Blackwell Epiphany (2014)

I've played the opening section. It looks great - I think Ben Chandler is doing all the art now, so it feels a lot more cohesive. Again, would be nice to see him stretch out into higher resolutions, but I guess at least this way the series is consistent. There's lots of lovely polish as well, with weather effects, silhouettes of people walking around in their rooms in the distant windows, idle chatter between Rosa and Joey. You can even leave footprints in the snow, and if you spend too long walking back and forth admiring it, Joey notices and mocks you for it! The story starts up quite nicely - Rosa is an unofficial police consultant now and has been sent to look around a condemned building, you handle a ghost, see a shooting and get the start of some evil ghost-related plot, and then jump back to the 30s for a flashback with that duchess ghost who's shown up a few times.

I did find the puzzles themselves a bit fiddly, though, and got stuck far too often for an opening section (perhaps the assumption is that the game doesn't need to cater for new players at this point of the series, even in the tutorial section). I was mainly being held back by a lack of feedback on combination attempts or weird UI quirks (why have a 'use' option for Joey if he can't use anything ever, and have the only thing he can do - blow on things - be relegated to his only ever inventory item? Just make that the use option!). Also, there's the same old 'keep clicking through every note and then go back to every dialogue tree to see what's been unlocked' structure here.

Egg-timer update: the dreaded egg-timer is gone in this game, but the cursor is still active during cutscenes, which is very confusing! They never got it right, all the way to the end! Also, the portraits are really nice but also are massive (they take up like a fifth of the screen) so I find them even more distracting than usual. (Also, Joey is too attractive!)

Okay, I got to the point with this one where I was checking walkthroughs and then grumbling at the next solution so much that I gave up and just watched a playthrough. It's been a constant throughout the series, but they nearly all came down to just not having talked to everyone about everything over and over until a new option was unlocked elsewhere, regardless of whether there was a logical reason to follow a particular thread. Anyway, it was nice how this entry connected back to a lot of stuff in the earlier games and tied everything up fairly neatly. I don't think we ever got an answer to why certain spooks become guides, though, which I found a little frustrating!

Sidenote: Dave does some acting again in a couple of roles and is okay, but he cast himself as a Japanese person for one of them. Wouldn't get away with that now even in the world of indie PnCs, I suspect!

Broken Age (2014 - 2015)

Started on a replay of Broken Age. It looks and sounds absolutely gorgeous. The writing is really strong, of course, but I'd forgotten how gentle this game is, especially at the start, and that includes the puzzles. It's not as exciting a replay as other Schafer adventures. I have only just broken out into the hubs for both characters, though, so maybe I'm being a bit harsh.
I didn't mind the first half being easy when I first played, as I was enjoying the world(s) so much, but it's a little more noticeable on replay when you know exactly what's happening. I guess part of it is that the story revolves around two kids breaking out of a gentle, cloying routine, so the opening sections mirror that. You're not kicking down doors and smashing people's faces into bars or whatever.

Am into part 2 now and really enjoying it again. The build up of puzzles is really nice, it has a perfect oscillation of gaining new goals and finding their solutions. Plus, having all the different characters getting mashed up in different combinations and locations is really cool, bolstered with a load of story reveals.
The only thing is, I'm now stuck on the last steps of these sections for both characters! I'd really like to be able to solve it on my own, but I might have to resort to a walkthrough, which would be a shame. Can't remember if I had to use a walkthrough my first time playing it, but I don't think so! 

Okay, checked a hint through, and I probably would have solved it after a break and then coming back for a wander  - I had thought the 'tell a joke' puzzle was impossible to do with dialogue alone, but I just need to find the right combination apparently (I suspect I fluked it last time), and I didn't really think about where a till-then unused inventory item could help. 

Finished! The ending does feel a little abrupt - might have been nice for the villains to play more of an active role, and perhaps for Shay and Vella to get to do some more awesome stuff too (they were getting the massive ships to fire death rays and grabbers and stuff but again it felt a little indirect) - but a lot of the wrap-up is built-in already and any loose ends are tied up with the credits illustrations, so overall I think it's a cute, tidy way to finish it. Also would have liked a 'look at' function just to get more Tim Schafer writing in there, but never mind. Overall, looks and sounds gorgeous, loads of interesting characters and locations, and fun satisfying puzzles. It's not up there with DOTT, FT and GF, and it's hard to rate it separate from my experience as a backer with all the prior knowledge and everything, but it's definitely one of the better adventure games I've played.

Rating: gentle but great

Stick It To The Man (2013)

The platforming is bad and there are annoying pseudo-stealth bits everywhere that involve running away from baddies while also trying to grapple-hook out of their reach, and some of them you have to mind-read to get a sleep sticker to apply to them to put them temporarily to sleep, which is a real faff. It all adds that 'am I missing a puzzle or am I just not doing the platforming well enough' element, which is frustrating.
Otherwise, it's just running across the level and clicking on every thing to see what stickers you can get and then trying to use them on stuff in a way that feels like it might solve a puzzle. Oh, messing with the clowns enough made them get on with each other so one of them suddenly produced a smile sticker? I had no way of knowing that and did it just by mindlessly putting things on other things that kind of felt like they made sense. It's all very Amanita Design, just 'click everywhere until stuff happens'. It's one step of complexity up from McPixel.
The writing is all a bit too try-hard wacky and overwritten, it's like Schafer filtered through MCU writing. And, as reported, it really does feel very reminiscent of Psychonauts at every turn, with the artstyle and the psychic powers manifested as big glowing hands and a crazy lobotomist and a wild circus with an angry father figure and a bunch of g-men in trenchcoats chasing you and so on.

I'm going to give it a bit more of a chance, but first impressions are not great. Presentation is quite nice.

Yeah, played a bit more on this and gave up after skipping through a few long unfunny dialogues delivered in irritatingly wacky voices, and then getting stuck on a stealth bit where I have to do that nine-button-press sequence over and over again trying to figure out which of the two enemies is supposed to attack the other and at which precise pixel of their route it needs to happen at.

Rating: irritating, shallow and unfunny.

The Wolf Among Us (2013)

Started it. It looks great - the engine has been improved a bit, I'm playing it in 4K now, and it's drenched in 80s neon lighting. Along with the melodramatic title sequence, it's giving me Jessica Jones vibes. All the character designs are great, too, especially the non-human characters. The writing and acting is good so far, and the story is relatively intriguing. It does still have all those Telltale issues, though - some weird camera behaviour, inconsistent graphics quality, some characters looking near-identical, QTEs are still a thing, and the big issue of it pushing the whole 'your choices MATTER' thing without it ever being very convincing (at least, so far).

Finished episode 1.  They still have these bullshit 'next time on's at the end, am going to assume that if I quit out before it starts then I can go straight to episode 2 with everything saved when I return, but it's really bad UX to make that a thing I'm worrying about. Especially when I own the whole season. Just cut those out or make them optional.
The other thing that was really annoying me is the QTEs. They're so fiddly and confusing, plus they just distract you from whatever action sequence is actually happening on screen. Really can't believe they're still in here and still this bad. And regular gameplay-wise, the discrepancies between what you meant to do and what actually happens are still there. Otherwise, a fairly good Telltale. I'm hoping that I'll get more involved as the episodes go on, as with TWD S1.

Finished the whole thing. So, yeah, it has nearly all the same issues as TWD S1, though at least it didn't do shitty adventure game puzzles every now and again. The QTEs were infuriating, though. Also, by the end, I didn't really feel like I'd participated in or even really understood the detective story at all - I kept getting whisked away from places before I could look at everything, there was no really chance to put conclusions together, and then everything deflated into a 'well, the big group of baddies did it, obviously, but there's some quibbling to be done about whether the leader was really responsible' ending. There was also a twist at the end, but I didn't understand it and the internet seems to have decided it could mean two or three things but the point is that it's impossible to really know, which is the SHIT kind of twist. And I didn't feel as involved in it as I did with TWD by the end. Honestly, the more I think about it, the lower my opinion goes. It just gets away with a lot because the presentation is so nice. I'm deffo going to try the comics out, but I doubt I'll ever bother with S2 unless it gets rave reviews saying 'this is how Old Telltale should have done things'.

Rating: pretty but dumb; most of TWD's flaws but not as many of its highs.

The Inner World (2013)

Played a tiny bit of it. All very charming so far, a nice gentle start. It's presented well, although I have a few niggles like the character art style having that 'talented artist working in MS Paint' feel and a sneaking suspicion that the dialogue is either a translation or written and directed by someone for whom English is not their first language. I've chuckled at some jokes, but a couple have also not quite landed due to phrasing or delivery. Puzzle-wise, it's started small (catch a pigeon) but without being too dull - I've already got a worm drunk and used my naivety to haggle a garbage vendor down to zero, and regardless chasing a pigeon is much better than opening an email or whatever as the first puzzle.

Okay, played a little bit more. Was planning on playing longer but I actually got put off almost immediately by getting stuck on the very first puzzle - not a good idea to start the player off with something so close to moon logic - and then solving it and being given the goal 'find the girl' with nothing more than that to go on and a big opened up world, so it's going to be a case of looking at everything and talking to everyone until some puzzle strands coalesce. It's all a bit directionless and unengaging. The dialogue also continues to be gentle to a fault.

