Game review: Pocket Mars

The game Pocket Mars is, in our experience, more of a puzzle than a game. We found it difficult to win (by getting all our colonists to Mars). The challenge wasn't beating the other players, it was achieving the win conditions at all.  Any thoughts of competition were dwarfed by the challenge of getting to the finish line by any means possible.

In fact, it was so difficult that we only played it twice before returning it to the charity shop from whence it came. 

In our opinion, a game needs to have a high level of player interaction.  My race to win should come at the detriment of your chances of winning.  Snakes and Ladders has no interaction, but at least it's easy and you can feel like you're competing.  However, a good game for us isn't Snakes and Ladders, where we have no interaction at all, and it's just you and the dice, then me and the dice, and we could add dozens of players without affecting the game at all.  No.  Player interaction is key - I want to win because I beat you, not just because I rolled bigger numbers or drew better cards compared to you.

And Pocket Mars feels like it has no player interaction at all - you take a turn, I take a turn.  We launch our men to Mars, we take turns to draw cards, and we see who can do the best.  It is, at best, a complicated puzzle where we each battle the rules and restrictions of the game in order to get the best outcome we can, and then compare against the other players.  The game talks about sabotaging the opponents, but this didn't happen when we played, and the game lacked any 'fun'.  It was too difficult to make any real progress in the game, and this meant that the return on effort was too high and we promptly gave up.

Nope, this game was not for us, which was a shame because it's been produced to a very high level of quality.  The box, cards and pieces all looked and felt great, but I feel that they could have been reorganised into a game that would be a lot more fun.  If you're looking for something simpler that has some interaction and is more enjoyable, I can recommend the Rollorama Football Dice Game which I review recently.

Film Review: Transformers One

 NO REAL SPOILERS

I was there, back in 1984, reading the comics featuring Optimus Prime and Megatron.  I started with Issue 4 of the UK run (the second half of US #2) and that was origin enough for me - the Autobots and Decepticons had arrived on Earth and had the ability to transform.  I could work the rest out backwards.

Origin stories generally have the disadvantage that you know how they turn out (we know the characters from stories we've read or seen previously).  In the case of Transformers, the history of Optimus Prime has been covered in the cartoon series, in the episode "War Dawn", where we meet Orion Pax and Elita One.

With such a depth and wealth of history, how is the latest Transformers film, simply titled, "Transformers One" going to manage to tell a new story?  Partly by rewriting canon, and partly by focusing on the characters - this is the origin story for Megatron (and by changing him from a gladiator to a miner) more than for Optimus Prime.

Orion Pax (precursor to Optimus Prime) is written with a youthful and naive optimism throughout.  D-16 (precursor to Megatron) has a similar personality, at least initially.  Bumblebee is annoying, but far better written that in any of the other Michael Bay films (I was amazed to discover that Mr Bay had got his name on this film, there's far more character development and fewer explosions than a typical Bay outing).

D-16's character arc is far more interesting than Orion's - the two characters start as friends, and in order to become enemies, one of them has to go in a different direction to the other: it's D-16 who changes course.  Orion's development to Optimus is simply due to his relentlessly pursuing 'the right thing'; D-16 is more interested in forging a different path and doing things differently.  This is partly ironic, because Orion is the one who 'breaks protocol' in order to save one of his fellow miners near the start of the film.  

There are some key plot developments around halfway through the story, and the two characters respond differently to them.  This sets D-16 on a tangential course to Orion, and the further the story develops, the further D-16 moves away from Orion.  The plot also takes over - D-16 is captured by the enemy at one point, and his experience while he's separated from Orion change him further.  As I said, this is a character story and keeping the focus on a smaller number of characters works well - because they have such distinct personalities.

This doesn't mean that the planet Cybertron is uninhabited, or populated only by faceless drones.  On the contrary, you could rewatch this film and keep finding well-known G1 characters in the backgrounds of all the well-populated scenes.  G1 fans will thoroughly enjoy tracking them all down (for the record, I spotted Jazz, Brawn, Red Alert, Sideswipe, Ratchet, Wheeljack and some of the Coneheads while watching for the first time in the cinema today).

And when you've counted all the characters, listen out for the references:  I picked up, "You don't have touch and you don't have the power!"; "Transform and Roll Out" and "You're on the surface with these idiot Gobots!".

And then there are the visual references - my favourite was close to the end, where Optimus leaps into the air to attack the 'baddies'.  The film goes into slow-mo to make sure it's not missed, but if you ever saw Transformers The Movie, you'll recognise this sequence:

This is the best Transformers film since Dark of the Moon (2011), and possibly since the Transformers (2007).  It's in a different league completely to Revenge of the Fallen. It's aimed towards children and teenagers (and benefits significantly from not having the hormone-addled Sam Witwicky and his thoroughly annoying parents), and still has plenty to offer long-time Transformers fans who are the parents of those children and teenagers.  I took my teenage son to watch it and we both thought it was amazing, for very different reasons (although the first appearance of Megatron's weapon had us both wide-eyed and amazed).

Some of my other film reviews:
Cloverfield
Inception
The Green Hornet
Transformers: Bumblebee
Transformers: One
Tron
Wing Commander
Pixels
Wreck it Ralph

My Life in 10 Computer Games

During lockdown, I participated in the social media trend of posting lists of ten, one a day for ten days:  there was the list of ten albums, and the list of ten computer games.  They were posted at the time without any explanation, but now (a few years later, and now that it's the summer holidays) here is my list of ten computer games that have taken up more hours of my leisure time than they should have done --- or perhaps they're just the ones I like the most:

1.  Snapper

The first computer game we bought (as a family), on our first home computer: the Acorn Electron.  We programmed a number of games but couldn't save them as we had our Electron several weeks before we had a cassette recorder.  Once we had the tape recorder, we could save our programs and - more importantly - load purchased games as well.  Snapper is a straight rip-off of Pacman, with a few cosmetic changes, and we spent far too many hours on it.  

