s character than Tendi – who is still kind of an unknown quantity even several episodes in.

Back aboard the Cerritos, Boimler is trying to find ways to impress Barbara. At first he tries working out – doing push-ups. Mariner continues to espouse her theory that Barbara is some kind of intruder, alien, or spy and that Boimler is in danger. At first this seemed like “typical Mariner” – assuming she must be right because she knows best – but I was pleasantly surprised when the episode informed us why she’s so paranoid about the prospect of someone she cares about – and she does clearly care about Boimler – being the target of some kind of evil alien.

Mariner tries to convince Boimler that Barbara is evil.

By the way: in the image above, which takes place in the ensigns’ dormitory, does that look like a forcefield behind Mariner? Or is it supposed to be a window? It seems odd to me that the Cerritos would be flying around with a giant hole in its crew quarters – a loss of power would blow them all out into space! But we’re off-topic.

In a flashback sequence we see Mariner a few years previously. Wearing the uniform design used in First Contact and the back half of Deep Space Nine, she and a friend are visiting Quark’s. Mariner appears to still be an ensign at this time, though whether that’s because she’s new to Starfleet or had been promoted and demoted wasn’t clear. Her friend has a new boyfriend, but he turns out to be an evil alien shapeshifter and eats her! So now we know her concern about Barbara doesn’t just come from nowhere for the sake of setting up a funny story – she’s motivated by past trauma. And while we can definitely say she needs to work through that trauma instead of taking it out on Boimler, this moment humanised her in a way few moments in Lower Decks have managed to so far.

Mariner sees a friend eaten by a shapeshifting boyfriend in a flashback sequence.

It was nice to see Quark’s – albeit very briefly – as well as the uniforms of the Deep Space Nine era. We could do a whole series of articles on which uniforms are the “best”, and there will always be differing opinions on that, but I certainly like the grey-and-black variant seen here, and just like when they were included in Star Trek: Picard earlier in the year, it was a nostalgic treat to see them back here too.

Mariner’s determination to help Boimler was sweet, if a little misguided, and the fact that it was basically derived from seeing him as someone unlikely to get a girlfriend was a very “Mariner” way of looking at the situation. In that sense it stayed true to her character, while allowing her to help out. The flashback provided her ample motivation, and this storyline worked well.

Mariner is determined to “help” Boimler.

Up next we had another scene with the captain and the arguing natives. Despite limited screen time, I enjoyed this aspect of the story. The aliens (presumably Mixtusians?) follow on from several others we’ve seen in Lower Decks as being at least slightly more “alien” in appearance than some Star Trek races. Animation as a format allows for this much more easily than live-action, and I think it’s fair to say that we’ve seen Lower Decks take advantage of this as much as possible.

The captain manages to resolve most of their problems – moving homes, installing gravity generators, etc. – but one robed alien still is unsatisfied. He claims that imploding the moon will send debris to his people on Mixtus II, so it looks like there’s still a problem to be overcome after all!

Captain Freeman, Commander Ransom, and the Mixtus III aliens.

In his first attempt to win over Barbara (despite the fact he doesn’t need to) Boimler interrupts a meeting she’s giving about the mission. This scene was by far the worst in terms of cringe humour, and while that really isn’t my thing for fans of that style of comedy I have no doubt it worked.

While Boimler interrupts to try to stake his claim to Barbara in front of her ex (and several of her colleagues) Mariner is trying to prove she’s an impostor. At first she believes Barbara to be an android, programming her tricorder to disable any androids present. The two are eventually forced to leave the meeting and this scene (thankfully) came to an end.

Boimler and Mariner disrupt Barbara’s mission briefing.

Tendi and Rutherford bicker over who has the best claim to the T88 scanner – there seems to be only one available and they both want to take it back to the Cerritos for their various departments. It was never really explained why the T88 is so good – or even really what it does – so I didn’t feel this storyline had particularly high stakes. For the most part it followed a fairly common trope: two friends end up competing against each other, only to realise that their friendship matters more than the prize on offer.

Mariner has a number of theories about Barbara, and these checked off a number of creatures and characters from past iterations of Star Trek. She mentioned the “salt vampire” from The Original Series Season 1 episode The Man Trap, a transporter duplicate from The Next Generation Season 6 episode Second Chances, the Suliban from Enterprise, and a “surgically-altered Cardassian spy”, which is of course a reference to Seska from Voyager. The pinboard she has with lots of pictures and string was funny, and I liked seeing her get deeper and deeper into this rabbit hole. I’m also pretty sure this marks the first reference to the Suliban outside of Enterprise.

Mariner’s conspiracy theories about Barbara referenced a number of past Star Trek stories.

Boimler has a funny line here; while criticising Mariner for not accepting Barbara, he plans to change everything about himself to trick her. The comedy built and built on this, as Boimler confidently asks the replicator for an outfit combining the coolest people in history – in “boys size small”.

The outfit was suitably ridiculous: unmatched boots, two halves of a jacket, an (American) football, and pink sunglasses. I’m sure each piece represents a classic film or television series; I struggled to name them all. But the overall look was so over-the-top and stupid that I had to pause the episode from laughing so hard. This entire sequence was great – but it built up to another cringe moment as Boimler interrupts Barbara in the mess hall.

Cool Boimler.

After Boimler ruins things with Barbara (and spills beer on her) she storms off with her ex. Mariner is increasingly convinced she’s some kind of reptile in disguise, using Barbara calling Boimler “sexy” as evidence.

A misunderstanding in the shuttle bay eventually leads to Boimler and Barbara reconciling; there was never anything between her and her ex as of course we knew. Mariner hasn’t given up, though, and pulls Barbara’s pants down in an effort to expose her as an alien infiltrator. As I mentioned I’m glad Mariner was wrong on this point, as making her someone who’s always right about everything doesn’t tend to make for a fun and relatable character.

Mariner tries – and fails – to expose Barbara as an alien.

Just when it seemed sure that Barbara was human, she and Boimler leave to complete the next part of the mission. As they leave, Mariner finds something on the ground: a husk. After scanning it she’s sure that Barbara is a parasite (or is being controlled by one). She rushes off to tell Boimler.

Tendi and Rutherford complete their task together, but the officer on the Vancouver who gave them the assignment tells them they’re going to be transferred to his ship. Despite loving the Vancouver for its fancy systems and technology, both would prefer to stay on the Cerritos, and a slapstick chase ensues after they steal the officer’s padd – preventing him from submitting the transfer order. This scene was okay, and led to a funny payoff at the end that we’ll come to, but it wasn’t anything spectacular. Slapstick comedy like this can be fine, but something about it didn’t feel right here.

Rutherford and Tendi steal the padd to prevent their transfer to the USS Vancouver.

Meanwhile, Mariner is racing to get to Boimler before the Barbara-parasite can harm him. She puts on a spacesuit and jumps out of the airlock, racing to an orbital platform near the moon. She comes aboard only to find Boimler naked and waiting for Barbara – in another incredibly cringeworthy moment of comedy!

Mariner remains convinced that Barbara is the parasite, but Boimler – clearly fed up with her antics – isn’t buying it. He tries to get Mariner to leave, but because of the delay in destroying the moon thanks to the intransigence of the Mixtus II alien, the platform shakes and Boimler is knocked out.

Nobody wants to see that…

Commander Ransom alerts the captain to the problem on the bridge, while Barbara and Mariner fight over Boimler on the orbital platform. Apparently Barbara has been feeling the same way about Mariner, wondering if she’s an impostor and what her interest is in Boimler, which was kind of funny. This set the stage for the two to reconcile, realising that each other had Boimler’s best interests at heart.

With the moon about to cause devastation on Mixtus III, Captain Freeman feels she has no choice but to act. And in a very funny moment – that also served as a commentary on wealth inequality – the Mixtus II alien admits it’s just him and his wife on the planet; they’re very rich. The captain gives the order to implode the moon, saving Mixtus III from harm despite the rich alien protesting.

Captain Freeman and the Mixtus II alien.

After ending their fight, Mariner and Barbara bond over stories about Boimler. Though these tales almost all put him in a negative light, it was a funny sequence that was perhaps even a little sweet. They both realised that neither was a threat, and that their fighting was borne from a misunderstanding. I liked this resolution to a story that could have made Barbara an alien menace; I think it worked far better.

While Boimler lay unconscious, the two gossiped about him and some of his silly moments – messing up, touching aliens in an inappropriate way, etc. Mariner had a cute line where she said that Boimler is a dork, but he’s her dork. After seeing her being unkind and even bullying him in earlier episodes, this moment (and others earlier on) really hit home the fact that they’re friends, and I liked that.

Boimler lays unconscious in the foreground while Barbara and Mariner chat about their adventures with him.

Meanwhile Tendi and Rutherford have managed to uncover the Vancouver officer’s horrible secret – while transferring them to his ship, he plans to transfer himself to the Cerritos! I loved this moment, as the officer pleads to return to a less exciting ship. He can’t handle the pressure of being on such a cool ship and wants a quieter life. We’ve never really seen that idea explored in Star Trek – that an officer might not want that kind of life. Though it was a brief moment in a secondary plot, acknowledging the idea that some in Starfleet may prefer life in the slow lane was nice, and I appreciated its inclusion.

On the orbital platform, Mariner and Barbara finally uncover the source of the husk Mariner found – Boimler is the one who’s picked up a parasite! The green louse-like creature had affixed itself to his head, but Barbara was able to remove it. It turns out this was the reason why she liked him – the parasite gave off pheromones that made him much more attractive! This was another twist, but a fun resolution to the plot. Mariner was half-right after all – there was a parasite involved. Just not in the way she expected. Though the timeframe of Lower Decks is not at all clear, Boimler was supposed to have picked up the parasite more than a month ago – does that mean he’s had it in every episode so far? Or is it something he picked up between last week’s episode and Cupid’s Errant Arrow? If it’s the former, perhaps we can expect to see some changes in him going forward now that it’s been removed.

Barbara finds the parasite.

In keeping with Lower Decks’ style of returning to episodic storytelling, all of the storylines are wrapped up by the end of the episode. Barbara breaks up with Boimler, removing her from the picture. Tendi and Rutherford return to the Cerritos – with armfuls of T88 scanners! And the ship and crew have completed their moon mission, ready for another adventure next time.

Cupid’s Errant Arrow was fun, and despite the cringe humour that it made use of at points, there were some laugh-out-loud moments. I had a lot of fun with the episode, and I’m enjoying spending time with the characters. Tendi still feels underdeveloped, as if the writers don’t really know what to make of her. But the other three are finding the niches. Mariner’s turn away from being self-centred has been to the series’ benefit in a huge way, and I’m having fun with her, laughing along at her shenanigans rather than rolling my eyes.

The stolen T88 scanners.

This was an episode which really took the action away from what would have been the “main” story in another Star Trek series – saving Mixtus III from the crashing moon. This was always what Lower Decks promised to do: focusing on the unimportant characters rather than the main bridge crew. Several previous episodes had the ensigns participate in the main story in more of a major way, but this time they really didn’t, and thus Cupid’s Errant Arrow is an episode to point to as one that encapsulates the Lower Decks concept.

The teaser for next week’s episode looks like a lot of fun – and while I won’t spoil anything, I’ll say that I’m definitely looking forward to the crew’s next adventure. I hope you’ll come back after you’ve seen it for another review!

The first five episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks are available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States. The Star Trek franchise – including Lower Decks – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Game Pass for PC – first impressions

Game Pass for PC – first impressions

Dennis

Xbox Game Pass for PC has been out for a little while now, and after weighing up the options I decided to finally take the plunge and sign up. In this article I’ll cover my reasoning behind becoming a subscriber as well as my initial impressions of the service and its Windows 10 app. This won’t be a fully in-depth review, it’s really just my first impressions of the service.

First up, I’ll explain why I became a subscriber – and why you might want to as well. In short: I wanted to play Forza Horizon 4 and Game Pass was the cheapest option. I no longer own an Xbox One – I gave mine away years ago – so the only way to get that game is on PC, which is my primary gaming platform these days. But the “standard” edition is £50, and with the game not available on Steam (where sales happen more often) I hadn’t felt committed enough to trying it out to spend that much money. It’s rare that I’ll pay full-price for a game these days, and as someone on a limited budget £50 is just too much.

I subscribed to Game Pass as an inexpensive way to play Forza Horizon 4.

Enter Game Pass. At time of writing, the PC version of Game Pass is still in its “beta” phase, and costs £4 per month with the first month for just £1. That seems like a pretty good deal – even if the price is set to double when the service fully launches at some point in the future. At £4 per month I could play Forza Horizon 4 for a full year, cancel the service, and still have a few pounds left over compared to buying the game outright – and also have access to dozens of other titles to play in that time. It seems like a solid deal, and that’s why I signed up.

In recent months I’ve been critical of Xbox, mostly because of some of their odd decisions in the run-up to the launch of the Xbox Series X. But I have to admit that for Xbox gamers, Game Pass is a great deal. It’s by far the cheapest way to jump head-first into current-gen gaming, and when the Xbox Series X releases in a couple of months, it’ll be the most economical way to get into next-gen gaming too. Even if the Xbox Series X is priced similarly to the PlayStation 5, Game Pass provides an incentive for players to at least consider Microsoft’s platform simply because of the number of titles on offer. We’re primarily looking at Game Pass for PC today, but the console version currently offers more titles than the PC version and is thus an even better deal.

Microsoft currently plans to launch all of their major first-party games onto the service, and besides Forza Horizon 4 you’ll find such titles as Ori and the Will of the Wisps, The Outer Worlds, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and even the brand-new Microsoft Flight Simulator. Upcoming titles I’m looking forward to include Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, and I’m sure that there will be others. Although Xbox’s lineup of exclusives hasn’t been stellar this generation, Microsoft have made moves in that direction in recent years, snapping up studios like Obsidian and Ninja Theory who will now create titles exclusively for their platforms. Obsidian announced a new title a few months ago called Avowed, which looks to be their take on the fantasy/roleplaying genre and seems to have great potential. Avowed is just one title I’m following with interest from Microsoft, and guess what? When it’s released it’ll come to Game Pass.

Avowed, the upcoming title from Microsoft-owned Obsidian, is one game I’m anticipating.

So those are the key points in favour of Game Pass as I see it. It feels like a cost-effective way to play some of the newest titles, and even if there’s only one or two games on the list that you’re interested in, Game Pass can still be the cheaper option compared to buying them outright.

Now let’s look at the Windows 10 app.

This has been the least enjoyable part of the Game Pass experience so far. The app is very much a “beta” app, with a weird glitch that signs me out often and a small window that seems to constantly try to pop up only to immediately vanish. This happens every few minutes, and if I have the Xbox app minimised it flashes orange on the taskbar. It’s a minor annoyance, and one I’m sure will be fixed in future, but if you like perfect, seamlessly smooth experiences, the Xbox app for Windows 10 isn’t quite there yet!

However, signing in is a simple procedure – which is good considering how often it signs me out – and most importantly, downloads are at least as fast as those offered by other PC game launchers. The area where I live doesn’t have great internet; I don’t have fibre broadband or 5G or anything like that, so my downloads are never especially fast. But those from Game Pass are as fast as I get elsewhere, so from my perspective that’s about as much as I could have expected!

Game Pass for PC titles download at least as fast as those on Steam and other platforms.

One other issue that I have is that the same notification keeps popping up every time I sign in. It tells me something like: “your Xbox Live Account is not the same as your Microsoft account!” even though they are both the same account, linked together. Not sure if this is an issue which just affects me or if it’s something everyone has to put up with at the moment!

This is an incredibly minor point, but in the past Xbox allowed players to upload custom pictures to represent themselves and their gamertag – as other platforms like Steam do. But the current version of the Xbox app for PC only allows you to choose from a set list of pictures. As someone who has no friends (on Xbox Live, not in real life!) it doesn’t matter all that much to me, but it’s worth pointing it out.

One thing I did like about the app is that is has a “Surprise Me” button – when clicked this recommends a random game from the Game Pass collection. It’s a bit of fun, and for someone unsure what to play next could even be useful! I don’t see myself using it all that often, but it’s a neat little inclusion.

This is a neat feature – albeit one I doubt I’ll use often!

I’m sure that Microsoft is working on the app behind the scenes to fix its issues and get it ready for prime-time. In a way, it makes sense for them to focus on the console market at the moment, with the launch of the Xbox Series X being imminent. Minor gripes with the PC version can wait while they focus on having as good a console launch as possible under the circumstances.

With enough time and attention, though, Game Pass for PC has the potential to go from strength to strength. At this stage I don’t see it as a Steam competitor – there simply isn’t a big enough library to say that. But it is something that PC gamers could use to augment their Steam libraries, as well as a way to save money on some impressive new titles.

The caveat with any service like this is that you don’t own any of the games, and they can in theory be removed from Game Pass at any time. Game Pass itself could also cease to exist at some point in the future, making replaying games more difficult. In that sense it’s less permanent even than a Steam library, which while wholly digital does at least have a degree of permanence in that you “own” the games you bought. As someone who grew up when renting games – and even consoles – was a big deal, however, that doesn’t bother me all that much.

Game Pass aims to position itself as “the Netflix of games”, and just like Netflix adds and removes content, so too will Game Pass. Most Netflix subscribers are happy with the deal – the subscription provides a huge amount of things to watch, and not owning them doesn’t feel like a particularly big drawback. The same applies to Game Pass – it’s a different, but not altogether unfamiliar – way of gaming.

If you’re someone with an unlimited budget for gaming and a full Steam library, perhaps you don’t need Game Pass. But for budget-conscious gamers looking to get value for money, it really feels like a decent offering. At its supposed full price of £8/$10 a month you’ll be paying £96/$120 per year, which is the cost of around two full-price games. But when you consider you get far more than two games included in Game Pass, from my perspective as someone on a low income that definitely seems like a good deal – provided there are two or more games currently included with the service that you actually want to play! For me it was Forza Horizon 4, but I’ll also surely check out The Outer Worlds and several others, and when my first month only cost £1 and I can now play Forza Horizon 4 immediately, it feels like I saved a packet compared to buying the game outright.

Game Pass isn’t going to totally revolutionise the way we play games – at least, not on current form. But for gamers on a budget it offers an inexpensive way into the hobby, as well as a way to complement an existing library of games for everyone else. Despite the issues with the Windows 10 app, I recommend taking a look.

This post was not sponsored; I purchased a Game Pass for PC subscription for myself and these are my genuine opinions based on my experience. The Xbox and Game Pass brands, as well as others mentioned above, are the copyright of Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Has Star Trek: Picard’s first season finale set up the plot of Discovery’s third season?

Has Star Trek: Picard’s first season finale set up the plot of Discovery’s third season?

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Discovery, and the trailer for Discovery’s upcoming third season.

Ever since we first caught a glimpse of Star Trek: Discovery’s third season setting, I’ve been wondering what’s going on. According to everything we know at this stage, Burnham and the ship will successfully complete a 930-year time jump into the far future. That future looks pretty bleak, and perhaps could even be described as post-apocalyptic. If it’s true that Discovery plans to tell a story set in an era where the Federation is defeated or in decline, figuring out how that happened – and reversing it – is surely going to be the overarching story.

For now we’re going to have to set aside reservations about how a post-apocalyptic or otherwise bleak setting will work with Star Trek from a storytelling point of view. Instead, let’s look at things from an in-universe perspective and try to figure out what may be going on. I have already covered this theory back in March when I was wrapping up my Star Trek: Picard theories, so if you’re a regular reader it may be familiar to you.

In short, here’s how the theory goes: the race of super-synths from Star Trek: Picard are the cause of Discovery’s post-apocalyptic setting. Let’s break it down, look at why it could be a possibility, and explore it in more detail.

This shot of a planet being destroyed by powerful synthetic life-forms was used in both Discovery Season 2 and Picard Season 1.

So although I said this would be an in-universe explanation of the theory, there is one production-side reason we need to look at too. One thing that modern Star Trek shows lack is a relationship to each other. Discovery did a pretty good job of tying itself to The Original Series, and both Picard and Lower Decks have connected themselves to The Next Generation, but there’s essentially nothing beyond a couple of throwaway lines linking Picard to Discovery right now. That would have been unthinkable during the 1990s, where The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager all shared characters, settings, locations, factions, and themes.

Modern Star Trek is hampered by its shows being split up along the timeline, and this makes it harder for new fans to transition smoothly from one series to another. There are no threads of consistency running between the different series, and while they are semi-independent productions they are all being produced by one overall team of people under the Star Trek Universe umbrella.

If we were to learn at some point in Discovery’s third season that the events depicted in Picard were directly related to the Federation’s decline or defeat, suddenly there would be a reason for Discovery fans who missed Picard to go back and watch it, and for Picard fans who haven’t seen Discovery to jump over and watch that show too. There would be the strong feeling that both shows genuinely take place in the same universe and the same timeline, which right now is lacking. This would help the Star Trek brand stay cohesive, and be a frame of reference for casual viewers, all while allowing both shows to provide each other a boost.

The Federation official from the Discovery Season 3 trailer.

So that’s on the production side of things. But I promised you an in-universe look! First let’s very briefly recap, in case you forgot the events of the final few episodes of Picard. While investigating Soji’s origins, Picard and the crew of La Sirena came to realise that there are a race of synthetic life-forms – created by Bruce Maddox – living on a planet called Coppelius. The Romulan faction known as the Zhat Vash were searching for the synths too, because they believe that the synths will trigger an apocalyptic event. This apocalypse was revealed to them by a beacon left behind by an ancient race on a world they called Aia, and when we got a clearer look at the message the beacon contained, it was less a warning to organics than a message to the synths themselves, offering aid. A faction of super-synths that I nicknamed the “Mass Effect Reapers” exist somewhere beyond the galaxy, and they have promised aid to any synthetic race that calls on them. Sutra and Soji planned to contact them, and to open a portal that would have allowed the “Mass Effect Reapers” to travel to the Milky Way galaxy. They successfully built the beacon, but at the last second Picard convinced Soji to shut it down, closing the portal and preventing the arrival of the “Mass Effect Reapers”.

Did I miss anything? I hope not! I nicknamed this faction the “Mass Effect Reapers” because they have noteworthy similarities to another race of super-synths in the Mass Effect series of video games.

I think that the most important thing to note is that in the finale, Soji and Sutra were successful in opening the portal. Thus, the “Mass Effect Reapers” are aware of the existence of a race of synths in the Milky Way galaxy, and also of the existence of the Federation. While Picard was able to convince Soji to stand down and close the portal, questions remain.

Soji working on the beacon in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.

Now that the “Mass Effect Reapers” know of the existence of the Romulans, Federation, and synths, will they be content to go back to sitting still, waiting for another race of synths to contact them? Or did Sutra and Soji set into motion a chain of events that can no longer be stopped? Closing the portal may have prevented the imminent arrival of the “Mass Effect Reapers”, but it’s totally unclear what they will choose to do next.

The “Mass Effect Reapers” were presented as hyper-intelligent, arguably far beyond the Federation and Romulans in terms of technology, and thus their motivations and actions can be difficult to predict. This may be an oversimplification, but at the moment Soji closed the portal and shut down the beacon, she didn’t seem to communicate to the “Mass Effect Reapers” why she was doing so. From their point of view, a portal was opened – through which they could see a race of synths threatened by an imposing fleet of starships – then before they could take action the portal was closed. If I were the “Mass Effect Reapers”, I’d want to know why. And if I were paranoid, I might be thinking that the synths who tried to contact me were under attack and that the beacon had been forcibly shut down.

If the “Mass Effect Reapers” followed this line of thinking, and their motivation is still to provide help to any synthetic race that asks for it, the logical next step would be for them to set off to the Milky Way as fast as they can. Depending on how far away they are – and the show never really explained that – it could take years, decades, or even centuries for them to travel, even if their technology is more advanced than anything we’ve ever seen in Star Trek. That’s assuming they set off immediately – there may have been a debate or discussion about what to do that could have lasted years or longer.

This is basically all we saw of the “Mass Effect Reapers” in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.

In any case, it’s not inconceivable that this extra-galactic threat could take centuries to arrive. I like to assume that Picard and/or Starfleet will travel to Aia and disable or destroy the beacon to prevent not only the Romulans from using it, but from other synths finding it in future. Even shutting down the beacon on Aia may be too late, though, because of the events of Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.

The “Mass Effect Reapers” are perhaps the only faction other than the Borg who could be capable of waging a successful war against the Federation. Even if all of the powers of the Alpha and Beta quadrants were to band together, it still might not be enough against the superior technology of these super-synths, and we could certainly expect any such conflict to be long and catastrophically costly. Even if the Federation survived it would be seriously weakened. Furthermore, a large-scale attack on the Federation would result in far-flung colonies being cut off, and any news or information might be hard to come by.

This is where the trailer for Discovery’s third season comes in. We see a setting best described as bleak, as Burnham and the crew arrive in a part of the galaxy that seems far away from Earth. The Federation seems to be in decline, Starfleet is described as a “ghost”, and we’re left wondering what happened to cause all of this. We’ve seen the Federation in the far future before, both in Voyager and Enterprise, and certainly 100-200 years before Discovery’s far future setting, the Federation and Starfleet seemed to be doing pretty well, even furthering their mission of exploration to include time as well as space. Reconciling that image of the future with Discovery’s setting is something Season 3 will need to do.

The crew of the USS Relativity in the 29th Century – around 300 years before Discovery’s third season is supposedly set.

As a faction we know essentially nothing about – not even their name – the “Mass Effect Reapers” are ripe for exploring in more detail. Discovery could do so in such a way that doesn’t interfere with anything Picard set up, providing not only the next part of the story, but also some background. We could learn about their leadership, motivations, and level of technology in much more detail. And it would still be a practically blank slate for Discovery’s team to use to set up the third season’s bleak and dark setting.

The question of the “Mass Effect Reapers” motivation comes into play again. There are two broad possibilities for their actions in Picard – either they were genuine in their offer to help synthetic races, or the beacon on Aia was part of an elaborate trap. Neither option bodes well for the Federation, assuming that the “Mass Effect Reapers” are now aware of their existence. If it was a trap, and the “Mass Effect Reapers” were waiting to be contacted by synths simply because that would mean advanced civilisations are present, they may now have a new target. If it wasn’t a trap and their desire to help was genuine, they may be motivated by concern for the Coppelius synths or even anger at the Federation and Romulans for intruding before communication could be established. While it’s hard to say what this faction could be planning or thinking based on such a small amount of information, these possibilities seem reasonable, and if they decided they wanted to attack or investigate, the events of Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 could have set that in motion.

Because Picard Season 1 wrapped up in the immediate aftermath of the standoff over Coppelius and the closing of the beacon, we don’t know what happened next. However, I consider two things to be somewhere between possible and likely: the synths on Coppelius would be relocated (in order to keep them safe from the Romulans), and Starfleet would make some attempt to contact the “Mass Effect Reapers” to explain what happened.

The Romulan and Federation fleets engage in a standoff over Coppelius in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.

Relocating the synths feels like a necessity. Commodore Oh may not have wanted to risk war with the Federation when staring down a massive armada, but there’s no indication that she changed her mind on the necessity of exterminating synthetic life. From her perspective, Soji and Sutra building the beacon was a culmination of her worst fears, and although Soji may have been convinced to stand down, again from Oh’s point of view what’s to stop her changing her mind? Or one of the other synths building a new beacon? Leaving the synths on Coppelius would be very dangerous for them, unless Starfleet plans to permanently base a fleet in the system, so the easiest option for everyone would be to relocate them to a safer place.

However, in the context of our theory, this could be problematic. Suppose it takes the “Mass Effect Reapers” a long time to arrive in the Milky Way galaxy, and they don’t manage to travel to Coppelius for several centuries. What do they find when they arrive? No synths, but several massive interstellar civilisations and empires of organic beings. Put the two things together and it’s not unreasonable to assume that the organics wiped out the synths – especially if the last thing the “Mass Effect Reapers” saw before the portal closed was two massive fleets approaching the planet. They may take the missing synths as proof of an attack and go on the rampage.

Even if Starfleet were able to contact the “Mass Effect Reapers”, there’s no guarantee a successful dialogue could be opened. Setting aside other theories like the “Mass Effect Reapers” actually being the Borg, a race of super-synths that considers themselves light-years ahead of organic beings in every respect may look at humans the way humans look at ants or bacteria, and consider any attempt at communication unworthy of their time. That’s assuming Starfleet could find a way to make contact without opening another portal – it may simply not be possible, though I expect the Federation would want to try.

The “Mass Effect Reapers” make their way to the portal in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.

Taken together, all of these different factors make at least a plausible argument for Discovery taking this story beat and expanding it for the basis of its third season. It could certainly be done in such a way that wasn’t confusing and didn’t make Picard essential viewing to understand what was happening – just like Discovery did with Pike, Vina, and the Talosians in Season 2. The Cage certainly provided extra details and informed what was going on, but viewers didn’t miss anything important for not having seen it. I’m sure the same could be done here, especially if the attack by or war against the “Mass Effect Reapers” was already over. It would exist simply as backstory; an encouragement to hop over and watch Picard without making doing so a necessity.

While this theory remains a possibility, at least in my opinion, it’s hardly a certainty and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn Discovery is going in a wholly different direction. Many of my theories during Picard Season 1 didn’t pan out, and this may simply be another that falls by the wayside! Nevertheless, it’s fun to craft theories and speculate, and at the end of the day that’s all this is: a bit of fun, and a chance to spend more time thinking about Star Trek. So please take everything I’ve said today with a healthy pinch of salt.

Star Trek: Picard Season 1 is available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and other countries. Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 will air beginning on the 15th of October on CBS All Access in the United States and Netflix in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Star Trek franchise – including all series and films discussed above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe – a review

Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe – a review

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against The Universe as well as for the Phineas and Ferb television series.

This is a rare treat! There hasn’t been a new Phineas and Ferb story since 2015 when the series went off the air, and I genuinely wasn’t expecting it to return. Disney Channel shows are usually one-and-done things, even now that we’re in an era of reboots and unnecessary sequels. Although some of the characters from the series had crossed over to Milo Murphy’s Law, the announcement of Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe was an incredibly welcome surprise.

I first saw Phineas and Ferb shortly after its 2007 premiere. I had a cable television subscription at the time (remember those?) and one of the channels in the package I’d selected was the Disney Channel – not that I watched it all that much as an adult! But somehow I caught a preview or advert for the series, and it looked like a lot of fun so I gave it a try. I was glad I did, because far from being a silly little kids’ cartoon, Phineas and Ferb has a depth to it that I truly believe transcends its target audience. There’s a lot to like in the show for kids and adults, and as someone who first encountered it as an adult, I can attest to that.

Phineas and Ferb debuted in 2007 with the episode Rollercoaster. This was the opening shot of the series.

As I mentioned the last time I talked about Phineas and Ferb, it’s a show I drift back to on my bad days when my mental health suffers. The bright colours, happy storylines, cute animation style, and fun musical numbers can really take the edge off sometimes, and I’ve always appreciated that about the series.

So what about its latest offering then? Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat – what on earth is going on with that horrible title? Nine words is far too long for any film’s title, and it needed to be cut down as much as possible! Calling it something like Phineas and Ferb: Candace v. the Universe would have conveyed the same message in a more concise form; there was no reason to include “the Movie” in the title of… a movie. So long as it was even moderately well marketed the audience would have known it was a feature-length production.

The titular Candace.

Unlike some titles, such as the upcoming Mulan remake, there was never any question of a theatrical release for Candace Against the Universe (as I shall be calling it for the sake of brevity). It was always scheduled for a Disney+ debut, and I believe it was always planned to arrive in the summer. Though the 28th of August is certainly the tail end of summer, it made its release window despite all the pandemonium in the world, and that’s a great accomplishment!

If I had to summarise my thoughts in a couple of sentences, I’d say that the film blew me away. It was exactly what I’d hope for from any returning franchise: plenty of references to past successes, but with a new and exciting story tying it all together. There were numerous callbacks to past events in the series, but none of them felt like they got in the way of a brilliant, surprisingly emotional story.

Candace referred to the events of a number of Phineas and Ferb episodes in her opening song.

Candace Against the Universe riffs off a similar overarching story from Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension, the first feature-length film in the series that released in 2011. In that story, Candace, Perry, and the boys wound up in an alternate reality and had to get home, while stopping the villain – that dimension’s version of Dr Doofenshmirtz – conquering their home. This time, after Candace is abducted, they have to rescue her and escape an alien planet, then stop the planet’s ruler conquering their home. Both of these stories are epic in scope and allowed for powerful moments, and the fact that it’s not a wholly original premise doesn’t even matter – what matters is it was an amazing ride.

I’ve talked before about Phineas and Ferb delving into some quite deep and complex themes, and perhaps the biggest one featured in Candace Against the Universe is that of mental health. Candace’s unhappiness (or depression), and the fact that those closest to her hadn’t noticed, is a big part of her story and sets up the main plot of the film. Mental health can be a difficult subject for any film to tackle, let alone one primarily aimed at kids, but Candace Against the Universe managed to approach the topic in a way that was understandable even for younger viewers.

Candace’s mental health was the main focus of her story.

Candace being unhappy with herself and her lot in life was communicated in two main sequences: one at the beginning of the film, and one as it approached its climax. It’s very easy for depression to be missed, even when the person isn’t going out of their way to conceal how they feel. Candace’s family didn’t spot how unhappy she was, which ultimately became a contributing factor and made her feel worse. Phineas is the character this affects the most (as Ferb, naturally, has very few lines). The realisation that his sister is feeling awful while he’s been having a great time weighed on him for practically the entire film.

This wasn’t a bolt from the blue for returning fans, either. Candace has always been a character with a complex psyche, at least in the episodes that explored her side of the story in any detail. We’ve seen her being neurotic, manic at times, and dejected and depressed too, so this side of her character really was a natural fit. Obviously there’s far more to mental health than can be explored in an hour-and-a-half, but the elements that the film was able to include – as well as the tone – were pitch-perfect. We often see characters with depression stereotyped, even in films and television shows made for adults. Yet Candace Against the Universe tackled its subject matter in a wholly different way, still firmly making Candace the star while allowing her to explore her issue and get to the heart of why she’s unhappy – instead of just beating us over the head with the fact that she is unhappy.

Vanessa approaches Candace near the beginning of the film.

While the concept of a single issue causing depression, then that depression being easily overcome in one single moment of realisation and coming together (as the film depicts) is arguably an oversimplification, it’s nevertheless by far the best way I’ve seen depression handled in any film or television show for a very long time. The writers and producers deserve a lot of credit for putting out this frank yet understandable depiction, and for conveying the message that you don’t need to be the centre of the universe to matter. That’s what Candace learned – and I bet a lot of kids watching learned it right along with her.

Okay, that’s enough about that for now. Phineas and Ferb was a show with an incredible soundtrack – and Candace Against the Universe didn’t buck the trend. I actually think that Candace voice actress Ashley Tisdale’s singing is even better than it was a few years ago during the show’s original run, and she had a great song right at the beginning called Such a Beautiful Day.

Candace Against the Universe had some great musical numbers.

That song was the opening sequence of the film, and it did a great job not only setting up Candace’s story, but recapping the show for new viewers and those who haven’t seen the series in a while. There also seemed to be a hint – just a hint – at possible further stories in the Phineas and Ferb universe, as Candace sings “other nonsense coming soon” when listing some of the boys’ inventions. I wondered earlier in the year whether Candace Against the Universe might be a springboard for Phineas and Ferb Season 5, and this line was the first big hint that the film dropped at that possibility. Certainly going on the strength of the film and its story, if co-creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh wanted to make another season, Disney would surely be up for it!

Also during this opening song (or rather, during a break in it) we got a short scene between Candace and her best friend Stacy. Though Stacy wouldn’t have much to do in the film overall, I loved this scene. It was a perfectly normal interaction between them, but it was in this moment that I really felt like I was back in the Phineas and Ferb universe. Life was going on, and all the characters were right where I left them.

This scene with Stacy normalised everything and made it feel like Phineas and Ferb never went away.

Other songs were good too, and overall the film had a great soundtrack. The songs equalled the best offerings from the series, and anyone coming into Candace Against the Universe looking for good music certainly didn’t leave disappointed!

The biggest familiar trope missing from the film was the interaction between Perry the Platypus/Agent P and Dr Doofenshmirtz. Because the story involved a team-up between Phineas, Ferb, and their friends with Doofenshmirtz, Perry was relegated to a lesser role, hiding in the shadows trying to avoid being seen by anyone for much of the film. Of course it makes perfect sense, and after the closing of Across the Second Dimension required the kids to get a memory wipe in order for the show to continue its two stories concept effectively, nobody really wanted to see a repeat of that. However, it meant that one of the usual two stories we’d expect from most Phineas and Ferb productions wasn’t present, and there’s certainly part of me that feels that’s a shame. Though there was a very brief fight between them at the beginning of the film, it didn’t fulfil its usual role as the second story, and the absence of that story beat was definitely noticeable.

Perry had less to do than usual – and didn’t really battle Dr Doofenshmirtz.

That isn’t really a complaint, though. Perry still had a role in the story, and although we didn’t see him spend much time with the other characters, he got time with Doofenshmirtz and Vanessa near the end of the film. Perry’s plot in some ways is reminiscent of his role in Across the Second Dimension, where he similarly wasn’t battling against (the original) Dr Doofenshmirtz.

The other thing we didn’t really get to see all that much of was Phineas and Ferb inventing. Off-screen they built the giant clown-robot at the beginning of the film – which was destroyed in a clear homage to Avengers Infinity War! Again off-screen they built the robots they used to attack the villain near the end of the film. They also built the portal to Feebla-Oot, which ultimately didn’t work. Again, I don’t feel this detracted from the film – though it was certainly a brave choice. It was definitely a twist in the final act to see the boys’ robots so easily defeated.

The defeated robots.

Candace Against the Universe actually contained several references to Star Trek, which isn’t something I was expecting! Part of the story involves Baljeet’s obsession with the fictional “Space Adventure” franchise. This isn’t new to Phineas and Ferb and had been mentioned or seen several times before. It’s a generic sci-fi franchise which seems to include films and a television series, and while I would have said past Phineas and Ferb stories treated it more like Star Wars, in this film it was definitely used as a stand-in for Star Trek. The aesthetic of Space Adventure, including its starship design and the design of the bridge of the ship, pays homage to Star Trek, and the starship featured in the show even used the “USS” designation. Baljeet was definitely a Trekkie stereotype at points, but that’s okay!

Phineas and Ferb has often been random in its sense of humour, and Candace Against the Universe definitely continued that trend. Buford bringing a canoe into space is one example that I found funny, and every time the canoe showed up I was wondering if this would be the moment it would finally find a use. The joke about passing the speed of light was hilariously random too – seeing the different stages of animation all the way back to co-creators Marsh and Povenmire explaining the storyboard was breaking the fourth wall at its finest! Again, this is something Phineas and Ferb has done on a few occasions in the past, so this was a continuation of that theme.

Dan Povenmire (left) and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, the co-creators of Phineas and Ferb.

Doofenshmirtz’s lab being destroyed – as it so often was in the show – when the rocket launches was funny too, and shows how bad he is at planning! The post-credits scene where Lawrence steps through the boys’ portal into the still-burning lab was also incredibly funny, and was played pitch-perfectly by both the animators and voice actor Richard O’Brien. O’Brien actually created The Rocky Horror Picture Show – a little Phineas and Ferb trivia for you!

Am I overthinking it, or was the alien prison vehicle at least a little similar to the prison transport Jyn Erso is on near the beginning of Rogue One? Regardless, I loved the cowardly aliens that the gang met, and their city of Cowardalia. It was perhaps a little fast for Phineas and Isabella to inspire the cowardly aliens to take on their biggest foe, but they were cute so they get a pass!

The gang arrives in Cowardalia.

There were plenty of little jokes, too. The escape pods all launching at once because of the faulty alien Alexa device. Vanessa ending up on the planet and not being sent back to Earth. The photo Major Monogram has of Candace being attacked by a crab. The diversion song. The fact that when the aliens’ upper bodies explode it makes the sound “Candace!” Dr Doofenshmirtz insisting on being a leader while being vastly incompetent. All of these little jokes and dozens of others lent that same fun, random sense of humour to the film that fans of the show will have appreciated.

Vanessa’s calmness in the face of everything going on provided a contrast with Candace, and putting the two characters together worked well, especially in the beginning of the film. Olivia Olson, who provides Vanessa’s voice, has always felt like an underrated performer, but she gave it her all here. The jokes about Vanessa posting everything going on on her social media were pretty funny too – as well as setting up a way for Dr Doofenshmirtz to find her. The final act of the film also gave Vanessa a big role, taming a wild space dragon and flying the gang to safety.

Vanessa’s social media post.

The aesthetic chosen for the alien world (Feelba-Oot) was interesting. I kept trying to decipher the name of the planet – it feels like an acronym, but I can’t figure out what (if anything) it means! But back to the way it was designed, I liked the giant mushroom forest, and the brown-and-orange colour palette. It made for a suitably “alien” presentation, as well as being in the vein of some of the classic sci-fi films and series (including Star Trek) that Candace Against the Universe was drawing on for inspiration.

So the crux of the plot. The villain, named Super Super Big Doctor, has a plant which produces mind-controlling spores. She used the plant to conquer the planet, but the plant is old and dying. She believes Candace to be the only source of a special element that can restore the plant – but this turns out to be carbon dioxide, and after Candace tells her there’s loads of it on Earth, she tries to conquer Earth too.

Candace with Super Super Big Doctor.

We can skip the nitpicking and asking why Super Super Big Doctor didn’t realise other earthlings breathe out CO2. The answer is “because plot”, and it’s a kids’ movie so that absolutely gets a pass! The film was, as its title suggests, Candace’s story. And this setup takes Candace from depression to elation as she realises she’s incredibly important – then back to contending with the fact that she isn’t special. Candace comes to realise her unhappiness is tied to feeling inadequate and overshadowed by her brothers, who can perform incredible feats, and she longed to feel special. The mind-controlling plant and evil villain were just there to help her come to that realisation; this is still Candace’s story.

In that sense, Phineas and Ferb (and the rest of the gang) played second fiddle. That’s a bold move for a franchise returning from a five-year hiatus, to put Candace front-and-centre, and it could have backfired. But it didn’t – it worked spectacularly well. Candace provided the story with heart and emotion, and a genuinely satisfying character arc.

