Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993 - 1999)

Note: most of these are my posts copied over from a Star Trek group-watch going through the entire series in broadcast order, rather than properly written reviews.

DS9 S01E01&E02 'Emissary' Stardate 46379.1 Broadcast date 1993-01-03.
Wow, that pilot is a lot! There's so much stuff in there. A lot to like, too. Opening with the big action of Wolf 359 and also making it part of Sisko's backstory is a great idea. It's nice and crunchy to have a series crossover where the one lead can barely stand to be in the same room as the other. There's a ton of fun sci-fi concepts thrown in, like Odo, Dax and the wormhole inhabitants, and a bunch of fun characters introduced. The dialogue is a little pulpy and the acting is mostly naturalistic and earthy but with some Wild West and even Shakespearian tones thrown in here and there. And the concept of using a non-linear species to discuss grief is great. It's all directed and edited really nicely.
Probably the main negative to my mind, in fact, is that there's too much in there! It still feels like a show finding its feet, albeit more enthusiastically than TNG's beginnings. There's the Wild West vibe of a new sheriff arriving in town, meeting the locals and trying to clean things up, prophecies, a quest for a mystical MacGuffin, encountering a new species, and developing galactic politics. There's space battles and O'Brien kicking machinery to get it going, there's extended hallucinatory sequences. There are about ten different acting styles, most of them coming from Avery Brooks. It's a serialised show set on a space station and yet they're already off on missions, moving the station to a different location and introducing a second big local political football.
Basically, I enjoyed it, I think it's more successful than TNG's pilot, and I appreciate the energy, but also look forward to the show refining and controlling that energy a little more.

DS9 S01E03 'Past Prologue' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-01-10.
This one was okay. I do like the relatively complicated set-up of various factions all working their own angles, and the divided loyalties and priorities that Kira (and presumably others in the future) has to deal with. It didn't feel particularly deep or resonant here, but it's a good baseline to start from for a second episode. Also liked the Klingon sisters showing up, the doctor being a young naive dope rather than the usual worldly-wise grump/sage that we usually get, and the introduction of Garak who seems like a fun Varys-esque character.

DS9 S01E04 'A Man Alone' Stardate 46421.5 Broadcast date 1993-01-17.
I thought this one was really strong, a great mission statement of what this show can, or at least one mode of it. Winding between the multiple stories, with complex blocking and showy oners, overlapping them in the plot a little, showing the different styles of story that can co-exist like detective, domestic, romantic, and hinting at the continuing clash of cultures on the station.
Granted the detective story wasn't particularly deep or elaborate, but it was interesting enough and served well to highlight power structures and character histories. This episode made me more excited about the show's potential than Past Prologue did, certainly.

DS9 S01E05 'Babel' Stardate 46423.7 Broadcast date 1993-01-24.
I really liked the opening of this episode, O'Brien running around putting out fires and the station being in a state of unreliability that we're not used to after so much time spent on the Enterprise. There's in-built tension here before the plot even gets going. Then the idea of the rapid-onset aphasia is great. Though it's a shame they gave the game away so early with that shot of the doohickey in the replicator - why the hell did they make that choice?! It feels like the whole thing is set up to drop subtle but fair hints and then have a nice reveal when Odo catches Quark and works it out, but then they decided that audiences were too thick or impatient to wait fifteen minutes? Anyway, after that, I was looking forward to a Darmok style episode where the crew quickly fall victim to the virus and have to find non-verbal ways of communicating and solving the problem. Instead they all catch it very slowly and, conveniently, after providing their individual contribution to the solution, and then drop out of the story. The language aspect to the virus may as well not be included, they could just instantly fall unconscious for all the plot function they have once they become symptomatic. So yeah, a very slow investigation and a vague last-minute ticking clock didn't really stand up to my expectations.

DS9 S01E06 'Captive Pursuit' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-01-31.
I really enjoyed this one! It was a bit slow, but in a considered, purposeful way. I liked the Enemy Mine style growing friendship between O'Brien and Tosk (curiously similar reptilian alien name to Bossk!), the designs and culture of the new races, and just as I thought it was running out of steam, they had O'Brien come up with a smart solution. Guest actors were good, too.
I did think it was a little odd that they had that opening bit about Quark legally obligating his staff into sleeping with him only to not only immediately drop it but then have a couple of sympathetic comedy scenes with him. Stuff that didn't get thought about as much in early 90s tv, I guess.
It's funny that they've come up with this way to still have them encounter new species and have to think about the Prime Directive etc in the same way as the Enterprise shows - they just have the strange new worlds come to them via the wormhole!