2. Around the World in Forty Screens (Repton 3)

 

In the 1980s and 90s, Repton was not widely known outside Electron and BBC Micro owners, which suprised me because for those platforms it was a seminal series.  I didn't play Repton or Repton 2 until years after they were released, but Repton 3 and the various spin-offs were high on our playlist, and in our house, that meant Around the World in Forty Screens.  Repton 3 is a 2D scrolling maze game, where you have to collect diamonds, kill monsters and avoid getting trapped or hit by falling rocks. It's a great game... and so good, it's now in the Science Museum Group's collection.  Do you feel old?

The main aspect of Repton 3, though, was the ability to edit the characters and the maps.  You could load up the existing levels and change them, or adapt the default sprites and devise your own maps.  And we spent weeks and weeks and weeks doing this: we had Repton in Space.  This was in the era before discs and before mice, so every character or level, or both, had to be edited with the cursor keys and the space bar, and then saved to cassette.  Then you had to restart the system, load the game, load your new levels, and playtest them.  No wonder it took us weeks - but creating the levels was almost as addictive as playing the existing ones, and that's why Repton is in this list.

3. F-29 Retaliator

Eventually, we moved from the Acorn Electron to a PC.  Our first PC was a 286 with 640KB RAM, and we set about upgrading it - and the first thing was the monitor.  A colour monitor and a 1.44MB disc drive opened up enormous possibilities, including the option to play two or three different games in an hour (no more tape cassettes).  I've listed F-29 Retaliator here as it was the first game we played head-to-head:  with a serial cable, it was possible to connect two PCs to each other and play against another human being on another PC (in an adjoining room).  This was earth-shattering at the time, and that's why F-29 is on this list - my brother and I used to demonstrate this tech to any visitors, friends or family who came to watch.  And it was our first decent flight sim.

4. Command and Conquer

I received this for Christmas 1995 (my choice) in the big-box version shortly after it released and it too expanded my game-playing horizons.  I had been playing Dune 2 (its precursor) for months beforehand, and had read about the new Command and Conquer in magazines - I bought it without trying a demo. Full motion video.  A campaign that made sense.  Good in-game visuals and sound effects (especially the sound effects and voice effects).  And the ability to play head-to-head against my brother (who was Nod, and was always better than me).  It defined the genre, and I was there at the start (although I never finished either campaign).  I bought all the follow-ups, including the First Decade, and finished C&C3 (as GDI), but I still enjoy the original.

5.  Worms

This is straightforward comedy - playing computer games for fun.  After F-29 and Command and Conquer, Worms took us back to sharing a computer and taking it in turns to play, but what a crazy game.  My abiding memory of my 19th birthday is playing Worms with my parents and brother in my university room.  And then, several years later, introducing it to my kids, who love playing it with me (including the time that one of my sons deliberately took my turn and walked one of my worms straight into the sea!).  Light-hearted and crazy fun - as gaming should be.  And for me, the sequels became too complicated - the original was the best.

6.  Dark Reign: The Future of War

Command and Conquer spawned a whole range of copies and clones, and defined the Real-Time Strategy (RTS) genre.  Some were reasonable, some were clunky, and some - like Dark Reign - were actually very good.  This one had a unique (at the time) approach to the fog of war, and had a wider range of units than most games.  The graphics were a step-change higher than the original C&C, and the animation was also much smoother.  I only ever played it single-player, but it did have a long-standing online community.  

7.  Wii Sports

This is where the chronological ordering breaks down, but in around 2008 we (as a young married couple) invested in a Wii.  I'm not sure why, but we did, and we had a lot of fun with it.  You might call it a team-building exercise, or you could just call it entertainment.  We specialised in Wii Sports, and were particularly good at doubles tennis.  Nowadays, it's bowling against my two sons, and two-against-one (them against me) at doubles tennis.  They also enjoy the sword-fighting in Wii Sports Resort, but that's a whole separate game!

8. Lego Star Wars PC (2006)

Not to be confused with the various spin-offs and sequels, this was (again) the original Star Wars Lego game for PC, and I played it on PC first.  Before it was playable on any of the other platforms with their optmized-for-gaming controllers.  Yes, I've played those versions, and they are just as funny - and as always, better played with two or more people.  I never completed it (it's a long-standing trend, by the looks of it) because I got stuck with a puzzle with R2D2 who wouldn't stand where he was supposed to.  This was before YouTube really took off, and it occurred to me to watch videos of how to win the game - and the written instructions in the walkthroughs said, "Solve the problem with R2."  Yes?  How?  With the Force?  Fun, but frustrating - and then a decade later, my son solved the same game on PS3.

  

9.  Lego Jurassic World PS3

I'm probably breaking my own rules here, because I've not played this game - but it has had an impact on my life (courtesy of my son, who spent most of Christmas Day 2017 playing this on our lounge TV).  He was heavily into Jurassic World and Lego, and this was the perfect intersection.  He had the sense and initiative to consult online support when he got stuck, and he finished Lego Jurassic World by the end of the Christmas holidays.  He then went on to work his way through the Lego Star Wars games as well.  The games are well-designed, have cute graphics and clever stories, and have lasting appeal as you try to get all the points, all the bonuses and all the characters.

I think he let me play it once! :-)

10.  Zenon  (Acorn Electron cassette)

I'm not sure how I missed this one out on my first run through, because I think this is the first co-operative game we (my brother and I) played as kids.  Zenon was a sideways-scrolling shoot-'em-up game, where you had to run to the end of each level, destroying as many aliens as possible along the way - without getting hit by them.  It was all standard arcade action, but with the (then) added twist that two players could play co-operatively at the same time.

