Review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Ep6, “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach”

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Scene from Star Trek Strange New World “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach”

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I just finished watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S1, E6 Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach. I knew about the topic and the climax ahead of time and it still made me angry.

The Enterprise is on a routine mission to the Majalan System when they are hailed by a shuttle that’s come under fire. The shuttle had been traveling from a nearby moon to their world when an alien cruiser attacked.

Uhura is doing her security rotation and La’an is riding her pretty hard. The attacker refuses to break off after Pike contacts them and fires on the Enterprise. Pike gives the expected order to target their weapons and propulsion. Uhura is at the phasers and the enemy shifts course suddenly. She brings the spacecraft down instead. If it was that important, I probably wouldn’t have put an inexperienced cadet in that position, so it’s really La’an’s fault. Continue reading →

Review of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021)

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Just finished watching Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) last night. It’s about two-and-a-half-hours long, and like a lot of superhero movies, it tries to cram too much into that space.

The movie starts out where Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) left off, with the recording of Mysterio/Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal) saying that Spider-Man (Tom Holland) killed him and that Spider-Man is Peter Parker.

Peter’s life goes downhill immediately and so do the lives of his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), his wingman Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), and even Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau).

Federal agents detain all of them, but in spite of all their bluster, they can’t really hold any of them except Hogan who has ties to the Stark technology used in the previous movie. Even that doesn’t stick very long.

There’s a cameo of Charlie Cox appearing as attorney Matt Murdock (Daredevil) and a cute little scene where he catches a brick thrown through the Parker’s apartment window from behind. It was a tragedy that Daredevil didn’t appear in the movie because a Spider-Man/Daredevil team up would have been awesome.

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Film Review of “The Batman” (2022)

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I watched The Batman (2022) starring Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, and Jeffrey Wright last night on Blu-ray (thank you public library system). It was basically a PG-13 horror film more than a superhero movie.

Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne and Batman were both portrayed as terribly dysfunctional. Wayne himself was a noted recluse who ignores the running of his company even at the urging of Alfred (Andy Serkis). The murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne was twenty years ago and The Batman has been operating in Gotham for two.

The real mystery of the movie is how Batman and Police Lt. Jim Gordon (Wright) managed to get so close, and how Gordon pulls so much clout that he can get Batman to an active crime scene investigation past thirty cops.

Actually, the story begins with the Riddler (Paul Dano) stalking and gruesomely murdering Gotham’s Mayor Mitchell (Rupert Penry-Jones). The more canonical Riddler tended to range from playful to clever, but while this one is good at puzzles, he’s also sitting on a terrific amount of rage. He wears glasses on the outside of his mask and the moment when the audience realizes he’s in the same room as the Mayor is when we see a dim light reflecting off of the lenses. The effect is chilling.

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Review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Ep5, “Amok Spock”

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Scene from Star Trek Strange New Worlds “Spock Amok”

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Just finished watching Star Trek: Strange Worlds E5 Spock Amok. I’m fairly certain that Theodore Sturgeon, who wrote both Amok Time and Shore Leave, is spinning in his grave.

Oh, they did use the same “combat” music in the dream sequence as we heard when Kirk and Spock were fighting in “Amok Time.” It was kind of cool.

This was supposed to be the “comedy” episode of the season. The original Star Trek had several including I, Mudd and The Trouble with Tribbles, but in the case of “Spock Amok,” it wasn’t funny.

I mean I can see how Goldsman and Kurtzman tried to make it funny. I think they believed it was funny. But the best they got was “awkward.”

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Get “The Fallen Shall Rise” for Free Starting Tomorrow!

@james.pyles

Free #scifi #ebook offered on #Amazon July 16 – 20, 2022 by James Pyles and Starry Eyed Press . https://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Shall-Rise-224-Verse-ebook/dp/B09SP7VK38

♬ Science – TimTaj

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Free five-day giveaway from Amazon to your kindle starting tomorrow! Please feel free to write an honest review.

Excerpt:

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Free Promo for “The Fallen Shall Rise”

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Promotional image for my 224-verse SciFi Novelette “The Fallen Shall Rise”

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My 224 Verse novelette The Fallen Shall Rise is being promoted on Amazon.

