Speaker 1: Weird.
Speaker 2: We welcome back midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly round up.
Speaker 2: I'm Father and with me wearing her brand new shiny
Speaker 2: collar is missus ripley Jean? Will you sound a kind
Speaker 2: of musical? Do we need a theme song? What am
Speaker 2: I talking about? We have a theme song one that
Speaker 2: a student listener, Chris Haggerty, wrote in to say that
Speaker 2: it reminded him of the interstitial music from John Carpenter's
Speaker 2: assault on Precinct thirteen, which is exactly what it's meant
Speaker 2: to evoke. Good on you and thank you once again
Speaker 2: to HP for that theme. What are we talking about
Speaker 2: this week?
Speaker 3: You know what?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think I have mentioned your brother. Have
Speaker 2: I mentioned Norman Bates on this podcast yet? Norman is
Speaker 2: a freaky LIIKOI cat. Those are more commonly referred to
Speaker 2: as werewolf cats, which is an appropriate name. It's like
Speaker 2: being in an American werewolf in London all the time.
Speaker 2: When Norman was around in more ways than one last week,
Speaker 2: I said, Hey, do you want to go outside and
Speaker 2: go potty? And he turned and he said, didn't you
Speaker 2: mean the lou And I said no, I meant potty
Speaker 2: like a brat would use because you're a fucking brat.
Speaker 2: And then we both said see you next Wednesday, bitch,
Speaker 2: and I thought we were going to kill each other.
Speaker 2: But it turns out that that Freaky Friday movie was right.
Speaker 2: If you say the same thing at the same time
Speaker 2: with the same intent, it causes magic. Except if you
Speaker 2: say see you next Wednesday at the same time, it
Speaker 2: conjures up John Landis and he just immediately starts talking
Speaker 2: about Lon Cheney. It diffused the situation, and I'm thankful,
Speaker 2: But man, he made us watch Kelly's Heroes and he
Speaker 2: did a running commentary. Oh he was exhausting anyway. Speaking
Speaker 2: of werewolves, this would have been Rip's picked this week
Speaker 2: if I could have smuggled her into the theater to know.
Speaker 2: Neither your brother nor sister are interested in forming a
Speaker 2: pantomime human to sneak into movies with you. Wait wait,
Speaker 2: Norman says he'll do it, but he wants to be
Speaker 2: the head and shoulders. I'd actually love to see that.
Speaker 2: You'd be like some kind of wolf man.
Speaker 3: Right now, we're gonna hello, Could anyone hear me?
Speaker 1: Hello? We were in an accident, Daddy, We're gonna die.
Speaker 2: No, it's my job to protect you and we.
Speaker 3: We were at to act. I think my husband was infected.
Speaker 1: Back daddy, Daddy, what's wrong with daddy?
Speaker 2: She got sick?
Speaker 3: What is happening to week? Can you understand me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you're.
Speaker 3: You're scaring me.
Speaker 1: Daddy's mean. Sorry, Mommy is coming.
Speaker 2: The current state of the studio system is wildly depressing
Speaker 2: to think there was a time if a gangster picture
Speaker 2: was coming from the Warner Brothers, it was probably gonna
Speaker 2: be aces, or that if a musical bore the roaring
Speaker 2: Lion of MGM, you were in for a treat. Or
Speaker 2: that torch Lady Front in Columbia, she'd be announcing a
Speaker 2: hell of a Western But horror, Oh my goodness, oh
Speaker 2: my badness. There were other studios that dabbled, looking at you, RKO,
Speaker 2: but really there was only one game in town, and
Speaker 2: that was Universal Pictures. The literal murderer's row of boogeymen
Speaker 2: they gave us would come to symbolize horror in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The
Speaker 2: Invisible Man, The Phantom of the Opera, The Bride of Frankenstein,
Speaker 2: The Mummy, Doctor Jekil and mister Hyde, the Creature from
Speaker 2: the Black Lagoon, and the Wolfman.
Speaker 3: Oh you've got a Wolfman impression? Ah?
