In my humble opinion Star Trek continues to become a better and better show as time goes on.  The chronological order quest continues for me, and I've now hit the point where TnG ends, DS9 gets good and Voyager begins.  Of the three, I'm actually becoming more and more inclined towards the adventures of Captain Kathryn Janeway and crew.  The pilot leaves a little something to be desired, but the shows infancy is entirely more satisfying than that of the two previous shows.  TnG had the best core cast, DS9 the most gravitas, but Voyager has a nice mix of the two and a brilliant concept that should get better as the central plots begin to emerge.  Both of the new shows have something that TnG didn't: a beautiful opening credit sequence with amazing music.  They're inviting, homey, regal, comfortable places to sit and rest a while.  I queue up an episode before bed even when I know I'm going to drift off immediately just to listen to the orchestra capture a little bit of the majesty of space.

Of the leads: Sisko matches well against Picard as a reserved, thoughtful, deeply scarred human being, and he has an amazing speaking voice that belays intelligence and wisdom.  Janeway, on the other hand, is more of a Kirk - aggressive and curious, principled and in charge.  Both are better characters than their counterparts and exude leadership and charisma in a way that is barely understandable - they're Captains, even the one that's a Commander.  I especially like that Janeway has an insane knack for engineering and constantly gets to step in and correct or fix problems aboard her own ship, never beholden to her chief engineer. They both seem well representative of properly constructed characters in the minorities of television and I wish there were more characters like them in modern shows.

That's it for now.

ME3 is getting pretty stellar reviews across the board, which is to be expected, not because it necessarily deserves them but because people who make high budget video games generally know how to appease the system assuming they don't make a massive screw-up. The game is gorgeous, it's well-paced and fun, the story is not nearly as atrocious as most things out there, especially for the first half - it's easy to give it good marks and even to recommend it. Still, there is a laundry list of things wrong with it and I can certainly name a few:

• Atrocious new character design. The New Illusive Man, EVA, James and Allers (ESPECIALLY those two), Javik, Kai Leng - all have hatable character models that are usually matched with hatable personalities.
• A limited character roster filled mostly with ME1 favorites means it's easy to get stuck with a squad you're not wild about.
• Much of the character development dialogue is one-shot, contains no camera work, and is easily skipped by accident.
• The Normandy is poorly constructed and has a tremendous amount of unused space over five floors, any one of which might contain new content but requires a loading screen and a hike to go check every time you complete a mission.
• The exact same goes for the Citadel.
• The lighting in the Normandy is bad and the new sound effect realism modifications make it hard to hear some dialogue.
• Filler material is bland and uninteresting, more so than any prior.
• Sidequest tracking is bad, some of the sidequests are easily broken.
• Resource gathering (Galactic Readiness) is a meaningless number, especially after you fill the green bar.
• Dream sequences are hackneyed, meaningless, and boring.
• Pacing is correct for a video game but inappropriate for the setting in which it is clearly established that the Reapers harvest no less than 1.6 million people per day - and that's just on your planet.
• Shorter than both previous titles despite advertisement to the contrary.
• Easier than both previous titles despite advertisement to the contrary (maybe that's just me).
• Multiplayer "Readiness Rating" decreases in real time, not game time. Multiplayer becomes a daily necessity for obsessive compulsives who don't have time to play the entire thing in one sitting.
• Galaxy map division and percentages are meaningless.
• No final boss.
• Lots of bad dialogue.
• Glitches.
• Origin must be installed on your computer. For me this meant loading ME3 through Origin through Steam, because fuck you I like Steam.
• Infiltrators designed to outsurvive better players and turn multiplayer matches into long, unpleasant experiences that no one is willing to leave. Vanguards have common glitch that immobilizes them and does the same thing.
• Your Shepards face doesn't load across all three games.
• The new Femshep, who has as hatable a face as any of the new characters, constantly loads her face on to your Shepards face at regular intervals.
• Maleshep still the worlds worst voice actor.
• Many bad DLC characters show up again. Many regular characters expected to show up again do not.
• In the best possible run, all of my favorite characters die.
• A mission that only ends when you run out of ammo, and thus never ends if you're playing a competent biotic.
• Blatant thematic copying from other source material without effectively transcribing the emotional value of the material copied. (notable: Winter on Mars, the Miranda Complex from Firefly, all of the terrible games where you chase mystery children through forests in slow motion, and firmly sticking to the flawed proposition that Shepard=some sort of mass-murdering Jesus )
• The ending. That one gets a post all to itself.

