Andor is Really Good (Really)

I’ve been a little down on Star Wars lately.

The Abrams-Johnson-Abrams story hand-off in the sequel movie trilogy still pisses me off. Have a meeting and work your shit out, K? That’s what professionals do.

Mando is fun in a Saturday morning cartoon / western sort of way. I wanted to throw something at my TV at parts of The Book of Bo-bo. Kenobi was at least partially broken in the Editing Bay, though there is a pretty good fan-edit that fixes the pacing and re-assembles it as a movie instead of a clunky serial. So, I was frankly surprised how good Andor is. It is … Empire Strikes Back, good. (Yeah, I was skeptical, too)

I can’t really blame those who have passed on watching Andor considering recent installments out of Mickey’s Star Wars film factory. A TV Series about a not-particularly interesting secondary character from a prequel-one-off that hit theaters 6 years ago.. How could this possibly be any good? If it wasn’t for the persistent praise of friends and reviewers with similar taste, I’d likely have skipped it too.

I’ve heard it said that many of the Disney Plus Star Wars shows are like John Favreau and friends playing with their Star Wars toys; smashing them together and having fun. With Andor, Tony Gilroy puts the toys away and explores the moral perils of a burgeoning rebellion, the inner workings of a galactic bureaucracy, the thin line that separates revolution and terrorism, imperial control and cultural dominance. Don’t get me wrong, there is room and audience for both lanes: The Toy box and the Assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

NSFW The Critical Drinker’s Review of Andor that puts it into perspective better than I can…

Andor is a 12-episode series on Disney Plus that is structured (more or less) into 4 related mini-arcs. It is a dense show and not conducive to play with your phone second-screen shenanigans. The good parts are wrapped with neon arrows and may not be evident until the story develops.

The initial episodes lay groundwork for the conclusion and in the moment, they felt to me like a slow burn. I’ll admit that up through about episode 4 or 5 I wasn’t really getting what the buzz was about. By 6, I was sold and the show just amps up in every way until the final scenes, which pay off the initial setup episodes.

Reprising his role as the (not yet) rebel spy Cassian Andor, Diego Luna provides a stable through-line character for the series. Though much like in Breaking Bad and similar modern anti-hero dramas the supporting characters elevate the overall experience. I don’t want to say Cassian takes a back seat in his own show rather they know how to use him and when to cut away. There is a brief finale after-credit scene that pays off an assumption most astute-viewers will make that tie this series back to Andor’s final moments in Rogue One.

Genevieve O'Reilly reprises her role as Mon Mothma and this time she isn’t relegated to battle briefings. Her subtle character work, poise and grace make for a terrific performance. Her political machinations within the imperial power structure and viewer knowledge of the cost of her choices make for great television. Stellan Skarsgård plays Luthen Rael, a pre-rebellion co-conspirator and art / antiquities dealer. Watching him switch between an art-dealer and bit of a dandy to a menacing revolutionary is quite the spectacle. If you’ve seen Skarsgård in Chernobyl, you know what I‘m talking about. When he switches on the gravitas, his performance (and his ship) are my favorite moments of the series.

About late mid-season, Andy Serkis makes and appearance and without spoiling anything: holy crap, he’s awesome. Really, everyone turned in exceptional performances by any standard much less by Star Wars standards. I’m leaving other characters out in the interest of brevity that frankly deserve discussion but…. maybe later.

The writing and dialog on this show are the best I’ve seen in Star Wars and top contenders across modern drama, television and streaming content. Andor isn’t going to beat Breaking Bad, The Leftovers, The Wire on prestige drama pantheon but it belongs in that category, which is a strange thing to say for the same intellectual property that brought us Tatooine Vespa gangs and Luke milking a space-Walrus.

My Pitch

If you are looking for a more textured and complex story in the Star Wars Universe that is somewhat divorced from dogmatic-preachy Jedi, sniveling Skywalker descendants and Cackling Sith - give this show a try.