Speaker 2: How after last week's Lorne Michael's I Am All Ears,
Speaker 2: Good Girl leew and l Knows tension After two decades
Speaker 2: of pretty decent scare shows, the open seen here has
Speaker 2: a camera move that made me giggle at how skillfully
Speaker 2: it manipulated me. Bravo oneell. The goal in both The
Speaker 2: Invisible Man and here in Wolfman, not the wolf Man,
Speaker 2: just wolf Man, seems to be to drag those characters
Speaker 2: into the twenty first century. Invisible Man is easier than
Speaker 2: most because you don't have to deal with the supernatural.
Speaker 2: It's always been a mad scientist. Now a suit of
Speaker 2: cameras that project what's behind you on the surface is
Speaker 2: just as plausible now as the bleaching properties of monocane
Speaker 2: were to audiences in the original. So it's amusing that
Speaker 2: he sets this film in a cabin isolated in the
Speaker 2: wilds of Oregon, conveniently allowing the first of all modern
Speaker 2: horror checklist items to be marked present can't get any
Speaker 2: cell service out here, shocker, but at least that's a
Speaker 2: clear choice that the film has made the rest of
Speaker 2: its motivations are about as opaque as any window seems
Speaker 2: to be in this film. That is ultimately going to
Speaker 2: be the theme. By the way, movement without clarity, the
Speaker 2: whole thing is set up. I should mention with an
Speaker 2: opening crawl that tells us, you know what, I'm just
Speaker 2: going to read the entire word salad here. In early
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, a hiker disappeared in the isolated mountains
Speaker 2: of central Oregon. After several observations, some members of the
Speaker 2: isolated community, have you got an the idea that it's isolated,
Speaker 2: that's twice began to speculate that the missing man had
Speaker 2: contracted a virus transmitted my animals that they call He'll fever.
Speaker 2: The indigenous peoples who preceded them called it differently, mouth
Speaker 2: of the Wolf. Okay, so that's a cheat right there.
Speaker 2: From the get go. I want this to be plausible,
Speaker 2: but also, you know, it could be spooky, supernatural stuff.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it turns you into a wolf, but that's completely scientific.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: This story is about an out of work writer whose
Speaker 2: real career is super dad. That's right, He'll buy you
Speaker 2: everything in the gift shop of the museum and take
Speaker 2: you to ice cream afterwards. But he has a bit
Speaker 2: of a temper, so maybe this is an allegory for
Speaker 2: domestic violence, though between parent and child here as opposed
Speaker 2: to spouse to spouse, like Invisible Man could be, seems
Speaker 2: a totally legitimate path to follow. There's trouble at home though.
Speaker 2: He and his wife have reached that convenient place in
Speaker 2: movies where they've grown distant, but without any real discernible
Speaker 2: reason to be pointed to. It's just one of those
Speaker 2: generally drifted apart that is in most flicks conveniently solved
Speaker 2: with a declaration of love scenarios. Is there jealousy because
Speaker 2: she's a working journalist and he's unemployed. That's attack you
Speaker 2: could hang the film on. So Blake, that's the lead
Speaker 2: character's name. I had to look it up. A side
Speaker 2: of being superdad and somewhat estranged from his wife, has
Speaker 2: just received word that his dad, missing for an indeterminate
Speaker 2: amount of time, has been declared dead and his personal
Speaker 2: effects have been passed down. That's the cabin in the forest,
Speaker 2: So off they go. Does this make this like straw
Speaker 2: Dogs about the thin veneer of society that covers up
Speaker 2: animal instinct. Hell of a theme to explore. You can
Speaker 2: figure out where this is going. Blake is bitten or scratched.
Speaker 2: Let's say he's wounded, and then the fun begins, or
Speaker 2: it would if the film had any interest in that.
Speaker 2: It is a great setup. There's a monster patrolling the exterior,
Speaker 2: waiting to pounce and attempting to gain entrance, while your
Speaker 2: spouse is slowly becoming that very same beast. Maybe Oneell,
Speaker 2: being Australian, didn't see the fucking super obvious allegory he
Speaker 2: could have pursued here. I mean, in general, tell me
Speaker 2: a relationship you've been in where over time you feel
Speaker 2: the person has changed, or maybe you've changed and they haven't.
Speaker 2: That is worth exploring. Never mind the current state of
Speaker 2: affairs here in the United States, where we no longer
Speaker 2: recognize our friends.
Speaker 3: And loved ones.