It made my Christmas list in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and had the advantage of being only half the price of a 'normal' computer game at the time - Impact Software were onto a good thing.  The review of the game mentioned the two-player option, and that's what swung the decision for me.

Gameplay was simple and straightforward; each player lost a life if they lost all their health through collisions with the aliens or taking blaster fire from them.  There was a wide variety of power-ups to collect, including health and weapons, and if both players got the best weapon (the red laser) then they could do considerable damage to the aliens very quickly.

Now:  we completed this game.  There were around 200 levels (I can't recall), and my brother sat down early one morning, loaded the game (via cassette) and blasted our way through all of them.  We even saw the 'Congratulations screen'. But - to my frustration to this day - it came with a 'press any key to continue' so we saw the message, but because the level ended and the message showed so abruptly, we were both still pressing our gaming keys - run, jump, fire, whatever, so the message appeared for a second and then we were returned to the main menu - Level One.  Come on, game designers, do better!

Anyway, we stopped playing after that.  It's a shame really, because it was one of the best games on the Electron at the time - the graphics were above average but the gameplay set it apart (in two player).  Yes it was difficult, yes there was a high element of randomness in the game and no, there weren't any patterns - it was just run and gun.

And that's my list of 'my life in ten computer games', covering the mid 1980s to the late 2010s.  I haven't included Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds; Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2, or Fortnite.  Maybe another time...

Other similar posts that I've written

Sums to Infinity and Refuelling Aircraft (a puzzle based on a BBC Micro coding book)
The BBC Micro and Sums of 2^n (more on coding a BBC Micro, or an Acorn Electron)

TV Review: Doctor Who The Space Babies and The Devil's Chord

Doctor Who needs no real introduction. My first memories of Doctor Who were posters of The Master during the early 1980s, and seeing episodes with the Psychic Circus during the mid 80s. It was deemed to scary for me to watch, and I wasn't ready to understand it either.

The Christopher Ecclestone series started the week before I got married. I watched it with great interest and thoroughly enjoyed it. I also enjoyed David Tennant's Doctor, and although I saw less as time went on, still saw some of Peter Capaldi's episodes.

I also watched Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, but it didn't really work for me. The first few episodes were so different from the Doctor Who I had seen before. With dramatic changes such as a female Doctor and new companions, it would have been helpful (if not essential) to have carried over more of the core components of Doctor Who into this series: things like the Tardis, the sonic screwdriver, familiar monsters or villains, or supporting characters (such as UNIT).  However, these were absent from many of the episodes, especially the first few, and it felt far more like watching a new TV series instead of a continuation of an existing story. Subsequently, I gave up and only watched the last few Jodie Whitaker episodes, which interestingly featured many of the major monsters and villains from classic Doctor Who.

So, what did I expect from the latest regeneration of the Doctor? The return of Russel T Davies to the helm meant I was optimistic, especially after he conclusion of the Jodie Whitaker series. I didn't like the Christmas special, which was a strange musical, but I very much enjoyed the first episode of New New Who, Space Babies. It was cute, it was snotty, full of bodily functions and toilet humour, and a scary monster that is saved at the end.  This is definitely Dr Who, not just a generic sci fi episode, and it's good.

The second episode stands in stark contrast to the first, as a real psychological thriller. The androgynous Maestro is stealing music from the whole world, starting with London in the 1960s. The villain in this episode is not only stealing music but is a serial killer too. And the Doctor? Hero of countless Dalek battles, winner of the Time Wars?  He is, as Ruby points out, a coward. What's going on?  Yes, he's camp, OK, but a coward? This is new, and will need some explaining.

I like the cause and effect thread running through these stories: if you do tread on a butterfly in this universe, you do change history. If you let the Maestro steal all the music in the 1960s, then the 2020s look very different. We've jumped from Doctor Who's parallel worlds (Father's Day, etc.) to Star Trek or Back to the Future, where it's one timeline with consequences for stepping on butterflies, and you'd better be more careful, Doctor.  

The Maestro is the Toymaker's child - there's some motivation for you - and is truly scary, and clearly powerful and motivated.  For most of the story, the episode narrowly manages to avoid becoming a musical, and a disaster, and genuinely piqued my interest.  That was, however, until the musical number at the end.  I suppose it was as inevitable as the defeat of the Maestro (who I was hoping was the latest regeneration of The Master, but never mind).  Even my daughter, who has seen a handful of Dr Who episodes, said, "What on Earth is that?" as the musical number played towards the end of the episode.  Not obviously Doctor Who, is the answer to that one.

So, two good episodes that could have been better with a few minor tweaks.  I am a little irked by the introduction of all the musicality - first in the Christmas special, and now in a regular episode.  I do like music, but I don't watch Doctor Who for it - and it takes up so much unwarranted time in the episode that it almost looks like padding or filler.

Allons-y!

My other Doctor Who Reviews

Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks
Doctor Who: Sea Devils
Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep
The Space Babies/The Devil's Chord

Other sci-fi TV reviews:

Star Trek Picard - Season 1 and Season 2
The Book of Boba Fett

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 10 Farewell

As we enter the final episode of this season of Picard, here are my thoughts (before watching) of what I'd like to see (and not see) in the finale.

1. No magic tricks. The crew are stranded in the 21st century with no ship. Let's see how they get home.  Right planet, wrong time.

2.  No reset button plot.  A common cliche in time travel stories, this involves everything being put back the way it was and nobody knows anything about what happened.