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… If you require further evidence, here’s a clever edit from a Luthen speech overlayed from other clips so that it obfuscates spoilers…

Modern Star Trek Round Up

TLDR: If you liked older Trek, go watch Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Something that Modern Star Trek and Modern Star Wars seem to share in common:

Modern takes on these franchises often seem to be poorly received by their fandoms.

I’m not the type of person to crap all over someone else’s art with my opinion. After watching some awful modern attempts at Star Trek, I’ve found myself staring at after-show credits thinking to myself: “That was garbage. How the hell did this get made?”

In the Beginning, There was T.O.S

The Original Series only ran for 3 seasons, between 24 and 29 episodes per season costing about $180k 1966USD’s per episode to produce. Originally considered a failure, Star Trek found its audience through syndication.

The episodic anthology used space exploration as a backdrop to explore geopolitical topics at times and in other times as a setting for silly futuristic adventures. In doing so it sparked the imagination of millions and set off one of humanity’s most iconic entertainment franchises.

TNG Era

Star Trek: Next Generation evolved Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian human future into 7 seasons of 26 Episodes spanning 8 years. With DS9, Voyager, there are Star Trek on ramps for the 90’s and 2000’s kids as well.

Big Screen, Mixed Results

As Star Trek was adapted for the big screen, the box office results were often flat. A few were critical successes (Star Trek: The Motion Picture & Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan) but the rabid fandom failed to translate to large box office earnings. 2002’s Star Trek Nemesis barely eek’d out a profit, eventually - maybe. The Studio decided it was time to make a change.

Production budgets vs Box Office

(Contemporary adjustments for inflation in bold)

Original Series

Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Budget: $46 million — $152.5 million
Gross: $139 million — $460.7 million

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Budget: $11.2 million — $27.9 million
Gross: $97 million — $241.9 million

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
Budget: $16 million — $37 million
Gross: $87 million — $201.5 million

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Budget: $21 million — $46.1 million
Gross: $133 million — $292 million

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Budget: $33 million — $64 million
Gross: $63 million — $122.3 million

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Budget: $27 million — $47.7 million
Gross: $96.9 million — $171.2 million

The Next Generation

Star Trek Generations
Budget: $35 million — $56.8 million
Gross: $118 million — $191.6 million

Star Trek: First Contact
Budget: $45 million — $69 million
Gross: $146 million — $223.9 million

Star Trek: Insurrection
Budget: $58 million — $85.6 million
Gross: $112.6 million — $166.2 million

Star Trek: Nemesis
Budget: $60 million — $80.3 million
Gross: $67.3 million — $90 million

Reboot, the Kelvin Timeline

Star Trek
Budget: $150 million — $168.3 million
Gross: $385.7 million — $432.6 million

Star Trek Into Darkness
Budget: $185 million — $191.1 million
Gross: $467.4 million — $482.8 million

Star Trek Beyond
Budget: $185 million
Gross: $318.1 million (to date)

ref: Reddit Post

Help Me JJ, You’re my Only Hope

(that’s going to piss some people off, lol)

Bad Robot

The Studio flipped the keys of NCC-1701 to JJ Abrams and the result was 2009’s Star Trek and the beginning of the Action Trek era that persists today. The idea was to expand the appeal to the average summer blockbuster moviegoer. The 2009 film was a refresh of TOS, a reimagining…. a.. (ffs) reboot. (Big Sigh) It would borrow from the past but adapt Star Trek to the modern ADHD / Twitter addict sensibilities. Young and sexy actors right off of underwear-model gigs, giga-hours of CGI render time, a soaring music score underpinned with rock-hiphop contemporary staples and lens flares for days.

Modern Trek takes the dramatic pacing of Breaking Bad, mixes two parts Calvin Klein commercial, two parts “pew pew pew pew space lasers!”, one part X-Games and one part canon-breaking technobabble to create the red bull commercial in space that is modern Star Trek.