Speaker 2: So what is the movie about? According to one l
Speaker 2: in every interview I've listened to, it's about disease.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: Sure, there are nods to all the possibles I mentioned,
Speaker 2: but the fact is Whenell's big innovation for the werewolf
Speaker 2: may is to make it the fly. Because that is
Speaker 2: the film that this most resembles all the way through.
Speaker 2: The problem is you can feel one L straining over
Speaker 2: the weight that meant the invisible man. I'll bet dollars
Speaker 2: to donuts that one L sat down to write a
Speaker 2: thriller and framed it in the most relatable way possible,
Speaker 2: a controlling relationship. It's a potent idea on its own,
Speaker 2: but the timing of the film's release crested the me
Speaker 2: too wave and gave the film a gravitas that may
Speaker 2: not have been entirely earned, or maybe it was. In
Speaker 2: any event, that's not something you can replicate spontaneously. The
Speaker 2: Fly can be taken as a very real allegory for
Speaker 2: the AIDS epidemic. It was in the right place, at
Speaker 2: the right time, with the right subject matter. But the
Speaker 2: fact is Cronenberg had been dabbling in body horror all along.
Speaker 2: I suspect if he had made The Fly in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine, it would have been remarkably similar to the
Speaker 2: film that we received, though it would have been viewed
Speaker 2: through whatever lens was popular at that moment. So one
Speaker 2: L doubles and triples down here, throwing out all of
Speaker 2: these possibles of what he's trying to say about the
Speaker 2: wolf Man without focusing on any of them at all,
Speaker 2: which is fine if it has good scares, which it does,
Speaker 2: and interesting characters, which it does not. I won't spoil
Speaker 2: that or really anything else, but I will say, because
Speaker 2: one hell wants this to be science based, if a
Speaker 2: character loses a foot, they don't become faster you dig.
Speaker 2: More likely they bleed out after two minutes tops, no
Speaker 2: silver bullet required.
Speaker 3: Listen.
Speaker 2: I didn't get behind the mic glow those many years
Speaker 2: ago with the intention of contributing to the endless waves
Speaker 2: of negativity out there. In fact, what spurred me to
Speaker 2: start broadcasting in the first place was the preponderance of
Speaker 2: shows laser focused on the shredding of movies to pieces
Speaker 2: just bread and circus bullshit. It may be why my
Speaker 2: focus tends to hover on the things I love. I've
Speaker 2: got a brain jam packed with so much stupid movie
Speaker 2: knowledge that it wouldn't hurt to spread some of it
Speaker 2: around and recommend things people might actually find diverting. But
Speaker 2: then I started reviewing contemporary entertainment and things get dicey,
Speaker 2: which is a long winded way of apology. This show
Speaker 2: isn't about snark unless I'm pushed, and goddamn it, the
Speaker 2: entertainment gods are pushing me like well, like you do
Speaker 2: rip when you're trying to get a treat out of
Speaker 2: my hands.
Speaker 3: No, I don't have a treat right now.
Speaker 2: Hit at HP K, thank you hp it's raining men,
Speaker 2: am I right? Remember just a couple of episodes ago,
Speaker 2: when I was telling tales of fandom past, back when
Speaker 2: the Star Trek fans were the assholes and Star Wars
Speaker 2: fans the underdogs. And even though those roles have now
Speaker 2: reversed and Star Wars fandom has become toxic, it has
Speaker 2: still managed to produce two shows worthy of the Star
Speaker 2: Wars name well that Upside Down Bizarro World, or in
Speaker 2: this case, the Mirror Universe just keeps right on hurtling
Speaker 2: through the cosmos. In my mind, Star Trek has always
Speaker 2: had something of quality on at all times until Voyager anyway,
Speaker 2: that show was terrible, but Star Trek has always been
Speaker 2: hit or miss. This was a film franchise marked by
Speaker 2: the fact that the even films were good. That means
Speaker 2: the odd films were bad. So maybe Star Trek fans
Speaker 2: are a little more flexible given the mutability of the
Speaker 2: show's quality over the years, or the quality of the shows.
Speaker 2: Here are my Starfleet credentials. I'm fluent in the original series,
Speaker 2: the animated series, Next Gen, and most of Deep Space nine.