3.  Rios to pay his penance for breaking the temporal prime directive.  Butterflies, indeed? He's trampled a few.

4. Agnes not to reappear and bring the crew back home.  No, she's gone and should not reappear to save the day. 

So no, on reflection, I did not think this was not a great episode.

We join the crew standing around and talking in Chateau Picard, with the sense of urgency which they've had since they arrived in the 21st century.  Soong is still out there, planning to sabotage the Europa mission which launches imminently, but hey, let's stand around and talk.

Tallinn will break her cover to keep Renee Picard safe, while the rest of the team will try to track down Soong and stop his sabotage efforts.  Tallinn dishes out some more magic tricorder boxes, then beams out in a box of blue smoke... and Picard leaps into the box at the last second.  He can see (and this is conveyed well) that Tallinn is planning to sacrifice herself if necessary to save Renee, following the Borg Queen's cryptic "one Renee must live, one Renee must die" line in the last episode.  What's with the cryptic clues from the Borg? Can we go back to Resistance is Futile? We knew what THAT meant.  The Borg Queen has become nothing more than a Battlestar Galactica hybrid, spouting philosophical nonsense. 

The rest of the crew, meanwhile, will pursue Soong, who we last saw at his lair, mourning the loss of his daughter, or his life's work... or both.  Not sure how they got from Paris to LA, but I guess they used their magic tricorder boxes. It almost turns out to be immaterial, as they go off on a wild goose chase.  It's been a tragic tale for them, as they've been working in parallel with the main plot and having very little impact on it throughout. This time, it turns out that Soong has already left his house in order to sabotage the Europa mission personally. He's left four drones (mini helicopters, although four Borg drones would have been more fun) to launch and collide with the Europa craft as it takes off.  The crew gain control of one of them, and Rios prepares to take the rest down. "Prepare for ramming speed," as Worf once famously said.

They succeed, and somehow return to Chateau Picard. Don't ask me how, I've lost track. 

Tallinn and Picard discuss sacrifice, destiny and all the subjects that Q dredged up from Picard's subconscious (I still maintain there was no way Q knew what he was doing).  Picard has changed, surprise, surprise, and if he ever gets home will rethink his relationship with Laris.  The relationship between Picard and Q has always been great source of stories and character development.  Until now.   Q deserved a better conclusion than this: he's dying, doesn't want to die alone, so sends Picard on a trip into his childhood to see his relationship with his parents differently, so that Picard will thank Q for the second chance and then go and live a better life.  Oh, and Q mysteriously regains his powers for one last click of the fingers.

No.  It would have been more interesting for Q to have kept his powers, but they switched on and off, just like the transporters, at the whim of the story.

Anyways: Kore (Soong's daughter) is now out and about and enjoying her freedom, starting with the total erasure of all her father's data files.  No more work on genetic modifications for his 'daughters'.  This leaves Soong with just the paper copies of some of his work, including Project Khan.  Nice touch. Khan was a genetically enhanced superhuman - extra strength, extra intelligence, extra arrogance and extra charisma - who was responsible for starting the Eugenics Wars, also known as World War 3.  See the Original Series episode Space Seed, and Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.  See also Star Trek Into Darkness, which is a modern twist on the same theme.  See also the Enterprise series episodes The Augments and Cold Station Zero.  They could have unpacked a little more of this, but the episode is already crammed full of stuff (some of it was just crazy).

For example, after Kore deletes all of Soong's work, she heads off into her new life, where she is randomly accosted by none other than Wesley Crusher.  Wesley is a character from The Next Generation, who was last seen joining a creature known as the Navigator and travelling time and space.  Long story, see The Next Generation episodes Where No One Has Gone Before and especially Journey's End.  It transpires that he has set up/will set up the Supervisors (or Watchers), of which Tallinn was one, and so was Gary Seven in the Original Series episode Assignment Earth.  This stretches incredulity, but we can play along... until he adds that his organisation's role is to keep the timeline on track and prevent major disasters.  So, he recruits Kore - right there and then - while her father is just around the corner taking humanity on its first steps to World War 3? And he doesn't think to address that?  As a friend of mine pointed out, Wesley Crusher makes everything he touches worse.

This leaves the main plot: will Soong be able to sabotage the Europa mission? Rios has downed all the drones, so direct intervention is needed, and Soong takes matters into his own hands.  Using his money and influence and his own inimitable brand of rude charm, he engineers a meeting with Renee. 

Except Tallinn has got their first, and when Soong shakes hands with Renee, introducing a fatal nerve agent through his hands, it is in fact Tallinn who is sacrificing herself (using her disguise tech to appear as Renee).  Soong goes off, believing he's succeeded.  Tallinn dies in Picard's arms; after all, one Renee must die and one must live.

The crew regroup, having completed their mission and saved the day. Now all they have to do is get home.  Except of course that Rios The Butterfly Slayer is staying to mess up the timeline.  And Q suddenly, despite dying, has one final click of his fingers to spare, and can return Picard and the crew back to their own timeline.  The whole mission was contrived by Q so that Picard would realise that Q didn't want to die alone.  And sure enough, Picard hugs Q before they go their separate ways.  Perhaps the mission was designed so that Picard would face his past, or have the courage to start a relationship with Laris? I honestly don't know - this final episode was rushed, crammed full of stuff, and did I mention that we aren't home yet?

The crew are transported back to the bridge of the Stargazer, with the Borg Queen in full assimilation mode.  Except that the Borg Queen is now a very old Agnes Jurati (but looking good for it). The Borg have come to join the Federation to help them stop a massive explosion at the middle of the galaxy.  It all goes smoothly, except that one ship has trouble sorting its shields out... surprise! Elnor is resurrected and alive and well on the Excelsior.  A new era dawns between the Borg and the Federation and all is well with the world. 

