Where to Start with Star Trek?

The recent arrival of Star Trek: Picard on CBS All Access and Amazon Prime has spurred a renewed interest in the venerable SF franchise. New viewers want to check out the older material, but the sheer amount of it is daunting. By the summer of 2020, no less than 34 seasons of television will have aired in the franchise, totalling 777 episodes spread across eight separate series airing over fifty-four years (and counting). It would take you more than 570 hours (or almost 24 days, non-stop) to watch all of that material. In addition, there are 13 feature films in the mix, as well as a plethora of video games and hundreds of novels, audio dramas and fan films. If you want to check out this mass of material where do you start?

There are several different approaches you can take and I’ll run through a few of them below. The one thing I would say first is that, with a few notable exceptions, Star Trek is mostly an episodic franchise, where each episode stands alone with its own beginning, middle and end. That starts to shift in Deep Space Nine, which introduces more serialised elements, and by the time of Discovery and Picard the series has become fully serialised, but for the most part the different series are episodic and in fact designed for each episode to be enjoyed by themselves.

Before we get into the lists, it might be worthwhile briefly brushing up on what each series is about.

Star Trek: The Original Series
Live-action: 1966-69 • 79 episodes • 3 seasons • 6 films (1979-91)
Animated: 1973-74 • 22 episodes • 2 seasons

Also called the original series, the classic series or just Star Trek, this series follows the adventures of Starfleet Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Constitution-class starship USS Enterprise. They explore strange new worlds, encounter new alien life and seek to uphold the utopian values of the United Federation of Planets in the mid-23rd Century whilst dealing with recurring enemies, including the Klingons and Romulans. The story of this series continues in Star Trek: The Animated Series (which is the same, but as a cartoon) and then in the first six Star Trek feature films.

The first episode of the series, The Cage, was filmed two years before the rest of the series and features a significantly different cast of characters (who do go on to play major roles in some of the films and in Star Trek: Discovery, which revisits the same time period).

Star Trek: The Next Generation
1987-94 • 178 episodes • 7 seasons • 4 films (1994-2002)

Set in the mid-24th Century, roughly 100 years after the events of the original series, The Next Generation focuses on a brand-new, much larger and vastly more sophisticated Galaxy-class USS Enterprise under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The emphasis remains on exploring new worlds and meeting new races. Although the series mostly remains episodic, recurring and more serialised elements creep in towards its end. Most notable is the introduction of the Borg, an overwhelmingly powerful cybernetic threat which remains a key enemy through the next several series, and the Cardassians, a mid-ranking antagonistic enemy. The story of this series continues in the seventh through tenth Star Trek feature films and the sequel-series Star Trek: Picard, set thirty years later.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
1993-99 • 176 episodes • 7 seasons

To date, the only Star Trek series not set on a starship. Instead, the focus is on Deep Space Nine, a Federation outpost established on an abandoned Cardassian space station orbiting the planet Bajor. The Cardassians conquered and ruled Bajor with an iron fist for forty years before withdrawing, leaving the planet in ruins. The Federation are helping them rebuild, their efforts spearheaded by Commander Benjamin Sisko. Unlike most Star Trek series, which focuses on the Federation and Starfleet crewmembers, this series has a large number of civilian and alien recurring characters. Bajor becomes unexpectedly important when a stable wormhole leading to the remote Gamma Quadrant of the galaxy is discovered, allowing the planet to benefit from increased trade (to the fury of the Cardassians). Early seasons revolve around renewed Cardassian/Bajoran tensions before the introduction of the Dominion, the alien alliance which rules the Gamma Quadrant and is unhappy with the Federation poking around its back yard. Later seasons are more heavily serialised and see the outbreak of full-scale war between the Federation and the Dominion.

Deep Space Nine was controversial during its first airing for being perceived as a lot darker than prior Star Trek shows, but in recent years it has undergone a critical reassessment and is now often cited as the best (or at least the most critically consistent) of the Star Trek series.

Star Trek: Voyager
1995-2001 • 172 episodes • 7 seasons

This series opens when the USS Voyager is flung 75,000 light-years across the galaxy to the Delta Quadrant and has to return home, which is estimated will take over seventy years at maximum warp. Captain Kathryn Janeway and her crew seek to find faster ways home with any means at their disposal, whilst upholding Federation values in a desperate corner of space where no one even knows who the Federation are.