Despite all of this Mass Effect 3 is an incredibly fun experience. For all the story inadequacies the gameplay is just short of perfect, so much so that I eventually found myself enjoying the co-op horde mode more than I enjoyed the single-player, which I had to force myself through. It's empty fare where it should be rich, but it's so goddamn delicious it's kinda hard to care.

Star Trek: The Trekkening

he mad quest continues. To date, the rabbit hole goes as deep as season one of The Next Generation, which is quite a ways from where we left off. I've seen six movies, two of which were bizarrely off-kilter and kind of charming because of it. I've been through all of third season of the original, most of which is unequivocally bad, but with a few solid gems. Probably the most singularly memorable episode featured a mad prison gambit by a former Starfleet officer who, in addition to being a cooler version of Kirk in the past, was a cooler version of Kirk in the present. Probably the most terrible episode featured Abraham Lincoln wrestling a Klingon. All in all, there are good times to be had.

TnG hasn't grown the beard yet, so what I'm getting is supposed to be a mixed bag. Nonetheless, I was startled by the episode "Coming of Age", which a) features Wesley Crusher in a completely not-hatable plotline of his own, and b) features Captain Picard at his finest. The episode hints at a grand plot of conspiracy at Starfleet, which is so much cooler than any external crisis threatening humanity. Real characters here. Real intrigue. God do I hope they run with it.

Currently TnG's only running web of recurrence is Q - who is interesting only in that he's the most charming form of god-creature to grace the set - so it's nice to have this floating on the horizon. Also, Picard dons a Starfleet topcoat-thing in this episode, and it's a hundred times cooler than any other costume the military has yet designed. Represent!

I, Mudd

When this is done I hope to have a list of essential Star Trek episodes, in addition to good ones. I am kind of surprised to find "I, Mudd" makes the list on both counts. Harcourt Fenton Mudd, the recurring character in this episode, had little appeal in his previous episode apart from his awesome name, and I very nearly skipped this episode when I saw he'd be making a second appearance.

However, this episode is deliberately light, and unlike previous attempts, it actually succeeds at being funny. Young Shatner, whose acting I believed to be pretty much beyond repair at this time, actually nails comic timing. Pretty much the entire cast gets a line or two of character development and a moment of crowning glory.

And then they all go insane. Literally every character of importance on the Enterprise, of their own free will, acts like a ninny for a full twenty minutes for LEGITIMATE STORY PURPOSES. It's glorious.

They do, however, abandon Harry Mudd on a planet to fend for himself at the end, similar to the events in Space Seed. So where's Star Trek XII: The Wrath of Mudd?

Amok Time!

Oh god oh god this is the greatest thing.

"Amok Time" is the first episode of second season, and is called that not because time has run amok (a common occurence) but because it is the time to BE amok. By which we mean sex. All of the sex.

Since it's the first episode of second season, this means that it introduces Chekhov. The first words out of his mouth are "setting course for Wulcan".

The plot is that Spock is horny. Spock is horny and needs to sex. There are some things, as he tells Kirk, that transcend the line of duty.

The episode breaks down into three parts:

1. Why is Spock so insane right now? (oh, he needs to be sexed)
2. Can we keep a straight face while we get him to Vulcan to be sexed?
3. HILARIOUS INTERCULTURAL MISHAPS.

Part 3 consists of a fight to the death between Kirk and Spock in which Spocks opening move is to gash Kirks chest open like it is filled with delicious candy. Mind you, there isn't a problem in Star Trek that isn't solved by A) deus ex machina or B) Kirk getting into a fight and tearing his shirt, so this one seems resolved already.