I slogged through the first section of this and can't be bothered to continue. The puzzles all feel completely arbitrary and disconnected from the story, the signposting is dreadful (especially annoying is the lack of feedback on interactions, outside of a few all-purpose sarcastic remarks - "that was a random guess, wasn't it?" being particularly annoying when the thing you tried made perfect sense) and some puzzles are only really solvable thanks to dialogue option icons which I'm not sure was intentional, the translation and readings from German to English are frequently wonky, and the puzzles are uninspired. I just got to the start of another section, where I've been dropped in a forest and not given any direction whatsoever so it's back to just wandering around clicking every interaction on every hotspot until I can figure out what random task I've got to work on (and presumably then have my character's achievement nullified by the game, which has happened every time so far). Just a very fiddly, irritating game with not much in the way of story or charm to get past the issues.

Rating: irritating.

The Journey Down (2012 - 2017)

I only have chapters 1 and 3 of the three, irritatingly, and it'll cost £9.11 to get the middle one, so I probably won't do that unless the first one is spectacular!

Started it. Very slick so far! Impressive for an indie game (though at nearly £30 for all episodes, it had better be). Great atmosphere, looks lovely, good voice acting and music, and I immediately like the scoundrel I'm playing as.
Small issues: the characters are a mix of 3D models and 2D sprites (slightly different method between cutscenes and gameplay, I think) and their animations can feel a little stilted and canned (and the very first character you see doesn't have a great face design, unfortunately, which didn't help); it's a single-click interface; the first puzzle was opening a panel then opening four clasps then opening another panel then pulling a switch (in the name of tutorialisation and nicely presented as part of a little story beat, but still, ugh) and now I'm looking for ladder rungs so I can actually climb a ladder in my house and get the story started - it's all very 'my first adventure game'.

Okay, had to find a book in a room (by clicking on five hotspots) then a little logic puzzle (AGGGH, though at least this one was very simple). Now I'm into a slightly more meaty puzzle, finding three missing parts (of course!) for my plane. It's not the most exciting thing ever, but it's a step up and it looks like I'll be tempting rats with cheese and all that good adventure game stuff to get them
Incidentally, this whole thing is very Grim Fandango. Apart from the 3D(ish) characters on 2D backgrounds thing, the characters all have Afro-Caribbean masks for faces, the whole thing is very culturally specific with the VO and music etc in fact, and there's talk of the underworld as an adjacent location, there are some gangsters involved in some scam about the way to get there, and the inciting incident is a woman showing up in the lead scoundrel's life who has some connection to it all. Obviously some of that is rather broad, but all together and with some other little specifics, it is clearly a huge influence.
Just a shame the puzzles are a bit bland. By this point in GF I'm clambering up the sides of skyscrapers and befriending demons and reaping souls in the land of the living.

Got a fair bit further with this, and yeah, the puzzles are just uninspired. I'm breezing through it without really thinking. I got to a point where I was finally stuck, so will pause here for now, but I just checked a walkthrough and the only reason I was stuck was that I didn't realise I could get in the plane I'm trying to fix. Now, I should have thought of this really, because they showed me in there in a cutscene and I know the lady is in there waiting for me, but I'd only ever been in there in the cutscene and then they take you back out of it, so it just instinctively felt like a non-gameplay space, plus it turns out you get in via a small hole in the top rather than the big but inaccessible door on the side, so I can see why I didn't consider it.
One puzzle I did like was very simple, which was that I'd been looking at a lovely ceiling fan a lot, thinking 'that's rendered so well, and it looks nice and chunky, great art design', and then at one point realised that I hadn't seen clues as to how to get a propellor anywhere, and instantly clicked that I'd been walking around under one the whole time. They cheat a tiny bit by not giving it a hotspot before the plane puzzle (I think), but that's okay, it helped the moment.

Okay, finished Chapter 1. Good enough to play Chapter 3 (I'll do it straight away, rather than stick to its actual release date in this chronological playthrough), but not enough to buy Chapter 2 (especially not for £9. Maybe if it had been one or two quid, just for completion's sake?).
So, yeah, presentation is great even though it's still very clearly low-budget. The atmosphere, the music, the acting, the visual design, all top notch. It's a shame they couldn't go a bit further with the animation at times, and some of the character designs feel a little cheap, but an impressive amount of cutscenes.
There's not much story to speak of, but that's intentional, and honestly they probably could have done with even less - just have Lina show up, buy the book and then ask to charter your plane. Then goons show up and start shooting at you as you take off and intrigue is created. In the meantime, you've used the puzzles to sow the seeds of the big bad electric company etc. Honestly, the 'meanwhile' cutscenes of the villains feel a bit like padding, and without them this all would have been a nice 30-60 minute intro to a full-length game.
As mentioned though, the puzzles are a bit crap overall. The only places I got stuck were a lack of communication on the game's part which, as with many adventure games' sticking points, I probably could have overcome by dedicating more time to just wandering around and double-checking everything but shouldn't really have had to. Like, I had no reason to go back and check all those bookcases a second time and find out that there's a book on herbs in there which also has some pressed herbs in it of the exact variety I need. I had no reason to think, when I was trying to get rid of a dog, that I should go use a fishing pole with a buoy which was an  ambiguous distance away from me because it had a crab in a cage on the bottom of it which I could use to scare the dog away.
There were some smarter ones, though, like a walk-in freezer that you can come back to and re-use for different stuff - at first you have to route power to the overhead heater to thaw the door out and escape, but later you can then re-route power back to the lower heater to use it to grill some bread. It's one of those nice Tim Schafer moments where you feel smart for using your learned knowledge to figure it out and you also appreciate the tidy layered design that went into it. There's another bit where you have to stop a lift halfway down (Grim Fandango!) so you can sneak up under a railway track and put something on it to get run over by a train. It's a nice FT/GF big-budget-feeling moment where you get to feel clever and cool. Shame there wasn't a lot more of that. For the most part, as I think I said about a recent game on this playthrough, it mostly felt like an idle-clicker for adventure veterans, like you see the matrix and it's all coloured keys for coloured doors. 

Started Chapter 3. They're trekking through the Lower World now, and it's basically Africa, it's well-presented and nice to have a change of scenery, even if some of the wide shots are embarrassingly low-poly and empty. You get to a mining station which is basically the petrified forest from GF, but it overall is taking in a wider range of influences (Tomb Raider 1, Monkey Island, FoA, Terminator and Avatar, Last Crusade). It's a double-edged sword, though, because having these characters out of their element robs them of the charming specificity they had in chapter 1; they start to feel more like video game characters. You quickly move to the city, though, and see the local chefs from Chapter 1 have been forced to move there to survive and there's a big street market with a fruit stand and street band and so on, and you start to feel the cultural idiosyncrasies again of African immigrants in a western city. It reminded me a lot of North East London. Also, we return to the great running bit of Bwana knowing everyone he meets - even when you jump in a bucket chain (GF) and wind up being held at gunpoint by some revolutionaries (GF), you get out of it immediately because you're mates with that one soldier in the Rasta hat. Normally in an adventure game, you're meeting everyone for the first time. Here, there's this lovely feeling of community, and any outsiders stick out even more. It's like Deponia except good.
Otherwise, all the same issues with the puzzles and the story (very simple goal - find the professor - is a bit overloaded by conspiracy plot).

Okay, finished. Not much more to say, really just scuppered by the puzzles, but also I didn't really feel driven to get through them by the storytelling either. This might be to do with skipping the middle chapter, but I don't think so. The actual beats of the story or really just there to give you the occasional long-term goal, which is fine except there isn't much characterisation to replace it either. You never get to know any of these people. The street market that I was happy to see was there purely to give you a fruit sticker, that's its sole purpose, and they don't take the opportunity to let you chat with the vendors or anything. I was actually on the verge of giving up but then it went into the final act which was a bunch of little isolated puzzles (one of them is 'you need to tell someone the name of this plane, you can see the number of the plane and there's a manifest that tells you what names go with what numbers', that's the level of puzzle we're dealing with here) and extravagant action sequences. While it's cool and impressive to have things exploding and car chases and gods fighting each other, it also does contribute to this feeling more like a Lego game.
So, lots of stuff to enjoy but also some fairly big flaws. (I suspect some of these problems could have been solved by having an Afro-Caribbean person on the creative team rather than a bunch of white guys. I guess they copied that from Grim Fandango too!)

Rating: buckets of atmosphere and charm, but some big design and narrative issues.

Silent Night (2023)

Really enjoyed it. It doesn't feel like classic Woo, it feels like a hyper-competent first-time post-Wick action director's calling card, but it has a lot of truly excellent action in it.

There's basically no story (it's near to the most stripped-down revenge plot possible), but that's the point.

Sidenote: the Christmas motif is basically non-existent outside of the marketing, I wouldn't be surprised if some producer asked for it to get mentioned a couple of times so they could justify ripping off Die Hard for the trailer edit.

Rating: this is the real b-movie shit.

The Cat Lady (2012)

Started this, played through the first chapter (of 7) and a little of the second. This is a horror/drama adventure game that seems to be very well thought-of, but so far I'm not a big fan. My overall impression is of playing through an emo teenager's sketchbook in 1998, and I've spent more time laughing at the game than getting creeped out.
The graphics are an incohesive mish-mash of styles and fidelity; it could be argued that this is to make it creepier but to me it just comes across as amateurish. It's not helped by the fact that it's in a fairly low resolution and 4:3 aspect ratio, which feels very low-rent for a 2012 game charging £8.50, especially when a lot of the graphics are photo montage, and certainly doesn't work well with the post-Se7en preference for scratchy Courier type fonts.
The music is too loud and often ill-fitting, the dialogue audio and quality is inconsistent, and some of the acting is quite amateurish. There's a lot of 'old man clearly played by 17 year old drama student' happening, and lines are often misread.
The dialogue is clunky - it's over-written, unnatural, and often feels like it's badly translated or at least written in a second language (often it uses "this" where it should use "that" or similar grating choices). So is the storytelling and puzzle design - you spend a lot of time wandering back and forth, using keys on doors or knives on ropes, passing by bodies in nooses or dead animals, or having too-long conversations. So far, the story is 'you attempt suicide, have a dream where a being tells you that you have to kill some evil people or you won't be allowed oblivion, then you wake up in a hospital and must wait for a doctor to sign you out'. It's taken far too long to tell that little amount of story.
Finally, the control system is a bit irritating - it's keyboard only, with direct control. Presumably this is to help with immersion, but that doesn't work when you're still tapping through verb menus, so all it really achieves is a clunkier UI than necessary.

