#like. i understand it being in the unaired pilot
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thinking about how the diner scene was in both the unaired pilot and the official pilot. like they wanted that scene in there for some reason. hm.
#sorry all of my mental illnesses are kicking in and it's an experience.#this entire post is /hj tbh#like. i understand it being in the unaired pilot#but the actual pilot itself??#they're trying to tell us something.#bbc sherlock#sherlock#sherlock holmes#john watson#a study in pink#the gay pilot#gay pilot my beloved#IT WAS SO FRUITY AND FOR WHAT.
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I think there's something fascinating about the evolution of Darla as a character in the Buffyverse.
It's very common in the Buffy fandom to talk about the show almost as if it were fully planned out from the beginning or somehow emerged fully-formed one day in its entirety. To analyze Season 1 episodes as if the writers had already decided on the Heart/Mind/Spirit symbolism of the core Scooby Gang; to act as though a Season 5 retcon means that Spike was really in love with Buffy as early as Season 3's Lovers Walk; to suggest the constant changes in how the show deals with soul lore or vampires as a metaphor must mean that Giles and the Council were 'really' lying or ignorant in the first few seasons; to wonder what the Watchers Council introduced in Season 3 were doing in the show's first two seasons; to insist you can't really understand Season 1 until you've finished Season 7.
And, look, I totally get the temptation to do that sort of thing. It's unavoidable if you want to talk about the universe of the show as a real thing in its own right, or try to write fanfiction that takes every season seriously. It can be a useful and interesting way of thinking about the show. I've done it myself and will no doubt keep doing it.
But at the same time, it's very misleading if you want to think about the show as a constructed work of collaborative art: as a piece of fiction in constant conversation with itself, shaped and reshaped again and again over years by a team of different people. Which, to be clear, is what it actually is.
The real show is almost a piece of improv or some sort of conjuring act, with the writers and actors constantly juggling with new ideas and twists without any time to worry about how exactly everything fits together. With some episodes reportedly being written in only a handful of days and lore being continually changed and ignored as fits the current demands of the plot. Questions like "how does soul lore really work?" or "after Prophecy Girl who is the real Slayer anyway?" ultimately can't be answered, because there simply is no single truth to uncover. It depends entirely on the current episode.
And I think the ever-changing character of Darla provides the best illustration of that reality.
In the original unaired pilot, Julie Benz plays an unnamed vampire who is nonetheless pretty easy to identify with the Darla we'll see in the show proper. She has no links to Angel or Luke or the Master, because none of these characters even exist yet. Just like in Welcome to the Hellmouth, she lures an unsuspecting victim into the high school after dark before vamping out and killing him, but by the end of the episode she is dead: gruesomely dispatched (or as gruesomely as the pilot's limited special effects budget allowed) after Willow douses her with holy water.
The two parter Welcome to the Hellmouth / The Harvest expands on her role slightly. She has a name now, for one thing. She works for the Master, too, but she doesn't at all seem to be his favorite (she's very much subordinate to Luke in both these episodes), and there's no suggestion that she has any special connection to Angel. (Unsurprisingly, as the show's writers hadn't even decided to make Angel a vampire at this point.) And her ultimate fate at the end of this two-parter is unclear: just as in the pilot, Willow soaks her with holy water, and then she's ... gone? Nobody mentions her again, she's not in scenes with the Master in later episodes which logically she should be. I'm pretty sure that, just like in the pilot, we're meant to assume she's dead.
But then Darla gets her first big break. Angel is, it turns out, a vampire, and he needs some backstory to match. Julie Benz obviously made a decent enough impression in the first couple of episodes, and nothing she did or said quite ruled her out as Angel's sire, and we never quite see her die. So suddenly she's back, now the Master's favorite vampire, attacking Buffy's mother in her own home and sowing the seeds of mistrust between Buffy and Angel and ... oh, she's dead again. Bummer.