Spock is so consumed by the "blood fever" (not enough air quotation marks in the world) that he kills Kirk without batting an eye, a fact that doesn't seem to damage their friendship in the slightest. In fact, this magically removes all of his reproductive urges, which has led wikipedians theorize is because the ritual itself is enough - but those of us who know our quadrants know better.

And then it all turns out all right, by means which I cannot explain without invoking the word "Auspistice" and making several penis jokes. YOU ARE SPARED. LIVE LONG AND PROSPER.

And now, the 60's.

Starting to skip forward a bit on Star Trek. Too much of a time investment for too little gain - the original series is really just mostly bad.

"The Space Seed" introduces Khan for the first time, and while Khan is a charming type of sociopath, that's actually the worrying part of it. Khan comes from the 1990's, when we apparently invented prolonged space travel and cryogenics (agh), and also when a eugenics program created a bunch of perfect men and women who managed to take over most of the world (aaaagh). Khan's one of these, and this makes him an incomparable badass whom the ladies on the ship are instantly infatuated with (aaaaaaaaagh).

He takes a mildly obsessed officer and converts her into a dedicated servant with ridiculous speed - pretty much the most uncomfortable portrayal of gender roles in the 60's possible. It would be enough to make me throw up my hands and move to Next-Gen were it not for the continued presence of Lt. Uhura, who fortunately continues to have a spine and a brain, both in excellent repair.

The final decision of Captain Kirk after the conflict is over is interesting, and pretty morally ambiguous. The more episodes there are like this - where the choices Kirk makes aren't necessarily the right ones, and his morality gets tested without being proven right by divine providence - they're the interesting ones of the batch. Still, I don't much like Khan's existence, as it assumes a lot of stupid things about the nature of the world that shouldn't be assumed, based on bigotry, sexism and general ignorance. I hear "The Wrath of Khan" is quite good though? Hmm.

While Star Trek is still just a constant string of god-creatures who can't be fought by any rational means, the classy aliens are starting to show up at last. "Balance of Terror" introduces the Romulans and makes a good showing of portraying them as a flawed race with some great people in it. "Errand of Mercy" introduces the Klingons and isn't nearly as nice about it, but still shows a little spark of shared character between Kirk and the enemy general. And then they both get fucked by ANOTHER race of god-creatures who can do whatever they want with reality and choose to waste it pissing about with the mortals and both creating and solving all their problems for them. There have been at least ten in one season. Q seems less and less appealing when you consider all of his predecessors.

Time travel is still pretty popular too, and already overplayed, but "City on the Edge of Tomorrow" is still pretty great. Still, there was this unfortunate sequence. Ah, the 60's.

A little more Star Trek has been watched in the last month. The show's got ups and downs but is a lot more respectable than it looks at first. Still I'd agree based on just the few episodes I've seen that Next Generation does the same thing a lot better.

Still, certainly some stuff of merit here.

"Miri" is bad on a couple of different levels, which is a pity because it actually has a number of qualities that would make it a very good episode. The plotline involves the ship finding an exact copy of earth in the 60's-70's, except with an alternate history that makes it post-apocalyptic. This is a really resonant idea and was probably even more so back IN the 60's-70's, but the episode immediately catches a separate plot and then fails to resolve why an alternate earth is floating out in the middle of space. That's, you know, kind of a big deal. That kind of shit rearranges your entire theology.

The other plot is pretty solid but somewhat marred by a pack of feral children who have enacted an entirely dim new society. One of the kids looks a lot like John C Reilly but isn't, and none of the kids can act. Which is really par for the course for child actors, especially when their writing sucks. Still, cool things happen here.

"The Menagerie" is a two-parter, which takes the very interesting concept of Spock hijacking the Enterprise to help a former space captain and mixes it with the extremely dull footage of the pilot episode. I mostly skipped through this, as it's literally that entire episode with mild interjections from the real world and a barely modified ending. The actual interesting bits end with a combination of "it was all a dream" and deliberate ignorance of plot.

"The Conscience of the King" pulls off a neatly complicated plot with a few good turns, and it's the first episode that really kind of hurts emotionally. It feels like an episode where Captain Kirk loses, and those are pretty important to have. He's human in this episode. And this episode is about humans. And that's really why it shines.