I know that all sounds negative, so I should put my cards on the table here. I like the new cast and I like the sensational visuals and over-the-top sound design. I just sort of hate that Star Trek on the Big screen usually has: First Act: Long, lingering spaceship-Porn showing the ship docked at some amazing StarBase and Third Act: Same amazing space ship gets exploded or crashed into a planet in a narrative sacrifice. Seriously - Get a new story, already.

The Abrams era Star Trek films appear to have been successful at the Box Office despite some story stuff that does violence to Trek canon. In Abrams Trek, you can bring people back to life with a super blood transfusion; transwarp beaming can send an individual (or bombs) to seemingly anywhere. “Whatever”. Star Trek has always played fast and loose with the rules.

Star Trek Discovery

Star Trek Discovery centers around the hi jinx of Spock’s secret adopted sister. Discovery is a TOS era ship equipped with an experimental spore drive that allows the ship to transport itself through a cosmological mycelial network to nearly anywhere in the known Galaxy. “Black Alert!” Because: magic mushrooms and tardigrades. If it sounds stupid, well: that’s because it is.

That aside Star Trek Disco is sort of a mixed bag. Michael Burnham (Spock’s secret sister) has this space Jesus thing going that can be a bit much at times, despite the fact that I genuinely like the actress that plays Burnham: Sonequa Martin-Green. In fact, I like most of the casting on this show. Doug Jones plays a Starfleet officer named Suru and his physical performance goes a long way to make Saru believably alien, not just another dude with plastic crap glued to his face. Anthony Rapp plays the ships engineer (Staments) with a believable tinge of Aspergers. Wilson Cruz plays the ships’ doctor (Culber) and Stamet’s love interest. They have pretty great “opposites attract” chemistry and their relationship makes sense within the story.

Discovery Season 1 establishes Burnham’s character and explores the Federation-Klingon war.
Discovery Season 2 is a time-traveling / runaway AI story.
Discovery Season 3 is a dystopian future story.
Discovery Season 4 is the story of the future dystopia making a turn back towards core federation values.

Star Trek Picard

As a fan of STTNG, I looked forward to character study of Jean Luc Picard. Instead… we got something else.

Picard Season 1: The JL Apology tour
This season introduces the viewers to an even further aged-up Jean-Luc Picard. It introduces us to a new crew of younger characters. The casting on the new characters is good but there are some truly baffling writing choices in this show. One character: Raffi, lives in a trailer, smokes snake leaf and has a frustratingly over familiarity with Picard. She calls him ‘JL.’ One admiral that I’m going to call “admiral bitch face” just cussed Picard out when he comes to her with valid concerns. Picard spends the majority of the season just sort of meandering between plot contrivances. Patrick Stewart’s charisma still comes through at times but it mostly overshadowed by the dark and violent mood of this series. One side character gets his eyes forcibly removed, while he’s awake. Plenty of disintegrations, decapitations and death. One bright spot is seeing Jonathan Frakes and Steward together on screen. Riker is always a joy and has some great line delivery. I’d also love to build his pizza oven in my backyard. One day..

Picard Season 2: The Voyage (Sorta) Home
I came into the second season ready to overlook the numerous shortcoming of the first season. First seasons can often be shaky until a cast and crew finds their groove. Stewart has better energy and people spend less time bitching him out this season but the overall story still feels like something written as part of a middle-school writing contest for a free personal pan pizza. This season is a time travel plot that brings the characters to our near future, much like The Voyage Home. Also like The Voyage Home: Season 2 explores social commentary and contemporary issues such as the wild fires in the Western states, climate change in general, CBP abuses of illegal immigrants, poverty, healthcare & the pitfalls of late-stage capitalism. Unlike The Voyage Home, this season of Picard explores takes on these issues without any nuance, proposes no solutions and isn’t particularly fun. You never get “nuclear wessels” or “double-dumb-ass on you” moments that you got in The Voyage Home. You could watch the 1st, 2nd and final episode of Season 2 and not miss much. Worst of all, John Delancey never really shifts into the mischievous gear.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds

Star Trek Strange New Worlds is a refreshing entry to modern trek. The cast is great, the story is good, the enterprise looks amazing and the overall “feel” is Star Trek. It is a campy, optimistic romp through the stars and a true return to form for Star Trek.