Except then in Season 2 Angel's role expands again -- he's not just Buffy's intermittently seen vampire boyfriend anymore, he's the focus of the whole season and he's going to appear in all but one episode. Of course, he's going to need more backstory (and we're all going to be treated to David Boreanaz's best Irish accent) so ... once again Darla rises from the ashes, albeit this time only in flashbacks. And the Darla we see in Becoming's flashbacks is once again an evolution of the character we last saw in Season 1's Angel. More confident, more complex. A character that it is honestly difficult to reconcile with the take on the character we saw last season, especially the one we swa in the show's first two episodes.
Anyway, Angel gets sent to hell in Season 2, but not before managing to (somehow) act his way into his own spin-off series. And yes, that means more flashbacks, and more Darla, and more retcons about the precise nature of her relationship with the Master, but ultimately it means the writers decide to bring Darla back from the dead at the end of the spin-off's first season (for, depending on exactly you count it, arguably the fourth time, though only the first in-universe). And this iteration of Darla -- both the human Darla we see in the beginning of Angel's second season, and the vampire she becomes again later that season -- is arguably the closest thing there is to a definitive take on the character. This is the Darla people mean when they talk about her on the show. Not the mid-level vampire of Welcome to the Hellmouth or the essentially single episode villain of Season 1's Angel, but the real deal. Darla at her most complicated and rich and alive, a Darla whose history is hopelessly entangled with that of her on-again, off-again lover Angel, a character who provides the driving force for the spin-off show's greatest season. A character who is, I think, one of the most interesting to ever appear on that show.
Then the last few episodes of Season 2 completely drop Darla and all trace of the arc she introduced. When she reappears next season (in just a handful of episodes) it's so that her character can be written out of the show via mystical and impossible-by-the show's-previous-rules pregnancy in order for men to feel sad about it (but not for very long), and afterwards everything generally goes to shit.
But then, that tells you quite a lot about the Buffyverse and its creators as well.
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BBC SHERLOCK REWATCH - A STUDY IN PINK (REAL TIME NOTES)
From the perspective of someone who watched this show when they were thirteen, made it their whole personality and then stopped being a massive prat.
I thought about organizing this into a cohesive review, and maybe as I go on I'll delve deeper into some of my observations but for now I thought it would be funny to present my findings in raw, mostly unaltered form:
- loud ass opening, my god
- only bit of acting Martin freeman ever does lmao
- dances along to theme against my will
- god the effects and transitions are so shit
- all the shots of the pills are so ugly
- oh yay molly - whoo - yayyy
- the potential withe these two goddamn
- also this sherlock does not drink his respect women juice by god
- fucksake the deduction about john's sister- not only is it translated awfully into this modern setting, it's explicitly a deduction Sherlock is supposed to make once they know eachother a bit better
- THE POTENTIAL
- also sherlock displaying one insecurity when john accidentally insults his stuff- well done moftiss, characterization
- How far away is the crime scene, why it dark
- pls the transitions
- PIPE BOMB, WHOO Phone deductionnnn
- oh my god it's so shit
- uuuuuuuugggghhhh the potential I hate this shooooow
- fuckin deduction as a way for witty one liners and sexism, i hate this place
- 'you were thinking it's annoying' i'm going to send myself off a cliff, CRINGE
- RACHE- moffat, come here a sec- literally putting ACD on par with the police, who are always wrong the sheer audacity- also just a bad change
- these lens flare white lights are so goofy please, you will never be a whole scene of silence with jeremy brett
- benedict cumberbatch is very pretty i will grant
- terrorized by the fact i used to quote this show unironically
- from a writing point of view I understand that John gushing over Sherlock is to show off and emphasize their specialest boy- but, some sincerity is infused into it from an acting standpoint
- 30:02 GIRLIE WHAT IS THAT SOUND EFFECT
- OOH YAY THE PSYCHOPATH/SOCIOPATH STUFF WHOO YEAAAAH
- All the phones calling as john walks past is kinda cool but mostly stupid
- oh anthea, what a rich character lmao
- how long was mycroft posed like that
- First johnlock queerbait whooo
- Where does he fuck off to???
- he just vanishes lmaoooo
- Three patch problem. Bruh.