It takes until episode 15 or so for Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood to stop being an exceptional recap of the original. This is not terrible, because in the 14 episodes preceding it covers about 30 episodes worth of content. That's a decently fun way to rewatch the series.

The point where the plot starts to twist is also the point where the show suddenly decides to reveal its incredibly ridiculous geography - sort of Wheel of Time meets Europa meets a toddler with a crayon. The show takes place in a pentagonal Germany analogue divided into pretty sectors, bordered by a huge eastern desert that keeps the China analogue with its ninjas and special eastern alchemists at bay. The Russia analogue is to the northeast, and the two other countries bordering are unnamed but I would guess to be British and French. So you've got this very strange WWII vibe going on, with a holocaust having already occurred, and then a militaristic nation led by a Fuhrer-King who's charismatic and pleasant and infinitely terrifying. The implications are a bit vague to me.

In this series you have all seven homunculi, and while none of them have that lovely human backstory they all have a lot of character - the ones that aren't completely mindless psychopaths, that is. The rest all have brilliant personalities, and the whole lot of them are engaged in a conspiracy of pants-wetting grandeur, the kind where the extermination of an entire race is listed as Step 6, Subcolumn C and everything just sort of gets worse from there.

The basic themes of FMA are still there, the execution wholly different. The show is still about human struggle, about seeking truth and the problems of finding it, the horrors of war and how totally sweet-ass personifications of seven deadly sins can be. Also, if you have a taste for magic with weird rules and interesting derivations - which I do - this is pretty much the show for you.

I'm hoping it all comes together - FMA's first ending was messy, but powerful, and if Brotherhoods ends up being the opposite I'll be exceptionally disappointed.

Suddenly, this.

http://video.adultswim.com/fullmetal-alchemist-brotherhood/death-of-the-silver-alchemist.html

That is all.

Sherlock is stunning as always. Second season's first episode picked the best possible story and ran with it, managing to incorporate all the major characters in the process. And it did something else, too, something I didn't quite appreciate as much as I wanted to but which very much made Moffat's Holmes the best of them. Moving on.

Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood is... a little weird.

It's an anime based off a manga, the second one of its kind, only this one was made after the manga finished and therefore it can follow it perfectly because that's what you want to do with film adaptations. Of course, the early episodes are still perfectly in line with the early episodes of the first series because those were perfectly in line with the manga - but knowing this, they don't take their time, rushing to get as much information out as possible so that they can (assumably) get to the meaty bits.

Huh.

This irks me a bit. For one thing, I have the DVD's of Full Metal Alchemist. It's the only anime series I own, and I knew I'd want to watch it again someday. I remember the little private moment of catharsis I had, a somewhat life-changing realization mostly unrelated to the show itself, but which I tend to only get after chewing on something of its caliber for a suitably long period of time. That show means something to me. But I'm somewhat incapable of starting it over when there is a remixed version that I haven't seen - that kind of stodgy tenacity to nostalgia is to say that something told well could never be told better, and that is not how stories work. Our words and pictures have never been immortal - the best a writer can hope for is to be a part of that grand, ever-expanding eidolon of knowledge and imagination. I can't disrespect a second draft by saying the first was 'gud nuff. But I also can't watch it without drawing comparisons.

And in comparison, it's kind of not as good. The storytelling is hasty and haphazard, well aware that we've seen everything before but still willing to intersperse as many short jokes as possible. Characters go chibi at weirdly dramatic moments. The animation is cleaner but not as atmospheric. The voice actors are the same but a little worse. Scenes don't have the same emotional weight, villains are less frightening, narration is constant and overbearing. I'm not sure if the feeling I'm getting here is "please bear with us while we get to the point where we can tell the story the way we want to" or "oh gosh, isn't money delicious?"

I still have high hopes. All the characters are there, all the little defining moments. There's just enough new with the old that I'm interested in seeing where it goes. And it's REALLY QUITE FRUSTRATING THAT I CARE.

At least there will be more Scieszka. Swoon. <3.