Candace with Phineas and Ferb.

It was great fun to have another adventure with Phineas, Ferb, Candace, Perry, and the rest of the gang. I had high hopes for Candace Against the Universe, and I did not come away disappointed. Sometimes a high bar can be impossible to reach, but this time my expectations were met, and the film has to go down as one of the best I’ve seen all year.

The big question now is… will there be more from Phineas and Ferb? And if there are to be further adventures, will they take place in the form of a fifth season or of specials and feature films like Candace Against the Universe? It’s hard to predict right now, but if the film has performed well, I’m sure the team behind it will want to keep going and create more stories in this world. I’ll be very interested to find out if there is more to come, but if not, it’s fair to say that this one-off return saw the franchise go out on a high that surpassed its finale from five years ago.

Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe is available to stream now on Disney+. The film is the copyright of the Walt Disney Company. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

How long can Sony and Microsoft get away with hiding their prices?

How long can Sony and Microsoft get away with hiding their prices?

Dennis

For me, the beginning of September has always marked the start of the slow march to the holiday season. It’s the end of the summer holidays, kids return to school, the weather slowly cools, leaves begin to fall, and sunset gets earlier – all signalling that autumn has begun. It’s around this time of year when thoughts turn to the holidays, and to budgeting for big expenses at that time of year. With that in mind, now that we’re into September, it’s a surprise to me that we don’t know how much the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are going to cost.

It’s pretty obvious that both companies are playing a high-stakes game of “chicken” – neither wants to announce first so they’re both holding fast, waiting for the other to make the first move. Looking back at past console launches, the cheaper system has been by far the best-seller. The Xbox 360 undercut the PlayStation 3 and enjoyed great success in that console generation, and the PlayStation 4 came in $100 cheaper than the Xbox One, and while in that case price arguably wasn’t the only factor in the Xbox One’s troubled launch, the fact that the cheaper console sold significantly better is clearly impacting Microsoft and Sony’s decision-making at this critical time.

The upcoming Xbox Series X. Price? Unknown.

But in past cycles, prices were announced much earlier. By the middle of June 2013 we knew the prices for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One – more than five months ahead of their launches. Microsoft promise the Xbox Series X is coming in November, and it’s assumed that the PlayStation 5 will follow suit. But November is literally in just a couple of months now, and there’s still no price information.

If it were good news, I think it’s fair to assume we’d know by now. If either company were planning to launch a system for less than say £350, they’d have made that abundantly clear and would be using it as a selling point. The fact that they’re keeping their pricing plans secret is in part because of how they’re in competition with each other, but it’s also at least in part because it’s bad news – both consoles are going to launch with a hefty price tag, which is not a good look in 2020 with the economy flailing.

Microsoft has perhaps the most riding on pricing. As I’ve said before, undercutting the PlayStation 5 is perhaps their last good strategy for the already-beleaguered Xbox Series X, which has seen incomprehensibly bad business decisions already hamper its launch. If the Xbox Series X could find a way to be a hundred dollars (or more) cheaper than the PlayStation 5, suddenly it seems a better proposition and Microsoft is back in the game.

The soon-to-be-released PlayStation 5. How much will it cost? Nobody outside Sony knows.

Sony seems better-placed than Microsoft right now, with a good lineup of exclusive games that are being built from the ground up for the PlayStation 5 instead of being limited by current-gen hardware. But an excessively high price could see them repeat the problems faced by the PlayStation 3 two generations ago, and even if they don’t end up charging $600-650 as some have suggested, if Xbox is able to undercut them they could still suffer. So while Microsoft has arguably the most to gain from a positive reaction to pricing, Sony certainly has the most to lose from a negative reaction.

At this late stage, though, both companies are going to suffer criticism and negative feedback for as long as they keep their prices covered up. With two months to go until launch, players and parents need to know how much to budget; keeping this information private is incredibly anti-consumer. Both Sony and Microsoft know their prices by now, having worked out how best to break even and turn a profit. They’re staying quiet on purpose, and people are starting to talk about that.

These are undoubtedly going to be pricey machines.

Sooner rather than later, both sides are going to have to rip off the metaphorical bandage. If the prices are high, reaction will be negative, especially from players whose jobs are under threat in a seriously disrupted economy. But going into the launch with that negativity around their necks will be harmful to Sony and Microsoft, and the more time they have after making price announcements means more time for their marketing and PR departments to spin it in a positive way – or at least blunt the edge. In short, if it’s bad news, giving players more time to get used to it rather than going into the launch window with potential buyers still reeling from the shock announcement will be beneficial.

A delay helps no one, and in the end will backfire on both companies and hurt them as they go into their most important sales window in seven years. In the absence of news, people will make their own assumptions – and the assumption right now is that if they had something good to say on pricing, they’d have said it ages ago and built their marketing around it! The conclusion gamers are drawing is that both consoles are going to be expensive – perhaps the most expensive machines ever, even topping the $600 mark. That’s putting people off right now, as in the current economic climate it’s increasingly hard for many people to justify such a large expense on a “luxury item” like a games console.

We need to see both companies make immediate announcements on price and stop messing around. The corporate game of “chicken” has gone on too long, and its anti-consumer nature is already causing both companies and their brands harm. They can’t keep this up any longer – players have a right to know how much they’re going to be expected to fork over for the new consoles.

At this stage I don’t know when we could expect an announcement. It may be imminent from one or both companies… or it may not be something we’ll get for weeks or even until next month. That would be a mistake for the reasons I’ve already given, and at a time like this, consumers need clarity. Both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are going to be expensive pieces of kit. We get it. But please just tell us how expensive so we can either start saving up or get the disappointment out of the way.

Both companies have been looking at this situation selfishly. Microsoft sees a pathway to a better-than-expected launch, and Sony fears losing the dominance they’ve enjoyed for years. But both companies’ selfishness has crossed a line into being something decidedly anti-consumer, and it needs to stop. At this point, I’d even wager that the company willing to make an announcement will get at least some positive reaction simply by demonstrating they’re not covering up their price. Either of them could even stage an event based around how their competitor is keeping their price a secret – something that could give them at least a temporary boost.

Either way, this has gone on too long. It’s past time that players around the world got to learn how much they’ll have to play for next-gen gaming in a couple of months’ time. We shouldn’t be in this position of having to ask and ask and ask – this information should have been available ages ago. From this point on, every day that Microsoft and Sony continue this cover-up is going to hurt them – and hopefully when they see that, they’ll finally come clean.

The Xbox Series X is the property of Microsoft, and the PlayStation 5 is the property of Sony. Both consoles are due for launch before the end of 2020. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Marvel’s Avengers looks an awful lot like Battlefront II…

Marvel’s Avengers looks an awful lot like Battlefront II…

Dennis

One of the things that seemed weird to me about Marvel’s Avengers – the new video game, not the film series – is that the game seems to be using a visual style very similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe… but without any of the actors’ likenesses. I wondered why they hadn’t been able to negotiate with the various actors like Robert Downey Jr., Scarlet Johannson, etc to use their faces or even get them to provide their voices to the title. Given the popularity of the MCU, that struck me as odd. But perhaps now we know why – the game is going to be very controversial.

If I were an actor in the films or an agent/advocate for them, I’d take one look at Marvel’s Avengers and think to myself just how glad I am to be able to say I have nothing whatsoever to do with it. The controversy the game is drawing for its incredibly aggressive monetisation and microtransaction policies is going to be toxic – and any brand or individual associated with that should watch their backs.

Star Wars Battlefront II generated a lot of controversy in 2018 for its in-game monetisation, and while it’s up for debate whether Marvel’s Avengers will reach that level, it’s trending in a very similar direction. Every single aspect of the game seems designed to extract as much money from players as possible – in a game that charges £50/$60 to purchase in the first place – with a £66 deluxe edition, of course.

Battlefront II released to widespread controversy.

When the game was announced as one of these always-online, “multi-year experience” games, the writing was on the wall. In recent years we’ve seen such titles as Anthem and Fallout 76 try to go down that route, and practically no game which does so manages to avoid controversy. Even by the low standards of this type of game, though, Marvel’s Avengers is taking the piss.

One of the Marvel franchise’s most iconic characters – Spider-Man – is going to be a console exclusive on the PlayStation 4. There are tie-ins with all sorts of random companies, each providing in-game rewards for purchases or subscriptions. There’s an in-game currency which can be bought with real money. Each character – of which there are six at launch (or seven if you’re playing on PlayStation 4) will have their own paid “hero cards”, which seems like a necessary feature to get the most out of each character.

In short, if you can think of a crappy anti-consumer business model used by a recent video game, publisher Square Enix has thrown it into Marvel’s Avengers.

One of several in-game marketplaces ready to vacuum up players’ cash.

The £10 “hero cards” per character is perhaps the most egregious of all the monetisation tactics. It means that players who want to fully experience the game – a game that they have already paid full price for up-front – will need to continually shell out more and more money, perhaps even spending double the initial asking price. That’s not accounting for other cosmetic items, skins, costumes, etc. that are all going to be paid for. The only thing the game doesn’t seem to have is lootboxes – something they make a big fuss about as if expecting gamers to reward them for it.

I’m not a big fan of Marvel, or of comic books in general. But some games with a comic book setting can be decent, and if this were a single-player action title with a big budget behind it I might’ve been tempted to give it a try. Not like this, though. Not with the game being in such a state. People who had early access to play through the beta version have even been reporting back saying that underneath all the aggressive microtransactions, the game isn’t actually all that good.

Marvel’s Avengers may not be as exciting as this promo artwork suggests…

So a 6/10 title is going to cost easily upwards of £100 if you want to buy the deluxe edition and all of the battle passes and in-game currency and cosmetic extras… and you still can’t get iconic character Spider-Man unless you spend all that money on the PlayStation 4 version. I don’t know about you, but to me it’s beginning to sound like it might not be the best value proposition in the gaming world right now.

The Star Wars brand has been dragged through the mud in recent years – admittedly not just because of decisions in games. But the release of Battlefront II and the controversy and backlash it generated tarnished the overall brand to a degree, and I can’t help but feel Marvel is in serious danger of making a very similar mistake. The fact that both Star Wars and Marvel are owned by Disney is worth noting; clearly the company is fine with going all-in on these kind of aggressive money-making tactics.

If I were a Marvel fan, I would have been looking forward to the franchise’s biggest game in a long time. But I’d be looking at the underwhelming game drowning in microtransactions (if we can call £10 “micro”) and feeling sick to my stomach. This is barely even a game – it’s a shop, designed to rope players in and force them to spend more and more and more money. If the core game underneath was decent, perhaps players would be willing to do that. But if reports from those who played the beta are accurate, there isn’t even the kernel of a good game at the heart of this mess.

Ms. Marvel in a promo screenshot.

And perhaps that’s to be expected. The best games are passion projects – titles developed because the team behind them genuinely loved the idea and wanted to see it fully realised. Everything about Marvel’s Avengers feels corporate and soulless, like the game has been conceived in a boardroom full of men in suits who looked at the list of franchises they own then tasked some poor team of developers with making a money-printing machine. These are people who looked at the success of titles like Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto Online and – without understanding anything about them – said “make me one of those!”

The sad thing is that there are many comic book fans and fans of Marvel who would have loved the chance to work on a fun title and bring the superheroes to life for players. But it seems like none of them got a look-in, or if they did they saw this sad, corporate shell and walked away. The suits in charge don’t care, and what has been built is a game where the nicest thing anyone can say is that it looks pretty. Visually impressive, but mediocre and drowning in attempted monetisation.

Disney tried this a couple of years ago in partnership with Electronic Arts. The result? Star Wars Battlefront II, a game so controversial it literally got politicians involved and will probably end up getting in-game gambling banned in at least some areas of the world. It will be hard for Marvel’s Avengers to fail quite so spectacularly, but it seems like they’re willing to try.

Marvel’s Avengers is due for release at on the 4th of September on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, and Stadia. Marvel’s Avengers was primarily developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. The Marvel franchise is the copyright of the Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Perhaps Fall Guys could fix some of its issues before releasing Season 2?

Perhaps Fall Guys could fix some of its issues before releasing Season 2?

Dennis

I was a little surprised to hear that Season 2 of Fall Guys – a game that only launched at the beginning of August – would be arriving in early October. That seems an awfully short span of time for a “season”, though admittedly Fall Guys has hardly been a game that follows the beaten path. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of seasons in online games, it’s something that popular titles like Fortnite have been doing for several years. In short, each season brings new content and new opportunities to progress. In Fall Guys’ case, this means new mini-games and new cosmetics.

But Fall Guys has some issues, and I’d much rather see time and attention spent on improving the core experience before adding new content.

And I know: it isn’t just an either/or case. But at least some of the development time dedicated to building new content for the game – if indeed it is new and wasn’t cut from the initial release – could be reallocated to fixing some of the problems Fall Guys has. Most egregiously I’m thinking of cheating.

There are countless videos on YouTube advertising hacks and cheats for Fall Guys. In this example, a player is able to fly above the course far faster than the players below can run.

I know, right? What kind of pathetic basement-dwelling low-life needs to cheat in a fun little game like Fall Guys? It’s sad, really. But unfortunately, at least on the PC version where I play, it’s becoming much more common. When I first played the game in early August, I didn’t encounter a single cheater. And for the first couple of weeks or so that continued to be the case; the thought never occurred to me that cheating would even exist in a game like this. But in the last couple of weeks cheating has become commonplace. I would guess that roughly one in five games I play now has at least one cheater; some have several.

I don’t pretend to understand the technical side of how the cheats and exploits work, but in-game they appear to give characters the ability to move very fast, fly, and even clip through obstacles and scenery. This gives cheaters a massive advantage, and I’ve played some racing rounds where one or two cheaters were able to qualify before everyone else had even got past the first quarter of the course. This has been going on for some time, and it clearly hasn’t been fixed or patched out yet, but it should be a priority.

When an online game becomes plagued by cheaters, it becomes offputting for everyone else. What’s the point in continuing to progress through the rounds to make it to a finale when you know you’re going to lose to a cheater who can fly all the way to the top of the mountain before you’re even a quarter of the way there? Or who can levitate over the course while everyone else has to hop from tile to tile? There’s no fun in that! And it’s going to result in people no longer wanting to play.

There are other issues too, most notably lopsided teams in some of the team games. I made note of this when I put the rounds in a ranked list, but some of the team games can be horribly uneven. Even a single extra player can provide teams with a huge advantage in some cases, and while the patch notes for a recent update claimed to have fixed the problem, I’ve continued to see unbalanced teams often.

It can be frustrating to play a heavily one-sided team game.

Some rounds need tweaking too, at least from my experience. Perfect Match – a game that involves memorising tiles to avoid falling – routinely ends with hardly anyone being eliminated, and despite the fact that it’s a very enjoyable round, surely something’s got to change there. Likewise Roll Out, which is another round I have a lot of fun with, can take forever as it just isn’t that difficult, meaning it takes a long time to eliminate the right number of players. Better to fix the current rounds than work on a bunch of new ones, right?

Though the server situation has improved massively since the game’s launch, there are still disconnects and failures to connect to contend with. It can be very disheartening to make it all the way to the finale only to get disconnected from the server!

I don’t want to just attack Fall Guys. This is developer Mediatonic’s first big hit, and I genuinely want the game to continue to be the roaring success that it has been this month. According to sales reports, the PC version alone has sold over seven million copies! That’s an astonishing accomplishment for any game, let alone one developed by a small studio. It would be such a shame to see that hard work undone if players are driven away by cheating and other unfixed issues.

Preparing a big update – or “season” – as we head into the autumn does make sense for a business perspective, and I understand that Mediatonic and publisher Devolver Digital recognise they’ve got a hit on their hands and want to keep players engaged. But I’d caution them by saying this: new content will only achieve that objective if players believe that games are fair and that the rules apply to everyone. If cheating continues to run rampant, and cheaters continue to get away scot-free, it won’t matter how much new content is available because there’ll be no one coming back to play it.

Staying ahead of the curve when it comes to stamping out cheating and exploits is part of the job for any company that wants its multiplayer title to be a success. The moment an exploit or cheat is identified it needs to be patched out; Fall Guys has only released a couple of patches since launch, and by now they must know how players are able to exploit the game to fly, move quickly, clip, etc. Quicker fixes for cheats is a must – and any player found cheating needs to be permanently banned from the game.

New cosmetic items are great and all, but preventing cheating would be better.

The most successful online games take a tough stance on cheating. It’s a shame that it exists, that there are people so scummy as to cheat in a game like this. But not understanding it or taking a dim view won’t make it go away, and with the PC version of the game not even using player’s gamertags/Steam names, identifying cheaters to report them to the developer is even more difficult for regular players. Mediatonic and Devolver Digital need to step up – they’ve got a hit on their hands, but they’re in danger of losing it.

Focusing on bringing out new content while these issues still exist feels wrong. Players who’ve had their fun ruined by cheaters are well within their rights to ask why the growing problem doesn’t seem to be getting the attention it warrants, and while it’s absolutely fair to say that a developer can do two things at once, the messaging and marketing trying to hype up Season 2 is in danger of becoming a bit of an own goal from a PR perspective.

Here’s hoping that cheating can be stamped out, and other issues tackled, so we can all get hyped up for Season 2 and the new content it will bring. I’m looking forward to it – but I’m also increasingly worried about some of these issues.

Fall Guys is out now on PC and PlayStation 4. Fall Guys is the copyright of Mediatonic and Devolver Digital. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 4: Moist Vessel

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 4: Moist Vessel

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the first four episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks, and for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Last week’s episode, Temporal Edict, was fantastic. I had a great time with that story – as I’m sure you could tell from my review – and I especially enjoyed seeing Ensign Mariner step up and start being more of a protagonist I could get behind. I was optimistic and even excited for this week’s episode after what I saw last time, and although Moist Vessel started with a scene that got me worried Mariner would wholly regress back to being vain, selfish, and annoying, I was pleasantly surprised with another largely enjoyable episode.

Even now that we’re four weeks into Season 1, there’s still no news regarding an international broadcast. Practically nobody outside the United States and Canada is paying any attention to Lower Decks any more, and what was probably Star Trek’s best opportunity since the 2009 reboot to reach out to new would-be fans has been thoroughly wasted. It’s such a shame to see the hard work put in by Mike McMahan and the rest of the team behind the show being squandered by ViacomCBS in what has to be one of the worst business decisions in Star Trek’s recent history. As I predicted, Lower Decks is being heavily pirated practically all over the world, reducing its value in a packed market – assuming ViacomCBS still hopes to sell the international rights. With no one at the company even acknowledging Star Trek’s international fans, and with no information as to when or even if the show will get an international release, piracy is quite literally the only option for fans who don’t want to miss out.

But of course I’d never sink so low! As you know, when it became apparent that Lower Decks wasn’t going to be coming to the UK I had no choice but to up sticks and move to America. I’m relaxing in my home in northern California as we speak, looking out on the Blue Ridge Mountains in Yellowstone National Park. Tomorrow I’m going to take a short drive to Atlantic City to sample the famous New England cuisine. I can hardly wait!

This is undeniably my house. It’s in the United States, of course. That’s where I definitely am.

As I indicated at the beginning, Moist Vessel begins with another scene in which the humour was supposed to come from Mariner’s selfish “I-don’t-care” attitude. And as I’ve covered several times already, those moments generally don’t work for me. I find that side of her character childish and rude, and the attempted humour derived from that isn’t my thing – at least not in a Star Trek setting.

A scene in the Cerritos’ briefing room introduced the first major Tellarite character to appear in Star Trek for a very long time – Captain Durango of the USS Merced. The Cerritos and Merced will be working together on a mission to tow a long-lost “generation ship” that contains a previously-unknown kind of terraforming fluid.

Mariner isn’t a good source of humour in moments like this, when the entire “joke” is centred around her selfishness.

I liked this setup; it felt very “Star Trek”. Bringing in a second minor ship – the Merced appears to be a California-class like the Cerritos – was a nice touch too, and allowed the rest of the story to work better than if we’d just been following the Cerritos. Animation as a format allows for more variety and versatility than live-action in a lot of ways, and including a second ship is much less of an expense in an animated series than it would be in a live action show. In a way I’d have liked to see the Merced as a different starship class; as I noted in the finale of Star Trek: Picard, having lots of identical ships doesn’t look as good as having varied styles. But that’s just a minor point really.

The generation ship was massive, far larger than the Starfleet ships. And it wasn’t made obvious which species it belonged to – it’s possible the crew of the Cerritos didn’t know either. It’s clear that the generation ship had already been discovered and explored by a previous Federation crew; the Cerritos and Merced are just there to tow it back to Starfleet. This ties in with Lower Decks’ premise of following an unimportant ship, but was done in such a way as to still give the crew a genuine adventure.

The scale of the generation ship was impressive.

After the title sequence, Mariner is getting another well-deserved dressing-down from Captain Freeman; her mother. When we learned at the end of the premiere that Freeman and Mariner were mother and daughter it was surely only a matter of time until that fact became relevant, and here we get to see the first real interaction between them. As happened in either the first or second episode, I was wholly on the side of the officer giving Mariner a stern telling-off, despite her being the show’s supposed protagonist.

Mariner’s anti-authority streak has a distinct feel of teenage rebellion, which is compounded in this scene by the fact that it’s her own mother that she’s in trouble with. Perhaps that kind of character appeals to, well, teenagers and children, but it’s a trait I find particularly annoying in Mariner. I was hoping after last week’s episode she may have turned a page, but this scene – complete with sarcasm, whining, and a Vulcan salute delivered in the way one might flip the middle finger – was Mariner right back where she’d been. I was disappointed by this, though she would regain some of her standing from last week via her actions later in the story.

Mariner gets scolded like a misbehaving child.

Captain Freeman is upset, and along with Commander Ransom hatches a plan to force Mariner to request a transfer – giving her the worst jobs on the ship. Ransom allows his captain to take credit for what had been his idea – I got the impression that’s something he does a lot. He seems to know how to deal with Captain Freeman, and while he had seemed to take a shine to Mariner last week, it’s clear where his loyalties lie.

The second-in-command coming up with an idea that the captain pretends or thinks is their own is a pretty common trope, though, and while it was okay as a one-off joke, I’m not sure how well it works for Freeman’s character. We know her as a pretty strict captain with ambitions for her ship and crew, and to show her as vain or easily manipulated like this makes her far less relatable and likeable. Neither of which are good things.

“That’s why you’re the captain!”

The ensigns are given their assignments in the next scene. Boimler would be absent for much of the episode, but was present here briefly. As Ransom and Freeman had planned, Mariner is given the worst jobs, though Rutherford initially seems unhappy with his – he wanted a different kind of calibrating.

This sequence sets up the B-plot, which this time focuses on Tendi. She’s given the opportunity to witness an “ascension” – a seemingly human crew member is going to ascend to become a “being of pure energy”. Rutherford compares the process to becoming a Q or being the Traveller (from The Next Generation), and though Tendi dismisses those comparisons it seems like a fairly similar process.

Tendi expresses her excitement to Rutherford.

Along with Boimler, we won’t see much of Rutherford until near the end of the episode; Moist Vessel follows Mariner and Tendi’s stories much more closely. And that’s okay, many Star Trek episodes focus on a particular character or group of characters, and we’ve spent time with Boimler and Rutherford before, and surely will again.

When trying to make a comedy series like Lower Decks, it must be hard to give each character a fully-rounded personality while still keeping open possibilities for jokes and humour. In the next scene, Tendi is at the ascension ceremony when she becomes distracted and ultimately disrupts the proceedings in what was an incredibly slapstick sequence. I don’t mind slapstick, visual comedy, but in a similar way to making Captain Freeman easily-manipulated, oblivious, or someone who takes credit for her officers’ ideas, turning Tendi into a bumbling idiot wouldn’t have been my choice.

Tendi ruins the ascension ceremony.

Tendi doesn’t appear to have done any research or read her assignment brief, as she turns up late (the ceremony was already in progress) and doesn’t know what to do or even whether she’s supposed to observe or participate. But then, midway through, she becomes distracted and wanders off to look at an object in the room – this is what leads to the slapstick falling over and ruining the ceremony. I could excuse accidentally knocking something over, but the way she put herself and her own interest in the gong ahead of everything else that was happening was selfish and childish – something we might have expected from Mariner, but not Tendi.

Keeping each of the four ensigns’ characters and personalities distinct is a pretty basic expectation, and the fact that Lower Decks is an animated comedy series may lower the bar in some ways, but it doesn’t work as a catch-all excuse for everything. And in this scene, Tendi seemed to act way out of character; this would have been an acceptable (but still silly) storyline for Mariner. Boimler has been established as the “by the books” anxiety-riddled nerd. Rutherford is the workaholic who loves even the most tedious of tasks in engineering. Mariner doesn’t care about Starfleet. Tendi doesn’t really have a personality yet, and this was a good opportunity to show off what she could be. Instead we got her dumped into a sequence that didn’t seem to fit, and while she wasn’t exactly Mariner 2.0, she wasn’t her own character either.

This sequence with Tendi wasn’t my favourite.

The ceremony, and Tendi messing it up, was really just the setup for what would be the B-plot of the episode, though, and if I’m being charitable I guess I could say I can see why the audience might have found it funny on a visual level. I liked that Tendi tried to replicate more sand for the sand-design that she ruined; that was an amusing moment.

Boimler and Mariner are up next, and he’s teasing her about being assigned the worst jobs while he gets a (comparatively) better one. Boimler seems to have picked up some of Mariner’s traits as well, as he repeats the sarcastic Vulcan salute that she used earlier in the episode. Mariner telling him it doesn’t look cool when he does it, only to admit a moment later that it did was a pretty funny joke, and I certainly cracked a smile at this point. Mariner and Boimler can work well as a duo provided their bickering stays on the friendly side and doesn’t cross over into anything mean-spirited. In this instance I think they stayed on the right side of the line.

Mariner, dejected about her duties, and Boimler.

The next sequence showed Mariner undertaking the various dirty jobs on the ship, including cleaning out the holodeck filters (yuck), applying grease to a turbolift, and phasering carbon from a carbon filter. I’ll excuse the fact that these tasks could be performed by robots (even today, in some cases) because we were always going to get moments like this. It didn’t harm canon and it wasn’t immersion-breaking; in many ways, this is what Lower Decks promised to be about. We were going to see unimportant crewmen performing unimportant tasks on an unimportant ship. The sequence was great; it had some comical moments and I enjoyed it.

At the end, though, was a moment that didn’t work particularly well. As Mariner turns her final task – cleaning the carbon filter using a phaser – into a fun game and seems to be enjoying herself, Ransom spots her. He reports back to the captain that Mariner is “finding little ways to inject joy into otherwise horrible tasks”. It was incredibly on-the-nose for a character to say aloud; the audience saw Mariner doing that firsthand, so we didn’t need to have it explained in such an obvious way. It felt pretty patronising, as if the team behind the series didn’t trust the audience to understand what was going on.

Did Ransom really need to say out loud that Mariner was having fun right after we’d seen this sequence?

Tendi is trying to make up for her earlier mistake, as she feels awful – so she’s definitely not Marinier after all! It was pretty funny that the lieutenant who was supposed to be so calm and zen that he was on the verge of ascending from this plane of existence became very grumpy and annoyed with Tendi, and this being played for laughs worked pretty well – at least the first time it was done.

The storyline between these two characters was kind of a cliché though. Someone trying to make up for a mistake while the person they wronged wants nothing to do with them has been done and overdone in countless comedies and dramas over the years, played both humorously and straight, and nothing about Lower Decks’ take was original or innovative. It was fine, and there were some funny moments, but it wasn’t spectacular.

Tendi spends much of the episode trying to make up for her mistake.

Freeman and Ransom are still scheming about how to get Mariner to request a transfer off the ship. From Freeman’s conversation with Mariner’s dad in the premiere, it sounded like her parents had an understanding that one of them would keep an eye on her on her Starfleet postings – and I would suggest that perhaps the only reason she’s still employed as an ensign is because they’ve been intervening on her behalf. So it seems to run counter to that conversation that Freeman would now be plotting to get her removed from the ship.

Interestingly, my (totally legal) version of the episode had one word censored when talking about the holodeck filters. I assume this was done on CBS All Access, perhaps it was deemed too raunchy for TV? Regardless, Freeman hits on the perfect solution. She’s found the thing Mariner would hate even more than the dirty, disgusting jobs: being promoted.

Mariner does not want a promotion!

This scene, in which Mariner is promoted to lieutenant, kicks off what I guess was supposed to be the C-plot of the episode. Boimler, who was cleaning the conference room while Mariner was receiving her unwarranted promotion, decides that he needs to be a rule-breaker like her in order to get ahead in his Starfleet career. But in what was a busy episode there wasn’t enough time for this to play out, and it’s pretty clear that trying to run three storylines each featuring a main character is too much to cram into an episode barely twenty minutes long. Boimler’s sub-plot added nothing, and was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it thing anyway, taking up practically no screen time.

Star Trek shows of the past have rarely tried to have three or more stories on the go at once, and they were all using far longer episodes. It was never going to work, and it’s a shame in a way because the idea of Boimler trying to put on a Mariner-esque persona could have been funny (so long as it was clear he wasn’t committed to being a selfish jerk). But it feels totally wasted here, and if this was the one attempt this season to try that concept, it’s a shame. Maybe it will be revisited in more detail in another episode, though.

Boimler’s reaction to Mariner’s promotion. His story had potential but there was simply not enough time in the episode to do it justice.

Should we talk about nepotism in Starfleet? Because Moist Vessel seems to suggest that the practice is possible and relatively easy to get away with. We’ve seen situations before in which an arguably undeserving character is given a position aboard ship (I’m looking at you, Wesley Crusher) simply by having a good relationship with the captain, so it isn’t wholly without precedent. However, it raises some alarming questions about elitism within the organisation. Starfleet has usually been presented as meritocratic, but if Freeman can promote Mariner – her own daughter – when she’s clearly undeserving, presumably any captain or admiral can do the same to their relatives? It’s definitely worth considering the implications of this, I think.

I keep saying that we need to treat Lower Decks as an animated comedy first and a Star Trek show second. And it’s true, the show works way better when putting canon and the minutia of the franchise to one side. But moments like this raise questions, and because Lower Decks is officially part of canon and in the same timeline and universe as all the other series, sometimes it’s hard to avoid comparing the way Starfleet is presented here with how it’s been presented elsewhere. Perhaps the topic needs looking at in more detail; I’ll add it to my writing pile!

Sometimes it’s not what you know, it’s who you know…

A montage goes on to show Mariner not enjoying her time as a lieutenant, and some of the activities we might’ve enjoyed seeing the senior officers engaged in in other Star Trek shows are clearly not to Mariner’s taste. Some of these – like the poker game – were little references to past iterations of Star Trek, which I appreciated.

Tendi is explaining to Rutherford how she’s trying to make up for her mistake, and while he’s sympathetic and clearly a good listener, he doesn’t put much stock in her plan. She seems to think she can get the lieutenant – named O’Connor – back on track with his ascension by studying spirituality, but Rutherford is a voice of reason telling her it doesn’t work like that. Tendi is not dissuaded, however, and rushes off with her collection of books. She leaves her unfinished lunch to Rutherford who seems excited that she left her pudding; I’m sure this was a reference to something – but I have no idea what!

Though I’ve no idea what this moment was about, it surely will have made sense to some viewers.

Mariner has received new quarters to go along with her promotion, and Boimler visits her. This furthers the underdeveloped C-plot that we discussed earlier, and it really feels like a way to force Boimler into a story which offered no organic role for him.

In Engineering, Tendi is trying different spiritual techniques to help O’Connor ascend, and as I said this storyline started leaning heavily into the trope of one character trying to help and the other not wanting their help. It was fine, but not particularly funny or interesting from my point of view. O’Connor being so grumpy and annoyed when he’s supposed to be on the verge of ascending due to his calmness and composure was funny the first time, but that should’ve been a one-time-use joke, and building this whole story around it stretched it past breaking point.

O’Connor shouts at Tendi in engineering.

When Mariner and Freeman had their next scene in what looked like a lounge or perhaps the captain’s ready room, Mariner was close to cracking. She clearly hates the role of a senior officer, along with all of the “boring” things they have to do – like attending a birthday party for Commander Ransom, who will apparently play the guitar. Despite that, she is unwilling to admit defeat and request a transfer. This scene had perhaps the funniest one-liner of the episode, too. When Freeman says she’s doing what she needs to do, and “it’s called being a captain”, Mariner hits back with “no, it’s called being a dick!” That definitely won a laugh from me.

In the next scene, there’s a contrivance to suit the plot. It’s not worth getting too worked up over – animated comedy first, Star Trek show second, remember? – but Captain Durango moves the Merced closer to the generation ship, believing he should be in that position as its “his” mission. Moving out of formation ruptures the generation ship’s hull, spewing out the terraforming liquid. Because the liquid transforms everything it touches, whole sections of the Merced are affected, disabling the ship in an instant.

The USS Merced (left) is disabled after being hit with the terraforming liquid.

The Cerritos is soon affected too, as the terraforming liquid is drawn to the ship along the tractor beam. On the bridge, Commander Ransom ordered an evasive action, but it was too late. Across the ship, various crystals and plants emerge, transformed from the ship’s own hull and material. I love the way the terraforming liquid works – it’s something we could have absolutely seen in past iterations of Star Trek. The idea of the ship itself being transformed harkens back to Masks, from the seventh season of The Next Generation, where something similar happened to the Enterprise-D.

From here, the story follows two pairs of characters – Freeman and Mariner, who had been together when the crisis occurred, as well as Tendi and O’Connor. Both pairings put together characters who had been antagonistic to each other earlier in the story, and this concept can work very well. We’ve seen Star Trek stories of the past do similar things; one example that comes to mind is the episode Disaster, from the fifth season of The Next Generation. Disaster made my list of ten great episodes from that show, as it’s one I really enjoy.

Freeman and Mariner will have to work together…

The terraforming liquid has also introduced large volumes of water to parts of the ship – including engineering, where Tendi and O’Connor are. Just as Freeman and Mariner will have to put aside their disagreements to work together, so too will Tendi and O’Connor. No one seems to know what to do amidst the chaos to save the ship, but Freeman and Mariner both come up with the same idea – and it turns out that Mariner had read the mission brief after all. Tying in with last week’s theme of Mariner stepping up when the ship and crew need her to, this worked so well.

When the episode began with Mariner having seemed to regress, I was concerned that Lower Decks was going to continue to use her selfishness as one of its key points of humour, and as I keep saying, “Ensign Rick Sanchez” just doesn’t work for me in this Star Trek setting. But I’m glad that she once again proved she isn’t just interested in herself, and that despite proclaiming boredom and lack of interest at the way Starfleet operates, she still does the work – including reading the brief.

Tendi and O’Connor in a flooded and overgrown engineering.

Both pairs of characters overcome their differences thanks to the chaotic situation. Tendi realises that her desperation to help O’Connor is motivated by a desire to be liked by everyone on the ship, while Mariner’s dislike of her mother and authority seems to come from being treated like a child and smothered. In Mariner’s case, I have to say I’m still kind of on the captain’s side – Mariner does undeniably behave like a bratty teenager, and if I were responsible for someone who behaved that way, I’d certainly treat them accordingly.

However, this sequence was really interesting from a character point of view, and we got to see the mother-daughter relationship in detail. Freeman and Mariner are more alike – especially in terms of how stubborn they are – than either would be willing to acknowledge. Both are also – in their own ways – dedicated to their friends and crewmates, and while Mariner might sulk at the notion of spending an evening at Ransom’s birthday party while he plays the guitar, she wouldn’t let him down if he needed her help. This side to her character goes a long way to making up for her attitude, and after the last two episodes showed this, I have much more respect and admiration for Mariner and her abilities.

Freeman and Mariner tunnelling their way through the partly-terraformed ship.

The dichotomy in Mariner has always been that she’s perfectly capable officer, but she has such a bad attitude and a selfish streak that she doesn’t make use of her talents. The past two episodes have put her in situations that required her to step up, and this has been great news for her character – it’s made her far more likeable and relatable, which are qualities a protagonist needs to have. I just hope these traits stick around for the rest of the season and aren’t lost as the show retains an episodic approach to storytelling.

Lower Decks’ episodic nature, though, has been in many ways a welcome reprieve. Television storytelling in recent years has become all about serialised stories, season-long arcs, and the like. Star Trek shows of the past – especially prior to the Dominion War arc in Deep Space Nine – took this much more episodic approach, and in that respect, Lower Decks feels like a return to that kind of Star Trek story. The downside, as I suggested, is that we can go from what feels like a genuine character arc to a regression in the next episode if that transformation doesn’t stick!

Still digging that tunnel…

After their journey to the environmental control room, Freeman and Mariner are able to reverse the transformation – thanks to some very Star Trek-y technobabble! They even shared a hug as the terraforming was reversed, in what was a very sweet moment.

After Tendi managed to use an exploding pod to drain the water from engineering, saving her and O’Connor’s lives, he returned the favour by saving her life when a large crystal or rock fell from the ceiling. Doing so helped him find his centre and his composure, and he was finally able to ascend – though it looked very painful! This was another joke that dragged just a little too long, in my opinion, and the humour wore off by the time O’Connor was finally fully ascended. But that’s just personal taste, and for many animated comedy fans I think it would be right in line with what they like.

O’Connor’s painful ascension.

It wasn’t possible to use the same process to reverse the damage done to the USS Merced, which seems to have been more severely damaged. However, Mariner and Freeman were able to use the Cerritos’ transporters to beam the Merced’s crew to the generation ship where they’ll be safe – and I liked their shared joke about dumping the boring Captain Durango with the mummies and fossils!

Freeman gets a little over-excited, thinking that this concordance with Mariner may last. It won’t, of course, and the idea that the mother-daughter team will work this closely going forward was put to rest pretty quickly! Despite how well it worked here, Lower Decks’ fundamental premise means we won’t be seeing it happen any time soon.

Mariner and Freeman share a hug.

With Tendi having made her peace with O’Connor and him having ascended, all that was left for the episode to do was reset Mariner’s status in time for the next story – and by insulting an admiral in front of the captain, she was demoted back to ensign and rejoins her crewmates in their shared living space.

Tendi isn’t quite as okay with not being liked as she thought, though; she presses Rutherford to tell her who else aboard the Cerritos doesn’t like her when he suggests there may be others besides O’Connor. Boimler is upset that Mariner got everything he wanted – i.e. the promotion – but rejected it. But Mariner is back where she she’s happiest, and I think we can agree that (if she belongs anywhere in Starfleet) she belongs there.

Mariner is back where she wants to be.

So that was Moist Vessel. Another slow start, perhaps, but another solid and enjoyable episode followed after the opening titles. It was nice to get to spend more time with Tendi, even though at the beginning of her story she felt a little out of place. She grew into it, though, and by the time the ship was in peril she had firmly established who she was and how she was going to react. In that sense, this episode laid the groundwork for establishing Tendi as more than someone who’s just wowed by everything in Starfleet because she’s new.

Mariner once again stepped up to be the officer we know she can be. I could certainly leave behind the attitude and the brattiness, but if she continues to demonstrate that she’s a decent person underneath it, I’ll put up with it. Boimler’s storyline was a waste in Moist Vessel, though, and added nothing whatsoever. I’d like to see this angle explored again – the idea of Boimler trying to be more like Mariner – because I think it has the potential to be both funny and interesting. Unfortunately in an episode barely twenty minutes long there just wasn’t enough time to dedicate to it; it really needs to be the focus of half an episode or more to work effectively.

Boimler’s story needed more time.

At time of writing I don’t believe a title for episode 5 has been announced. Perhaps that’s to avoid spoilers, or perhaps it’s something that will be coming imminently. Either way, Lower Decks is off to a good start and I’m very much looking forward to next week’s offering. I hope you’ll check back afterwards for my review; I’ll be looking at every episode this season as they air.

Star Trek: Lower Decks is available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States. No international broadcast has been announced. The Star Trek franchise – including Lower Decks – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

A look at Project 4K77

A look at Project 4K77

Dennis

A lot of Star Wars fans haven’t seen the original Star Wars. Oh sure, they’ve seen A New Hope, but not the original film as it appeared in 1977 and the years after. In the late ’90s and early 2000s the original film was edited – heavily, in some places – and given the “Special Edition” monicker. It’s this version of the film that’s been the only one available to watch on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming platforms ever since. So as I said at the beginning – many Star Wars fans haven’t seen the original film.

Even I hadn’t until recently. I’d been lucky enough to see the pre-Special Edition cut on VHS in the early 1990s, but even that version of the film had at least one significant edit – the title. In 1977, Star Wars was just Star Wars. A New Hope was the revised subtitle given to the film after the release of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, which was also the time it was retroactively declared “Episode IV”. So even I hadn’t seen the original theatrical version!

In one of the most notorious changes made in the Special Edition of A New Hope, Greedo shoots at Han Solo in the Cantina.

The subtitle doesn’t really bother me. I tend to refer to the first film in the series as Star Wars anyway, unless discussing the wider franchise. Then it becomes necessary to differentiate the first film – just like how Star Trek can be called The Original Series. But what does bother me – at least a little – are many of the other edits and changes.

In a way, I can appreciate what George Lucas was trying to do. In 1977, a combination of budget and technical limitations meant that some of his ideas for how scenes could look had to be curtailed, and with the unlimited resources thrown his way in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he evidently felt he could bring the original films more in line with his vision by using CGI.

The opening crawl from the original theatrical version of Star Wars. Note the lack of a subtitle – the film was not called A New Hope in 1977.

The problem is, of course, that CGI in the late ’90s was pretty crap. Heck, CGI can be janky even today – just look at the catastrophic Cats film from last year for an example of that. The result of Lucas’ edits to Star Wars is that the film is, at best, a visually weird mix of poor-quality CGI and the original practical effects. At worst, the crappy CGI can be totally immersion-breaking.

There have been numerous other edits to Star Wars, including when it recently arrived on Disney+. Some fans noted that the currently-available version on both Blu-ray and streaming looks darker and washed-out, as if a filter has been applied.

CGI Stormtroopers, creatures, and ships in the Special Edition.

So what is Project 4K77? It’s a fan-made remaster of the original theatrical release of Star Wars – the 1977 version, digitally transcribed and available to watch in 4k resolution. None of the Special Edition features are included, and there are two versions – with and without digital noise reduction, which can help clean up the old film grain, but at the expense of not being as “pure”. The title is simply a reference to the fact that the finished version is in 4K resolution, and that the original Star Wars was released in 1977. Hence, Project 4K77.