The gang all reconvene with Guinan (back to her Whoopi Goldberg guise) who fills Picard in on all the historical gaps:  Rios The Butterfly Slayer set up a clinic with Teresa and helped those in need - there's a photograph of them together behind Guinan's bar.  Teresa's son, Ricardo, went on to become a biology expert.  Renee went to Jupiter's moons and brought back a biological sample of a microbe, which Ricardo identified as a cure for Earth's ecological ills.  So that's what it was all about.  At least that got tidied up - not sure why not having the ecological fix would cause humanity to become xenophobic overlords, but it's possible.

Even Picard gets to go home to find that Laris is packing her bags, but persuades her to stay.  We don't get to see them kiss - surely the biggest emotional payoff since that near-miss in the first episode - but we can be sure that all is well in Chateau Picard.

If this review seems long, it's because there was far too much going on, all of it rushed and most of it thrown together, and I didn't get to cover it all.  It ended the series in the same way as a parent does with an evening story when it's well past bedtime - everything is finished, but the last page is read at double-speed with half the sentences removed.  It was OK, but much of this could have been covered last episode instead.  Good, but not great, with too many cliches and too many Get Out Of Jail Free cards.

Season 2 Episode List

Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One

Episode 7: Monsters
Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 9 Hide and Seek

 CONTAINS SPOILERS

Looking back, this series of Picard has had slow patches and fast patches.  The story raced along at the start, slowed down in the tunnels beneath Chateau Picard, raced through a pre-flight gala that was so fast we even started the episode at the end, slowed down while the crew chased the Borg Queen through LA:  to be honest, the variation in pace has left us with the plot equivalent of whiplash.

The catch-up ("Previously on Star Trek Picard") at the start of this episode includes Picard and Tallinn discussing Q's intention to get Picard to face his childhood, and Picard's reply, "All of that is irrelevant!"  I only wish it was, because we get a lot more of it in this episode, interrupting the main plot in the most critical moments.  The story races along... it grinds to a halt as we get flashback... it races again... it stops again...  I either need a seatbelt or an airbag.

I could summarise the plot in a few sentences:  the Borg Queen beams her new drones into the field outside Chateau Picard, and then a few more (including herself) into La Sirena.  In a bizarre jump-cut continuity error, Agnes goes from wearing her bright red dress to absolutely nothing in two seconds, before assimilating the Queen's earlier body and going FULL Borg.

Meanwhile, Rios is on board, and he activates the Emergency Combat Hologram in the form of Elnor, the sword-wielding Romulan ninja commando, who holds his own against the Borg (nice touch: Elnor wears a mobile holographic emitter, as the Doctor did in Voyager).  The rest of the crew take on the Borg outside, get chased inside the Chateau (where Picard has his childhood flashbacks), before managing to return to the ship (Seven and Raffi across the ground, Picard and Tallinn through an escape tunnel initially, before the whole thing turns into a dead end and they also return overground, with Rios's assitance).

Agnes and the Borg Queen continue to struggle to take full control; she attacks Raffi and Seven as they return to the Sirena, and as the Borg Queen attempts to deal the fatal blow to Seven, Agnes intervenes. 

They have their own internal dialogue, where Agnes persuades the Queen to stop assimilating the strong, but instead look to connect the weak, vulnerable and injured into a cooperative rather than a collective, which the Queen does - Seven is first.  The Borg Queen/Agnes commandeers the Sirena, and takes off for the Delta Quadrant, to remake the Borg in a new, slightly more charitable form than it was previously.  As she says, "The Federation will have no need for a Borg-slayer - at least not from us."

The Sirena crew realise their mission must be to protect the launch of the Europa mission, as it was all along (the rest, including the extended flashback scenes, are irrelevant) and head off from central France back to the USA (presumably with Tallinn's transporting device).

This could be covered in 20 minutes, maybe 30, but it was stretched - painfully - over 45 minutes as Picard kept having his flashback sequences, and the Borg played hide and seek through the chateau (with the ridiculous plot design that they had to shine their green laser beams wherever they were looking, which immediately gave away their position, direction, and where they were looking).  These Borg were scariest - and they managed it once in the episode - where they leapt into the heroes' path without shining their beams first.

I'm not saying that the flashback scenes weren't poignant, upsetting or lacking emotional impact - they were.  But they were thrown into the episode at such unexpected moments that they lacked the kick of an emotional reveal, because it was hard to keep up with what was happening.  Most of it I'd guessed previously, but it was certainly saddening to see Jean-Luc's mother's suicide, and to see that Jean-Luc's best efforts to help his mother were what finally made it possible for her to end her life.  But this is all swept away because here come the Borg and their insidious ally, Adam Soong.

And I'm not buying the whole 'Q planned this all so that Picard would have to face his past' nonsense.  Q did not plan for Picard to make his own way back to the 21st century; did not anticipate Picard bring the Borg Queen along, or landing in the grounds of his own castle.  No.  Q may be a lot of things, but he's not capable of predicting the future, or Picard's actions.  Sorry, no, I'm not buying it, especially not in an episode which is so cliche-ridden as to be set during a dark and stormy night.

Instead, it's interesting (worrying?) to note that Picard and the crew have been relegated to passengers or followers of the plot for most of the time since it was put into effect in the first episode.  

1.  The Borg summoned Picard to the spatial anomaly; Picard went running along on the Stargazer, straight into a fleet-destroying battle with the Borg.  

