infiltration | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On the Trump Era Paranoia of “Star Trek: Picard”…

Posted on March 23, 2023 by Darren

I am doing weekly reviews of Star Trek: Picard at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Thursday morning while the show is on, looking at the third season as the show progresses. This week, the season’s fifth episode.

The third season of Picard is fascinating, in large part because it’s so narratively and thematically empty. So much of the show is given over to empty nostalgia, that there’s little sense of what this story is supposed to be about, beyond a loose assemblage of familiar clichés into a recognisable pattern. There’s none of the urgency of the immigration and xenophobia metaphors that informed the first two seasons, as clumsy as those were. Instead, Picard falls back on a set of unfortunate science-fiction clichés that speak to the worst impulses of the current moment, a paranoia that feels tied to the worst of the American zeitgeist.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: changelings, Government, great replacement, imposters, infiltration, january 6th, maga, nostalgia, paranoia, qanon, star trek, star trek: picard, trump | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Colony (Review)

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

Colony is another second season game changer. As with other episodes in the second season, there’s a sense that the production team are really getting to grips with what works with the show – laying groundwork and defining a template that they can work with into the show’s third season. While the Duane Barry and Ascension two-parter had been an act of desperation to work around Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy, Colony and End Game is a two-parter that the show embraced entirely of its own volition.

These two two-part episodes really set the template for the show going forward. There’s a sense that Chris Carter and his team were really defining what a season of The X-Files should look like, giving them a blueprint that they might build on in the years ahead. From the second season through to the sixth, the show would stick quite rigidly to the idea of two big two-parters in the middle of the season, quite apart from any multi-part stories bridging the seasons.

Lights in the sky…

These two parters were typically broadcast as part of the “sweeps”, and inevitably focused on the show’s alien conspiracy mythology. Even the more stand-alone two-parters like A Christmas Carol and Emily or Dreamland Part I and Dreamland Part II still build off the series’ central mythology. Given those were the points at which the show got the highest exposure, and the point where the show worked hardest to draw in an audience, it’s no surprise that the mythology arc rose to such prominence.

Duane Barry and Ascension undoubtedly set a precedent, but those episodes were prompted by factors outside the control of the creative team. However, Colony and End Game really solidified that precedent into a guiding principle for the show. This two-parter comes to codify and cement a lot of the things that the show’s mythology comes to take for granted. For better and worse.