Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 5

Star Trek: Picard - Season 1

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I have mixed feelings about the first season of Star Trek: Picard.

Picard himself is, of course, fascinating to watch. There would be no point in doing this show if you couldnā€™t get Patrick Stewart back, and heā€™s not phoning it in. The new characters are appealing, and each of them has something they have to deal with over the course of the season: Raffi with her desperation to solve the mystery, Riosā€™ guilt complex, Dr. Jurati trying to keep her head above water, and Soji slowly becoming aware that something weird is going on around her.

And thereā€™s action, and effects, and doing something different with the Borg, and easter eggs. (Itā€™s possibly the first time Vasquez Rocks has appeared as Vasquez Rocks!)

But itā€™s kind of like the Star Wars sequel trilogy: On one hand, itā€™s nice to check in on these characters again after all this time and see what theyā€™ve been up to. On the otherā€¦things havenā€™t turned out as well as one might hope. I mean, sure, Picardā€™s got his vineyard, but you always figured heā€™d retire from Starfleet with honors. Riker and Troi have a family, but thereā€™s a tragedy they still havenā€™t quite moved past. Seven of Nineā€¦well, sheā€™s kicking butt and taking names, but at the end of the day she canā€™t escape the feeling that itā€™s not enough. And then there are some of the minor charactersā€¦

(I was reminded several times of the line from Sandman about how the secret to a happy ending was knowing where to stop, because if you keep going, eventually all stories end in death.)

And maybe thatā€™s more realistic. ST:TNG, like the original series, was very optimistic about what could be accomplished, what could be solvedā€¦and itā€™s damn hard to stay optimistic these days. So itā€™s darker than TNG, and more introspective than Discovery. On one level, itā€™s ā€œPicard rides again!ā€ On another itā€™s deconstructing the idea of Jean-Luc Picard, looking at the pieces critically, and reassembling them.

And this is Patrick freaking Stewart. You donā€™t bring him back after 30 years just for a special effects extravaganza. You give him a chance to act. And they did. The plot is about Picard getting a ragtag crew together to find and protect synthetic androids from Romulan spies. But the story is about the heavy, personal cost of doing the right thing, even when opposed or ignored by those around you. Theyā€™re constantly faced with the question: was it worth it?

Like The Last Jedi, a lot of it is a grueling journey where we watch that tiny flame of hope flickering in a hurricane. And like The Last Jedi, it finishes on a positive note: Yes, itā€™s worth it, it tries to say.

But the finale is really abrupt. Motivations are opaque, and decisions are made for the sake of the plot. The story threads donā€™t all tie together (well, maybe if you stretch some of them like bungee cords). And most importantly: the pieces of the idealized Jean-Luc Picard appear to have been put back in place just the way they were before. Examined, yes, but with no indication that heā€™s learned anything from the process.

That said, itā€™s still better than The Rise of Skywalker, and handles the artificial intelligence/natural intelligence conflict at least somewhat better than season two of Discovery.

Update

Season Three (and to a lesser extent Season Two) has given me a new appreciation for the first season of the show. In large part because they added a lot of interesting ideas to the Star Trek canon:

  • Exploring the flip side of the event that kicked off the Kelvin timeline.
  • Picardā€™s role in the evacuation and resettlement process, Starfleetā€™s unfortunate response, and how he deals with it.
  • Seven of Nine trying to make her way in the galaxy.
  • The Zhat Vash and the Romulan history with silicon/synthetic life.
  • The Qowat Milat and the Way of Absolute Candor. (I canā€™t hear the phrase ā€œchoose to liveā€ without thinking of Elnorā€™s warning.)
  • The Artifact and the team studying it, and trying to actually rehab ex-Borg into somewhat functional people again.
  • Linking the Romulans, the Borg, and Dr. Soonghā€™s work building synthetic humanoids.
  • Generally making the Romulans less monolithic. (And the simple explanation of the appearing/disappearing forehead ridges, making it just part of the normal variation within the species.)