DS9 S01E07 'Q-Less' Stardate 46531.2 Broadcast date 1993-02-07.
This is a rough one.  A complete waste of Q (I normally like his episodes and it was pretty cool to see him show up on DS9!) and aside from him a very dull and predictable episode. I think I liked Vash okay on TNG too, and she didn't get much to do here either.
The only good bit was the Promethean stone thing turning out to be an egg instead of just exploding. Even the "Picard never punched me!" scene was worse than I remember, because Q literally puts Sisko in a boxing ring with him and punches him several times. I expect Picard probably would have punched him at that point. I had it in my head as happening in Sisko's office, Q saying something particularly obnoxious and getting caught off-guard by a Sisko haymaker. (I probably was also picturing bald goatee Sisko!)
Also, I'm not sure why, but the SD/HD gap was much more noticeable this episode, it as pretty ugly. That opening scene especially felt like watching a contemporary episode of Neighbours.

DS9 S01E08 'Dax' Stardate 46910.1 Broadcast date 1993-02-14.
Just watched the cold open and uh oh ,think I'm starting to dislike Bashir. The 'hopeless romantic/gadabout' act is starting to curdle into creepy, and he was absolutely fucking useless in that fight. Almost knocked himself out against a wall by punching someone and then just stopped fighting because, what, he was so surprised that his opponent was a woman? It's the 24th fucking century, Julian!
Turned out to be a solid episode. Trials and hearings are always strong ground in Trek, and this one works nicely with the symbiotic nature of Trills giving it some unique things to argue about, and the different members of the crew going off to investigate different areas (even if really only Odo did much there). And wow, what a guest cast - Gregory Itzin, Fionnula Flannigan and Anne Haney, all doing good work. Oh, also cool to see DC Fontana get a credit on another Trek show!
Really the main drawback here was that it was fairly obvious what the truth was as soon as Enina confirmed that someone leaked the route - it's going to be someone we know about and that list is limited. Plus the overplayed sad look a few moments later when she hears Curzon Dax died makes it obvious that they were lovers, so Jadzia is keeping quiet to cover for her. Admittedly, though, I did guess that this meant Enina leaked the route, so I didn't get it 100% but then it's a bit weird that the general leaked his own route so I'm not surprised I didn't guess that. I suppose the implication is that he wanted them to pick him up so he could escape with them?
Also, might have been nice to get this episode after we'd gotten to know Jadzia a little better so we'd be invested despite her silence and we'd have experienced the quirks of Trill life directly a bit more.
Anyway, enjoyed it, and I continue to enjoy them experimenting with what this show can be. Feels like they have a LOST style approach at the moment - we have this ensemble of characters with different jobs, strengths etc, so at any time we can do a different genre of show.

group-watch in progress

Conclave (2024)

SPOILERS BELOW

Looks and sounds lovely, lots of strong performances, but it inexplicably gives up at the end. Turns out the obviously corrupt guy probably did all the corrupt stuff (though he denies it and we never get full closure on that), the obviously awful guy is so awful he wants to start a war against Islam, and the lovely charity in war-torn countries guy is really lovely. But then a twist! The lovely guy is so lovely that he's intersex. The end. Why spend the whole movie acting like a mystery thriller and then not give it a proper ending? Why didn't we ever meet the mysterious Morales, why didn't it turn out the pope was murdered, why didn't we at least get a confession? It's so utterly unsatisfying, which I wouldn't mind so much if the underneath all the lovely dressing the film was anything other than 'detective story in the Vatican'.

Rating: lovely presentation, letdown of an ending.

Here (2024)

And I thought Nickel Boys' central conceit was distancing...

This just does not work. It's like a combination of a John Lewis Christmas ad and a flashback episode from a show like Lost where they use shorthand to show you all a character's important life events, but it goes on for 100 minutes. The frame-in-frame mechanic is the least imaginative transition method they could have come up with, and it feels so stiff, just like everything else in the movie - the acting (especially but not exclusively when via CG de-aging), the blocking where everyone steps perfectly into frame for their big speeches, the dialogue where historical echoes and period-establishing elements and hints at future illnesses are delivered with all the subtlety of a cheap animatronic park ride, and the centuries-old exterior settings feel about as real as a school play backdrop.

I can imagine a version of this that might have worked, if the transitions were more inventive, the dramatic moments smaller, the staging messier, the Forrest Gump of it all reduced. But alas.

Also, they should have left that tidal wave in.

