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Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Fiction and Excerpts [4]
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Fiction and Excerpts [4]

Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: Fourth Season Overview

Thu Jan 14, 2021 1:00pm 18 comments 2 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: CBS

Star Trek: Voyager Fourth Season
Original air dates: September 1997 – May 1998
Executive Producers: Rick Berman, Jeri Taylor

Captain’s log. Much like Deep Space Nine, its sister show, Voyager had its first major cast change in its fourth season, in this case with Jennifer Lien as Kes departing and Jeri Ryan joining the cast as the ex-Borg Seven of Nine.

If there was any kind of theme to the season, it was moving forward, most obviously shown when Voyager itself was thrown forward 10,000 light-years by Kes on her way out the door at the top of the season, and then the ship gaining another 300 light-years thanks to a juryrigged quantum slipstream drive at the end of the season. Just in general, Voyager emphasized making progress, not pausing long in any one place, and while there were recurring antagonists like the Hirogen, most of the nations encountered by the ship were left behind in short order. And even the Hirogen encounters were all bunched up.

[Bridge to Chakotay: scorpion!]

Series: Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch

“Let’s fly!” — Star Trek: Discovery Third Season Overview

Tue Jan 12, 2021 1:00pm 82 comments 7 Favorites [+]
Credit: CBS

For the first time in its three-year history, Discovery kept a show-runner and a stable writers room for an entire season, and the difference in consistency and quality is marked. Plus one of the biggest issues with the show—that the technology in a show that takes place ten years prior to the original series looks more sophisticated than that of the 24th century in the 1987-2001 spinoffs—is solved by bouncing the crew into the 32nd century.

As a result, we have Discovery’s finest season.

[I really really didn’t know how this day was gonna turn out.]

Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “Hope and Fear”

Mon Jan 11, 2021 1:00pm 30 comments 4 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: CBS

“Hope and Fear”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Season 4, Episode 26
Production episode 194
Original air date: May 20, 1998
Stardate: 51978.2

Captain’s log. Seven and Janeway are playing Velocity on the holodeck. Seven is frustrated by the fact that Janeway is doing better than her. Given her physical and mental acuity thanks to being a former drone, she should defeat Janeway every time. Seven wants a rematch, but Janeway refuses.

[“Impossible” is a word that humans use far too often.]

Series: Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch

Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “One”

Thu Jan 7, 2021 1:00pm 59 comments 4 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: CBS

“One”
Written by Jeri Taylor
Directed by Kenneth Biller
Season 4, Episode 25
Production episode 193
Original air date: May 13, 1998
Stardate: 51929.3

Captain’s log. Seven is on the holodeck, trying to learn how to have conversations with people, under the supervision of the EMH. However, she treats “getting to know you” questions as an interrogation, and barely gives Torres and Kim time to answer the questions she asks before moving on. The EMH castigates her for her behavior, and she decides she’d rather go to sickbay to perform medical maintenance than keep going through this program.

[Read more]

Series: Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch

“Wanting is not the same as doing” — Star Trek: Discovery’s “That Hope Is You, Part 2”

Thu Jan 7, 2021 10:00am 88 comments 2 Favorites [+]
Credit: CBS

Okay, my favorite part of the the third-season finale of Discovery is the ending: the closing credits, which employs the closing-credits music from the original series. This probably would’ve been even niftier last week, which was the 800th installment of Trek onscreen, but it’s still a nifty little call-back to end this season, and as we just completed a year that had three new seasons of Trek in it.

The episode’s ending prior to the credits also isn’t a cliffhanger, which is a welcome relief, frankly.

[Your approval means everything to me.]

Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “Demon”

Mon Jan 4, 2021 1:00pm 39 comments 3 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: CBS

“Demon”
Written by André Bormanis and Kenneth Biller
Directed by Anson Williams
Season 4, Episode 24
Production episode 192
Original air date: May 6, 1998
Stardate: unknown

Captain’s log. Because they’re low on deuterium, Voyager has gone into “gray mode,” which requires that nonessential systems be shut down and power cut off to several decks. This also requires barracks-style sleeping arrangements, though Neelix decides, along with a few other people, to bunk down in sickbay instead.