Having glanced at some reviews, it seems like this might get more interesting as it goes, so I might give it a while longer. But I strongly suspect it's a beneficiary of the 'PnC bump' where every reviewer gives it a bunch of leeway because it's an adventure game and that genre is dead, after all, so we should be grateful that this one even exists. (This despite the fact that the genre only died for a couple of years and we're drowning in the fuckers now.) It may also be getting the 'mature themes' and 'arty' bumps.

I can't be bothered to give Cat Lady any more time. I mean, I clearly wasn't enjoying it, and I looked at a walkthrough to get me past the bit I had got stuck at, and it was because two things I had tried should have worked but didn't. Sooo fuck it.

Rating: clunky.

They/Them (2022)

SPOILERS BELOW

Lots of good performances, but it's half uneventful tropey slasher and half shallow tropey conversion camp pic, ending up as an unsatisfying whole. It also doesn't make a whole ton of sense, and it feels compromised by its unwillingness to kill or even put in mortal danger any of the queer kids.

The slasher genre is so rote that it's difficult to make interesting even when melding it with something else, and this joins the likes of Freaky, The Final Girls, Happy Death Day 2 U, Bodies Bodies Bodies and many more in missing the mark.

Rating: disappointing

The Silent Age (2012)

Started on The Silent Age. It's nice enough, but it feels very much like a game designed for people to play on their smartphone on the bus. The graphics are nice, kind of art deco side-on presentation. Though there's obviously some corners cut so it feels a little Flash game-y, just stuff like items fading from view rather than getting picked up. The VO is nice, but it's dialogue only (i.e. internal thoughts have no VO, Wadjet Eye style). The writing is nice enough. It starts off very Valve, with you as a janitor in a creepy research company, getting pushed into doing things by men in suits, and turns into a time-travel thing where you're flipping back and forth between present day and post-apocalyptic future. There's nothing that feels particularly fresh but it's all done well. The main problem is that it's very slow and the puzzles are very simple and dull. You spend a lot of time using stairs and lifts over and over, and it's all very linear 'get key to open door to get code to open safe to get paperclip to pick padlock to get knife to cut rope to open door'. It's almost like an idle clicker for adventure game fans. I got to chapter 3 of 11 very quickly and they finally introduced time-travel puzzles, but the only one so far has been 'open door in present so it's open in the future' which is a bit weird logically and also very dull.

It seems like it's going to be short and easy so I'll probably breeze through it until I get stuck and/or bored. Apparently it got released as two episodes initially, with the first one being free, so perhaps the second half of the game as it is now will ramp up a bit...

Some other things about this game that make it feel shallow are that inventory items always disappear when you've used them on something regardless of how much sense that makes, and you barely get to talk to other people there are a few cutscenes and a couple of 'use' interactions that get you a little chat, but that's it.

So many of the puzzles are based around locked doors or getting a light plugged in so you can see in a dark corner and find a new thing.

There's been maybe one interesting puzzle so far, where you use an apple core, leaky pipe, filing cabinet and some soil in the present to make an apple tree in the future. And there's some nice 'oh no, it was me that did that thing' or 'oh no, avoid past me' moments towards the end. But it needed another twenty of those.

Anyway, I got stuck right near the end and it seems from a walkthrough like there might be a bug because I've tried doing the thing I'm supposed a few times and it didn't let me, so I'm giving up on this game.

I watched a playthrough of the last bit, and it's terrible. You lose your time machine, so the last few puzzles are incredibly mundane things, including one where someone gives you a mug and asks you to get them some water, the solution for which is to walk back four screens to the dripping water and use the mug with it then walk through the four screens again. Then they do a big 'oh no it was you all along' causal loop twist, but THEN undo it... somehow, and kind of give you a happy ending except maybe you're going to see a drug dealer now but it's not very clear.

Rating: some nice presentation but very shallow

Nimona (2023)

It looks great, it's well-directed and it's fun enough. (Also cool to get some fully embedded queer rep and themes.)

But it also feels pretty sloppy in a bunch of areas. 

The writing has that 'if we say everything loud and fast it'll be funny' thing, plus that 'we've learnt the rhythm of this style of humour without really coming up with the clever jokes to go in it'.

The setting is a mash-up of medieval, modern day, and sci-fi future, and they needed to drop at least one of those because there's a bunch of overlap and redundancy and gags that are delivered like they're one of those 'modern day but X' Pixar jokes and yet is just 'modern day'. It feels again like they copied a joke format without understanding it, or they just didn't dare make it straight fantasy or get too close to Onward. (I don't know how close it is to the webcomic in how it handles this stuff.)

The writing is too vague when it comes to what characters know or are feeling, which is exacerbated by the 'if they just plainly said this thing' issue.

And there's a whiplash-inducing tonal shift towards the end, so most of the movie is silly gag-a-second comedy and then the last twenty or so minutes are po-faced trans allegory, story reveals and melodrama.

I think the fact that I wrote out so much instead of saying "it's shit" goes to show how frustratingly close to good this was. I was close to noting it down for recommendation to a friend's kid at one point, but I think he'd probably lose interest in it pretty much at the same rate I did.

Stick to Emperor's New Groove or Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.

Rating: good-looking but irritatingly sloppy.

The Lost City (2022)

The humour was infantile and unfunny, the motivations didn't make sense, the characterisation was regularly inconsistent and it was so so predictable and unoriginal. Primarily Romancing The Stone (which they nod to with a convention called Romancing The Page, though I'm whether this is intended as a homage or a nostra culpa), but also a bunch of Tropic Thunder and then a hundred other movies for the rest of it.

(Also, sad to see Sandra Bullock with so much plastic surgery and then a layer of CG airbrushing on top of that.)

Rating: Bad

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 - 1994)

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. 

TNG S01E01&02 "Encounter at Farpoint" Stardate 41153.7 Broadcast date 1987-09-28
So, only ten months after the latest TOS movie, this comes out. Incredibly slick, especially for a tv show, and it still gets filed as modern tv in my mind even though it's 40 years old now. I remember the first time I saw this show, I was 8 or so on a family holiday to America and it was on in a hotel room - it hadn't aired in the UK yet, and I just assumed that all American tv was mindblowingly advanced.

I'm really looking forward to this, even though I know it's pretty creaky for at least the first season. I'm so glad they kept it 4:3 and they had all the source footage for a proper remaster, including (I believe) the elements for composite shots and stuff like that.

Oh shiiit, you can see people walking about in that little dome on top of the saucer! At least in the title sequence. I don't think I've ever noticed that before.

Interesting that Alexander Courage gets a theme credit, I didn't notice any of his tune in there. Maybe it's just a legal thing...

Women crewmembers still in very short skirts BUT I think I just saw one of the few skirted crewmen, plus a crewwoman in trousers. I like that they're acknowledging the sexism of the original, but it's still pretty silly to go "see, anyone can choose to wear skirts or trousers, some people find miniskirts more practical and dignified for working on a spaceship!" instead of just putting everyone in trousers.

Worf looks almost as grey as Data!

Enjoying it so far, very pacey. I like how there's a robot, a Klingon, a psychic, and a Vulcan in engineering. Makes it feel more like this is the Federation exploring, not just Earth. (Undermined a little by Q's rant, but never mind!)

Ugh, this all feels a bit too TOS so far - a cheesy alien dressing up in Past Earth cosplay, a settlement with some sort of secret being hidden by a character actor in a goofy wig. I feel like this is going to end with Picard talking a computer into blowing itself up.

The whole trial thing is an odd choice for the first episode - we spend a bunch of time learning about a time period in which the show is not set.

Ha, something else they've taken from the movies - the security footage gets auto-edited into a handy 'previously on' format!

The pacing is all over the place. Started with the Q thing and got right into it, then went to medium intrigue, then everyone just having a chat and a quick gratuitous TOS cameo, then Q suddenly pops in to shout 'ticking clock!' and goes again, and now they're explicitly just proceeding as if the whole Q thing weren't happening. Not great to have one of your characters say out loud how redundant your b-plot is! (Is it the a-plot or b-plot? Hard to say.)

Saying all that, though, I did like the Picard/Riker stuff, getting to know our new characters and how they interact with each other. The Data/McCoy scene was sweet, too. His make-up and accent were better than I remember, and I love that he has the old buccaneer trouser and boot style. I just think it would have been better to drop Q and get to this point in the first ten minutes.

Holodeck! Data's super-strength (as well as his mimic ability we saw back in the court - wonder if that gets used ever again)! This stuff is all cool - again, would have worked nicely in a 'slowly getting ready for the first mission' opening act.

Ah, that was Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa in the court scene! Just going by "Cary-Hiroyuki", though - reminds me of how Ming-Na Wen was credited just as Ming-Na in her first stint on E.R. then her full name when she returned. Her character made the same change and commented on it iirc, must have been some sort of cultural shift I don't understand.

Anyway, episode over. I liked the resolution, those jellyfish aliens were cool. I just wish they'd kept Q back for his own episode and either used this very slender Bandi story as a way to introduce everyone in a single episode or deepened it for a leisurely TMP-paced double-episode.

