SpaceScotsman @ SpaceScotsman @startrek.website

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The music is disappointing in this one because until now Gold has done a pretty good job. The bit you point out with the chords stood out to me. It did sound like there was an error in processing. Had it been at one peak moment, say a pivotal realisation, it might have been a good way to highlight things are going wrong. But it just seems to happen randomly. The rest of the score is kind of bland this episode.

This is a really nice episode. Not the best but definitely above average. It's a very human one - these are the ones where usually RTD excels, so it's interesting to see it was written by someone else.

The premise is a very natural one to imagine when you've got a time machine. Of course it leads to classic time travel shenanigans - the doctor ends up very upset at what rose has done, which is understandable, but I think he is being a bit unfair. This is rose, and much of the modern audience's, first real experience with a paradox. The doctor could have done a better job of explaining the stakes instead of leaving an emotionally struggling person to witness their own parent's death. Throughout this episode he keeps his very frank and pointed style of talking, but he starts being the emotional support for much of the human cast present, which is a great way of showing his heart starting to grow after he has been so pessimistic since we met him. The moment when he is standing up in front, like a priest preaching to his flock, is an especially nice image.

Rose's dad seems to really have struggled in life. Pete is really smart - he figures out the reality of whats happening fairly quickly, but he seems to struggle socially. He obviously has his own problems with confidence and relationships, and jackie really isn't helping. She goes on a few tirades here, but its never clear if what she is saying is accurate or whether that's just her viewpoint. The whole trip seems to break rose's interpretation of her dad, and that's possibly the bigger message to take away from this episode than the paradox: If you time travel, you might find out things that break your idealised version of the world.

The tardis losing its inside is a really great way to demonstrate what is happening, and how the tardis itself works. It reminds me of an old tom baker explanation which I really like: https://youtu.be/JJ01T3_E6YQ?t=48. The episode also serves as an example of a fixed point in time - Rose's dad has to die, so she can be raised in a certain way with her mum, so she can meet the doctor and do everything else she needs to.

The reaper designs are really nice. The flying monster motif makes a reapparance in the next season, and gargoyles get a brief mention in Blink. The gothic image is one that doesn't appear so often in popular sci-fi so it's nice to see used here, especially against the backdrop of the church. The monster designs looks pretty good even if the texturing and animation is a little janky. As far as beings in charge of timeline discrepancies go, they are more interesting than the weird bonemonsters from the most recent series finale.

Extras:

• I forgot about the mickey joke - that was fun
• The doctor mentions the isle of wight in 1987, I had to look this reference up. There was a massive storm back then that hit the south of england really badly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_storm_of_1987
• The adults all scream when the aliens are attacking. In the playground none of the kids scream when the same happens. I wonder if that was an intentional choice or if someone at BBC standards had an issue with a bunch of children screaming as they died

I think I am starting to lean towards ebooks for the convenience when reading novels and prosey nonfiction.

However for reference books a physical thing is easier to flip through, and for anything with illustrations, physical still has better quality.

The article is saying the petition is targeting steam, but the actual linked petition is addressing credit card companies. The text of the petition doesn't mention steam or valve. I don't know what the author of the article thinks is happening here, and they've explained it very badly.

What happens when anti-porn organisations like Collective Shout go after the currency exchanges?

Much of the episode is devoted to zombies, and zombies are boring. Moving on. I thought the directing and/or editing was pretty lifeless (heh) in this one, too - not a lot of tension throughout.

This could have been a bottle episode and might have been better for it. The plant was a macguffin that could have been anything. A molecule on some random asteroid could have served the same purpose and allowed the plot to continue mostly unchanged.

Maybe without the zombies that would have given more time for focusing on discussion around what the characters are feeling - More of ortega's struggle; something better than spock's mind meld which seems to serve as nothing more than foreshadowing for something that's going to be said out loud a few minutes later anyway.

If the writers were going to use zombies in a story, then they should actually use them as part of the plot.

This was an ok episode. Very character focused rather than sci-fi.

Everyone should recognise what is happening with ortegas, they really shouldn't be letting her do anything until its figured out, nevermind chain of command training. There must be something seriously wrong with starfleet's psych evals if she had one and they didn't spot this.

Last week I did wonder if the Gorn DNA was going to cause problems, and here we are going to get a... hybridisation of some sort. I wonder where this is going to go - hopefully not the same way as Paris and Janeway went. We know Pike must suffer, and I wonder if he is going to have to deal with losing Batel altogether on top of everything else. I wonder if she is going to have to deal with heightened violent emotions, as the mind meld suggested, and end up having to be "dealt with" in a permanent way.

Zombies. M'benga's "don't call them that" was hilarious - Zombies in Star Trek just feels kind of wrong. They were alright, but, it's zombies. The fact that it came from genetic modification with plants reminds me a bit of Cordyceps which has featured in many other zombie stories. Something that did bug me is M'benga is a medical doctor, and the best mask he could bring was some sort of fabric wrap? Do they not have surgical masks or M95 masks in the future? I wondered if the story could have been about saving the infected, maybe a "do I have to make the choice of cutting off this limb to save someone" moral quandry. The closest we got to that was the klingon that got bit and immediately vaporised. Zombies were kind of just set dressing / a mechanic to keep the characters moving forwards.