Speaker 2: I watched Voyager intermittently until seven of nine showed up,
Speaker 2: and then with a little more regularity. Nice work, Brandon Braga,
Speaker 2: and then there's Enterprise. There was so much I like
Speaker 2: about that show, or wanted to like about that show,
Speaker 2: but the completely interchangeable white guy Bridge crew was so
Speaker 2: fucking dull man. No complaints about DePaul, No complaints with
Speaker 2: the continued use of Jeffrey Combs as an Andorian. He
Speaker 2: should be in all the Star Trek's dummies. He's a
Speaker 2: good luck charm. Treat him like Ratzenberger is treated by Pixar.
Speaker 2: Do I have to mention the opening song. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have to mention the opening song. It's one of the
Speaker 2: best track credit sequences with the fucking worst possible piece
Speaker 2: of music. It's like they hired Mike Post circa nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: Five to compose that. Diddy.
Speaker 2: I know there's a working theory of failing upwards, so
Speaker 2: it makes sense that one person can constantly bumble their
Speaker 2: way to top creative positions. But this isn't the work
Speaker 2: of one person. There were many just to decide, hey,
Speaker 2: let's do a song that'd be different, and then they
Speaker 2: hired someone, and then they handed in a demo, and
Speaker 2: then they listened to that demo and said, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the sound of Star Trek in song form. Even if
Speaker 2: it's three or four dunderheads, even if it were only them,
Speaker 2: then the fact that it gone on the air would
Speaker 2: make sense. But now that song has to be recorded,
Speaker 2: Musicians and vocalists have to be hired, time is booked
Speaker 2: at a studio, and engineers services are engaged. How many
Speaker 2: people is that now? No pushback? Okay, so maybe none
Speaker 2: of those people are really affiliated with Star Trek. There's
Speaker 2: session people and contractors. Not their job to comment on
Speaker 2: the material. It's to do as they're told and cast
Speaker 2: the check. But then that song has to be laid
Speaker 2: into the show over those credits where the credits designed
Speaker 2: around the song. What a terrible thought. Now, how many
Speaker 2: people haven't opened their mouths and said the fucking obvious.
Speaker 2: I'm sure I could find the actual answers to these questions,
Speaker 2: but I'm treating them hypothetically because there is no decent
Speaker 2: reason for that fucking song to exist. Because of it,
Speaker 2: there is no streaming skip credits button fast enough to
Speaker 2: get me to rewatch that series. Enterprise really took the
Speaker 2: joy out of the show for me for quite a while.
Speaker 2: That in the fact that it found itself in between
Speaker 2: Insurrection and Nemesis. I mean, seriously, that's a fucking terrible sandwich.
Speaker 2: I mentioned failing Upward. Well, meet Alex Kurtzman. He and
Speaker 2: his partner Robert Orsey have been responsible for so much
Speaker 2: fucking mediocrity in the last twenty years. It is staggering,
Speaker 2: jumping from that Kevin Sorbo Hercules series to the Island,
Speaker 2: that fucking awful Michael Bay film. From there to Transformers.
Speaker 2: You know, when everyone was saying Michael Bay ruined their childhood,
Speaker 2: even though that movie made billions and spawned too many sequels,
Speaker 2: that script was by our man Alex Kurtzman. To be fair,
Speaker 2: he also wrote the horrible scripts for the Amazing Spider
Speaker 2: Man two and The Mummy with Tom Cruise, which is
Speaker 2: hilarious considering that film was meant to kick off Universal's
Speaker 2: misbegotten Dark Universe, where they were attempting to turn the
Speaker 2: Universal Monsters into the Avengers, a concept that was considered
Speaker 2: dead until the surprise success of Leewanel's Invisible Man. Somewhere
Speaker 2: between Transformers and The Mummy, a terrible thing happened. This
Speaker 2: guy got hold of Star Trek, starting with jj abrams
Speaker 2: remake of Star Wars as Star Trek in two thousand nine.