Stranger Things Season 4

Stranger Things Season 4 dropped this weekend. It. IS. GREAT.

Mild spoilers in the form of context-less stills below. If you are severely spoiler averse, come back after you’ve seen Season 4a (up to Episode 7).

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(in portrait mode - that renders wrong but I’m not going to change the whole site template for one ascii gag)

I’ll be somewhat vague on details here so as not to spoil specific plot elements, though these stills may reveal story and character beats.

Bias up front: I was a kid in the 80’s, from Indiana. Stranger Things is high-grade, pure-cut nostalgia crack for someone like me.

Stranger Things Season 1 was an incredible achievement. In many ways it kicked off an entire genre of nostalgia-bait lookalike projects that often fell flat. In my opinion, Seasons 2 and 3 did a good job at character work, delivered some entertaining moments but lacked some of the thrill of the essential mystery of the first season. There is a formula to it and the formula gets to be pretty obvious.

That formula usually looks something like this:

Hey, Remember the 80s? -> Characters Pair off and Adventure -> Eleven screams and force-chokes a portal -> Roll Credits and Synth Track.

Despite my love for the material I have to admit I’ve been giving my Netflix subscription the stink-eye lately. The subscription cost keeps creeping up while the utility and entertainment we get from Netflix keeps falling. I often see Netflix properties as Great-Value Brand knock-offs of better shows. They’ve hooked me and cancelled several series without providing adequate closure. To the point that I’m often hesitant to engage with newly buzzing series; defense against future rug-pulls.

As of episode 7, Stranger Things Season 4 is an incredible outing for the series. If they stick the landing, it may be the best yet. Netflix spared no expense, spending an average of $30 million per episode and it shows. After watching the series, I’m going to cut that Netflix subscription some slack.

The show continues to do an incredible job of period-accurate set pieces and scenarios. Drawing inspiration from classic 80’s movie, television, music and culture. Not just in subject matter, either. The Duffers continue to nail the aesthetic.

I always appreciate a good period film (Chernobyl, for instance) and Stranger Things excels at this by leaning into period-accurate sets. The video rental store is a really nice touch.

Some of the techno-babble stretches credibility for 1986 tech. “IP-Geolocation” is mentioned. NSFNET was live in 1986 and used early TCP/IP implementation through fuzzball routing but there were only 6 nodes and (probably) no meaningful interconnect between NSFNET & ARPANET-MILNET. I mean, famously the ICBMs control silos still used 8” floppies in 2014. Hopefully that EM shielding on the silo control bunkers is top-notch.

(Pushes up my nerd glasses...) But, I digress…

The episodes are biggie-sized, coming in at an hour or more per episode. The pace feels right and the show never felt like it was running out the clock. It is refreshing to see a show take the time it needs. “Good, Fast or Cheap - Pick 2” We got great, long and expensive and I’m here for it.

Season 3 wrapped towards the end of the 2018 and Season 4 was protracted and delayed b/c of COVID-19 impacts on the industry. In terms of casting there have been valid concerns that the extra four years of real time would strain believability in such young characters. Through lighting, make-up, costume, practical effects and shot-framing the production crew did a great job of accounting for the actors ages. Millie Bobby Brown is a charming young lady these days but they make use of story-grounded reasons to dress her in ways that obscure her age. Through loose-fitting hand-me-downs or other scene-appropriate costuming, you forget that she’s 18 now. It doesn’t hurt that MBB is an incredible performer. At the extreme, Charlie Heaton is 28. Some of Heaton’s IRL pharmaceutical shenanigans have diminished his youthful appearance. The writers lean into that in a clever and fun way to even make Jonathan’s age believable. Joe Keery (Steve) is 30 but has a Toby Maguire thing working for him.