It’s worth noting that the project is completely unofficial and unsupported by Lucasfilm or parent company Disney. The completed film exists in a legal grey area – it’s a copyrighted work, wholly owned by Disney and Lucasfilm, but the team behind Project 4K77 argue that the original version of the film has been abandoned by its parent company and thus is fair game. Big companies like Disney often jump on fan projects as they become aware of them; Project 4K77 has been out in the open since at least 2018, when the finished remaster of Star Wars was released, and in the two years since nothing bad seems to have happened and the website is still online. Perhaps Disney and Lucasfilm simply don’t care – I can’t imagine they’re unaware of the project after two years. But if you’re desperately worried about things like copyright, you should be aware of its status. The people behind the project also say that they expect everyone who downloads it to already own at least one copy of the film through official means.

The original version (top) and Special Edition revision (bottom). Note the difference in colour temperature and lighting for Obi-Wan and the two lightsabers in particular.

I have great admiration for anyone who takes on a big project and sees it to completion, but these fans have gone above and beyond. They’ve worked on this project basically for free in their spare time, and the result has been a complete restoration of the original film. Return of the Jedi has been remastered too, under the title Project 4K83, and The Empire Strikes Back is supposedly still being worked on. The expression “labour of love” can be thrown around very casually sometimes, but it absolutely fits here. There’s no other way to describe what these fans have accomplished.

Star Wars is in an unusual place as a piece of film history. It’s a classic film that spawned an entire franchise, but unlike many other classic works of cinema, the original film that accomplished so much has, in effect, been out of print for decades. When considering other comparable works, even within the sci-fi and fantasy genres, that hasn’t happened before. Alien, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and even films like Flash Gordon can still be found and watched in their original forms. Star Wars can’t – or it couldn’t until recently.

This scene – featuring a crap-looking CGI Jabba the Hutt – wasn’t even included in the pre-Special Edition cuts of the film.

I don’t think it’s possible to understate the importance of what Project 4K77 has done. When future historians come to look back at late-20th Century cinema, there was a real risk that one of the most important works in the sci-fi/fantasy genres would only be available in a reworked, heavily-edited form. Thanks to this project, that’s no longer the case. The original film has been preserved in its original form, and the importance of that is profound.

While we may look at Project 4K77’s remastered Star Wars as an interesting curiosity, it’s so much more than that. And not only for Star Wars fans like myself who hasn’t seen the film in this form – but for countless current and future fans of sci-fi/fantasy and cinema in general. It’s a piece of history, and I’m all for the preservation of important historical documents and artefacts – by whatever means necessary!

Luke’s X-Wing in its original form – a physical model, not a CGI creation.

If you’re going to go looking for a copy, I daresay you’ll be able to find it through the usual methods for acquiring such content. But bear in mind the file size is particularly large – it hasn’t been compressed in any way. I watched it on my television – a 4K display, but just an LCD one, nothing special. On an OLED display it would look stunning, I’m sure – and even better if you have a proper home cinema setup with a 4K projector and screen!

The more copies of Project 4K77 that exist out there in the wild, the greater the chance it will survive long-term, which is important for the reasons discussed. But it’s something I feel every Star Wars fan needs to see at least once; this is where the franchise truly began. Everything that’s happened since in a galaxy far, far away is built on the shoulders of this film – and in particular, this version of the film. It’s a piece of cinematic history that George Lucas tried to bury. Fans decided not to let him, and Project 4K77 is the result.

The Star Wars franchise – including Star Wars and the rest of the original trilogy – remains the copyright of Lucasfilm and Disney. Project 4K77 is unofficial, and it’s your responsibility to stay on the right side of copyright law. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trekkin’ – a number one hit!

Star Trekkin’ – a number one hit!

Dennis

Here in the UK, we have a long tradition of supporting what are politely termed “novelty” songs. That is, songs which are just plain silly. We’ve seen number one successes for such titles as John Kettley (Is A Weatherman), Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West), and the dreaded Crazy Frog… which still gets stuck in my head sometimes! There was also a successful campaign a few years ago to get hard rock band Rage Against The Machine a Christmas number one hit to protest the success of televised talent shows like X Factor and Pop Idol. And more recently there was a charity song called I Love Sausage Rolls, which was a parody of the song I Love Rock n’ Roll.

So you’ll believe me, then, when I tell you that there was a novelty song about Star Trek that was a number one hit in 1987. You do believe me, right?

This was a real song. About a real weather presenter.

Star Trekkin’, by a band called The Firm, actually has an interesting story behind it – at least according to the people who created the song. In the early 1980s, The Firm had been a one-hit wonder with another novelty song, but hadn’t made any new music for several years. One of the musicians was involved in an English Civil War re-enactment, and while sitting around the campfire dressed up as a Roundhead or Cavalier, overheard another member of the re-enactment society strumming an old song but reworking it to include a couple of lines from Star Trek – “there’s Klingons on the starboard bow” and “it’s life, Jim, but not as we know it”.

Inspired by what he’d heard, he asked his fellow re-enactor if he’d be willing to record his version of the tune, and he did. It took some time, but eventually the band found out who “wrote” the lines that had been included in the song, and after making a number of changes, recorded their own version. The members of the band came back together for the song, and each of them recorded a line in the style of one of five Star Trek characters – Spock, Uhura, Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty. It was actually the wife of one of the bandmates who voiced Uhura.

The song was – perhaps understandably – rejected by several record labels. According to the story they took one look at it and turned it down hard. But the members of The Firm were convinced they had a winner, and at their own expense funded an initial release of 500 copies – the source I have says they were on vinyl, but it seems more likely to me they would have used cassettes in 1987 to make recordings cheaply. That’s a bit of a mystery. But we’re off-topic.

The cover.

After sending a number of the copies to radio stations in the UK, the song blew up. The first week it was released it peaked at a lowly 74 in the music charts, but soon rocketed up all the way to the coveted number one spot. It’s hard to think back nowadays, but until a few years ago the music singles chart was a much bigger deal than it is today, especially here in the UK. Having a number one hit was an astounding achievement for a group of amateurs!

But the saga wasn’t over. A number one hit meant that the band would need to appear on Top of the Pops – a weekly television show where the chart-toppers of the week were performed live (or lip-synced). The Firm felt that appearing in person would “ruin” Star Trekkin’ – seeing the people behind the silly, repetitive hit would rob it of its humour. So they decided to produce a music video… in less than a week!

After attempts to create a video with puppets were shot down by the high cost and length of time required, the band hired an independent animation studio – which was really just a handful of students – to make a claymotion video to accompany the song. The resulting video was completed with just hours to spare, and was shown on that week’s Top of the Pops as planned.

The bridge of the Enterprise in the music video.

The video adds to the song’s weirdness. The characters are made from potatoes with claymotion mouths, there are aliens made from papier-mâché, and at one point the Enterprise appears to be made of sausages and pizza. The whole thing is completely bizarre, and has to be seen to be believed. Yet despite the amateurish way it was thrown together, Star Trekkin’ was a number one hit, and among some British Trekkies, retains a cult status even today, some 33 years later.

The song consists of a few lines from Star Trek – or misattributed to it by the writers.

Here they are:
“There’s Klingons on the starboard bow.” – Uhura
“It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” – Spock
“It’s worse than that, he’s dead Jim!” – Dr McCoy
“We come in peace… shoot to kill, men!” – Kirk
“I cannae change the laws of physics!” – Scotty

The line sung by “Spock” in the song is one frequently believed to have been spoken in the series, but that isn’t actually the case. In fact, it’s possible that the song itself is the reason why the line in that form is so often attributed to Spock (though that seems like a circular argument!) The voices are actually done very well – all of them (except maybe Uhura) sound like reasonable approximations of the characters, and it’s clear they put effort in to get their voices to sound that way! Other than those five lines, there’s the refrain “Star Trekkin’ across the universe!” And that’s it really. The song repeats those same lines, getting faster and faster until it ends. It’s wacky, unique, and kind of catchy.

Spock, as you probably never saw him before.

I remember owning Star Trekkin’ on cassette, and when I was on the bus going to school I’d keep the volume on my walkman low so that no one nearby would overhear and make fun of me! It isn’t the kind of song that I want to listen to all the time, of course – it can get annoying to say the least – but when I’m in the mood for some light-hearted Star Trek-themed weirdness, I’ll find the video on YouTube (or the mp3 on my PC, because you know I bought it for a second time in the digital era) and give it a listen.

Star Trek has been parodied and paid homage to on many occasions since the 1960s, including in song. But Star Trekkin’ has to be one of the strangest examples out there. It’s well worth a listen for any Trekkie who hasn’t heard it, and while I don’t promise you’ll enjoy it as a piece of music, you might just crack a smile. You can find the music video below. Enjoy!

The song Star Trekkin’ is the copyright of The Firm, and rights may be held by Bark Records, Bush Ranger Music, and/or Orchard Enterprises. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten games that I’d remaster (if I could)

Ten games that I’d remaster (if I could)

Dennis

A few days ago I looked at the possibility of a remastered Mass Effect trilogy. While unconfirmed, this project has been rumoured to be in development for at least the last six months, and while I could certainly consider the argument that we don’t need a remaster less than a decade after the trilogy wrapped up, it got me thinking about games that I really would like to see given a proper update for 2020.

When it came to choosing titles, I excluded anything from the last couple of console generations, as those are new enough – in my opinion – to hold up reasonably well in 2020. I excluded titles that have been remastered already, as well as one title (Super Mario 64) that has been the subject of intense speculation regarding a potential upcoming remaster. I considered a number of titles from the 1980s and early ’90s, but despite some good contenders, the titles I ultimately chose are all from the mid ’90s through to the mid 2000s. Remember that these are just my opinions; the list is subjective.

This list is just a fantasy. Some of the games below may one day be remastered, but others are so obscure that I may be one of only a handful of people who knew they existed even when they were new! So don’t get excited at the prospect of an impending remaster; if you must play a title on this list… I dunno. Try eBay?

Number 1: Star Trek: Generations (PC, 1997)

Data and Picard in stellar cartography.

When it comes to naming my “all-time favourite” game, I struggle. There are so many good video games that I’ve played over the years, and what I enjoy playing changes with my mood. That said, the PC game Star Trek: Generations has to be a contender. Part Doom-clone, part puzzle game, part tactical ship-to-ship combat game, featuring fully-voiced characters and some great sequences set in stellar cartography that I don’t even know how to categorise, Generations was a fantastic and incredibly well-rounded experience. It’s such a shame that it released way too late – several years after the film – and was overlooked by even the hardest of hardcore Trekkies.

A first-person away mission.

The main part of the game is a series of Doom-inspired first-person missions to various planets. Generations took a randomised approach – there are a number of planets that the villainous Dr Soran can visit, and which ones he travels to differs with each playthrough. All of the main characters from The Next Generation have their own missions, and the final act of the game lets players take on the role of Kirk. The story sticks to the film in the beginning and near the end, but diverges greatly in the middle during some of the away missions. It’s a fantastic title, and a few years ago I was able to track down a copy on eBay. I’ve been intending to replay it but haven’t got around to doing so yet.

Number 2: Jet Force Gemini (Nintendo 64, 1999)

Saving a Tribal in Jet Force Gemini.

Jet Force Gemini was a Nintendo 64 exclusive just before the turn of the millennium, and it was a fun sci-fi adventure in an original setting. The game gave players three characters to control: twins Juno and Vela, and their dog Lupus. An action/adventure title with some basic 3D platforming sections, the game had a slightly over-the-top story that involved saving teddy bear-like creatures and defeating a nefarious villain. Considering how many sequels and franchises exist right now in all forms of entertainment, Jet Force Gemini could offer something different – or at least something most players in 2020 haven’t experienced before!

Lupus the dog.

Developed by Rare, the game had weapons that could be upgraded as well as an open level design that was comparable to other Nintendo 64 titles at the time. Though it was included in the Rare Replay compilation a few years ago, no remaster – or even a sequel – has been attempted, which is a shame. If a title like Jet Force Gemini were to launch today it would undoubtedly spawn a whole franchise!

Number 3: Knights of the Old Republic I & II (PC & Xbox, 2003-04)

I talked about Knights of the Old Republic a few times during my playthrough of Jedi: Fallen Order, because some aspects of the two titles are comparable. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I didn’t enjoy the Star Wars prequels, and the first two films were especially bad. But in the aftermath of Attack of the Clones I got to have two of my favourite ever Star Wars experiences – these two games.

With all the discussion around a Mass Effect remaster, Bioware’s Star Wars game hasn’t been mentioned. But it should be – both Knights of the Old Republic and its Obsidian-developed sequel are phenomenal. The Star Wars franchise has struggled to break away from its original trilogy and characters for a long time, but Knights of the Old Republic took a genuinely original and interesting setting and told a story that took place millennia before the films. These games did wonders for the Star Wars brand at a time when two crap films had tarnished it, and playing them again but with the enhanced graphics of a title like Jedi: Fallen Order would be amazing.

(A KOTOR remake was subsequently announced in 2021!)

Number 4: Blue Stinger (Dreamcast, 1999)

Protagonist Eliot explores Dinosaur Island.

The only Dreamcast exclusive on this list was a bargain-bin find even at the time it was released! But that’s such a shame, because if you can look past the hammy dialogue and silly premise there’s a fun game hiding just beneath the surface. Blue Stinger didn’t pretend to take itself too seriously. Its dinosaurs-from-space apocalypse setting precluded that! But not every game – or every film – has to be dark and gritty; there’s plenty of room in the gaming realm for titles like this.

Fighting a monster.

What I liked most about Blue Stinger was the fact that the game offered a lot of customisation. Different outfits and different weapons for the multiple playable characters all contributed to making my playthrough feel unique, that I was having an adventure all my own. Few games at the time offered that kind of experience, and I appreciated it.

Number 5: Arx Fatalis (PC & Xbox, 2002)

An underground lair.

After playing and loving The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on the original Xbox, I was looking for another fantasy-inspired roleplaying game to play. There were a few such titles around, but after finding Arx Fatalis and seeing little more than the box art I was convinced it was going to be the next big thing. The PC version of the game – which I didn’t play – is generally considered to be better, as its spellcasting system involves using the mouse to draw symbols in the air. That extra sense of immersion must have felt great!

The magic system.

Arx Fatalis’ underground setting was amazing, with towns and settlements built into caverns, and I had a great time exploring the dungeons and caves of this unique world. There was a decent amount of choice, both in what quests I could take on and how to go about completing them. While Arx Fatalis arguably offered less than Morrowind, it was a solid and decent title nevertheless. Sadly it didn’t sell very well, partly due to being overshadowed by Morrowind, and remains in relative obscurity.

Number 6: Star Trek: The Next Generation – Future’s Past (SNES & Sega Mega Drive, 1994)

Riker, Worf, and Picard on the bridge of the Enterprise-D.

You knew that there was going to be at least one more Star Trek title on the list, right? Future’s Past (or Echoes from the Past if you got the Sega Mega Drive version) plays out like an extended episode of The Next Generation in a lot of ways, and there are things to do on the bridge of the Enterprise-D as well as on away missions. A team of up to four crew members – including both redshirts and major characters – can be assembled for away missions, and different combinations of characters can yield different results.

An away mission.

The away missions take a top-down view, making the game a kind of real-time tactics game as well as being a fun Star Trek adventure. Some of the game’s systems are quite in-depth for a mid ’90s title, and performing tasks like navigating the ship from one star system to another actually made it feel like you were a crewman on the Enterprise-D!

Number 7: FIFA 97 (Multiplatform, 1996)

Though the FIFA series had been running for three years by the time FIFA 97 arrived on the scene, it was the first iteration that I owned. FIFA 95 had introduced club teams after the first entry only featured national sides, but it was only available on the Sega Mega Drive. FIFA 96 was the first truly multiplatform release, and after the excitement of the 1996 European championships in England I was craving a football game to play!

FIFA 97 had a choice of indoor or outdoor stadia to play in!

Nostalgia is big in entertainment at the moment, as people look back fondly on the past. What could be absolutely fascinating to see, as a football fan, is a recreation of the various leagues and divisions as they were in the 1996-97 season, but with the graphics of modern FIFA titles. I think such a game would play on the nostalgia that football fans have for the players, stadia, and kits of their younger days, and if it were successful, there could even be a whole range of legacy FIFA titles going all the way back to the inception of competitive football leagues! Can you imagine a FIFA game set in the 1890s featuring clubs like Northwich Victoria, Glossop North End, and Small Heath? Maybe it’s just because I’m a history buff but I’d love something like that!

Number 8: Pirates of the Caribbean (PC & Xbox, 2003)

Ship combat in Pirates of the Caribbean was great.

Despite the name, 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean has very little connection to the film series – the first iteration of which was released the same year. Though the Black Pearl makes an appearance, the story is really that of Captain Nathaniel Hawk, an original character. Hawk must put together a crew and then can sail across several islands in a shrunk-down map based on the Caribbean. There’s a main quest involving a war between England and France, and a number of smaller side-quests too.

The player character – Captain Nathaniel Hawk.

The popularity of titles like Sea of Thieves and Assassin’s Creed IV shows that gamers love a good pirate-themed title, and I think the under-appreciated Pirates of the Caribbean could work brilliantly in 2020. It had a fun and engaging story, and was a title that allowed a decent amount of player choice.

Number 9: Donkey Kong 64 (Nintendo 64, 1999)

The DK rap…

As I mentioned at the beginning, Super Mario 64 has been rumoured to be the target of a remaster. But the Nintendo 64 also saw the first 3D adventures of that other great Nintendo character – Donkey Kong. Where the Donkey Kong Country games on the SNES had introduced Diddy Kong and a couple of others, Donkey Kong 64 kicked things into high gear by having five playable characters.

Diddy Kong with his twin pistols.

The game is similar to both the aformentioned Super Mario 64 in terms of its 3D platforming as well as titles like Banjo-Kazooie, which was also developed by Rare. It had a multiplayer mode, well-designed and diverse levels, and while the plot was pretty basic it was a lot of fun. The game was re-released on the Wii U as a download title, but wasn’t remastered.

Number 10: Max Payne (PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2, 2001)

Max duel-wielding his handguns.

Despite receiving two sequels and a feature film adaptation, no attempt has yet been made to remaster the original Max Payne. I’ve often talked about how Shenmue on the Dreamcast was my first experience with a game that felt genuinely cinematic – well Max Payne was the second such game I played. Gaming before the turn of the millennium was a lot of fun, but as an art form and entertainment medium, it hadn’t fully hit its stride. Many games had stories which were childish, over-the-top, or just silly; Max Payne was a classic detective/noir adventure that would have been just as at home on the big screen.

Taking out an enemy with a shotgun.

The story and even 95% of the gameplay would need absolutely no adapting; this is one game that just needs to be updated using today’s better graphics! The story is what makes Max Payne worth playing. Its sequels were fine, but nothing can top the original experience. Though the game’s signature “bullet time” has since been reused in many other titles in the years since its release, the story underneath the gameplay is still one that players today could enjoy.

So that’s it. Ten games that I’d remaster if I could. In the years since I got my first home console in the early 1990s – a SNES – I’ve been lucky to play many different games on a range of platforms. These are just a few that I’d love to remaster – if I had a studio, an unlimited budget, and a willingness to lose money!

This has been a fun topic, and it’s one I may revisit in future. I had at least ten more titles lined up that could have made the list, and with so many great games from the past, there’s no shortage of options! It was great fun to talk about some games of yesteryear that I enjoyed during the 1990s and early 2000s.

All titles listed above are the copyright of their respective developers, studios, and/or publishers. Some screenshots courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten character ideas for Star Trek: Picard Season 2

Ten character ideas for Star Trek: Picard Season 2

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Season 1 as well as for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

I really hope Star Trek: Picard Season 2 goes ahead. With all of the delays and cancellations flying around in this unpredictable environment, and with California – where the show is filmed – being one of the worst-hit locales, I’ll be at least slightly concerned about the show’s future until I know for sure that filming has wrapped!

Regardless of events in the real world, I wanted to take a look at some characters from past iterations of Star Trek that it could be fun to see make a return in Season 2 of Picard. I wrote a similar list of characters that I think would make fun additions to Strange New Worlds, and this one is going to be in a similar vein.

Jean-Luc Picard.

The usual caveat that I always give applies here: I have no “insider information”. Nor am I suggesting in any way that any of these characters will appear. I’m simply saying that I think it could make for a fun and interesting story if they did.

Season 1 surprised me by bringing back several characters that I would have never expected – Seven of Nine, Icheb (briefly), Hugh the Borg, and of course Bruce Maddox, who was the driving force behind the plot of the first half of the season in particular. With that in mind, here are a few picks for characters it could be fun to see return.

Number 1: Dr Beverly Crusher

Dr Crusher with her son Wesley in Star Trek: Nemesis.

Of The Next Generation’s main cast, only Beverly and Wesley Crusher weren’t confirmed to be alive in Picard Season 1. Data has died, of course, and we saw the return of Riker and Troi. La Forge and Worf were both mentioned by name, and I take that as confirmation that they’re alive. But no mention was made of the Crushers, and given Picard’s closeness with Beverly in particular, that strikes me as odd.

Is Dr Crusher dead? We have no evidence for that really – and no, lack of evidence that she’s alive is not evidence that she’s dead! There weren’t really any points at which the conversations Picard had could have turned to discuss Dr Crusher, so it may simply be the case that he was busy and so didn’t talk to or about her during his mission to find Soji.

In at least one future timeline – that seen in The Next Generation’s finale, All Good Things – Picard and Dr Crusher had married. Again there was no evidence of this in Season 1 of the show, and I took several remarks by and about Picard to mean that he had been alone in his retirement in France. But there’s nothing to say that he couldn’t have had a relationship with Dr Crusher in the years between Nemesis and his resignation from Starfleet.

Picard and Crusher had come close to romance at several points but never crossed that line. Partly this was Picard feeling responsible for the death of her first husband, who died under his command years previously. But perhaps something could have inspired them to take their relationship beyond friendship – such as two close friends of theirs rediscovering their own romance. In Nemesis, Riker and Troi were married, and indeed remain so as of Picard Season 1. Could that event have been the catalyst for Picard and Crusher to realise it was now or never for them?

Number 2: Narek

Narek’s storyline may not have been everyone’s favourite in Season 1, but I liked that it was unpredictable and that he didn’t follow the trope of being the “spy with a heart of gold” who falls in love with his target. Sadly, Narek was simply abandoned about halfway through Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2. We don’t know what became of him after he worked with Rios, Raffi, and Dr Soong to try to stop Soji building the beacon.

The last we saw of Narek he was being wrestled to the ground by Soji’s synth allies – in what was a pretty weak scene. But we’ll set aside criticisms of the finale for now. What happened to him next is a mystery.

There are several possibilities, though. He may have been taken into captivity by the synths as he was a Romulan spy and had been instrumental in leading the Zhat Vash to Coppelius. He could have been recovered by the Romulans during their brief visit to the system, probably by beaming him aboard one of their ships. He could have been taken into custody by the Federation to be interrogated about the Zhat Vash. It’s even possible – though unlikely – that he left Coppelius aboard La Sirena with Picard.

Regardless, Narek’s story feels incomplete. I want to see more of him and learn what impact Soji’s decision to stand down had on him. Did he still believe synths needed to be destroyed when he saw firsthand that Soji could be reasoned with, and that the prophecy he believed in was not going to come true? We simply don’t know, as the finale robbed his character of any conclusion. There’s more for Narek to say and do – and though I don’t expect to see him back, I hope we at least learn what became of him.

Number 3: The Lower Decks ensigns.

No, not those ones. The four survivors from The Next Generation Season 7 episode Lower Decks. There was Lavelle, who was promoted to lieutenant at the end of the episode, Nurse Ogawa, Taurik, and Ben the waiter. Of the four, perhaps the one I’d be most interested to see is Lavelle, whose story of receiving a promotion in the aftermath of the death of his friend could certainly be given an epilogue. I picture him having ascended through the ranks to be a commander or captain by this point in the timeline.

Nurse Ogawa would be nice to bring back too, given her role as a secondary character across a number of episodes from Seasons 4-7 of The Next Generation – as well as two films. In an episode which focused on Dr Crusher’s reunion with Picard, perhaps she could make an appearance too. She could also be a senior medical officer in her own right, perhaps being someone Picard or one of La Sirena’s crew seeks help from.

I recently re-watched Lower Decks, and you can find my thoughts on the episode by clicking or tapping here.

Number 4: Ezri Dax

This ties into a theory I have that the Dax symbiont could make an appearance in Star Trek: Discovery, which we know from the trailer is going to have Trill characters. I keep talking about the need for modern Star Trek to get some threads of consistency going between the various shows – which are split up across multiple time periods right now. One way this could happen is for Dax to appear in both Discovery and Picard.

What became of Dax after the end of Deep Space Nine is totally unknown. There were novels in which she became a captain, but of all the Star Trek novels, those struck me as some of the worst examples of fan-fiction! I think it’s much more likely she continued her role as a counsellor and scientist rather than made an attempt to move into command, though twenty-five years on from when we last saw her she could really be doing almost anything. She and Dr Bashir may still be together – or their relationship at the end of Deep Space Nine may have been little more than a fling.

Because Ezri only got one season before Deep Space Nine ended, she’s a character we didn’t get to know as well as we otherwise might’ve, and even the last time we saw her she was still adjusting to her new life as a joined Trill. Just like with Seven of Nine in Season 1 of Picard, it would be great to see her years later having made that transition and adjustment and being a more settled character.

Picard may even have need of a counsellor – having your consciousness transplanted into a new body is going to be a shock for anyone, and as someone who seemed to have made his peace with dying, he’s now been thrust into a new phase of life. Maybe Ezri, whose own life was majorly disrupted by the Dax symbiont, could offer her services?

Number 5: Sela

When I looked at the Romulans in the run-up to Season 1, I wrote that I didn’t think we’d see Sela back, and I wasn’t particularly bothered because she wasn’t someone Picard knew very well. That was in the context of Sela being some kind of high-ranking Romulan, and after two major defeats in her two engagements with Picard, I highly doubt she’s in any kind of leadership position.

Whether the Romulans will feature as prominently in Season 2 is unclear, but perhaps there could be an opportunity to see Sela again in a different way. She could be a minor officer, having been demoted after her failures and may even hold a grudge against Picard. She could have been involved with the Zhat Vash. Or she could have been exiled by the Romulans, perhaps as a result of her failures in The Next Generation.

Sela is not the most interesting Star Trek villain, and she’s not the most exciting adversary Picard ever faced. But now that the series has survived its first season and is standing on its own, Sela could make a return in a way that would be interesting. Her relationship with Picard as the daughter of Tasha Yar was touched on in The Next Generation, but arguably never resolved. Perhaps there’s a chance to resolve it now, one way or another.

Number 6: Ro Laren and Thomas Riker

Although these two characters never interacted on screen, they share a similar – and ambiguous – fate. Both Ro Laren and Thomas Riker defected to the Maquis in the years before the Cardassian-Dominion alliance and the Dominion War, and what became of them after that is unclear.

Thomas Riker (a transporter-created clone of William Riker) was taken into captivity by the Cardassians not long before war broke out, and as far as we know, remained in captivity from that point onward. However, it seems logical to assume that – if he survived the war – he would have been rescued by the Federation. With William Riker having made an appearance in the first season, the potential conflict between the two characters could be an interesting reason to bring back Thomas as well.

Ro Laren’s fate is a little less clear. The Maquis were wiped out by the Cardassians and their Dominion allies when they were on the verge of declaring independence, and many Maquis were killed. However, it stands to reason that some were captured alive, so it’s possible Ro was among them.

The reason why I feel they could show up together is if Season 2 were to take a look at Cardassia, Bajor, and the aftermath of the war, they may be able to play a role in that story. I doubt they could both still be in Cardassian captivity twenty-five years later, but they may be working together in the former Maquis territories. With Picard taking a look at the Federation and Starfleet from the outside, and showing both organisations as being flawed, a potential Maquis story could take advantage of that.

Number 7: Q

Q could be an interesting character to bookend Picard’s story. He appeared in Encounter at Farpoint, when we first met the Enterprise-D’s captain, and there would be something poetic about Q appearing in whatever season or episode will mark Picard’s end as a Star Trek character. While I hope there will be a third and perhaps fourth season of Picard, if it is to end with Season 2 I’d definitely bring Q back.

When Picard “died” in the Season 1 finale, I half-expected him to encounter Q in the afterlife. This would have been wrong for many reasons, of course – not least because it would have been very confusing to large parts of the audience! Nevertheless, if that were to have been Picard’s end it could have been very fitting.

Q in “the afterlife” in the episode Tapestry.

I wonder if we’ll learn that Q visited Picard during his self-imposed isolation in France. That seems like something he might have done – to try to prompt some kind of reaction from his adversary. Q has no concept of ageing or even of death really, so the notion of Picard getting old and becoming depressed would be things he might have wanted to examine.

Q seemed to consider Picard a friend, if it’s possible for him to have friends, and he certainly went out of his way to help him on several occasions. I’m sure Q would be upset at the thought of Picard dying, and even if he were to have no impact on the story, could still be one of the characters seen at a funeral service or wake for Picard if the show is to end with the character’s death.

Number 8: Nella Daren

This is a sad one, as original actress Wendy Hughes passed away in 2014, but her character could be recast as Dr Maddox and Icheb were in Season 1. Lieutenant Commander Daren was an officer who briefly served aboard the Enterprise-D as a scientist. But more interestingly, she was one of the few characters linked romantically to Picard during The Next Generation’s run.

Could she have resumed her relationship with Picard at a later date, when they weren’t serving together? As with Dr Crusher above, it’s at least possible. The episode which featured Daren was Lessons, from the sixth season of The Next Generation, and it was a solid episode that appears to have been well-received. There’s no reason why we couldn’t learn what happened to her after she was transferred off the Enterprise-D.

Giving Picard a romantic interest may not seem to be a natural fit for the series. But romance (or past romance) can be a great source of drama in storytelling, and as he readjusts to life outside his vineyard Picard may be interested in rekindling relationships that fell by the wayside.

Number 9: Thadiun Okona

Okona was only seen in one episode of The Next Generation’s second season – but so was Bruce Maddox, so we shouldn’t count that against him! Why would this roguish character be a good fit, though? Well, Picard is currently operating outside of Starfleet, and unless that changes, finding allies who know their way around the rules could be useful and important.

I see at least a little of Okona in the character of Chris Rios, perhaps because they’re both independent captains of small ships. I wonder how they’d react to one another? A story which required Picard and the crew of La Sirena to think creatively could suit a character like the “outrageous” Okona.

William O. Campbell, who played Okona, was recently the lead in a series called Helix on the SyFy channel, so he is still active as an actor. Perhaps he could be tempted to reprise the role.

Number 10: Dr Leah Brahms

Dr Brahms appeared twice in The Next Generation, albeit once only as a hologram. She was a colleague and love interest for Geordi La Forge, and it was implied in at least one future timeline that they had married. Any story featuring him could thus include Brahms as well.

Dr Brahms was also said to work at the Daystrom Institute – which would potentially make her a colleague of Dr Jurati, assuming she was still there after more than twenty years. Perhaps they know each other, and that could be another point of connection. Dr Brahms was an expert in warp drive, and if La Sirena needed to undergo repairs or upgrades, she could prove useful in such a story.

So that’s it. Ten characters who could – but most likely won’t – appear in Star Trek: Picard Season 2. I managed to avoid putting Benjamin Sisko on a list of character reappearances for once! Whoever would have guessed that, eh?

Jokes aside, I think we will see several characters from past iterations of Star Trek crop up in Star Trek: Picard Season 2, whenever it may eventually be broadcast. Season 1 brought back several unexpected characters, and I hope we’ll get more of that next time as well.

Some of these characters may not be a good fit for whatever story the showrunners and writers have in mind for Season 2, so we’ll have to wait a little longer to learn what became of them after we last saw them. That’s okay, because what matters most is that whichever characters come back are the right ones for the story.

It remains my hope that Star Trek: Picard will serve as a launchpad for more Star Trek adventures at the dawn of the 25th Century, and while there has been no confirmation of that just yet, there is at least one other Star Trek project in development that we have no details on. Could it be another show in the same era? Possibly!

The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard and all shows and films mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

How many “dark and gritty” Batman reboots do we need?

How many “dark and gritty” Batman reboots do we need?

Dennis
Trailer for The Batman, due for release in 2021.

I’m not a comic book fan, generally speaking. I wasn’t into comic books as a kid, and while I have a passing familiarity with some of the superheroes and other characters from film adaptations, it’s certainly not my favourite genre. Despite that, there have been some decent comic book adaptations over the years. The Dark Knight trilogy, which ran from 2005-12, was certainly enjoyable, and remains for many the best take so far on the character of Batman.

One of the things that can be quite jarring for me is when a comic book film takes itself too seriously. The aesthetic of comic book superheroes is cartoony and childish, and when contrasted with “gritty” realistic themes and scripts the mix all too often doesn’t work and falls flat. The Dark Knight trilogy was, for the most part, a rare exception to this, and while I wouldn’t place those films at the top of any list, they worked well.

Christian Bale took on the role in Batman Begins.

But even in the mere eight years since The Dark Knight Rises we’ve had several other attempts to bring Batman into a “dark and gritty” modern-day setting. There have been the films of the wider DC Comics expanded universe, including the likes of Suicide Squad and Batman v. Superman, in which Ben Affleck took on the role. There’s the Gotham television series which featured a young Bruce Wayne and took an in-depth look at many of Batman’s antagonists. There has been the Batwoman television series, the Joker film from last year, the Batman Arkham video game series, the Batman Telltale video game series, and a dozen or more animated features. The character has been referenced in the Arrowverse television franchise, and there are at least two Gotham spin-offs in development.

Almost all of these projects took the “dark and gritty” approach that many franchises have favoured since the millennium. Despite attempts to offer variety – for example by looking at Bruce Wayne as a child, or having Batwoman instead of Batman – a lot of them ended up feeling pretty derivative and unoriginal as a result.

The Batman doesn’t look like it will offer anything different.

Just considering Batman’s major appearances in cinema, the version of the character seen in Batman v. Superman and the other DCEU projects was fundamentally no different from that seen in the Dark Knight trilogy. There was no originality compared to what we’d had just a few short years prior. And it seems that the new Batman seen in the trailer just published will be more of the same. Maybe that’s what Batman fans want – the same thing over and over again. And I freely admit that as someone who is a casual viewer at best, the new film isn’t really being made for me.

But it’s supposed to be a big box office title, and as I say all the time, franchises aren’t just made for their hardcore fans. Reboots in particular are supposed to be made to appeal to new fans and bring in large audiences. I’m just struggling to see how The Batman is supposed to do any of that when it seems to offer more of the same.

Robert Pattinson in the recently released trailer for The Batman.

In the Star Trek franchise, which is a favourite of mine and something I talk about a lot here on the website, each new iteration offers something different. In recent years we’ve had the Kelvin timeline films, which aimed to reboot Star Trek and bring in more mainstream audiences. We’ve had Discovery, which is an action-sci fi show that took a serialised approach to storytelling. We’ve had Picard, which was a dramatic sci fi show that took a radically different approach to Star Trek than Discovery had. And of course now we have Lower Decks, which aims to be a comedic take. Four mainline entries in the franchise all bringing something new to the table.

Contrast that to the approach DC is taking with Batman, where they’re following up one “dark and gritty” take on the character with another equally “dark and gritty” take. If the fans and audiences want that and are going to lap it up, then okay I guess that’s fair enough. Tastes are, after all, subjective. I’m not trying to argue that this approach is fundamentally wrong, instead I’m simply saying that it doesn’t work for me. I like when new iterations bring something genuinely new to the table, not when they’re a rehash of what’s come before. For a franchise that hadn’t seen a new entry in decades, maybe that would hold some appeal – bringing back a classic. But Batman has hardly been off our screens at all since the late 1980s, and since 2005 when Batman Begins aired, every mainstream entry in the franchise has taken a very similar approach. I guess it’s just not my thing, even though the Dark Knight trilogy was pretty good.

The closest that the Batman franchise has come to something different has been 2017’s The Lego Batman Movie, which injected some much-needed humour into what has become a pretty grim and humourless franchise. Practically every other major release has stuck firmly to the formula Batman Begins established in 2005.

The Lego Batman Movie was something different.

It’s no criticism of Robert Pattinson, who will take the lead role in The Batman. He looks to be doing a perfectly solid job in the role, and were it not for fifteen years of samey takes on the character I might even be convinced to say I was looking forward to seeing this film. But I’m not, because it seems to offer nothing fundamentally original or interesting, just another “dark and gritty” take on a character and setting whose darkness and grit have been done to death.

I’d like to be proven wrong, and for The Batman to be a film that has something more to offer, so when it’s released next year I’m sure I’ll take a look to see what Pattinson and director Matt Reeves have to offer. Perhaps by setting a low bar for the film I’ll come out of it pleasantly surprised; it’s happened before! Because of the hype and buzz that surrounds any major comic book film these days they’re inescapable, and I found myself drawn to comment on this upcoming release.

I have enjoyed several Batman projects in the past, so perhaps The Batman will surprise me. Check back in 2021 (or 2022) to find out!

The Batman is the copyright of DC Films and Warner Bros. Pictures. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Is the decision to bring Mulan straight to Disney+ a good one?

Is the decision to bring Mulan straight to Disney+ a good one?

Dennis

I’ve made no secret here on the website that I consider Disney’s live-action remakes of some of its classics to be very much lesser versions of those films. That’s for a variety of reasons, and I’m sure is at least partially influenced by the nostalgic feelings I have for some titles. 1998’s Mulan is an interesting film in many ways, but it’s always felt like a second-tier member of the Disney Renaissance, not quite reaching the same heights as The Lion King, Aladdin, or even Pocahontas. So its remake, which had been scheduled to premiere earlier this year, is a project I’ve been anticipating with muted excitement at best.

That was before the coronavirus pandemic disrupted everything. After abortive attempts to release the film in cinemas in March, then July, then finally August, Disney decided to try something they haven’t done before: bring a major release directly to their streaming service, Disney+. But Mulan won’t arrive on Disney+ ready to watch like any other title, instead it’s going to be paywalled with customers being asked to stump up an extra $30 on top of their regular Disney+ subscription fee in order to access it when it releases next month.

Mulan (1998) is getting a live-action remake.

On a purely mathematical level, I can understand the charge. Films are expensive to make, and Disney wants to recoup as much of that money as possible. $30 is around the price you might pay for 3-4 cinema tickets, so if you think that it’s the same money as a family going to see the film at the cinema, Disney obviously feels that it’s a fair price. But of course watching a film on streaming isn’t the same as going to the cinema, and I have to confess I was taken aback by how steep the cost of seeing Mulan is. As a single person, $30 (or whatever its equivalent in GBP will be) is excessive for seeing one film! That’s the equivalent of more than four months’ subscription to the streaming platform, and I have no doubt many will be as put off as I was.

My big question is this: why can’t Disney just be patient? It isn’t just film releases that have been disrupted, film production has been massively affected too. Disney has already postponed the release dates of many other titles that are currently in production as a result of the pandemic, and surely Mulan could have taken any one of those release slots once the disruption finally ends. Sitting on the film costs Disney very little – releasing it too soon could backfire and cost them massively.

Liu Yifei in the 2020 remake of Mulan.

Ever since broadband internet made it possible to stream and download large files, piracy has been a problem for big entertainment companies. Streaming services like Disney+ are able to survive in part because most people like to follow the rules, but also at least in part because they make it easy and affordable to do so. Who would even notice £4.99 a month – that’s how much Disney+ costs in the UK. Hardly anyone would, of course, and that’s how the service survives. But a sudden turnaround to charge more than $30 for a single film and suddenly a lot of people will be looking for other options.

Piracy is incredibly easy. A simple online search leads to dozens of websites that allow users to stream up-to-date films, and within hours of a film or television series going live, it’s been recorded and reuploaded countless times. When Mulan releases behind a paywall, it will very quickly be uploaded to pirate websites where people will be able to watch it or download it for free.

No, not that kind of piracy…

While Mulan’s release on streaming will almost certainly be lacklustre, it could have the unintended side-effect of harming Disney+ as a brand. Disney+ already is worse than its competitors in that the most recent seasons of its television series aren’t uploaded until months or even years after they debut on television, but if the service gets a reputation for paywalling content, many people will wonder what the point of paying for it is and will unsubscribe. Partly that’s on principle, and partly it’s because the cost of accessing Mulan is incredibly high.

Disney has also harmed its relationship with cinemas and distributors. The cinema industry is suffering greatly from months of closure, and here in the UK, while cinemas have been allowed to reopen since early July, many haven’t. Regular readers will know that disability precludes me going to the cinema these days, but in the past when I was able to, I favoured an independently-owned cinema in a nearby town – one of the few left in the UK. Its fortunes hang in the balance right now, and one thing that could have helped is a big release like Mulan to tempt people back. By cutting cinemas out of the equation and going direct to streaming, Disney has upset the apple cart. Why should cinemas go out of their way to show other Disney films in future?

Cinema owners will protest this decision vehemently.

At least one cinema chain – Odeon, which is owned by AMC – has stated that they will no longer show any films by Universal Pictures as a result of that company making a similar decision. Universal chose to release Trolls World Tour digitally as a result of the pandemic, and AMC and Odeon reacted swiftly, banning Universal films in their cinemas, of which there are many in the UK; Odeon is a big chain. Disney could end up in a similar situation, and if several big chains were to band together, they could effectively prevent Disney films being released almost anywhere. Any company, even a giant like Disney, needs to tread very carefully.

Disney has chosen to prioritise making as much money as possible as soon as possible ahead of all other concerns. And with the company losing money – Disney lost $4.7 billion in just three months this year – perhaps the higher-ups decided they needed to do as much as possible to offset that. Indeed, the decision to reopen as many of the company’s theme parks as they’re allowed to is also part of that – the losses made by having the parks open are clearly less than the losses made by keeping them shut. Evidently Disney has made the calculation that the short-term harm of releasing Mulan digitally is less than the harm of sitting on it for an unknown length of time.

For those willing to pay, Mulan will be available next month on Disney+.