Speaker 2: Kurtzman has been there for everything track since. There were
Speaker 2: a few writers on that first film, so I can't
Speaker 2: say for sure who did what I'm gonna say the
Speaker 2: notion of exiling Kirk on a random planet that they're passing,
Speaker 2: where he then gets chased by a beast into a cave,
Speaker 2: where he then runs into alternate timeline Spock, who has
Speaker 2: just so happened to set up shop there a veritable
Speaker 2: dais I Spakina, Shut up. I lay the blame for
Speaker 2: that nonsense on Kurtzman. When I saw his name was
Speaker 2: attached to the first new series in over a decade,
Speaker 2: my expectations were not high. So when Star Trek Discovery
Speaker 2: hit the airwaves, I was shocked. I loved it. I
Speaker 2: loved setting it just prior to the original series. I
Speaker 2: loved the aesthetic, I loved the characters. I loved having
Speaker 2: a complicated, shaded, and potentially morally corrupt character as a lead.
Speaker 2: I loved the Klingon double Agent, the whole Mirror Universe thing.
Speaker 2: Everything in that season was aces. I didn't finish the
Speaker 2: second season. It just felt off.
Speaker 3: What happened?
Speaker 2: Oh, Brian Fuller, the creator of the Hannibal television series,
Speaker 2: The creator the American Gods television series. That Brian Fuller,
Speaker 2: the one in the JJ Abrams verse with actual talent,
Speaker 2: the one who apparently kept nagging Paramount that Star Trek
Speaker 2: is a television based franchise and maybe they should get
Speaker 2: back to it, and apparently pitched a series that would
Speaker 2: base its model on American horror story, with each season
Speaker 2: being self contained and set in different eras of Starfleet
Speaker 2: season one before the original series, season two, during the
Speaker 2: original series, season three, during Next Generation, and on and
Speaker 2: on into the future we've yet to see. Paramount had
Speaker 2: him streamline it down to one timeline, so instead of
Speaker 2: plotting out different stories in different eras, he plotted out
Speaker 2: one season of Discovery and then bailed, leaving us with
Speaker 2: Kurtzman and leaving Kurtzman and Discovery adrift for all seasons
Speaker 2: going forward now This might be a shame on me scenario,
Speaker 2: because even with all of that precedent, all those terrible
Speaker 2: stories and half bank characters and lapses in logic and
Speaker 2: everything the man has written. When I heard he was
Speaker 2: making a series about a Black Ops division of Starfleet,
Speaker 2: I kind of got excited.
Speaker 3: No, not kind of.
Speaker 2: The idea of a gritty and oranth series set in
Speaker 2: and around the Star Trek universe is really fucking tantalizing.
Speaker 2: Did I say shame on me? This is Star Trek
Speaker 2: Section thirty one.
Speaker 3: Here's a customer, hope it for a word with you?
Speaker 1: Bring him?
Speaker 2: What are you doing in my space station? I'm giving
Speaker 2: you a chance to get back in on the action
Speaker 2: on a galactic scale.
Speaker 1: What a cute idea.
Speaker 3: The only way this works is if I know exactly
Speaker 3: what I'm dealing with.
Speaker 2: We're facing a threat unlike anything Starfleet's ever seen. Millions
Speaker 2: of lives are at stake.
Speaker 1: Gather your people who are going to need every one
Speaker 1: of them. Thirty one is a Black Ops Division spy work.
Speaker 1: It's just a place for people to lend the rules.
Speaker 2: Start leaders here to make sure no one commits murder.
Speaker 3: Whatever you believed your mission was it's worse than you thought.
Speaker 1: How do we stop it?
Speaker 3: We work together and don't get dead. I'll try my hurtest.
Speaker 1: You. Ready, let's get messy.
Speaker 2: You don't answer her questions directly, she will punch you
Speaker 2: in your face.
Speaker 1: What you said that she was going to be doing
Speaker 1: a face punching.
Speaker 3: You have no idea what you've started.
Speaker 2: This is gonna be bad or record one, We survived
Speaker 2: together Article fourteen, Section thirty one. In times of extreme threat,
Speaker 2: extraordinary measures must be taken. That's the Starfleet charter y'all.
Speaker 2: Section thirty one is basically the Wetworks division of the CIA.
Speaker 2: We first met them on Deep Space nine, where they
Speaker 2: were represented by William Fuckin Sadler. That's death in Bill
Speaker 2: and Ted talk about tantalizing. Why didn't they spin the
Speaker 2: shit off immediately? I'm sure section thirty one showed up
Speaker 2: in the comics and novels and all of the other apocrypha,
Speaker 2: but we wouldn't really get them again on screen until
Speaker 2: Star Trek into Darkness, and there they were hardly themselves,
Speaker 2: not a clandestine thing at all. They were like some
Speaker 2: insurrectionist group with an admiral and a giant fucking Starship
Speaker 2: marauding around speaking of into Darkness screenplay by Alex Kurtzman.
