Star Trek: Warlord

Episode: "Warlord"

Series: Star Trek: Voyager

Season 3, Episode 10

Original Air Date: November 20, 1996

via Memory Alpha

Our heroes rescue three injured beings from a ship moments before it explodes.  They seem grateful - at first.  One of them is possessed by a malevolent entity who takes mental possession of Kes just before his current host dies.  Possessed Kes and her two new friends steal a shuttle and return to their own world, intent on overthrowing its current ruler.

"Warlord" is a good Kes episode.  Jennifer Lien gets to show off some range as Tieran, the entity possessing her, is quite ruthless in pursuing his ambitions.  We nearly get an on-screen same-sex kiss between Kes and Nori, Tieran's wife, before they're rudely interrupted.  More importantly to the long term, Kes breaks up with Neelix.  At first, it seems like she's only doing it because she's possessed.  That would definitely have been disappointing as Neelix is undeniably a controlling, possessive boyfriend and Kes's desire for breathing room is completely understandable.  But, in fact, this is it.  They never will get back together after this episode.

Unfortunately, we're running out of time with Kes.  Jennifer Lien left the show near the beginning of Season 4.  I'll discuss the particulars when we get to that point.  But having the benefit of knowing what's coming, I'm inclined to appreciate the character all the more while we still have her.  With "Warlord," we see Kes finally coming into her own.  She can be more than Neelix's adoring girlfriend or The Doctor's eager assistant or everyone's empathetic pal.  Just as she's finally being given room to grow, we must prepare to say goodbye.

Acting Notes

via Wikipedia

Leigh J. McCloskey (Tieran) was born in Los Angeles, June 21, 1955.  "Warlord" is his first of two Trek appearances.

McCloskey is unusual for the people I have featured in this space in that he is likely more accomplished as a visual artist than as an actor.  His ongoing work The Heiroglyph of the Human Soul is a hand-painted library installation in his own home.

That said, the screen resume is nothing to sneeze at.  He found particular success in soap operas: 248 appearances on Santa Barbara, 46 on Dallas and 32 on The Young and the Restless.  Films include Inferno and Just One of the Guys.

Squid Flicks: A Master Builder

Title: A Master Builder

Director: Jonathan Demme

Original Release Date: November 11, 2013

My Overall Rating: 3 stars out of 5

via Wikipedia

Halvard Solness, an accomplished architect, is dying.  His doctor pays a visit, as do his former rival, that rival's son/Halvard's assistant and the assistant's fiancée/Halvard's bookkeeper and mistress.  Follow all that?  It's not even the most twisted part of the story.  Halvard is also visited by a young woman, Hilde, who remembers Halvard from her childhood.  Though she's not seen Halvard in 10 years, she's clearly in love with him.  The screenplay is Wallace Shawn's adaptation of Ibsen's play The Master Builder.

Halvard (Shawn) is a terrible person.  His wife Aline is fully aware of his philandering as he makes minimal effort to conceal it.  He destroyed his rival professionally and is deliberately holding his own protégé back.  The fact that he once made advances on 12-year-old Hilde would be disgusting in any context.  All that aside...

It's an absorbing story even with a thoroughly detestable protagonist and the fact there's very little action.  The entire film is shot in the one house - maybe three rooms? - which helps support the stage-play-on-screen feel.  The acting is strong.  Shawn is always good.  Julie Hagerty hits all the right buttons as Aline and Andre Gregory plays the former rival, Knut, in a My Dinner with Andre reunion.  Honestly, it feels a bit like the earlier film - more characters but nonetheless a complete narrative told in conversation.

Lisa Joyce steals the show as Hilde - a bright ray of sunshine, yet clearly on the edge of madness.  She more than holds her own in her scenes with both Shawn and Hagerty.  

Overall, it's okay.  The basic elements are strong and I certainly admire the simplicity.  But I don't see myself ever watching it again.

Star Trek: Things Past

Episode: "Things Past"

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Season 5, Episode 8

Original Air Date: November 18, 1996

via Memory Alpha

Garak episode!

It's also a Terok Nor episode.  Sisko, Odo, Dax and Garak pass out on a runabout, then wake up on the station seven years before when it was still under Cardassian control.  They are not themselves.  They are Bajorans whom Odo remembers had been accused of and executed for an assassination attempt on Gul Dukat.  Our heroes quickly set about figuring out how to escape their fate.  Meanwhile, Odo is falling apart.

The technobabble explanation for how they all ended up in the situation is completely ludicrous, detracting from what is otherwise a meaningful story.  The writers didn't want to do time travel or a flashback.  Instead they concocted a convoluted "everyone is living Odo's dream" scenario.  I fail to see how that's better.