2.  Q whips Picard over to the alternate timeline, Picard has to work out what's happening.

Ok, Picard and crew kidnap the Borg Queen and she agrees to transport them back in time, but since then, they've been doing nothing but chasing along - 

3.  chasing Q and trying to stop him preventing the launch of the Europa (their one success to date); 

4.  chasing Rios when he got hospitalized; arrested and transferred (wild goose chase, almost, since Picard found Renee and Tallinn single-handedly) 

5.  chasing the Borg Queen across LA (total failure);  

6.  attempt to prevent the Borg Queen taking over the Sirena (again, failure)... 

It seems to me that they're on course to fail:  Soong's plan to stop the Europa mission will succeed, and they'll all get trapped in the 21st century.  Their track record in this series has not been good. 

But, and here's the question: if they succeed in getting the Europa to launch, how will they get home?  The Borg Queen has commandeered their spaceship - we see it go to warp off to the Delta Quadrant (again, another nice touch - this is the Borg's home in The Next Generation) - so they are well and truly stuck on Earth, in the past.  I fear I'm going to be very unimpressed by the resolution in the next and final episode, because something's going to have to appear out of thin air; Q has no powers either, and Guinan is only your typical alien.  No, I can't help feel slightly uneasy regarding next week's episode, especially since we're catapulted into it with the Borg Queen's annoyingly cryptic message: "The mission must succeed.  There must be two Renees - one who lives, one who dies."  Ok, parallel universes it is then, folks.  I just wish the Borg had tried to assimilate Q, but that's just me, right?

Season 2 Episode List

Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One 
Episode 7: Monsters

Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 8 Mercy

CONTAINS SPOILERS

I can't quite believe I missed the single biggest plot development from last week's episode - namely that at the end of the episode, Picard and Guinan were arrested by the FBI after Picard's beam-in to Forward Street was picked up by a CCTV camera.  Well, it's time to correct that oversight, because this episode features the subsequent interrogation by an FBI agent who really doesn't seem to know what he's doing.

The pre-credits sequence at the start shows a young boy (I guessed Picard again, still running from some monsters or other) running through a forest night, chased by apparently imaginary but actually real monsters.  Neither the boy nor the pursuers are fully revealed at this point, but fortunately we don't have to wait too long to find out.

FBI Agent Martin Wells seems out of his depth and incoherent in his line of questioning; there are veiled threats, circumstantial evidence and bits and pieces (some photos from the gala; the video of Picard's transporter beam) and this would be trivial except that the Europa flight is now in jeopardy again, and Picard and Guinan are imprisoned in an unknown cellar somewhere in an FBI facility in LA.  I never watched The X Files and I have no desire to now, and this aspect of the episode frustrated me.  Still, it does get moving fairly quickly - there are no drawn-out conspiracy theories, just story development.  Agent Wells reveals that somebody transcribed Rios's outburst while he was in the immigration detention centre, and hearing Picard read out these words while in detention with the FBI makes the story seem very plausible, and neatly draws out that thread from the earlier episode.  

Guinan is taken from the interrogation room so that Wells can continue his interview with Picard one-to-one.  While Guinan is waiting in a separate room, Q enters - having been 'summoned' by Guinan in the previous episode.  Q, now wearing FBI garb, reveals that not only has he lost his powers, but he's actually dying.  This is indeed an opportunity for Picard to learn about Q, but it's not gone as Q intended (because he's still a poor judge of Picard's character).  Q hasn't trapped Picard in the past; Picard did that himself, and Q declares: "The trap is immaterial, it's the escape that counts."  Guinan projects herself back into Picard's interrogation room, with the message, "All humans are stuck in the past," which Picard repeats to Wells, as Wells explains his own back-story.

Agent Wells is the boy we saw in the pre-credits sequence, who had been out looking for his missing dog in a forest after dark.  The story is very reminiscent of Flight of the Navigator and E.T., but it's passable (both films are worth watching, if for some reason you've never seen them before).  While searching for his dog, he happens upon two Vulcans who are carrying out a study on Earth (we've seen Vulcans on Earth in First Contact, and in the quiet but very engaging Star Trek Enterprise episode, Carbon Creek. If you've not seen it, do - it's very, very clever).   The Vulcans realised they'd been discovered, and attempted to chase Agent Wells, in order to mind-meld with him and erase his memory.  The Vulcan was beamed out before he could carry out the mind-meld, and hence Agent Wells now has a fascination - obsession? - with extra-terrestrial life.  The conversation between Wells and Picard is well-written once they get past the veiled threats and conspiracy theories, although some might think it was resolved a bit quickly.  Picard demonstrates a Vulcan mind-meld (he's participated in them in his past), and explains: he needs help from Agent Wells, who subsequently agrees to let Picard and Guinan go free. It worked for me, but I do hope that Wells (or one of his descendants) turns up in the 25th century with a key role in history. 

Seven and Raffi have finally put some urgency into their search for the Borg Queen.  Too little, too late, however, as Agnes is now almost completely assimilated by the Borg, due to a diet of endorphins, lithium and other trace metals which Agnes is compulsively eating.  Seven and Raffi even manage to track down Agnes, using Seven's intuition, but it is, dare I say, futile.  Agnes is now almost entirely Borg, and consequently is very strong, incapacitating Seven with a single blow that sends her flying across a car park, and then preparing to strangle Raffi with a single hand (Darth Vader style).  Agnes, however, is able to assume control and release Raffi, but there's no way that the two of them alone would be able to provide sufficient resistance to stop her.

There's a surprising amount of bickering between Raffi and Seven - yes, Raffi is manipulative (and even persuaded Elnor to join Starfleet security, a decision which ultimately led to his death in this parallel universe) and yes, Seven is the epitome of cold and aloof, but their relationship has clearly left them both scarred.