Speaker 2: There's a scene where Spock has turned in Kirk for
Speaker 2: some infraction, and before Kirk is able to save the
Speaker 2: day by throwing a fire hose into the intake of
Speaker 2: a spacecraft's engine, a fire hose on a spool in
Speaker 2: the twenty third fucking century. Before that piece of anachronistic idiocy,
Speaker 2: Kirk refers to Spock's betrayal as being thrown under the bus.
Speaker 3: What bus?
Speaker 2: What the fuck are you talking about? Spaceboy? Oh right,
Speaker 2: the writers are fucking terrible. That line shouldn't have bothered
Speaker 2: me as much as it did, but it did. I'm
Speaker 2: fucking furious about it right now, recalling it. At no
Speaker 2: point during the writing, reading, rereading, handing the script to
Speaker 2: others to read and sign off on, and then crew
Speaker 2: members to build things and actors to interpret them, and
Speaker 2: no one says, hey, this thing no one was saying
Speaker 2: last year. We're sure they're going to still be saying
Speaker 2: it two hundred years from now, right, fuck you. Section
Speaker 2: thirty one is a wash in that kind of dialogue.
Speaker 2: Remember the Delvins in Star Trek. The motion pictured the
Speaker 2: bald girl, super sexy. She was a Delvin They've got
Speaker 2: one here, and Michelle Yeo calls her a honey trap
Speaker 2: during the time between Kirk and Picard. The term honeytrap
Speaker 2: is still being used by a character from a parallel dimension.
Speaker 2: She was an emperor there, grew up knowing nothing but
Speaker 2: pain and blood and murder, eventually becoming a genocidal emperor
Speaker 2: before finding her way into our universe somewhere between slaughtering
Speaker 2: her own immediate family mom, dad, little brother and attempting
Speaker 2: a coup. In our universe, Emperor Philippa Giorgio learned and
Speaker 2: still employs in casual conversation the term honey trap. If
Speaker 2: that fucking anachronism doesn't grab you, how about calling a
Speaker 2: guy in a mech suit a Swiss army knife a
Speaker 2: what Swiss? What's that? That emperor played by Michelle ye
Speaker 2: first appeared on that well plotted first season of Discs.
Speaker 2: Evidently Michelle Yo enjoyed playing her so much that it
Speaker 2: was her suggestion for a spinoff series, So in a way,
Speaker 2: we weren't getting a section thirty one series without her.
Speaker 2: But I question her involvement here, not her the character
Speaker 2: adding the former emperor to a morally questionable part of
Speaker 2: the United Federation of Planets seems like a natural, but
Speaker 2: the opening scene of this movie illustrates exactly why she isn't.
Speaker 2: That's where she murders her family and his crowned emperor
Speaker 2: while simultaneously branding and breaking the spirit of her only rival,
Speaker 2: who happens to be her lover. This character is too
Speaker 2: grand and has too big an arc to be running
Speaker 2: around and scooby dooing week after week. I keep saying
Speaker 2: series because that's what this was supposed to be, and
Speaker 2: they were as far along as having the entire first
Speaker 2: season scripted, and then there were delays and pandemics in
Speaker 2: scheduling difficulties, and finally Paramount decided it'd be best to
Speaker 2: use this as a one off instead. You ever watch
Speaker 2: a fan cut of some epic trilogy or television series
Speaker 2: boiling it down to some bastardized reader's digest version, check
Speaker 2: out Breaking Bad the Movies sometime. That's what this feels like.
Speaker 2: They took the major arc of the season and turned
Speaker 2: that into a two hour film. Guess what happens when
Speaker 2: you do that. Everything suffers. Characters meant to evolve and
Speaker 2: reveal themselves over the course of a season with their
Speaker 2: own standalone episodes get boiled down to their base characteristics
Speaker 2: given through various exposition dumps of clumsy dialogue. Kurtzman has
Speaker 2: described a series overall as Mission Impossible meets Guardians of
Speaker 2: the Galaxy. It's not it's Ocean's Eleven meets Guardians of
Speaker 2: the Galaxy. Actually, it's Ocean's twelve meets Guardians, and I
Speaker 2: mean just Guardian that twenty seventeen Russian knockoff. The problem
Speaker 2: with any of those combination is it's bumping up against
Speaker 2: the fundamental, hopeful, shiny bright future that is Star Trek.