A running theme in this episode seems to be the characters falling out of their comfort zones. For all but Scotty, this seems to leave them worse off than when they started. It's good to see him slowly making progress after being thrown in the deep end.

Misc notes:

• The gravity loss shot was very nicely done.
• For all that I didn't like the zombies I did like their design. There was one bit where one got stepped on the head and it slowly deflated, like it was made of plant material.
• With all the AR wall stuff, I liked the actors having some set they could really interact with.
• The viewscreen has a "rear view mirror" display :) why isn't that always visible in the corner?

My point was that brave's solution, like Signal's, is dependent on microsoft playing fair. If microsoft decides they don't want brave, signal, or anyone else using DRM to interfere with their screen scraping chatbot, there is not going to be an easy way to fix it.

I picked up Project Hail Mary from the library this week. Only just started but I'm enjoying it so far.

They haven't blocked the windows feature, they're using DRM to interfere with it. Microsoft could easily change how the DRM works any time they want, rendering all these hacks useless.

I agree that this episode seems to be pushing more on the 9-Rose relationship than it ought to. It really doesn't feel like they work as anything other than companionship between two people that have lost their place in their respective worlds.

I am not a fan of this episode. It has some really great plot points and themes but the whole episode fails to bring them together in a satisfying way, and most of the guest characters aren't really useful.

Simon Pegg, in my mind, made for an OK editor, but this story would have been great with him as the Editor-In-Chief. I don't see why we needed an alien with an unpronounceable name and a CGI design that has aged incredibly poorly. Humans are perfectly capable of being awful to each other without outside intervention, and here was an opportunity to play that up. Pegg could have been great as an evil mastermind instead of a mere henchman.

With Adam, I'm confused. Rose has changed her look since the last ep, and the way they act in the beginning seems to suggest some time has passed since they left the museum. But then it doesn't appear that time has passed at all because Adam feigns feeling uneasy and wants to be alone. He leaves at the end of this episode with a character arc so unsatisfying it might be more accurate to say he didn't have one at all. The doctor does something incredibly nonsensical and leaves him, a known alien artefact profiteer, with the stuff installed in him, even though he makes a show of erasing the phone answering machine. Despite trying to scare him, he would obviously have the ability to analyse, pilfer, and sell what is in him. Nothing about his character makes any sense.

Cathica and Suki are alright, but I am not sure they really did anything of much consequence, excepting cathica jumping in right at the very end.

The standout guest for me here is Tamsin Grieg as the sales medic. I forgot she was ever in DW. A future where they upsell medical treatment like they would options in a car is freaky, even down to them installing extras that are on offer without even asking. Her creepy performance really sells how weird it all is.

I don't like the whole body horror "you can see inside your brain" stuff, even with the dated CGI. Gives me the ick. And also makes no sense - if you have a chip, why on earth do you need trepanning other than to shock the viewers?

Which brings me to the themes and major plot points. We have:

• future medical horror show (used better in the next series with 10)
• workplace political drama,
• journalism and its role in politics (I think this alone should have been the plot),
• conspiracies vs freedom fighters,
• privacy rights (very perceptive in ~2000),
• digital money and worker scrip,
• racism (RTD re-used this "you don't see racism" idea to much better effect in Gatwa's series); Just to name a few. If the episode had focused more on just one of these that would have been better.

The design of the station itself is confusing, even if the CGI visuals and set design are nice. It has spinny bits, but because they're always in the central column it clearly has artificial mavity, so why does it need the spinny bits‽ I also don't rally understand why they needed the "it's really hot" ventilation plot point - usually larger animals tend to have a lower metabolism, not higher, and the editor was going to invite the doctor up anyway. And you don't ventilate the get rid of heat in space, you radiate it.

As usual I enjoyed the score, from classic themes to the upbeat accompaniment during the tourism scene early in the episode, and the later conspiratorial detective melody.

The only thing that really happens of any note here is the perhaps unnecessary setup for the series finale, and a deepening of 9 and Rose's relationship, which could have easily happened in any scenario.

My theory - M'benga's daughter had a degenerative disease and her pattern was stable enough to put into the buffer.

But Batel's problem is she has loads of living Gorn inside her, and so has Gorn DNA in very close proximity to her own. At one point they even say they're co-dependent on each other. They probably didn't want to end up with a "The Fly"/Tuvix situation.

This was a good mix to start with - a serious episode and a fun silly one.