Rating: stiff, cheesy, shallow.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

SPOILERS BELOW

Bit of a disappointment after the high standards of so many previous ones. It's all very 'this might be the last one, global stakes' portentous and slow, it doesn't keep a light touch while maintaining the stakes and not winking at camera, unlike the best of them. There aren't any classic M:I heists or anything like that, and the action scenes weren't that thrilling; it's weird, this one felt more like it was COVID-affected than the last one did.
I didn't even really care about Luther dying, it just felt so rushed and perfunctory - why was he ill, how did Gabriel find him? Speaking of which, we never really found out the deal with Gabriel and Ethan's backstory, never got a proper confrontation between them. And the Entity doesn't have a personality so that can't really be the baddy either. Not that an M:I film needs one - Ghost Protocol did fine - but it helps! And all the 'Ethan must reckon with all his mistakes, This Is His Final Reckoning' stuff didn't work either - the Jim Phelps thing was so gratuitous, why should Ethan feel like he needs redemption on that front? And then the guy is like, I don't care about what happened with my father, I just think you're a maverick. And then there's Donlowe - I really liked them bringing him back and keeping him as part of the team, that was great, but of all the things Ethan has to atone for, it's getting this office drone reassigned? And then they contrive it so he did the guy a big favour! The whole thing just felt a bit rushed and unpolished, I think they really got a little high on their own supply and bit off more than they could chew with these last two entries.

Rating: It's okay, but I think probably my least favourite of all of them. I'd probably rather rewatch MI2 again than this one because as cheesy as it is, at least it's an hour shorter and it's got some proper action in it.

Rick & Morty (2013 - )

note: pulled from Discord posts, so the first three seasons don't get discussed week by week and some episodes get missed (which probably meant they were mediocre!). Probably some spoilers.

S01-S03 - great!

S04 -
2&3 were the worst of the entire series, just really poor. I'm going to be severely disappointed if getting such a large episode order on one go means that they don't bother pushing themselves any more and take a Simpsons-style dive into lazy mediocrity.
4 is terrible.
5 is a return to form. It's not a groundbreaking classic or anything, but it was funny and light on its feet.
6 is great. Such a relief for the ratio to be going back up.
7 not awful but not particularly good either. Bit of a confused, unimaginative mess.
8 - okay. Some funny stuff, wraps up a bit lazily. This seems to be the new standard - season 1 level laughs and ideas, but a little less care taken over it.
9 - The beginning and end were a little sweaty, but the middle section was great. It does still feel like the writers have got a bit lazy - there's stuff that definitely could have used more work.
10 - proper good! Clever, funny, exciting, fast-paced, pulling off satisfying lore updates while simultaneously poking fun at them. Not in the top ten or anything, but not in the bottom ten either. Probably my only niggle is that they didn't add anything new to the ||'sad Rick ending'|| trope so it felt a little pat.

S05 -
1 - okay. Not great, not awful. Felt a little derivative of previous episodes.
2 - I did enjoy it, and at times it felt quite fresh, but then other times it would hew too close to something from a previous episode and it would suddenly taint the whole thing. Plus I'd be thinking 'now I'm not going to be as excited if they do another Council of Ricks/Evil Morty' episode because they've done so many slightly-adjusted copies of it now.
As I wrote that, I suddenly realised that this episode is probably a metaphor for how they realise they're writing the same thing over and over and the episodes gradually turn into 'slightly worse copies' as it goes on :(
3 - Felt again like a remix of old stuff, along with whatever random ideas they had floating around, rote edgelord stuff, and a straight-up rip-off of the Funny Or Die Captain Planet videos. It wasn't as bad as that dragons/cat episode, but it was getting close.
4 - I was quite enjoying it at the start, felt like a fun low-stakes romp. But it kept getting worse as it went. I swear the show never leant on meta humour, pop culture references or 'lol random' stuff this much before. It's actually starting to remind me of Family Guy. I'm kind of scared to go back and watch the first three seasons now, in case it was always this bad and I just never noticed because it wasn't done so clumsily/lazily.
5 -  really good!
6 - quite fun, but it ran out of steam a little in the second half.
7 - mediocre at best
8 -  really good! I think it's only one of two this season I've actually enjoyed (along with ep 5), and certainly the only one that's felt up to S1-3 standards.
9 - I enjoyed the Morty story, but the Rick one felt pretty rushed and flimsy. And the ending just had no emotional heft. As we've said previously, this show really needs to change or expand or something, and I guess they're not going to because they have this safety net of the 70(?)-episode commission or because vocal fans turned them off it or whatever.
10 - Watched the second one. For the first half I was like 'Jesus, this is weak. Another full-blown anime pastiche?' Then they just did a sharp turn into a Citadel episode halfway through, which was a fun twist, and it actually felt like they were trying again. The problem is, I could barely follow the serialised stuff! I don't know if that's because I'm not smart enough or I haven't been poring over wikis and fan theories, or if it's because they didn't do  good job. But it didn't really feel like it did anything new with the character arcs either - I liked the whole 'I'm only Evil Morty because I'm sick of him' thing, but it doesn't say anything about the Rick-Morty dynamic that the first Evil Morty episode didn't say. I wish they'd spent two episodes on this instead of mostly doing the crow shit. They even could have tied it in loosely with the Birdperson stuff. Oh well, if I ever do a R&M rewatch again I'll be skipping a lot of 4 and 5 but this one at least makes it onto the list, I think.
Okay, just looked at some story discussion, and these are two things I didn't fully grasp from the episode:
a) The Ricks specifically bred Morty to be the perfect sidekick by hooking their daughter up with some loser with the right DNA, i.e. Jerry. (I initially thought this was happening under evil Morty's rule.)
b) The reason all the universes have a super-smart Rick is that he’s walled off those universes, and has been visiting only a small (but still infinite) part of the multiverse in which he dominates – the central finite curve.
I think that was all told in a pretty muddled way, and also I thought there was a line there about how Rick created the Citadel, but it turns out his wife was killed by a Citadel guy? So what's up with that?