Star Trek: Enterprise
2001-05 • 98 episodes • 4 seasons

A prequel series taking place about a century before the events of The Original Series, this show takes place before the Federation or Starfleet even exist. Instead, it follows the adventures of the NX-01 Enterprise, Earth’s first experimental spacecraft with a Warp 5 drive. The series sees the crew trying to engage in interstellar diplomacy, exploration and commerce with much more primitive technology than even in Kirk’s time, whilst also trying to deal with problems such as a brewing conflict between the Andorians and Vulcans, and Earth’s first fumbling dealings with the Klingons and Romulans. The series is almost completely episodic for its first two years, but in its third season explores a series-long arc where Enterprise has to search for aliens who carried out a devastating sneak attack on Earth. The final season is divided into shorter arcs revolving around the formation of the Federation.

Star Trek: The Kelvin Timeline Films
2009-16 • 3 films

A series of three films (Star Trek, Into Darkness, Beyond) produced by J.J. Abrams, these films are set in an alternate timeline created by time travel. Spock (from the original series) is blasted back in time by his failure to stop the destruction of the Romulan homeworld, pursued by a vengeful Romulan crew. This results in alterations to the timeline, such as a younger James T. Kirk and his fellow crewmembers joining forces and taking command of the Enterprise years earlier than in the original timeline and getting into fresh, new adventures in the mid-23rd Century.

Star Trek: Discovery
2017 onwards • 42 episodes • 3 seasons (to date, as of the end of 2020)

Another prequel series, this time taking place ten years before the events of The Original Series. The focus is on Michael Burnham, the first officer of the USS Shenzhou who badly fumbles a confrontation with the Klingons, inadvertently leading to a massive war. A disgraced Burnham is assigned to the USS Discovery, a highly experimental starship with unusual technology and an oddball, maverick captain, where she is offered the chance to atone for her mistakes.

Star Trek: Picard
2020 onwards • 10 episodes • 1 season (to date)

A sequel series set at the end of the 24th Century, Star Trek: Picard picks up story elements left dangling from the end of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, as well as exploring events in the original timeline after the destruction of Romulus (in the original timeline).

The Curated Sample

This order is not exhaustive but what it does is provide a snapshot of the different series and some of the strongest stand-alone episodes which hold up well today. These episodes are stand-alones (not part of multi-episodic arcs) and are designed to showcase some of the different types of storytelling the series indulges in. A viewer can jump from these episodes into the rest of that series if they like what they see.

The Animated Series is effectively a continuation of The Original Series and it would be hard to recommend individual episodes from Enterprise, Discovery or Picard due to their heavy serialisation (Picard is also best-watched having seen some or all of The Next Generation first).

• Star Trek: The Original Series, The City on the Edge of Forever
• Star Trek: The Original Series, The Trouble with Tribbles
• Star Trek: The Original Series, Space Seed
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Measure of a Man
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, Q Who?
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Inner Light
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Visitor
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Far Beyond the Stars
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, In the Pale Moonlight*
• Star Trek: Voyager, Eye of the Needle
• Star Trek: Voyager, Message in a Bottle

* This may seem to be an exception to the multi-episode arc rule, as In the Pale Moonlight has references to and a big impact on the Dominion War storyline which dominates much of Deep Space Nine’s latter seasons. However, the episode itself is more about Sisko’s journey and how he and Garak bring about a major shift in political events whilst never leaving the station (the Dominion itself does not appear), which can be understood well enough without additional context.

The Pilot Sample

This approach simply has the viewer sampling the first episode of each version of the series to see what grabs their attention straight away, and from there they can choose which series to watch first:

• Star Trek: The Original Series, The Cage (1964)
• Star Trek: The Original Series, Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, Encounter at Farpoint (1987)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Emissary (1993)
• Star Trek: Voyager, Caretaker (1995)
• Star Trek: Enterprise, Broken Bow (2001)
• Star Trek: Discovery, The Vulcan Hello (2017)

Release Order

AKA the “completionist” approach. This may be the approach everyone ends up taking once they’ve been sucked into the material, but I wouldn’t recommend it for a first run-through. This approach basically means watching the series in order of release and is the best for enjoying the series as it originally aired and was intended (just somewhat compressed).

The primary weakness of this approach is having to watch The Original Series in full before the more recent shows. The original show is certainly great from the perspective of a 1960s TV series and also has many outstanding episodes that have withstood the test of time, but it also has a lot of episodes that…have not. The series underwent an in-depth HD remastering process in 2006 which saw the film quality improved and revamped CG effects added to make the visual quality of the episodes more acceptable to modern audiences, although obviously the writing and performances were not affected.