- I am bored as shit, help
- This music- girl
- Bloated is a very good word to describe some of these scenes
- HERE SHE IS- THE BIG DADDY OF QUEERBAITING
- this scene is insane fucKING INSANE I HATE THIS SHOW
- god how much episode is left fucksake
- the stop/go signs- pick a tone girl
- this episode is so almost good and it's anytime Sherlock makes a mistake lmao
- not the drugs bust :/
- ooh sociopath line- whoo
- "I don't have to [imagine]." OOOH OKAY, WELL, YOU GUYS GET *ONE* POINT FOR THAT SHEESH
- this is so ridiculous- COME WITH ME- girl shut up
- I wanna be done I wanna be doooone.
- lamenting the confrontation we had in the unaired pilot
- The 'Frwhoomp' noise as the light goes out, girl
- 20 Minutes left my christ
- BRO- I forgot that bit of ADR wooooof
- and thus begins the scree of Moriarty
- five years, why is Scotland Yard still doubtful of Sherlock's skills? I know he might have been deep in his addiction during some of that, but they evidently kept him around for crime solving.
- Great man/good man quote has me fumin babes, my god, what a fundamental misunderstanding of Sherlock Holmes
- boring ass back and forth
- this piano is giving me war flashbacks
- is it a five orange pips reference?
- also the pills look like that speckled gum that burns your throat
- when is it oveeer
- falling asleep
- bomb under the table but the table is made of glass and hates gay people
- she tooks the kidssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
- 13 min
- love, or rage, dude, come on Sherlock
- i hate this 'enjoying crime too much' theme they've written
- like watching a stupid play
- once more, the potential
- moriarty he said calmly
- also, so out of character for Sherlock do I even need to say
- peaks of what could have been- FUCK
- this mycroft fake out- lord
- also, mummy, fucksake
- cheesy ending BUT IT'S OVER
#like pulling teeth#and it's only episode ONE#anti bbc sherlock#not tagging the main fandom tag because i don't really wanna dunk on the fans#they've been through enough lmao#sherlock holmes#john watson#feral sh rewatch
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I might be interested in that “Sherlock writers/producers power trip” stuff 👀
Calling it a power trip was a bit dramatic of me XD but I do think the creators of Sherlock had a... weird relationship with the character of John Watson. He gets two different and incongruous characterizations, and I don't understand the rationale behind it.
The most clear example of this for me is how this changes between the Unaired Pilot and A Study in Pink. The Watson of the UP is self assured, practical, intelligent, competent, moral (if somewhat grim and with a veneer of darkness lurking beneath the surface) and mature. The Watson of ASIP is insecure, impractical, rather dumb, extremely loyal to a person he just met for no reason, a failure of a petticoat chaser, and essentially an adrenaline junkie. And these are two versions of the same story.
On the UP, the first meeting between Sherlock and Watson is marked by Watson's curiosity and earnest admiration about Sherlock's deductions; the same scene in ASIP shows us Watson being taken aback by Sherlock's behavior. When they are at the scene of the crime and Sherlock asks Watson if he's aware that he's speaking his appreciative remarks out loud, UP Watson just calmly asks if that bothers Sherlock; ASIP!Watson hurries to apologize. And in general he hesitates, apologizes and feels out of place much more across the latter version.
In the UP, what "cures" Watson's limp is that he notices that something has gone wrong with Sherlock's attempt at dealing with the cabbie, and he jumps to go help/save him. Watson is a doctor, his vocation in life is centered around helping and saving people; his psychological symptoms are caused by a sense of purposelessness, as he's been discharged after being wounded, and lives on a military pension. Now that he has met Sherlock and realized the ways in which Sherlock is self-destructive, he has found new purpose. ASIP, by replacing this for a foot-chase, replaces this element of characterization (intelligence, moral fiber, decisiveness) with... John is just an adrenaline junkie -and doubles down upon this through Mycroft words, and by removing from the ending scene the lines where Sherlock calls Watson "my doctor", and Watson tells Lestrade off by reminding him that Sherlock must eat if he is to be useful in future. In both versions we have the set-up of the gun Watson keeps in his drawer (that he may come to use to kill himself) and the payoff (that he ends up using to save Sherlock's life); but whereas in the UP it is of a piece with the characterization I mentioned above, in ASIP it feels like a leftover they couldn't remove because it was so deeply baked into the plot.