The coronavirus pandemic has been hard to predict, but many medical experts and analysts are anticipating a renewed increase in cases as we move into the autumn and winter here in the northern hemisphere. Disney may have interpreted such statements to mean that regional lockdowns may not be going away any time soon, and even if the rules are relaxed, the general nervousness of the public about the disease – and the looming recession it’s triggered – may put people off going to the cinema anyway. With the USA, which is Disney’s biggest market, being much more seriously affected than the rest of the world, even if everywhere else were to get back to some degree of normality, it may take a lot longer before American cinemas will all be able to reopen.

All of these issues and more have fed into the decision, and I can understand it on a corporate level. But I think one of the key problems is that many higher-ups don’t appreciate just how much they’re asking people to pay to see a single film in their living rooms – or even on a phone screen. $30 is a lot of money to a lot of people, and while it may not be to someone who’s making megabucks at the top of a huge company, out here in the real world it is. $30 could be the back-to-school supplies for a child, a big takeaway meal for a family, or as already mentioned, more than four months of Disney+. People could do a lot with that money, and while many are happy to pay extra for a treat like a visit to the cinema, far fewer will be willing to cough up cinema-ticket prices for a film they’re watching in their living room or on their phone. Disney+ has been inoffensively priced until now, and that has won it many supporters and subscribers. Mulan is not inoffensively priced. In fact it’s priced in such a way as to be downright offensive to many people.

Disney evidently sees this as the least-bad option right now.

Speaking purely anecdotally, I haven’t found anyone willing to pay for Mulan. One person I asked suggested that if it were a better film, they might be willing to consider it, but definitely not for a remake of a B-tier film like Mulan. That was the closest I got to a “yes” out of everyone I spoke to. While there will be a market for it, as some people will desperately want to see this reimagining and others will be pestered into it by their kids, it won’t be enough for the film to break even and I have no doubt Mulan will have a seriously disappointing launch.

But even a serious disappointment may be good enough for Disney as they look for ways to slow their financial haemorrhaging. Mulan will undeniably bring in more money for the company than the precisely $0 it would if it remained unreleased. As long as it covers the costs of streaming it worldwide – which, given Disney+ already exists, it almost certainly will – it may be seen as a success. At the very least it will be something Disney can show to investors and shareholders to demonstrate that they’re trying new and creative ways to get through what could be many more difficult months that lie ahead.

Mulan and Disney+ are the copyright of the Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 3: Temporal Edict

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 3: Temporal Edict

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the first three episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Spoilers may also be present for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Speak to almost any Trekkie and they’ll tell you that Star Trek shows typically take at least a few episodes – if not a full season – to really hit their stride. With modern Star Trek’s shorter seasons, there’s arguably less time for the producers and writers to get it right. Lower Decks has had a decent start, if an unspectacular one, and aside from the lack of any news regarding an international broadcast, its biggest problem has been one of its main characters: Ensign Mariner.

Since I always comment on the international broadcast as I’m from the UK, I’ll forgive you if you skip over this paragraph. But I want to continue to make this point: the lack of any news regarding an international broadcast, and the fact that no one at ViacomCBS has even acknowledged the problem, is hurting Lower Decks immeasurably. The show needs all the help it can get to win over sceptical Trekkies and make a name for itself in an animated comedy market that isn’t exactly lacking in sci-fi themed shows. But by broadcasting the series only in North America, ViacomCBS has upset Star Trek’s biggest overseas fans, killed much of the hype for the series, reduced the value of the show from the point of view of broadcast agreements and licensing, and actively invited piracy.

Of course I’d never partake in such an under-the-table endeavour. As you know, the only way to watch Lower Decks is to be in North America, so I had no choice but to relocate to my second home. The icy, windswept tundra of the state of New Mexico may seem a rather chilly place to be, but in summer the sun never sets and it’s a balmy 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m a stone’s throw from the city of Boston – the Big Apple. It really is an amazing place to be.

This is definitely my house. And it’s in the USA. That’s where I absolutely am.

Of the three episodes so far, Temporal Edict has to be my favourite. Far less of the humour was focused on Mariner being selfish and unpleasant, and as a result not only was the episode much more enjoyable, it was funnier too. In terms of laugh-out-loud moments, there were almost certainly more in Temporal Edict than there had been in the first two episodes put together. If I were speaking to someone who’d seen the first two episodes and decided it wasn’t their thing, I’d absolutely encourage them to at least give Lower Decks one more chance.

The episode began with Boimler giving a violin performance to an unimpressed crowd in the ship’s bar. The show is really ramping up Boimler as a “mummy’s boy”, as he dedicated both pieces of music to his mother. Mariner and Tendi interrupt and play a kind of instrumental punk rock piece, which is so loud that it disrupts a conversation Captain Freeman is having with a Klingon ship. After Mariner and Tendi finish their song, Boimler returns to the stage with his violin – and in the episode’s first good moment of humour, Lieutenant Shaxs arrives and stops the performance, mistakenly believing Boimler to be the source of the disruptive noise.

Tendi and Mariner interrupt Boimler’s performance.

What do you think we can read into the Klingons seeming to be more aggressive here? The Klingon captain certainly wasn’t behaving like a firm friend and ally of the Federation! Of course this could simply be something that was played up for laughs, but it does make me wonder. The previous episode featured a Klingon ambassador, so diplomatic relations clearly still exist. I guess Lower Decks may be taking a looser approach to canon, which under the circumstances was to be expected. But it’s fun to speculate nevertheless.

The show is set in or around 2380, which places it only five years after the Dominion War. That’s certainly more than enough time for wartime allies to drift apart – as we know from our own history! Add into the mix that other iterations of Star Trek seem to have depicted future settings where the Klingon Empire and Federation were once again adversaries and nothing here seems to violate canon.

The aggressive Klingon commander.

The title music continues to impress me. As I said last time, Lower Decks easily has the best theme of any post-1990s Star Trek series. It’s a piece of music I’d be happy to listen to time and again. After the title sequence, Commander Ransom – the ship’s first officer – is recording his log. The ship is en route to Cardassia Prime to broker a peace agreement between… unnamed factions, as Ransom was interrupted before he could finish. A change of plans sees the Cerritos downgraded from the peace ceremony to a much less important role – delivering diplomatic gifts.

As above with the Klingons, this is Star Trek so let’s speculate a little about what could’ve been happening on Cardassia Prime! The Dominion War ended in a peace agreement, and subsequent comments from Captain Freeman and a Starfleet admiral at least imply that neither of the two races is the Cardassians themselves, so let’s rule them out. Perhaps, given Bajor’s proximity, it could be them. Or it could be the Dominion, though they should have retreated behind the wormhole. It’s interesting that a Federation ship was going to take part in what seems to be a major peace initiative on Cardassia Prime. Perhaps we can infer that Federation-Cardassian relations are greatly improved post-Dominion War. Again, there are parallels in our own history to make such an outcome at least plausible.

The USS Cerritos at warp.

One thing I was uncomfortable with in this scene is the anti-Cardassian sentiment expressed by both Captain Freeman and the unnamed Starfleet admiral. I’d even go so far as to call it racism. It reminded me of the often-repeated story that Gene Roddenberry hated The Undiscovered Country when it was screened for him, largely because he felt Kirk’s anti-Klingon attitude had no place in the 23rd Century as he imagined it. I wonder what he would have made of this scene.

The captain is obviously very put out by the decision to move the peace conference and cut her out of it. She takes it as a personal attack against the ship, and pledges to take action to prove their worth to Starfleet – after throwing her padd at the viewscreen! We hadn’t really seen the captain or first officer have much to do in the series so far; this was their first significant interaction on the bridge since the premiere. It was nice to see Ransom at least try to cheer up Freeman – he’s clearly much happier with his role on a less-important vessel than she is.

Commander Ransom and Captain Freeman on the bridge.

Meanwhile, the “slackers” – i.e. the main four ensigns – are working on a task in the brig. After completing their task they take a break and enjoy a drink – apparently they all overestimate the time to complete a task; it’s Starfleet tradition! If you remember Relics, from the sixth season of The Next Generation, Scotty told Geordi La Forge something very similar, and I greatly appreciate that reference. Now referred to as “buffer time”, all of the ensigns – and everyone else on the crew – build it into their schedules.

One of the jokes here – Mariner’s phaser not being set to stun – was included in the show’s trailer, and an image of the four drinking margaritas was similarly part of the pre-release marketing for the series. Tendi is the only ensign who seems to have any objection to buffer time, even Boimler is on board with it as it’s tradition. Tendi soon comes around to the idea too, and lies to Dr T’Ana about completing a task. I like Dr T’Ana, and she has a very funny moment that we’ll come to later in the episode. Perhaps it’s because I like cats – I have several of my own – but I’d been excited to see another Catian in Star Trek for ages!

Mariner realises her phaser wasn’t on the stun setting.

Captain Freeman is in a mood, stalking the corridors of the ship growling at officers who seem to be slacking. She runs into Boimler in a turbolift as he’s humming The Next Generation’s theme – which was very cute – and he accidentally spills the beans about buffer time!

The result, of course, is that buffer time gets cancelled for everyone aboard the ship – though surprisingly, Boimler is never outed as the culprit for blabbing about it! The first couple of episodes of Lower Decks haven’t really had serious messages underneath the comedy, but Temporal Edict does. The story uses its science-fiction setting to look at the real-world issues of time management and overworking. Star Trek has often done this in the past, as I’ve talked about before, and it isn’t something I was really expecting from Lower Decks.

Boimler spills the beans on buffer time to the captain.

For a lot of people, time management can be a problem. The internet and always-connected devices like smartphones mean we’re always able to be contacted by work, even during what’s supposed to be time off. I can attest from personal experience how easy it is to get burnt out if you’re constantly replying to emails and basically working in your free time as well as when you’re at work. And of course, we can all remember a time when a manager or boss was constantly on our backs about every little thing – precisely how Captain Freeman begins to behave!

The captain institutes a shipwide policy of setting timers for every task, resulting in the crew losing their buffer time and becoming stressed and overworked. Another side effect is, of course, that many tasks aren’t completed or are completed very poorly in order to meet a deadline! The crew rush from task to task with no time in between; the captain has pushed them from one extreme to another.

The overworked crew after the captain’s titular “temporal edict.”

Only one crew member seems unaffected – Boimler. He’s loving the new routine, and has somehow managed to complete all of his tasks on time. When a new one becomes available he claims it – not that anyone else would have wanted it, or been able to take it of course – and seems oblivious to the chaos the new rules have caused. Even Rutherford, who seemed so level-headed when working in engineering last week, is suffering.

Mariner has been selected for an away mission led by the first officer, and makes her way to the Cerritos’ shuttlebay. She’s not impressed with going on the mission – nor is Commander Ransom impressed at having to bring her. Although she’s wearing the red uniform of the command division, Ransom tells her she wouldn’t be accompanying him if she weren’t so good with a phaser – suggesting she’s there as security or backup rather than for any other reason.

The away mission crew.

The shuttlecraft Yosemite – which I think is the same one Mariner and Boimler almost lost last week – lands on the surface. The Gelrakians are a crystal-worshipping society, so Ransom and the crew bring along a special “honour crystal” as a symbol of peace. Ransom is a laid-back version of Riker or Kirk in many ways – incredibly confident in his abilities. I kept expecting that to backfire – for him to be all talk with no skills to back it up – but he was surprisingly competent!

The scene after landing has to be one of the funniest. Due to the demanding schedule the crew has been punished with, they accidentally brought a wooden totem instead of the honour crystal, upsetting the Gelrakians who attack them. There were several really funny moments here, but the standout one that had me laughing hard was when one of the Gelrakians shouted “he’s got wood!” Low-brow comedy, perhaps, but it was hilarious in the moment.

“He’s got wood!”

After a brief fight the away team was captured by the Gelrakians. I liked how Mariner seemed to genuinely step up and contribute to helping her team when they were in danger, including bandaging Ensign Vendome’s spear wound. As mentioned, Temporal Edict really brought out the best in her in a way that we hadn’t seen in the series so far.

Back aboard the Cerritos, the chaos of the new schedules is continuing. Everyone (except Boimler and the captain) is struggling to keep up, overworked and stressed. The Gelrakians have launched their crystal-ships, but the pandemonium aboard the Cerritos has crippled the ship – it has no shields! The Gelrakians are able to attack and even board the ship with ease.

A Gelrakian boarding party.

The captain gives the order to repel the boarders – but at the same time commands the crew to continue their work and not use it as an excuse for slacking off. This is one of those moments where we have to step back and remember to treat Lower Decks as an animated comedy first, and a Star Trek show second! The captain should surely recognise that the decline in performance on the ship is the result of the strict time limits imposed on the crew, but for the sake of the story she doesn’t, and in any other Star Trek show I’d have to call that an unbelievable story beat. However, in Lower Decks it works, and as a story point in this kind of animated comedy show we can’t really take it too seriously.

Rutherford and Tendi are among the crewmen and officers caught up in the Gelrakian attack, and many of the Cerritos’ crew are too busy working to notice the boarding parties. The crew are leaderless and uncoordinated, and unable to repel the attack – which is silly because the Gelrakians are only armed with spears! Again, though, we have to remember to treat Lower Decks differently from other Star Trek shows. And it’s of course worth mentioning that it wouldn’t be the first time in Star Trek that we’ve had hand-to-hand combat or this kind of weaponry; both the Klingons and Jem’Hadar were known to use melee weapons in the 24th Century.

Rutherford and Tendi hide from a Gelrakian boarding party.

On the surface of the planet, Mariner and Ransom are sharing a prison cell. Mariner tries talking to the guard to no avail while Ransom works on a speech that he hopes will convince the Gelrakians to let them go. The two argue about what to do, and to be perfectly honest, hearing Ransom call out Mariner on her bad attitude and selfishness was pretty good. As you know I’d been thinking much the same way about her over the last couple of episodes – with the exception of a few moments – and Ransom pretty much nailed it as far as I was concerned in that moment. Perhaps the dressing-down got to her, because from this point on I really noted a change in Mariner.

Obviously Ransom’s speech doesn’t go anywhere, and the two then bicker over who gets to take on the Gelrakian’s challenge of a trial by combat against their biggest, strongest warrior. Defeat will mean the entire away team will be executed – by a giant crystal, of course. Ransom won’t allow Mariner to put herself in harm’s way, and deliberately wounds her in the foot so he can be the one to face down the warrior.

Ransom, Mariner, and the battle blade.

Aboard the Cerritos, Boimler is happily going about his duties, seemingly oblivious to all the chaos. He easily defeats three Gelrakians with his phaser, and wonders aloud why things are so out of control. Again, same caveat – it’s an animated comedy, and in that context Boimler’s obliviousness to the ship being under siege gets a pass.

On the bridge he talks to the captain. No one else is able to man their stations, so Captain Freeman is doing all the work. Boimler realises that the problem is the new scheduling – everyone on the bridge, including the captain, is working under strict time limits too. Before he can do anything the bridge is attacked by some Gelrakians.

Boimler realises the problem.

The action cuts back to the planet’s surface, and Ransom takes on the Gelrakian warrior. I loved this scene, it was pretty funny. I was expecting Ransom’s over-the-top cockiness to get him hurt or killed, but he was incredibly strong and – in a twist to what I was expecting – emerged from the fight triumphant. Even Mariner was impressed – perhaps a little too impressed! I liked Mariner’s line about wanting to help “our team” – compared to what she said earlier it definitely feels as though she’s stepping up. She may be a slacker aboard the ship, but she won’t let her crewmates down when she thinks they need her.

The defeated champion’s line about pretending to be strong and dumb when he really loves to read was pretty funny too – something I think will resonate with a lot of people. Intelligence can feel undervalued sometimes, especially compared to strength or looks. Again, this was Lower Decks using its science fiction setting to make a point.

Ransom during the fight.

Boimler finally gets to make his case to the captain. The standout line was this: “not everyone is a Boimler.” He recognises that other members of the crew don’t share his love of rulebooks and tight schedules, and that the problems the ship is facing are caused by that. He talks sense into the captain, who relaxes the rules and unleashes the crew.

The temporal edict is withdrawn, and unburdened by the strict rules, the crew of the Cerritos is easily able to retake the ship and drive away the intruders. It took Boimler realising his mistake to help the captain realise hers, and it worked well as a conclusion to this side of the story. Rutherford and Tendi are among those seen fighting off the intruders, and Dr T’Ana gave a truly funny cat-like hiss as she also jumped into combat.

The bridge crew – and Boimler – celebrate victory.

After winning the fight on the planet’s surface, Ransom has won the freedom of the away team. Mariner definitely has a newfound respect for him after seeing him defeat the Gelrakian warrior, and the away team makes it home in one piece. He even carries her back to the ship – her foot being wounded and all.

With the boarding party safe and the Gelrakians defeated, the two sides get a second chance as Ransom returns to the surface, this time with the honour crystal. War was averted, and peace breaks out between the two sides. In sickbay, Ransom prepares himself for a court-martial for stabbing Mariner, but she says she won’t report him for it. Just as it seems he’s developing a newfound respect for breaking the rules to go along with her newfound appreciation for them, he orders her reprimanded for wearing her uniform incorrectly! The story set up Ransom and Mariner as being attracted to one another, but I don’t expect this to be something that develops in any major way – at least not this season. It may be played on for laughs at points, as it was here, but I don’t think we’re going to see them in a relationship any time soon!

Ransom and Mariner in sickbay.

All that was left to do was fully repeal the scheduling and reinstate buffer time, which the captain did. The new rule was named in honour of Boimler, which was very funny. He doesn’t like it, of course, as he’s all about following the rules, but his friends reassure him that no one will remember his contribution to the Boimler Effect.

In a scene set in the far future, Boimler is hailed as “the laziest, most corner-cutting officer in Starfleet history!” That was a funny addendum to the episode, and the reference to Gene Roddenberry (the “Great Bird of the Galaxy”) did not go unrecognised. The episode ends with this far future schoolteacher continuing her lesson on great Starfleet officers by looking at Chief O’Brien!

Boimler’s place in history.

So that was Temporal Edict. Not a story about time travel at all – as I had feared it might’ve been when I saw the word “temporal!” I’m not the biggest fan of time travel stories in Star Trek, but this was a complete twist on what I was expecting in so many ways.

Captain Freeman’s speech when she commanded the crew to retake the ship, and its accompanying music, was genuinely inspirational – the kind we could have heard from Captains Janeway, Picard, or Kirk in a past iteration of the franchise. It was pitch-perfect, despite the semi-ridiculous buildup.

Captain Freeman withdraws the temporal edict.

As mentioned, Lower Decks works best when looking at it as an animated comedy first and a Star Trek show second. By doing so, some of the sillier aspects of its premise melt away, and what’s left behind is truly enjoyable entertainment. In this episode, Mariner snapped out of her selfishness and stepped up to the task when her crewmates were in danger, and I liked seeing that side to her. It’s something I hope we see a lot more of in future.

It was great to spend a little more time with Captain Freeman and Commander Ransom. Ransom’s story worked better than Freeman’s in my opinion – in the captain’s case, you really have to overlook or excuse her not realising the extent of the problems on the ship until way too late in order for the rest of the story to work. Ransom had been set up as someone who was all bark and no bite, but Temporal Edict turned that on its head by showing that he’s a truly capable first officer under the cocky facade.

I had to include this shot because Dr T’Ana hissing like a cat was hilarious.

I had a great time with Temporal Edict, which is easily my favourite of the three episodes we’ve had so far. I’m definitely looking forward to spending more time with Mariner, Boimler, and the rest of the crew. Next week’s episode, Moist Vessel, will hopefully be just as good! I can hardly wait!

Star Trek: Lower Decks is available to stream now on CBS All Access if you’re fortunate enough to live in North America. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Lower Decks – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Two Microsoft products – a controller and a keyboard

Two Microsoft products – a controller and a keyboard

Dennis

By sheer coincidence, I replaced both my keyboard and game controller in August. And also by coincidence – or at least, not by design – both of my replacements came from the Microsoft Store. This short review will detail my experience with each of them; rolling two items into one article is certainly a rare example of efficiency from me!

First let’s look at the controller. This one, I have to admit, is a bit of a luxury. I’d had an Xbox One controller for years – it may have been the one I got when I bought an Xbox One at launch in 2013. Now that was a bad decision if there ever was one – the console may have improved somewhat in the years since, but at launch it was bad value and offered precious little to play! But we’re off-topic already; you can read more about my Xbox One experience by clicking or tapping here. I decided that it was time to replace the controller – one of the thumbsticks was loose, making it harder to make very precise movements in some games, and in addition its vibration/rumble function didn’t seem to be working right. It still vibrates, but it does so in a much more clunky way than it used to.

I considered a few different controller options, including the Hyperkin Duke, which is a reimagining of the classic Xbox controller from 2001. That controller was one I greatly enjoyed using during the original Xbox era, but unfortunately the new version is difficult to get hold of here in the UK. I found one on Amazon, but at quite a mark-up. So I decided to check out Xbox’s Design Labs website, where Microsoft sell customised controllers. I went with an all-blue design, with a metallic D-pad, black Start and Select buttons, and black A, B, X, and Y buttons with the proper colours for the letters. I’m sure some people feel that removing the coloured letters and replacing them with a grey or black design looks more sleek, but the colours can be a great visual reference when it comes to things like quick-time events or any other occasion where split-second button presses are required.

My new controller.

Microsoft stated when I bought the controller that it could take up to a month to arrive, so I wasn’t expecting it much before the beginning of September. To my pleasant surprise, though, it arrived much sooner – on the same day as my keyboard, no less! The design was just what I’d chosen – which it should have been, of course – and so far I’m satisfied with it. Was it worth the extra money to get a different colour compared to buying a standard controller? I don’t play that many games any more, so I guess you could argue that it wasn’t. The control pad is fundamentally no different from a standard Xbox One controller; unlike the Xbox One elite controller it doesn’t have swappable parts or extra buttons, and its construction is wholly plastic instead of the “rubberised” feel of the elite. But the elite controllers are twice the price! For around £20 more than a standard controller, Xbox Design Labs offer a huge range of colours, and different areas of the controller can be different colours. They brag about millions of colour combinations – most of which you’d never want, of course – but all of the main colours are there, and they have a couple of “fades” and “camo” options too.

Controllers can also be engraved – though to be honest, that’s a pretty impressive-sounding term for what seems to be just laser printing. But for someone who wants their gamertag on their controller – or to make a fun gag gift, perhaps – it’s nice that the option exists.

The Xbox One controller was very similar to the Xbox 360 controller, which was itself not massively different from the second iteration of the original Xbox controller. So I’m not really reviewing the controller from that perspective. I already know I like it as I’ve been using something similar for years! The Design Labs experience was solid. There were a number of options, the website worked smoothly and was well laid-out, and the colours on screen match perfectly with the product I received. Add to that the quicker than expected delivery and it’s hard to find fault.

The Xbox S controller from 2002 or 2003. The “S” may have originally meant “small”.

As someone who has never really been a “PlayStation guy”, I think I’ll always prefer Xbox’s controllers than those made for the rival console. They feel chunkier and more substantial in my (admittedly oversized) hands, but at the end of the day once you get used to a particular design you want to stick with it. That’s presumably why the Xbox Series X’s controller won’t be a significant departure from the current design.

Up next we have the keyboard.

I write almost every day, not just for this website but for other projects that I have on the go, as well as typing messages to friends and the like. For the last three years or so, I’ve been using a Corsair Strafe mechanical keyboard. The variant I have has a red backlight and Cherry MX blue mechanical switches – the “clicky” kind. I bought this keyboard on the recommendation of several tech reviewers who said that the blue switches were great for typing.

The Corsair Strafe.

This keyboard has been fine. It was interesting at first to go back to a keyboard that, for all its modern aesthetic, had a very retro feel and sound. It reminded me of the kind of keyboards I first learned to type on when I was very young. I actually remember the first time I ever used a computer, being concerned that the keyboard only had capital letters when I wanted to type something in lowercase! That was when I was at school, and the “computer” in those days was little more than a word processor. And of course there was no internet. How things have changed, eh?

Although the typing experience has been good overall with the Corsair, after very long typing sessions it can get a little tiring on my old fingertips. The space bar in particular has a strange, almost rough texture to it, and I often find that my thumb – which I use to hit the spacebar almost all of the time – can start to not exactly sting, but rather notice this texture in an unpleasant way after longer typing sessions. The mechanical keyboard has also proved a nightmare to keep clean, with deep chasms in between the keys that seem to attract dust and cat hair like magnets! Finally, several of the keys have started to wear down, and the backlight shows through on the edges of several of them now. Perhaps that’s simply the result of heavy use, but for something I haven’t owned that long it seems like it shouldn’t have happened so quickly. Regardless, the keyboard doesn’t look as nice as it once did, and while it does still work I thought I’d try out a replacement.

I don’t need backlighting on a keyboard, as I can type from muscle memory – something that will happen as you spend more time hunched over your computer! And my computer setup is in a well-lit room, so on the occasions where I need to look down to see what I’m doing I don’t need the keyboard to be its own light source. The keyboard I ultimately bought as a replacement is not backlit, and I don’t consider that to be a problem at all.

After looking at several options, both mechanical and non-mechanical, I opted for the Microsoft Surface bluetooth keyboard. I’ve used a Microsoft mouse in the past (though my current daily driver is a white Logitech G305 wireless mouse) and I’ve always considered Microsoft’s hardware products to be solid and of decent quality. After ruling out a few other options for a variety of reasons, I chose the Microsoft Surface.

The Microsoft Surface bluetooth keyboard.

Initial impressions were good. The packaging was premium – as the Xbox controller’s had been too – and I was very impressed with the look and feel of the keyboard. It has almost no give to it when pressure is applied; it’s very solid. The keys, despite being low profile, have a satisfying press, and unlike the loud “click” of the Corsair, are relatively quiet.

The keyboard also has a full number pad, which is important to me as I often use the right Enter key when writing. It takes AAA batteries instead of being rechargeable via USB, which for some people may be offputting, but it’s a feature I really wanted to have. AA or AAA batteries last ages in devices like mice and keyboards. I used to use a Logitech MX Master mouse, and that thing needed to be charged every few days, which was incredibly annoying. In comparison, a mouse I have in my bedroom which takes AAs has been using the same pair of batteries for at least a year – probably longer. And since I replaced the MX Master with the G305 I’ve gone through precisely one battery. Why anyone would favour rechargeable devices that have such a short battery life over devices that take AA or AAA batteries that last months or years is beyond me. But we’re off-topic again! The battery cover is magnetic, which was a very neat feature. The magnet seems strong enough to keep the battery compartment closed, which is important for obvious reasons, and I like the modern touch it offers over an older-style plastic latch.

I did have an issue with the keyboard – but it’s one that seems almost unique to me that anyone with a modern setup should be able to avoid. The keyboard connects via bluetooth. Duh, right? It’s in the name. But my PC doesn’t have bluetooth connectivity built in, as several years ago I didn’t see any need to spend extra money on that additional feature. Most wireless keyboards come with a dongle so you can plug them into your PC, but presumably Microsoft’s expectation is that the Surface keyboard will be paired with a Surface PC – which must all come with bluetooth as standard. Like I said, this is a minor gripe that probably won’t affect anyone else who buys this product, but if your PC lacks bluetooth connectivity like mine, you’ll need to buy a separate dongle to be able to use the keyboard.

As with many things I’ve accumulated over the years, I could have sworn I owned a USB bluetooth dongle – but I haven’t the faintest idea where it is. I had to get a replacement on Amazon – not a big deal as they aren’t expensive, but it meant waiting an extra couple of days after the keyboard arrived before I could use it! It reminded me of the Christmas where I got a Nintendo 64 – I was all set to play with my new console when there was a power cut! The N64 sat in its box for what seemed like an eternity, unable to be played because the electric was out. Decades later and I’m back in that position. Life is funny like that sometimes.

Ah, memories.

When the dongle finally arrived, pairing the keyboard was easy. From the settings menu in Windows 10 – for which the keyboard has a designated button – it’s possible to see the device’s battery status. The keyboard is also in the standard UK layout – which means that a few symbols are in different places than on a US layout keyboard – which is obviously important to me as that’s how I’m used to typing. I’m on Windows 10, but the keyboard should be compatible with Windows 8.1 – or indeed any device capable of using bluetooth.

The typing experience is pleasant. As mentioned, the keys have a satisfying press, and they also have a slightly soft feel that’s definitely nicer than the hard plastic keycaps of the Corsair that I’d been using. It feels closer to typing on a laptop – a premium, high-end laptop – than any desktop keyboard I’ve ever used. Microsoft promises a whopping five million presses per key over the lifespan of the keyboard – so let’s put that to the test over the next few months and years! Unlike in the picture above, the Return/Enter key is full-size, which is something else I greatly appreciate. A single press of the Function button switches between the F-keys (F1 for help, F5 for refreshing web pages, etc) and a variety of other functions. The aforementioned settings button is one, and there are also keys to control the volume, media player keys to play, pause, etc. and even screen brightness controls. I don’t use such keys that often, but the additional functionality is nice, and not having to hold down a second key to use them is also a neat feature.

Of all the “premium” keyboards I looked at, the Microsoft Surface seemed like the best option for me at this point. I was ready for a change from the clicky mechanical switches I’d been using for the past few years, and as someone who does a lot of typing I wanted something I’d be comfortable with. So far, the Surface has accomplished that and I’m happy with my purchase.

It’s hard to make product recommendations, because I don’t know your circumstances. If you have a spare £20 burning a hole in your pocket and you like customised things, get the Design Labs controller and show off your unique style. But if you’re on a budget, skip that and just get a standard controller. Or better yet, find a pre-owned one or a 360 controller and save even more money.

Likewise for the keyboard. If you write as much as I do on a daily basis and want something solid and premium, the Surface could be a good option if you don’t want a mechanical keyboard. But it’s impossible to deny that you can get a perfectly functional keyboard with a number pad – wired or wireless – for a fraction of the price. I just looked on Amazon, and one of the top results was a Microsoft wired keyboard for £10 – a full £80 less than I paid for the Surface. So the question is – what do you want from a keyboard? If you don’t type a lot – or even if you do but are on a tight budget – save your money. Nothing the Surface does is essential and you could get identical functionality far cheaper.

Speaking for myself, though, I’m happy with what I got. Sometimes it’s worth spending the extra money on a higher-end product, and sometimes it’s worth splurging a little on a cool-looking or custom product just for the fun of it. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide what best suits your setup and where you want to invest your money.

The Xbox and Surface brands are the copyright of Microsoft. No sponsorship was involved; these are products I purchased for myself with my own money and the article comprises my genuine impressions regarding them. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

The pros and cons of a fourth Kelvin timeline film

The pros and cons of a fourth Kelvin timeline film

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the three Kelvin timeline films and for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

A couple of weeks ago it was reported that a fourth Kelvin timeline film, which has supposedly been worked on since at least 2019, was “paused”. That’s usually Hollywood-speak for “cancelled” and “never going to happen”, but there are other potential Star Trek film projects in the works, so the Kelvin timeline may yet be granted a reprieve. While rumours can be all over the place when looking at the production side of Star Trek, two things came up often in discussions around the potential film: the return of Chris Hemsworth’s character of George Kirk being a story point, and the salaries of some of the main cast – including Kirk actor Chris Pine – being a stumbling block. I have no idea whether there’s even a grain of truth to any of these rumours, but the potential for a fourth Kelvin timeline film got me thinking.

What would be the pros and cons of a new film in the alternate reality – especially now that we have prime timeline Star Trek back on the small screen? It’s a big question, and I’ve broken it down into a short list of points for and against making a new film in this series. Let’s look at them in turn.

Pro:
Star Trek Beyond clearly teased a sequel.

The Enterprise-A was seen at the end of Star Trek Beyond.

The Kelvin timeline story hasn’t ended. The crew are back together, and despite the loss of the original USS Enterprise, at the end of Beyond we saw the christening of a new Enterprise-A – the clear implication being that Kirk would assume command and bring his crew with him.

Something similar happened in the prime timeline at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In 1986, when that film premiered, Star Trek: The Next Generation was in early production, and some may have argued that Star Trek was moving on and didn’t need another Kirk-led film. While the next film in the series, The Final Frontier, was hardly a great success, The Undiscovered Country was – and it was a far better send-off for the original crew. If the Star Trek films had ended with The Voyage Home we’d have missed out on a great story and a more fitting end to Kirk and the crew’s adventures.

If the film series were to end now, it would arguably feel incomplete. The tease at the end of Beyond would still be there, taunting fans with a never-realised continuation to the story.

Con:
And which fans are those?

Look, it’s all of the Kelvin timeline’s hardcore fans.

Despite their popularity with a wider audience – something which we’ll look at in a moment – I’ve never really found that the Kelvin timeline films had much of a following of their own. They’re summer blockbusters in the vein of something like the Transformers series; popcorn flicks that people will happily watch – and then immediately forget about.

Within the Star Trek fan community, the Kelvin timeline films haven’t picked up a following of their own. I’m not even counting the many Trekkies who didn’t see the films because they didn’t like the premise; the Kelvin timeline just doesn’t have its own fandom. People have other iterations of the franchise that they prefer – the Kelvin timeline films are, at best, someone’s second choice.

There are sub-groups of Trekkies – some may like The Original Series, others favour The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine, etc. And the new Star Trek shows since 2017 have fans of their own too. But the Kelvin timeline films don’t seem to have that kind of following; there’s no group of dedicated Trekkies who favour them above everything else in the franchise. People I’ve spoken with are in two camps: they either detest the Kelvin timeline films or they think they’re just okay.

With all that in mind – who would a fourth film even be made for?

Pro:
The films brought in huge numbers of non-Trekkies.

The Kelvin timeline films appealed to a wider audience than any prior Star Trek production.

Though they may lack a hardcore following, the Kelvin timeline films succeeded beyond any other Star Trek project at bringing in huge audiences. 2009’s Star Trek was an overwhelming box office success, bringing in more than double the money of any other film in the series – and Into Darkness did even better, becoming the high-water mark of the entire Star Trek film franchise’s financial success. Beyond was considered a “disappointment” – but it still raked in over $340 million on a $180 million budget, making it hugely profitable for Paramount Pictures. 2009’s Star Trek also won an Academy Award – the only Star Trek film to ever achieve that feat.

So there’s clearly an audience for another film set in the Kelvin timeline, and any such project should be a guaranteed money-maker for Paramount and ViacomCBS. Bringing the crew back together and putting a seasoned director in charge – as they did in 2009 – would generate plenty of buzz, and the aforementioned wider audience that saw and enjoyed the first three films will surely show up for the next entry.

Star Trek isn’t made for Trekkies. That may sound odd, but it’s true. Hardcore fans will only ever be a small portion of any franchise’s audience, and I’ve said countless times that the Star Trek franchise needs to reach out far beyond this small pond if it’s to survive long-term. The new animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks has potential to help in that regard, but so does a new Kelvin timeline film.

Con:
The unique premise of the films no longer exists.

Cadet Kirk.

In 2008-09, during the buildup to the release of Star Trek, one angle that was really interesting was the idea that the films would show “young” Kirk and Spock in their Starfleet Academy years. We’d get to see how all of the characters came to meet one another, and although the films would be recasting the classic characters, we’d see them in their younger days, before Kirk assumed command of the Enterprise and set out on his five-year mission.

That premise no longer exists. The end of Star Trek saw the characters graduate from the Academy, and Beyond explained that Kirk and his crew were engaged in their five-year mission of exploration. That premise is exactly the same as The Original Series, and the unique aspect of the films is gone, replaced by a copy of what came before.

With Strange New Worlds looking to pick up the exploration angle of Star Trek, do we really need a Kelvin timeline film to do the same thing? It’s certainly arguable that we don’t.

Pro:
There’s the possibility for crossovers.

A Pike-Pike story? Heck yes, sign me up!

I mentioned this as one concept that could be fun to see in Strange New Worlds – but how about a crossover? Pike and Spock from the Kelvin timeline and Pike and Spock from the prime timeline working together to achieve some goal or defeat a nefarious villain could be a fascinating story and a great piece of cinema or television.

This concept doesn’t just have to be limited to Pike and Spock either; we could see crossovers with literally any group of characters. The idea of a ship and crew from one side of the divide between parallel realities having to work with others to make it home again is something that could be really fun to watch.

Con:
The Kelvin timeline will be retreading too much ground.

Spock, Kirk, and McCoy during their five-year mission.

Pike and Spock are the leads in their own upcoming series – Strange New Worlds. Do we really need two “young Spocks” in Star Trek? There’s a risk that the two productions will trip over one another, and that the Kelvin timeline film will do nothing for Spock’s character in particular that hasn’t been done in Discovery or Strange New Worlds.

That’s in addition to the point mentioned above – that we’ll be seeing Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the crew undertaking the same five-year mission that was depicted in The Original Series. Some fans have argued for a return to Star Trek’s spirit of exploration, but with at least one television show focusing on precisely that, where would a Kelvin timeline film fit in?

Fundamentally this comes down to a couple of characters – most notably Spock. Ethan Peck’s version of the character has gone down very well with fans of Discovery, and I’m just not convinced the franchise has room for two identical characters. If I had to choose only one… I’m sorry to Zachary Quinto but I’d rather keep Ethan Peck’s take on the character.

Pro:
Quentin Tarantino may be working on a script.

Renowned director Quentin Tarantino has supposedly pitched a Star Trek film.
Photo credit: Georges Biard via Wikimedia Commons

Quentin Tarantino has written and directed some of cinema’s recent classics. Titles like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, the Kill Bill duology, Inglorious Basterds, and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood are all hailed as phenomenal works of cinema. His violent style can be controversial – and some may argue a bad fit for Star Trek – but he’s an incredibly talented filmmaker, one that any franchise would love to bring on board.

It’s worth pointing out that there’s no guarantee his pitch – if it even exists and is still being considered – would involve the Kelvin timeline crew. But the timing of the rumour coincided with the Kelvin timeline’s production, so it’s at least a possibility.

I know some people dislike Tarantino’s style. But even they would have to admit that he does what he does very well, and any film that has his name attached draws a lot of attention – which translates into big numbers at the box office.

An R-rated Star Trek film just for the sake of it wouldn’t be my first choice. But if the story works well, I’m not opposed to it either. Recent Star Trek projects have not been shy about trying new things, so Tarantino could be a good fit for an expanded franchise.

Con:
Anton Yelchin’s tragic death means that a major character will be absent.

Anton Yelchin in 2015.
Photo credit: GabboT on Flickr via Wikimedia Commons
Image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Anton Yelchin died tragically in 2016, shortly before the premiere of Star Trek Beyond. This is a sensitive topic, and I thought long and hard about including it here, but I think it’s important because it’s hard to imagine another film without him.

Yelchin had taken over the role of Pavel Chekov in 2009’s Star Trek, and while Chekov is arguably less of a “main” character than Kirk, Spock, or McCoy, he was still a big part of all three of the Kelvin timeline films. In 2016, the producers of Star Trek Beyond stated that the role would not be recast for any future films, and it would be very difficult for a new creative team to go back on that promise without the support of Yelchin’s family, the other cast members, and the wider fan community.

Chekov’s absence would be hugely significant and very noticeable; a hole at the heart of the crew. While it’s possible to work around that, as other films have done under similar circumstances, I’m not sure how well it would succeed. Chekov filled a unique role in the crew as its youngest member, and without his occasionally comedic presence, there will be a key element missing from any future story.

Pro:
The alternate reality setting allows for a huge amount of creative license.

Could we see Kirk face off against the Borg? Maybe… but only in the Kelvin timeline.

Now we come to perhaps the biggest point in favour of the alternate reality: nothing after Enterprise happened. Canon is nonexistent – aside from that established by the first three films – so writers and producers have a blank slate to tell any kind of story they want without worrying about treading on the toes of established canon.

Have you always wanted to know how Kirk would fare against the Borg? The Kelvin timeline could do that, as bringing the Borg into a story doesn’t affect prime canon. How about the Dominion War breaking out more than a century earlier? The Kelvin timeline could do that too. Or what if William Shater finally got his wish to reprise the role of Kirk? He mentioned it as recently as a few weeks ago, and the best way to bring back Shatner’s Kirk – who of course died in the prime timeline – could be in the alternate reality.

When considering 2009’s Star Trek as a reboot, one of the best things it did was use an alternate reality setting, because that has opened up endless possibilities for the film franchise going forward. The examples above are just a few options off the top of my head, but there are so many more, including stories that could never work in the prime timeline.

Con:
The Star Trek franchise will be more convoluted than it already is.

The official Star Trek website posted this guide to the franchise’s timeline(s) a few months ago.

It’s only fair to follow the biggest pro with the biggest con, and in my opinion the biggest drawback to continuing the Kelvin timeline films now is that the Star Trek universe is already incredibly complicated. It’s difficult for casual viewers to get the hang of which show is taking place in which time period, but if you throw an alternate reality into the mix as well, the whole thing just becomes convoluted.

Bringing in and retaining new fans is the key challenge for the Star Trek franchise going forward, and one thing that has to be avoided is putting people off. Star Trek has been running for so long and has so many different iterations that it can already feel overwhelming for newcomers; the Kelvin timeline films may draw large crowds, but if those crowds don’t stick around and jump over to other parts of the franchise because it’s too complicated, it’s almost not worth the trouble.

So that’s it.

Some of the pros and cons of making a fourth Kelvin timeline film. As always, the caveat applies that this is just my opinion; I don’t know whether a film will be made or is even under consideration.

Kirk and Spock (with John Harrison in the background) in Star Trek Into Darkness.

If it were left up to me, I think what I’d say is that the Kelvin timeline films have run their course. They achieved what they set out to: rebooting a Star Trek franchise which had become stale after decades in production, and set the stage for a resurgence in the franchise’s wider popularity, which culminated in Discovery, Picard, and Star Trek’s return to the small screen.

While there is certainly scope to use the alternate reality setting to tell more stories, I don’t feel that it’s necessary right now. There are so many other Star Trek projects in various stages of production that the franchise is hardly going to be lacking in content at least through the first half of the 2020s. A Kelvin timeline film would be a complete outlier when compared to the rest of the franchise, simply because of its setting. That’s not to say that there’s no place for a new film and never will be, just that it would be superfluous at the moment.

The Enterprise goes to warp.

