Science Fiction – Page 83 – RazorFine Review

Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Matter of Perspective

Alan Rapp / May 19, 2020 / Television Reviews

Title: Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Matter of Perspective
wiki: link

“It is the truth… as you each remember it.”

Throwback Tuesday takes us back to the final frontier where no one has gone before. “A Matter of Perspective” opens with the destruction of a space station the Enterprise was sent to inspect just as Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) is beaming back to the ship. Riker’s tumultous relationship with the scientist (Mark Margolis) killed in the explosion, and suggestions of the First Officer’s inappropriate behavior towards Apgar’s wife (Gina Hecht), make him the prime suspect in the explosion. Under local law, Riker is presumed guilty and must prove his innocence or Picard (Patrick Stewart) will be forced to turn his First Officer over to the authorities.

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Doctor Aphra #1

Alan Rapp / May 18, 2020 / Comics

Title: Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #1
Comic Vine: link
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Marika Cresta

Set after the events of The Empire Strikes Back, evil archaeologist Chelli Lona Aphra earns a new series opening with her plundering the recently-evacuated Rebel base on Hoth, and running into a bit of Imperial trouble, before accepting a job from Shadow University student Detta Yao. Yao is on the hunt for the mythical Rings of Vaale (which, it turns out, may be real, very valuable, and very dangerous).

The new series’ initial issue is a good mix of action and story with several characters to introduce including Aphra and her team of Just Lucky and Black Krrsantan, Yao, and an old acquaintance of Aphra in archaeologist Eustacia Okka, along with introducing the Rings and the team’s chief rival in their search for them in Ronen Tagge and the Tagge family.

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Star Trek: Discovery – Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

Alan Rapp / May 6, 2020 / Television Reviews

Title: Star Trek: Discovery – Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
wiki: link

“Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” offers a time loop episode featuring the return of Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd. Through the use of an injured, and endangered, space creature and a time crystal, Mudd is able to sneak on-board Discovery and keep resetting time as he searches for the secrets of the ship which he plans to sell to the Klingons. He also spends quite a bit of time killing Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) over and over as revenge for the captain living Mudd in a Klingon prison. While not as clever as something like “Cause and Effect,” and problematic for glossing over how Mudd acquired (and could figure out how to use) such technology, the episode does have its moments including the use of a Trojan Horse and making use of Stamets‘ (Anthony Rapp) altered physiology to explain why he alone remembers the various loops.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation – Cause and Effect

Alan Rapp / May 5, 2020 / Television Reviews

Title: Star Trek: The Next Generation – Cause and Effect
wiki: link

Throwback Tuesday takes us back to the final frontier where no one has gone before. Time loops are a common plot device used in science fiction. One of the most famous uses on television came in Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Fifth Season episode entitled “Cause and Effect.” Opening with the destruction of the Enterprise, the episode takes us through the same couple of days over and over again, always ending with the Enterprise encountering a distortion in the spacetime continuum and colliding with another starship. Each time, the resulting explosion destroys both ships and returns the crew back in time to the beginning of the loop only vaguely aware of a sense of deja vu.

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Star Trek: Picard – The End Is the Beginning

Alan Rapp / May 5, 2020 / Television Reviews

Title: Star Trek: Picard – The End Is the Beginning
wiki: link

After being denied assistance by Starfleet Command, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) turns his attention to an old friend with plenty of resentment towards Romulands and Picard (whose exit from Starfleet led to the swift end of her career as well). Three episodes in, the show is still dragging its feet and struggling to get Picard into space. It will be another episode before the crew is complete, and two more before the story presented in the first episode actually begins to come together. (So it’s not really the end of the beginning just yet.) As a conspiracy nut who has seen better days, Raffi (Michelle Hurd) shows how far Picard has to go in order to find assistance outside of Starfleet. Hurd is fine here, although the show will continue to struggle with well Raffi holds it together and the level of her skill-set over nearly every episode in which she appears. Flashbacks between the pair help further explain Picard’s exit from Starfleet in a rather uncharacteristically moment of naivete.

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