Remembering Weird Dreams on the Atari ST

For four or five years during the late 80s and early 90s, my computer of choice was the Atari 520 ST. Weird Dreams was among the most memorable and imaginative games I played on that machine. During my original playthrough, I never made it further than the desert statues. I dreaded the giant wasp, but I loved the game's creepy, surreal landscapes and its excellent (for the time) music.

And now, thanks to the wonder of YouTube, I now know how the game ends! To think I only needed to endure a few more dreams to finish...

baremetalHW: Restoring Hot Wheels Toys on YouTube

This fellow restores and modifies old Hot Wheels toy cars and shares his knowledge through very understated but well-composed instructional videos. I don't collect Hot Wheels today, but when I was between the ages of about 3 and 7 I adored them. Watching these short vignettes brings back fond memories and allows me to marvel at the incredible talent and creativity that exists all around us. 

At Peace with "The War Without, the War Within"

SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY'S

"THE WAR WITHOUT, THE WAR WITHIN"

As we close in on the season finale of Star Trek: Discovery, my impression of the show is as confused and muddled as the show itself can be: I'm impressed by its moments of greatness, but in equal measure I'm frustrated by its storytelling flaws. "The War Without, the War Within" reflects this ambiguity.

The basic structure of this episode is simple: Admiral Cornwell arrives to bring the Discovery up to date on the war (the Federation is losing, badly), and the crew comes up with a harebrained plan to turn the tide; meanwhile, Ash Tyler/Voq struggles with questions of identity and forgiveness.

The Ash Tyler/Voq question has been the show's greatest puzzle. By this point, I think it's become clear that the showrunners either haven't really considered the larger philosophical questions surrounding this character's journey (or is it two characters?), or they have, but they've presented it in such a way as send a message that's the opposite of the one they intended.

The dialogue in this episode and others seems to establish that what we have here is Voq's surgically altered body, which until recently also contained Voq himself (that is, his personality/memories/soul/katra/essence) with an overlay of Ash Tyler's memory/personality/soul/katra/essence. Since L'Rell "killed" the Voq aspect of this being's tortured psyche, we are left with, presumably, Ash Tyler, who now has all of Voq's memories.

Presumably, Ash Tyler's body is dead. Maybe some of it was even used to build Voq's human body. Or maybe Ash Tyler is still a prisoner of the Klingons, and they only transferred a copy of his personality to Voq. So maybe there are two Ash Tylers, one with an original human body, one in a surgically altered Klingon body. Or, if you take a different philosophical view, maybe there's a "real" Ash Tyler, and the one we know is really Voq, but Voq "brainwashed" to believe he's a human. It really depends on the sophistication of the medical technology involved; are people the future sophisticated enough to transport and capture souls, body-swapping them as necessary? I suppose there's precedent for it in Star Trek--witness episodes like "Return to Tomorrow," for example, in which non-corporeal beings possess Enterprise crewmembers. And in a way, it's much like the age-old transporter problem: do you die when you're transported, only to be replaced with a perfect copy at the end of the process?

Whatever Tyler's "true" nature--if that can ever really be established--we're clearly meant to empathize with him here, tortured as he is by Voq's actions. I thought the writers handled his situation  in this episode reasonably well, given the circumstances, if you accept their premise that this really is Tyler. Tyler bumps into Paul Stamets in the hallway, and Anthony Rapp delivers an incredible performance in just a few seconds; he looks like he wants to tear Tyler apart for the murder of his partner, and it's all in his murderous eyes. But he walks away, of course, because this is still Star Trek, a point driven home even harder when, after an awkward moment in the mess hall, a number of crew members join his table in an effort to start the process of forgiveness and healing. It's a reminder that this is still a utopian vision, an imagined future in which people try to do a better job of being nice to each other. On the flip side, Michael Burnham is not so forgiving of her former lover; Tyler begs her for forgiveness and understanding, but Burnham, clearly struggling, recoils; he tried to murder her, and she's having a hard time forgetting that. This interaction felt very genuine, and encapsulated how the showrunners are trying to balance classic Trek ideals with modern television storytelling techniques. They don't always strike the right balance, but I think it works here.

I also enjoyed Admiral Cornwell's reaction to learning that her Gabriel Lorca died (presumably) months ago, and that for several months she's been interacting with (and even sleeping with) an evil duplicate. In one amusing moment, she vaporizes Mirror-Lorca's trademark dish of fortune cookies: "Bastard!" She also classifies all knowledge of the Mirror Universe, which explains why, in "Mirror, Mirror," Kirk and company are so surprised to wind up there.