You can tweak this order for simplicity: there’s nothing stopping you from watching all six films featuring the original cast before watching The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine and Voyager are divorced from one another almost completely, so you could watch DS9 in full before switching to Voyager. TNG and DS9 do have a few more notable crossovers in terms of characters and storylines, but it also wouldn’t be the end of the world if you finished watching TNG in full before watching DS9.

• Star Trek: The Original Series Pilot, The Cage (made in 1964, but didn’t air until later as part of the original series)
• Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1-3 (1966-69)
• Star Trek: The Animated Series Season 1-2 (1973-74)
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1-2 (1987-89)
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3-4 (1989-91)
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 5 (1991-92)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1 / Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 (1992-93)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 2 / Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7 (1993-94)
• Star Trek: Generations (1994)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 3 (1994-95) / Star Trek: Voyager Season 1 (1995)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 4 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 2 (1995-96)
• Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 5 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 3 (1996-97)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 6 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 4 (1997-98)
• Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 7 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 5 (1998-99)
• Star Trek: Voyager Season 6-7 (1999-2001)
• Star Trek: Enterprise Season 1 (2001-02)
• Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
• Star Trek: Enterprise Season 2-4 (2002-05)
• Star Trek (2009)
• Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
• Star Trek Beyond (2016)
• Star Trek: Discovery Season 1-2 (2017-19)
• Star Trek: Picard Season 1 (2020)
• Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 (2020)

Chronological Order
This order lists the series in the order of when the episodes take place in the order of events within the Star Trek universe.

This order has some strengths, as it roughly matches the historical order of events, but it also has some major weaknesses. It puts Enterprise, arguably the weakest Trek series overall, up first and also features a number of spoilers for later series (since the Enterprise writers couldn’t resist pulling in familiar creatures and aliens to the show from later periods, no matter how incongruous). You’re also talking about waiting a long time to get to the good stuff.

• Star Trek: Enterprise Seasons 1-4 (2151-55, 2161)
• Star Trek: The Original Series Pilot, The Cage (2254)
• Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-2 (2256-57)
• Star Trek: The Original Series Seasons 1-3 (2266-68)
• Star Trek: The Animated Series Seasons 1-2 (2269-70)
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (2271)
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (2285)
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (2285)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (2286)
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (2287)
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (2293)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Seasons 1-5 (2364-68)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 / Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1 (2369)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7 / Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 2 (2370)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 3 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 1 (2371)
• Star Trek: Generations (2371)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 4 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 2 (2372)
• Star Trek: First Contact (2373)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 5 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 3 (2373)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 6 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 4 (2374)
• Star Trek: Insurrection (2375)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 7 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 5 (2375)
• Star Trek: Voyager Season 6-7 (2376-77)
• Star Trek: Nemesis (2379)
• Star Trek (2385, alternate 2258), Star Trek Into Darkness (2259), Star Trek Beyond (2263)*
• Star Trek: Picard (2399)
• Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 (c. 3160)

* The chronological order of events also makes placing the Kelvin timeline movies awkward, as they rely heavily on knowledge of events after the original show and The Next Generation but are set much earlier, albeit in a parallel universe. Sticking them here is probably the best approach.

What's the best order then? I'd say order of release for those who want to experience the franchise as it was released and understand it could be a bit of a bumpy ride, otherwise one of the curated approaches might be best.

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RIP Malcolm Dixon

British actor Malcolm Dixon, a stalwart of genre television and film, has sadly passed away at the age of 66.

Dixon was born in Durham in 1953. He was born with dwarfism, a condition that did not hold him back from a physical job on his parents' poultry farm. He was spotted by talent scouts impressed by his abilities at Durham Ice Rink and recruited to perform in ice shows, from where he was recruited by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. In 1971 he appeared in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, marking the beginning of his film career.

His subsequent film roles include Flash Gordon, Time Bandits, The Dark Crystal, Return of the Jedi (as an Ewok), Labyrinth and Willow. His theatre roles included a three-year stint playing Bilbo Baggins in a stage performance of The Hobbit.

In addition to his scripted roles, he also performed in music videos for artists including David Bowie

He stopped performing in the late 1990s to focus on his family. He passed away yesterday and is survived by his wife and two children.

Dixon was a familiar face to any fan of genre film, particularly through the 1970s and 1980s. He will be missed.