Rios, meanwhile, is embarking one on of the most ridiculous relationships in Star Trek history since Kirk fell in love with Edith Keeler in The City on the Edge of Forever (a time-travel episode that's regarded as one of The Original Series' best).  There's no way his relationship with Teresa is going to work, for a whole host of reasons (the temporal prime directive being one of them), but here they are, eating replicated cake while Rios fixes the Sirena and removes the Borg subroutines from its main computer.  Is there much more to say here?  Not really, except he'd better get fixing those routines quickly.

Dr Adam Soong has been a busy man.  As his latest 'daughter' Kore is discovering, Soong has been attempting to manufacture a genetically pure human clone.  Attempting, and failing.  Kore discovers that she is the last in a depressingly long line of at least a dozen failed "experiments", and that she has outlived many of her predecessors by a significant amount.  I'm not sure if this was meant to be a great reveal, or a plot twist, but it seemed obvious to me that she was genetically manufactured, and was the latest in a line of clones.  I'll acknowledge, though, that I hadn't realised that Persphone (and the alternative name Kore) was the daughter of Zeus (even though I caught the name in the previous episode, I didn't work out its significance).  Soong is as proud as he is delusional.

Kore activates Soong's virtual reality device, and in doing so, triggers a subroutine that Q had implanted in it.  This subroutine is basically a plot device that enables Q to speak directly with Kore, and show her (a) that she is a clone, or at least genetically created instead of conceived, and (b) that Q can send a cure for her genetic disorder.  He sends the cure in a little vial with a label.  I was expecting it to say "Drink me" in Alice in Wonderland style, but instead it was labelled "Freedom".  

How does this all fit together?  The answer is 'exceptionally well'.  Kore confronts Soong about his work, questioning if he loves her at all, and if he does, then is it because she's a living person, or just the fulfilment of his lab work.  Tough question.  He can't answer convincingly, and she steps out into the previously-toxic sunlight.  She's taken Q's cure, which is completely effective, and she walks out of his house, his garden and his life.  This leaves Soong broken, frustrated, weak and very vulnerable.

Raffi and Seven, meanwhile, are using their tricorder-box-of-magic to tap into Agnes's companion's mobile phone  Agnes left the bar with him in the previous evening, attempted to find a connection with him (as Borg are wont to do), failed, killed him and then consumed the lithium from his mobile phone battery, in order to speed up Agnes's assimilation process.  Raffi and Seven connect his now-flat mobile phone to their tricorder in order to deduce Agnes's/Borg Queen's next step.  And deduce it, they do, by reviewing the internet search history on the phone.

The Borg Queen realises that she needs help to speed up the assimilation of Agnes, and to produce her own nanoprobes and begin assimilating the 21st century, and turns to an expert in biology and human genetics:  Dr Soong.  The sight of her arriving at Soong's house was one of those 'eureka' moments - suddenly all the convoluted and seemingly irrelevant plotting made sense.  

"I assume a lecture on the resistance of futility is not going to be necessary."
"Am I dreaming?  Or is this a nightmare?"
"Ultimately, that's up to you."

Nightmare, obviously.

She offers to make him immortal - figuratively - with a long legacy of being the father of the future of the human race.  This is exactly what he's searching for, and knowingly or otherwise, the Queen plays to his insecurities and desires, telling him how he'll be famous, but only if he can stop the Europa mission (otherwise it's alcoholism and obscurity).  In another case of stories coming together, the Borg Queen reveals that the Europa mission will uncover microbial life in one of Jupiter's moons that will render his genetic research obsolete (and presumably remove all funding from his work).  So that's why the Europa mission must succeed.  All the pieces that have been in play are now starting to come together and make sense.  Soong can provide the "raw ingredients" that the Queen requires to complete her nanoprobe assembly process (and further the assimilation of Agnes, presumably), and gain access to the security forces; the Queen can use them to prevent the Europa mission from happening... by storming the Sirena and preventing any further interference from Picard and his team.

The story wastes no time:  Soong and the Queen make their deal, and then we see the Queen start adding the security forces' biological and technological distinctiveness to her own... she's assimilating them into a very dangerous squad of Borg drones.  Rios, meanwhile is oblivious, making cake and trying to fix the transporters.  The condition of the transporters is now reaching joke level:  they only work when it's not urgent... Rios beamed himself and his girlfriend into the Sirena without any problem last time:  this time, when the crew need the transporters - they're offline.  Picard, Seven and Raffi meet up, and will use Tallinn's transporter to return to the Sirena... battle lines are drawn, and the next episode should be a good one!

Season 2 Episode List
Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One
Episode 7: Monsters
Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 7 Monsters

CONTAINS SPOILERS

There are a few episodes of Star Trek where nothing much happens.  They aren't particularly memorable, and in fact, you'd be hard-pressed to think of them.  They aren't "bad" episodes, but they're often under-rated psychological thrillers where the activity is secondary to the motivations of the characters.  (One example I can think of is the one where Riker doesn't go crazy, Frame of Mind).  The latest episode of Star Trek Picard is mostly one of those episodes, and at a time when the main story should be gathering pace, it's a little frustrating to see it go on a lengthy detour while the secondary storylines get more time (that's my opinion, other opinions are available).  Still, I've got plenty to say about it.

In the previous episode, we saw Agnes/the Borg Queen heading towards downtown Los Angeles, full of intent and suspense.  Does this episode move her story forwards?  Only in one small scene, more than half-way through the episode.  She enters a jazz club, where Patrick Stewart's wife plays the lead singer, singing, "I know what people see; and I know what they say; no-one's stopping me, and no-one's leaving today."  That would be the jazz translation of "Resistance is futile," then.  The Borg Queen is attempting to push Agnes's endorphin levels up so that she can complete her assimilation more quickly, and to be honest she seems to be winning.  Seven and Raffi are about 8-10 hours behind, in a large city, and with very little clue of where she is heading next.