The rest of the episode is pretty much a setup for tonight's big finale. There's a nice sequence of the Discovery engaging in a bit of terraforming to grow some more mushrooms to replenish the ship's spore drive, and Admiral Cornwell and Mirror Georgiou hatch a (possibly genocidal?) plan to turn the tide of the war. Cornwell even puts the Emperor in nominal charge of Discovery--posing, of course, as the real Georgiou, who she claims actually survived the battle of the binary stars. Only a few of the crew know differently, and presumably they're all just waiting for Georgiou to stab them all in the back, Mirror-style.

We'll see what happens a few hours from now...

Saturday Night Fortune and Glory

4,000 Films

As of this evening, I have seen 4,000 films, or about 91 films per year since the age I was old enough to remember what I was watching. If I can see another 1,000 films before I turn 51, I can claim to have seen 1,000 films per decade on average...quite a stretch, unless I watch nothing but shorts for the next couple of years.

And now, for the first time ever on The Earliad, a pie chart! Click to embiggen.

The chart reveals that my attempt watch films from across the motion picture era is a qualified success, with no single decade absorbing more than 15% of my attention. However, the decades I've been around for (not counting my birth year, 1969) account for 60% of my viewing.

Here's a numerical breakdown of the films I've seen in each decade, counting down from top to bottom:

1980s: 597
1990s: 510
2000s: 451
2010s: 433
1970s: 405
1960s: 366
1950s: 361
1940s: 242
1930s: 182
1890s: 165
1910s: 96
1900s: 86
1920s: 78
Undated: 16 (These films have release dates, but the film database I'm using doesn't know them)
1880s: 10
1870s: 2
Total: 4000

And no, I still haven't seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off. 

The Best Pictures Update

I have about 100 more films to go before accomplishing my goal of seeing every movie nominated for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Best Picture Oscar. I discovered recently that two films on the list, East Lynne and The White Parade, can only be seen in one place: at the University of California at Los Angeles. In order to see these films, I'll have to travel to UCLA and make an appointment with the Powell Library Instructional Media Lab. Sounds like a good excuse for a long weekend trip to California...

This Party is Off the Hook

Heavy Mettle

I took a few minutes today to watch this launch and booster landing live, and it was magnificent. Seeing the side boosters land with pinpoint accuracy, right next to each other on their pads in Florida, was like seeing an Amazing Stories cover come to life. And that moment when the SpaceX people crank up David Bowie's "Life on Mars," well, I teared up a little. An astounding accomplishment. 

Assemblymen...Assemble!

What's Passed is Prologue?

SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY'S

"WHAT'S PAST IS PROLOGUE"

Here's a little extra spoiler space for those who see this on Google Plus...

And so the U.S.S. Discovery's excursion to the Mirror Universe ends as I was afraid it would: serviceably, and not without considerable entertainment value, but stopping short of excellence. 

Holding Up a Mirror to Ourselves

"What's Past is Prologue" concludes the Mirror Universe arc with Gabriel Lorca plays his final hand: unleashing a violent coup to take over the I.S.S. Charon and overthrow Emperor Georgiou. The action is well-orchestrated and effectively violent; people are exposed to biological weapons, knifed to death, and vaporized by phaser fire; it's all as awful and ugly as it should be. It is also, however, somewhat contrived. The plot is constructed in such a way as to give Michael Burnham victory despite overwhelming odds: she wins over the Emperor and they essentially win out with fisticuffs and swordfighting. It's a little tough to swallow. 

That being said, the scenes aboard the Discovery, with Saru taking command of the ship, were extremely well done; Doug Jones really shines as Saru in this episode, throwing shade at Lorca and delivering a truly inclusive and inspiring speech to the crew before they head into battle to rescue Burnham, destroy the Charon, and make the jump back to their home universe. The climactic sequence is well-staged, exciting, and comes with a surprise twist that had me leaning forward in my chair...only to slump back, disappointed, in the final moments. More on that below. 

