Television | the m0vie blog

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D – Pilot (Review)

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Darren

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a very competent production. It looks lavish. It connects the dots. It reminds the audience that it’s connected to a string of blockbuster movies without being pushy about it. It introduces a diverse ensemble. It sets up long-running mysteries and story arcs. It’s a tight and focused, and controlled piece of television.

Perhaps too controlled. There’s something oddly restrained and oddly refined about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., feeling a little smoother and a little more polished than a pilot really should. There’s not a hair out of place, but only because everything has been so meticulously styled. This isn’t a bad thing – the pilot plays remarkably well – but it just feels a bit limp, a bit lifeless.

It’s as if we’ve tuned into a Life Model Decoy of a Joss Whedon show.

Phil us in…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Television | Tagged: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, avengers, Centipede, Chloe Bennet, Clark Gregg, extremis, joss whedon, nick fury, paris, Phil Coulson, S.H.I.E.L.D, sam raimi, Skye, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, thor, Whedon | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Necessary Evil (Review)

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first season. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

Commence Station Security log. Stardate 47282.5. At the request of Commander Sisko, I will hereafter be recording a daily log of law enforcement affairs. The reason for this exercise is beyond my comprehension, except perhaps that humans have a compulsion to keep records and lists and files. So many, in fact, that they have to invent new ways to store them microscopically, otherwise their records would overrun all known civilisation. My own very adequate memory not being good enough for Starfleet, I am pleased to put my voice to this official record of this day. Everything’s under control. End log.

Necessary Evil continues to deliver on the promise of “things you can’t do anywhere but Star Trek: Deep Space Nine“ that Michael Piller made at the start of the show’s second season. It’s a genuinely ambitious piece of Star Trek, all the stronger for the fact that it’s idea that could go horribly and spectacularly wrong. Movies like Blade Runner demonstrated that it is possible to blend the aesthetics of science-fiction and film noir, but it seems like a mix that would sit rather uncomfortably in the bright utopian future of Star Trek.

However, Deep Space Nine was never afraid to experiment with its format. This wasn’t always successful, but it did give the show a unique flavour. And when it did work, as it does here, it offered something new and exciting to the franchise’s playbook.

Time for a Changeling…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, Cardassian, deep space nine, games, Ira Steven Behr, Kira, Kira Nerys, Odo, Peter Allan Fields, Quark, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, Starfleet, StarTrek | 6 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Rules of Acquisition (Review)

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first season. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

The Nagus was a surprising high-point of the first season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It represented a conscious effort to rehabilitate and reappraise the Ferengi, the aliens introduced as potentially major adversaries in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, only to wind up as mostly unfunny comic relief. The Nagus dared to suggest that the Ferengi might not be the monsters the Federation considers them to be, suggesting that their culture – while different – was no less worthy of respect or consideration than that of the Klingons.

Rules of Acquisition is a clear follow-up, right down to the way that it includes Grand Nagus Zek. However, it’s nowhere near as charming and successful as The Nagus, because it feels like it’s just treading water. It teases potential developments down the line, but the story seems locked in a familiar holding pattern – right down to the rather convenient ending that inevitably sees Quark snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

It’s not quite a bad episode, certainly not on the scale of the colossal misfire that was Melora, but it’s also not a particularly good one.

Nothing to see here…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Dax, deep space nine, Dominion, Ferengi, Galactic quadrant (Star Trek), games, Ira Steven Behr, Jadzia Dax, Julian Bashir, Klingon, Nagus, Quark, Rom, Rules of Acquisition, Saudi Arabia, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Melora (Review)

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first season. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

It’s hard to believe, based on what we’ve witnessed so far, but one day viewers will be able to think “oh, a Bashir episode!” without an involuntary shudder. There will come a time when the writing staff figure out how to write a Bashir-centric episode. In fact, they’ll even revisit this central premise in the show’s final season, in a way that is much less creepy because at least it acknowledges the creepiness. However, we’re a long way from that.

It’s not that Bashir is a bad character. In fact, I’m very fond of him. I think that this version of the character works very well as part of an ensemble, or even teamed up with another major character to carry a story. However, I don’t think that the show has quite figured out how to tell a Bashir-centric story yet. Most notably because – like The Passenger before it – Melora isn’t really about Bashir. At least not in a way that isn’t creepy and disturbing and unnerving.

Instead, Bashir is mostly a vehicle for the guest character of the week, who lends the episode her name and serves as the focal point of some incredibly condescending and patronising writing which doesn’t make the optimistic future of Star Trek look particularly bright.

Floating in a most peculiar way…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bashir, Benjamin Sisko, Daphne Ashbrook, Dax, deep space nine, ethics, Jadzia Dax, Julian Bashir, Melora, Next Generation, Quark, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, Starfleet, StarTrek, Television program, Worf | 3 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Never-Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack (Review)

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first season. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

More than any of the other Star Trek spin-offs, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine lends itself to narratives running in parallel to the main plot. Part of this is due to the conscious world-building the show engaged in, creating an expansive supporting cast populated by citizens of countless different worlds that were developed into more than just “planets of the week.”