Honestly, I wouldn't normally be up for a flashback either - typically the sort of choice that indicates a show's writers are running out of ideas.  I'll forgive it in DS9's case because the Terok Nor history is particularly interesting - and pertinent to the series's present.  In this instance, Odo is working through guilt over his own role in the assassination investigation.  "Things Past" is not as strong as Season 2's "Necessary Evil," my choice as DS9's first truly great episode.  But I'll still take Terok Nor over the Mirror Universe anytime.

At story's end, there's a confrontation between Odo and Kira over the newly revealed truth, an exact swapping of roles from their confrontation at the end of "Necessary Evil."  They're even now.  For each, there is something the other did in the deep dark past that will be difficult to forgive.  The Odo-Kira relationship is only going to get more complicated moving forward.  Will they be able to trust one another?

Acting Notes

via Regular Show Wiki

Kurtwood Smith played Thrax, Odo's Cardassian predecessor as head of security on Terok Nor.  Smith was born in New Lisbon, Wisconsin, July 3, 1943.  He has a BS from San Jose State and an MFA from Stanford.

Smith's stage and screen resume is extensive, one of the most recognizable character actors of the 1980s and '90s.  I remember him most for two very different father roles: Tom Perry, Neil's father in Dead Poets Society, and Red Foreman, Eric's dad in That '70s Show.  He's a hardass in both, though it plays out differently in drama and comedy.  Other films include RoboCop, Rambo III and A Time to Kill.  On television, he had principal roles on The Ranch and That '90s Show, reprising his role as Red Foreman for the latter.  He made guest appearances on Lou Grant, The X-Files and 24.  "Things Past" was his first of two Trek appearances.

Off My Duff: Winter 2026

In my last fitness report in September, I noted that winter was a challenging time for maintaining goals and so it has been this year.  It's colder.  It's darker.  Hibernation instincts are hard to fight.  Even recess duty doesn't help as much as in fall or spring because we're more likely to be inside due to cold and ice.

So, my initial idea to increase my step goal didn't help.  If the goal is harder to reach, I'm more inclined not to try.  That's the trouble for me (and I imagine for others) with exercise.  It's too easy to come up with an excuse not to do it.  Attainable goals matter.  Without them, I just won't bother.

In early January, I think, I set my step goal back to AmazFit's factory setting: 8,000.  Since then, I've hit the goal far more often than not, including every day this past week.  The hardest days are travel days with long stretches in car or plane with virtually no steps at all.  

The step goal is enough for now.  Admittedly, it's not as good for exertion but at this point, I think those targets will need to wait for summer.  Establish the vigor habits then with an eye towards how to keep them up in the fall.

Meanwhile, my present aim: hit the step goal for 365 consecutive days.  I'm currently at 7.  It can and shall be done!  The key is doing it on the days when I really don't feel like it.

Star Trek: Future's End, Part II

Episode: "Future's End, Part II"

Series: Star Trek: Voyager

Season 3, Episode 9

Original Air Date: November 13, 1996

via Memory Alpha

The story begun in the last episode concludes.  Janeway and company must stop evil tech baron Henry Starling (Ed Begley, Jr.) from going to the 29th century in his timeship to steal more future tech to adapt and sell in his own time.  They must do so without corrupting the timeline and also preventing whatever future disaster Voyager was involved in to set all of this in motion in the first place.  

Confused?  Yeah well, the details are more complicated than the basic idea: cat and mouse game between the Voyager crew and Starling with Rain Robinson (Sarah Silverman) caught in between.  Who?  Rain Robinson is the scientist who first detected Voyager.  Tom Paris and Tuvok have befriended her.  Unfortunately, Starling fears she knows too much and wants to kill her.  

Long story short: all works out, good guys win.  Tom gets to kiss the girl.  Voyager gets sent back to its own timeline - and back to the Delta Quadrant.

One important long-term development: Starling created a mobile emitter for the Doctor which allows the EMH an existence outside of sickbay.  

Acting Notes

via Wikipedia

Thirty years later, Sarah Silverman is a big star, a genuine A-list stand-up comic with a broad and lasting screen career to boot.  In fact, I think it's fair to say that she's had a more successful career since "Future's End" than any of the other actors involved - possibly excepting Begley.  Though I bet Silverman would win a name recognition poll.  In 1996, she was just getting started.

Silverman was born in Concord, New Hampshire, December 1, 1970.  She attended NYU for one year before dropping out to pursue a stand-up career in Greenwich Village.  She got the big break in 1993 when she was hired by Saturday Night Live as a writer and performer.  Unfortunately, it didn't work out.  She was fired after one season.  It set her back emotionally for about a year.  She's been on a pretty good roll ever since.