Aside from that, some slightly clunky moments (mostly around Yar and Worf being idiots, that again felt very TOS for the professionalism porn to get compromised by having crew act foolishly in one way or another because it's an easy way to get some conflict or drama going) but overall enjoyed it. I especially liked Picard's awful people skills - Captain Stick-arse, more like (as in, up it).

I think that, just as I had to modulate my expectations for TOS to 'very good Saturday morning show', I'll need to expect this to have a lot of the same foibles and flaws as TOS despite the slicker presentation.

I wonder if an exec or Roddenberry insisted they crowbar a ticking clock in there to give the Farpoint story more thrills. Maybe alpha-memory will tell us.

So, turns out, to simplify only one side of the story, Q was planned for later in the series but Roddenberry took over writing the script to screw DC Fontana out of some money, and just shoved Q in there.

"This episode is the only TNG episode in which a male stunt performer doubled for an actress. In this episode, an unknown stunt performer doubled Denise Crosby's fight scene in the courtroom."
I knew it! That wig looked terrible. Weird decision seeing as it was all shot from far off and the fight scene was really basic.

Here's what I said about this episode on the forums ten years ago (!) when I was attempting a skiplist watchthrough:

It's interesting that they immediately go with the "god-like alien dressing up in period clothing" trope so familiar from TOS. So far, it feels more considered and less goofy, but also quite stilted and not very fun. I like Picard's characterisation as a grumpy old bastard, though, and I guess that matches well. With all that, though, the crew still seems to be full of people who need to be told off every five seconds for emotional outbursts. Plus ça change... I like the way they've retroactively explained the awkwardly short skirts of the female uniforms in TOS by putting some female crewmembers in trousers and some male crewmembers in skirts. Very clever!

Favourite line is Data's: "I'm sorry sir, I appear to be commenting on everything." Also, cool to see a 137 year old Bones McCoy, though he seems to have gone a bit redneck in his extreme old age, boyyy.

Very similar thoughts!

TNG S01E03 "The Naked Now" Stardate 41209.2 Broadcast date 1987-10-05.
I enjoyed this one! It's a little bit disappointing that they're still following the TOS template so closely, to the point of explicitly stating "yeah, it's just that exact same episode again", and also a bit of a rum choice to have a 'the people you know so well acting really out of character!' story as the second episode. But at least it's tried and tested, and their own version of it works well. 'Stick Arse' Picard is a great straight man, and then hilarious once he finally gets infected and starts doing all these weird little laughs and skips. I liked as well that a lot of the characters had different reactions, they weren't all just horny drunk, they also got wistful drunk or manic drunk.

I'm looking forward to this series finding its own identity a little more, but good updates of TOS episodes is also fun.

Also, hooray, Troi in a pant suit!

TNG S01E04 "Code Of Honor" Stardate 41235.25 Broadcast date 1987-10-12.
I enjoyed the start of this one, all the stuff about having to research a new species' culture and act in ways that seem unintuitive for diplomacy's sake. Then it all gets a bit silly with the death fight stuff. And boy does that arena feel cheap! It all deflates a bit at the end as well, as some previously unexplained cultural thing solves everything. Then Picard grumpily barks out a couple of orders on the bridge and that's it - it's an interesting naturalistic approach in general, but it does lack the punch of those TOS banter denouements.

It suffers from being Yar-centric, too. Denise Crosby has been pretty bad in every episode so far. She's being given some very clunky dialogue, to be fair, but she isn't able to manage it quite as well as Sirtis, say. I can't remember the full details (I guess I'll see them again when I read the Memory Alpha page for Skin Of Evil), but I'm not surprised she quit the show in frustration.

(The choice to cast the primitive, pompous species exclusively with African-American actors and style them after traditional African culture was a dreadful misstep as well. I think the episode wouldn't be so poorly thought of if they hadn't done that...)

TNG S01E05 "The Last Outpost" Stardate 41386.4 Broadcast date 1987-10-19.
I feel a pattern emerging where I enjoy the opening acts of mystery and diplomatic tangles, and then they actually come up against the aliens of the week and everything gets really cheesy and silly. As soon as they got to the planet surface, everything felt really cheap and the writing suddenly became all about slapping humanity on the back for having become so enlightened while the Ferengi jumped about like naughty monkeys from a simple morality tale. The structure just kind of falls apart, there's some vague fighting and then some stuff about joining that old empire and then the portal guy apparently doesn't distinguish between how the Federation and Ferengi have acted in the episode up to this point but then comes down on one side because of Riker passing that one test, but also he's a mind reader. It's all so messy.

Neither the Ferengi nor this ancient dead empire get properly explored.

Also some jarring tones with the comedy onboard and Geordi's characterisation as a whooping wise-cracker. I feel like if Picard's in a serious mood, the rest of the bridge crew shouldn't be goofing around with finger-cuffs.

Not an awful episode, but no real meat or identity to it.

TNG S01E06 "Where No One Has Gone Before" Stardate 41263.1 Broadcast date 1987-10-26.
I quite enjoyed this one. It's very slow and the story is slight, but the dialogue and acting is on point and the trippy 'thought dimension' discussion is deftly evocative. It gave me a TMP vibe. The sillier hallucination stuff was a little jarring, but never mind.

I find it endlessly amusing how grumpy Picard is. I'm going to enjoy watching him warm up over time. I'm also finding Wesley a lot less irritating than I expected so far - perhaps being around his age when I watched the show on and off originally made his wetness more grating to me. I'd still prefer him not to wear monstrosities like that jumper anymore, though...

TNG S01E07 "Lonely Among Us" Stardate 41249.3 Broadcast date 1987-11-02.
Colm Meaney as "First security guard"!

This felt very slight as an episode. Weird stuff happening, no one doing much about it even with their magic eyes and brains and stuff. I know Troi being useless is a common complaint, but no one else was much help in this one either.
Data's Holmes stuff was quite fun but again fairly insubstantial and didn't achieve anything storywise.
And then the delegation sub-plot, which I only realised in the last few seconds of the episode was supposed to be comedic. Someone got murdered and eaten, big laffs!

Reading the memory alpha entry.
Ah, I thought the delegates stuff felt reminiscent of some TOS stuff - DC Fontana was "inspired" by her old episode Journey To Babel. It's cool to have TOS writers on staff and it sucks how some of them got pushed out, but also if they're just going to keep recycling their own old stuff then maybe the show will improve once they're gone...

TNG S01E08 "Justice" Stardate 41255.6 Broadcast date 1987-11-09.
How could Wesley possibly have known he shouldn't have run directly at that barrier then jumped over it and crashed through that greenhouse into all those flowers?! He's only a super-genius!

Again, this is a very slight episode. They're (very heavy-handedly) covering themes of Eden and religion and justice, but without anything to say about them. And the story itself barely has any conflict or drama. Consequently, all the skin on show doesn't feel justified in some Garden Of Eden way at all, and just feels like a gratuitous viewership grab.

Looking at memory alpha, it sounds like the original story had a bit more substance to it. Also, it correctly points out that this episode is fairly similar to The Apple from TOS. I get the feeling that as long as TNG is doing 'planet of the week' episodes, it's going to keep on telling very similar stories to TOS; when it drills down into the politics and relations of established species is when I think of it as getting interesting and finding its own identity...

TNG S01E09 "The Battle" Stardate 41723.9 Broadcast date 1987-11-16.
This one is solid but bland. The Ferengi are a little more credible here than their last appearance, and everyone's doing a fine job. But the problem here is that the 'mystery' is revealed to the viewer 15 minutes in (and the basics of it are obvious about 5 minutes in) and then the rest of the episode is just watching the symptoms of it repeat until finally Wesley just notices something and solves it. What's more, it's essentially just another 'crew(member) under a hypnotic spell' episode.
At least Wes got rid of that jumper.

TNG S01E10 "Hide and Q" Stardate 41590.5 Broadcast date 1987-11-23.
Enjoying this one so far. Interesting to have a returning villain so soon, marks it out as different to TOS. Q is great, perfectly pricking Picard's pomposity. And the story is moving on quickly without giving everything away immediately.

The only weak spot so far is bloody Yar. Petulantly shouting out of turn at Q like she's Sarah in Labyrinth, crying in frustration at being zapped about by an alien (get used to it Yar, this is Enterprise mission meat and potatoes) and then coming on to the captain because he said one nice thing to her! She's like all those TOS one-episode-only crewmembers who were brought in to do something too silly or impulsive or horny for the main characters, except she is a main character and she's doing something stupid every two minutes. Even her jump over the bridge console wasn't as good as Worf's...
It's a shame they've had to revert to crappy planet exteriors after the pilot. If they could just do something better with the skies it'd really help.

I liked this one! I think this is perhaps the first one that I could call good without any major provisos. (Riker's turn to arrogant Q-like behaviour is a little fast, but they do acknowledge that in the script. And Worf's reasoning for turning his gift down seemed a little sad - I was expecting an 'I must earn it' response similar to the others - but perhaps it will end up working well with his characterisation once it develops, though I get the impression that doesn't really happen until DS9!) It keeps moving, the central conceit is interesting and doesn't feel stale, and there are lots of nice character beats and acting moments.

TNG S01E11 "Haven" Stardate 41294.5 Broadcast date 1987-11-30.
This episode was okay, but the whole thing is made out of half-hearted vagueries. Deanna seems very upset about her arranged marriage but then seems into it? Riker kind of has feelings for Deanna, enough to get jealous but not enough to do anything about, and he can't be with her because he wants to be a captain? All living beings are connected, Wyatt and plague lady (Ariana) suspected this was the case, therefore they had a psychic bond? The plague lot have the plague but aren't dead, and Wyatt is able to teleport over without being affected?