The framing of Watson's killing of the cabbie is also different between UP and ASIP: in the UP, we only see Watson leaving the restaurant, then the cabbie dying, and "realize" with Sherlock who the shooter was. It is implied that he guessed where the cabbie was taking Sherlock, called the police, made a detour to pick up his gun, and then headed to Baker Street where he chose the vantage point of a house across the street, from which he watched the cabbie and Sherlock, and waited till the last possible moment to shoot, in case bloodshed could be avoided. This shows that he can keep a very cool head under pressure, that he underwent military training and it stuck, and that he is moral and practical, grounded and efficient.
ASIP!Watson picked up his gun after his interview with Mycroft -the implication that he means to use it as protection/defense for Sherlock and himself from... MI5/6. Now that does give some credence to Mycroft's insult that Watson is brave, but bravery is what people say when they mean stupidity. You were in the army, Watson! You should know better! (the Mycroft subplot also includes two painfully awkward attempts at hitting on one of Mycroft's underlings, a woman clearly much younger than him. As I was saying, Watson loses maturity between the UP and ASIP). Watson then only follows Sherlock and the cabbie because of the phone setup that had been previously solved by Sherlock (so no application of intelligence here), does not think of calling the police, and then we watch him desperately searching for the room where Sherlock and the cabbie are, then when he casually lands on the room across that one, he screams Sherlock's name to the top of his lungs, and as he is not heard, he ends up shooting the cabbie as a last desperate effort. No planning here, no cold head, and some very stupid decisions (had the cabbie been armed for real, and he had stumbled into the room or been heard, chances are one or the two would have ended up injured or dead).
I think the contrast between the two versions of this other scene showcases this really well:
ASIP:
Sherlock: are you alright?
Watson: Yes, of course I'm alright.
Sherlock: you just killed a man.
Watson: Yes, I... That's true, innit? (pause) but he wasn't a very nice man.
UP:
Sherlock: you are alright?
Watson: of course I'm alright.
Sherlock: you have just killed a man.
Watson: I've seen men die before -good men, friends of mine-; 'thought I'd never sleep again. I'll sleep fine tonight.
The unaired pilot plays more with setting up a "dark side" to Watson; his profession as doctor makes him mainly caring and helpful, but it can also make him clinical and detached at points; I don't think it is a coincidence that Donovan tells Watson to take his distance from Sherlock because "One day just showing up won’t be enough. One day we’ll be standing round a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there", but by the end of the episode the police is standing around on a crime scene for which the killer was... Watson. This last thing, again, carries over into ASIP because it couldn't be taken out without breaking the plot, but has been removed from the rest of Watson's characterization in the episode. Mind you, I don't think "exploring the dark side of John Watson's personality and maybe turning him into a villain or a conflicted antihero" is a good idea, but it was set up in one, discarded, and not replaced in the other.
I could write another post with the differences in the characterization of Sherlock between the two tellings of the story, but exploring that here would make this answer way much longer than it needs to be. I'll summarize it by saying that UP Sherlock is written to have some complementarities with UP Watson: Sherlock is rather juvenile/childish, too focused on "the game" to take care of himself, assess risks or evaluate how his behavior affects others. He has a hard time understanding the feelings of others, and that coupled with an enjoyment of tricks and disguises and games is what makes him difficult for other people to deal with. Basically, Sherlock is very intelligent in a rather theoretical, detached way, whereas Watson is a grounding presence because he's full of common, practical sense. ASIP Sherlock is... an asshole. It's not that he doesn't understand the emotions of others, he despises them. It's not that he's reckless, it's that he's super cool and dangerous (and suddenly is a master of combat what). He's basically a sort of pop culture übermensch?
The ASIP characterization for both characters dominates series 1 and 2 of Sherlock, and develops through two main dynamics: one is the "Watson as a silly wife in a bad 1950s sitcom", that is particularly intense and weird in The Blind Banker (which, in all fairness, was not written by mofftiss).