Wertzone Classics: The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

Lupe dy Cazaril is a former soldier in the army of Chalion. Taken prisoner after a siege, he has been sold into bondage, made a galley-slave and been rescued. Returning to his old home of Valenda, he seeks service with the Provincara dy Baocia. He is made tutor to Iselle, the sister of the heir to the kingdom, a position initially without power or influence. When Iselle and her brother are summoned to the royal court by their brother, the ailing king, Cazaril finds himself in a political nest of vipers, pitted against an old enemy who is very unhappy to see that he has survived, and a curse that may be beyond his abilities to thwart.

What happens when your life is taken from you and you are left abused, beaten and broken, and then abruptly returned to your former life?

The Curse of Chalion is a novel about trauma, about a man who has faced serious degradation and danger but lived to tell of it, and afterwards has to find his way back to something approaching normalcy. Unfortunately, whilst this is going on his country is under threat from external enemies and also from internal strife.

This is a fascinating novel, one that at first glance bears resemblances to Guy Gavriel Kay's classic The Lions of Al-Rassan (particularly the very strong Spanish inspiration) and to George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, particularly the political manoeuvrings within the royal court which start with mild barbed words but soon escalate to intimidation, murder and the threat of civil war. There's also a similarity to Robin Hobb's work, particularly the tight focus on a single character and its exploration of trauma and recovery. But it's also very much a Lois McMaster Bujold novel. Those who have sampled her other work, such as the long-running SF Vorkosigan Saga, will find similarities in the exploration of relationships, tragedy and redemption, although it is written in a different style.

The book lives and dies by the characterisation of Cazaril, the main protagonist. Although the book is not written in the first person, we spend the entire novel perched on Cazaril's shoulder to the point where it might as well be. Cazaril is a broken man, damaged goods, who tries to piece his life back together by retreating to his childhood home and station as a page to the royal family of Chalion but finds that his gifts and experience elevate him to a new position as a teacher and mentor to the younger members of the family. Cazaril is a refreshing fantasy protagonist; he is not a badass, sword-wielding prodigy or a reluctant youngster nevertheless gifted with vast sorcerous powers, but a middle-aged man who comes into situations he has little control over and has to find a way of negotiating his way through them, for good or ill.

The secondary cast is a well-drawn and varied lot, and the worldbuilding is impeccable. There's an interesting way of handling magic and the religion and politics of Chalion are drawn in some detail. Bujold's prose, honed at this point by twenty years of experience, is also excellent, evocative without being overwrought and a genuine pleasure to read.

The Curse of Chalion (*****) is a compelling, richly-detailed fantasy novel with superb, multifaceted characters and a strong sense of direction and purpose. It may just be Bujold's finest novel to date, in an exceptional career. It is available now in the UK and USA. It has a sequel, Paladin of Souls, and a prequel, The Hallowed Hunt.

TALES FROM THE LOOP boardgame launches on Kickstarter

Tales from the Loop started as an art book in 2014, became a roleplaying game in 2017, recently launched as a television series and has now made the transition to board games.

Free League Publishing, who publish the Tales from the Loop roleplaying game, have launched a board game which is based closely on the same premise. The players play a number of Kids who are drawn into investigating strange mysteries emanating from a massive particle accelerator lab called the Loop. These mysteries involved investigations, avoiding "Trouble" and dealing with some of the odd creations of the Loop, including teleportation, robots and even dinosaurs.

Free League have provided a "Print and Play" system which allows people to try the game before deciding to back the project. Their pedigree is pretty good: the Tales from the Loop RPG is excellent and the same design team designed the superb Crusader Kings board game.

The project has already exceeded its funding target, so additional pledges will secure more content and features. The currently-planned delivery date is May 2021, global pandemic crisis notwithstanding.

In another sign of the End Times, I have been nominated for a Hugo Award

The 2020 Hugo Award nominations have been announced this evening and, to my surprise, I have made the shortlist for Best Fan Writer, which was unexpected.

Congratulations to my fellow nominees, a formidably talented bunch who will ensure that I have zero chance of actually winning the award.

In the "big" category, Best Novel, the nominees are The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders; Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir; The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley; A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine; Middlegame by Seanan McGuire; and The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow.

The Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) nominees are The Good Place: The Answer, The Exapanse: Cibola Burn; Watchmen: A God Walks into Abar and This Extraordinary Being; The Mandalorian: Redemption; and Doctor Who: Resolution.

The Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) nominees are Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel, Good Omens, Russian Doll: Season 1, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Us.