Her own series, The Sarah Silverman Program, ran for three seasons on Comedy Central.  She's had numerous appearances on high profile shows, including Seinfeld, Monk and Frasier.  She was guest host of The Daily Show for a week in 2023.  She's had two televised stand-up specials.  Films include There's Something About Mary, School of Rock and The Muppets.  Then there's the voice acting career: The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, Wreck-It Ralph and Ralph Breaks the Internet among others.  She adapted her autobiography, The Bedwetter, into an off-Broadway musical.  She's had eight Emmy nominations, winning twice, and four Grammy nominations.

Seriously, she's everywhere - for over 30 years.

On the Road: Black Belt Eagle Scout

Our latest trip to North Adams, Massachusetts was inspired by a concert at Mass MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art).  Black Belt Eagle Scout's real name is Katherine Paul.  She's a Swinomish/Inupiaq singer-songwriter whose indie rock sound is heavily influenced by Native American folk music.  For her current tour, she has teamed up with Mato Wayuhi, an Oglala Lakota hip-hop soul performer from South Dakota, and Ailani, a singer-songwriter in her own right from New Mexico who also serves as KP's lead guitarist.  I enjoyed all three performers, especially the hip-hop elements Mayuhi brought to the ensemble.  The full band was the highlight.  The drummer was particularly strong.  

Black Belt Eagle Scout's "Indians Never Die":

Mato Wayuhi's "KETCHUP POTATO CHIPS":

Star Trek: Let He Who Is Without Sin

Episode: "Let He Who Is Without Sin"

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Season 5, Episode 7

Original Air Date: November 11, 1996

via Explaining Errors in Star Trek Wiki

Dax, Worf, Leeta, Bashir and Quark are off to Risa for a vacation.  Actually, it was supposed to be a romantic getaway for the newly involved Dax and Worf but the others tagged along for their own reasons.  Worf gets distracted by a radical fundamentalist group who take exception to Risa's decadence.  It seems he'd rather spend his time with them than with Dax.  

Dax.  Terry Ferrell.  One of the most statuesque women on 1990s television.  Oh, and she's smart and witty, too.  And she's in love with you.  Seriously?  You'd rather hang with the political wackos?

So I've finally come to a DS9 episode I don't like very much.  It's too bad because the idea had potential.  The writers wanted a show about sex but then the network made them tone it down.  Even so, there was plenty of space for something meaningful here.  Worf and Dax have different expectations of each other and of their new relationship.  That's a real world problem.  Frankly, a lot of couples don't survive it or they're miserable for years or both.  Without question, it's an issue worthy of narrative attention.  

But the writers couldn't make the pivot once they couldn't have the full-on sleaze fest they wanted.  My guess is they all had plenty of experience with lusting after scantily clad women but not so much successfully working through difficult relationship issues.  Yup, I'm being judgmental and catty.  So be it.  And Worf's childhood trauma tale about a soccer game to explain it all away?  What a load of garbage!

And the Leeta-Bashir story is downright vomit-inducing.  They're that cute college couple who can't keep their hands off each other and desperately need the rest of the world to know it.  There is one good long-term benefit from that thread: Leeta proclaims her love for Rom.  The Rom story just keeps getting better.

Mind you, I'm not exactly complaining about the beautiful women.  Beyond Farrell and Chase Masterson (Leeta), the screen is graced by Zora DeHorter and Blair Volk (Quark's Risian companions) and former Miss America, Vanessa Williams.

The episode title comes from the Book of John, chapter 8, verse 7: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Acting Notes

via Wikipedia

Williams played the role of Arandis, a former lover of Curzon Dax and the current chief facilitator of the Temtibi Lagoon on Risa.  Williams was born in The Bronx, March 18, 1963.  She went to Syracuse for college.

Vanessa Williams rose to fame when she was crowned Miss America 1984, the first African-American to win the competition.  Sadly, she had to resign when Penthouse published unauthorized nudes.  Let's be clear: other people took advantage of her fame and she suffered the consequences.  In 2016, Williams received a public apology for the scandal at that year's Miss America pageant.

Back in the '80s, Williams certainly made the best of the situation, turning to the music and acting industries, finding great success in both.  Overall, she has released nine studio albums, one live album and four compilations.  She's had four top ten singles including a #1: "Save the Best for Last."  Her Broadway acting credits include Kiss of the Spider Woman, Into the Woods and The Trip to Bountiful.  Television work includes principal roles on both Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives.  Films include Soul Food, My Brother and Eraser.  Awards include seven NAACP Image Awards, four Satellite Awards, 11 Grammy nominations, 3 Emmy nominations and a Tony nomination.

As if that weren't enough, she has also published two books: You Have No Idea, a memoir co-authored with her mother, Helen Williams, and a children's book entitled Bubble Kisses.