Tumblr! You Black Emperor

While the prior two episodes were a mixed bag for me, the latest episode "Ko'Zeine" worked a lot better, even if it has plenty of shortcomings that's led to what seems like a generally dismissive reaction.

To explain why I enjoyed this one, I'll summarize how the other two suffered. First, I wanted badly to love 1.05 "Series Acclimation Mil," because I'd seen online that Tawny Newsome had written it as a valentine to DS9, which is to this day my favorite Trek, full stop. And while I thought that the last act worked beautifully, the lead-up to it never connected to me, since it seemed so concerned with asking questions ("What, concretely, happened to Sisko?") that felt inconsequential. I realize that that's partly the point, but dwelling on it for so much of the episode dragged down the payoff of the scenes with Jake; in fact, the episode has the feel of having been built backwards from the Jake scenes, with Sam's struggles being an emissary feeling like a superficial connection to Sisko's role as Emissary. I like that it's about Sam, and that she gets to interact with Jake, but it's ultimately hero worship (though, let's be real, most of us would love to be in the situation given the chance), and not a position where she's a peer with her main scene partner.

As for 1.06 "Come, Let's Away," I mentioned in my previous post that I simply don't find streaming-era Trek's action interesting because the perils don't feel convincing ('90s Trek is more concerned with characters talking themselves into and out of problems, and sometimes violin recitals). Also, the episode continues the streaming era's chronic inability to flesh out secondary characters before they die. In the end, the focus on action in this episode left little time for the things I care about -- namely, the characters.

"Ko'Zeine," on the other hand, falls firmly in the slice-of-life category, with considerably lower stakes and body counts than "Come, Let's Away," and episodes like this is where Starfleet Academy has shined the brightest. The writers have come up with a colorful cast of weirdos, and I relish the chance to see them put into odd scenarios to bounce off of the walls and each other in funny and sometimes moving ways. Jay'Den, for instance, is a supporting character in Darem's plot this week, but we still see him getting past his rocky introduction to Darem as well as overcoming his fear of public speaking, all to culminate in a speech that was subtle, funny, and heartfelt. Darem, similarly, gets more depth, with the revelation that this kid, who has had mountains of expectations loaded onto him and has had his self-worth completely eroded away, finds freedom at the Academy to FINALLY let his inner asshole shine.

I also loved that we finally got some Genesis development, with the episode peeling back some of the "high-achieving nepo baby" layers to show a more vulnerable self, all while just letting her just hang with Caleb for much of the episode. (I did detect some hints at her becoming involved in a future love triangle with Caleb -- which I'm not excited about -- but unless/until we cross that bridge, I'll enjoy where we're currently standing.)

With that said, the plot machinations to move our characters into the places they need to get to are pretty underbaked. Darem's "byebye Starfleet I'm going AWOL to co-rule an entire planet(?) with my one-episode fishwife actually wait jk let's get a fishdivorce ok I'm back in the Academy" speedrun barely held together under its own weight. Meanwhile, Genesis's plan of tricking Caleb into hacking the bridge so she could alter some incriminating letters of recommendation was pedestrian, tic-tac-toe planning from someone whom we're meant to see as having more potential as a canny strategist. (I'm not mad at you, Gen, I'm just disappointed.)

All the same, I'm willing to put up with the sloppy plotting because the character work is so fun. I wouldn't argue that all of these developments are earth-shaking (though I really appreciate seeing Jay'Den being more at ease and even smiling -- we've never seen a happy Klingon as part of our main cast!), but they let me immerse myself into a world that feels so vibrant and alive and populated by interesting characters in a way that's been lacking in most of the other streaming Trek shows.

As much as I've been enjoying the ground-based episodes, I have missed SFA being on an away mission in space, since this is a Star Trek show, after all. What's more, an early shot of Nahla's feet clad in boots is an immediate sign that this episode is going to be a change from the happy-go-lucky tone that's characterized most of the season thus far.

And sure enough, we get an action thriller full of pew-pew, and while it's fairly competent, I think that's this is my least favorite genre of nu-Trek because it rarely nails that sense peril that I need for it to be thrilling, and it's not why I watch Trek in the first place.

I also had a few nagging problems with the episode that weren't central to my tepid reaction but that I had a hard time ignoring anyway.