Hopefully the Star Trek franchise, having found a new home on CBS All Access, will remain in production for a long time to come. Branching out into different genres, and telling stories in a more modern way has certainly helped build a foundation for future success. I’ll always be grateful for what the Kelvin timeline films did. They took Star Trek from a run-down franchise that was losing fans and viewership and turned it around. Not only that, they modernised the franchise and proved that it still had a huge potential audience. Star Trek’s current success is built on the shoulders of what these three films did. But despite that, I don’t think there’s a need to return to the same setting and the same cast to make another film.

One thing we’ve seen Star Trek attempt to do with Short Treks is tell one-off stories. Take a one-off story and make it last two-and-a-half hours and you’ve got a feature film – and there are so many possibilities within the franchise to tell such stories. With CBS All Access being Star Trek’s new home, the franchise could even experiment with direct-to-streaming films (something that may have to happen if this pandemic drags on), and there are countless possibilities for what kind of films could be made and what kind of stories could be told. There’s no reason why a Kelvin timeline film can’t be part of that… but there’s also no compelling reason that I can see why it needs to be either.

The Star Trek film franchise – including all titles mentioned above – is the copyright of Paramount Pictures and ViacomCBS. Photos and stock images courtesy of Unsplash and Wikimedia Commons. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

A Mass Effect remastered wishlist

A Mass Effect remastered wishlist

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Mass Effect series.

It’s been eight-and-a-half years since Mass Effect 3 was released, rounding out the original trilogy of Mass Effect games. Since then, the franchise has put out a single new title – Mass Effect: Andromeda – which was underwhelming to say the least. For the last six months or more, rumours have been floating around of an impending Mass Effect remaster, and while I was disappointed not to hear any official mention of it at June’s EA Play event, the rumours haven’t subsided. Is something going on with the Mass Effect series?

I have absolutely no idea. But that doesn’t make it any less fun to speculate and fantasise!

Promo artwork for Mass Effect 2.

After Andromeda’s weak launch led to mediocre reviews, memes, and poor sales, EA put the franchise “on hiatus” and Bioware moved on, focusing on the ultimately unsuccessful Anthem. To many of us that sounded ominous – especially given EA’s history of shutting down game studios and killing brands – but if it’s true that a remaster really is in the works, I have a wishlist of things I’d like to see included.

For the record, because I know people like to get excited: I have no idea if a Mass Effect remaster is even being worked on, let alone if any of these ideas or concepts will be included. This is a wishlist from a fan, not “insider information”. If anyone tells you they know something for sure about an unannounced or unreleased project, take it with a grain of salt. With that caveat out of the way, let’s look at my wishlist, which is in no particular order.

Number 1: Delay the project if necessary.

“My face is tired…”

This may seem like an odd one – why talk about a delay to a game that hasn’t even been announced? Well there are two reasons: Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda. Bioware’s two most recent titles launched before they were properly finished and polished, resulting in lacklustre sales, mediocre review scores, and online mockery. I’ve said it before, but the memes hurt Mass Effect: Andromeda’s sales far more than review scores. It’s a shame, because the most egregious visual bugs and glitches were fixed in a patch within days, but by then it was too late – the damage had been done.

Andomeda’s development was difficult, and the final build of the game was – at least according to reports – put together in mere months, despite the game having been in development for five years. The reason why I’m saying to EA and Bioware that one of the things I want from any potential Mass Effect remaster is a delay, if necessary, is because I want them to learn from that mistake. The “release now, fix later” concept doesn’t work, and if the game launches to mockery, memes, and mediocrity as Andromeda did, there’ll be no salvaging it – or the franchise, quite frankly.

Number 2: 4K resolution and 60 frames-per-second.

The whole point of remastering a game is to improve its graphics and the way it looks using newer and better technology than was available to the original development team. But the second and third Mass Effect titles in particular still look decent today, and as I keep saying, graphical improvements get smaller and smaller with each new generation.

One thing that has improved in the last few years, however, is the frame rate games can run at. 30fps was commonplace in the Xbox 360 era, when Mass Effect debuted, but now we have 60fps as standard, and on higher-end machines we can push frame rates way further. The bare minimum for a big-budget game in 2020 is 4K resolution at 60fps. If the Mass Effect remaster can’t manage that, a lot of people will wonder what the point of it is.

Number 3: Rework Mass Effect 1 to use Mass Effect 2 and 3′s gameplay.

Mass Effect 2 offered massive gameplay improvements over its predecessor. Gunplay was faster and more fluid, the complicated inventory system was streamlined, and many more quality-of-life improvements made the second game way better than the first. If a Mass Effect remaster is going back to the drawing board to rebuild the games from the ground up, it would be a great opportunity to update the first game to be in line with the second and third.

Aside from making the first game more enjoyable to play, this would also standardise the remastered trilogy, making it an easier experience to go from one game to the next, especially for new players. Mass Effect 2 and 3 don’t really need much improving from a gameplay point of view, but the first title could do with an update.

Number 4: Include all three games – plus all of their DLC – in one package.

No special editions. No deluxe editions. No console exclusive characters or missions. No paid DLC for a thirteen-year-old game. All of the content for all three games should be available in one package. While I’d prefer to see the full trilogy released all at once, one possible option is to follow the trail blazed by Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC and release the first game, then the second, then the third. But regardless, one price should get players all three games plus all of the DLC.

The Mass Effect series has been poor in this regard. Both Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 had day-one DLC – which is industry slang for cut content that they could sell separately for more money. Some of the expansions were great, but others added what felt like content that should have been part of the main game, or felt like small additions for the asking price – like adding a single character. Javik, the series’ first Prothean character, was only available as DLC – despite the fact that he played a pivotal role in Mass Effect 3. It’s a good opportunity for the series to put all of that behind it and release the entire story in one package.

Number 5: If the game needs microtransactions, save them for multiplayer.

Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect: Andromeda had multiplayer modes. I only knew about Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer because failure to participate had an impact on your “war score” or “galactic readiness” during the single-player campaign, which was incredibly annoying. But both games enjoyed moderate success with their multiplayer modes, so I wouldn’t be surprised if EA crams multiplayer in to a Mass Effect remaster too.

If there is a multiplayer mode, this is the place to dump DLC and microtransactions, not in the already-complete single-player story. As someone who doesn’t play a lot of multiplayer, having DLC and microtransactions here will have no impact on my enjoyment of the campaign. If EA has to include in-game monetisation, the least they could do is keep it away from the story.

Number 6: Tweak Mass Effect 3 to at least pay lip service to more player choices.

This was a huge moment in Mass Effect 3 that seemed to go unrecognised afterwards.

I’m not asking for Mass Effect 3′s ending to be fundamentally rewritten; that will never happen. What I think could be done to massively improve the final third of that game is to add in some more cut-scenes, animations, and lines of dialogue recognising the choices players made across all three titles. One of the most disappointing things about Mass Effect 3 for me was that during the climactic final act, many accomplishments from earlier in the game and in the series went completely unacknowledged.

To give an example I’ve used before: if players followed a specific path across all three titles, it’s possible to save both the Geth and Quarian species when it looks like it would only be possible to save one or the other. Having both powerful fleets instead of just one feels like it should have a huge impact on the war against the Reapers… but it didn’t. A few extra “war score points” and two words of dialogue confirming that both fleets had arrived for the final battle was literally all you got for all that effort, and it just felt so hollow and disappointing. That was almost worse than the actual pick-a-colour ending.

Bringing back a few of the voice actors to record a few extra lines, creating some new animations to represent different combinations of fleets, soldiers, and survivors, and overall just tweaking and adjusting the final portion of Mass Effect 3 would go a long way to negating this issue, and if the game is being massively overhauled anyway, why not put in the extra effort? Fans may still be disappointed in the ultimate finale, but if the journey there were improved, it would be a better experience as a whole.

Number 7: Set the stage for a potential Mass Effect 4?

One of the possible endings to the trilogy.

I don’t know if this is really something I want – hence the question mark. But I can only assume that a Mass Effect remaster would be seen by EA and Bioware as a stepping stone to a potential new entry in the franchise, and after the disappointment of Andromeda, surely the only way that could happen would be a fourth mainline entry in the series.

Andromeda’s fundamental problem, beyond the animations and glitches and bland characters, was that it felt like an overblown side-quest. The entire game felt like the B-plot of a better story, and I think that feeling would have persisted regardless of how well-built it might have been. So how could a fourth Mass Effect game work? That’s a huge question, because the ending of Mass Effect 3 was simultaneously so final yet so transformative.

An idea I’ve been kicking around for a while is this: in the aftermath of the Reapers being defeated, a past race that had survived a Reaper harvest re-emerges or returns to the galaxy, looking to reclaim what they see as “theirs”. Shepard comes out of retirement, perhaps fifteen or twenty years after the end of Mass Effect 3 (which would allow time for the galaxy to have rebuilt). The new enemy would be tough and would be just as much an existential threat as the Reapers had been – keeping the stakes high and avoiding the sense of the new fight being anticlimactic.

The Leviathans featured in DLC for Mass Effect 3 and are exactly the kind of faction I’m thinking about with this concept.

But that’s just one fan concept, and there are myriad ideas for how a fourth mainline game could work. However it may happen, the Mass Effect remaster will have to set the stage for a potential fourth game – perhaps by adding an epilogue.

As we’ve recently seen with The Last of Us Part II, some stories don’t need sequels, and when a decision is made to make one anyway, what results can be disappointing to fans. There’s definitely an argument to be made that the Mass Effect trilogy was so special and unique that a sequel is unnecessary – or even unwanted.

Number 8: More customisation options and a better character creator.

The character creation screen in Mass Effect 1.

For a game that released in 2007, Mass Effect’s character creator was okay. But even by the time Mass Effect 2 and 3 were released, the limitations of the original game’s character creator were apparent. Games today can offer so much more in terms of building a unique face for a player character – from hairstyles to tattoos to beards and so much more. The Mass Effect trilogy is jam-packed with cut-scenes which show off Shepard, so making him or her look good is important! The default faces are fine, but a roleplaying game needs some degree of customisation, and the outdated character creator definitely needs an overhaul.

And while we’re at it, let’s have more cosmetic options for armour and weapons. The first game was noticeably lacking in this department, but the second and third titles did have pretty solid armour and weapon customisation. I’d like to see this expanded with a variety of cosmetic options for customising Shepard’s appearance and outfits, including his uniform when not in armour as well as individual weapons. While it may be tempting to turn this feature into a microtransaction marketplace, as mentioned above let’s try to keep that just for multiplayer!

So that’s it. A few things I’d like to see from a potential – but still unconfirmed – Mass Effect remaster.

Fans of Star Trek: Picard who haven’t played through this fun sci-fi game series will note some similarities in the broad strokes of the plot: an ancient race left behind a beacon, warning of the dangers of a race of synthetics who will come to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy. Sounds familiar, right? While Star Trek: Picard took a very different approach to this story outline, the similarity in premise is something I thought at the time was noteworthy – I even referred to the unnamed faction of super-synths in that show as the “Mass Effect Reapers”.

Remember this faction from Star Trek: Picard?

Is it the right time for a Mass Effect remaster? That’s a good question. The stink of Andromeda is still pretty fresh for a lot of gamers, and the trilogy only ended in 2012. I could absolutely entertain the argument that it’s something best saved for five or ten years’ time rather than something the gaming world needs in 2020 – but I’m not the one making those decisions! If there is a remaster this year or next, I have no doubt I’ll take a look to see what it has to offer. I’ll be curious to stack up a remastered version of Mass Effect 2 or Mass Effect 3 against the original to see how much better it could really look. As I’ve said before, in a lot of ways I’d be happy with a game that has Mass Effect 2′s visual effects even if it were released today, so any remaster will have to go above and beyond to wow me with the way it looks.

Still, I’ll take any excuse to revisit a beloved series. In December I put Mass Effect 3′s ending on my list of entertainment disappointments of the decade, and I stand by that. It was a let-down then. But time is a great healer! Although I’ve replayed the trilogy several times I haven’t touched it in five or six years, so it will definitely be nice to jump back in – assuming the rumours are true and there really is a remaster in the works!

I hope you’ll check back soon for more sci-fi and gaming articles!

The Mass Effect series – including all titles discussed above, as well as potential new titles – is the copyright of Electronic Arts and Bioware. Some screenshots and promotional artwork courtesy of press kits on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Let’s Play Jedi: Fallen Order – Final Thoughts

Let’s Play Jedi: Fallen Order – Final Thoughts

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the entirety of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, including its ending. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Wars franchise.

At the end of July I completed Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. If you missed it, I documented my playthrough of the game, and you can find the entire series by following this link. However, that won’t be required reading for this piece, which will serve as a review/summary of what I thought of the game as a whole. So let’s get started!

My recent history with the Star Wars universe has been complicated. Due to disability, I haven’t been able to go to the cinema in person for several years, meaning that the most recent Star Wars films had been spoiled for me, and I was aware of their basic storylines before I could sit down to watch them. The last film I got to see unspoiled was 2016’s Rogue One. I enjoyed that film a lot, and at the time I enjoyed the first and second parts of the sequel trilogy – The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, despite its controversial nature. Solo was okay, I guess I’d call it average. But I didn’t enjoy The Rise of Skywalker at all, and I found The Mandalorian to be bland and uninteresting, as well as a show that struggled to break away from the franchise’s past.

The Rise of Skywalker was a visually impressive film let down by a truly awful story.

Enter Jedi: Fallen Order. I’d been very much looking forward to the game since Electronic Arts announced it at E3 2018. It had actually been a long time since I played a Star Wars game when I first heard of Jedi: Fallen Order – though I would subsequently play the Star Wars Battlefront II campaign in late 2018 or early 2019. The only thing I was concerned about with the game before I played it was its difficulty; any time something is described as “Souls-like” (a reference to the Dark Souls series) I tend to think it probably isn’t something I’ll enjoy. However, the subsequent revelation that the game features an easier mode made me feel better. I bought Jedi: Fallen Order when it was on sale on Steam in the spring of 2020, a few months after it was released. Unfortunately around that time my PC was having issues, which meant I couldn’t play it immediately. I ended up replacing my graphics card – though the whole machine needs an overhaul at some point soon – and I was finally able to sit down and play.

I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from a game described as a “linear, story-driven, action-adventure” title, and from a gameplay perspective Jedi: Fallen Order was more or less what I was expecting. Cal had a lightsaber that he used as his only weapon, and a handful of Force powers that could be used both in combat and for puzzle-solving. As strange as it sounds when discussing a video game, I wasn’t particularly interested in the gameplay side of things. I wanted it to function correctly with no major bugs, and of course I wanted it to be an enjoyable and not-frustrating experience, but my real reason for playing the game was its story. As long as the gameplay didn’t get in the way of that I expected to be at the very least satisfied with the way Jedi: Fallen Order played.

Protagonist Cal Kestis.

My playthrough lasted 19.8 hours according to Steam – though a few minutes of that was taken up with the first-time setup, connecting to Origin, and a couple of updates that needed to be downloaded before I could play the game. Having looked it up online, the average seems to be around 20 hours, so I think my 19.8 hours is pretty much bang on what you could expect. I only died a handful of times (thanks in part to playing on the aforementioned easiest difficulty setting), so players who go for the hardest difficulty and end up having to respawn a lot more frequently than I did may find the game takes a little longer.

In my 19.8 hours I feel I accomplished as much as I could. I completed the game’s story, and there weren’t really side-quests of the type that many modern titles have, so the only things I could have done that I didn’t were collecting more cosmetic items and finding a few more “secrets” on each of the levels. These secrets mostly seem to be Force echoes – Cal can use the Force on certain objects or at certain locations to sense the past, and this would usually play out in an audio clip and perhaps an entry in the game’s databank. In short, as someone who isn’t a completionist who has to visit every last cave and open every single chest, I got as much out of the game as I reasonably could have. Backtracking simply for the sake of a few short audio clips and perhaps an extra outfit or lightsaber hilt colour doesn’t hold much appeal to me – so I didn’t.

Lightsaber customisation was a small part of the game – but a fun one.

Let’s talk about backtracking, because this is one of the few complaints I’d have about Jedi: Fallen Order. The game consists of seven planets – each planet forms one “level” for the purposes of our discussion. The first planet, Bracca, is a tutorial level, it’s very scripted, and within the first hour or so, Cal has left and there’s no option to return. Two of the other levels, Ilum and Nur, are relatively linear and compact, and may only be visited once. That leaves four levels: Bogano, Dathomir, Kashyyyk, and Zeffo. These are where the bulk of the game takes place, and they’re larger levels with some degree of exploration required to progress. However, the game’s story takes Cal from one planet to the next… then back to the previous one. This formula plays out for each of these four worlds, and frankly it got repetitive. I’m not averse to the idea of Cal revisiting the same planet – in the context of the story it made sense. But what I think would have worked better is if the levels had been broken down into two smaller chunks, with Cal visiting one location each time. This would have avoided the feeling of repetitiveness while still allowing the game to make use of many of the same assets for terrain and the environment.

The downside of bigger levels is that they can be confusing to navigate. Jedi: Fallen Order does provide an in-game map, but I found it difficult to get the hang of, especially on those bigger levels where a map would’ve really come in handy. The map is 3D, it’s entirely in shades of blue which made identifying any features difficult, there was no way to see the entire level all at once without completely losing my bearings, and generally the map was unhelpful most of the time. It was useful for seeing things like blocked doors and unnavigable passages, as these were usually highlighted, but for finding my way around a level and getting from point to point I have to give the holo-map a failing grade.

The holo-map.

Because Jedi: Fallen Order didn’t offer many shortcuts or ways back to the beginning of the level (i.e. where Cal’s ship was) after completing the level’s objectives, having a good map would have been very helpful when it came to backtracking through each of the levels. This was definitely something I found to be frustrating – with the mission over, I was keen to get on with the story and having to spend twenty minutes or more finding my way back through a level I’d already completed wasn’t a lot of fun. I can’t think of many games that do this – at least, not ones I’ve played – and it feels like padding. With the objective complete and the mission over, having to waste time going back through an already-completed level can hardly be described as anything else.

At a couple of points, Jedi: Fallen Order felt as though it was trying to present itself as a game that offered me a choice of things to do when really no such choice existed. In the worst example, after completing the tutorial level and visiting Bogano for the first time, Cal had a choice of two planets to visit. I chose to go to Dathomir, as I thought it may contain a side-mission and I didn’t want to miss out on it if the story moved on too quickly. The game didn’t make clear that there was absolutely no point in going there – Cal would be unable to progress in any meaningful way on that planet until far later into the game. This fact wasn’t even acknowledged while at the section of the level where Cal was blocked from progressing. In short, Cal needed to jump across a gap in a damaged bridge, but the gap was too wide. After trying and failing once, he says to himself something like “it’s too wide to jump.” After saying that once, that was it. It took me looking up a walkthough online to realise that there was no way at all to progress further on that level, and that’s just something which shouldn’t happen.

The impossible jump.

This ties into a much bigger theme that was present throughout the game – there were many points where an extra line or two of dialogue would have gone a long way to improving the story. In the case of Cal failing the jump on Dathomir, we needed more explanation than a single ambiguous line, something to make it clear the way was shut. But at numerous other points the same issue was present. While I wouldn’t say the story was confused as a result, there were a number of places where it wasn’t as clear as it could’ve been. I pointed these out as I found them, and it’s something I seemed to say often in my playthrough posts!

While Jedi: Fallen Order had one main story – Cal’s quest to find a Jedi holocron – it made an attempt to introduce a B-plot involving the Stinger Mantis’ pilot Greez and a faction of bounty hunters. But this storyline was not properly developed and seemed to be abandoned toward the end of the game with no conclusion. A sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order is in the works, and it’s possible it may come back at that point. But the storyline didn’t feel like it ended on a cliffhanger. One minute Cal was captured by bounty hunters, a few minutes later he’d escaped. For the rest of the game bounty hunters would periodically show up – even in places where it seemed illogical to find them – but they never said anything or did anything of consequence. They were just slightly annoying enemies to fight. The storyline just fizzled out, and as of the game’s finale felt like it had been abandoned; it wasn’t even mentioned once during the final couple of hours of the game.

Cal speaks with the leader of the bounty hunters. The character was seen only once in the game.

There were a handful of moments which I felt were immersion-breaking, where Jedi: Fallen Order stopped feeling like an unfolding Star Wars adventure and started feeling like just another video game. I looked at these moments as they happened, but the worst one was the escape from Ilum. After Cal retrieved his lightsaber crystal from the old Jedi temple, it was a race back to the Stinger Mantis with Imperial reinforcements on the way. Cere jumped on the radio to tell Cal to hurry – Star Destroyers were inbound! But when Cal made it back to the ship, Cere and Greez just stood there. And I had to walk Cal over to the galaxy map to choose the crew’s next destination. What should have been a daring last-second escape turned into a horrible anticlimax and completely robbed what had been a great part of the story of much of its dramatic effect.

As a whole, however, I liked Jedi: Fallen Order’s story. The idea of chasing a hidden holocron in what was a kind of archaeological/historical puzzle felt like something Jean-Luc Picard would have done in Star Trek: The Next Generation! As a history buff myself, I felt that the galactic history angle was fascinating and added a lot to the story. As far as I know, the Zeffo are new to Star Wars; they were certainly new to me. And in that sense, the story really did feel mysterious much of the time – I was never quite sure, especially early in the game, just was I was going to discover.

One of the Zeffo tombs.

The characters all felt real and added to the story, too. Cal himself is perhaps the least-interesting of the main characters, but as someone who has to be the “everyman” protagonist that’s fair enough. And he did have a backstory – a padawan who survived Order 66. Cere and Greez were interesting too, though as mentioned part of Greez’s story – his gambling debt and the trouble with the bounty hunters – feels incomplete. But perhaps my favourite character was Trilla, the Second Sister.

When she was first introduced near the beginning of the game, Trilla felt rather flat. Slightly over-the-top and leaning into being evil meant that there didn’t seem to be much depth to her character; she felt like she could’ve ended up being one-dimensional. But the subsequent revelation that she had been Cere’s padawan, and had turned to the dark side after being tortured by the Empire, was not only a fascinating story twist that rivalled some of Star Wars’ best (and far exceeded some of its worst), but one which transformed her into a character who was complicated and even sympathetic. Her death at the end of the game – when she seemed on the cusp of forgiveness and perhaps even redemption – was heartbreaking.

Trilla was a great character.

Though it worked well for me, I can understand why some players may have felt that the ending of the game wasn’t its strongest point. We can set aside the accusation of Darth Vader being a “deus ex machina”, because in the context of the Star Wars universe I feel it worked. But Cal and Cere’s mission, for the entirety of the story, had been to retrieve the holocron for the express purpose of using it to track down and train the Force-sensitive kids. The setup of the story strongly implies that this has been Cere’s quest for a long time – perhaps even years. Cal’s decision to renege on that, and to destroy the holocron instead, didn’t exactly come from nowhere, but it was a story point that was less developed that it could’ve been. His motivation for doing so comes from Merrin, but they only had two very brief conversations on the subject before the pivotal moment – one of which was an optional conversation that would have been easy to miss. So I can understand why some fans will have felt that the ending was unsatisfying.

However, I’d like to explain why it worked for me. Firstly, Cal changed a lot over the course of the game. He came to realise that putting Force-sensitive kids through Jedi training would lead to them being hunted by the Empire. He lived much of his life since Order 66 in hiding, and having experience the Empire’s Jedi-hunters firsthand was not content to see other kids go through what he went through. Secondly, the vision on Bogano showed him how training the kids could go wrong and lead to them being captured or killed. And finally, the conversations with Merrin were what pushed him over the edge and convinced him to destroy the holocron rather than keep it. For me, he has more than enough motivation from his background and his recent experiences to feel that destroying the holocron makes sense – and from out perspective as the audience, keeping the kids safe from the Empire is still a huge victory.

Cal destroyed the holocron at the end of the game.

Finally, let’s look at a couple of minor things that I didn’t like in terms of gameplay. Firstly, Jedi: Fallen Order was not as polished as I would have expected from a major release. There were a number of bugs and glitches, which mostly consisted of the environment or characters behaving incorrectly – characters would float in mid-air, stand on an invisible ledge, fall through the scenery, etc. The worst two glitches involved Cal getting stuck in the environment. At one point he was unable to cross a narrow beam because the game didn’t register where he was stepping correctly, and on another occasion he got stuck in the scenery after climbing an invisible wall. If I found these issues in a standard playthrough, QA testers must have spotted them during development. Between the game’s release and when I played it there were eight months in which a patch could have been rolled out; it’s a shame that these things were there in the first place but there’s been more than enough time to fix them.

Climbing an invisible wall.

There were a couple of gameplay features that I wasn’t wild about either. Both of these were creative decisions and not glitches or bugs, so I respect the decision to include them. But from my point of view, they didn’t work very well. The first is the checkpoint system. I haven’t played a game since the ’90s that had fixed checkpoints instead of allowing players to save freely, and even though it wasn’t something I had to make use of all that often, it’s not my favourite way to play. In the past it was a limitation of computing power that games had to get around because there was no alternative; in 2020 that isn’t the case. It’s a creative decision, one which aimed to bring Jedi: Fallen Order in line with titles like the Dark Souls series, and I respect that. I just don’t like it.

The second point wasn’t something I disliked per se, it’s just a feature that got old pretty fast: sliding. In the first level, the brief sliding section was wild and very fun. But the feature was repeated multiple times throughout the game and honestly it lost its appeal. Where it felt unique and fun the first time, after several mandatory sliding sessions the novelty wore off. Not to mention that several of these sections required milisecond-perfect button presses which could be very difficult.

Jedi: Fallen Order.

On the plus side, Jedi: Fallen Order gave me what might just be my favourite ever experience in a Star Wars game: piloting an AT-AT. Unlike the sliding feature, which was reused multiple times, the game only gave me one shot at this, but it was so much fun. Cal and BD-1 stayed in the vehicle’s cockpit, and over a fifteen-minute section blasted their way through other AT-ATs, ground forces, and even Imperial ships on the surface of Kashyyyk. It was undoubtedly the most fun section in the game purely from a gameplay perspective!

Speaking of Kashyyyk, it was fun to revisit a planet I’d played through years ago in Knights of the Old Republic. Though on my first visit the level looked quite different to the Kashyyyk I remembered from the older game, the second mission to the Wookie homeworld definitely brought back memories, and at points felt like playing an upgraded version of that classic from the original Xbox era.

Wookie chieftain Tarfful on Kashyyyk.

There were some great scripted moments in Jedi: Fallen Order. When Cal is dreaming while on the train on Bracca, there was a moment where the train was suddenly replaced with an Imperial ship. It was seamless and perfectly shocking. I liked the voice acting performances that the characters gave – at no point did I feel they misspoke, over- or under-acted a scene, or were anything other than competent throughout. BD-1, Cal’s droid, is absolutely adorable and I love him. There were some genuinely emotional moments in the story, such as where BD-1 encouraged Cal not to give up in the crystal cave. But above all, Jedi: Fallen Order was fun to play. I enjoyed myself most of the time, and came out of it with a renewed appreciation for the Star Wars franchise after the disappointment of the most recent film.

I’m not going to give Jedi: Fallen Order a score out of ten. Metacritic and others have plenty of numbered reviews if you need to put a score on it. What I’ll say instead is that I enjoyed the game, and it’s one I would recommend to anyone who either likes Star Wars or who likes Tomb Raider-esque action/adventure titles. Even non-Star Wars fans who like that style of game would find something to enjoy here, but obviously for a fan of the franchise the game offers a lot more.

Cal and Merrin.

Having completed the story, I’m in no rush to play Jedi: Fallen Order again. It isn’t a game which offers branching storylines or even a light/dark system to increase its replayability. However, I enjoyed my time with the game and definitely recommend it to anyone who’s on the fence about trying it. If you’re playing on PC and you’re on a budget, the game was recently discounted during the Steam summer sale, so I think there’s a better than average chance that in December, during Steam’s holiday sale, you might find it at a steep discount. I don’t think there’s any real advantage to be gained from buying the deluxe edition – it seemed to offer a couple of customisation options and nothing more, and given how many customisation options are picked up just from playing the game, unless you desperately want an orange lightsaber or yellow skin for BD-1, I’d say skip it and save the few pounds/dollars.

It was fun to document a playthrough in this way. I’ve already started a much more casual playthough of a second game – Disneyland Adventures. That series is ongoing and I’ll be updating it occasionally as we go through August and into the autumn. I haven’t decided what game in the style of Jedi: Fallen Order I might play next. I was initially considering Control, but after my recent bust-up with the Epic Games Store that’s not an option right now. I do have several other titles I’m considering, though, both modern and retro.

I hope you’ll check back regularly for more game reviews, gaming discussion, and articles about Star Wars, Star Trek, and the wide world of geekdom. Until next time… May The Force Be With You!

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is out now on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is the copyright of Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts. The Star Wars franchise is the copyright of Lucasfilm and Disney. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

All Fall Guys rounds ranked!

All Fall Guys rounds ranked!

Dennis

About a week ago, I gave you my first impressions of Fall Guys, which has been a game that completely took me by surprise. I’d even go so far as to call it the sleeper hit of the summer; it’s been very popular and has received widespread praise. When I wrote down my first impressions I’d spent a couple of hours with the game, which was enough time to know I liked it but not enough time for a really detailed breakdown. This time, I’m going to put all 25 of Fall Guys’ rounds in a ranked list from worst to best. Now that I’ve played all of them multiple times I’m in a good position to know which work well and which need some tweaking!

It’s worth pointing out that Fall Guys has a roadmap for more content, and that will include new rounds at some point. So eventually this list will be out-of-date! I’m also assuming, for the purposes of the list, that you have some degree of familiarity with the game. With those caveats out of the way, let’s rank these rounds!

Number 25: Door Dash

The basic problem with Door Dash is that it’s purely a game of luck. You have no control over which doors are fake and which are real, nor over whether you start near the front or back of the pack. Because the course is so short, hitting a wrong door even once can be enough to relegate you to last place, and if you’re at or near the back of the pack when jumping through the final door you may as well not bother because there’s only a very short distance at the bottom to the finish line. This round universally ends up with every player (and there can be up to 60 if it’s the first round) jumping through the final door within seconds of each other. It’s just not a lot of fun.

Number 24: Tip Toe

Because Tip Toe usually appears as a later round when there are fewer players – and thus, fewer qualification spots – it’s one that most people seem to take very cautiously. If you step on a wrong tile there’s no chance to jump back before it disappears and you fall, meaning it’s possible to do very well and make it almost to the end only to fail, and if you fall one or two tiles from the finish line, there’s usually not enough time to get back in with even a chance at qualification.

Number 23: Jump Showdown

The worst of the final rounds. Because the platforms fall away at random, it’s all too easy to simply be in the wrong place because that’s where the game placed you when the round began. Take away the falling platforms and you have Jump Club, which is one of the better minigames. Unfortunately the addition of the falling platforms means it doesn’t work nearly as well, and there’s often no skill involved whatsoever; it’s pure luck. For a finale, I think that’s poor.

Number 22: Fruit Chute

The entire race takes place on a treadmill moving away from you, with obstacles shaped like fruit being constantly fired down the track. There’s nothing wrong with the setup, but it’s another round where a single – often unavoidable – collision can mean failure to qualify. It’s more random chance than skill-based, and spawning at or near the front of the pack can give players an advantage.

Number 21: Roll Out

Several large rotating platforms with obstacles to jump between make for a tricky setup. However, at least in the rounds I’ve played, most people seem to have mastered it very quickly, and these rounds can drag on and on if not enough people get eliminated. If it would speed up or change direction or do something to make it harder as time went on, it would be more fun.

Number 20: Rock N Roll

I like the premise of this game, which involves three teams pushing a large ball to the finish line. It requires teamwork, which some of the other “team” games really don’t, and it can be just as much fun to stop another team making it to the end as it is to help your team! I think the obstacle course part of the track needs tweaking a little to make it harder or longer, as what often happens is all three teams basically make the same progress, at which point the ones who qualify are the ones who do best at holding up their opponents.

Number 19: Fall Ball

This is basically a Rocket League clone, but with two balls instead of one. Oftentimes it’s fine – though I’m undeniably bad at it – but what can be an issue is lopsided teams. I’ve seen games where it was six against eight and seven against nine, and when considering such a small number of players per team, a two-person advantage is huge! This isn’t something that can always be avoided, but it can be very frustrating to lose 10-0 through no fault of your own.

Number 18: Hex-a-Gone

Another of the finales, and perhaps the one I’ve done best at, Hex-a-Gone features hexagon-shaped platforms that behave like the donuts in Super Mario games – step on them for a second or so and they fall. This game is fun, but on a couple of occasions I’ve fallen from near the top to near the bottom, missing the platforms in between. Not sure if this is a bug or just the way the level is designed. For a finale, a “last one standing” is good, and the fact that you’re in control of where you walk and jump makes it far better than Jump Showdown.

Number 17: Gate Crash

A less-extreme version of the problem with Door Dash afflicts Gate Crash, and it’s another round where a solitary mistake – especially one near the end – can mean failure to qualify. I like its premise and design, and I especially like the slippery ramp leading to the finish line, but the fact that it’s very unforgiving stops it being ranked higher on this list.

Number 16: Hoarders

These next two games are very similar. Basically Hoarders is a team game where the team who has the fewest balls in their segment of the map is eliminated. It’s fun, raucous, and fast-paced, but as with every team game if you’re teamed up with someone crap, or a couple of players on your team disconnect, you can lose through no fault of your own.

Number 15: Egg Scramble

Egg Scramble is basically Hoarders but with several dozen eggs instead of a handful of balls. Once the pile of eggs in the middle of the map have all been claimed, players begin raiding other team’s “nests” to get theirs! It’s pretty good fun – but with the usual team caveat of sometimes losing because of other players being useless.

Number 14: Royal Fumble

Another of the final rounds, and a pretty solid one. There’s only one tail, and whoever is in possession of it when the timer runs out wins. It’s less important who has the tail earlier in the round, but keeping track of it so you can grab it at the last moment is challenging! It’s a competitive round in a game where sometimes it’s possible to win just by concentrating on yourself, and that makes it somewhat unique among the finales.

Number 13: Jinxed

By running away and avoiding anyone on the opposing team, it’s possible to do well at Jinxed. Rounds can be equal or very lopsided depending on who you’re teamed up with, but compared to something like Fall Ball your success or failure is at least partially in your own hands. It’s also a round that doesn’t seem to appear as often; I think I’ve only played it three times.

Number 12: Hoopsie Daisy

A rather unique offering, Hoopsie Daisy has a fun level design with spinning discs, conveyor belts, ramps, and open areas. The hoops appear randomly but in set locations, and they’re easy enough to jump through while at the same time not being too easy – it’s possible to mess up and miss the hoop if you mistime your jump.

Number 11: The Whirlygig

Spinning fans that resemble aircraft propellers and spinning bars to jump over are the two obstacles here, and the course is fun and can be challenging. It’s quite a forgiving round, and it’s possible to recover from even three or four falls to still qualify. The final jump, with the very slow rotating blades opposite, seems to cause a lot of problems for newbies!

Number 10: Team Tail Tag

Team Tail Tag has one of my favourite levels in terms of layout. It looks like a battle course from the Mario Kart series, and its upper and lower levels, with a few obstacles and a ring of conveyor belts near the centre, is a ton of fun. I’d even suggest it could be re-used for other mini-games if the developers wanted to! Team Tail Tag gives each team a set number of tails to start with, and whichever team ends with the fewest is eliminated.

Number 9: Tail Tag

The version of Tail Tag without teams is every so slightly nicer, in my opinion, than its team variant for the simple reason that victory or defeat is in your own hands instead of being tied to a bunch of random players.

Number 8: Jump Club

Jump Showdown, mentioned above, is the worst of the finales. But the game it’s based on, Jump Club, is actually very fun. The spinning bar is easy enough to jump over on its own, but the beams above it provide an extra challenge. It’s so frustrating to survive to almost the end only to be the final player eliminated… speaking from experience here!

Number 7: Dizzy Heights

A series of spinning discs are the main obstacles here, and the round is plenty of fun. There’s no “best” path from the start line to the finish, which shows how well-designed the level truly is, and the final section, with three platforms moving in opposite directions and occasional balls rolling down is deceptively tricky! I’m getting pretty good at Dizzy Heights, and it’s a round I can expect to qualify from more often than not.

Number 6: Perfect Match

Perfect Match is utterly unique and thus hard to place on this list, but I like it so I’m ranking it in the top six. It’s not particularly difficult, and doesn’t always result in a lot of players being eliminated, but in a game that can be very fast-paced, it’s a slower game that’s about more than just who’s faster at pressing buttons. A good memory is very important – but you can sometimes get away with following other players if you’re quick!

Number 5: See Saw

I love See Saw. It’s a ton of fun, and deceptively tricky. It looks like it should be simple to get across the platforms, but a mistimed jump or an awkward landing can lead to a fall. However, it’s a very forgiving round and falling several times isn’t enough to put you out of contention. The only criticism I’d have is that players who spawn at the front of the pack have an advantage, and it’s possible to see the first four or five players qualify long before everyone else simply because they had a clear path to the finish line.

Number 4: Slime Climb

I’m atrocious at Slime Climb. In fact, I’ve qualified from this round precisely once – and that was by sheer luck! But in terms of what Fall Guys aims to be – a game about running fun obstacle courses – Slime Climb has it all. There are moving platforms, slippery sections, balance beams, a conveyor belt, moving obstacles, and bouncing balls to avoid on the way to the finish line at the top. And all the while, the slime is slowly rising! I love it, even though I suck at it.

Number 3: Fall Mountain

Fall Mountain is my favourite finale – even though I’ve never won at it! It’s a proper obstacle course, with different things in your path as you race to get to the summit and claim the crown. As balls roll down the mountain providing randomised obstacles, there are things to dodge and push and jump over, and it feels like a proper finale where your fate is in your hands!

Number 2: Block Party

Although it doesn’t always succeed at eliminating a lot of players, I like what Block Party is about. A fairly narrow platform is all the space you have, and there’s not a lot of time to get out of the way of the obstacles that come flying at you! The final seconds of the round are incredibly tense as players rush from side to side to side to get out of the way of speeding blocks! It can be tricky and tense, but it’s fantastic.

Number 1: Hit Parade

For me, Hit Parade epitomises the “obstacle course” concept better than any other round in the game. The round begins with beams to balance on and a slippery slope underneath. Then the next section has spinning gates to push and a moving barrier with a small gap. Up next are the swinging balls to avoid, and finally a slippery slimy slope to climb to reach the finish line. Of all the rounds, Hit Parade offers the most diversity in terms of obstacles, it’s perfectly designed to be just the right length, it’s forgiving enough if you make a mistake without being too forgiving, and above all, it’s just good fun.

So that’s it. All the rounds in Fall Guys ranked… according to me, anyway. I’m having lots of fun with this game, even though there can be a couple of frustrating rounds! Even the “worst” ones can still provide a good time, though. For pure pick-up-and-play fun, there isn’t anything quite like Fall Guys on the market, and I’d encourage anyone with a PC or PlayStation 4 to give it a go.

If your favourite round wasn’t one of my favourites, please don’t get upset. This list is the subjective opinion of one person, and even within a single game there will be a range of opinions on which course or level is “best”. If you like a round that I don’t, or vice versa, that’s okay. It’s great that we don’t all like the same things!

I’d love to see Fall Guys ported to the Switch – I think it could be a phenomenal game on that platform. And of course bringing it to Xbox would complete the lineup and make it a true multiplatform experience. I’m curious to see what the roadmap brings – will the new rounds be just as good as those already in the game? What else could they bring to the table? I’d like to see another logic or thinking-based round to go along with Perfect Match, which feels like an outlier at the moment. And more obstacle courses with diverse challenges instead of rounds where all the obstacles are the same type. Those would be my requests!

I mentioned in my first impressions that the game has microtransactions. I wanted to clarify that point before I go, because having played the game for longer, I can now say that there’s plenty of content available without spending a penny on the microtransactions. Each round provides players a certain amount of “kudos” – the in-game currency – and this can be exchanged for cosmetic items. In short, unless you desperately want a limited-time item and there’s no way to play enough rounds to afford it, you can play the whole game without touching the microtransactions and still rack up a huge variety of cosmetic items. The best cosmetics – or rather, the rarest – are only available with “crowns”, the second in-game currency. Crowns are awarded for winning – i.e. being the last player standing after the finale. While microtransactions can be an issue in games, they aren’t in Fall Guys in my opinion.

Maybe I’ll see you out there in the wild, pushing you out of the way to make it to the finish line!

Fall Guys is out now on PC and PlayStation 4. Fall Guys is the copyright of Mediatonic and Devolver Digitial. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Could Voyager’s Doctor appear in Star Trek: Discovery?

Could Voyager’s Doctor appear in Star Trek: Discovery?

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Season 1, Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, Star Trek: Voyager, and other iterations of the franchise.

Star Trek: Discovery’s premiere brought back Sarek, Spock’s father who had been first introduced in The Original Series. Season 2 saw Spock himself as well as Captain Pike and Number One make appearances, so Discovery is a series that has no qualms about reintroducing legacy characters. But its 23rd Century, pre-The Original Series setting precluded the use of most of Star Trek’s characters, as the bulk of the franchise’s 780+ episodes and films take place later in the timeline.

Discovery’s move forward in time should also mean that no legacy characters could have significant roles. After all, who could possibly still be alive more than eight centuries after the events of Star Trek: Picard? I can think of one character, but not in the way you might expect!

Voyager’s Doctor – or at least a version of him – could be alive in the 32nd Century.

As a hologram who doesn’t age, we could definitely argue that The Doctor – played by Robert Picardo for all seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager – might have survived this long. But that isn’t the angle I’m taking.

The 23rd episode of Season 4 of Star Trek: Voyager, Living Witness, takes place in the 31st Century. After the USS Voyager had an encounter with a species called the Kyrians in the 24th Century, some pieces of technology were left behind, including a backup copy of The Doctor. Reawakened in the 31st Century, he stayed with the Kyrians for a number of years, righting the wrongs in their historical records about Voyager and its crew.

The episode is interesting in itself, and well worth a watch, but from our point of view today what I want to consider is the episode’s ending. After living with the Kyrians for years – perhaps decades – The Doctor took one of their ships and left the planet, hoping to retrace Voyager’s path and return to the Alpha Quadrant.

A photo of The Doctor in a museum at the end of Living Witness.