The Hugo Awards are normally announced at WorldCon, the annual World Science Fiction Convention which this year was going to be held in New Zealand. Unfortunately, the global coronavirus pandemic means that the convention cannot be held as planned. Instead, a virtual convention and awards ceremony will be held instead.

Thanks again to everyone who nominated me. It's very much appreciated.

RIP Honor Blackman

Veteran British actress Honor Blackman has sadly passed away at the age of 94, of natural causes.

Blackman began her film career in 1947 as an extra in the film Fame is the Spur. She went on to appear in many films through the 1950s and 1960s, including the Titanic-based disaster movie A Night to Remember (1958) and as Hera in the Ray Harryhausen movie Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

In 1962 she was cast in the television series The Avengers, alongside Patrick Macnee. She played the role of Dr. Cathy Gale for two years, leaving when she got her role on the James Bond franchise (something referred to in the TV series, when the other characters refer to her visiting Fort Knox).

She played arguably her most famous role in 1964, when she starred as Bond girl Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, alongside Sean Connery (with whom she re-teamed in 1968 for the Western Shalako).

Her other roles include episodes of Columbo and Doctor Who, as well as Midsomer Murders and a late-career regular role on The Upper Hand. She also starred in Bridget Jones's Diary in 2001. She never formally retired from acting, and kept her hand in with a role on British soap opera Casualty in 2013.

A staunch republican, she declined a CBE in 2002. She alternated between living in the UK and in Maine, and is survived by two children. She married twice but spent most of the latter half of her life single, noting she enjoyed the independence it gave her.

A strong actress noted for her powerful and iconic roles in the 1960s, Honor Blackman will be missed.

Tales from the Loop: Season 1

1982, Ohio. The town of Mercer sits on top of the Loop, an immense particle accelerator built around a unique stone with unusual properties over time, space, light, magnetism and reality. The Loop's scientific discoveries have led to the creator of magnetic suspension technology and efficient, almost intelligent robots, and the detritus of past experiments litters the landscape. A number of individuals and families have their lives impacted by the Loop and its legacy, which brings them to a closer understanding of the universe, themselves and each other.

Tales from the Loop is based on a fictional universe created by Swedish writer and artist Simon Stålenhag. This universe was detailed in his art books Tales from the Loop (2014) and Things from the Flood (2016) and was fleshed-out in Free League Publishing's excellent roleplaying game (2017). Amazon Prime's television adaptation is not quite set in this universe, but it does borrow a lot of iconography and imagery from the book to craft a series of almost-standalone stories.

The season takes place mostly in 1982, although there are also flashbacks to the 1950s, when the Loop was first being constructed. If the series has an anchor, it's in the central Willard family consisting of Russ (Jonathan Pryce), the founder of the Loop; his wife Klara (Jane Alexander); son George (Paul Schneider); daughter-in-law Loretta (Rebecca Hall); and grandchildren Jakob (Daniel Zohlgadri) and Cole (Duncan Joiner). We learn gradually that Russ is a genius but has been emotionally absent from his son's life, something he is striving to correct with his close relationship with his younger grandson Cole, a lonely path that his heir apparent, Loretta, may also be following. This lays the groundwork for melodrama, but the show steers away from such cliches, instead choosing to depict events more calmly.

Tales from the Loop's 1980s setting and the source material would both lend themselves to becoming a nostalgia fest; indeed, the original book and RPG both have a much stronger Stranger Things vibe, down to the characters playing Dungeons & Dragons and listening to contemporary bands. Although the Tales from the Loop franchise predates Stranger Things, the TV show clearly does not, so the decision was made to steer the show away from that aesthetic and instead adopt a completely different tone. If Stranger Things is a 1980s action/horror movie on steroids, spread across 24 hours (and counting), Tales from the Loop is more restrained, even arthouse film, more The Quiet Earth than The Goonies.

Tales from the Loop is also much less serialised. There is an on-going story arc of sorts, but sometimes this is not referenced at all in an episode and at other times only barely. Instead the focus of each episode is dramatically different: the first features a little girl (played with beyond-her-years wisdom by Ant-Man's Abby Ryder Fortson) who finds herself in a strange place and has to get home; the second focuses on Jakob Willard and his best friend who play a prank that gets out of hand; the third on a young couple who find the ultimate way of spending time together (played by Nicole Law and Danny Kang); the fourth on Russ Willard; the fifth on a maintenance man (played by Veep's Dan Bakkedahl) who buys a robot to defend his family; the sixth on a security guard (Ato Essandoh) who is searching for a mysterious man; the seventh on a teenage boy (Emjay Anthony) who is trapped on an island with a terrifying presence; and the final episode on young Cole Willard and his despair at change. Events and characters which are front and centre in one episode are on the periphery of another, with the timelines of some episodes intersecting in interesting ways.