With the conclusion of the Mirror Universe arc and the upcoming (one assumes) end of the Klingon War in the episodes to come, it's transparently clear that this first season of Star Trek: Discovery has been intended to serve as commentary on the world's currently upside-down political realities, with the rule of law, secular pluralism, and scientific rationalism under threat more openly than it has been for quite some time. (None of these threats are new, and one could argue that freedom, prosperity and democracy have long been somewhat illusory or at least unevenly distributed, but it's been a while since it's been at the forefront of public consciousness.) The allegory has been somewhat ham-handed, but then Star Trek has never been subtle; in fact, some might say that ham-handed allegory is the series' stock in trade. And while getting older has made me more cynical, the show gives me hope for the future despite its failings. In this case, it's that scene with Saru motivating the Discovery's crew, and Michael Burnham's anguished sincerity in believing in the angels of our better natures. She even rescues Emperor Georgiou, despite knowing she's a murderous cannibal--that's how much she believes in redemption and in the value of life, even evil life. (Of course, it's also true she has selfish emotional motives in play; but characters in Star Trek have always been imperfect.) 

 

Reflections on Mirror Lorca

I had hoped that Captain Lorca, once revealed as a native of the Mirror Universe, would turn out to be supporting the coalition of rebels fighting the Terran Empire, which might have added some shades of grey to the story; imagine what an endorsement of Federation values it could have been if Lorca changed his original plan and forswore his imperial ambitions? 

But no, Lorca was a wannabe dictator all along. There is a great moment, though, just before Lorca dies, when Burnham, confronting him, says that if he had just asked, the Federation would have helped Lorca get home. Jason Isaacs' reaction to this news is great; you can see on Lorca's face that asking simply never occurred to him, but given his experiences in the Federation, he realizes that Burnham is telling the truth. He doesn't say so (nor does he have much chance to, as he's killed by the Emperor moments later), but Isaacs' performance speaks volumes here. I'm going to miss him, and I hope we get to see him return as the yet-unseen original universe Lorca. 

A digression: I want to commend the sound designers of this episode for mixing in some old-school sound effects from the original series--a nice, nostalgic touch. 

Back Through the Looking Glass

When Discovery returns to the prime universe, they discover that they've overshot the mark...arriving much later than they had anticipated. This is when I leaned forward in my seat; I knew that Bryan Fuller's original plan had been to produce an anthology show that visited the various Star Trek eras, and I thought maybe Discovery had jumped forward 10 years, to the time of the original series, which would have utterly blown my mind. Unfortunately, they only missed nine months, and so the last two episodes of the first season will doubtlessly conclude with the wrap-up of the war with the Klingons. 

I know my initial hopes were unrealistic, but just imagine how cool it would have been if the writers had developed a strategy to make a Trek anthology work. Handled properly, it could have tapped into the powerful nostalgia that helps make the show work, while also using our current reality as a lens through which to re-evaluate that nostalgia and the Trek shows that preceded Discovery. 

I suppose, though, that would have broken the show's budget, and it may have failed utterly. But it could have been cool...

Here's where I tie this review back to the pun in the title. You can guess where this is leading: what we've seen so far from Star Trek: Discovery this year--what's passed--may or may not foreshadow what we can expect to see in season two. Depending on your response to the show, that may be (in my case) good television that falls just short of greatness, or more disappointment if you think the series has fallen short this initial season. The show may not be perfect, but it's trying to bring something new to a series with literally hundreds of episodes. I applaud the showrunners for their efforts thus far, even if they sometimes miss the mark. 

When You Wear the Same Cape to a Party

Friday Read: The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems

In late 2016, Benj Edwards wrote a somewhat melancholy article about the few bulletin board systems (BBSes) that remain active today. Like several of my friends, I was an avid BBSer from about 1987 to 1994, that golden era before the Internet changed the world. There was a BBS for the U.S.S. Bonaventure (the Edmonton Star Trek Club, which is still around and has a Twitter account (!)), and my friend Ron hosted Freedom BBS for several years, an anarchic reaction to some of Edmonton's more button-down BBSes. Someone has compiled what seems to be a pretty authoritative list of BBSes that existed in the old, more expansive 403 area code, which back then included all of Alberta and the Northwest Territories. There were hundreds of them! I had no idea.

Benj's article covers the American BBS scene, and he relates some amusing anecdotes. It makes me a little misty; thanks to Ron, I have some of the writing I shared on BBSes in those days, but most of it has been lost. Most of it was likely garbage, but I remember a story or two that I thought was pretty good.

I can still remember the screeching noise my modem made before it connected. Ah, those were the days. 