This season nods to classics like Nightmare on Elm Street, Carrie, Evil Dead, Amityville, Munsters, IT and much more. Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) even plays a Character named Victor Creel. Despite the influences, the story never feels like a cheap knock off. The writing on this show is expertly crafted and character moments are interwoven brilliantly. Be warned though, this season leans more into horror territory than the Goonies-esque adventure start of the franchise. If you get easily squicked out by body horror, you may not enjoy this ride. It never feels gratuitous, though - the point of the horror is to establish the stakes.

The light and sound design of this season are incredible. At times, the audio-video experience here is downright visceral and almost always in service to the story. Lighting is usually period-appropriate with incandescent warm glow. Computer monitors and TV’s usually have scan-lines. Though, I suspect they may actually be LCD/LED panels installed in old chassis with black borders and a filter to produce edge distortions. The sound design makes great use of ambient hums and electrical clicks to bring extra intensity and to highlight “power up” moments. They often lean into practical effects and the attention to detail is quite remarkable. There are some digital-de-aging shenanigans on display and they usually work quite well. Clever cuts between old-vs-young keep shots from lingering too long on de-aged subjects and do a good job of hiding the uncanny valley of video-game-like faces.

Shot-blocking and composition are particularly inventive this season. There are some outstanding scene transitions, also in service of the story and designed to clue to viewer into plot details. Thematically, there is a two-sides motif that is often aided by the rotational transitions between Hawkins and the Upside Down. Low camera angles can establish hero shots or be used to put the viewer into the perspective of a child and they use this brilliantly. They often lean into zoom shots instead of dolly works, the zoom-pulls and pushes being a staple of 80’s horror.

The soundtrack is very good - and you guessed it: also services the story. You’ll notice Kate Bush climbed the iTunes chart to Number 1 this week in part thanks to in-story use of one of her songs.

The show explores the 80’s Satanic Panic and Parental overreaction. It also explores Bullying and the “Other-ification” of people, conformity and demagoguery. These things could be mirror-allegories for modern times but the Duffers are here to entertain, not preach - and it all lands without being overbearing.

Honestly, after a month or so of force-feeding my eyeballs some truly laughable modern content: I found Stranger Things Season 4a to be a brilliant and refreshing departure. The writing is excellent, the old characters are even better and new characters really hit the spot. A new character, Eddie - immediately became one of my favorites. Argyle and his not-quite mystery-machine van are a nice addition, as well.

Much like the Purple Palm Tree Delight, Stranger Things Season 4 is a real treat.

Two great podcasts to check out:

As always, I’m a big fan of the guys over at Bald Move:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dungeons-and-demogorgons-a-stranger-things-podcast/id1296708934

The Streaming Things Podcast is also quite entertaining:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/streaming-things-a-stranger-things-podcast/id1291620241

The Expanse

I’m going to keep this mostly spoiler-free because you just need to experience this as it is meant to be experienced.

The Expanse on Amazon Prime Video
The Book Series

Primary Factions and Overview

Earth has a unified government, the United Nations. Earth is crowded and the majority of the citizenry are on a subsistence-level universal basic income with better opportunities being doled via a series of Lotteries and internships.

Mars, a former Earth colony, comprises of citizens organized around terraforming and spreading the Martian work ethic and ideal. Their culture is marshal and collectively focused. Martians, in this case, aren’t little green men, simply 3rd and 4th generation of humans that colonized Mars.

The Belt is comprised of humans that have grown up outside of a planetary gravity well. These humans subsist as miners and engineers and their cultural touchstones are forged through experiences surviving in the vacuum of space. They settle asteroids and low-gravity moon bases, their language is a polyglot creole english-mashup with numerous cultural influences. Their physiology, living in low-G environments tends to make them taller and less muscular than their inner-planet counterparts but they tend to be scrappy and cunning warriors nonetheless.

The Inner Planets: Earth’s space-navy is dated but large. Mars space-navy is modern but smaller.
The Outer Planets and Belt lack a formal navy.

Story Overview

The First 3 Seasons (and Books) introduces us to a future (around 2350) where mankind has begun to exploit our solar system for natural resources. This first portion of the story uses a number of potentially interconnected mysteries to introduce the factions and setup tensions between those factions.