Tales from the Loop therefore comes across more like a set of Twilight Zone or Black Mirror episodes, if they were all set in the same town and everyone was kind of accepting of the oddness going on. There are also similarities to Eureka (although a totally different tone) and Lost, which I suspect the island episode might have been a tip of the hat to.

The series has attracted some criticism for being slow, but I found this to be a point in its favour. Each episode has its own storyline and focus, but the story is usually relatively simple and the generous 50-60 minute running time allows each idea to be explored in depth without contrived events to spin things out for another few minutes (a key weakness of many shows in this age of streaming, which seem to assume the audience consists solely of people who will stop watching if there isn't some crazy plot twist, explosion or death every ten minutes). The series has also been criticised for being emotionally remote, a complaint I find utterly baffling. The show is deeply interested in themes like family, love, mortality, morality and the consequences of actions, and it explores each theme with emotional depth and resonance. There are several moments in the series which are capable of reducing the viewer to tears, through the restrained direction, almost uniformly excellent performances (Jonathan Pryce's performance in the fourth episode should win him every award under the sun in particular) and the way the story keeps circling around to touch on ideas raised earlier.

Tales from the Loop's first season (*****) is not for everyone. But the relaxed and quiet pace, the thoughtful storytelling and the measured characters do combine to produce something uniquely compelling, visually beautiful and at times genuinely heartbreaking. The season's conclusion, which may be more timely than ever, is that life may be fleeting and perhaps random, but it is also beautiful and wonderful. It is available to watch now on Amazon Prime worldwide.

Star Trek: Picard - Season 1

2399 AD. Fourteen years ago, Admiral Jean-Luc Picard failed in his mission to help save the last remaining people on the planet Romulus before it was destroyed in a supernova. Riven by guilt and anger that Starfleet and the Federation (both more insular in the wake of decades of war and uncertainty) did not do more to help, Picard retires to his winery in France. The arrival of a young woman who is being targeted by Romulan assassins calls Picard back into action, especially when he learns that events are tied into the death of his friend Lt. Commander Data twenty years ago and his experiences with the Borg.

Picard represents a key moment in the Star Trek franchise. For the first time since the release of the film Nemesis in 2002, the Star Trek universe is moving forwards. Every Star Trek project since 2002 has been a prequel or set in a parallel universe (or, in the case of J.J. Abrams' movies, both). It's way past due time that we get to see what happens next.

Picard is a bit of a mixed bag and, like its CBS All Access label-mate Star Trek: Discovery, is often deeply frustrating. The ingredients are here for a compelling and enjoyable SF series reflecting on timely themes like mortality and nostalgia, but instead we get moments of excellence interspersed with terrible dialogue and moments of contrivance that will make you very briefly wish Brannon Braga was still working on the franchise (okay, never that bad, but still).

The season opens with a mystery and it is here that Picard shines, as the titular ex-admiral takes charge of the investigation which is deeply connected to his own past. Patrick Stewart is physically incapable of acting poorly, even in his elder statesmen years (Stewart turns 80 this year and is playing a 94-year-old), and when required brings gravitas and integrity to the scenes. One change is that Picard is here suffering the very earliest stages of Irumodic Syndrome (the same disease that was afflicting his future self in the Star Trek: The Next Generation finale, All Good Things...) so Stewart has to make Picard a somewhat more tremulous, feeble character than the one we remember.

This adds an interesting element of human mortality to the series. Stewart was such a commanding force of nature in The Next Generation series and movies that seeing him here as an older and less certain figure is sometimes genuinely distressing. Time is not a kind figure, but having it thrown in the viewer's face as vividly as here is startling. Thankfully, Stewart has still got the old magic in flashback scenes set years earlier and is a much more commanding and forceful figure.

The rest of the cast is a mixed bag, not for acting talent but for writing. Isa Briones as Dahj and Soji is outstanding in the first few episodes as she portrays two versions of the same character, one fleeing Romulan assassins and the other trying to unearth the secrets of the Borg. She does tremendously well in both roles, and even better in a third role a lot later in the season. Inbetween she is not always well-serviced by the scripts, and becomes too much of a passive figure in the central third of the season, first swept up in a morally dubious romance and then buffeted around by various people trying to save her.

