#chip chalmers

TREKMATCH! # 777 - TNG's "Ethics" vs 2021's West Side Story

WEST SIDE STORY (Nominated for Best Picture Oscar, lost to CODA, won Best Musical or Comedy Golden Globe)

In the 50s a couple of street gangs get wild over each other and do rumbles and musical numbers. Meanwhile there's a Romeo and Juliet situation happening and only one bad song in the whole thing! I always thought the gangs were supposed to be high schoolers but the internet says they're in their 20s. Weird they're going to sock hops or whatever then! Is it better than the 60s one? Well, no, but at least it's not a buncha white people in brownface and the actors sing their own songs (with a teensy bit of help from digital pitch correction).

GRADE: B+

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - "Ethics"

Worf has a big bouncy hollow barrel fall on him but it still destroys his spinal cord and he is maybe never gonna walk again. Well for a Klingon that's dishonorable so he wants to have Riker kill him with a knife! I guess it's a complicated question because of course in our real human planet of Earth we want disabled people to live full cool lives but like it's Worf's imaginary Klingon culture that demands this ritual or whatever. Anyway the metaphors don't work!

GRADE: D+

TREKMATCH! # 646 - DS9's "The Magnificent Ferengi" vs 2014's Draft Day

DRAFT DAY

The general manager of the Cleveland Browns navigates pressure from his boss and fans and staff when he manages to get the first overall pick in the draft. It's kinda interesting if a little too kind a depiction of the NFL as a whole, since they co produced the movie. Logistically I think it's interesting to consider how they picked the team to focus on - really I think the only two teams that nobody hates except their own fans are Cleveland and Jacksonville, so they'd be the only two teams who could've worked for any viewer.

GRADE: C-

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - "The Magnificent Ferengi"

Quark's mom (or Moogie as he calls her) gets kidnapped by the Dominion, so he assembled a group of Ferengi badasses to rescue her! Well, not badasses per se, just some Ferengi he knows, and only because he's getting paid by the Ferengi president. A little negotiation with Iggy Pop and some Weekend at Bernie's shenanigans later and everything is copasetic again!

GRADE: C+

TREKMATCH! # 365 - TNG's "The Wounded" vs 1980's Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

STAR WARS: EPISODE V - THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Darth Vader and his cronies have the Rebels on the run, and the latter are stuck on Ice Planet! But wait, *all* of the Rebels are there? It only looks like a few hundred people! Best not to think about space logistics - this isn't Star Trek we are talking about here. There's a big ole battle featuring giant robot donkeys (I wonder if the Battle of Hoth or the Death Star trench run is the battle I've played the most in video games?) and then Luke goes off to learn the ways of the force from a little dude named Yoda. Luke seems to be a much quicker study than any other Jedi (he learns the force in like three days!), but he abandons his extension classes to go fight his (gasp!) father to the death! Or at least to the hand.

GRADE: A+

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - "The Wounded"

A rogue Starfleet ship is destroying ships and stations and even innocents of a new group of aliens we've never heard of, the "Cardassians" or something. The Enterprise is dispatched to stop this ship before a brand new Federation/Cardassian war breaks out. Luckily somebody who served with the captain of the rogue ship is serving on the Enterprise - everybody's favorite transporter chief (presuming you don't give a shit about Chief Kyle from TOS), Miles O'Brien, who must confront his lingering prejudice from the Cardassian war. This episode is good at digging into complex emotions, which of course the Star Warsss don't really do except for The Last Jedi, but there are really only a dozen or so episodes of Trek that coulda beat Empire and this ain't one of em.

GRADE: B+

Victory to Wars, putting movies up 183-182!

TREKMATCH! # 370 - DS9's "Take Me Out To The Holosuite" vs 2015's Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

STAR WARS: EPISODE VII - THE FORCE AWAKENS

It's been 30 years or something since the Rebel Alliance won the war and turned into the main government! Only waitasec, they're now called the resistance and they're fighting some other evil empire? I don't get it but I'm sure they'll explain all that in the next two movies (they don't btw). Anyhoo a young desert planet dweller goes on an adventure with some space scoundrels to stop a planet size superweapon from... hey I heard all this twice before already! Also I really really don't think JJ Abrams knows how light travels through space.

GRADE: C+

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - "Take Me Out To The Holosuite"

An old Vulcan bully of Captain Sisko's shows up to challenge him to a baseball game of all things, so Ben assembles a team to defeat the Vulcans! It's weird that the best baseball players on the station are all Sisko's closest friends slash the main cast of the show but ok. And might I add that maybe these two baseball teams shouldn't get take it so personally since they are on the same side in a dang war? It's a rare "fun" episode in the usually dour seventh season.

GRADE: C+

Victory to, say, Trek, tying things up at 185!

TREKMATCH! # 171 - Star Trek: The Next Generation "Captain's Holiday" vs. 2010's Superman/Batman: Apocalypse

SUPERMAN/BATMAN: APOCALYPSE

After Superman's cousin Supergirl crashes on Earth (she was sent ahead of him to look after him growing up but hit some time snag and is now younger), Superman has to train her to be a real human girl, like by shopping! Come on, movie, give me a break. Batman is doubtful of her, much like he is of everybody and everything all the time because he never went to therapy after witnessing his parents' murder, and then Darkseid, a super evil dude who lives on a fire planet, kidnaps Supergirl to make her his executioner. Anyway, Batman mysteriously holds his own against what is one of the most powerful entities in the DC Universe, and Supergirl is rebooted once again.

GRADE: D+

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - "Captain's Holiday"

Dr. Crusher order Captain Picard to take, you guessed it, a holiday, so he travels to Risa to catch up on some reading and accidentally gets caught up in a mostly incomprehensible time travel archaeology plot. The show introduces Vash, here, an unscrupulous love interest for Picard who is never really used that well in my opinion. Risa is supposed to be this incredible relaxation planet but it just looks like a boring resort. Like, in a large interstellar community of hundreds of planets how valuable can beachfront property really be?

GRADE: D+