We know from later seasons of Voyager that it only took them another three years or so after leaving Kyrian space to make it home – though that did involve the use of the Borg transwarp network, among other helping hands – so the journey is definitely achievable. The Doctor, unlike us mere humans, doesn’t need food or any other supplies personally, so as long as his ship was functional, even if it took him decades he would have been able to make it back to Federation space – and if it took him several decades, the timeline starts to line up for a crossover with Discovery.

One thing that I’m cautiously interested in when it comes to Discovery’s third season is the potential to learn more about what happened to some of the characters we knew in other Star Trek shows. Perhaps we won’t learn the specifics of what happened to individuals, but we may learn broad strokes about what happened to their planets and cultures, and we could infer from that what may have happened to them. The series looks – if we take its trailer at face value – as if part of the story will be about restoring a declining or defeated Federation. Characters who originated in an era where the Federation was strong and just would be well-suited to that task, and they may find an unlikely ally in this version of The Doctor.

Restoring the Federation may be part of Discovery’s third season storyline.

On the production side of things, Star Trek has recently had great success bringing back Brent Spiner as Data and Sir Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. Spiner’s role as Data is a great comparison, because both Data and The Doctor are artificial, and thus not susceptible to ageing. Brent Spiner had said as early as the mid-2000s that he felt he’d “aged out” of the role of Data, yet the makeup and visual effects used in Star Trek: Picard worked very well. Obviously if you try to compare the way he looked earlier this year to the way he looked in 1987’s Encounter at Farpoint there’s a difference, but it’s not immersion-breaking. All this is to say that there’s no reason why Robert Picardo couldn’t reprise his role too.

Digital de-ageing effects have been used more and more often in recent years, even on television, and while the technology isn’t cheap, it shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive either. So that option would be viable for the team behind Star Trek as well.

But the big question is what kind of role The Doctor could play in a 32nd Century Discovery story.

Robert Picardo in a 2017 episode of Lucifer.

If I were writing it, the way I’d see him involved would be working alongside Burnham, Saru, and the crew of Discovery to restore the Federation. They’re looking at things from a 23rd Century viewpoint, but The Doctor could fill in more than a century’s worth of gaps in their knowledge. The Federation in the 24th Century is very similar to how it was in the 23rd in terms of morals and outlook, so I could absolutely see them working in common cause.

Rebuilding or reinvigorating the Federation is a noble task, and while I’ve documented my misgivings about Star Trek taking on a kind of post-apocalyptic setting previously, one way I think it could be made to work is if at the end of the season the Federation was back up and running. The Doctor could be invaluable to Discovery’s crew in accomplishing such a task, and with Data now permanently gone from the Star Trek universe, there aren’t many others who could still be around in this era.

The Doctor could help the crew of Discovery in the 32nd Century.

Perhaps after Season 2, which brought back several legacy characters for major roles, Discovery wants to stand on its own two feet again. Indeed, part of the reason for shifting the show’s timeline so far into the future is specifically because the producers and showrunners wanted to get away from the constraints of the 23rd Century – and the fan criticisms that came as a result of using that setting. So perhaps bringing back a legacy character in Season 3 isn’t on the agenda.

But The Doctor could still appear in Season 4 – and reports suggest that pre-production is underway on Discovery’s next adventure. While I think that The Doctor could be a good fit for a “rebuilding” type of storyline for the reasons already mentioned, if Season 4 takes the show in a different direction, perhaps that would be something more suited to his medical expertise, such as curing a disease. For all we know at this stage, a disease could be involved in damaging the Federation in this time period!

If not The Doctor, there are a few other characters who could – in theory – still be active in the 32nd Century. Let’s look at them briefly:

Number 1: Soji

Spoiler warning for Star Trek: Picard Season 1, but Soji is synthetic; an android. At the end of the season, Picard was told that his new synthetic body wouldn’t keep him alive for centuries, but there’s no reason Soji should have the same limitation. In many ways, Soji would make for a better crossover character than almost anyone else, as she’s a main character in an ongoing series. The crossover would thus be between two Star Trek shows that are currently in production, providing a link between them.

We could also add into the mix the other synths from Coppelius, including Sutra (aka Evil Soji) and even Dr Soong, if he was successful in creating himself a new synthetic body (and there’s no reason why he wouldn’t have been).

Number 2: Lore

Lore was said to have been disassembled after his final appearance in The Next Generation, but we learned nothing of his fate after that. I speculated during Star Trek: Picard’s first season that Dr Maddox may have had access to Lore’s components while working on Soji and the other synths, but this was never confirmed on screen. It’s at least possible that Lore survived in disassembled form until the 32nd Century.

However, with Star Trek having gone out of its way to write Data out of the franchise, and to give Brent Spiner a new character in Dr Soong, I think any re-emergence of Lore is highly unlikely.

Number 3: Benjamin Sisko

I’ve mentioned Captain Sisko so often in relation to characters who could re-appear that you may think he’s become an obsession of mine! However, his story as of the end of Deep Space Nine was deliberately written in such a way that he could come back at literally any point in the Star Trek timeline. After being saved by the Bajoran Prophets, Sisko went to stay with them for a while – and they exist outside of linear time, meaning he could essentially travel to any point in time, including the 32nd Century.

Avery Brooks, who played Sisko, hasn’t always seemed willing to reprise the role, and recently declined to appear in the documentary What We Left Behind. However, there’s no reason why the character couldn’t be recast for future appearances.

Number 4: The Dax symbiont

While still arguably unlikely, this seems perhaps the least-unlikely of all the characters we’ve looked at so far. The trailer for Discovery’s third season showed Trill characters as well as what looked like a scene set on the Trill homeworld. We know, thanks to Deep Space Nine, that Trill symbionts can live for centuries; how many centuries exactly has never been stated as far as I’m aware. That leaves an opening for Discovery to bring back Dax – as well as an excuse to recast the character.

With centuries of knowledge, Dax could be a huge help to the crew of Discovery for the same reasons we’ve already talked about. Rebuilding the Federation will be a huge task, and it will take people who knew how it worked to help out.

So that’s it. A handful of other characters to go along with The Doctor who could – but probably won’t – appear in Star Trek: Discovery’s 32nd Century setting. As the show gets nearer to being broadcast (mid-October, in case you missed that announcement) my optimism is growing. Season 2 was decent, and despite my misgivings about taking the series away from its setting and into the far future, I think it has potential to tell interesting stories. I’m cautiously optimistic!

It seems unlikely that The Doctor, or any of the other characters mentioned, will make an appearance, but from an in-universe perspective it’s not entirely impossible. We’ve seen with Star Trek: Picard that bringing back legacy characters and referencing events that took place in a past episode or story are both things that the people in charge of Star Trek are willing to consider, so it’s at least possible to think we could see someone from the past reappear in Discovery.

Most of all, this was a bit of fun. We got to look back at Living Witness, which was a unique entry in Star Trek: Voyager, as well as speculate on the fates of The Doctor and some other well-known characters from past and present iterations of Star Trek. I’ll take any excuse to spend more time in the Star Trek galaxy!

Star Trek: Voyager is available to watch now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Netflix in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 will be available to stream beginning on the 15th of October 2020. The Star Trek franchise – including all properties mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS.

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 2: Envoys

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 2: Envoys

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the first two episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

If you stopped by last week, you might’ve felt that I was a little hard on Lower Decks’ premiere. I certainly thought so on re-reading what I wrote last time, so just for the sake of clarity, although not all of the jokes landed and despite my misgivings about Ensign Mariner, I did enjoy Second Contact. This new series is all at once very different from past iterations of Star Trek, yet also familiar. That familiarity comes from the show’s creators, writers, and producers being big Trekkies who put a lot of love into what they’ve made. Discovery could feel, on occasion, that it was made by a team of people who weren’t necessarily all that familiar with Star Trek, but there’s no way the same accusation could be made against Lower Decks.

If I had been in charge of making the series and broadcasting it, one change I’d have made would’ve been to put Envoys first. The opening scene from Second Contact definitely made a good introduction, so perhaps I’d have rejigged the first two episodes so that scene was still the first scene of the series, but the episode that followed had the plot of Envoys, which is a stronger story and one which gave all four main characters more to do.

Three of the four main characters in Envoys.

I’m sure you’re getting tired of me saying this by now, but Lower Decks still has no international release planned. This continues to be a source of profound disappointment, and it’s something which will unfortunately harm the series going forward. While I think it’s fair to say that Lower Decks has hardly taken the world by storm, the moderate level of hype and buzz that it did manage to generate has been tarnished by the fact that a huge portion of its potential audience is missing out and unable to participate. Because Lower Decks is such a unique offering in the Star Trek lineup, and with the general popularity of animated comedy backing it up, it’s a show which should have the potential to bring in legions of new fans. The decision to broadcast it in North America only, with no plans for an international release, damages this. It means potential new fans miss out on the show when it’s new, killing a large portion of the hype, and it means that anyone who is very interested to watch will simply pirate the show, as doing so is incredibly easy.

Not me, though. Heavens no. As you’ll recall from last week, I’ve temporarily moved to my second home in the USA so I can watch the show. I really am enjoying my time in the beautiful state of Maine. The desert, the cacti, the dry heat… it’s perfect! And I’m only a half hour’s drive from the neighbouring state of Alabama, where I can sit on the beach and gaze out over the Pacific ocean. Bliss.

This is definitely my house. And it’s totally in the USA. Which is where I absolutely am.

So let’s jump into Envoys, shall we? By the way: how do you pronounce it? Is it “ON-voys”? Or “EN-voys”? I’ve heard it said both ways, and I don’t think either is strictly right or wrong, it’s just a matter of dialect. But we’re off topic already. The opening scene before the title sequence was the weakest in Envoys, and reinforced everything I’d been thinking about Ensign Mariner from last time. In fact, this scene was her at her arrogant and most un-Starfleet worst as she tries to kidnap a sentient energy-lifeform and forces it to grant her a wish.

There’s so much wrong here that I felt like switching off the episode and saying, “well I guess Lower Decks just isn’t my thing.” But let’s break it down – Starfleet is all about seeking out new life, learning about them, and coexisting in a peaceful, friendly manner. Mariner kidnapped a sentient lifeform for… what? Because it would be funny? And she let it go only when it could provide her a minor material benefit at great cost to itself. As I said last week, it feels like Lower Decks wants to have its own Rick Sanchez (from Rick & Morty) – an “I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-anything-except-myself” mega-genius – but that kind of character doesn’t work in a Starfleet setting, and definitely not as an ensign.

Ensign Mariner captures the energy lifeform.

After re-reading my criticisms from last time I wondered if I’d been unfair on Mariner, but this scene riled me up and convinced me that I hadn’t been. When I wrote earlier that if I’d been in charge I’d have reworked the first two episodes, I’d also have cut this scene entirely. For me, Mariner is not a good source of humour when she behaves selfishly and in an un-Starfleet manner. If the show was not set on a Federation starship, with Mariner taking on a Chris Rios-type role (the captain of La Sirena in Star Trek: Picard) maybe it would work better. While she did improve significantly as we got further into the story, she remains the show’s weak link for me, and this scene at the beginning of the story was Mariner at her absolute worst.

The title sequence was up next, and I’m really enjoying the music. Lower Decks’ theme is easily one of my favourite Star Trek themes now, and certainly the best one since the 1990s. I didn’t mention this last week, but at one point in the title sequence, the USS Ceritos stumbles on a battle between Romulan vessels and Borg cubes – given that we know the Romulans captured the Artifact (a derelict Borg cube) prior to the events of Star Trek: Picard, I wonder if this is meant to depict that event. Even if not, it was a cute little wink to fans of Picard simply by putting Borg and Romulans together.

The USS Cerritos arrives at the Borg-Romulan battle.

After the titles, Boimler is boasting to Tendi and Mariner about his new assignment – he’s to pilot a shuttle and escort a high-ranking Klingon general to peace negotiations. This scene went a long way to making up for Mariner’s earlier conduct, as we see her more relaxed while presumably off-duty. She doesn’t really do anything too offensive here, which by her standards is a win. I liked Boimler practising his Klingon pronunciation; it was suitably silly and funny!

Ensign Rutherford – who we didn’t get to spend much time with last week – crawls out of a jeffries tube where he’s been working to realign the EPS conduits. He and Tendi share a cute moment as she asks him if they can get together to watch a pulsar. The show is clearly setting the two of them up as a pair alongside Boimler and Mariner, though whether they’ll ever end up as anything more than platonic is unclear. In order to get enough time off work to watch the pulsar with Tendi, Rutherford decides to transfer out of engineering, which is the second plot of the episode along with the shuttle mission.

Ensigns Tendi and Rutherford as the latter exits the jeffries tube.

Rutherford provides an even stronger contrast to Mariner than Boimler does. Where Boimler is neurotic, anxious, and horribly concerned with making a good impression, Rutherford just gets on with his job and seems to revel in the menial tasks he undertakes as an engineer. Boimler doesn’t seem to enjoy being a Starfleet officer, despite being well-read, but Rutherford has taken to his role naturally and with a positive attitude. Of the four main characters, only Rutherford truly feels like someone who could’ve been a Starfleet officer in a past Star Trek series.

In the shuttlebay, Boimler has arrived to get ready for his mission escorting the Klingon general. And wouldn’t you know it, Mariner has managed to “pull a few strings” and get herself assigned to the mission with him. At first it seemed as though she’d used her connection to the captain (if you missed it last time, Captain Freeman is her mother), but later it’s revealed that she knew the Klingon general, so that may have been how she was able to land the role.

Boimler is angry to see Mariner messing up his shuttle.

In typical Mariner fashion, she’s messed up the shuttle. Boots on the control panel, she’s eating her lunch and has spilled it. Once again I’m getting a distinct Rick & Morty vibe – Mariner seems to treat the shuttle the way Rick Sanchez treats his flying car/spacecraft, and the comparable visuals of empty food containers and general mess wasn’t lost on me.

For once, though, we got to see a genuine moment of excitement from Mariner, who is fascinated by the shuttle’s blast shield. She even sang a little song (which was very catchy and got stuck in my head) about it, which was sweet. Perhaps there may be an appreciation for some of what Starfleet has to offer underneath the uncaring exterior after all? This moment had been briefly seen in the trailer, and I liked it there as well.

The blast shield song.

I didn’t really like that Mariner had managed to not only elbow her way onto Boimler’s mission, but that she’d been placed in charge with him relegated to the role of co-pilot. While Mariner herself may act in an un-Starfleet manner, the rest of the crew shouldn’t, and this change of role for Boimler – who didn’t even know until he reached the shuttle – seems very unprofessional.

I know that I need to try to distance myself from what I already know about Starfleet when watching Lower Decks and not take it so seriously. And I am making a genuine attempt to do so, but as I wrote last time, the franchise has fifty years of history and lore that has been built up, and speaking personally, I have over a quarter of a century as a Trekkie under my belt. Discarding parts of that is hard, and trying to see Lower Decks as an animated comedy first and a Star Trek project second isn’t always easy.

Boimler learns he’s been assigned the co-pilot’s role.

Up next, Rutherford is in main engineering and is working up the courage to follow through with what he promised Tendi and ask for reassignment. I liked this scene, as Rutherford clearly has the respect of the chief engineer and his crewmates. Though it seemed as if the chief engineer may have been angry, everyone was thrilled for Rutherford as he moved on.

It was great to see the Cerritos’ engineering deck in more detail too. The warp core strikes me as some combination of those seen in The Motion Picture, The Next Generation and Voyager, and the whole of main engineering has a distinct Star Trek aesthetic that couldn’t possibly be from any other franchise. I liked the Enterprise-D-style main engineering table; we’d often see Geordi La Forge, Data, and others standing there in The Next Generation. There’s no question that, when it comes to the design of the ship, Lower Decks is doing a great job of staying consistent with what’s come before.

Rutherford with the engineering crew in main engineering.

Up next came the shuttle mission. Mariner is reunited with her Klingon friend, someone she met on a past assignment. Boimler confirms for the audience that he and Mariner are roughly the same age, something that I wasn’t sure of given her past history of promotions, demotions, and reassignments. While Boimler pilots the shuttle, Mariner and the Klingon get drunk on bloodwine.

Compared to the Klingons seen in Discovery, whose aesthetic had been very different to what we’d seen before, the Klingon general here was a return to form. Sporting an eyepatch similar to General Chang’s from The Undiscovered Country, he looked exactly like I’d have expected an animated Klingon from The Next Generation era to. The typical Klingon forehead, the long flowing hair, the beard with the distinctive moustache-gap, and of course the armour and batleth were all present, and I liked the way this character looked.

The Klingon general.

Despite being ordered to transport the general to a Federation outpost on what seems to be a non-aligned planet, the Klingon – backed up by a drunk Mariner – insists on being taken to a Klingon district so he can get gagh. Gagh is a Klingon food well-known to Trekkies, as it’s appeared numerous times in the Star Trek franchise. Unable to resist their demands, Boimler lands the shuttle in the Klingon district.

We’ve already spent too long focusing on Mariner and her un-Starfleet conduct, so I’ll skip over that to avoid this review being too repetitive. After landing the shuttle, Mariner and Boimler disembark, and it’s promptly commandeered by the drunk Klingon, who shakily flies it away, stranding Mariner and Boimler who now need to recover the shuttle and the wayward Klingon.

The shuttle is stolen.

This sets up what would be the main focus of the episode’s story – Mariner and Boimler working together on the planet. While I like this story and I felt it finally gave Mariner a few brief moments of actually seeming like a nice character for a change, it was very similar to what we got last week. When I mentioned at the beginning that Envoys would have made a better premiere, this is what I mean. The whole concept of a by-the-book officer and a rebellious officer working together, using their differences to complete an assignment that’s gone wrong works remarkably well, and this could have been a great way to set up the series. Its thunder feels at least a little stolen by being very similar to the Mariner and Boimler story from last week, though.

The two can have a fun dynamic when they’re alone and when Mariner isn’t being too unkind. If we use our Rick & Morty comparison, Boimler is definitely the Morty to Mariner’s Rick, and the way she treats him will clearly be very funny to people who like that kind of humour. Those moments in Rick & Morty are seldom my favourite, though, and as mentioned I don’t think it translates well to Star Trek.

Rick and Morty… oops, I mean Boimler and Mariner.

While they’re left to explore the settlement, which features a variety of Klingons and other aliens, back aboard the Cerritos Rutherford has transferred to the command division. He’s been taken under the wing of the ship’s first officer, Commander Ransom, and on the holodeck Rutherford is put through his paces. This sequence left me in stitches and was perhaps the best in the episode in terms of pure comedy, as poor Rutherford simply can’t get the hang of starship command!

In the first training simulation, Rutherford gets the ship destroyed. Ransom then gives him a simpler assignment – the ship is directly in the path of a small asteroid. This should be super easy to avoid, but Rutherford again messes up and gets the ship’s school and kindergarten destroyed. If you haven’t seen it you’ll just have to watch it, because the way the scene unfolds is absolutely hilarious, and everything from the way the holo-characters deliver their lines to Rutherford and Ransom’s reactions to his mistakes were just pitch-perfect.

Rutherford gets a turn in the (simulated) captain’s chair.

On the planet’s surface, Mariner and Boimler are still on the tail of the Klingon general. While Mariner stops to go to the bathroom, Boimler gets hit on by an attractive woman. Of course it turns out to be a creepy alien who wanted to use Boimler to incubate her eggs, and Mariner is able to save the day. Were she not such an insufferable character by this point, I’d have been more impressed with her knowledge of different kinds of alien races and her “street smarts” – for want of a better term.

Rutherford’s next assignment is in sickbay, where he gets to work alongside Tendi for a brief moment. The ship’s Catian doctor, Dr T’Ana, is impressed with his anatomical work – he compares it to working on a starship. She then gives him a relatively simple task, to keep a wounded officer calm. But of course he manages to mess this up, causing the man to panic and make things worse! This was another very funny scene, and Rutherford has provided much of the episode’s comedy so far.

Dr T’Ana, Rutherford, and Tendi with a patient in sickbay.

After being kicked out of sickbay by the grouchy Dr T’Ana, Rutherford tries his hand at security. He’s thrown into a simulated battle against a number of Borg drones, and is able to defeat them all thanks to his cybernetic implant. This greatly impresses the security chief, the Bajoran Lieutenant Shaxs. This scene wasn’t as funny as the others, but Rutherford’s genial nature contrasted with Shaxs’ description of him as a natural born killer did win a chuckle.

Boimler and Mariner have reached an Andorian settlement or district back on the planet’s surface, and are getting closer to locating the Klingon and shuttle. During their time here, we get to see a slightly different side to Mariner, which I think has started to show her in a better light. It’s not that she doesn’t care about anything, just that she’s very selfish, arrogant, and puts herself first. Which is an improvement. I guess.

Boimler and Mariner in the Andorian settlement.

Tendi is the character who got the short straw this week, I think. Rutherford got his very funny B-story about trying out the various departments, and Mariner and Boimler got their mission to the planet, but Tendi really hasn’t had much to do at all, besides being excited to see the pulsar. Though after she spent last week basically just saying “wow” to everything, even that was an improvement. However, I’d like to see her have a proper story of her own – and I’m sure she will in an upcoming episode.

In the Andorian settlement, Boimler starts a bar fight by being too quick to step in with his phaser when he sees a group of Andorians hassling someone. It turns out that they were trying to stop a changeling – presumably not a Founder, as other shapeshifters exist – and upsets them. Mariner steps in and saves the day, leaving Boimler dejected at how bad his mission is going.

Boimler with his phaser.

This moment was perhaps the first time in the series that the “book smart vs. street smarts” dynamic between Boimler and Mariner genuinely seemed to work. Boilmer thought he was doing the right thing, upholding Starfleet values. But he learned a valuable lesson – that he can’t learn everything there is to know about being a good officer from textbooks. Mariner’s experience proved invaluable to completing this part of his assignment (even though her lack of care put him in the position to begin with).

We also get to see Mariner properly take on the role of mentor that she promised at the end of Second Contact, trying to provide some degree of comfort and reassurance to Boimler when he’s at his lowest ebb. And I liked that – I wish we’d seen this side of her character earlier, as she’s far nicer and more enjoyable to watch when she’s not being rude or unkind for the sake of it. Boilmer had thrown down his combadge in a threat to quit Starfleet, but Mariner definitely stepped up to help him here.

Boimler and Mariner after the bar fight.

Lieutenant Shaxs was thrilled with Rutherford’s performance as a security trainee and inaugurates him into the “bears” – the nickname for the Cerritos’ security team. However, in a cute and funny moment, Rutherford sees his beloved jeffries tube and declines the offer. The security chief, who seemed like he would’ve been angry, instead compliments Rutherford on his decision to be true to himself, and Rutherford returns to engineering.

I enjoyed Rutherford’s story this time. He’s a fun character who loves his job, but was also willing to go above and beyond for his friend just so they could spend more time hanging out. Where Tendi seems to perhaps have some kind of feelings for him, I got the sense that Rutherford’s interest in her is – at least at this stage – platonic. But I could be wrong; the show could easily make them a couple at some stage.

Rutherford’s beloved jeffries tube.

Boimler and Mariner finally have a lead on the Klingon general and the missing shuttle, and are on their way. There should be just enough time to sort everything out before the Klingon is missed at his scheduled peace conference. They’re stopped by a Ferengi en route, and he seems to be trying to mug them.

In what was a clear setup, Mariner pretends to naïvely go along with his demands, allowing Boimler to step in and “save” her from the devious Ferengi. I think – and I could be wrong – that this is the first Ferengi we’ve seen in Star Trek since their sole appearance in Enterprise in the early 2000s. There was a Ferengi emblem glimpsed briefly in Star Trek: Picard, but I think this is the first Ferengi character to make a proper appearance since then. Given that we got to know a lot about them from their appearances in Deep Space Nine in particular, it was nice to see a Ferengi back.

The Ferengi.

After “escaping” from the Ferengi, Boimler and Mariner find the Klingon general passed out in the shuttle – which had accrued several parking tickets in what felt like an homage to The Simpsons episode where Homer’s car gets lots of tickets in New York! I liked that silly little visual gag; it was very funny even if it wasn’t a reference to The Simpsons.

Boimler got a much-needed win from their encounter with the Ferengi – though he’s a very sore winner, which is not an attractive character trait – and there was just enough time to deliver the general to his peace conference and get the shuttle back to the ship. Despite the mission going off the rails, the pair managed to salvage things right at the end!

The shuttle has been ticketed!

Back aboard the Cerritos, Boimler brags about his “win” against the Ferengi at Mariner’s expense, which I didn’t really like. It was clear, of course, that she was just going along with it to boost his confidence; moments later, after leaving the bar, she speaks to the Ferengi confirming that the two of them are friends and the whole thing was a setup. What I liked about it was that it was a very “Mariner” way to help out. She stayed true to her character, but was able to use her skills to help Boimler for a change.

The episode ends with Tendi and Rutherford in the jeffries tube. Tendi got her wish of watching the pulsar with Rutherford – albeit on a padd screen – and Rutherford got his wish of being back in the engineering department, crawling through the tubes. All in all, a happy ending.

Tendi and Rutherford in the jeffries tube.

So that was Envoys. An episode which started very weakly ended up being better than last week’s offering. We got to see some heart underneath Mariner’s carefree exterior, which will be important if she’s to become a protagonist worth rooting for. I felt that her conduct in the opening scene was perhaps the low point out of her two appearances so far, but the way she helped out Boimler when they were together on the planet went a long way to making up for it.

The breakout star of Envoys for me, though, was Rutherford. He has such a positive attitude to his work and to his friends, and he just seems like an all-round nice guy. Not to mention that his story provided much of the humour in the episode – or at least, much of the humour that worked best for me. Lower Decks still has a very distinct style and sense of humour that won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I’d encourage anyone disappointed or put off by last week’s offering to give it a second chance.

Mariner and her Klingon friend annoy Boimler.

I don’t think there’s much more to say. Lower Decks remains a very interesting project in the Star Trek franchise, and I’m curious to see how well it’s performing with viewers. So far I haven’t heard anything about that. I always want Star Trek projects to be successful, and of all of the projects in recent years, Lower Decks has the most potential to bring in a new and different kind of fan. Hopefully that’s starting to happen, because the greater success the franchise enjoys, the more Star Trek we’ll get to see in future.

After feeling a little trepidation in the run-up to this week’s episode after having mixed feelings last time, I can now say with confidence that I’m genuinely looking forward to next week. Roll on episode 3: Temporal Edict!

Star Trek: Lower Decks is available to stream now on CBS All Access if you’re fortunate enough to live in the United States. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Lower Decks – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Picard Season 1 theory roundup!

Star Trek: Picard Season 1 theory roundup!

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the entirety of Star Trek: Picard Season 1, including its ending. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Star Trek: Picard’s first season wrapped up at the end of March – and it feels like forever ago, what with everything that’s happened in the world since! While the season was running, in addition to reviewing each of the episodes in turn I also concocted a number of different theories for what was going on in the show. Star Trek: Picard very carefully set up a number of mysteries, and even heading into the second half of the finale, it wasn’t clear exactly how they would be resolved.

I’d argue that the first season’s two-part finale wasn’t the show at its best, and it felt as though a season which started incredibly strongly ended up stumbling a little as it crossed the finish line. There were a number of reasons for this – which I covered at the time – but it boils down to some of the show’s mysteries not being fully explained, and some storylines being dropped or left unresolved. That and the truly awful gold makeup used for the synths on Coppelius!

Yikes.

If you’d like to read all of my theories from Star Trek: Picard Season 1, you can find them on my dedicated Star Trek: Picard page. Click or tap here to be taken there!

This time, what I’d like to do is take a look back at some of the theories I postulated while the season was running. I’ll explain why I thought they seemed viable – and why they ended up being total misses! In a way, part of the fun of theory-crafting and speculating is knowing that you won’t always get it right… and boy oh boy did I have some seriously wrong theories!

Number 1:
Dahj and Soji aren’t synthetics, they’re genetically-engineered humans.

Soji in the episode Nepenthe.

This is a theory I first came up with right at the beginning of the series, almost from the very moment Picard begins to suspect that Dahj is synthetic. It seemed like it could’ve been a clever idea for a double-bluff – establishing Dahj and Soji as synths, only to rip that away and challenge both Picard’s and the audience’s expectations. However, it didn’t pan out that way, and looking back, this theory was kind of ridiculous!

Genetic enhancements, similar to those made on characters like Dr Bashir and Khan, could have given Dahj the incredible speed and strength that she possessed in Remembrance, so from that point of view it wasn’t wholly unthinkable. But looking back, while Star Trek: Picard did aim to be a show that kept us guessing and didn’t telegraph every aspect of its storyline, this kind of subversion of expectations would have been a step too far. We didn’t know anything about Dahj or Soji at the beginning of the series, and to take the one established fact about them and make it a lie or a misunderstanding would have been a storytelling mistake.

Dahj during her fight against Zhat Vash operatives in Remembrance.

There was also plenty of evidence that Dahj and Soji were synthetic: Picard’s meeting with Dr Jurati, Narek’s interest in Soji, and the strong connection Picard felt to Dahj (and later to Soji) because of his friendship with Data. All of that would have made no sense in the story if we’d ended up dealing with genetically-enhanced humans!

I brought this theory back after episode 3, The End is the Beginning, based on a line spoken by one of the Romulans who attempted to assassinate Picard: “she’s not what you think she is!” This of course referred to Soji, and it struck me that, as Picard and his comrades believed Soji to be a synth, perhaps the Romulan knew that she was not. However, as the story progressed it became abundantly clear that Soji and Dahj were the synthetics that the story established them to be, and that I was barking up the wrong tree with this one!

Number 2:
Section 31 will make an appearance in the show.

A black Section 31 combadge from Star Trek: Discovery.

This theory was crafted not so much because of anything that directly happened in the plot of the show, but rather for production reasons. In short, the Star Trek timeline is seriously fractured, with shows being produced simultaneously occupying very different timeframes. When Discovery’s third season kicks off in a few weeks time, there will be four shows occupying four time periods. This complicates the franchise, and what that means is that some threads of continuity would be very helpful, especially for casual viewers.

Section 31 featured heavily in Discovery’s second season, and in addition, a spin-off based on the organisation is currently being worked on. It seemed logical that Star Trek: Picard might want to find some way of incorporating Section 31 if for no other reason than having one of those threads of continuity running through the franchise, tying things loosely together and being a frame of reference for casual viewers.

My first thought for a potential Section 31 appearance was that they could’ve been responsible for the attack on Mars and the destruction of Picard’s armada. I theorised they might have taken such aggressive action to prevent the Federation giving aid to the Romulans. This was extended to include Section 31 hacking the Mars synths as part of this plan.

F8’s eyes during a flashback sequence that depicted the hack.

I next had two potential Section 31 operatives pegged – Chris Rios and Seven of Nine. Rios because he worked aboard a Starfleet ship that was “erased” from the records, and Seven of Nine because it wasn’t clear who she worked for or why she was following Picard.

Finally, as these other theories fell by the wayside, I speculated that Section 31 may have arrived to take control of the Artifact after it was abandoned by the Romulans and later crashed on Coppelius. While I suppose you could argue that might yet happen, it didn’t happen in Season 1, and thus any real benefit of the organisation crossing over from a behind-the-scenes perspective was lost.

I maintain that this theory makes a lot of sense from a production perspective, and my final idea in particular – Section 31 taking control of the Artifact to study it – could have been accomplished without making any changes whatsoever to the season’s storyline. However, it didn’t happen!

Number 3:
Soji’s Trill friend will end up getting assimilated or killed.

Soji with Dr Kunamadéstifee in Maps and Legends.

Episode 2, Maps and Legends, introduced a Trill doctor working aboard the Artifact along with Soji. She ultimately only appeared in one sequence, but that sequence seemed to contain a lot of horror film-style foreshadowing, and for weeks I was insistent that we’d see this character meet an unpleasant end! Aboard a Borg cube – even a disabled one – the most likely way that would manifest would’ve been her assimiliation.

After Soji helped Dr Kunamadéstifee with her uniform, the two stood together while they listened to a speech from one of the Artifact’s Romulan guards. He stated that the area they were about to enter was incredibly dangerous, and a nearby sign seemed to reinforce the possibility of assimilation by counting the days since it had last happened. This seemed as thought it could tie in with Soji working on de-assimilating Borg drones; was she about to see her friend end up on her operating table?

Dr Kunamadéstifee again.

It turned out, of course, that I was reading too much into one side character and one short sequence, because not only didn’t Dr Kunamadéstifee end up assimilated, she was never seen again after Maps and Legends, which was a shame because she seemed like a potentially interesting character. Soji spent much of her time from episodes 2-6 with Narek, and giving her someone else to interact with was a good idea. My theory was that their friendship may have built up a little more, leading to shock and sadness for Soji upon learning of Dr Kunamadéstifee’s fate.

I suppose in theory we could say that it’s unlikely that she survived the various disasters which befell the Artifact, from Narissa executing huge numbers of ex-Borg to the ship crashing on Coppelius, but nothing was ever seen on screen to even hint at her fate.

Number 4:
Commodore Oh is a synthetic.

Commodore Oh in the episode Broken Pieces.

As with Soji and Dahj being human, this was kind of an “out there” theory! But the whole point of theory crafting is to make wild guesses sometimes, and there were a couple of reasons why I considered this a possibility. First of all, it would have been thoroughly unexpected and shocking. Many recent films, games, and television series have tried to pull off genuinely unexpected twists, and had this been true, it would have been one heck of a shock!

Secondly, the premise of Star Trek: Picard’s first season had been the cloak-and-dagger factions vying to thwart or create synthetic life. The Zhat Vash and the Tal Shiar were on one side, Maddox and his team on the other. There were rogue traders, Romulans, ex-Borg, and all sorts of shadowy figures involved – any one of whom could have not been what they seemed. The show crafted mysteries for us to examine. As we learned more about the Zhat Vash and their mission, I began to wonder if they could have been infiltrated by someone who wanted to stop them harming synths. This later evolved into wondering if they’d been infiltrated by someone who wanted to bring about the very disaster they sought to prevent.

Commodore Oh on the bridge of her ship.

Dahj and Soji were both unaware of their true synthetic natures, which built on past iterations of Star Trek that showed synths can be programmed to not realise they’re synths. Commodore Oh could have genuinely believed in the Zhat Vash cause – but been programmed to “activate” at the opportune moment. We later learned that the Zhat Vash feared the arrival of a faction of super-synths that I dubbed the “Mass Effect Reapers” (because they were very similar to that video game faction) and I incorporated that into this theory, suggesting that Commodore Oh may be working for the “Mass Effect Reapers” to try and bring about their arrival.

Of course it was a complete bust! Commodore Oh was a Zhat Vash operative to the core, and as far as we know, wholly organic in nature! I still think she’s a fascinating character, and I wrote an article a few months back looking at her place in the Star Trek timeline. You can find it by clicking or tapping here.

Number 5:
Picard telling everyone that their enemies are the Tal Shiar – and not the Zhat Vash – will have consequences.

A Zhat Vash operative.

One thing that Star Trek: Picard didn’t do particularly well, in my opinion, was staying consistent in how it referred to its antagonists. In Remembrance, the faction who attacked Picard and Dahj weren’t named, but in Maps and Legends we learned of the existence of the Zhat Vash – an ancient, shadowy organisation which operated within, yet were distinct from, the Tal Shiar.

Yet for several episodes, Picard and others kept referring to their adversaries as the Tal Shiar. In-universe, there’s a certain kind of logic to this. Picard may not have believed fully in the Zhat Vash’s existence, having only heard about them from one source, or he may have felt trying to explain the difference would have been too time consuming and/or made him seem too conspiratorial. However, with practically everything else in the show being done deliberately to achieve certain story payoffs, I wondered whether Picard’s decision not to be up front with his crew might have had repercussions.

Colonel Lovok (or rather, a changeling impersonating him) was a Tal Shiar operative seen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Elnor was the one character who I felt seemed most likely to be affected by the revelation that it was the Zhat Vash, not the Tal Shiar, that he was up against. As a member of the Qowat Milat, Elnor was opposed to the Tal Shiar. But the Qowat Milat’s relationship with the Zhat Vash was unclear; even if they were enemies, the Qowat Milat may have had particular techniques for dealing with them. And at the very least, Elnor and his faction seemed likely to know of their existence.

However, Elnor learned in Nepenthe that he was facing off against the Zhat Vash, not the Tal Shiar, and the revelation seemed to have no impact on him whatsoever. The rest of La Sirena’s crew were equally nonplussed, and there were no consequences at all for the confused terminology – at least, not from an in-universe point of view. I think that, unfortunately, the decision to complicate the terminology around the show’s antagonists may have made it harder to follow for casual viewers. When dealing with made-up names like “Tal Shiar” and “Zhat Vash”, remaining consistent is important for the audience to be able to follow what’s going on.

Number 6:
There’s a Starfleet-Zhat Vash conspiracy.

Admiral Clancy, the commander-in-chief of Starfleet.

In Maps and Legends, we were introduced to Commodore Oh for the first time. It was a great shock to see a high-ranking Starfleet officer involved in Dahj’s murder, and at the time it wasn’t at all clear whether Commodore Oh was a Romulan infiltrator or a Vulcan co-conspirator. If she was a Starfleet officer working with the Zhat Vash, it stood to reason that others in Starfleet were as well – perhaps even senior admirals.

Furthermore, when we learned how Commodore Oh recruited Dr Jurati into the conspiracy – all it took was a brief mind-meld – it seemed plausible that she may have used the same technique on others. Commodore Oh had been embedded in Starfleet for more than sixty years, and in that time there’s no telling how many people she may have interacted with.

Lieutenant Rizzo arrives to meet Commodore Oh.

However, it turned out not to be the case. Admiral Clancy, the head of Starfleet Command, wasn’t compromised, nor were any of the other Starfleet officers and leaders seen or referenced in Season 1. As far as we know – and this could change if future Star Trek projects decide to look at this aspect more deeply – only Commodore Oh and Rizzo were involved within Starfleet, and they were both Zhat Vash operatives.

This is one theory that I’m definitely pleased didn’t pan out. Making Starfleet itself the “bad guys”, even if there were a reason for it, wouldn’t have felt great in a Star Trek series, and would have been a far darker path for the show to have taken. Seeing Riker show up in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 at the head of a Starfleet armada was a beautiful moment (though sadly one that had been telegraphed ahead of time) in large part because it proved that Starfleet and the Federation were still on the right side. The plot to kill the synths and attack Mars was purely a Zhat Vash creation.

Number 7:
The Control AI, from Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, is involved.

A re-used image from Star Trek: Discovery.

Although I initially considered it to be a bit out of left field, the episode Nepenthe really kicked this theory into high gear! My first thought had been that perhaps the reason why the Zhat Vash were so frightened of synthetic life was because they had some involvement with Control, the rogue artificial intelligence from Star Trek: Discovery’s second season. I was convinced – wrongly – that the producers behind the overall Star Trek franchise would have wanted to build a major connection between Discovery and Picard for some of the reasons already discussed, and bringing Control in seemed like a viable option for accomplishing this.

In the episode Nepenthe, we finally got to see how Dr Jurati came to be recruited into the conspiracy – she was shown a vision by Commodore Oh, one that seemed to warn of something apocalyptic. Contained within this vision were a couple of visuals that were made for Star Trek: Discovery – more specifically, they were used to show a vision Michael Burnham and Spock had of the Control AI.

The Control AI commandeered Captain Leland’s body in Star Trek: Discovery.

At the time, I noted that there could be production-side reasons to re-use visual effects, as it was less time-consuming and cheaper than making wholly new CGI. However, for a couple of weeks I really did think that we were going to find some connection between Control and the Zhat Vash; perhaps the Romulans and Federation had been competing in some kind of mid-23rd Century AI arms race, or perhaps while Control was on the loose it had attacked Romulan ships or planets.

In a thematic sense, Star Trek: Picard’s first season and Discovery’s second season share some significant points. Both consider the potential for rogue or out-of-control artificial life, and both look at the consequences of continuing to develop AI – something that we arguably should be concerned about today! But there was no deeper crossover beyond basic themes, and the shows remain almost entirely separate from one another. The re-used visuals are what completely threw me for this one!

Number 8:
The synths on Coppelius are already dead.

A crowd of clearly not dead synths in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.

Star Trek: Picard’s first season had, unfortunately, one rather large plot hole. The driving force for much of the first half of the season was locating and rescuing Bruce Maddox, the Federation cyberneticist who built Soji, Dahj, and many of the other synths. Maddox was on a planet called Freecloud, a place he travelled to when he seemed to have nowhere else to turn. He ended up returning to the dangerous Bjayzl, someone he owed a lot of money to, and was captured. The reason he put himself in such grave danger was because his lab had been destroyed by the Tal Shiar, or so he claimed.

But in the two-part finale, Picard and the crew travelled to Coppelius and saw for themselves that Maddox’s lab hadn’t been destroyed, and the Tal Shiar or the Zhat Vash had never been there. This feels like a pretty major issue, because the question of why Maddox was on Freecloud now has no satisfactory answer. The reason seems to be “because plot”, and that’s never a good thing.

Bruce Maddox only went to Bjayzl because his lab had been destroyed.

However, before the finale I was still trying to square that particular circle. One of the possibilities I came up with was that Maddox was right – his lab had already been destroyed, which could mean that the synths he’d built were already dead. It would have made Narek’s mission kind of a waste of time, as his colleagues had already killed off the synths, not to mention being a rather bleak way to end the season, but it would have fit together with what had already been established.

I don’t think I’d have enjoyed this storyline, which would have left Soji as perhaps the sole survivor of her race. It would have been very dark, and would have felt like a victory for the show’s antagonists. But at the time, I was scrambling around looking for ways to make the story of the first half of the season – culminating in Maddox’s statement to Bjayzl about his lab being destroyed – fit with the second half of the season and the revelation of the existence of more synths.

Number 9:
The captain of the USS Ibn Majid is a character from a past Star Trek show.

Harry Kim could’ve been a starship captain in this time period.

This was a pretty simple theory by my standards. When we learned that Rios had served aboard a ship called the USS Ibn Majid, which was destroyed and covered up, I began to wonder who might’ve been in command of the vessel. Rios was clearly very attached to his former captain, and I wasn’t sure if we might’ve seen – in flashback form – this character make an appearance.