The first acts as a really good introduction for Scotty, giving him a chance to build up his character with some insurmountable engineering problems that, with some coaching, he surmounts. The second is a nice way to round off Spock and Chapel's relationship, poking fun at the mess that following the canon has left us in, using Trelane as a stand-in for the fans.

various thoughts on the plot:

• Ortegas seems to have been left with a bit of trauma, being part digested will do that to you I guess. Hopefully La'an will spot this and help out.
• Una mentions a "couple of litres" of blood. Did she mean pints, and the writers did a find/replace to make it metric and more futurey? Because "a couple of litres" is a lot.
• Camera spin continues to be a big part of the visual language. It gives me a headache and I have to close my eyes whenever they do this. There were quite a few instances of roll in the first episode that were a bit too much for me.
• John de Lancie and Rhys Darby make the perfect duo for these characters.
• Scotty mentions not drinking, but ends up having to take some when he eats something dodgy at the batchelor party. Previously (later?) Scotty has been shown to be a fan of drink, I guess now it's canon that had there not been alien interference, he may have always been teetotal.
• While Chapel is dealing with Batel, the Gorn hatchlings seem to agitate when the ship first goes close to the binary stars. Then, at the end of the episode when the ship has been suspended between the stars for a long time, no real mention is made of this. I guess the blood infusions and operations just kind of negated all that? Feels like Chekov's gun got loaded and then forgotten about.

I take issue with this article using the language "lagging behind in the use of generative AI". That language seems to imply there is something wrong in this behaviour.

Good idea - if you also cap car speeds at 15mph

This is such a good episode. The mood from the very beginning is great, and it's got a kind of tension that leads right up to the reveal of the Dalek. This is another reveal that really early on made me hate the "next time" trailers, because it interrupts your ability to emphasize with the unknown Metaltron being tortured. Watching it for the first time I knew what the Daleks were, so it didn't bother me as much that it was being imprisoned and controlled - it's a deadly killing machine. But that's not why its in prison, being controlled, it's there because Van Statten is a horrible human being.

Van Statten is a great character. It can be very easy to verge off into cartoon villain territory with his type, but here I think it got the tone of overly confident self assured rich person you love to hate just right. In 2000s, we thought that in the future they'd be in bunkers, hiding away doing their evil deeds behind the scenes. Instead, nowadays they're just openly evil out for everyone to see. When the doctor and his assistant plane him towards the end of the episode, that makes for a very satisfying ending. (Van Statten owns "the internet" - I wonder if he got conned into buying a little black box with a blinking light on top?)

The way the doctor is written and directed in this episode is fantastic. It's a complete role reversal from what we normally expect. Often the Dalek (and Rose) take the position of the caring emotional one, and the Doctor is consumed by hatred. It's nice that we see more of the background of what makes 9 who he is, and that he finally gets some sort of absolution to move on a bit, all the better that it comes from a Dalek pointing out that he is capable of love again.

I felt that this episode was trying to push a kind of romance, or at least light infatuation, between Rose and Adam, which just bugs me to no end. Rose still has an interest in Mickey at this point, there's a budding relationship (not really romantic at this point) with the doctor, and Adam is just a completely unlikeable character. He obviously knows that his boss is torturing this alien, and he goes along with it because he gets to play with cool gadgets and have his ego stroked. Rose has more chemistry with the Dalek in this ep than she does with Adam.

The Dalek itself is great. The gold redesign looks amazing and less plasticky than the white and blue of old. The CGI is pretty good too. The contrast between the broken dalek that can't even do a full 360 with it's eye stalk, and later having some glamour bullet time shots as it rotates it's middle section all the way around is really cool. The direction of having some of the deaths happen off screen with screams echoing down a corridor, and the Dalek being smart enough to use water to electrocute hundreds of people at once really adds to the fear, because an episode of death after death can get a bit much, so the variation helps.

Really good episode, and it has a nice message driving throughout that you should question your instincts. Also it continues a running theme of RTD's in doctor who that a lot of the problems that happen do so because of greed.

I'm pretty sure those guts are just instant noodles with green food dye :)

I wonder if they ran out of budget there

The character interactions in this one are really nice. Especially the doctor and Jackie, him being blunt and her being caring.

I think this part 2 is much better than part 1. its a bit more grounded on the characters, there's a bit less of the fart jokes, but it's still got some good action and comedy.

How terribly designed are those neck braces if they can transmit a massive electric shock over... presumably radio? still, cheap easily resolved cliffhangers are par for the course with DW

On dialogue - there are some great quips from the doctor in this episode. The dialogue from the slitheen is a bit cheesy - but it actually fits well considering they're a rag tag bunch of criminals playing big bad.

The unit computer has "buffalo" as a password. Ugh. this does remind me the bbc had a series of flash games and one of them was this interface that you could play "hacking" into. that was fun. all we get from media tie ins these days is some funny gifs on social media, if we're lucky.

The political play here is actually quite clever. If i can theorise, i would guess getting the earth to destroy itself with its own weapons would skirt around any shadow proclamation rules outlawing their behaviour. Allowing the slitheen to operate a bit more freely and profitably.

That harriet jones being the pm for 3 terms got retconned fairly quickly.