S06 -
1 - Enjoyed it! It was basically a lot of plot tidy-up but it was funny and interesting, and not lazy in a way they could have got away with. It probably worked a lot better with me having done a rewatch of the first three seasons plus the good episodes from the next two.
2 -  it was okay. The Roy thing was a really interesting idea but didn't really develop into anything after the first half, and the Die Hard stuff was pretty uninventive. It's not like I mind them riffing on stuff - the Inception/Nightmare On Elm Street mash-up is still great - but when it's like this or the whole 'two crows anime pastiche' thing, it's just so 'South Park did this fifteen years ago'.
3 -  I don't mind them doing a slow character-based episode, but it wasn't particularly funny or inventive (shagging your own clone is like plot device 3 in a clone story).
4 - really enjoyed it! Strong premise, well done. Not laugh out loud funny, and it even has a couple of Futurama moments (dynamite museum, ugh, funny Jewish stereotype robot, what the hell was that? I feel like I was missing some reference there, but still, eesh), but overall very enjoyable.
5 - Enjoyed it. There were a couple of elements that didn't really work, but mostly very funny and cool.
6 -  bad. Just disjointed and tired and unoriginal and not funny at all. Utterly bland autopilot episode.
7 - okay, but a less funny rerun of the story train ep.
8 - pretty good, a funny metaphor for toxic online discourse.
9 - mediocre at best. Total autopilot.
10 - This show is so tired. It's just 100% recycled bits.

S07
1 - I don't think it was in the five worst episodes or anything, but only because of its lack of ambition. It was like a better-written episode of Family Guy. Turns out the new voices are more convincing than the new writing.
2 - A little better just by dint of having a story idea and being a little less lazy, but also just felt like reheated elements of previous episodes while not fully examining its own premise.
The whole show needs some kind of shake-up. The 70-episode commission didn't do it, Roiland leaving didn't do it, maybe if Harmon leaves too that will do it? I guess the issue is that because it's animation, there are no enforced changes. Roles can be recast, characters are much less affected by their actors aging or having other life issues, locations never become unavailable, budget doesn't have as much effect. Simpsons at least had show-runner changes, though - R&M hasn't even had that.
Community losing Harmon for a year and having an awful season, then losing half of its main cast in quick succession probably led to a much better two seasons than if everyone had just stayed put for season 4.
3 - Dull. Doesn't do anything new with the Unity concept, relies mostly on dialogue being read out very fast rather than actually being clever and funny.
4 - best one in ages. Probably better than the weakest S1-3 episodes. (Can't believe they went to the 'watch someone's whole life in a montage' well again but it was at least a good version of it.)
5 - this was okay, the fight and action choreography was fun and Evil Morty still works well as a character, but as a 'continuity' episode it felt perfunctory. There was nothing to it except moving the continuity on a step. I used to get very excited when these episodes came up but now it just feels like wiki fodder.
6 - great! Good old taking a fun concept and squeezing it for all it's worth and writing good jokes instead of just making everyone talk real fast. Also, I genuinely forgot Roiland was gone until after I finished watching. (One could argue that the fake clip show format is something they've done a bunch before and is maybe easier to write than a full story but hey it shows they can still do some stuff well.)
7- So bland, felt like an AI wrote it. And almost every single joke had a line of dialogue explaining it directly after. Wondering if that 'rich dickheads thinking 69 is funny' bit was a jab at Musk, though. If so, either it got snuck past Harmon or he's finally come around on 'Musk is a useless tool'.
8 - bad. Taking something that worked great as a post-credits gag and stretching it out over a whole episode without any extra layers to it. (I did like the post-credits scene to this one, though. Probably bodes poorly for about three seasons' time...)
9 - Another bland one, with some story stuff that didn't really track or at least was muddy. Also another example of the references getting lazier, just like naming and showing the actual thing (here Pokéballs and Pokémon) and that's it.
10 - Pretty good! The 'conquer your fear' mechanic didn't always make complete sense, which it didn't need to have done by the end but was a little distracting in the moment. And wow yet another 'live a whole life' sequence though at least it was quick. But overall interesting and fun.