[This is a sickbay, not a dormitory!]

Series: Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch

Yippee-Ki-Yay, Michael Burnham! — Star Trek: Discovery’s “There Is A Tide…”

Thu Dec 31, 2020 10:00am 87 comments 5 Favorites [+]
Credit: CBS

When Die Hard came out in the summer of 1988, nobody had particularly high expectations for it. Just another summer blow-’em-up, whose lead was a smirky TV star best known for his quips on Moonlighting, seemingly miscast as an action hero.

It became not just a hit movie, but also a trope. Tons of TV shows and movies have riffed on it, or at least used it as a logline (“It’s Die Hard, but on a train!” and so on). Star Trek has done Die Hard riffs before (TNG’s “Starship Mine,” Voyager’s “Macrocosm“), and now Discovery takes its turn as Burnham, Book, and the bridge crew work to take the ship back from Osyraa.

[It’s pretty good, for shit.]

To Be Free, Face Your Deepest Fear — Star Trek: Discovery’s “Su’Kal”

Thu Dec 24, 2020 10:00am 52 comments 3 Favorites [+]
Credit: CBS

This week’s episode picks up right where last week left off, with the crew still gathered in the mess hall to memorialize Emperor Georgiou, but the gathering becomes the subject of several revelations in short order, thus allowing Discovery to finally head to the Verubin Nebula to investigate the origins of the Burn.

We start with the return of Gray to Adria’s headspace. There are several things I like about this particular development. One is that it isn’t being treated like a delusion. Stamets not only takes Adira seriously, but even turns to address the empty area where Adira says Gray is in order to rebuke him for treating Adira poorly. And we’ve seen in DS9’s “Field of Fire” that joined Trill can call up images of past hosts with the Rite of Emergence. Since Adira isn’t Trill, having the Rite happen with a past host they’re emotionally attached to as a side effect is reasonable.

[Okay, we’ll skip Freud—what do you want?]

Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “Living Witness”

Mon Dec 21, 2020 1:00pm 44 comments 9 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: CBS

“Living Witness”
Written by Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky and Bryan Fuller
Directed by Tim Russ
Season 4, Episode 23
Production episode 191
Original air date: April 29, 1998
Stardate: n/a

Captain’s log. Janeway is having a conversation in her ready room with Vaskan Ambassador Daleth, negotiating terms for how Voyager will fight the Vaskan war on the Kyrians. Voyager will wage their war in exchange for access to a wormhole that will get them home. Janeway’s uniform is absent any rank insignia, her hairdo is different, and she is incredibly violent-minded.

[For your information, I don’t appreciate being deactivated in the middle of a sentence. It brings back unpleasant memories.]

Series: Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch

“All of us here have killed someone” — The New Mutants

Fri Dec 18, 2020 11:00am 37 comments 5 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: 20th Century Fox / Disney

Starting in August 2017, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic in the weekly 4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch. He caught up to real time, as it were, in January 2020, but is revisiting the feature every six months or so to look back at the new releases in the previous half-year. Last week, we looked at The Old Guard, and this time ’round it’s The New Mutants.

There was no comic book more popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s than Uncanny X-Men. After the third-rate super-team was rebooted in 1975 by the late great Len Wein and the late great Dave Cockrum, Chris Claremont took over the writing chores and, working with Cockrum and later John Byrne, turned it into Marvel’s powerhouse, the X-Men eclipsing Spider-Man as Marvel’s flagship.

In 1982, the inevitable spinoff happened.

[This isn’t a hospital, Pocahontas, it’s a cage.]

Series: 4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch

Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “Unforgettable”

Thu Dec 17, 2020 1:00pm 52 comments 4 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: CBS

“Unforgettable”
Written by Greg Elliot & Michael Perricone
Directed by Andrew J. Robinson
Season 4, Episode 22
Production episode 190
Original air date: April 22, 1998
Stardate: 51813.4

Captain’s log. Voyager finds itself proximate to a firefight, though they can only detect the results of the weapons fire, not the actual battle itself. Seven theorizes that the combatants are cloaked, which proves to be the case when one ship blows up the other one.