Santiago Cabrera (Heroes) is fun as ace pilot Chris Rios, especially as his narcissistic side has led to him crewing his ship with variations of the Emergency Medical Hologram Programme from Voyager, complete with ever more outrageously terrible accents. It's a fun gag, but one that feels a bit of out keeping with the tone of the rest of the series and is perhaps a bit over-used. Outside of that, Rios gets very little character development. Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd, Harry Treadway and Peyton List all do the best they can with the material they are given, but the quality is again all over the place. Particularly egregious is Alison Pill playing a character who commits an absolutely horrendous crime at one point and everyone seems to forget about it five minutes later and welcomes her back into the crew with open arms.

Particularly baffling is the character of Elnor, a Romulan swordsman prodigy whom Picard recruits for the mission for no particularly convincing reason and proceeds not to do very much for the rest of the series. Evan Evagora does the best he can with the material, but it's hard to make a character with no story purpose compelling.

More successful is the return of Jonathan Del Arco and Jeri Ryan as former Borg drones Hugh (from two episodes of The Next Generation) and Seven of Nine (from the last four seasons of Voyager). Both take care to root their characters in the way they last appeared (twenty-seven and nineteen years ago, respectively) but also layer them with two decades of off-screen character development. It's also good to see Brent Spiner back as Data (albeit in dream and flashback sequences), even if trying to accommodate for his ageing pushes both the makeup and CGI to their very limits. Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis also make very welcome return appearances as Riker and Troi.

Part of the schizophrenic writing quality can be put down to the competing interests of the two showrunners: Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer and Hugo Award-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union, is by some margin the most feted author to ever work on a Star Trek series and you can see his influence in the musings on the ethics of creating artificial life, the moral comprising of the utopian Federation by the trauma it has undergone in previous decades (multiple Borg attacks, the absolutely devastating Dominion War, a brief war with the Klingons etc) and the intelligent consideration of themes like mortality and nostalgia. However, it feels like this has been compromised by executive producer Alex Kurtzman, a writer who wouldn't know subtlety and thematic exploration if they joined forces and ran him over with a snowplough. At every turn, Kurtzman's over-earnest need for exposition, lens flares, infodumps, incongruous humour, explosions, needless character deaths for shock value only and murky CGI drags the writing down whenever it seems to be in danger of getting interesting. A good example of this is how Chabon wanted to reference the Dominion War and how the trauma of seeing millions of Starfleet personnel killed in battle rocked the certainties of the utopian Federation and put it on a more isolationist course, but Kurtzman overruled him because he didn't think anyone had ever watched Deep Space Nine, which is a deeply stupid decision.

Picard does have plenty of good points. The production values and effects (bar some strange use of stock footage) are better than they have ever been before in Star Trek, even the movies, and the actors all do the best they can with the material. It's genuinely fun to see Picard back in action and a few character reunions do bring lumps to the throat. The setup in the first two or three episodes is genuinely compelling (plus Into the Badlands' Orla Brady as an Irish-Romulan Tal Shiar agent turned housekeeper is absolutely fantastic) and some of the moral quandaries faced by the crew are intriguing. But it does feel that for every good thing in the series that makes it worth watching, there's something else that weakens it.

Star Trek: Picard's first season (***½) is inconsistent and problematic, but anchored in Patrick Stewart's still-formidable gravitas. It's certainly a stronger first season than Discovery's and it's revelling in continuity is refreshing after Discovery played very fast and loose with it (although the laughably impractical holographic controls in both shows do need to die a death soon). Whether the promised second season can build on the good points of the first season and jettison the numerous weaker elements remains to be seen. The season is available now on CBS All-Access in the United States and on Amazon Prime in much of the rest of the world.

The Broken Heavens by Kameron Hurley

The Tai Mora, invaders from a parallel universe, have overrun and conquered much of the island-continent of Grania. Their ruler plans to activate the five great temples and use their power to seal the ways between the worlds shut, ending the chaos that has engulfed every world and every timeline. For Lilia, the former scullery maid turned military leader, an opportunity to strike back at the Tai Mora is approaching, one that may hold the key to saving the world, but she must first persuade her reluctant allies (who prefer the idea of flight) to stand with her.