The Homn comedy is all a bit weak as well, the whole 'Silent Bob' bit and then endless shots of him drinking something and Data pulling an amused face for some reason. Again, undone by vagueness. The gong bit was good though.

The main attraction is Lwaxana, and I enjoyed her as a one-off character thanks to the way Picard and Data bounce off her. I understand she is pretty strongly disliked by the fandom, and I can imagine how repeat appearances by her would cause this!

TNG S01E12 "The Big Goodbye" Stardate 41997.7 Broadcast date 1988-01-11.
Well, this was a fun idea but it was so slow-paced. Having Picard et al stuck in the office having to just play for time until the holodeck got fixed was a really bad choice, it would have worked so much better if they needed to actually solve a murder or find a macguffin to stay alive for whatever reason.

TNG S01E13 "Datalore" Stardate 41242.4 Broadcast date 1988-01-18.
Another fairly big recurring character/bit of lore (ho ho). I hadn't realised how much stuff was getting put in place this early, even if the overall quality doesn't pick up until at least the next season.

Huh, I didn't realise there was initially a mystery to Data's origins. I like the idea that the Federation found this mysterious unique android, the only remnant of a disappeared colony, and were just like 'nice to meetcha, you can become a citizen and join Starfleet if you like'. That optimistic utopian approach.

This was a good one! Proper adventure stuff, with a light scattering of vital backstory and then the gradual reveals through exploration and environmental detail of the secret passage and the hidden base, Lore and the crystal entity.
Lots of fun with Spiner's duel performances, too. Lore is great, creepy and then full-on scary.
Then a couple of fight scenes that were fairly well executed - certainly much better than Yar hanging off a climbing frame.
It also has a nice balance of making Wesley sympathetic with the senior officers not giving him an inch of slack while also showing that he's still a kid who can't quite manage the Starfleet Professionalism that could have allowed him to get his message across effectively.
The sudden ending is a bit of a double-edged sword - the resolution of the entity and Lore feels rather abrupt, but also it's a relief that they didn't feel obliged to have a three minute epilogue.

TNG S01E14 "Angel One" Stardate 41636.9 Broadcast date 1988-01-25.
Rather a timid episode. Nothing too offensive, but nothing too bold or interesting either. They don't get their teeth into gender politics or discrimination or anything like that. Yar and Troi's reaction to Riker diplomatic outfit felt a little retrograde, too.
I like the idea of a virus that evolved to smell nice so that people breathe it in deeply, and it's quite neat how that ties in with the discussions of perfume and evolution elsewhere, but otherwise it's a rather perfunctory way to stop Riker from making a bad decision and do some mild 'people get a bad cold' comedy.

TNG S01E15 "11001001" Stardate 41365.9 Broadcast date 1988-02-01.
I really enjoyed this one! I could have spent the whole episode just watching the crew chill out and be giant nerds. Really liked the contrast between this docking sequence and the one from the pilot where Picard gruffly demands Riker do it manually, a nice illustration of how the crew has bonded already and the captain trusts them enough to let the formality drop a little. Also hilarious that 'horndog' is an explicit and large part of Riker's characterisation!
The switch to the main story worked nicely as well, mostly thanks to Spiner's performance. Amazing how he can inject emotion and drama while remaining convincingly robotic and neutral. I really liked the cybernetic theme (or at least motif) running through the episode as well, with the Binar, Data painting, Dr Crusher's research, Minuet. It's a smart touch that, much like Klingons, 'species run by a master computer' is no longer by default a villain and at least one of them seems to be in the Federation. I was disappointed when it seemed like they were turning out to be villains after all, so it was a relief that they ended up sympathetic. Really, the only bum note of the episode was Riker's immediate suspicion of the Binar, which seemed wholly based in racial or cultural prejudice. It's a shame that stuff like this or Yar and Troi getting judgemental about Riker wearing an 'effeminate' outfit is still making it into the show.

TNG S01E16 "Too Short a Season" Stardate 41309.5 Broadcast date 1988-02-08.
This is a very bland episode. It's utterly predictable from the start - the guy in old-age make-up has been specifically requested by the angry military guy to deal with some terrorists we don't see? Guess he's going to de-age and turn out to be the thing the military guy really wants! (This makes Troi's uselessness even more glaring.)
So it's just a slow grind of the specifics being revealed, no character or thematic development, and no one actively participating until the situation resolves itself. Picard is bizarrely lackadaisical throughout!
Then it wraps up with a half-arsed attempt at a philosophical resolution and some unearned smug nods. Feels pretty lazy.

TNG S01E17 "When the Bough Breaks" Stardate 41509.1 Broadcast date 1988-02-15.
My immediate guess on Riker, Troi and Crusher getting beamed down is that the Aldeans (or whatever they're called) want someone from the crew to permanently stay with them. It'll get resolved with that kid going to stay because he hates calculus and will therefore love being on an arty planet. A very TOS story, if I've guessed it correctly!

Bah, they just scanned Wesley, so maybe they want all kids, but they'll settle for that one calculusphobe? Okay, am going to stop guessing now!

This one was okay. It was very gentle, but intentionally so which is more enjoyable than an episode trying and failing to be exciting. None of the child actors were too bad or annoying, the guest stars are solid. Really the main issue is that it felt like a reheated TOS episode - liberal artist types who have forgotten the importance of getting their hands dirty, a society dependent on an ancient computer - without much to say outside of 'don't get too reliant on technology' and I guess 'look after your ozone layer'.
I did enjoy the swagger of holding off on their big model/effects shot until right at the end, when they probably could have gotten away with not doing one at all.

TNG S01E18 "Home Soil" Stardate 41463.9 Broadcast date 1988-02-22.
Another gentle one, but more successful than Where The Bough Breaks, I think. I like the idea that this can sometimes just be a chillout show - they go to a planet, find something cool and just investigate it until any diplomatic and emotional wrinkles are sorted out. Not much more to say than that, but yeah, nice. I liked the alien concept and how the intrigue all turned out to basically be 'terraformers get stressed out very easily'.
Troi was a lot more useful this episode, helping the episode cut to the chase around certain things, give little misdirects elsewhere. I wonder if this kind of storytelling efficiency ("he's hiding something, Captain, let's not waste any time wondering and just get straight down there") was something the writers expected to use her for a lot and ended up just not needing most of the time.

TNG S01E19 "Coming of Age" Stardate 41416.2 Broadcast date 1988-03-14.
Interesting to see them dip their toe into serialised stuff even though they gave themselves plausible deniability there at the end!
I enjoyed this one, another chill ep where you're just watching characters react to every day stuff like an inspection or taking an exam. I wouldn't put it on a best of, but I wouldn't advise people to skip it either.

TNG S01E20 "Heart Of Glory" Stardate 41503.7 Broadcast date 1988-03-21.
I enjoyed this one. It's story light but atmosphere strong. Very solid. Cool to get a bit of the Worf origin story and some more Klingon stuff. It's great that the whole 'Klingons entering a peaceful alliance' thing can be delved into deeper than TOS (including Search For Spock) managed to. Also a fun situation where the TOS movies are still going and will be able to keep showing earlier stages in this process. They lucked into quite an interesting storytelling structure!

TNG S01E21 "The Arsenal of Freedom" Stardate 41798.2 Broadcast date 1988-04-11.
Yeah, I enjoyed this one. Solid adventure story, with all the threads balanced nicely. I liked LaForge sweating but not breaking, and Troi heading potential crew issues off at the pass. Minor issues are that the derring-do dialogue from Yar and Riker is super cheesy, the 'exterior' sets are painfully obviously studio sets (it's a real shame they can't at least do something better with the backdrops than just a big flat colour), and I would have like Picard to figure out the 'stop it by buying it' solution rather than getting it handed to him.
Good creepy casting in Marco Rodriguez and Vincent Schiavelli.
Sidenote: I thought Logan was going to turn out to be another hologram, sewing discord amongst the enemy, he was so abrasive!

TNG S01E22 "Symbiosis" Stardate unknown Broadcast date 1988-04-18.
A strong episode! A little ham-fisted at times (the 'very special episode' conversation with Wesley, who somehow has not encountered the concept of addiction before, the smarmy acting of the Brekkians - though it was very funny how when they're shown to their quarters they immediately adopt the most smug poses possible - and some very plain exposition by Dr Crusher), but it's a great examination of the Prime Directive and very smart in how each new revelation about the two cultures forces Picard to consider his position again. It's also fun how effectively unsettling it is at this point to encounter space-goers who aren't rigorously professional and formal. I was worried that once the drug revelation came, it was going to be a 'defeat the villains' situation with Picard deciding to hell with the rules, great to see the writers and therefore Picard being smarter than that.

TNG S01E23 "Skin Of Evil" Stardate 41601.3 Broadcast date 1988-04-25.
18 mins in, I'm kind of liking it - I like the fake-outs with the martial arts contest b-plot and then the 'oh, they got Yar to the magic medical station, she's clearly going to get revived... wait, what?' moment. And redshirting a main character is a baller move, even if it was done due to Crosby wanting off (iirc).
The oil slick is a really creepy idea, and it's a cool idea to have them encounter a being who is just primal and sadistic. Also neat to have Troi there to be able to read it and psychologise it.
The big problem is that the execution of the oil creature is so goofy in every way - the CG of it moving is a bit ropey, its humanoid figure looks like a cheesy 50s b-movie creature (why even do this, it would have been much smarter and creepier to just have it stay as a slick the whole time), and the voice performance sounds like a villain of the week from a Disney cartoon. Also, maybe this will change as the episode goes on, but I don't really like it having a name, it immediately makes it feel more mundane. At the very least, it saying its name so early and formally.
Oh, also, what was with that big red cartoon splat on Yar's face after she was attacked? Bizarre decision!