There’s also the rather epic scale of events depicted in the show, with only The Best of Both Worlds offering a glimpse of events on a scale similar to those of Deep Space Nine. The show’s setting helps as well; even with the Defiant and occasional trips to other worlds, most of the show was focused on life on the station, suggesting a maelstrom of activity in the wider universe.

The Never-Ending Sacrifice takes advantage of these factors to offer a compelling narrative running in parallel to the events of Deep Space Nine, spanning from Cardassians through to the Pocket Books relaunch. It’s a rich and expansive tale which feels like a genuine epic, taking the opportunity to glimpse events of the season through a set of alien eyes.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: A Stitch in Time, best of both worlds, Cardassian, deep space nine, Diane Duane, John M. Ford, ronald d. moore, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, Way of the Warrior | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Cardassians (Review)

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

Cardassians suffers a bit from the same problems that haunt Invasive Procedures. Here’s another solidly constructed piece of world-building featuring a wonderful guest cast and an intriguing high concept. However, in the midst of all this, it seems like the human (er, Cardassian) element gets a bit lost. It’s great to have Garak and Dukat back on the show, and it’s great to deal with more fallout from the Occupation, but Cardassians never makes the emotional connection that a story about war orphans probably should.

Keeping up with the Cardassians…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, Cardassian, deep space nine, Dukat, Elim Garak, Garak, Julian Bashir, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, world war ii | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – Worlds of Deep Space Nine: Unjoined (Trill) by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels (Review)

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

Worlds of Deep Space Nine was an ambitious project, but one that existed as a testament to the world-building that defined Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A series of six novellas published in three books, each covering one of five planets associated with the television show (plus Andor), the book series was intended to launch the unofficial “ninth season” of the show. Beginning unofficially with The Lives of Dax and A Stitch in Time, the idea was for the spin-off novels to continue to develop and expand the series’ loose threads.

It’s quite something that Deep Space Nine left enough fertile ground to support a relaunch that ran so long, covering story beats that couldn’t necessarily be included in the television show – Bajor’s admittance to the Federation, the rebuilding of Cardassia, the aftermath of the war. Unjoined builds off the Trill storylines running through Deep Space Nine, using the events from the “eighth season” (the books through Unity) as a stepping stone to explore Trill culture.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: A Stitch in Time, Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, deep space nine, Ezri Dax, Federation, Julian Bashir, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, Trill | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Invasive Procedures (Review)

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

Invasive Procedures is an interesting episode. It has a great high concept, some nice character beats, and offers an inside glimpse at an astonishingly interesting alien culture. Verad is a compelling guest character and Sisko gets to be pretty badass, continuing the presentation of the character as some weird composite of James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard.

There are however, a number of very sizeable flaws. The most obvious being that – despite this is nominally a “Dax” story – Dax winds up feeling more like a plot point than a character in her own right.

Slugging it out…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Benjamin Sisko, Betazoid, Dax, deep space nine, Ferengi, games, gene roddenberry, Jadzia Dax, Klingon, Next Generation, Quark, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Tim Russ, Video game, Wesley Crusher | 6 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Lives of Dax: Reflections (Jadzia) by L.A. Graf

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

The Trill are an absolutely fascinating species, arguably much more so on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine than they were on Star Trek: The Next Generation. They were introduced in The Host as a race that was relatively straightforward – a bunch of symbionts living inside humanoid bodies. There was no indication that the host was anything but a blank slate for the organism inside to overwrite and control.

On Deep Space Nine, they became much more complex. The show’s first Trill-centric episode, Dax, pondered if it was possible to divorce the actions of the host from those of the symbiont, or vice versa. Though the episode in question wimped on giving a definitive answer one way or the other, the implication is that each Trill is a fusion of host and symbiont, rather than one dominating the other. Because of that, it seemed like the show always had trouble defining Jadzia (the character on the show) relative to Dax (the sum of lifetimes of experience).

As such, it’s hard not to pity veteran writers Julia Ecklar and Karen Rose Cercone (writing as “L.A. Graf”) for drawing the short straw and winding up writing the story from the anthology The Lives of Dax focusing on Jadzia.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Benjamin Sisko, Dax, deep space nine, Jadzia, Jadzia Dax, Julian Bashir, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, Trill | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Siege (Review)

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

The Siege wraps up the first ever three-part episode of Star Trek in a surprisingly efficient manner. There are a few missteps, a lack of nuance and an over abundance of convenience and simplicity. However, it succeeds in doing what this opening three-parter set out to do. It tells a single story which could only ever have been told on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It gives a sense of scale to the show which is unique to the series, and it creates a palpable sense of uncertainty about the Federation’s mission to Bajor.