I donā€™t think Iā€™d bump it up to four stars, but maybe three and a half.

Coffee Cartel

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The kind of neighborhood coffee house that actually feels like itā€™s part of a neighborhood. Community bulletin boards, bookshelves, sometimes local art. And a little bit of everything: coffee, tea, pastries, smoothies, and boba. (I donā€™t know how long theyā€™ve had boba - I just noticed it for the first time on the menu last week.) Offbeat and home-y despite its spot at the end of a row of trendy restaurants. (And itā€™s been here longer than most of those!) Decent amounts of both indoor and outdoor seating. The kind of atmosphere that makes you want to hang out there.

Most of the street parking has been converted to outdoor dining for those nearby restaurants, but itā€™s a very short walk from the metered parking lot across from Trader Joeā€™s.

Rival Coffee Co.

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Nighttime view of a low, squarish building with a lit up white sign saying Rival Coffee Co.

Nighttime view of a low, squarish building with a lit up white sign saying Rival Coffee Co.Good coffee and creative flavor combinations. REALLY good breakfast sandwiches. Your kids will like the filled donuts. (Sadly, the french toast cubes have been discontinued.) Friendly service, lots of seating both indoors (kind of echo-y) and outside in a shaded patio. Theyā€™re currently remodeling a bigger dining room for the ā€œEatsā€ part of the ā€œSips and Eatsā€ slogan.

Itā€™s a bit out of the way, in a small incomplete shopping center where you can clearly see the spaces set aside for more buildingsā€¦eventuallyā€¦but the only time I can remember seeing it anywhere close to empty was the time I got there five minutes before closing on a holiday.

The Press Espresso

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Good coffee with a wide range of flavored drinks. Indoor seating is small but inviting, the kind of place youā€™d want to hang out for a while. Well-suited for small gatherings, or reading a book, or working on a laptop. I keep meaning to try some of their baked goods, but I still havenā€™t gotten around to it. Open later than The Crafted Scone across the street.

City of Illusions

Ursula K. Le Guin

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Now I understand why these three Hainish novels are collected in a single book. Not just because they were earlier and not as famous as, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness, but because theyā€™re linked by more than just the setting. In a way, City of Illusions is the flip side to Planet of Exile: Instead of a single city of people from Earth just trying to stay alive on a primitive world, this time Earth is the (mostly) primitive world, with a single city run by the alien conquerors ā€“ at least, thatā€™s what the scattered humans believe, and even then they know their records are fragmented and probably falsified.

This is a post-apocalyptic world, but one thatā€™s had thousands of years for nature to recover. The story begins not in a forbidding desert, but a small village in a clearing within the vast forest that has regrown over eastern North America. People still have some technology, but itā€™s all used on a small scale.

At first, it seems like a travelogue showing different ways humans have adapted to living in a world where they simply canā€™t build large settlements. The small friendly villages in the forest, the fortresses that attack outsiders, the lone man living in the wilderness where his high-level empathic powers wonā€™t overwhelm him, the violent nomads of the plains, the wanderers, the slightly larger village with a self-proclaimed ā€œprince,ā€ the enigmatic beekeepers, and of course the hangers-on surrounding the City.

But once Falk reaches the City, it starts to become clear itā€™s not just about different types of societies. Itā€™s about isolation, adaptation, kindness, cruelty, trust and hope, and above all, how to piece together the truth ā€“ or at least how to pick out the lies. Illusions can highlight truths or disguise them. Falk is overwhelmed by the layers of deception and betrayal, knows heā€™s being manipulated, and knows heā€™s outclassed. All he can do is look for the flaws and find a few threads to expose bits of truth, and hope he can use them.

Are the Shing really aliens? Why are they really here? Who wiped Falkā€™s memory, and why? And why would the Shing be willing to unlock his past?

And how can you be yourself when you donā€™t know who you really are?

Definitely worth reading, whether youā€™ve read Planet of Exile or not, though I think the later chapters in particular benefit from having read both.