Shoutout to Leyland T. Lynch, clearly a ladder-climber who has decided the way to move up is to say your full name every single time so people remember you. Such a great little detail.

Anyway, finished it, and the ending is a bit of a let down - talk to him about his anger for a minute and you're done. I like the general idea of it, Troi figuring out the weak spots and Picard manoeuvring to exploit them, but it was too rushed and simplistic. And then that Scooby Doo "NOOOO" fade-out, terrible!
The funeral was sweet, but the wham-bam defeat-funeral-cut to triumphant end credits music of the last 8 minutes or so really undercut everything. The perils of episodic tv, I guess.

TNG S01E24 "We'll Always Have Paris" Stardate 41697.9 Broadcast date 1988-05-02.
This one was okay. Never really amounted to much, either in the Picard or time-hiccup plots.
Also, that end banter was bizarre!

TNG S01E25 "Conspiracy" Stardate 41775.5 Broadcast date 1988-05-09.
The first half of this episode is great. It's mysterious and creepy, well written, performed and directed. The scene at the mine entrance with the four captains (including Michael Berryman!) is great, and there's even room for some truly funny Data business (him getting told to shut up by the Enterprise computer is brilliant). And then in that moment when the one guy grabs Riker, everything gets silly and over the top and then wraps up too quickly. All the fights are clunky (especially now you can see the stunt performers so clearly!) and these patient alien masterminds are acting like dopes and it wraps up with some goofy effects straight out of an early Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi movie. I guess to be generous to the show, a lot of stuff (choreography, effects etc) might be suffering from being made to read on a 20" CRT telly and now being watched on a 65" 4K behemoth.
I don't know if I'd want this as a full series arc or whatever they were planning, but it certainly could have supported a two-part season finale, and might have worked better that way. I did enjoy the set-up from the previous episode paying off here, though.

TNG S01E26 "The Neutral Zone" Stardate 41986.0 Broadcast date 1988-05-16.
Season finale, and an exciting episode title!

Well, all the Romulan stuff was great, and the cryonic people were fun enough, but having them both in the same episode as essentially unrelated stories just did not work at all. The latter felt pointless and the former felt underworked.
It's really interesting to see there are still big differences between this fairly modern late-80s show and telly of the past 20 years. Any sci-fi show now doing a season finale with the return of a classic villain would be making a huge deal of it, probably doing a two-parter ending on a cliffhanger etc.

Oh, looking at memory-alpha reveals that this was a first draft script and couldn't get any more work done on it due to a writer's strike. So I guess actually this is less different to current telly than I thought!
Interesting, too, to learn that this was supposed to be the start of drip-feeding the introduction of the Borg, and stretch into a two or three parter over the start of the next season, but the writer's strike scuppered all that. I always thought their intro was an odd choice.  Well, I take it all back - the show was trying to do some very modern stuff and just wasn't able to do so due to industry events.

TNG S02E01 "The Child" Stardate 42073.1 Broadcast date 1988-11-21.
I enjoyed this one. An interesting situation given a very gentle character-based treatment - I was glad they didn't go down the body horror or Evil Child routes. I also liked the mirroring of Ian and Wesley, suggesting we may as well all be aliens when we're kids, learning how the world works.
Pulaski and Guinan are okay here, didn't make incredibly strong impressions, but probably smarter to ease them in like this. (And in fact, iirc they start trying to make Pulaski into a Bones-type making jabs at Data, but it always just comes off as small-minded and cruel rather than lovably grumpy., so this is probably the better version of her.)
Fun to see Wes Anderson semi-regular Seymour Cassel show up as well, looking very much like a 1980s character actor and not a future spaceman. Genuinely good banter at the end as well, with Worf deadpanning that he will tuck Wesley in at night!

TNG S02E02 "Where Silence Has Lease" Stardate 42193.6 Broadcast date 1988-11-28.
Another enjoyable but slight episode. Very chill considering the entire crew nearly dies!
I guess I misremembered the deal with Pulaski and Data - the writers seem, in fact, to be going for a more serious representation of bigotry than the McCoy "why, you green-blooded blowhard!" style of 'hey, they're just kidding around, they like each other really' banter that didn't seem to be criticised by the show. It still feels incongruously regressive and lazy of her, though, to not even be able to stop herself from talking about him like he's a toaster.

TNG S02E03 "Elementary, Dear Data" Stardate 42286.3 Broadcast date 1988-12-05.
A very strong episode! I like the fun start with Data and Geordi, less stuffy than Riker or Picard's holodeck jaunts; the idea that their software and hardware is so advanced that a single thoughtless parameter can threaten the entire ship is amusing, and I love the absolute seriousness everyone takes it with as soon as Data gets that drawing; the mindfuck of getting helplessly lost in a small empty room because it's able to project endless space around you is effectively creepy; the ending with Moriarty becoming self-aware and therefore not a cartoon villain but a noble person was a great left-turn. Also, nice that we did get a bit of an answer on whether Data could solve a Holmesian mystery with the rando murder - Data deduced the human motive behind it as well as the method.

Honestly, the only problem with this episode is that I wish it had more time to spend on Moriarty evolving, and perhaps on some simple Data and Geordi hi-jinx at the top, maybe get Worf into a fight with some London thugs somehow - I don't know if it could sustain a two-parter, but another 15 minutes would have been nice. Perhaps they could have started in the bar discussing the idea of doing a Holmes mystery, have Pulaski interrupt and make the challenge and then get all three of them in the holodeck within the first few minutes...

group watch ongoing

Primordia (2012)

It looks lovely so far, lots of Josh Kirby-esque gloopy, bloomy pixel art in a weird robot world that I haven't really started exploring yet. The presentation is fairly slick so far, with lots of nice little cutscenes or cutaways, and a dramatic opening that starts to teach you about the world and get you settled. (It was a little annoying being told 'get to the generator!' without knowing where it was, but I quickly realised I just had to find a "Hatch" hotspot a few times in a row!) The music and VO are atmospheric too. It does have the usual Wadjet Eye quirks, like the bloody egg-timer, Abe Goldfarb as a snarky floating sidekick again, and the 320x200 resolution (oh to see these pixel artists get to stretch their legs a little!).

Got stuck, so am stopping for now. But it's good enough that I'd prefer not to use a walkthrough, which is always a good sign. It's striking how much better this is than Deponia, just through good writing. (And solid puzzles, though nothing much amazing except for having to block that a defunct giant sand-steeped robot's nostril-like air vents to get it to open its mouth). There are a few too many cheesy jokes, especially with the snarky sidekick character, but overall the writing's really smart and the world-building is great. I'm loving the drip-drip of info about the history of my character and also of the post-apocalyptic world. 

I just got a little further (with the help of a walkthrough - the puzzles weren't unfair or anything, I probably could have figured them out if I'd spent enough time thinking about it and wandering around). I've moved to a city area now, which is really cool and intriguing and stuff but also is one of those points where you suddenly have fifty things to go look at. So I think I'll try to make playing this for half an hour something I do in the evenings instead of watching tv. My gameplay experience of many games probably suffers a lot from playing in sporadic bursts rather than regularly. It just always feels like more of an effort than just putting The Blacklist on or whatever...

Well, I finally got back to this after a 3 month break. I don't know if I took such a long break because I was a little unenthused or if it's because of that break that I was unenthused when I came back to it. Probably more the former - I didn't mind the fairly bland puzzles when I was climbing inside giant half-buried robot heads in the post-apocalyptic desert, but walking back and forth bartering motors for other motors and doing logic puzzles in a city setting with the end goal of trying to open a couple of doors was a lot less beguiling. When it got to the point that I was having to remember characters' surnames in order to solve puzzles, I gave up. I had a quick scan through the rest of the walkthrough and it didn't seem like it ever got back to what I found really intriguing and exciting about the first act.

Rating: strong first act, gets bogged down in adventure game busywork a little after that.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

(watched as part of a broadcast-order franchise group-watch)Possibly the cheesiest titles yet with the movie name 'teleporting' onto screen!

Ha, again with the 'clip from previous movie as security footage', this time somehow filmed from space to see the Enterprise self-destruct! Those Federation cameras get everywhere!

Hey, is this Ian Abercrombie as a weaselly Klingon diplomat? (Checks... No, it's not, though he *has* been in Trek, because everyone ever has.)

Oof, I always enjoy a matte painting, but that wide of the Bird Of Prey is is glaringly obvious! Budget constraints?

Ha ha, wow, they put all the Vulcan mechanics in red Smurf hats.

Well, if nothing else, the lesser ensemble all at least got to say "Aye sir" in this one.

Nice to see the Vasquez Rocks get some movie use.

That test scene is cool. I realise now that the Holoship episode of Red Dwarf was probably riffing on it. The "How do you feel" ending is really good too.

Yay, Jane Wyatt returning! Good to have both Spock's parents' original actors come back.

The mysterious drone ship is effectively spooky, and has some nice exterior shots.

So far, the structure of this movie is the same flipping between the introduction of the latest threat and any other plot threads that need introducing or reheating. It feels a bit smoother here, as all of the non-drone threads relate directly to Kirk et al heading back to Earth.

Saavik played by Robin Curtis again (not sure why Gwardinen thought she got recast again in this one!), but as with Search For Spock they really could have just got rid of her offscreen. Her brief appearance here doesn't achieve anything and it seems odd that she hasn't had the chance to spend ten seconds telling Kirk that his son died heroically.

As mentioned previously, could really do without yet another Spock reboot (just give us classic Spock!).