Darem not getting to do anything during the showdown with the baddies -- we could easily have had him collaborate with Genesis to find the cloaked ship.

I know that the Miyazaki was derelict, but its computer took FOREVER to read that comic.

B'Avi getting the slightest bit of character development in the same episode that he dies (this has been an especially chronic shortcoming ever since Trek came back in the 10-13 episode per season era). Fs in the chat for the biggest pair of brows I've ever seen on a Vulcan.

Obviously, Starfleet Academy is still early in its run, but despite the oftentimes disingenuous discourse that's blaming it for killing Star Trek as a franchise, I've enjoyed most of its first season so far (up to episode 4), which already puts it ahead of virtually every other series in the history of the show. (I've been saying that Lower Decks has easily been my favorite of the streaming era, but even that series took me longer to fully embrace than I have with SFA.) The only real dud for me has been episode 2, but on the whole, I've either had a great time laughing at the goofy teenage hijinks of the cadets or been genuinely moved to tears by the story of the odd-duck Klingon, Jay-Den Kraag. (Light spoilers ahead up to episode 4.)

Ignoring the grifterverse complaints (which seem to amount to little "look there's a black woman onscreen isn't that funny" -- see Jessie Gender's excellent video on this topic if you have 70 minutes and enough emotional reserves to wade into the swamp of idiot takes from idiot fascists), what some of the good-faith criticisms have centered on are its bias towards institutionalism (i.e. SFA isn't radical enough) and its focus on teenagers, with special attention on the dialogue.

The first point -- the bias towards institutionalism -- is the most trenchant, and is put forth by Second Wind here. Its argument is that throughout Trek's run, Starfleet has been a stand-in for the US (pretty inarguable), and the streaming-era shows reflect the failure of existing political institutions to prevent the rise of Trumpism. SFA specifically dramatizes this institutional failure in its first episode, where Nahla Ake sentences a single mom to prison, thus separating her from her young son, Caleb, now effectively an orphan. Ake quits Starfleet after Caleb immediately escapes custody; fast-forward 15 years, and Ake decides to return to Starfleet in an attempt to redress her past mistakes.

Second Wind argues that this very attempt to fix Starfleet, rather than replace it, amounts to the Democratic spinelessness in the face of fascism, that the system isn't irrevocably broken, and that if we just weather the storm, the system will correct itself (never mind the suffering inflicted in the meanwhile). I don't disagree, but I also don't have much faith in Star Trek as a corporate product to ever advocate for the wholesale abolition of a system of governance and economy that produced it; in this light, Starfleet will always be reconstituted, not replaced. That said, we are possibly seeing a different flavor of Starfleet -- episodes 2 and 4 both culminate with actual policy decisions being made or influenced by the cadets (which doesn't make too much in-universe sense, but I'm putting a pin in this for now), and maybe the argument SFA is putting forth is that effective change will be driven by the new guard and not the entrenched power structure. After only 4 episodes, it's too soon to say one way or the other, which is another reason why I questioned the Second Wind video.

(I have another theory about the "SFA = death of Trek" bandwagon: a perfect storm of circumstances -- the ascendancy of American fascism, and the algorithmic rewarding of outrage and right-wing grifter content -- has made SFA dog-piling lucrative, which is why even good-faith creators are ready to put the final nail in the Trek coffin after 3 episodes (which was when the Second Wind video game out). A simple "starfleet academy" search on Youtube will give you a greatest hits of the worst grifters before you see any results to the left of Nazism.)

The second point -- the YA tone of the show -- is a little more complicated, and leads me to put forth a reader response theory. In any work of fiction -- especially speculative fiction -- the audience negotiates with the text over where to draw the line for suspending their disbelief, i.e. how much latitude they will give certain plot elements or storytelling techniques before they stop enjoying the work. If the text has excellent dialogue or psychologically rich characters, maybe the audience will overlook plot holes or thin world-building; conversely, a lack of appealing elements will lead the audience to have less patience with the work. Obviously, the exact parameters that define that suspension of disbelief varies wildly from person to person (and even within a person, it'll change over time or between different texts -- e.g. I find TOS's production values hokey, but for various incarnations of Doctor Who, I actually find the cheap costumes and sets charming). For me, the humor on display in SFA (everything that Lura Thok has said, especially "shenan again") has bought a lot of wiggle room for me, and let's me ignore how unlikely an established organization like Starfleet is so open to letting teenagers dictate policy.

https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/blueberry-kuchen/

Secret ingredient is a mango because I only had two ripe bananas at hand.