For July 16 – 20, you can download a copy to your kindle device absolutely FREE!

The backmatter of the book has been updated to include a reading sample of another of my 224-verse novelettes The Haunting of the Ginger’s Regret.

From “Fallen:”

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Review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Ep 4, “Memento Mori”

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Scene from the Star Trek Strange New Worlds episode Memento Mori

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Just finished watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode 4 Memento Mori. This one has elements of Balance of Terror which actually closely mapped to the 1957 submarine film The Enemy Below starring Robert Mitchum and Curd Jürgens. During World War Two, “an American destroyer discovers a German U-boat, and in the ensuing duel the American captain must draw upon all his experience to defeat the equally experienced German commander.”

Bonus points because David Hedison (as Al Hedison) had a role in the movie. He later played Captain Lee Crane of the nuclear submarine Seaview in the 1960s Irwin Allen TV show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

As a child, I watched this film before Star Trek debuted, so when I saw Balance of Terror, I immediately recognized how writers Paul Schneider and Gene Roddenberry had “borrowed” from the movie’s plot.

At the beginning of the episode, we see scenes from prior shows revealing things about La’an, Uhura, and Hemmer.

Uhura is doing her engineering rotation and Hemmer is critical of her. Then again, he’s critical of everyone, so that’s not saying much. The Enterprise is taking a very powerful, very dangerous, and highly glorified air filter to the colony world Finibus 3 before their air becomes unbreathable. Heck of a place to settle down.

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Review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Ep 3, “Ghosts of Illyria”

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Pictured: Rebecca Romijn as Una of the Paramount+ original series STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS. Photo Cr: Marni Grossman/Paramount+ ©2022 ViacomCBS. All Rights Reserved.

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I watched Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S1, E3 Ghosts of Illyria last night. Not a bad episode as things go, and I did find some connections to other Star Trek shows from the past.

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Scene from the Star Trek Strange New Worlds episode Ghosts of Illyria

Pike, Number One, Spock, and a landing party are on the surface of an Illyrian colony world that’s apparently been abandoned. No one is comfortable being there since the Illyrians were eugenicists, tinkering with their DNA to adapt to various environments. Ever since Khan and the Eugenics Wars, gene manipulation has been strictly outlawed.

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Book Review of Transient: A Tech Noir Novel

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Cover art for “Transient”

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Transient: A Tech Noir Novel (2016) by Zachry Wheeler isn’t your ordinary vampire tale. In fact, when I first started reading it, I had no idea there were vampires involved.

It’s set in the future by quite a few years or decades.

Jonas is a transient, a human being who has infiltrated Eternal (vampire) society, in this case, Seattle. He was sent by the last remnant of humanity, hiding in places on Earth the Eternals can’t or won’t visit. He’s a spy who uses subterfuge and drugs to pass as in Eternal, suppressing his body heat and his aging.

Much of his story and the history of things are told in journal entries about the past.

Once the Eternals were the outcasts living on the fringes of humanity, but they were able to expand, to wage war, to take over, to cast out humanity when they were unable to turn them via the virus that creates the vampire state.

But as you might imagine, Jonas, having lived for five years among the enemy, has started to understand them, to admire their rather idyllic society, to make friends and the most forbidden act…to take a lover.

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Review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Ep2, “Children of the Comet”

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Scene from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds “Children of the Comet”

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I just finished watching Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 1, Episode 2, Children of the Comet.

The show starts on the surface of a desolate planet with a sparse and impoverished population of humanoids barely surviving. One of them looks up and sees what appears to be a comet in the sky.

Meanwhile, aboard the Enterprise, Uhura has been invited to join the senior staff in the Captain’s quarters for dinner. Ortega advised her to show up in dress uniform, but when she arrives, Uhura discovers that everyone is dressed very casually, including the Captain. In fact, dress is so casual, that Ortega looks like the 23rd century version of a “homie in the hood” complete with belly button reveal. On an actual Naval vessel, even if dress for an event were casual, it wouldn’t be that casual.

Ortega is shaping up to be a class A jerk which she continues to display as the episode progresses. In fact, both she and La’an seem grumpy most of the time, but the former because she’s arrogant and the latter because she’s depressed.

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