Thursday Seafalling

On the Batwalk

The Most Dangerous Earlympic Games

Yesterday, I outlined my vision for an everyman Olympics, one in which everyone has at least a chance of participating, regardless of ability. I am concerned, however, that some sports might be dangerous for the untrained amateur:

Ski Jump: this seems like a recipe for disaster.
Skeleton: could possibly turn people into skeletons.
Bobsleigh: four untrained people caroming down an ice track at hundreds of kilometres an hour.
Luge: one untrained person caroming down an ice track at hundreds of kilometres an hour.
Ice hockey: I imagine there are many opportunities to be bruised and broken by flying pucks and hockey sticks.
Weightlifting: muscle strain, broken spines?
Judo, Karate, Kung Fu, etc.: sprained muscles, broken bones?
Gymnastics: falls, muscle strains
Fencing: pokey thing in the eye?
Archery: accidental arrowing?
Javelin: muscle strain, bad aim, crowd injuries?
Shot put: muscle strain, wayward shots hitting officials?
Equestrian: falls
Football, Rugby: broken ankles, broken teeth
Cycling: crashes
Skiing: crashes
Water polo: drowning
Diving: drowning
Marathon: exhaustion

I'm starting to think this might not be a good idea. Golf, curling, darts, crokinole and baseball should be safe enough, though...

The Earlympic Games

At the Olympic Games, the world's finest athletes congregate to test their mettle against each other in a wide array of sports and events. But imagine an alternate games, one in which ordinary people compete under the exact same conditions as the Olympians. What spectacles might we see?

From Introducing the Earlympics (E.J. Woods, 2024)

...in unparalleled competition, unshackled from the constraints of athleticism, elitism, and good sense.

III. Host Cities

By international agreement, each Earlympics takes place in the same city which hosted the Summer or Winter Olympic Games, one year after said events.

IV. Participation

Anyone can compete in the Earlympic Games. However, the Earlympics can currently support only approximately 11,000 participants at each Summer Games and approximately 3,000 at each Winter Games. Thus, given high demand, Earlympians will be chosen by lot by the central Earlympic Evaluating Office/United Choosing Headquarters (EEOUCH), assisted by the International Earlympic Committees of each participating nation to ensure all nations are represented.

IV. a. Eligibility

Anyone with the ability to cast a ballot unaided, without regard for age, sex, or physical ability, shall be permitted to put their name forward for any and all Earlympics, from now until the sun burns cold in space. Unlike the Olympics, the International Earlympic Committee shall not ban or disqualify participants who choose to use performance-enhancing drugs or equipment.

IV. b. Event Selection

Any person selected to participate in the Earlympics shall be randomly placed in 1-5 Sports and 1-10 Events within those sports until all Event slots are filled. Any person who declines to participate in his or her randomly chosen Sport/Event shall forfeit his or her chance to participate in the Games and another name shall be drawn. Participants in teams sports shall be, again, selected at random.

Currently, the Summer Earlympics consists of the following Sports:

American Football
Archery
Athletics
Badminton
Baseball
Basketball
Beach Volleyball
Boxing
Canoe Slalom
Canoe Sprint
Cycling BMX
Cycling Mountain Bike
Cycling Road
Diving
Dodgeball
Equestrian/Dressage
Equestrian/Eventing
Equestrian/Jumping
Fencing
Fistfighting
Football
Golf
Gymnastics Artistic
Gymnastics Rhytmic
Handball
High Diving
Hockey
Human Cannonball
Judo
Karate
Kung Fu
Lacrosse
Modern Pentathalon
Parachuting
Rowing
Rugby
Sailing
Shooting
Skateboarding
Softball
Sport Climbing
Surfing
Swimming
Synchronized Swimming
Table Tennis
Taekwondo
Thai Kick Boxing
Tennis
Trampoline
Triathlon
Ultimate
Volleyball
Water Polo
Weightlifting
Wrestling Erotic
Wrestling Freestyle
Wrestling Greco-Roman

Each Sport consists of one or more individual Events for men and women. Athletics, for example, includes races of varying lengths, hurdles, relays, high jump, long jump, shot put, triple jump, steeplechase, javelin, and more.

The Winter Earlympics consists of the following sports:
Alpine Skiing
Bandy
Biathlon
Bobsleigh
Bowling
Crokinole
Cross Country Skiing
Curling
Darts
Figure Skating
Freestyle Skiing
Ice Climbing
Ice Hockey
Ice Sculpture
Luge
Nordic Combined
Short Track Speed Skating
Skeleton
Ski Jumping
Sled Dog Racing
Snowboard
Speed Skating
Tobogganing

As with the Summer Games, each Winter Sport consists of one or more individual events for men and women.

V. Rules and Regulations/Accessibility

Earlympic events shall be conducted in the same manner as they are at the Olympics, with necessary facilities and equipment provided for athletes. Athletes who require mobility or sensory aids (such as walkers, eyeglasses, hearing aids, etc.) shall be permitted to use those aids during the course of their Events.