[I fell in love with her twice, I thought she could do the same.]

Series: Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch

“There are no spoils from peace” — Star Trek: Discovery’s “Terra Firma, Part 2”

Thu Dec 17, 2020 10:30am 87 comments 3 Favorites [+]
Credit: CBS

This past weekend, Star Trek novelist Dave Galanter, whose work included the Voyager novel Battle Lines, as well as the recent Discovery novel Dead Endless, lost his battle with cancer at the age of 51. He was a valued colleague and a dear friend, and he will be sorely missed. This week’s rewatches and reviews are dedicated to his memory. 

So this week we find out the truth about who Carl is, we find out what Reno’s been doing all this time, we see Booker making himself useful to Discovery, we continue our lengthy digression into the Mirror Universe, and we bid goodbye to Philippa Georgiou, at least until she gets her spinoff.

Lots going on here, but the big thing is that I was so incredibly wrong about Carl.

[She had no tact—and God, I loved that about her…]

Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “The Omega Directive”

Mon Dec 14, 2020 1:00pm 53 comments 3 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: CBS

“The Omega Directive”
Written by Jimmy Diggs & Steve J. Kay and Lisa Klink
Directed by Victor Lobl
Season 4, Episode 21
Production episode 189
Original air date: April 15, 1998
Stardate: 51781.2

This past weekend, Star Trek novelist Dave Galanter, whose work included the Voyager novel Battle Lines, as well as the recent Discovery novel Dead Endless, lost his battle with cancer at the age of 51. He was a valued colleague and a dear friend, and he will be sorely missed. This week’s rewatches and reviews are dedicated to his memory. 

Captain’s log. Seven comes out of her regeneration cycle, dictates a log entry, and then goes to the mess hall to fetch Kim for a sensor diagnostic, finishing his kal-toh game for him, to Kim’s annoyance and Tuvok’s surprise. En route to the diagnostic, Voyager falls out of warp.

[“Your Starfleet directive is no longer relevant—I have found a way to control omega.” “I don’t care if you can make it sing and dance, we’re getting rid of it.”]

Series: Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch

“Humanity can go screw itself” — The Old Guard

Fri Dec 11, 2020 11:00am 17 comments 5 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: Netflix

In August 2017, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic in the weekly 4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch. He caught up to real time, as it were, in January 2020, but is revisiting the feature every six months or so to look back at the new releases in the previous half-year. This week, we have The Old Guard, while next week, we’ll look at The New Mutants.

Greg Rucka got his start in the writing biz as a novelist in 1996, with the novel Keeper. Two years later, Oni Press published his comic book Whiteout, with art by Steve Lieber, and at the turn of the millennium, he became one of the major writers in DC’s stable, novelizing the “No Man’s Land” event in the Batman comics, followed by lengthy runs on various comics (including Gotham Central, a favorite of your humble rewatcher, in collaboration with Ed Brubaker and artist Michael Lark).

In 2017, he collaborated with artist Leandro Fernández on The Old Guard: Opening Fire, a miniseries published by Image. Three years later, Netflix released a film adaptation of the series.

[“So are you good guys or bad guys?” “Depends on the century.”]

Series: 4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch

Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “Vis à Vis”

Thu Dec 10, 2020 1:00pm 47 comments 3 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: CBS

“Vis à Vis”
Written by Robert J. Doherty
Directed by Jesús Salvador Treviño
Season 4, Episode 20
Production episode 188
Original air date: April 8, 1998
Stardate: 51762.4

Captain’s log. Paris is on the holodeck, playing mechanic to a 1969 Chevy Camaro. The EMH inserts himself into the program to find out why Paris hasn’t been reporting for his medical training, since he’s supposed to have taken over from Kes as the doctor’s assistant. Paris jokes that he’s practicing surgery on the car.

[Advanced subspace geometry—it’s the one course at the Academy where I actually paid attention…]

Series: Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch

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