S08
1 - mixed bag. The 'Summer and Morty have scarred middle-aged minds now' thing works really well, but it all devolves into the usual 'whole life montage'/world where everything revolves around one thing/wacky extreme action stuff, which is fine but directionless.
2 - Fine but very watered-down. It's essentially a standard sci-fi action story with a ton of lazy lampshading and Futurama-level 'comedy bad guy' stuff slathered on top. They can't even get their post-modern riffing right the whole time, they misuse 'foreshadowing' and mix up their unlikely ally tropes. The one smart thing they do is an idea I've had in my back-pocket for ages ('successful heist plan narration continues over the actual heist going tits-up') so even that was a bit annoying!
3 - so, another kind of story they can't do well anymore, the 'serialised side-story without R&M prime'. There was nothing really interesting, funny or satisfying about this one, it was just 'more Ricks and Morties fight'. It didn't really take advantage of the fact that it was all clones with their own stereotypical identities, it didn't move anything on, and there's a weird incongruence where they remind the viewer that all the non-clone Ricks and Morties got pulled back to their own dimensions but then there's a non-clone Rick here with no explanation. There's probably some way it makes sense, but for a show that complains a lot about doing serialised episodes, it sure made its own lore irritatingly complicated.
4 - Some fun ideas, but the lore was just too stuffed full. I know that was the joke, but it still meant that there wasn't any space for actual jokes (outside of 'puke is funny' and 'sex is funny', and if you're too scared to show sex or even nudity uncensored then don't try to make comedy out of showing it). Then there was the weird epilogue with Summer which was also overstuffed with lore, and perhaps that was supposed to be playing on the theme, but it didn't make sense (why has spring break gone on for so long and turned into its own hierarchical society just because Summer has a high drug threshold now?) and again didn't really have any space for jokes. R&M at its height would have just enough moment to moment story information to force you to pay attention but not so much that you couldn't keep up without focusing on anything else or that it stopped feeling like a comedy. It felt smart, but now it feels like they've read that 'you have to be smart to understand R&M' meme and actually found it inspirational.
5 - mediocre. Picked up a bit with the Mad Mad Mad World stuff, wish they'd gone with that a bit more and actually put some mini-arcs in there and stuff. Otherwise, same old same old. Didn't feel overstuffed, but the jokes weren't that funny and the ideas were pretty bland.

Cruella (2021)

It's actually pretty good! It's a bit too long and leans a bit too heavily on needle drops, but it looks great, it's really well directed, all the performances are fun. If all the Disney live-action remakes/prequels were as good as this or Pete's Dragon, I don't think people would be complaining about them half so much.

Rating: pretty good

The Monkey (2025)

SPOILERS BELOW

A too self-conscious Final Destination/Wishmaster mash-up.

It applies zaniness unilaterally, which just dampens the effect overall - if you have a toy monkey killing people in bizarre ways and a guy who starts worshipping it, you don't also need to make the local priest really insensitive at funeral speeches and the adoptive parents swingers (they mention this in a single line of dialogue, it doesn't come into play at all) and the new partner of the lead's ex a weirdo self-help guide writer played by Elijah Wood (especially when he's only in the movie for two minutes).

The story doesn't really kick in until very late on (basically when we learn what the bad twin has been up to) and there are some holes there too. Like, why did the aunt die if the brother hadn't retrieved the monkey yet but still had the key? Did the monkey just decide to show back up again and did it have one more bang of the drum left to use? Do the rules, which the movie seems to care a lot about, not actually matter? The movie simultaneously wants to be meticulously constructed and gonzo, and the two instincts clash.

It reminds me of a Chris Carter-penned comedy X Files episode, where he's trying to emulate Darin Morgan but doesn't have the comedic restraint and tonal control.

Rating: Kind of fun but a bit of a mess.