Trektember: Will You Take My Hand? | Star Trek: Discovery
The season finale to the first season of Star Trek: Discovery draws upon the depth of the entire season to deliver a show full of fanservice, callbacks, and worldbuilding in service of a uniquely Star Trek story. Of course, that…
Trektember: The War Without, The War Within | Star Trek: Discovery
“We created something today in a desolate wasteland that had never seen life.” —Michael Here is a terrific episode, the best one of the season. It floats through what feels like the perfectly toned middle act of a great submarine…
Trektember: What's Past is Prologue | Star Trek: Discovery
Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled…
Trektember: Vaulting Ambition | Star Trek: Discovery
While some reviews of Star Trek: Discovery have lauded the second half of the first season because “the stakes are high, and the showrunners and writers aren’t afraid to let us know nothing is sacred,” I, unfortunately, didn’t see it…
Trektember: The Wolf Inside | Star Trek: Discovery
“Even the light is different…the cosmos has lost its brilliance. And everywhere I turn, there’s fear.” —Michael Burnham Star Trek is, at its core, about identity: identity as a society, identity as a species, identity as an individual. And since…
Trektember: Battle at the Binary Stars | Star Trek: Discovery
It’s interesting to note who the villains are in this episode. In Klingon culture, T’Kuvma is a member of a disgraced house; a lower class, if you will. Unprivileged. The 99%. The marginalized. He accepts outcasts into his group, embracing…
Trektember: The Vulcan Hello | Star Trek: Discovery
What struck me most as I watched the debut episode of Star Trek: Discovery was its use of the eye as a recurring visual motif, and vision as a dominant theme. It begins, a la the 1997 science fiction film…
Top 5 Wuxia Films
The Chinese movie genre “wuxia”, meaning “martial or chivalrous hero”, has been getting a lot of attention as of late. I recently reviewed the 2015 festival film darling The Assassin, the famous Taiwanese director Hsiao-Hsien Hou’s fabulous take on the genre. And…