From Rios’ initial comments about the character – that they were dead, male, and “heroic” – I put together a shortlist based on possible characters from past Star Trek shows who could conceivably have been starship captains in that era. I ruled out those who seemed to have no desire to sit in the captain’s chair, like Dr Bashir or Tom Paris, and obviously ruled out those who wouldn’t be eligible like Chief O’Brien. Finally, Zhaban had mentioned that La Forge and Worf were still alive, so they were out too. That left a handful of characters, including Chakotay and Harry Kim, both from Voyager. I also suggested Edward Jellico from The Next Generation two-parter Chain of Command, Solok from the Deep Space Nine episode Take Me Out to the Holosuite, and Captain Bateson from The Next Generation Season 5 episode Cause and Effect.

Solok, the Vulcan captain of the USS T’Kumbra.

There were other possibilities – most of which were minor characters who made only one or two appearances in Star Trek – and there were many male officers who could, in theory, have made the cut. I liked this idea simply for the sake of continuity, as having the Ibn Majid’s captain be someone we already knew seemed like an interesting concept.

With Bruce Maddox, Hugh, and Icheb all killed off in Star Trek: Picard’s first season, it was clear that the producers has no qualms about getting rid of legacy characters! That fact also contributed to making this theory plausible. Past iterations of Star Trek has been reluctant to kill off main characters, but Star Trek: Picard did so several times. However, none of this came to pass, and instead a new character – Captain Alonso Vandermeer – was created for the show, and was only seen briefly in a photograph.

Number 10:
Narek will go rogue.

Narek in Broken Pieces after trying to kill Soji.

Narek was a unique character, not only in Star Trek: Picard but in the whole franchise. Never before had an out-and-out villain been a main character, with their name in the opening titles. Narek was also an interesting and nuanced character in a season where – most of the time – the villains could feel flat and one-dimensional. I’m still disappointed that his storyline was unceremoniously dumped midway through the season finale; we didn’t even learn what became of him after Picard’s “death”.

But that’s somewhat beside the point. From as early as the third episode, I began speculating that somehow, Narek would be convinced to abandon his mission and join with Soji and Picard. His clear feelings for Soji seemed to offer a route for him to make this happen, but even if the show didn’t go for the “spy falls in love with his target” trope, there were other ways it could’ve happened. Narek seemed like a reasonable man; if it were demonstrated to him that the synths were not a threat, it seemed at least plausible that he might’ve switched sides.

Narek’s final appearance.

However, as of the last time we saw him – before he just dropped of the face of the series with no conclusion to his story – he was still 100% committed to the Zhat Vash cause. In fact, he never wavered. His attempt to kill Soji may have caused him great distress, but that didn’t stop him going ahead with his mission; he didn’t even hesitate.

I actually like that Narek was unpredictable, and as a whole I like that the show set up what looked to be a familiar trope – the spy with a heart of gold who switches sides for the girl he loves – only to say that actually, Narek was still committed to his cause and his mission. However, it’s a shame that this never really got a proper payoff, as Narek disappeared. His character arc feels incomplete, and as I’m fairly confident he won’t be returning for the show’s second season, we may never learn what happened to him after the events on Coppelius.

So that’s it!

A handful of my theories for Star Trek: Picard Season 1 that never came to pass! I did manage to successfully predict a handful of (more obvious) plot points across the first season, so my theories didn’t all fail as hard as those listed above. The important thing, though, was that I had fun doing this. Thinking about the series and writing up the theories was really enjoyable at the time, and it’s something I hope to do with Discovery later in the year – at least, provided it has suitable theory-crafting material to work with!

Jean-Luc Picard will return for Season 2!

The important thing when considering fan theories is to remember that they’re just guesses and speculation. The showrunners, writers, and producers are the ones who craft the story, and they’re the ones who get the final say on how it’s going to pan out. Getting overly attached to any one theory – no matter how much we like it or how plausible it seems – really just means we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. I could point to many projects in recent years which have suffered as a result of this, but all I really want to say is that, for those of you who followed my theories during Star Trek: Picard Season 1, I hope that I didn’t cause you any disappointment or frustration when I was wrong. At the end of the day, this is supposed to be fun and an excuse to spend more time in the Star Trek galaxy. Let’s all try to take fan theories with an extra-large pinch of salt!

Star Trek: Lower Decks is currently airing its first season – the second of three Star Trek projects in 2020. For all the problems that this year has thrown at us, having three different Star Trek shows to enjoy has been a blessing. If you missed it, I’ve reviewed the first episode of Lower Decks and I’ll soon be taking a look at episode 2, which will be available to watch (at least for viewers in the US and Canada) later today. And as mentioned I’ll be looking at Discovery when that airs in October. There’s no word on when exactly we can expect to see Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard. It has an optimistic release date of 2021, but given that California is still largely locked down and filming has yet to begin, I wouldn’t be surprised if that slips back. Regardless, whenever we get it I’ll be taking a look at the episodes and probably crafting a bunch more theories!

Star Trek: Picard Season 1 is available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Halo Infinite’s delay doesn’t matter at all for the Xbox Series X

Halo Infinite’s delay doesn’t matter at all for the Xbox Series X

Dennis

The blogosphere and the gaming world have been aflame today, following the announcement that Halo Infinite has been delayed. 343 Industries – the studio which acquired the Halo brand when original developer Bungie left the series a decade ago – made the announcement earlier, and it’s significant because the new game will no longer launch alongside the Xbox Series X. Well, unless that gets delayed too!

The general consensus is that this announcement is the worst possible news for the Xbox Series X and could ruin its launch. But will it?

I don’t think the Halo Infinite delay will prove to be all that significant for one major reason: the Xbox Series X was going to have an underwhelming launch anyway. The hardest of the hardcore Xbox fanatics will buy a console, and perhaps a few well-meaning aunties and grandpas will buy one for their relatives for Christmas, but the console most gamers are interested in and excited for is the PlayStation 5. And I’m not saying that as a PlayStation fanboy – for the longest time I was an Xbox guy. It’s just the reality of where most console gamers are right now.

A scene from the recent Halo Infinite trailer.

Microsoft – as I’ve noted several times already – has made the incomprehensible decision to launch the Xbox Series X with literally no exclusive games. Not even one. Halo Infinite is also scheduled for a release on Xbox One and PC, as are a number of other first- and third-party titles that Microsoft has shown off. The arguments in favour of buying an Xbox Series X this year were already nonexistent, so removing one non-exclusive game from its launch lineup will have no material impact on sales. I can practically guarantee that.

With all of the issues that are stacking up right now – including those of Microsoft’s own making – I’d argue there’s a pretty solid case for delaying the console’s launch until next year. In the current economic climate, I’m already expecting that fewer people than usual will be interested in a brand-new console for the inevitable £400+ price tag, and many fans – even those who are genuinely interested to play some next-gen games – may have no choice but to wait it out.

If the Xbox Series X launches alongside the PlayStation 5, all it will do is draw unfavourable comparisons. The lack of exclusive titles is a large part of that, and it’s not inconceivable to think that there could be hundreds of thousands of unsold units sitting on shelves or in warehouses come January. It feels like it’s going to be an expensive flop, and while it may eventually build up a solid user base a few years down the line, the Xbox Series X is already lining up to be the upcoming generation’s second- or even third-tier machine.

The upcoming Xbox Series X.

The Halo Infinite delay will upset some Halo diehards who were excited to see their favourite franchise get a new release for the first time in over five years. But in terms of the launch of the new console – where it wasn’t a system exclusive – it’s genuinely hard to see how it will have any impact whatsoever.

When considering the more general issue of game delays – and, incidentally, delays in other entertainment media as well – I’m all in favour of them. How many titles have been released just in the last few years that would have benefited massively from some additional development time? I can think of many, such as: Anthem, Fallout 76, Mass Effect: Andromeda, No Man’s Sky, 2013’s Star Trek, and WWE 2K20. All of these games released to negative reviews and underwhelming sales, so from that point of view, I fully support the delay to Halo Infinite – and to any other upcoming title that needs it.

I think Mass Effect: Andromeda is a good example of how to screw up a launch, and a great comparison to Halo Infinite. The Mass Effect series was already tarnished by the ending of Mass Effect 3, and was relying on Andromeda to be a semi-reboot of the series. Similarly, the Halo series has been experiencing gradually declining reviews, and while there isn’t one moment fans can point to on a par with Mass Effect 3′s ending that really upset the fanbase, there’s a sense that the series isn’t as good as it once was. Halo Infinite has billed itself as a soft reboot, aiming to return Halo to its roots and put some recent disappointments behind it.

Mass Effect: Andromeda launched in a broken, glitch-riddled state.

When Mass Effect: Andromeda launched, it was a bug-riddled mess. It was mocked online, and the mockery and memes hurt its sales far more than the mediocre reviews the game received. Halo Infinite has already seen its trailer come under heavy criticism for its visuals, which many felt look decidedly current-gen – an odd criticism for a game that literally is a current-gen game as it will be released on Xbox One, but that’s beside the point. If Halo Infinite were to release later this year in its current form, it would have undoubtedly drawn criticism on a scale similar to Mass Effect: Andromeda. And that game killed the Mass Effect series, which was “put on hiatus” in the aftermath of its disappointing launch and underwhelming sales.

It’s clear that 343 Industries and Microsoft feel that Halo Infinite needs more development time to work on the issues it currently faces. And to them I say: take all the time you need. I’d rather wait a little longer for a better, more polished game than play a rushed, broken mess.

Another moment from the Halo Infinite trailer.

But I don’t agree that it will damage the reputation or sales performance of the Xbox Series X. That’s not because the game doesn’t matter to that console – the Halo series is one of Xbox’s few strong selling points, after all – but because behind-the-scenes business decisions have already condemned the Xbox Series X to second place behind the PlayStation 5. In fact if I were advising Microsoft, I’d ask them if they wanted to take this opportunity to delay the console as well.

Flip the issue on its head, and let’s think about it this way around: would Halo Infinite have been a massive help to the Xbox Series X at launch? Because that’s the fundamental assumption people are making when they say its delay will hurt the console, and from where I’m sitting that doesn’t feel true. If I don’t own an Xbox or a PC and – for some reason – have a desperate need to play Halo Infinite, my best bet is to pick up a cheap Xbox One S or a preowned Xbox One from 2013 and play it there. I don’t need to buy an expensive Xbox Series X to play a game that I could play on a console that costs less than half the price. And if I’m already an Xbox One owner, I’m in no rush to upgrade because every Xbox Series X game is coming my way, including Halo Infinite.

So at the end of the day, Halo Infinite’s delay should be good for the quality of the finished title. I’m all in favour of that. And it won’t have any material impact on the launch of the Xbox Series X – because that console is destined for a seriously disappointing launch anyway.

Halo Infinite is the copyright of 343 Industries and Xbox Game Studios. The Xbox Series X and Xbox One consoles are the property of Microsoft. Header image and Mass Effect: Andromeda promo screenshot courtesy of press kits on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten of the best games… that I’ve never played!

Ten of the best games… that I’ve never played!

Dennis

After Star Trek, gaming and the games industry is probably the subject I write about most here on the website. I used to work in the games industry as regular readers will recall, and I’ve enjoyed the hobby for decades – though I spend less time playing these days for a number of reasons. However, with decades of gaming under my belt, and time spent on the inside, I like to think I can write about the subject from a unique perspective and perhaps even with some degree of authority. So let’s completely ruin that by looking at some of the biggest games and game franchises that I’ve never even played!

The entries on this list are games (and franchises) that I’ve heard almost universal praise for; these titles are undeniably good. However, for a variety of reasons I simply haven’t got around to playing them, or they seemed like “not my thing” so I never gave them a try. I’ll make an attempt to justify myself… but I’m sure you’ll agree that this seriously harms my “gamer” pedigree! There shouldn’t be any major spoilers because these are games I haven’t played, but we will be discussing some details. If there’s a title you want to avoid even the slightest chance of spoilers for, it may be safer to skip that entry and move on to the next.

Here comes the disclaimer: just because I’m not interested in these titles or haven’t played them doesn’t mean I’m saying that they’re bad. Look at the title of this list! These games are generally held in very high regard, so if one of your favourites is here and I’m being negative about it, please try not to take it personally. Our experiences are all subjective; we all enjoy different things. And that’s great!

So without further ado, let’s look at the list!

Number 1: The Pokémon series (1996-present)

When I was still at school in the late ’90s, Pokémon cards became a short-lived craze among some of the younger kids. I considered myself “too grown-up” for a silly card game like that, which was a pretty typical attitude among my teenage friends at the time! I did, however, receive a pack of the cards as a gift at one point – and promptly gave them away to someone I knew who was collecting them.

I also didn’t own a Game Boy at the time – though in those days they were available to rent! Do you remember going to a rental shop and literally checking out a whole console? But because I didn’t own a Game Boy – and could afford to rent one so infrequently – I never got around to trying out the first entry in the series. Since then, there have been eighteen mainline Pokémon games across eight “generations” that have come out on six systems, and a number of spin-off titles too, including Pokémon Go, which seemed to take the world by storm in 2016.

And I’ve managed to avoid playing any of them! Japanese-style RPGs aren’t my favourite kind of games usually – particularly due to their style of combat – and combined with Pokémon’s youthful style and seemingly ever-growing list of critters, it’s something that’s never seemed like “my thing”. The increasing number of creatures in particular feels a little daunting at this point, and the series has developed a lore over the course of almost a quarter of a century that spans not only the games but a long-running animated series as well. At this point, even if I were interested in the series, I wouldn’t know where to start!

Number 2: Practically every arcade game!

I grew up in a rural community, and none of the small towns in this part of the world had arcades, not even during the height of their popularity in the ’80s. The closest I got was a small “penny arcade” in a seaside town which had a couple of video games alongside claw machines, slot machines, and pool tables. On the odd occasion that I’d get to go to bigger cities in my youth, visiting a video arcade was never a high priority.

As such, I’ve only ever played a handful of arcade games, and even then not many times and not for very long. The one I can remember playing most is 1994’s Sega Rally Championship, which I was fortunate enough to play a few times when I lived overseas. But I missed out on the arcade experience that many gamers of my generation had, and I’ve never played the arcade version of titles like Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Out Run, the Star Wars arcade titles, or Space Harrier. The closest I got to playing Space Harrier in an arcade was in Shenmue on the Dreamcast! Though this entry might seem like kind of a cheat for this list since I have technically played many of these games when they were ported to consoles or via emulators, the experience isn’t the same.

Because of my health, I’m no longer in a position where I can travel very far, nor would I be able to really use an arcade machine for any length of time (unless I could do so from a seated position). So unfortunately it looks like I’ll never really be able to have that arcade experience.

Number 3: Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)

So far we’ve looked at games I wasn’t interested in and games that were generally unavailable to me. Red Dead Redemption 2 is in neither of these categories. I could have played it upon its 2018 release on PlayStation 4, or after its 2019 PC release on my computer, yet despite being interested in its historical setting, I simply haven’t got around to doing so – at least, not yet.

As a history buff, a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 should be exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for. It ticks almost all of the boxes for things I’d enjoy – a single-player game with a detailed story, an open world with lots to do, and a fun historical setting. American history is one of my favourite fields of study (despite not being American), so there’s really no excuse for not playing this game, right? The only real drawback is that it’s a sequel (technically a prequel, despite the somewhat confusing numbering) and I’m not usually someone who likes to jump into a series that’s already in progress.

I’ve been interested in Red Dead Redemption 2 since it was released, for all of the reasons listed above, yet I just haven’t got around to picking up a copy yet. I think if I’d seen it discounted I might’ve, but on Steam during the recent summer sale event it was only 20% off, which still left it priced at over £40. I don’t have a huge budget for games, so that’s definitely one reason why I haven’t picked it up yet. Unlike some of the other entries on this list, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game I absolutely plan to get around to playing… one of these days!

Number 4: The Dark Souls series (2011-2016)

This entry could really be expanded to encompass a number of other titles besides the three main Dark Souls games which fall into that new pseudo-genre inspired by the series. “Souls-like” games are notorious for their high difficulty, and the three Dark Souls games pioneered and epitomise that. I respect people who play games for the challenge, and I’m sure it must be very rewarding to finally overcome a difficult level or boss after numerous attempts. However, I’m not that kind of gamer!

If you read my playthrough of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, you’ll recall I played on the easiest difficulty setting. I usually do this where possible, because in single-player titles I’m more interested in an engaging story than a challenge. The Dark Souls series deliberately doesn’t offer lower difficulty options, which is an artistic decision that I respect; I’m not going to argue that the game should go out of its way to accommodate players like myself. However, it means that it’s a series I have no interest in playing.

I’m not the world’s best gamer. Completing Jedi: Fallen Order and The Last of Us Part II on their lowest difficulty settings have been two of my big gaming accomplishments of 2020, and perhaps the most challenging games I’ve played have been rounds of Fall Guys! But I’m not really someone who seeks out a challenge. I don’t have the skill to be a top-tier gamer, nor the patience to play one game over and over and over again to “git gud”. If Dark Souls seemed like it had a genuinely interesting story underneath the difficulty, perhaps I’d be willing to try. But everything I’ve seen from the series looks like an incredibly generic fantasy world with hack-and-slash gameplay, so I don’t think I’ll be convinced to give it a try any time soon.

Number 5: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (2016) and Fortnite Battle Royale (2017)

I’m not really into competitive online gaming, at least not unless a title offers something genuinely different. Fall Guys, which I mentioned above, does fall into that category, but PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite really don’t. Both titles are in the action/shooter genre, and if I wanted to play a game like that I could choose from myriad single-player offline titles.

However, in both cases I have a great respect for what the games bring to the table. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds didn’t exactly create the battle royale genre, but it certainly elevated and refined it, and Fortnite is a phenomenon that the gaming world hadn’t seen since Minecraft. Both titles brought millions of new people into gaming as a hobby and helped the medium grow to the point where it’s wholly mainstream. I’ve touched on this topic before, but when I was younger, gaming wasn’t exactly a niche but it was certainly a nerdy, geeky hobby to be associated with, shunned by adults and self-proclaimed cool kids. The rise of titles like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite – and their ubiquity on practically every platform from consoles to phones – has meant the video gaming hobby has expanded far more than I would have ever thought possible a few years ago.

That doesn’t mean, however, that I’ll be tempted to try either of these games any time soon.

Number 6: World of Warcraft (2004)

Earlier, I criticised the Dark Souls series for feeling very generic and uninteresting in its fantasy setting. The same simply cannot be said of World of Warcraft, the title which arguably defined the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) genre. It has a rich lore and a deeply detailed, painstakingly crafted world, all of which has been built up over more than fifteen years with updates, patches, and expansions massively improving the game in that time.

From my perspective, World of Warcraft falls down simply because of its online nature. I just don’t enjoy playing with other people in this kind of always-online environment, and I find that interacting with other people is immersion-breaking. In a fantasy world, I need that sense of immersion to enjoy myself and have a good time, and as I said in the previous entry on this list, there are many single-player titles which offer something similar.

The longest I’ve ever stuck with an MMORPG was Star Trek Online, which attracted me for obvious reasons! However, even being set in my favourite fictional galaxy and having some enjoyable story missions couldn’t overcome the issues I have with this kind of game, and after struggling on with it for a while, I eventually stopped playing.

Number 7: The Final Fantasy series (1987-present)

As I mentioned when talking about Pokémon, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Japanese-style roleplaying games. The combat in particular is something I find offputting, not because it’s bad but there’s something about its slower, turn-based nature that I tend to feel doesn’t gel with an action-oriented title. The Final Fantasy games have always had this style of gameplay, which is one reason I’ve never been all that interested.

The second major reason why I’ve never jumped in is that the Final Fantasy series is complicated. There are sixteen “main” games (counting Final Fantasy XIV twice as it has an online and offline version), as well as dozens of other titles (perhaps as many as fifty if you consider mobile games and spin-offs). There are also films and other associated media, making the series quite daunting to get started with. While I gather many of the games are semi-standalone titles, there is a lot of background and lore that connects them and keeps the series intact. Maybe that’s a bad reason not to jump in, but coupled with the style of gameplay being something I generally don’t enjoy, it’s enough to be offputting.

Though I have owned several of the consoles that Final Fantasy titles released on – like the SNES – many of the most well-received entries in the series are or were PlayStation exclusives. As someone who didn’t own a PlayStation until the dying days of the PlayStation 3 (which I bought so I could play The Last of Us) I didn’t have access to most of the games released between the mid-90s and the mid-2000s.

Number 8: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)

The SNES was the first home console that I owned, but for many of the same reasons given above regarding my general dislike for Japanese-style RPGs, I didn’t play the only Zelda title released on that system: A Link to the Past. Nor did I play the Zelda titles on the Nintendo 64, Wii, DS, 3DS, or any other Nintendo console I’ve owned in the years since. I wouldn’t say I’ve deliberately shunned the Zelda series; it’s more a case of having other priorities and putting my money elsewhere.

I must be practically the only Nintendo Switch owner to have not played Breath of the Wild, as the game has been one of the system’s best-selling titles since it launched in 2017. Though I have been tempted to pick up a copy, especially if I could find it pre-owned or at a discount, I simply haven’t got around to it yet, as I’ve had other games I’m more interested in playing.

Number 9: Super Mario Galaxy (2007) and Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010)

Ever since I received Super Mario 64 for Christmas in 1997, I’ve been a huge fan of Mario’s 3D adventures. I was even lucky enough to play through Super Mario Sunshine on a friend’s GameCube as I didn’t own the console for myself. Yet I skipped the two 3D Mario titles that were released on the Wii.

The Wii had one of the best Mario titles ever in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and I had great fun playing that game. But the two Mario Galaxy titles didn’t hold much appeal, mostly due to the level design, which consists of a number of spherical planets and asteroids to navigate. I found those environments looked incredibly confusing, and the Wii’s motion controls seemed like they would make that worse. With so many other titles to play on the Wii, which was a fantastic console that had a great library of games, I kept putting off playing Super Mario Galaxy. When a sequel came out I put that to the back of the queue as well, and I’ve just not got around to picking up either game.

I think I still have my Wii in the attic, so perhaps one day I need to get it out, dust it off, and finally pick up one or both of these games. In 2018 I had a great time with Super Mario Odyssey, so it’s clear that my enjoyment of 3D Mario titles hasn’t waned at all!

Number 10: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

A couple of years ago I set out to play the famed Witcher series. Not wanting to begin with the third entry, I started with the first game – but I had a hard time getting into it and haven’t picked it up since. It wasn’t the world, the lore, or the story that I found offputting, but rather the mouse-and-keyboard controls. I’m so used to playing most action/adventure titles with a control pad these days that it was a bit of a jolt, and I’m surprised that a game from as recently as 2007 didn’t have any controller support on PC!

As a result, I didn’t get into the series and haven’t got to its incredibly popular and critically-acclaimed third entry yet. The Witcher 3 is many people’s pick for game of the decade or game of the generation, and I’m very interested to try it for myself. I own the game and both its expansions, so I will one day get around to playing it – once I’ve completed the first two titles!

The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings are supposed to take around 40 hours each to complete, so it may be a while before I finally get to this acclaimed game, but unlike some of the other entries on this list, it’s one I hope to play one day.

So that’s it. Ten great games and franchises that, for a variety of reasons, I’ve never played. Sorry if your favourite made the list, but remember that this is all one person’s opinion, and I’m in no way trying to argue that these games are bad. Some of them just aren’t my thing. If you love them or are passionate about them, great! Diversity takes many forms, including the titles we enjoy in the entertainment space. It would be a very dull world indeed if we all enjoyed the same things!

Hopefully this list has been a little bit of fun. If you’re new to the website, I write lists and articles on gaming and related topics often, so I hope you’ll check back for more in future. Until next time!

All titles listed above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Screenshots and promo artwork courtesy of press kits on IGDB. Arcade machine photo courtesy of Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 1: Second Contact

Star Trek: Lower Decks review – Season 1, Episode 1: Second Contact

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Second Contact, the first episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Star Trek: Lower Decks was a surprise addition to this summer’s television lineup. Though it had been announced that the show was coming this year, it seemed logical to think that Discovery’s third season – now scheduled to premiere the week after the Season 1 finale of Lower Decks – would have come first. Partly the change is due to the ongoing pandemic, and with Lower Decks being ready first, it got to go first.

It isn’t the fault of creator Mike McMahan, nor of the cast and behind-the-scenes crew, but Lower Decks has not been made available internationally. I’ve discussed this on the site several times, and if you want to see what I had to say you can find the articles dealing with the subject on the Star Trek: Lower Decks page. I won’t go into detail on that issue here, but suffice to say it’s a moronic decision to broadcast the show in the United States and Canada without also making it available to fans elsewhere.

“But Dennis, aren’t you from the UK? How can you watch Lower Decks?” I’m glad you asked. In order to circumvent ViacomCBS’ selfish and stupid decision to only release one of their biggest shows in a limited market, I had no choice but to physically move to that market. My second home, high in the Sierra Nevada mountains of North Dakota, overlooks the crystal clear waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This sleepy all-American town, an hour’s drive from the nearest big city (Honolulu, for those of you who don’t know your geography) and close to the snowy bayou of the neighbouring state of Kentucky, seems like the perfect place to chill and watch Lower Decks, don’t you think? I’d invite you all to come too, but I think that would be a violation of social distancing.

For legal reasons this is my house. And it’s definitely in the USA. Where I definitely am.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s talk about Second Contact. The episode begins with a scene that was a big part of the show’s marketing, appearing in two of the pre-release trailers. This was the scene with Ensign Boimler recording his pretend “captain’s log” in a closet. While this wasn’t new for me and was less interesting as a result, it was a good way to set up the premise of the show for new viewers and for those who skipped the trailers, and the scene as a whole was funny – even though some of the impact of the humour was blunted by having already seen it a couple of times.

Ensign Mariner interrupts Boimler’s log, having got drunk on “Romulan whiskey”, which looks a lot like Romulan ale. She teases him for wasting time with a pretend log, and while showing him a Batleth that she found, accidently cuts his leg.

Mariner and Boimler in the closet.

After this scene came the title sequence. I enjoyed the music; it’s much more up-tempo and adventurous than either the Discovery or Picard themes have been, which is nice. It’s a piece of music that could have been played over the opening titles for The Next Generation and would have fit right in. Interestingly – and I was not expecting this – the title sequence uses The Next Generation’s font for the names of characters and actors, and that was a fun little bit of nostalgia for returning fans.

Before we go any further with Second Contact, let’s talk about returning fans, Trekkies, and people like myself who are longstanding fans of the Star Trek franchise. In some ways, Lower Decks is trying to target that demographic. But there are certainly going to be Trekkies who are turned off by the style of humour. While I’d argue that there is a good degree of crossover between fans of Star Trek and fans of comedy series like Rick & Morty, the two groups aren’t one and the same and there will be fans who, having seen Second Contact, will decide that Lower Decks isn’t a show for them.

The USS Ceritos during the title sequence.

I’ve spoken before about divisions within the fanbase, but generally speaking, Star Trek projects until now have all been within the science fiction or action/sci-fi genres. Fans had preferences within that genre as to which show or film they preferred, but Star Trek was, by and large, a franchise firmly in that space. Lower Decks is something different – an overtly comedic series. Thus I think it’s quite likely that some fans, even those who’ve enjoyed Discovery, Picard, and the Kelvin-timeline films, may feel Lower Decks isn’t something they’re into and will choose to skip it. As long as they come back for Strange New Worlds, Discovery, Picard, and other live-action series, from ViacomCBS’ perspective that’s probably okay. But in that sense, at least among longstanding Star Trek fans, I expect there to be some degree of controversy.

There is a flip side, however. There are going to be fans of animated comedy series like Disenchantment, Solar Opposites, Rick & Morty, or even shows like Family Guy, for whom Lower Decks will be their first adventure in the Star Trek universe. It’s a show which I believe has the potential to reach out way beyond Star Trek’s usual viewer base and attract a whole new crowd of fans. Some of them may go on to become Trekkies, inspired by Lower Decks, though of course many won’t. Making a series like this will certainly expand the franchise into a new market – figuring out how best to capitalise on that and retain some of these new viewers will be a challenge, but Lower Decks could perhaps be the first of several comedy series produced under the Star Trek brand if ViacomCBS deems this experiment a success. Only time will tell – and unfortunately the lack of an international broadcast will hurt that in the short term.

The title sequence concludes.

Let’s get back to Second Contact, because the episode was generally quite fun. After the title sequence we’re introduced to Ensign Tendi as she arrives aboard the USS Cerritos for the first time. Ensign Boimler is assigned to be her orientation officer, and Ensign Mariner butts in, making fun of Boimler and taking Tendi on a tour of the ship where they also meet the other main character, Ensign Rutherford. I’d speculated, by the way, as to whether Rutherford was an ex-Borg or had been cybernetically augmented (like Lieutenant Detmer in Discovery) and it turns out to be the latter.

Boimler, Tendi, and Mariner visit the holodeck – which looks just like the one on the Enterprise-D – and each of them take turns choosing somewhere to visit. Boimler chose the warp core, before being summoned to the bridge.

Boimler, Tendi, and Mariner on the holodeck.

The senior officers have just returned from a successful second contact mission with a race called the Galardonians – who I believe are new to Star Trek – and have returned to the ship. Captain Freeman speaks to Ensign Boimler in her ready room and gives him an assignment: keep an eye on Ensign Mariner and report any breaches of regulations. In principle I like this setup. Boimler is by-the-book, and giving him an assignment to keep tabs on Mariner gives him a reason to follow her and spend time with her, developing the relationship between the two. However, it seems from the previous scenes as though Boimler and Mariner were already friends, in which case Boimler may not be a good choice for this kind of assignment. Some of this connects to how I feel about Mariner as a character, but we’ll come to that later.

I also liked the Galardonians – animation as a format allows for more “alien-looking” aliens, and it was nice that they weren’t just another random group of humanoids with slightly different features.

The Galardonians.

The first officer of the Ceritos – Commander Ransom – was bitten by an insect on the planet’s surface and brought a pathogen or parasite back to the ship. While Rutherford is having a date in the ship’s bar, Ransom basically turns into a black bile-spewing zombie, and the infection rapidly spreads through the ship.

On the planet’s surface, Boimler follows Mariner to where she’s making a secret deal with some Galardonians. He accuses her of selling them weapons – but it turns out to just be farm equipment. They’re attacked by a giant spider-creature, and Mariner has the idea to make decoys using their uniforms. Boimler ends up getting chewed on by the creature, which the Galardonians keep as some kind of farm animal. The two return to the landing site with Boimler covered in slime. I will come to Mariner’s conduct and the way she comes across in a moment, but for now let’s wrap up the story.

Boimler being chewed on by the alien creature.

Aboard the ship the zombie infection is out of control. Rutherford and his date escaped to one of the transporter rooms by going out an airlock – which was a pretty neat sequence. Mariner and Boimler beam up, and it turns out that the slime he’s covered in is the antidote to the zombie infection. The crew fight their way through to sickbay and synthesise a cure – this was one of the scenes that featured heavily in pre-release marketing.

With the infection over, Captain Freeman and the senior officers take credit for saving the day despite Mariner and Boimler’s help, and Boimler decides not to tell the captain what happened on the planet’s surface. It later turns out that Captain Freeman is Mariner’s mother. I’m sure this revelation will be important later in the season.

Captain Freeman.

This setup, with Boimler tasked to spy on Mariner but choosing not to, feels like it didn’t work as well as it should. They were introduced as already being friendly, which undermined the whole setup, and the payoff at the end where she tells him she’ll mentor him felt unearned. It seemed like he would absolutely rat her out for not following orders – and I’m not really sure why he didn’t given that she got him chewed on by a giant spider.

So it’s time to talk about Mariner. She gets top billing for the series, was the most significant character in pre-release marketing, and takes the central role in the show as its star. But so far I don’t like her. She’s rude to Boimler, despite supposedly being his friend, and we’ll later learn that she’s been demoted and kicked off several past ships that she served on. In fact, it seems as though her family connections – her parents are the captain and an admiral – might be the only reason she’s able to stay in Starfleet.

Ensign Boimler and Ensign Mariner.

Lower Decks, as a comedy series, was always going to have to find ways to make the typical goings-on in Star Trek funny, but I don’t necessarily feel that making a character who’s rude, insubordinate, and inherently un-Starfleet is the right way to generate that comedy and those funny moments. Mariner seems to be a rebel, someone who likes breaking the rules and who doesn’t have much respect for Starfleet, for her uniform, her ship, or her crewmates. Yet in any other Star Trek project, someone like that wouldn’t have even made it to the rank of Ensign.

And I know, this isn’t “any other” Star Trek project. But if we’re asked to take Ensign Mariner as our protagonist for this show, she needs to be less offensive and just nicer. I know we’re only one episode in, and a lot can change over the course of a season. I’m willing to give her a chance to grow on me. But Star Trek isn’t a franchise like Rick & Morty – a Rick-like character, which is what it feels like Mariner is meant to be, who doesn’t play by the rules and is unpleasant and selfish doesn’t feel like a good fit. Mariner put Boimler in danger, insisting she knows best despite only having a gut feeling, and has generally been unkind, rude, and insubordinate, not only to Boimler but to the rest of the crew as well.

I’m on the fence about Mariner at the moment.

Right now I’m having a hard time getting behind her as a fun protagonist, and that’s a problem because the other three characters aren’t exactly protagonist material either. Tendi and Rutherford feel underdeveloped; Tendi’s entire character consists of saying “wow” to everything because she’s new to Starfleet, and Rutherford has the cybernetic augmentation but we really didn’t learn anything else about him, making him feel like a secondary character in the premiere episode. And then we come to Boimler. A character perhaps inspired by The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper, Boimler is neurotic and seems to suffer from some kind of anxiety disorder. While I like the contrast between “by-the-book” Boimler and “rebel” Mariner, the contrast is perhaps a little too extreme for my taste, and scaling both of them back a few notches would make their dynamic – and the series – more interesting.

Comedy is subjective, and one person’s sense of humour isn’t the same as another’s. Lower Decks will definitely succeed in appealing to fans of the kind of shows I mentioned earlier – Rick & Morty and the like. And there is some degree of crossover with Star Trek and sci-fi for fans of animated comedy, meaning Lower Decks could be a springboard for some people to watch Star Trek for the first time. But for many existing Trekkies, the style of humour on display here will be a turn-off.

This kind of humour won’t be to everyone’s taste.

I don’t want to say that Second Contact was jarring, because that isn’t exactly true. But a couple of days earlier I re-watched Lower Decks, the episode from The Next Generation’s final season; suffice to say there is a major contrast between what this show is and what other Star Trek shows have been. Star Trek has always had a sense of humour – something I said countless times in defence of Lower Decks in the the run-up to the premiere. But the franchise’s past sense of humour is certainly different from what we saw in Second Contact, and when compared to an episode from a past iteration of Star Trek that played it straight, the difference is vast.

What’s so odd, I think, is that Star Trek usually requires its crew members to work together. Even in Discovery and Picard, which both featured single protagonists supported by secondary characters, there were many times where the crews would come together and work in common cause. Lower Decks has set up Ensign Mariner as its protagonist, and she isn’t someone who seems to work well with… anyone. At least not at this stage. Yes it’s early days, and she has the chance to improve and work better as a team player, but it feels like Lower Decks is setting her up to be Star Trek’s answer to Rick Sanchez, and as a Star Trek fan, I don’t think that kind of character works, at least not within the confines of Starfleet.

The four main characters at the end of the episode.

Comedy and animation require a different kind of suspension of disbelief than a live-action, non-comedy show. And Lower Decks is very much in that category, where it needs to be seen as an animated comedy first and a Star Trek project second. There is a lot to like, but I’m also thinking that perhaps its sense of humour isn’t always going to be “my thing”. Some of the jokes in Second Contact relied on Mariner being unkind to Boimler in particular, showing no care whatsoever for her friends or her crewmates. For me, most of that side of the show’s humour failed to land, and while for many fans of other animated comedy series it might, I’m having a hard time detaching Lower Decks from the rest of the Star Trek franchise to see it in that way.

Second Contact’s zombie story was okay. I liked that Rutherford, on his date, kept his cool and the fact that he and his date kept talking romantically while chaos erupted around them was funny. This story wasn’t the main focus of the episode, though, and took up comparatively little screen time.

I’d have liked to have spent more time with Ensign Rutherford, who really only got the date/zombie fight on screen. And perhaps, as mentioned, the setup for Boimler and Mariner’s friendship could have been better established prior to Boimler being tasked with spying on her. However, overall the episode was solid, and it seems that Lower Decks has started as it means to continue.

After more the fifty years, the question is whether Star Trek can successfully transition to a new genre. I enjoyed Second Contact, but on that – the biggest question the show faces – the jury is still out.

Star Trek: Lower Decks is available to stream now on CBS All Access for anyone lucky enough to be in the United States. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Lower Decks – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Fall Guys – First impressions

Fall Guys – First impressions

Dennis

I’m not usually an online multiplayer guy, and Fall Guys – also known as Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout – is the kind of massively-multiplayer game that I’d ordinarily overlook. The last online games that I played with strangers were Mario Kart 8 and Rocket League, and it’s been a while since I played those. But after hearing great things about its fun, silly gameplay I decided to take a look for myself, and for £16 on Steam it wasn’t a huge risk despite Fall Guys being a new title.

To be up front, Fall Guys currently has some issues with its server capacity; this is something that’s being worked on. High demand for the game seems to have caught developer Mediatonic and publisher Devolver Digital a little wrong-footed, but I’m confident that, with the game reviewing well and being popular, those problems will be fixed before too long. It is, however, understandably frustrating to get disconnected or to have to wait a long time to join a game. But part of the fun of Fall Guys is that its levels are very short – a couple of minutes or so at a time – so it’s easy enough to jump back in, and losing or getting disconnected doesn’t end up causing a huge amount of lost progress. If you’re on the fence about buying the game, though, it’s worth being aware of this server problem. It may be prudent to wait a couple of weeks to see how quickly it can be fixed if you’re really worried about it.

A couple of server error messages.

The first time I tried to play Fall Guys after installing it, I was hit with this server problem. Despite waiting almost half an hour I wasn’t able to join a game. It was only when I came back to try again several hours later that I was actually able to successfully play. Although the server problems made for a poor first impression, Fall Guys is a ton of fun!

The game is a cross between a competitive “battle royale” and television game shows like It’s A Knockout and Total Wipeout. For some reason, it also reminds me of late-90s kids’ show 50/50. Fall Guys’ levels are designed to look like they’re taken from such shows, deliberately using the aesthetic of soft foam rubber obstacles. In fact, many of the levels are designed like obstacle courses! An indoor children’s play area would be another good comparison when considering the look of the levels.

One of the levels, showing off the “soft foam rubber” look.

The other side of Fall Guys’ aesthetic is the incredibly cute character design. It’s hard to say exactly what these little guys look like – personally I feel like they’re somewhere between Oompa-Loompas and marshmallows – but they’re absolutely adorable. There are customisation options, some of which can be unlocked simply by playing enough rounds of the game. Other character customisation options are, however, paid for with in-game microtransactions. Because Fall Guys has a very child-friendly atmosphere, it’s worth making sure your parental controls are up-to-date if you plan to get the game for your little ones to play. Obviously I’d prefer a game that had no microtransactions at all, but this is the realm of online multiplayer – and these days, in-game monetisation comes with the territory. If Fall Guys were charging more than its £16 asking price I’d be annoyed at their inclusion, but considering that there are some cosmetic items that can be acquired in-game, and taking into account the relatively low up front cost, I think the microtransactions are okay. They’re easily avoided for those who don’t want to participate.

Microtransactions.

So Fall Guys is a battle royale/game show? How the heck does that work? Glad you asked! 60 players compete in a variety of events, including races, challenges, and some team events, to be the last one standing. Though it’s possible to play the game in such a way as to sabotage someone else’s chances of progressing, for the most part – at least in the early rounds – it’s easier to focus on one’s own character or team. Navigating the obstacles – like see-saws, spinning platforms, and windmills – to win a race or to make it to the next stage is great fun. And the team challenges borrow from the likes of Rocket League – there’s even a football-themed one!

I’m not great at games in general, let alone competitive multiplayer titles. Yet despite my limitations, I had a lot fun. I was able to progress to the latter rounds on several occasions, and the times where I lost in round one or two it usually only took a few seconds to load up a new game and try again. Fall Guys isn’t something you can be great at on your first attempt, even if you’re a regular online gamer. However, with each round lasting only a couple of minutes or so, losing doesn’t feel so bad.

Losing at Fall Guys is no big deal. Just try again!

Each round whittles down the number of players until only a few remain. The first round is supposed to begin with 60 players (though I’ve seen anywhere from 49-60 in practice), and of those, perhaps 40 will qualify for the second round. The game continues in this way until it reaches a final round, with the survivor crowned champion. Though I haven’t won (yet?) I’d reckon playing a full session from the preliminary round to the finale is only going to take maybe quarter of an hour at most. And as I keep saying, any time you’re eliminated, getting into a new game doesn’t take all that long.

There’s a “roadmap” of updates planned for Fall Guys, promising more content, more cosmetic items, and new levels. Though I’m generally sceptical of this kind of business model, the current version of the game has a lot to offer and doesn’t feel like it’s missing anything major. If you play for a while you do start to see the same levels repeat – there are 24 levels at time of writing, including three “final rounds” – but again, each one only takes a couple of minutes, and they’re chosen at random. If you discover a burning hatred for a specific one, I guess it might be annoying to keep encountering it, but Fall Guys is the type of game where even something like that doesn’t have to be a big deal.

An example of a character in the game.

It’s been a while since I played through a game that’s as apologetically fun as Fall Guys. There’s no story, there’s no background or explanation given for why these weird little characters are taking part in a game show, and there doesn’t need to be. It’s just simple, casual, pick-up-and-play fun. I had a smile on my face practically the whole time, and making it to the end of a challenging level when it looked like I wasn’t going to manage in time has been legitimately thrilling.

A lot of care and effort has gone into crafting what could be one of the sleeper hits of 2020. Though the server issue is definitely frustrating, it’s something that will hopefully be resolved in the coming days, and aside from that I encountered no bugs or glitches during my time playing. I’m looking forward to jumping back in!

A race begins!