The ephemeral nature of dance and my own gradual but inevitable senescence conspire to make my impressions more and more fleeting, and in the tradition of our earliest writers, I aim to commit my experiences to some kind of posterity.

Hell of a modest way to start blogging again.

I bought a ticket to Program 2 because it originally featured a ballet called Anima, Animus, which sounded admirably contemporary but was then pulled a few weeks before the premiere of the program. (I haven’t investigated why, but with the recent news of NYCB and its own #MeToo turmoil, you kind of have to fear. I hope I’m wrong.) Because the other two parts of the program were distinctly neo-classical (Balanchine, Millepied), I seriously (not really) considered asking for a refund or exchange, but laziness prevailed and I went to the program. And I’m glad that I did! The Balanchine program was Divertimento No. 15, and while I didn’t love it, I wasn’t as bored by it as I expected to. I learned to watch not just individual dancers but the entire formation to appreciate the geometries of Balanchine’s blocking, which is quite a lot different from what I get out of contemporary ballet (athletic execution and tricky partnering). Millepied’s Appassionata came next, which was a double feat because the moment that has stuck with me -- a trio of ballerinas emerging backwards from the wings en pointe, gliding like apparations -- was so striking that the likeliest reference to Giselle made me reconsider my disinterest in classical story ballets.

Finally, the replacement to Anima, Animus was Justin Peck’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, which I didn’t realize was set to a bunch of M83 songs. The above New Yorker actually mentions Peck’s work as a choreographer, not, thankfully, directly in connection to #MeToo, but hardly glowingly: “His casts, even when they are not wearing sneakers, and jackets emblazoned with protest slogans, [...] often seem like teen-agers, a notion that is highly vulnerable to cliché and sentimentality.” Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming does nothing to disprove Acocella’s assessment but I didn’t care -- the earnest hope of the (yes) young dancers together with M83′s exultant emotional triumphalism brought me to the edge of tears, so potent was its celebration of the joy of dancing. I wish that, instead of the more sedate direction it takes, it would’ve crested into a frenzy of giddiness and dionysian ecstasy, but I’m not the choregraphic wunderkind here.

Onto Program 3, fresher in my mind but not more memorable. 

I was late by minutes to The Fifth Season, which is a stately neoclassical affair that is nearer to my tastes, but I was maybe too far away to appreciate it properly (shame too because it featured Dores Andre, Sofiane Sylve, and Yuan Yuan Tan -- one hell of a cast).

I got to my seat (row H! But seat 20, which is only one chair in from the right-most edge) for Snowblind, which quickly dashed my incipient curiosity into watching more story ballets. I was mildly interested to see that Jennifer Stahl (who came to my attention for her portrayal of the Chosen One in The Rite of Spring) was playing yet another matronly character (she played Victor’s mother in Frankenstein, if memory serves).

I HAVE BEEN CLICKING ON STREET SIGNS FOR 5 MINUTES STRAIGHT AAGGHGH.

Influence here referring solely to the show, and not the wider drag world. Note also that I’m not listing my personal favorites, but instead the queens that, in my paltry view, changed RPDR.

For my money, Willam was the first to show contestants that you didn’t have to be crowned to win your season, being the first (unless I’m mistaken, which is entirely possible) show alum to get a WOW series that would burnish her internet presence and maintain popularity afterwards -- a path that played a large part in Trixie’s rise. 

Beyond being a hilarious performer, Alaska also hit on something that’s become absolutely crucial to post-RPDR success: branding. Ongina and Mystique both said it first, but Alaska turned “HIIIIIEEEE” into a trademark, and not long afterwards nearly every queen had their own “t-shirt slogan” (to quote Shangela).

And then there’s Laganja. Her time on the show was painful to watch, but she left two important marks on the show. In the interregnum between the filming of the season and its airing, she hustled to capitalize on her moment in the spotlight and deliver content to thirsty fans, and more importantly, her vomitorium of drag jargon is basically the new vernacular. Between her and Paris Is Burning, you’ve got pretty much all the drag slang on the show covered.