The Broken Heavens is the concluding volume of The Worldbreaker Saga, Kameron Hurley's epic fantasy trilogy set in a world that is being invaded by mirror versions of itself. Following on from The Mirror Empire and Empire Ascendant, the book chronicles the adventures of a number of core characters scattered across Grania as events begin to converge.

The Worldbreaker Saga is, as with much of Hurley's fiction, offbeat and weird but is anchored in believable human characters. The book plays with the "chosen one" trope by pitting these as the people who happen to be in the right place at the right time to deal with the crisis, and they succeed or fail, live or die based on their own strengths and weaknesses, and isn't afraid to have them mess up, sometimes catastrophically. It's unusual for an epic fantasy following a standard three-act trilogy structure (albeit in an original and unusual world) to be so inventive in how it handles its characters and plot.

Particularly interesting, and something much more strongly focused on here than previously, is the idea of the mirror characters being not just different characters with the same face, but different versions of the actual same character: the pacifist in one world and the war-mongering dictator in another could have been the same person if it were not for circumstance. Thematic ideas of nature/nurture, environment and desperation are woven intriguingly into the story and developed as it continues.

Some of the weaknesses of the first two books remain: there are occasional moments of obtuseness and the limits of the magic-wielding characters' powers are not always clear. There's also the feeling of events sometimes being a little rushed. There's easily a more sedate thousand-page story which could have explained things a bit better lying within these sometimes compressed-feeling five hundred pages. On the plus side, it does mean that the book moves like it's on fire, with little time or pages wasted.

The setting, with its living killer trees and seething organic temples, is vividly drawn and Hurley's formidable powers of characterisation are at their peak here, not just in depicting different characters but different versions of the same character, which requires a great deal more nuance. Overall, The Broken Heavens (****½) is a worthy conclusion to an often engrossing and original work of fantasy. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey

The Laconian Empire has conquered the Solar system and most of the colony worlds established through the ring space. A resistance movement led by the crewmembers of the Rocinante is hoping to win back the freedom of the individual worlds, but High Consul Winston Duarte has taken James Holden captive. As tensions rise, Duarte makes the bold decision to declare war on the unknown, possibly unknowable aliens that killed the creators of the protomolecule, a war that will have unforeseen consequences.

Tiamat's Wrath is the eighth and penultimate novel in The Expanse, moving the series decisively towards its endgame with the conflict against the unknown aliens beginning in force. This is the moment that The Expanse has been building towards for a decade, with the true conflict finally getting underway.

It's a shame, then, that it feels anti-climactic. Part of the problem in this latter part of the series is that it feels like it is trying to do too much in too little space: the conquest of the Solar system by the Laconians happened very rapidly (and mostly off-screen) in the previous book and in this book the resistance movement forms and takes action with almost indecent haste. Persepolis Rising did at least benefit from the tight focus on the Rocinante crew trying to escape Medina Station and using that as a lens through which other events unfolded. Tiamat's Wrath is a much more epic, widescreen book which tries to tell the story across a number of fast-moving fronts, but in almost exactly the same page count. This results in a much faster-paced story where events happen quickly and sometimes without enough setup.

We've been here before, and in fact Tiamat's Wrath forms the second half of a duology that began with Persepolis Rising, and in doing so comes across as a near beat-for-beat retread of the previous duology (Nemesis Games and Babylon's Ashes): in the first book a huge, epic, game-changing event takes place with apparently massive ramifications for the series, and in the second it is wrapped up with almost indecent haste, both times relying on an important female character in the enemy camp deciding to swap sides. The structural similarities between the two duologies can leave the reader with a nagging sense of deja vu. The pieces are different but the game is being played the same way.

There is also the problem that we still know very little about the extradimensional alien threat. We know they're bad news, but their motivations, capabilities and real level of threat remain unclear after eight books out of nine in the series. It does feel a little like the situation with the Others in A Song of Ice and Fire, where we're supposed to be wary of this species but we don't really know what they want so it means their level of threat remains vague. The stakes, rather than being made clear or raised, are instead simply left undefined.

As usual, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (who together make up the gestalt entity known as James S.A. Corey) deliver a fast-paced, moderately well-written space opera yarn with some exciting battles, interesting plot twists and some decent characterisation, but also one that feels like it is repeating earlier beats from the series and still leaving a lot of information undisclosed before heading into the final volume of the series. Tiamat's Wrath (***) is solid but occasionally feels like a detailed plot summary of a novel rather than a novel in its own right. The book is available now in the UK and USA.