So this has been my initial first impression of the game after spending a couple of hours with it today. I may write another piece in the coming weeks if I find that I have more to say after spending longer with Fall Guys. But for now, what I’d say to anyone on the fence is that Fall Guys is great fun, and the kind of game that practically anyone could pick up easily. The server issues are a problem, but when I got into the game on my second attempt I didn’t experience too many disconnections and was able to load up a new game every time without having to wait too long. However, it may be worth checking back in a few days or a couple of weeks to see if that’s still an issue if you’re concerned. For £16, though, I can’t really fault the game for the way it plays. If you’re a subscriber to PlayStation Plus, you’ll get Fall Guys for free this month – and if you’re in that category you have no excuse for not trying it out immediately!

Fall Guys is available now for PC and PlayStation 4. Fall Guys is the copyright of Mediatonic and Devolver Digital. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Okay ViacomCBS, let’s talk “priorities”

Okay ViacomCBS, let’s talk “priorities”

Dennis

Yesterday, Star Trek: Lower Decks had its digital “red carpet” event, officially kicking off the show’s first season. The first episode, Second Contact, will debut tomorrow – but only if you’re lucky enough to live in the United States or Canada.

Having written about this topic previously, and with my excitement for the show building, I wasn’t going to revisit the issue of the show’s international release. However, something I read this morning really pushed my buttons, and it has to do with one single word: “priority”.

I do not in any way blame anyone who worked behind-the-scenes or in the voice cast of Lower Decks for what’s happened. In many ways, the stupid decision to only broadcast the show in North America hurts them too, tainting their work with a moronic business decision. But unfortunately this article was prompted by a comment from Lower Decks’ creator Mike McMahan, who said that it’s “a priority” that fans outside the US and Canada will get to see the series. The full conversation, for context, can be found on TrekCore by following this link (warning: leads to an external website).

So let’s talk priorities.

Lower Decks will be the first Star Trek project since the 1990s to not get a near-simultaneous release in the UK. Even Enterprise managed to do that in 2001, and as I’ve said repeatedly, in 2020 with the internet and online fan communities being such a big deal, companies can no longer get away with splitting up their biggest releases by geography. If ViacomCBS couldn’t get the paperwork for Lower Decks signed in time to guarantee its international broadcast, then the only way the company could demonstrate to its international fans that we’re just as much of a priority would have been to delay the series until everyone could share it and watch it together.

That would have sent a very clear message: Star Trek is for everyone, and ViacomCBS wants everyone to be able to watch it at the same time. It would have been a sensible business decision, generating double the excitement and hype for the show online – the buzz around Lower Decks has been muted at best, and at worst tainted by questions surrounding its international release. Every tweet, every post, every article that they publish online receives dozens of such comments and queries, detracting from the message ViacomCBS wants to put out.

It’s incredibly galling to hear that ViacomCBS considers its international fans to be “a priority” when everything they’ve done regarding Lower Decks’ broadcast categorically demonstrates that it’s not true. Saying they consider us “a priority” is a lie. If they did, Lower Decks would either be coming out for everyone tomorrow, or would have been delayed until it could.

There are clearly very difficult negotiations and discussions going on at high levels of the company trying to secure some kind of overseas broadcast. And I understand that these things are complicated. It’s arguable that, depending on circumstances, the failure to secure international broadcast rights isn’t wholly ViacomCBS’ fault. They can make the case that it’s out of their control; something in the hands of these intransigent international broadcasters. But you know what categorically is within ViacomCBS’ control? The decision to go ahead and broadcast the show in the United States and Canada. Doing so is their decision, and thus choosing to split up the show and not allow its international fans to see it is entirely ViacomCBS’ decision.

And it’s a bad decision. Not just because of the message it sends to Star Trek’s millions of fans who live in the rest of the world, but because the international broadcast will lead to widespread piracy of the new show, undermining ViacomCBS’ own position in the aforementioned negotiations. Not only is the show and its brand now damaged in the eyes of many viewers by not being broadcast at the same time in the rest of the world, but it’s also going to be heavily pirated. Many of Star Trek’s biggest fans won’t wait because they don’t want to miss out. In fact, if there’s no legal and lawful way to access the show, piracy is literally the only option. ViacomCBS, by failing to provide access to the show internationally, is essentially condoning piracy of its own series and undermining any efforts which may be underway to see the show receive an international broadcast.

Even if it were announced now, today, that Lower Decks will receive an international release imminently, the hype and buildup that the show should have received has already been damaged; its brand soiled by the unnecessary delay of any such news coming out. Many fans outside of the US and Canada will have stopped paying attention on the expectation that the series isn’t something they’ll be able to enjoy and wouldn’t even hear any hypothetical announcement.

It’s also not, as some may suggest, wholly the fault of coronavirus. While production and release schedules have doubtless been affected – Lower Decks was originally planned to premiere after Discovery’s third season, for example – I again restate what I said a moment ago: it is still wholly within ViacomCBS’ control when to broadcast the show in the United States. The pandemic may have forced changes, but if the international rights for Lower Decks had not been secured, it is still entirely ViacomCBS’ decision to go ahead and broadcast it to half its fanbase – or less – regardless. Coronavirus and its associated issues is a factor, but that is not the whole story, and to lay the blame there is little more than a distraction from the real heart of the matter – Star Trek fans outside of the United States are not any kind of “priority” to ViacomCBS.

Lower Decks is the most unique Star Trek project in a generation. It’s a crossover with the kind of animated comedy shows that are popular with a far wider audience than Star Trek’s typical niche, and thus it’s a show which had the potential to bring in legions of new fans – including new fans in other parts of the world. But how can that happen with the show segregated by geography? How are those potential new fans supposed to get on board and be excited about a series that they can’t even watch?

At the very least, ViacomCBS owes its international fans transparency. It doesn’t just upset me that Lower Decks isn’t going to be broadcast here, it upsets me that there’s been no word at all from the company. They leave it to Mike McMahan, and it’s not his job. There’s been nothing official at all from anyone higher up involved in the production of Star Trek, just a gaping void and an absence of any news. The briefest of statements would have been adequate – something like “we understand fans are anxious and we want to reassure you that negotiations are ongoing.” They could even provide a tentative estimate, such as Lower Decks receiving an international broadcast “before the end of 2020.” It wouldn’t be good enough, but it would at least be an acknowledgement that fans outside the US and Canada exist.

Far from being “a priority”, ViacomCBS has completely ignored its overseas fans. Not only have they done so by not securing the broadcast rights for the show before premiering it in the United States, but by failing to tell us anything. Star Trek’s official website and social media channels are all gearing up for Lower Decks’ premiere, yet there hasn’t been any acknowledgement of this problem. The social media managers ignore comments and messages asking about the international release date, and we’re left with the inescapable realisation that ViacomCBS simply does not care. Calling that “a priority” when it’s patently nothing of the sort is really just insulting.

I feel sorry for Mike McMahan and the rest of the cast and crew of Lower Decks. This isn’t their fault, yet they’re left picking up the pieces. To McMahan’s credit, he has at least acknowledged that there’s a problem, which ViacomCBS has wholly failed to do. And I appreciate that he at least gives lip service to Star Trek’s international fanbase. This article was prompted by his comment, as I find the use of the word “priority” to be a complete joke, but it isn’t his fault at all; ViacomCBS have put him in an awkward position through their own ineptitude and lack of care.

The launch of Lower Decks should be a moment where Star Trek fans from all over the world could come together and celebrate a new addition to the franchise we all love. Instead, it’s ruined by ViacomCBS choosing to prioritise one group of fans over another. They have deliberately chosen to release the show without securing its international broadcast rights, clearly demonstrating that Star Trek’s overseas fans do not matter to them in the slightest. It’s clear where their real “priorities” lie.

The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Lower Decks – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: The Next Generation re-watch – Lower Decks

Star Trek: The Next Generation re-watch – Lower Decks

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Spoilers will be present for The Next Generation and for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

It’s only a couple of days now until the premiere of Star Trek: Lower Decks – at least for viewers in the United States. The franchise’s first full animated series in over forty years looks like it’s going to be hilarious… but did you know that it isn’t Star Trek’s first “Lower Decks”?

On the 7th of February 1994, Star Trek: The Next Generation aired the fifteenth episode of its seventh and final season. The episode was titled Lower Decks, and much like the new show, it took the action away from the main cast and the bridge crew. The episode wouldn’t be broadcast in the UK until April 1996 (that’s when I will have first watched it, as I was an avid Trekkie even in those days!) Let’s hope that ViacomCBS doesn’t plan on making us wait anywhere near as long as two years to get the new Lower Decks.

With the new show coming out, I thought it could be fun to step back in time twenty-six years and revisit the first Lower Decks.

No, not that one…

By this point in the history of the franchise, Star Trek shows had expanded well beyond a small cast of regular characters. Where the “redshirts” of The Original Series had been, to put it politely, one-time use characters by and large, The Next Generation had a handful of secondary characters who would augment the main cast. Ensign Ro, Guinan, Chief O’Brien, Lt. Barclay, Nurse Ogawa, and several others all had roles to play, and as the show went on some of them came to be increasingly prominent. This was a concept that Deep Space Nine would expand greatly, and that series had a far larger secondary cast, some of whom – particularly in later seasons – would be incredibly important across whole story arcs.

Lower Decks looks at four junior members of the Enterprise-D’s crew (and one civilian). Only two – Nurse Ogawa and Sito Jaxa – were familiar to us before the episode aired. Ogawa had been a regular character in scenes set in sickbay since the fourth season, and Sito had appeared in the fourth season episode The First Duty. The other three were new for this episode, but all would have significant, interconnected roles in the story. The episode can be overlooked when it comes to thinking about The Next Generation’s best offerings, in part perhaps because its premise means it spends so much time away from the main cast. I confess that I overlooked it myself when I put together a list of ten great episodes from The Next Generation a couple of months ago; I didn’t even consider it a contender! However, it’s a fantastic story and a great piece of television. While it isn’t unique in the Star Trek canon – Deep Space Nine would have many episodes where secondary characters were the focus, and the episode Good Shepherd, from Voyager’s final season, similarly features junior crewmen – it was unusual for The Next Generation, and features some genuinely emotional moments. Stellar performances from all of the guest-stars elevate the episode, and make what was an interesting story into something truly great to watch.

Nurse Ogawa would go on to have roles in two films – Generations and First Contact.

At this point, almost a quarter of a century from when I first saw it (gosh does that make me feel old) I’ve seen Lower Decks a number of times. I wouldn’t like to guess how many, but The Next Generation is probably my most re-watched Star Trek series so it’s been a fair number, I can tell you that! I’m always happy to go back, though, and this will be my first time writing about it and taking a deeper look at some of the moments within.

Lower Decks opens with Commander Riker and Counsellor Troi sitting in Ten-Forward. They’re engaged in something we almost never saw them do in The Next Generation – managing the ship’s crew! On a ship with a complement of over 1,000 people, this must be a huge task, yet with all the other adventures and hijinks that befall the crew, we never really get to see these quieter moments or the more “boring” tasks involved in running a starship of this size. This is actually something I hope we’ll see some of in the new Lower Decks, as I feel it’s an under-explored side of Star Trek and life aboard a Federation starship.

Troi and Riker are the Enterprise-D’s human resources department.

While they discuss officer assignments and promotions, a group of younger officers are seated a few tables away. This is where we meet the episode’s real stars – in addition to Ogawa and Sito there’s Ensigns Lavelle and Taurik, as well as Ben, the waiter in Ten-Forward. While the others are enjoying their evening away from their duties, Lavelle is obsessed with the prospect of promotion. This character setup was great, painting Lavelle as the career-obsessed type and showing that the others find it easier to relax. Setting up Lavelle’s fixation on his promotion will pay off a bittersweet moment for him at the end of the story.

This kind of story can be difficult – in the space of a couple of minutes the show has to set up several new characters and their relationships in a way that feels natural and not like there’s a huge dump of exposition on the audience. It’s really only Nurse Ogawa who’s familiar to the audience; Sito hasn’t been seen in three years at this point, and the others are brand new. So it was a clever scene, and I think it achieved its goal of introducing us to the episode’s main characters.

The group in Ten-Forward.

Riker and Troi’s conversation turns to promotion, specifically for the night-duty Ops officer. This is a role that both Lavelle and Sito are contenders for. Ben, the waiter, overhears, and after the tiniest amount of persuasion from the junior officers spills the beans; I get the impression this is something he takes a lot of satisfaction in doing! Setting up a conflict between the friends is an interesting way for the episode to go, and of course there’s only one job so one of them will be disappointed.

Sito and Lavelle are left stunned and concerned, and then the title sequence rolls. I will always love The Next Generation’s theme – even though it was, of course, “borrowed” from The Motion Picture!

After the credits roll, Riker is in the Captain’s chair on the Bridge, ordering a phaser lock. Sito is at tactical, with Worf standing over her shoulder, and Lavelle is manning the helmsman’s position next to Data. They’re conducting a battle drill – though that may not have been immediately obvious – and Riker seems a little disappointed with their response time.

Riker in command during the battle drill.

Riker seems to be harsh on Lavelle, reprimanding him for saying “aye aye” instead of “aye”, while in main engineering, Taurik is tasked by La Forge with writing up the battle drill report. Sito seems to be the one who really messed up – after the ship changed course she had to re-lock the phasers which delayed firing on the target. However, Riker seemed to take it easy on her, offering her advice instead of cracking down, and compared to how he treats Lavelle it’s clear who he favours.

Captain Picard emerges from his ready-room and orders an immediate course change, postponing a scheduled rendezvous, as the ship has received new orders. Picard summons the main crew – Data, Riker, and Worf – to the observation lounge, and Riker assigns Sito to the ops station next to Lavelle, who seems put out by her being given the role ahead of him. The system they’re travelling to is close to Cardassian space, and there’s some discussion about why they may be going there, and the two share a cute moment when Sito uses the expression “spider under the table” to mean a “fly on the wall” – eavesdropping on the senior officers’ chat.

Lavelle and Sito on the bridge.

Lavelle is worried that Riker favours Sito for promotion over him, but it doesn’t seem to hurt their friendship at all – despite knowing they’re effectively in competition their friendship remains solid. I liked this characterisation; if Lavelle became too cold, distant, and unkind toward Sito he’d be much harder to root for as a character.

In engineering, Taurik tries to show La Forge a theory he learned at Starfleet Academy to increase the ship’s engine efficiency. La Forge initially seems interested, but Taurik may have jumped the gun by suggesting it be rolled out to the Enterprise’s engines without completing a simulation first. Taurik has other ideas to help too, but La Forge – seemingly annoyed – basically tells a confused Taurik to get back to him later.

La Forge listens – briefly – to Taurik’s proposal.

Two things come out of this for me: the first is that Lavelle and Taurik have comparable issues with their commanding officers. And secondly, we see how a junior officer can feel that they’re being treated not necessarily unfairly, but perhaps that they feel they’re taken less seriously. The Next Generation in its first few seasons would sometimes put the character of Wesley Crusher in a vital position where his ideas and plans were listened to by the whole crew; this episode feels, at parts, like a total reversal of that. The way Taurik is treated by La Forge here is just one example.

The next scene features Nurse Ogawa in sickbay. In contrast to how Taurik and Lavelle have, at best, complicated relationships with their superiors, she and Dr Crusher are on much more friendly terms. To the audience this undoubtedly makes sense – Ogawa is a character we’re much more familiar with as by this point in The Next Generation’s run she’s already made thirteen appearances going back over three years; she’s a character we’ve seen in sickbay often, and her relationship with Dr Crusher has been touched on previously. Ogawa is being recommended for a promotion to lieutenant – if only it were that easy for Sito and Lavelle!

Dr Crusher uses Ogawa’s first name – Alyssa – and they talk about her personal life and who she’s dating. Ogawa treats her as a friend, and I loved this dynamic.

Ogawa learns of her impending promotion to lieutenant.

The ship drops out of warp, and back in Ten-Forward, Sito is talking to Worf about her brief stint manning the ops console. Worf is the one who recommended Sito for the position – and on the other side of the room, Taurik, Lavelle, and Ben the waiter are looking on. Ben is on first-name terms with Commander Riker, much to the shock of Lavelle. Taurik and Ben convince him to strike up a conversation with his commander, as getting to know him on a personal level might improve their relationship.

What follows has to be one of the best scenes in the episode. Lavelle makes a truly cringeworthy attempt to talk to Riker, mistakenly believing him to be from Canada when he’s in fact from Alaska, and generally making a fool of himself in a moment that I certainly could relate to – and I’m sure lots of people who’ve made conversational missteps can too! As mentioned, Lavelle could have come across as a kind of selfish and egotistical glory hunter, chasing his own promotion and ignoring his friends if the character had been less-well written. But this moment, and the other with Sito on the bridge, go a long way to humanising him and making him relatable.

Though Lavelle doesn’t see it, as he excuses himself and slinks away, there seemed to be a moment of hope for his cause at the very end; despite everything, Riker was at least amused by the conversation and smiled to himself.

Lavelle realises his chat with Riker is not going well.

The Enterprise-D is holding position 5,000km from the Cardassian border – which is practically a stone’s throw when dealing with the vastness of space. Captain Picard is concerned, seemingly waiting for a ship to arrive, when Worf detects a small object that could be an escape pod. The pod is 50,000km inside Cardassian territory, and the captain wonders aloud how it will be possible to retrieve it. The only one of the ensigns present on the bridge in this moment is Lavelle, and from this point on the episode begins to split the characters up for important events.

I love this setup – each of the characters, as the episode progresses, will learn part of what’s going on, but it won’t be until the very end that they can put all the pieces together and establish the whole story. This is what really gives the episode its unique feel; following the junior officers who don’t know everything that’s happening but must carry out their orders regardless.

In engineering, Taurik and La Forge work to increase the effectiveness of the transporter to be able to beam the individual from the life support pod onto the ship. I have to confess at this point that I feel that 50,000km seems like a very limited range for the transporter. I wouldn’t like to say with certainty, because Star Trek in general can be vague with things like distances in the few instances where we get specifics, but I’m reasonably sure we’ve seen the transporter used over greater distances before with no issues.

La Forge and Taurik work on beaming the occupant of the life support pod to the ship.

Interestingly, and continuing the theme of the junior officers not knowing the full story, La Forge orders Taurik not to scan the life pod’s occupant to determine his or her species. Again – this seems like something that might be helpful or even necessary for using the transporter, but Star Trek’s technology is vague enough that it can be made to fit circumstances like this!

In sickbay, Ogawa helps Dr Crusher prepare for the arrival of the mysterious figure, but when they’re ready Crusher orders her to leave the room. In the hallway she meets Sito, who has been posted at the entrance to sickbay in her capacity as a security officer. They wonder aloud what’s going on; Sito isn’t letting anyone but the senior officers inside. As Ogawa departs, Captain Picard arrives and seems to briefly hesitate when greeting Sito.

Ensign Sito and Nurse Ogawa wonder what’s happening in sickbay.

Lavelle asks Riker on the bridge if he can work another shift; he says he needs the extra training, but Riker tells him it’s a bad time. Captain Picard leaves sickbay and orders Sito to accompany him. En route, he asks her if she’s a qualified pilot, and in his ready-room queries her past record from the Academy – the events of the Season 4 episode The First Duty. In that episode, Sito, Wesley Crusher and a couple of other cadets were involved in a plot to cover up the death of a fellow cadet who died during an illegal flying manoeuvre. Sito defends herself to the captain, and defends her record and her character.

We see Picard being far more harsh than usual, and something definitely seems “off”. Picard has always believed in telling the truth, as indeed we saw in the episode in question. But he’s also a believer in second chances; Sito would never have been allowed aboard the Enterprise-D without his permission, so his words seem overly critical and perhaps even unfair.

Ensign Sito and Captain Picard in the turbolift.

In one of the shuttlebays, Taurik is using some kind of beam on a shuttlecraft. It wasn’t obvious at first, at least not to me, but it’s revealed in short order that he is in fact firing a phaser rifle at it, “intentionally damaging” it as he puts it. La Forge tells him it’s a requirement to test shuttles in this manner from time to time, but like Taurik, the audience is just as surprised at such an odd regulation!

Taurik cottons on pretty quickly – La Forge is making it seem as though the shuttle was escaping an attack. He tells the junior officer it’s a coincidence – but both of them know that the other knows the truth. The way Taurik is presented is very much in line with other Vulcans – he’s very clever, but also not at all subtle about concealing the fact. Instead of keeping to himself what he knows about the work he’s doing on the shuttle, he shows off to La Forge that he’s figured it out – in spite of the fact that it could potentially cause problems for him.

Taurik fires his phaser rifle.

In sickbay, Dr Crusher swears Ogawa to secrecy before revealing their patient – a comatose Cardassian! It couldn’t be anyone else this close to Cardassian space, right? The seventh season of The Next Generation was running concurrently with Deep Space Nine’s second season – in fact, the day before Lower Decks premiered, the 14th episode of Season 2 had aired. So by this point in the history of Star Trek, the Cardassians have taken shape as a significant antagonist faction.

The junior officers – and Ben – are playing poker while off-duty in the next scene, and of course conversation turns to why they are where they are and what might be happening. Sito is of course upset because of her conversation with Picard. Playing poker has been a hobby of the Enterprise-D’s crew for the whole run of the series, and giving the junior officers the same hobby ties the two groups together neatly (if somewhat transparently).

The poker game.

The scene is juxtaposed with the senior officers’ poker game – where the topics of conversation are the junior officers! Riker disagrees with Worf recommending Sito for the role at ops, and Dr Crusher has spotted Ogawa’s boyfriend talking to someone else in Ten-Forward. The scenes jump between the two poker games in what is a pretty clever sequence.

I once again liked Lavelle’s conversation with Sito – despite wanting the promotion for himself, he reassures her when she’s feeling low after her dressing-down from Picard, strongly emphasising their friendship is what matters most to him. The poker games draw a comparison between Lavelle and Riker, something which Troi also picks up on, to Riker’s annoyance. Riker wins his hand, but Lavelle loses; he was bluffing. Perhaps that says something about the positions the two men are in?

As several people depart each poker game, La Forge arrives at Taurik and Lavelle’s quarters to summon Taurik to engineering.

La Forge and Taurik in the latter’s quarters.

Ben is the only character who’s able to flit between the two groups – and as Lavelle retires to bed, he joins the senior officers’ poker game. The next day, Worf springs a surprise test on Sito in her martial arts class – he claims it’s a Klingon ritual that the test must be unannounced. He blindfolds her and proceeds to beat her several times in a row.

Sito eventually protests; removing the blindfold she declares is isn’t a fair test. Worf tells her that she has passed – the test was not about defeating him while blindfolded, but about standing up for herself. Combined with what she’s just been through with Picard, the sense that the senior officers are all testing her is starting to build!

Worf blindfolds Sito for his “test”.

Inspired by the lesson from Worf, Sito heads straight to Captain Picard’s ready-room to respond to what he had told her earlier. Standing up for herself, she insists that if he won’t judge her fairly, she wants to be transferred to another ship.

Captain Picard wasn’t being unfair or unduly hard on Sito for no reason. As we suspected, he had an ulterior motive. The ops position will have to wait; Sito is being assessed to see if she’s capable of being given a very dangerous assignment – she’ll learn the details at a briefing with the senior officers. I’m glad that Captain Picard had a proper reason for treating her the way he had earlier; it seemed to run very much against his character and it needed an explanation!

Captain Picard listens to Ensign Sito defend herself.

A brief scene in sickbay sees Ogawa telling Dr Crusher that her boyfriend had proposed – Dr Crusher had been seconds away from telling her about seeing him with another woman! The action then cuts to Sito’s briefing. Captain Picard, Riker, and Worf are joined in the briefing room by the Cardassian from the escape pod. His name is Joret Dal, and he’s a Federation spy who brought them information about Cardassian military operations, and he now has to get home.

The mission sounds very dangerous – Sito is a bargaining chip to help Joret Dal cross the border, and when he makes it he’ll launch her home in an escape pod. The border is heavily militarised, and crossing it will almost certainly mean they’ll be intercepted by the Cardassian military. However, he believes that if he has a “prisoner”, it will make the crossing easier.

Joret Dal, the Cardassian spy.

It isn’t clear how or why Joret Dal came to work with the Federation, but Sito readily agrees to the mission. Earlier, Captain Picard had told her he asked for her to be assigned to the Enterprise-D to she could have a chance to “redeem” herself after the incident at the Academy; I can’t help but feel she sees this mission as her shot at redemption.

Sito is ordered to report to sickbay, and to keep the mission secret from everyone – which of course includes her junior officer friends. Out of everyone present, it’s Worf who seems to be most concerned for her safety. Captain Picard didn’t order her to undertake the mission, but in a way, being in the room with the captain, first officer, and the Cardassian spy put her in a very uncomfortable position if she had wanted to refuse. Combined with what Captain Picard said earlier about redemption, there’s an element of psychological persuasion going on that isn’t acknowledged, but is definitely present. Despite the way it’s presented as being Sito’s choice, I confess I find the circumstances a little concerning. She wasn’t coerced, not exactly. But she was certainly placed very deliberately into a position where refusing the mission would have been very difficult.

Ensign Sito accepts the mission.

As Sito departs, Worf looks very concerned. Joret Dal says “I didn’t realise she would be so young”, clearly foreshadowing what’s to come. At the damaged shuttle, Worf and La Forge are with Joret Dal. Sito arrives, having been made-up by Dr Crusher to look as though she had been hurt. Worf is even more alarmed at seeing her; he clearly cares deeply for her – in a platonic way, of course.

Sito expresses her thanks to Worf before departing aboard the shuttle – again, more foreshadowing and setting up what’s about to happen. After telling him she’ll see him soon, Worf is left to stand watching as the shuttle door closes, leaving her alone with Joret Dal and about to undertake the mission. Seeing a sensitive side to Worf may not be something I would’ve thought I’d have wanted to see, but it absolutely was. He was almost behaving like a father or older brother to Sito, building up her confidence and looking out for her. It’s a side of him that we don’t see often, despite him having a son of his own.

Worf watches wistfully as Sito boards the shuttle.

Aboard the shuttle, Joret Dal tells Sito he doesn’t consider himself a traitor for working with the Federation. He feels that the Cardassian military engages in too many pointless battles with the Federation, and no longer serves Cardassia properly. His motivation isn’t that of a spy, but of a patriot. His character, which doesn’t get much screen time and thus could have come across as wholly one-dimensional, ends up feeling very real and well-rounded in just this short scene.

Sito and Joret Dal share a moment – they both realise that they have at least over-generalised each other’s people. She never thought she’d see a Cardassian who was tired of war, and he never thought he’d meet a Bajoran who would help him. There are two strong moral lessons in these moments for us as the audience: war and international relations are far more complicated than it may ever seem, and it’s possible to misjudge someone on the basis of their background or even their race.

The shuttlecraft.

The scene ends when a computer alarm signals a patrol ship is moving in. Sito moves to the back of the shuttle where Joret Dal handcuffs her. She looks anxious as the mission approaches its most crucial phase.

In Ten-Forward, Lavelle, Taurik, Ogawa, and Ben are wondering where Sito has gone. Lavelle is convinced that she left aboard the shuttle, and he knows it was heading across the border. All four are concerned. Taurik has the most telling line: “we have to accept that we’re not told everything that happens aboard the ship.” Lavelle wants the three to share what they know, and is upset that Ogawa and Taurik can’t share what they know.

The group at the bar in Ten-Forward.

Thirty hours later, Sito hasn’t returned to the rendezvous point in her escape pod. On the bridge, Lavelle, Data, and Riker are attempting to locate the pod. Worf recommends launching a probe, and despite launching a cross-border probe being a violation of the treaty with the Cardassians, Captain Picard okays it.

The probe almost immediately detects debris – Data confirms it’s the right consistency to potentially be the escape pod. Later, the Enterprise-D intercepts a Cardassian message confirming they destroyed the pod, and that Sito was inside.

Lavelle realises Sito has died.

Captain Picard makes a statement to the crew via the intercom, letting them know that Sito has died. Taurik hears it at his post in engineering, Ogawa at hers in sickbay, and Lavelle at his station on the bridge. Ben was, sadly, omitted from this sequence. However, even now, even after seeing this episode so many times over the years, this moment packs an emotional punch. Captain Picard speaks about Sito in glowing terms, in sharp contrast to his first conversation with her, and her death clearly has a huge impact on her closest friends.

Nurse Ogawa learns of Sito’s death.

In Ten-Forward, Worf sits alone and doesn’t even acknowledge Ben, who has brought him a drink. Lavelle joins Taurik and Ogawa and reveals he’s been promoted to lieutenant, though he feels absolutely no joy in getting what he wanted at the beginning of the story. He’d trade it in a heartbeat to have Sito back.

Taurik, Ogawa, and Ben comfort him, telling him Sito would have been happy for him, and to honour her by performing his new role to the best of his ability. Ben talks to Worf, inviting him to join the others in mourning and remembering Sito, telling him that she considered him a friend, not just a superior officer. He joins Lavelle, Ogawa, Taurik, and Ben silently, and the episode ends as they prepare to remember their friend.

Worf joins the junior officers.

So that was it. The first Lower Decks. What started out as a story with an interesting premise turned into one of the emotional high points of the whole season. It’s a story which still has me tearing up a quarter of a century on, and despite the fact that we didn’t know Sito or her friends terribly well, the episode did a phenomenal job getting across their relationships, which were at the core of what made the story so emotional.

The new series may have its emotional moments too – we don’t know for sure yet, but many comedy shows have a balance between funny and emotional moments. I’m looking forward to seeing what Star Trek’s latest show, and first animated series in four decades, will have to offer, and it provided a great excuse to step back in time and re-watch the first Lower Decks.

If I were thinking of characters to bring back for a future iteration of Star Trek, the junior officers we met in Lower Decks would absolutely be contenders. I wonder if the new series will make any reference to them, or to the events of this episode. If it did, it would be a neat little tie-in between The Next Generation and the new Lower Decks.

It’s only a couple of days now, so I hope you’re ready! Check back here regularly while Lower Decks is on the air for episode reviews, theories, speculation, deep dives, and more.

Star Trek: Lower Decks begins on the 6th of August for viewers in the US and Canada. The Star Trek brand – including Lower Decks and The Next Generation – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Let’s Play Disneyland Adventures – Part 1

Let’s Play Disneyland Adventures – Part 1

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Disneyland Adventures.

I miss Disneyland. It’s actually been well over a decade since I was last able to take a trip to any of Disney’s theme parks, and I miss the rides, the food… even the queues! If you’re like me and you’re missing spending time at Disney – especially with the current pandemic messing up holiday plans – I’ve got just the game for you: Disneyland Adventures!

This is actually the second time I’ve bought a copy of this game. I first played it in 2011 or 2012 when it was on the Xbox 360 as Kinect Disneyland Adventures. The Kinect was Microsoft’s foray into the motion-control space, and it was a peripheral for the Xbox 360 (a second version was later bundled with the Xbox One). The Kinect device consisted of a camera and a sensor, and the idea was that it would allow for controller-less play; players would use their arms, legs, and whole bodies to control games.

The Kinect sensor for Xbox 360.

We could spend hours delving into the history of Kinect and its hits and misses; suffice to say the concept was good, but the execution – especially in this first version on the Xbox 360 – wasn’t perfect. Though the Kinect peripheral and its bundled game (simply titled Kinect Adventures) actually ended up being the Xbox 360’s best-selling title, it’s fair to say that it wasn’t the success Microsoft hoped for. The Kinect concept has since been discontinued for gaming, though it is still used in some specialist applications.

Disneyland Adventures is the 2017 re-release of the original 2011 title, and came out for Xbox One and PC. Most importantly it doesn’t require Kinect, nor any other motion controls, and can be played with a normal gamepad. This is the version we’ll be looking at today – and in future updates to this series of posts. If you followed my last “Let’s Play” – where I played through 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order – the format will be similar.

Let’s Play Disneyland Adventures.

So what is Disneyland Adventures? It’s a game for kids that features a digital recreation of Disneyland (the original in California) to explore. Fan-favourite characters can be found who’ll give the player little tasks and quests, and some of the park’s most famous rides are reimagined and stylised to form mini-games and levels away from the open space of the theme park.

Today we’ll take a look at the game’s introduction and check out one of those rides.

After a very brief opening cinematic, I had the opportunity to “customise” my character. I’m putting that in inverted commas because the customisation options for Disneyland Adventures are limited, even for a game from 2011. There is a choice of gender, and several of the characters I interacted with had gendered dialogue which I’m assuming does change depending on whether you choose to play as a boy or a girl. And yes, that’s what the game calls its gender choices – the player character is a kid, after all! Other than the gender option there were a handful of different preset faces and a few outfits, and that was all.

My newly-created character by Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

I’d wager that if you’re even vaguely familiar with Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom, you’ll find that the digital recreation of the park in Disneyland Adventures will feel familiar; I certainly felt that way! The game opened with my (unnamed) character being given a task by Mickey Mouse – take an autograph book to Donald Duck and get his signature. However, after being set this task I was free to explore the park, though there was a quest marker constantly showing my route to Donald’s location.

The Disneyland Monorail makes a loop of the park.

After taking my time to make it to Donald, he signed the autograph book and sent me back to Mickey Mouse. The character voices are all exactly what you’d expect from classic Disney characters, and though the 3D anthropomorphic style used for the characters might take a little getting used to, especially if, like me, you’ve only seen these characters in older 2D animated features, they have a truly classic Disney feel. En route back to Mickey I ran into Captain Hook, and while I couldn’t get his autograph I could interact with him which was fun. Collecting autographs and high-fiving the various characters is going to be a big part of the game.

Dancing a jig with Captain Hook.

Mickey Mouse was still standing near the castle and I returned the autograph book to him. The next quest was to take the book to Goofy in another area of the park, but I took the opportunity to get Mickey’s autograph first. The autographs are one of the games collectables, and they’re divided up into groups of characters.

Getting Mickey’s autograph.

My next task, courtesy of the main mouse himself, was to head over to Goofy and deliver the book. But on the way I decided to have a little bit of a wander through the park – that’s really the main appeal of the game for me! In Tomorrowland, the sci-fi/futuristic area of the park, I met the aliens from Toy Story.

The little aliens.

After that encounter, I tried out one of the attractions – the classic Tomorrowland ride Space Mountain. I’m not wild about ultra-fast rollercoasters usually, but the ones at Disney are done very well and I’ve always enjoyed Space Mountain in particular. In fact, Tomorrowland as a whole is kind of a sci-fi geek’s paradise! The versions of the ride differ at the different theme parks, and I’m sure people who’ve visited all of them will have an opinion on which one is best! In Disneyland Adventures, the attraction stays true to the original theme of the ride – outer space – but kicks it up a gear or two!

Boarding Space Mountain.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the ride; it’s been a while since I played this game, and because even in those days my health wasn’t great, I struggled with the motion controls and didn’t play Disneyland Adventures – or any other Kinect title – very much. But I was pleasantly surprised to find a delightfully old-school on-rails spaceflight game.

An asteroid to avoid in the centre-right, and coins to collect on the right.

In the style of classic arcade games, the player’s vehicle – styled after the ride cars used on the real Space Mountain – moves forward on its own; control is limited to moving side-to-side to avoid obstacles, collect power-ups, and some sections involved shooting a laser-gun.

Targeting reticle to the upper-left and a “hyperspace gate”.

I wasn’t great at the Space Mountain game, I have to be honest. I kept flying into the asteroids and I missed a bunch of power-ups and coins! Luckily the game is very forgiving and every time I crashed I respawned in the same place, not losing any progress. There are more levels within Space Mountain – at least two more – but I didn’t carry on after completing the first stage. There was a “story” of sorts within the mini-game, following my character through several different space environments, including a battle!

Flying past other spaceships in a battlefield.

After exiting Space Mountain I decided to call it a day. I’ll pick up Disneyland Adventures again soon – unlike my last playthrough I’m in no rush to race through everything that the game has to offer. There may be another few parts in this series to come over the next few weeks though, so stay tuned!

I hope you had fun, and if you’re missing Disneyland or find yourself unable to go because of the pandemic, for £15 on Steam this could be a fun distraction. If you aren’t interested in mini-games and collectables perhaps you won’t enjoy it, but for a relatively low price it’s worth a punt in my opinion. If not, keep checking back and follow my playthrough!

Disneyland Adventures is available for PC and Xbox One. Disneyland Adventures is the copyright of the Walt Disney Company and Xbox Game Studios. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

I don’t understand “fans” sometimes…

I don’t understand “fans” sometimes…

Dennis

I’m not a big social media person. In fact, I don’t have any social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc) linked to this site. I like the pieces I write here to speak for themselves. But I follow some social media accounts of franchises I support, such as Star Trek and Star Wars. It seems with almost every update and every announcement posted, people will complain – even about shows that haven’t been broadcast yet!

Here on this website you’ll find criticism of entertainment companies and their films, shows, and games. That’s what I do here; I’m a critic, not a cheerleader for any franchise or company. But my criticism is reserved for things that I’ve seen and played for myself, and is directed at titles that I enjoyed or hoped to enjoy. I don’t seek out things to dislike on purpose, and when it comes to my favourite franchises I always start out hopeful and wanting to have a positive experience. Yet on social media I see so many negative and hateful comments directed at shows like Star Trek: Lower Decks – which hasn’t even aired a single episode yet.

Star Trek: Lower Decks has been criticised by people who haven’t even watched it yet.

There are reasons to criticise ViacomCBS. When thinking about Lower Decks, the fact that the show doesn’t seem like it’s coming overseas any time soon is an issue I’ve been vocal about. But the reason for that is that I want to see Lower Decks – I’m excited for it and not thrilled at the prospect of missing out. I guess I just don’t understand why someone who clearly hates Star Trek would bother to follow Star Trek’s official social media pages only to comment about how much they hate it. It just seems like such a waste of time, and why would anyone choose to live their life in such a negative way?

This extends to the so-called “fans” who set up groups and YouTube channels that deal wholly in negativity. You know the ones I mean – where The Last Jedi is an “objectively bad” film and where any Star Trek production post-Enterprise is automatically hated without even being watched. Passion in a fanbase is all well and good, but why channel it in such a negative way?

The Last Jedi prompted some “fans” to start a campaign of hate against everything to do with Star Wars.

I didn’t enjoy The Rise of Skywalker, the most recent film in the Star Wars franchise. And I was up front about the reasons why when I reviewed it. But that dislike of one film doesn’t mean I’m now a Star Wars hater who’s going to spend a lot of time talking about all the things I didn’t like about the whole franchise, and I’m certainly not going to be jumping on any new announcement to tell you why I think it’s going to be crap. There are films, shows, and games within Star Wars that I like and a few that I dislike. I’ve just finished playing Jedi: Fallen Order, for example, and had a great time with it. In the case of The Rise of Skywalker or The Mandalorian, unless I have something worth saying I’m not just going to keep harping on about how much I didn’t like them. There are so many other things to watch that I don’t have time to waste.

Many of the comments that I see when a show like Lower Decks is being shown off are just one-line things saying something like “this is gonna be shit”. What was the point of saying that? It added absolutely nothing to the discussion, and if someone really believed a new show was going to be that bad, the simple answer is: “don’t watch it then”. As Dr Tolian Soran said in Star Trek: Generations:

“Haven’t you got anything better to do?”

As with the Star Wars “fans” who have decided they hate anything other than the old expanded universe and the first few films, some Star Trek fans aren’t interested in the franchise’s more recent offerings. And that’s fine. Nobody is being forced to watch any show or film that they aren’t interested in or don’t think they’re going to enjoy. I just don’t understand all of the negativity and aggression that seems to plague fan communities.

If it were coming from a place of love, if it was constructive criticism or designed to make a positive change then that would be okay. I write about things I’m passionate about here, and sometimes that means speaking critically about a film or series that I wanted to enjoy but found disappointing. But these people seem to have already decided to hate something without watching it or knowing anything about it, and then take that negativity and toxicity and smear it all over social media. I truly don’t understand that side of “fandom”, nor how someone who behaves that way can consider themselves a “fan” of Star Trek, Star Wars, or anything else.

Representation of a “fan” screeching about a show or film that they’ve decided to hate.

Star Trek in particular has always tried to be a franchise with a positive outlook. Even its darkest stories all took place against the backdrop of an evolved, enlightened humanity, and the battles our heroes fought were against opponents who sought to tear down the bright future humanity had built for itself. That’s the foundation of Star Trek, and while there are definitely points to criticise in Discovery, Picard, and perhaps in Lower Decks too – though we won’t know for sure until we get to see it – blindly hating on something doesn’t seem like something the crew of the Enterprise would do.

As I’ve discussed before, many of these people aren’t interested in even having a conversation about Star Trek or whatever franchise they’ve decided to hate. Their whole identity is tied up in hating a franchise, and nothing will ever convince them to change. Though I find that sad and will always prefer to judge a series or film on its own merits, as I’ve made the mistake in the past of rushing to judgement, I’m fine with someone disliking something I enjoy or not being excited for something I’m looking forward to. We are all different and we all enjoy different things in life. What I don’t understand is the negativity, choosing to spend hours and hours on social media following a franchise just for the sake of being negative about it.

A short selection of negative comments taken from two recent Facebook posts from Star Trek about Lower Decks. Names redacted.

When I write critically about a work of entertainment, I take the time to watch it and I’ll often do other research looking into things like its production history, other works by the actors and director, etc. When I come to the conclusion that a story was unenjoyable for me, I put that into words and try my best to explain what I didn’t like specifically and why I didn’t like it. I didn’t just say “The Rise of Skywalker was crap” and leave it at that. I broke down the specific moments in the film and its story and tried to properly detail why I thought it was crap. These social media comments are often one or two sentences at most, and don’t even bother to explain what the person is taking issue with.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. But social media has made it not only easier for everyone to express those opinions about every tiny little thing, but also to form communities in which only one opinion is acceptable. That side of things in particular has not been positive, and we’re seeing the consequences now when new announcements in practically every franchise are met with hundreds of negative comments that are often rude or even toxic in nature. I’m disappointed that so many people choose to engage in such toxic and negative behaviour, but it’s unlikely to change any time soon.

This post was, somewhat ironically, a way to vent my own frustrations at some of the comments I see plastered across social media. Just like the “fans” who need to spend less time following franchises they hate, I clearly need to spend less time reading the comments – it seems like that’s the way to avoid getting so worked up about it.

All shows, films, and games mentioned above are the copyright of their respective company and/or owner. Header image and other stock photos courtesy of Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.