Speaker 2: Star Trek has had plenty of moral ambiguity in the past,
Speaker 2: but the characters are always fighting against it.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: They need to lean into the darkness and they just can't.
Speaker 2: Not helping is having a genocidal mad woman as your lead.
Speaker 2: How do you sand off of those edges?
Speaker 3: They don't.
Speaker 2: They pay it some lip service and just treat this
Speaker 2: as if it were any other origin story, and more
Speaker 2: than undercutting the character's fundamental nature, it makes zero sense
Speaker 2: she'd be involved in this story at all. It ends
Speaker 2: up being all about her enter past because that's where
Speaker 2: the season was going, but she doesn't know that. When
Speaker 2: she agrees to take her first mission with them, she
Speaker 2: just kind of does it because the show, i mean,
Speaker 2: movie needs her to and there's a lot of that,
Speaker 2: which is frustrating because it nullifies anything that's good. There
Speaker 2: is an early heist that's pretty ingenious. We get the
Speaker 2: planning scenario scene with cuts to the potential role of
Speaker 2: each of the members, and then Michelle ye proposes a
Speaker 2: different plan, pairing herself and the mcguffin using a device
Speaker 2: that sets them out of phase, allowing her to walk
Speaker 2: unobstructed through physical threats and phaser fire and just walk
Speaker 2: away with the item. It's pretty clever, except they immediately
Speaker 2: turned it into the big action set piece they had
Speaker 2: cleverly circumvented. What's worse is that it's a big hand
Speaker 2: to hand fight scene between Michelle Yeo out of phase
Speaker 2: against a masked villain also out of phase, with them
Speaker 2: blinking in and out of existence and robbing the fight
Speaker 2: of any immediacy. This may be owing to Michelle Yeo's age,
Speaker 2: She's relying on her cape for most of her acrobatics
Speaker 2: these days. No judgment, We all know she's a goddess,
Speaker 2: but it just underlines the complete lack of necessity of
Speaker 2: this drawn out martial arts display when this is supposed
Speaker 2: to be an espionage show. For every visual effect that
Speaker 2: is stunning, and there are a lot, there's an unnecessary
Speaker 2: chase scene on hovering platforms with even more fisticuffs that
Speaker 2: is so horribly rendered that you have to worry about
Speaker 2: these folk. You didn't recognize the irrelevancy of the scene
Speaker 2: at its core, but then you saw this and you
Speaker 2: still thought the scene was necessary. Speaking of Guardians of
Speaker 2: the Galaxy, Captain Boomerang is the dude in that Swiss
Speaker 2: Army knife mech. That's right, every Australian and every show
Speaker 2: has to be boisterous and unhinged and completely reckless. Other
Speaker 2: members of the team include team leader Common That's Common,
Speaker 2: the rapper actor from John Wick and Suicide Squad, except
Speaker 2: he's not in this. We've got discount Common, or maybe
Speaker 2: it's common Common just a dull mysterioso with few words
Speaker 2: and less personality. Sam Richardson shows up as Quasi, the
Speaker 2: shape shifting comic relief who is not funny and his
Speaker 2: transformations look remarkably ai in nature. Don't know if it
Speaker 2: was just looked remarkably as if he were about to
Speaker 2: start crashing uncontrollably into the walls or eating an oversized
Speaker 2: hamburger in the next few frames after the cut. I
Speaker 2: wish this was the final member of the team because
Speaker 2: it's the only character I enjoyed. But there is another.
Speaker 2: I have to talk about this one first, though, because
Speaker 2: that other character I'm gonna be furious after speaking of
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Rachel Garrett, A regular old human here is played
Speaker 2: by Casey Roll, and she's fucking great. She completely embodies
Speaker 2: the spirit of the previous series while slotting nicely in
Speaker 2: with an idea of where this series could go. I
Speaker 2: found her performance alive in ways everyone else's wasn't. She
Speaker 2: seemed like she was on a mission for Starfleet. Everyone
Speaker 2: else seemed like they were in a sitcom. And I
Speaker 2: didn't even realize that her character was a younger version
Speaker 2: of the one from yesterday's enterprise. From the Next Generation,
Speaker 2: she was originally played by Night Gallery Elam Tricia O'Neill. There.