Seven and Raffi's contribution continues to be relegated to the comic subplot.  Upon learning that Agnes kissed Rios at the gala, they go off on their own little dialogue about their own relationship - this is largely uncharted territory for Star Trek, and it comes off well ("We're the main event, and Agnes and Rios are the side story...." with an unseen wink to the audience).  The humour turns serious as they realise that The Queen (via Agnes) has infiltrated the Sirena's computer and locked out all access - they can't track Agnes's com-badge or her location, and instead must rely on 21st century surveillance cameras and their tricorders (which seem to be little bundles of magic).

Well over half of the episode is spent inside Jean-Luc's coma.  Tallinn the Supervisor has a neural interface device that enables her to mind-meld with Jean-Luc and actively participate in his dream.  "They all woke up and it was all a dream" is a huge cliche to avoid here, and the story barely manages it.  We see Picard's nightmare from two perspectives - his first as a child in the labyrinth of the cellars of Chateau Picard, where Tallinn is able to intervene, and the second in his current position as a Starfleet Captain, in a psych evaluation with a therapist.  The episode starts here, and it was a moment of comedy to see that the therapist is played by James Callis, who was Doctor Gaius Baltar on Battlestar Galactica (I can recommend it, but it's a long story).  Baltar was an opportunistic fraudster who was always trying to covemr his own tracks, and he's perfect for this role.  Is he real?  Is this a dream?  A memory?  What's his motivation?  

To cut a long, long story short:  Picard's mother suffered fom depression, and these are manifest in Picard's dreams as monsters who were taking his mother away from him.  Picard's father locked the mother, Yvette, in one of the cellars, where she would bang on the door and plead to be released.  And in the key twist in this story, Picard's subconscious has placed his father in the role of the therapist.  As Picard pieces all this together, with his adult experience and the assistance of Tallinn in the nightmarish cellar scenes, he realises that there was nothing he could do to help his mother when he was merely a child.  

That's a very short version of a considerably more complex situation, but the takeaway that Picard gets is not only should he know himself (ancient Greek wisdom) but that he should also acknowledge that his greatest teacher is his enemy, and therefore he needs to learn more about Q.  It's a stretch, but it also points back to Q who has recently lost all his powers - something has happened to Q, and it's something he's not in control of.  Maybe the Q continuum has internal strife again (see the Voyager episode Death Wish for more on the Q continuum).  Tallinn sums it up when she ask if Q really set all this up so that Picard would learn about him? The implied answer is yes, but how would Q set things in motion, then lose his own powers, have to counsel Renee, then get found by Picard, who would in turn have to meet Tallinn, then Picard would have to push Renee out of the path of a volatile and unpredictable Soong in his car, and end up in a coma... no. Q did not plan all this out.

Apart from Picard, the character who sees the most plot development in this episode is Rios.  Raffi commented last week that he seemed to have a slightly goofy smile, as if he was in love; she also warned him not to get involved with anybody in this timeline.  Is he paying attention?  Nope.  He's falling alarmingly quickly for Teresa, who runs the clinic - and he has to break the temporal prime directive to save Picard while he's in his coma.  Rios shows Teresa some 24th century medical tech - he doesn't know how to use it (as if she would?) and she knows for certain that he's not exactly safe.  He's locking doors in her clinic; he shows her Tallinn and Picard in their crazy alien mind meld; and that's before he beams in a medical device.  Line of the episode goes to Rios:  "I'm not from outer space.  I'm from Chile; I only work in outer space."  Kirk said the same in Star Trek IV (in his case it was Iowa, but the principle is identical and very funny).  Yes, Kirk broke the temporal prime directive to get his hands on two whales and save humanity; I'm not sure what Rios's excuse is, but by the end of the episode he's beamed himself, and Theresa, and her son onto the Sirena.  

And yes, Kirk beamed Gillian onto the spaceship in Star Trek IV, but that was not entirely his fault (she jumped into his transporter beam while he was transporting).  This disregard for the temporal prime directive, butterflies and all that had better have some repercussions, or I will be annoyed.  The rest of the crew are busting a gut to keep time on track, and Rios just flaunts the rules to impress his would-be girlfriend:  not impressed.  And how come Raffi can beam the medical device directly into Rios's hands, when two days ago, they couldn't even beam Rios safely onto the ground, and they missed by about three metres - vertically?

Picard needs to find Q, and in order to do that, he revisits Guinan in her bar at 10 Forward.  There is an established uneasy relationship between Q's people and Guinan's (see Q Who) but it's not been unpacked in detail before - it was a nice touch to expand on this here.  Anyway: Guinan attempts to contact a Q (any Q will do), but fails:  our Q doesn't register as a Q because he's lost his powers.  Something is definitely wrong.

So, the crew have completed their primary mission - to get Renee Picard into pre-flight.  However, they've trampled on so many butterflies and released so many more that they've still got their hands full.

Agnes is now wandering around LA with a head full of Borg, which is both a blessing and a curse:  the Borg Queen is the only one who knows the way home.

Picard has a head full of 'must find Q'.  His 'mission' seems the weakest and less relevant at the moment.

Rios has a head full of hormones, and he needs it examining, pronto.

Seven and Raffi need to find Agnes before the whole timeline goes to pieces.  Their mission is the most critical, and surely must succeed: however, I can't see Agnes surviving - how do they save the ability to get home without fully saving Agnes?  The answer will be a sci-fi fix, and it had better be a good one, or I will be annoyed (again).

Overall, this episode didn't do as much as the previous ones - there was a lot of movement in the tangential side stories, and not much actual forward movement - hopefully we'll see more next time. 

Season 2 Episode List

Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One
Episode 7: Monsters

Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell