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Shenanigans on Ferenginar with Quark, Moogie, Zek and Brunt of the FCA. Plus Leeta and Rom finally get engaged back on the station. Fun but silly- ya kinda feel like you’ve seen this one before.

Think Kira has worked out all her mishigoss from the Occupation? Think again.

Remember that time she allied herself with a dissident Cardassian (back when she was kidnapped and made to think she was a Cardassian?) Well, that dude is back and about to die and wants to do the ceremonial brain-dump of secrets. This becomes a two-way street. Also becomes an opportunity for Dukat and the Vorta Weyoun (remember that guy?) to visit the station and shed some light on the new Dominion Alliance.

1/2

Not all that dissimilar from the finale of TNG, and if you hold the two side-by-side there is no contest whatsoever, but this is still a neat zipping-through-time episode that ends kinda-nicely, but not quite.

We see Kes at her death, then bouncing back to her conception, and she can’t get back into phase. Or something. Trust me, it makes total sense when you see it.

The Ocampan lifespan is a fascinating thing, to be sure, so any light shed on it is welcome. Also: possible futures are neato too. (See how Chakotay becomes captain!)

I didn’t like, though, how blase people seem to be about affecting the Temporal Prime Directive. Janeway seems very eager to know about the evil that lurks behind the next star system….but would Picard have done the same?

Quark enters into the arms trade but his time spent with hu-mans has given him something of a conscious. He can’t sell biological weapons to Lawrence Tierney, even if this does make him a disgrace. DS9’s treatment of Quark’s struggle with his Ferengi heritage may very well be the best example of IDIC anywhere in Trek.

A Simple Investigation is a fairly simple episode. With a lot of talking. I’m not an “it has to be all action” guy, but there’s an awful lot of shot/reverse yap going on here. For DS9 I expect better.

Harry Kim runs afoul of Space Hotties. As is always the case, they are not what they seem. First they want to make out, then they want to turn you into dust. Plus – they lie!

Neelix saves the space elevator. Or something. Tuvok learns a valuable lesson, here, too. Zzzz.

Holy crap, I forgot how expensive the Blue Note is. And how they cram you in like you are on an airplane. And how the sets aren’t all that long.

Complain complain complain. F, C & M gave a great show, even if it was a bit too jazz-bo for my tastes. Only one selection features waves of reverberating Bill Frisell sound. The rest was the work of simply a damned fine trio. Actually, it was really the Ron Carter show. I think more people were there for him anyway.

And….that’s fine. A Ron Carter show is great. Now I just wish Frisell would book some dates with his full band and string accompaniment again.

It holds up.

Not quite the pure genius of the later Starship Troopers, RoboCop still works damned well in that unique genre of insane, glorious action and radical social politics. This is a genre that consists of, basically, two films: RoboCop and Starship Troopers.

RoboCop is also fun in that it is the single greatest influence on the fine film Ultrachrist!.

Darren Aronofsky is set to do a reboot for next year. With that in mind, Michael Hess and I offer up a suggested casting call, with his recent comments on Pro Wrestlers in mind. You can look at this lovely article at UGO.

I think it is fair to say that the first two seasons of The Wire are great television, but season three surpasses all that and becomes something truly greater. It feels more like a rich novel. The social experiment of Hamsterdam is among the more fascinating narrative arcs I’ve encountered in any medium. Add my voice to everyone else’s claiming this as a masterpiece.

Bunny Colvin for President.

Only Gus Van Sant gets to make Paranoid Park.

What I mean is, frankly, it is possible I’d shrug this off if it was coming from some young unknown. Especially if it were from the So-and-so Brothers and shot digitally. But it isn’t. It’s the same dude who can play it totally straight and make Milk, if that sentence makes any sense.

Taking much of the shooting style of his brilliant “pure cinema” trilogy of Gerry, Elephant and Last Days with just a dash of CSI intrigue, the movie is an exercise in tone with enough kick-off momentum to sail on its own. I think that was a skateboard metaphor. Anyway, really well done stuff. In some other life, I’d've put this on my top 10 of the year, maybe.

Such a disappointment. The great screenwriter Ed Neumeier gets in the director’s chair and….lays waste to his best property.

All the subtlety that makes the first Starship Troopers such a masterpiece is traded in for cheap jokes and easy satire. When the Federation is this plainly evil it also deadens all of the action sequences, in that it is impossible to root for anywhere. Mild kudos, though, to Casper Van Diem to be seen as such a, um, vertically challenged man. Who knows if he knew about it on set, though.

As shocking as it may sound, I prefer the straight-up monster movie slasher that was Starship Troopers 2.

Will the radical twists and turns about the story of Dr. Julian Bashir never cease? Turns out dude is genetically altered? And now his kindly gardener father is gonna do hard time. And it is kinda the EMH Doctor’s fault!

Meanwhile Rom and Leeta finally hook-up and it only takes Leeta’s most cleavage revealing outfit to do so.

No Insignia

Retarded, even by Voyager standards. Infiltration of “nasty elements” of a programmed reproduction of historical characters invade the safety-redundant EMH? And how can light throw you off a cliff again?

The trouble here is that Robert Picardo’s The Doctor is, let’s face it, the best character on Voyager, hence the writers scramble to write Doctor stories. The sad fact is that the EMH should have always stayed on the periphery. Once he becomes the focus, it all falls apart.