I do like the evolving McCoy-Spock relationship, though - now they've had that extreme mind-meld-soul-carry experience, McCoy suddenly wants to be best mates. Carried off well by Kelley as usual.

I wonder how many of these rando alien species get brought back over the course of the franchise...

I think I just spotted Chapel, but I wouldn't have realised if I hadn't seen her in the titles, I would have just assumed she was an anonymous officer.

Wow, that time-travel sequence was great, I loved the trippy CG morphing sequence. Holding onto a bit of that Space Odyssey flavour.

I think one of the reasons this movie stands out as one of the better Treks is that it feels a little fresh - most of them are out of uniform, they're in a Klingon ship, there's no real antagonistic force, and they spend a lot of time in the 1980s (which feels just as much like a classic sci-fi budget-cutting trick as it does a callback to a handful of the tv episodes).

That arrival scene with the binmen felt very Terminator, which had come out two years prior I think. I felt the transition from future and spaceship interiors to on the ground 1980s business needed a little smoothing over, though - could have done with an opening crane shot or something at least, then maybe seeing the move from park to city streets from the crew's eyes rather than just slamming into an establishing wide.

Anyway, already enjoying the fish out of water stuff, it's great. "Double dumbass on you!" And just casually throwing in a little time loop with the spectacles, the writers feel refreshed here too. Plus they got all the threads tied together and into the main thrust of the movie in record time.

Didn't ever expect to see this much Spock butt.

Uh oh, the instant this Bob guy walks on screen he seems like a classic 80s nice-guy-scumbag.

Smart to pair them off for separate sub-missions, too. Gives them all something to do, keeps the pace up.

Ha, as soon as I wrote that they brought most of them back to twiddle their thumbs on the ship again. Ah well, it worked for as long as it needed to. This stuff with Chekov on the battleship is a bit too goofy, though. Sulu chatting to the pilot takes on a bit of a different tone now that he's canonically queer.

Fuck you, Bob. I fucking knew it.

Wow, what a great ending! That really could have wrapped up the TOS movies and felt perfect.

Those credits are sooo tacky. Not least because they showcase the cheap-feeling score by Leonard Rosenman taking over from James Horner (and Jerry Goldsmith).

To end on a positive, though, a very fun and propulsive movie, and it was nice to have a bit of heart added back into the mix with the whales and Gillian. I felt a lot more affected by them than David's death!

Saltburn (2024)

SPOILERS BELOW

Stylish and confident, but when it's this shallow and derivative that tips into self-indulgence. A movie that's basically The Talented Mr Ripley or Six Degrees Of Separation or Parasite or Down And Out in Beverly Hills (with an admittedly cute reversal that I somehow didn't see coming but doesn't do much except provide a more interesting 'the riches lose their taste for the pov' beat than usual) doesn't need to be over two hours long and it certainly doesn't need a big montage at the end where all the utterly obvious twists are revealed like they're a surprise to anyone.

Rating: okay but, outside of a couple of well-executed shock value moments (the bath and the grave), seen it all before

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984)

(watched as part of a broadcast-order franchise group-watch)

Down to two years between movies at this point!

I know this one isn't particularly well thought of. Hopefully I'll find stuff to enjoy in it before going onto fan favourite Voyage Home and then returning to episodes and crossing over what I still consider the boundary of modern Trek with TNG.

Started watching!

The titles are even less high-falutin' and perhaps more modern as they play over recap and then stock footage, and then the usual starfield but one pans over to reveal the Enterprise. This feels a lot more like a series now.

Didn't realise they actually recast Saavik, that's frustrating. Not sure there have been any canon recastings up till now in the show or movies? I'd rather they'd just shuffled the character offscreen, but maybe that was unmanageable with how closely the stories are linked, I'll have to see.

Nimoy directing! Is this the first castmember directing? Or at least the first series regular?

Hmm, they've said most trainees were reassigned and sent Saavik down to the planet with David, they easily could have just sent her off with the rest of the trainees. Ah well.

I like the bit with Scotty about the factor of 4. Didn't realise the stuff between him and Geordi about this in TNG was a callback!

Uhura has taken time to get a new hairdo!

The reveal of the Klingon cloaking tech surprised that pirate guy, so I guess it hasn't gone into common use since "The Enterprise Incident".

That Klingon dog is really goofy. And they even do a comedy bit with it! Undercuts the villain immediately.

Still, interesting to see a new Klingon woman design. Shame that they feel the need to make her attractive to human audiences, with minor head-ridging and a cheesecake outfit (and to give them no benefit of the doubt, lighter skin). Iirc the cleavage-framing costumes will persist at least through Generations, though the face make-up will start to align more with the men.

Rand cameo! This non-dialogue moment is all she gets, but still fun to see her shake her head grouchily at the state they brought the Enterprise back in.

These security officer outfits are terrible! I'm guessing they saved money by reusing the costumes from a sports movie and spray-painting them.

Speaking of money, some of the compositing seems a bit worse in this movie. But the Klingon and pirate ship stuff all looked really nice.

Again, the opening to this movie feels too loose, they tend to just set up a bunch of stuff in order and then get around to tying them all together at some point. Like, I don't think we needed to see the Klingon stuff until now, and we could have gotten to this point with Kirk et all a lot quicker.

I liked the scene with McCoy in Spock's quarters, very spooky and Kelley plays it really well.

Wow, they got as much replay value out of that Genesis CG render as they could!

Speaking of CG, that shot of the science ship heading to the Genesis planet felt very CG. I hope I'm not watching some sort of remaster with new fx - if not, it's a very impressive fx shot for the time, even with the compositing artefact of a lighter square of space around the planet.

Interesting to get a (first?) mention of the Klingon Empire negotiating peace with the Federation.

Cool to see Sarek again! Everything's still feeling pretty directionless, though. Hopefully now Kirk's got a mission it'll all get on track.

Very funny that the security video logs of Spock's final moments just happen to exactly match the camera angles and editing of the movie! Complete with celluloid scratches too, which doesn't jibe with the magnetic tape effects we've been seeing on other diegetic footage.

Ahh, McCoy is so good in this! Those terrible attempts at a neck-pinch, and then "revenge for al those arguments he lost". Gold!

They really should have focused on this instead of having like four different plot strands all vaguely going in the same direction anyway.

This gives everyone something to do as well, even if it is just little action comedy moments and it means that suddenly the Federation is full of dickweeds to be humiliated.

Nice use of Kobayashi Maru as their team codename.

And a callback to the 'give the word' dialogue from WoK. It's cool that the movies are starting to build up their own little reference points as well as taking stuff from the show. Makes the whole thing start to feel cohesive.

A shame Uhura isn't coming along with them. Chekov is getting all the comms dialogue she could have had! Especially as they don't have Spock, they really could have streamlined some other stuff and given her a big role in this movie.

Hey, Miguel Ferrer! He's like the ultimate stick-up-the-ass dickweed casting. Plus this preening, smug captain. Very funny how that's the framing of the Federation now and Kirk et al are the Han Solos flying around dodging regs in an old rustbucket. I guess they did often have stuffy Federation diplomats and high ranking officers getting in the way in TOS.

I think Lloyd works quite well as a cold-hearted schemer, more in line with the TOS Klingons than the hulking brutes that would come later. And I guess they didn't want another Khan type right away. He feels more like an 80s Middle Eastern terrorist character, like Art Malik in True Lies or something. But he doesn't really get enough to work with here to be a truly memorable villain, in the way that he would later with Judge Doom for example.

It's probably his voice that's the biggest issue, he just sounds like a human American middle manager, it needs some spice on it. He does do a great "GET OUT!" though.

That entire Enterprise destruction sequence is fantastic, in fact.

Oof, Nimoy doesn't direct physical fights very well, the scuffles on the planet surface are worse than the ones on the show!

The Genesis setting reminds me of LOST a little bit - jungle setting associated with the source of life, a mysteriously empty coffin, a final fight on a disintegrating clifftop. (LOST even planned to have erupting lava for the final fight originally!)

Prosthetic effect of face pulsating as it changes shape - now I know we're in the mid eighties!

Okay, finished now. That ending was cool but real slow, which I wouldn't mind so much if the rest of the film had been a bit more successful. This really did feel like a 'downtime' episode in a modern serialised show where it's just spinning wheels and connecting a couple of dots between two tentpole episodes.

I also vaguely remember that Spock is reset again in Voyage Home to not calling Kirk "Jim", which might wind up being a bit frustrating when they already gave him a reset in TMP and had him remember him as Jim here, but we'll see.

Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan (1982)

(Watched as part of a broadcast-order franchise group-watch. I went with the director's cut as it was easier to get ahold of and apparently the differences are minor.)

Another classy minimalist opening, though the font and the "In the 23rd Century" card make it feel a little less arty. The uniforms and sets feel warmer, too.

I like the Kobayashi Maru sequence. I wonder how fresh the 'psych, it's a holodeck (kinda)!' twist opening was back then, and how many people thought they'd just summarily killed off half the main cast in the first few minutes. It's given away a little by the lack of score.

They're back on the 'Kirk is old' thing from TMP, but I guess there's a twist on it here because rather than fighting to get back in the fight and being unequipped for it, here he's resigning himself to obsolescence. I hope not every one of these films does this for the first twenty minutes!

That first Khan scene is great. Frankly, I think they should have opened with it and either moved or cut the KM stuff. This movie is already feeling a little less focused than TMP. There it was 'there's a threat, Kirk is going out to investigate and pulling everyone along with him'. Here there's training exercises and inspections and fireside chats and clunky cutaways to scientists and stuff.

Also, I do wish they'd found a way to keep at least some part of those classic uniform colours. I guess it might have felt weird with them all being 15 years older, but they still look great in the Kelvin movies, and having everyone wear basically the same outfit is a bit dull.