VI. Disclaimers

The Earlympics provides no training or guidance for participants, nor can it be held responsible for any injuries that result from participation.

Faulting Ambition

SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY'S

"VAULTING AMBITION"

In "Vaulting Ambition," Michael Burnham, Captain Lorca, and the rest of the U.S.S. Discovery's crew are still trapped in the Mirror Universe, searching for a way home while hoping to avoid being revealed as intruders by the vile cutthroats of the Terran Empire. To that end, Lorca and Burnham infiltrate the I.S.S. Charon, the gigantic flagship of Emperor Phillipa Georgiou in the hopes of finding the data that will give them a way home. 

Kudos, by the way, to whoever designed the Charon. It's a city in the sky powered by a small sun, and looks much like a dark, floating castle; it's beautiful but malign, and exactly the sort of vessel you might expect an evil empire to build. 

Using a gambit as old as fiction, Burnham poses as her own evil self, with Lorca posing as her prisoner, delivering Lorca into the Emperor's talons - or more accurately, into an agony booth. As a reward, Emperor Georgiou invites Burnham for dinner...

Burnham discovers the meal she's been genuinely enjoying with the evil version of her beloved former captain Phillipa Georgiou is cooked Kelpian, essentially turning Burnham into a cannibal who's just eaten, if unknowingly, the flesh of a sapient being. In the context of Burnham and company's current predicament, the story beat makes an awful kind of sense, viscerally illustrating the perversity of the Terran Empire. Even so, I found the idea gratuitous - surely the torture, genocide and backstabbing already established in the Empire is enough to signify their evil? 

Meanwhile, Stamets' consciousness is trapped in the mycelial network, where he meets his own Mirror Universe counterpart, who is similarly trapped. After a tearful (and well acted, I thought) encounter with a vision of his murdered partner Doctor Culber, Stamets manages to break out of his coma (and so, too, does his counterpart), only to discover that the Discovery's supply of mushrooms has been corrupted. This could be why the spore drive is nowhere to be seen in future iterations of Star Trek...

Back on the Charon, Georgiou figures out that Burnham is up to something, and prepares to execute her. Out of desperation, Burnham reveals that she's from a parallel universe, prompting Georgiou to spare her. Because of the crossover of the U.S.S. Defiant into the Mirror Universe a century ago, Georgiou knows about the prime universe, and one senses that she's eager to conquer it. So she and Burnham make a deal; Georgiou will hand over the Defiant files to help the Discovery get home, if the Discovery crew hands over the secret of the spore drive. Hopefully Burnham isn't dumb enough to believe the Emperor will hold up her end of the bargain...

This episode also confirms what some fans suspected: that the Gabriel Lorca we've been watching this whole season is, in fact, a native of the Mirror Universe, and he deliberately engineered the Discovery's crossover so that he could...well, the jury is out. Either Lorca wants to take the throne for himself and rule as an evil dictator, or he could be on the side of the rebels and want to restore freedom to his universe. We'll see, but his behaviour as the episode concludes is so brutal that I suspect we're meant to see Mirror Lorca as irredeemable, especially since Georgiou earlier claimed that Lorca "groomed" Mirror Burnham to be his lover/protege, a word choice with connotations so disturbing it essentially ruins Lorca's character if true. 

Finally, this episode was really, really short, clocking in at under 40 minutes. I miss the days when an hour-long show was closer to 52 minutes...

While I'm still enjoying Discovery, I'm finding that the Mirror Universe works best in small doses. Hopefully the Discovery gets home next episode, with this particular plot resolved - save for Lorca's fate. I hope we get to see the "good" version of Gabriel Lorca; I'd love to see Jason Isaacs tackle that. 

The Mark of Janus

On the third finger of a black-haired, brutish fist
Is wrapped a two-faced ring
That leaves the mark of Janus
On the hapless faces of the helpless victims
Of the hawk-nosed, green-eyed thug
But then a careless moment came
The ringed fist met wet cement
And got stuck there
At a loss for words he was
Unable to utter even
You dirty rats

Five Nights of the Raven

Silent are the raven's talons
Upon the fresh-fallen snow
Black eyes flick to the slowly turning moon and stars
That suddenly drop from the midnight sky
The basketball moon thumps into a snowbank
The stars, like cinders, melt pinpricks into the bone-white dunes
This the raven has done on just the first night
While half the humans sleep
And the others await their turn

Return to Returnia

No crowds lined up on main street
No fan parade or fireworks
No feast, no audience with the Queen
Not even the best of a friendly sheep
Just the ennui of a lanky farmer
Leaning on her fence and remarking to no one
"Oh look, they're back again
Like all the others."