The story establishes and follows the Crew of the Rocinante, a Corvette-Frigate-Gunship and her unlikely crew as they coalesce and they unravel a series of mysteries in a politically charged, cold-war scenario. In addition to the crew of the Roci we are introduced to a slew of well-written characters to follow the perspective of the superpowers, the downtrodden and shadowy power-players with opaque motives and interesting pathos.

The storytelling here is fantastic with a great balance of political intrigue buffeted by impressive character work. The writers handle multiple POV characters with confidence and the characters feel realistic, aided by dense dialog and smart interactions. New viewers might find the Belter language difficult at first but it gets easier as the actors find their voice and the Belter Creole is well-justified through the in-universe cultural mechanics of the story.

As the mysteries of the first three installments unfold, the middle portion of the story shifts focus to a interplanetary gold-rush of sorts and all of the interesting things that happen when evolved chimps are given an unexpected boost in technical capabilities.

The last portion of the story explores the culmination and resolutions of the tensions of established factions, emerging powers as demagog leaders co-opt exploited populaces in an all-too-familiar power gambit.

Space is Brutal

One thing that makes The Expanse stand out from other sci-fi offerings is that the story tries to stay grounded when possible in physics. This isn’t a pew-pew-pew space-wizards sort of show. Space wants to kill you.

Critical Analysis

I’ve read the series twice (once in print and once on Audible), including the available novellas with their in-universe character gardening. I’ve also watched the series twice. The series has a lot of the same first-season challenges as the actors learn to inhabit the characters but also does impressively subtle foreshadowing of future events.

The series was on Sci-Fi through Season 3 and was sold to Amazon starting on Season 4. There are some mild location / set continuity shortfalls in the Amazon produced episodes but that is largely a nitpick. Probably some of the shooting locations were not available post-sale or potentially the practical sets didn’t convey to the new production.

The show is dense and demands your attention, you will become lost quickly in a background-watch scenario. Blink and you may miss it.

The effects work is really good throughout the series, lending towards realism with a few exceptions. The cast and crew really work their asses off and their love and dedication to the work shines through.

Themes, Concluding Thoughts

It is rare to find a Sci-fi series that competently juggles heady themes and even more rare to find a series with complex politics and a webwork of characters that sticks the landing. The Expanse does both. The writing duo got their start through affiliation with George RR Martin but haven written 9 books and stewarded their show to a satisfying conclusion, I wish George would tap them to help finish TSoIaF / Game of Thrones.

The Expanse TV Series effectively stops at the conclusion of book 6. Books 7, 8 and 9 cover the state of affairs after a significant time jump (~30 years) after the events of book 6. That said, the TV Series does find a satisfying conclusion despite the material left for future storytelling.

The Expanse explores themes of found family, prejudice, humanism, exploitation, radicalization, colonialism, acceptance, human suffering and grace; just to name a few. The show does a fantastic job of showcasing a diverse talent pool in a believable way with in-universe rationale. It does all this without coming across as preachy, hostile, or forced. The writers shine a light on the human condition and if you are uncomfortable with this reflection, then perhaps that’s the first step towards a better tomorrow.

More important that someone else's life gets better than for you to feel good about yourself. You never know the effect you might have on someone, not really. Maybe one core thing you said haunts them forever. Maybe one moment of kindness gives them comfort or courage. Maybe you said the one thing they needed to hear. It doesn't matter if you ever know. You just have to try.

-Naomi Negata

Further Analysis & Commentary

One half of the “James SA Corey” writing duo: Ty Frank & Wes Chatham: the actor that plays Amos have a great podcast:
Ty and That Guy

The duo has good friend chemistry, they spend about half of most episodes covering background detail about the episodes and production and the other half exploring their mutual love of cinema or storytelling, like hilarious recollections of trying to buy recreational drugs while on vacation in Costa Rica.

I give The Expanse 5 out of 5 Quarters.