Maybe I'm imagining it but the Enterprise bridge feels a lot more like a set here than in TMP, even a little cheap. Perhaps the same for the engine rooms as well. I guess the budget was going elsewhere on this one. They do at least take some time for nice exterior shots of the ship and a majestic launch sequence, glad they didn't bin that vibe completely.

Okay, the Marcus call to Kirk got things feeling focused again, I just think the opening was a little too diffuse. Really enjoying the dialogue scenes in this movie - not just the Khan one, but Kirk in the elevator with Saavik and then Bones, and then in Spock's quarters. Sharply written and delivered, amazing how many iconic lines are rapid-fired in that Spock scene.

Fun that Khan had Moby Dick in his book collection and is now going all Ahab on Kirk. Is this the first explicit allusion to that novel in Trek? I know there's a lot of it in First Contact, of course.

Yesss! James Horner puts his four-note danger motif into use once again, was hoping it would show up!

Interesting that they're talking about "the cosmic problems of population and food supply". Ties in with The Mark Of Gideon. I guess even with the entire galaxy at their disposal, civilisations still run up against the problem of most planets being uninhabitable. And the food replicator still isn't a thing? I suppose by TNG food supply is no longer a cosmic problem?

The costuming on the Khan lot all feels very TOS levels of cheese, it's weird to see them all on the Reliant bridge like that. Surprised the filmmakers didn't take advantage of the story to give them slightly more modern 'survivors on a desert planet' costumes.

You can certainly feel an ongoing tension between the original show and contemporary cinema in these first two movies. It's great that TMP redefined the property, but it does then feel a little jarring when it edges back towards the TOS vibe in this one.

It's great watching old movies and seeing everything done with models, all the space ships and stations here look great.

Also fun that the Genesis Cave is like a big-budget version of the 'paradise planets' they'd represent with a location shoot and a couple of shrubs on the show.

Ha, Spock has learnt another goose-based human idiom! What a great callback!

Wow, this really kept up the pace the whole way through once it got started. A very fun movie. I liked the theme of rejuvenation as well, it fit well with this more energetic take on the Trek movie franchise and justified the continued focus on the characters' ages.

The differences between this and TMP reminded me of the Mission Impossible movies, adapting a cheesy tv show by starting off with a classy, almost stately entry taking influence from cinematic auteurs, and then going the other way with a slam-bang second entry. Though Wrath Of Khan doesn't quite make the same swing to the opposite end of the spectrum as MI2 does; it's probably a combination of MI2 and MI3, blending the arty and mainstream modes together and providing a formula for the ongoing franchise.

Some criticisms - it's a shame they still can't find something for everyone to do, Saavik feels less Vulcany than Spock, and the Carol/David storyline barely has an effect on anything, it's quite an odd inclusion. I guess it's part of the rejuvenation theme, the crew are living on in their trainees and Kirk finds a use in old age by gaining a son even as his contemporaries die.

Some points of interest from the Trek fan wiki memory-alpha:
The budget was a third of TMP's
Saavik was referred to in cut dialogue as half-Vulcan, half-Romulan
The bridge uses the same set as TMP but it was repainted to feel warmer
I thought Carol Marcus was played by Dee Wallace! Turns out it was Bibi Besch, whose name I didn't recognise but whom I know from a great performance in a small role in Tremors.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

(watched as part of a broadcast-order franchise group-watch)

Really looking forward to watching this one! I enjoyed the deliberate, reverent pace back when I first watched it even though I hadn't actually watched that much Trek, especially not TOS. Excited to make the jump from TOS and TAS into this!

Nice classy minimalist opening titles, feels a bit like a palette cleanser from the show, inviting us to see the franchise afresh.

Love the long, slow sweeps over the Klingon ships with all their greebles in full view. Like, 'yes, we have a budget and we've seen Star Wars'. (Some of the compositing here feels a little worse overall than Star Wars, but never mind.)

New Klingons! This feels of a piece with the new ships - the foreheads have been greebled just like the ship hulls. Until Trials And Tribbleations forced the issue, this could have just been read as 'this is what they always looked like, you just saw them in low def'.

Feels classy and cinematic to start with an anonymous ship of Klingons, too. They have the self-control to make us wait a little bit for the iconic set-up. I love when movies do this, like Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves starting with a beardy Costner in Jerusalem or whatever. The kind of thing that would get me worried and impatient as a very young viewer before I started to appreciate it.

Similar approach with Spock. Like 'yep, we can do impressive planet exteriors now', showing off costumes and make-up. But withholding Classic Spock a little - he's got lanky hair, we don't hear him speak. Also, interesting that they have the Klingons and Vulcans speak with subtitles here, it feels like a conscious move to make the whole thing feel more adult and sophisticated. Also a nice detail to have the computer read out and display a real-time translation of the Klingon transmission.

Kirk! Don't like his new hair. I wonder what happened there. Did it just go wiry with age, or is this some kind of hairpiece evolution?

Still got the pointy sideburns, though, that's the main thing.

Fun to introduce him being incredibly grumpy. Also love that he's clearly trying to fill his bromance hole with another Vulcan science officer.

Scotty! Boy, I hadn't realised how big the age gap is between TOS and here, you can really feel it in that first Kirk-Scotty scene. Smart move to use Scotty as the character who starts to thaw things out a little, get Kirk joking, start to bring us back to that TOS vibe.

Also enjoying the slimming white hourglass shape they put on Kirk's uniform!

LOVE that docking sequence. All the awe and affection that the Klingon ships didn't get. Plus, thank fuck they didn't greeble up the Enterprise. Kept it slick and clean, like the opening titles. Taking that long over it is such a statement on the movie's part, I love it. The gradual unveiling of pieces of the ship until its full reveal, similar to what Verhoeven did with Robocop.

I still find it really hard to conceptualise the scale of the Enterprise, though - I always think it should be bigger than what it seems to be when you get other ships and stuff next to it.

Really funny joke to go from that sentimental docking sequence straight into chaos on the bridge with a bunch of crew yelling at each other and trying to slap stuff together in time. Then the reunion of Uhura, Sulu and Chekov is only given a second or two of shiny eyes and warm grins before it's replaced with that classic Federation professionalism.

Lots of smart little touches to make the Enterprise feel more dense without overdoing it. Some strong lighting, low angles shots, some simple background and foreground action like the guy pushing the hover-crates. Again, feels like they've taken some tips from Star Wars. Plus, having stuff crapping out in the engine room consoles feels very Millennium Falcon. But then they pivot that to a nastier tone with the teleport accident. Goddamn, that's harsh. Another 'this is more grown-up, the stakes are higher, you're not watching goofy schedule filler now'.

Also awesome to see Rand. She might be the only one who turns away from the horror, but she's transporter chief now, she's wearing trousers, and she still maintains a fairly steely demeanour. No mini-skirt and burying her face in the captain's chest. Again, though, it's a shame we never got more of her and what happened with Grace Lee Whitney.

It's very funny that the big threat in this movie is 'a big space-cloud'. It's so TOS, just perfect.

I like Uhura's late-70s look.

I've been pausing on these panoramic crowd shots, checking out all the aliens tucked away in there. Not getting too showy with it, just another confident display of budget.

I'm mostly enjoying all the redesigns, but it's a shame all the uniforms are beige. Would have been nice to retain a bit of colour at least.

Okay, we've got some whites and blues in there now, thankfully. It's not just Uhura who's gone 70s either, lots of hairy chests, taches and medallions on show. Shatner still looking pretty trim at this point, too.

I like the relationship this movie has with nostalgia for the franchise. it nods at it, indulges it a little, but also keep reminding the characters and the audience that everything has changed, must change. Kirk no longer knows every rivet of the Enterprise, Spock is no longer in the mood for banter with Bones. Kirk's need to hang onto command of the Enterprise could be read (if only through a modern lens) as a metaphor for the fandom wanting everything to stay the same. Even on a surface level, you can see this film's influence in things like the first Mission Impossible or the later Indy movies and how they handle the time gap between the show or the earlier movies, how the actors have aged or how the original optimistic viewpoint interacts with more cynical times.

That journey into the cloud is great, it really underlines the other big influence here alongside Star Wars - 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's probably where a lot of the confident, considered pacing comes from. It's a shame that it basically goes away after this movie, even if the original show was after all 90% goofy hi-jinks.

Wow, then at least another two journey sequences. They're really cool, I love how many disparate elements there are, all somehow tying together, and how the scale keeps redefining itself, but I can see how this might drive some people a bit nuts!

I laughed when the alien probe showed up and Dekker said "it's taken over the computer". Such a classic TOS moment, along with crewmembers getting zapped for interfering, but now beefed up into an throbbing, impactful sequence with layers of sound and visual design. (edited) 

It really has shifted into some classic TOS beats now. The great intelligence sends a (conveniently human-alike) representative onto the ship, which can then hang out in scenes passively until needed, arguments over whether Spock should be allowed to go on a reckless recon expedition, Kirk using basic psychology and bluffs to outfox the antagonist. Again, really cool to see all this filtered through a cinematic approach.

Finished. I really enjoyed it, and I think it was a very smart way to kick off the movie franchise - establishing it as a robust, cerebral, adult, cinematic venture, before getting into scenery-chewing villains and space battles and what have you.

Really the only issue I have with it is that it ends much like any other TOS episode, returning to the status quo. The 2001 'star child evolution' ending doesn't work half so well when it's happening to a new, secondary character. Imagine if that had been Kirk! Or at least, say, Chekov. Perhaps an awareness of this led to them ending the second movie with a main character sacrifice...