Speaker 2: I fucking loved that character, and unknowingly I fucking loved
Speaker 2: her again here, which leads us to fuzz there have
Speaker 2: been some pretty annoying characters in Star Trek's seventy year history.
Speaker 2: But they've done it. They've reached the top of the
Speaker 2: Paramount Mountain on section thirty one. They've officially created the
Speaker 2: most annoying character in Star Trek history. A nanosized worm
Speaker 2: piloting a robot Vulcan. Very fanciful. Oh he's wearing gold chains.
Speaker 2: Kind of a loose Vulcan. Oh wait, he's talking in
Speaker 2: the world first fucking Irish accent ever, So this makes
Speaker 2: it a tiny Irish worm. And for all the unknowing
Speaker 2: world to see an Irish Vulcan, a manic, unfunny Irish Vulcan.
Speaker 2: They get a chance to feature a fully emotional Vulcan,
Speaker 2: and faith and Bacora, they give us this. What's worse
Speaker 2: is if you hear the actual actor speak, I won't
Speaker 2: say his name and promote him so great or his crimes.
Speaker 2: He speaks with an odd South African accent that would be,
Speaker 2: I don't know, perfect for Star Trek. The character's very
Speaker 2: presence feels like a reach. Hey, we've never seen this. Yes,
Speaker 2: there's a good reason in seven decades they haven't done this.
Speaker 2: I don't want to end negatively, but I'm struggling to
Speaker 2: continue with anything positive, so I'll say this section thirty
Speaker 2: one is still a great idea. It was a great
Speaker 2: idea when they created it for Deep Space nine, and
Speaker 2: hopefully it will remain a great idea when someone in
Speaker 2: the future takes the Helmet Star Trek and can do
Speaker 2: it some justice. I was hoping we'd get the Star
Speaker 2: Trek equivalent of and or we got the.
Speaker 3: Book of Boba Fat. Oh. That's enough poor genre for
Speaker 3: the week, young Ripley.
Speaker 2: I know we'll put on some Collin jokes for you
Speaker 2: in a.
Speaker 3: Minute, Okay, I know.
Speaker 2: As for you, thank you for joining us here at
Speaker 2: Father Malone's weekly roundup. Be sure to tune in Friday.
Speaker 2: Antonio Lapourt is back for Anthology's Attack, and we're taking
Speaker 2: a look at mel Brooks History.
Speaker 3: Of the World Part one. It's Good to be the King.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear it right now, head over
Speaker 2: to patreon dot com slash Father Malone. Subscribers get to
Speaker 2: hear everything early and commercial free, and you'll also be
Speaker 2: able to hear Cable Box Theater where Night Mister Walters
Speaker 2: and Midnight viewing composer HP and I evaluate the late
Speaker 2: seventies early eighties cable networks practice of airing Broadway plays,
Speaker 2: not even musicals, straight up dramas when they were desperate
Speaker 2: for content. You don't have to be desperate for content.
Speaker 2: Just head on over to Patreon, or if you can't
Speaker 2: see yourself paying for this, dude, you can still support
Speaker 2: us by giving us five stars and sharing the show
Speaker 2: and reviewing it in a nice manner, nicer than I've
Speaker 2: been today, or you know, just keep listening. I am
Speaker 2: going to leave you with a bit from the greatest
Speaker 2: song ever written.
Speaker 3: It's been a long old getting from there. It's been
Speaker 3: a long time, but my time is fun me.
Speaker 2: I will see my dream come alive and massive. I
Speaker 2: will touch the sky and.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna home down no more.
Speaker 2: No, They're not gonna change my mind and save that
Speaker 2: base of the hall go on the lot.
Speaker 3: Will take men of god base.
Speaker 2: To believe I can do a spell of the soul.
Speaker 2: You're gonna bend off? All right, That's enough, that's enough, sorry, everybody.
Speaker 2: We're going to that again.