Jeff's Meditation on Televised Nostalgia

Fans of Star Trek, The X-Files, or pop culture in general should visit Jeff Shyluk's Visual Blog and read his recent essay on the recent reappearance of those two shows. With enviable articulation, Jeff illustrates how the new iterations of the shows, while they possess a number of merits, may fail to provide satisfying experiences, particularly for older fans. Jeff's argument is thorough, well-presented, and thoughtful, and I envy the depth of his insight. The essay is also accompanied by a delightful illustration that perfectly matches Jeff's point.

Head over here to read the essay and view Jeff's artwork. 

The Strange Adventures of the Invaders from the Ice World

Their plan to conquer Earth
Could not fail; they were invulnerable
The marching snowmen from the ice world
Uniformed in corncob pipes and stovepipe hats
Coal eyes shooting death rays at foes unseen
What strange adventures would they have?
All in colour for a dime
In time their stories petrify
Ink on yellowed newsprint
Eternal but absurd
Left for dead in piles in cardboard boxes
Rotting like the two-dimensional corpses
Of the imaginary victims that they burned
The day invaders from the ice world came
In ships of gold and bronze
Rusting and abandoned on some otherworldly plane

Dark Liaison

The night is sweat, salacious
Blood crawling through sluggish arteries
A trombone's bleating in the distance
Wafting up from an almost empty club
Slowly dying on the riverbank
A note scrawled in pencil abandoned on fetid carpet
The door softly closing, a sliver of light disappearing
Ice melting in a shot glass on the nightstand.

Two enter, one leaves
A moment remembered five decades or six
And then lost forever
Like all the others

Wacky Racer: Red

Confronting The Wolf Inside

SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY'S 

"THE WOLF INSIDE"

"The Wolf Inside" establishes definitively that poor Ash Tyler was the Klingon Voq all along, surgically altered and overlaid with Tyler's personality to appear human. To my mind, this somewhat blunts what I thought was an important and interesting examination of post-traumatic stress disorder, trading it for subterfuge and intrigue. Everyone saw this coming, so I'm not surprised, but I am somewhat disappointed. 

On the other hand, this revelation (or rather, clarification) certainly raises the stakes for Michael Burnham, who, on top of all her other issues, now knows she fell in love with a Klingon spy, with all the attendant betrayal that entails. To complicate matters still further, it appears as though the Ash Tyler personality implant/overlay is making it hard for Voq to take control, or at least to maintain it. And now that he's been revealed, surely Tyler/Voq has been neutralized as a threat, which makes you wonder where this story was going in the first place. 

On to other matters. This week, the Discovery's crew continues their mission to steal the technological data necessary to make their way back to the so-called "prime" universe without falling afoul of their evil counterparts. To that end, Michael Burnham makes contact with something she calls a "coalition of hope," the assembled Mirror Klingons, Andorians, Tellarites and Vulcans who stand in opposition to the evil Terran Empire, the our peaceful Federation's dark counterpart. 

As in last week's episode, the creators manage to create a palpable sense of jeopardy for our heroes, trapped in a dark reflection of their own reality; "Even the light is different," Burnham remarks. First Officer Saru's Mirror counterpart serves as slave labour in this reality, denied even a name. And we continue to be shown the duplicitous and savage nature of the human beings in this universe, who show not the smallest fraction of the humanity and compassion displayed by the alien rebels. If nothing else, this storyline comes at an opportune time, as people in our reality are reminded once again that we are often our own worst enemies. 

There's a bit of derring-do bait-and-switch action in this episode that fooled me in a delightful way at a pivotal moment, and the final reveal was, if somewhat predictable, still powerful - and puzzling, given Captain Lorca's sinister, smiling reaction to seeing the face of power in the Mirror Universe. One gets the impression that Lorca has been planning this journey all along...

There's one more note of mystery as we see the internal voyage of coma-ridden Stamets, who meets with a duplicate - perhaps from the Mirror Universe, perhaps not - in a hallucinatory alien forest. What wonders might unfold here? 

While not as strong as the previous pair of outings, "The Wolf Inside" remains solid, if uneven, entertainment. There's certainly a lot to unpack in each episode of Discovery, so much so that it may take until the end of the first season to see if it all hangs together in a coherent and satisfying way.