The first Sherlock-John scene in TBB is a juxtaposition between Sherlock having a skilled fight at the flat, while Watson is failing miserably at... checking out groceries. The following scene is poor silly woman Watson with her his silly little homemaking problems cannot understand the huge work and problems her husband Sherlock tackles when she's not looking. Watson is worried about having money to pay the necessities, Sherlock cannot be bothered to mind such pedestrian things.
This depiction of Watson as """"feminine"""" (derogatory) pops up here and then. He gets kidnapped three times for just being... careless (again, doctor, yes, but war veteran and human being that has been kidnapped before). It may not sound like A LOT, but when you consider the whole series is just 14 episodes, of which one is a short and another happens exclusively inside Sherlock's head... well...
Magnussen literally calls Watson Sherlock's damsel in distress in His Last Vow. His feelings upon discovering Sherlock is alive in The Empty Hearse are treated as over-reaction by Sherlock, Mary and the narrative. In general the whole Mary arc is filled with this sense that Mary and Sherlock relate to each other and understand each other and cooperate with each other on a level that Watson can't reach, and he's therefore relegated most of the time to a figure to be protected from both truth and evildoers, and then to give Rosie to, because man carrying a baby emasculating or something? (Sherlock's single interaction with Rosie is about his trying to reason with her, but he never touches or holds her, and she virtually disappears as a being once Mary dies).
This concept of Sherlock as idealized pop culture übermensch and Watson as a failure of a man takes the rest of the time a strange tone of aggressiveness, not only in the occasions in which Watson beats up Sherlock (A Scandal in Bohemia, TEH, The Lying Detective), but in smaller ways in Watson's pointed acting like he's not interested in the case or in explanations... and his dating women for apparently no other reason that to try and stick it to Sherlock (which makes it extra out of nowhere when he's not only so deeply affected by Sherlock's death, but that he tells to his grave "I was so alone and I owe you so much". Wait, what? You've spent most of your time being annoyed and feeling threatened by this guy).
Watson's relationships with women is also part of the weirdness of his characterization. He dates several of them one after the other in what seems an effort to show Sherlock that at least in this he's more competent than him; he doesn't seem to really care considering he mixes up their names and neglects them. However, the series also wants to make him also a very awkward and poor flirt with no standards (like trying to get the therapist in The Hounds of Baskerville, starting an emotional affair with a woman who just smiled at him on the bus, gets very mad at a tabloid calling him confirmed bachelor), and that the women that DO actually get into stable relationships with him think him beneath them one way or another (the series makes a pointed joke about how his girlfriend in The Great Game won't have sex with him or make him breakfast, Mary uses him first as a cover and then calls herself the best thing that happened to him as a joke while he's very seriously trying to propose to her). It rounds up again to that subtle "not man enough - feminine" undercurrent.
Then there's Watson's general incompetence. On my first draft of this answer I had written a list, episode by episode, of all the times Watson is being sent on wild goose chases, makes mistakes that no one with his background should, stumbles upon clues by sheer dumb luck, is generally useless, and his ideas are treated as extremely dumb, but it was very long and boring. So here are the ones I found to be the most notorious examples:
In TBB, he does not comment that left-handed people do in fact learn to shoot with their right hand (he is himself a left handed person who does that as established in ASIP); on that same episode he daftly stands by with a paint can and gets caught by the police and can't say anything to defend himself despite the high unlikeness of his being.... a street artist (his worrying about the charges is, again, framed as silly.)
He leaves the witness they need and who is in danger, alone, so he can go "help Sherlock" (which meant just... running out of the scene so she could get killed).
Watson's date is better than him at the brawl that happens at the circus somehow. He cannot tell a delivery guy from a ninja and gets kidnapped. He's scared witless because an old lady is pointing a gun at him (HE'S AN AFGHANISTAN VETERAN).
In TGG, Watson has kept the gun with which he killed the cabbie (against UP, and also, you know, incriminating evidence). Watson, a doctor whose CV specifies surgery, is jumpscared and upset by a head in the fridge.
In ASIB, he doesn't even know how to punch properly. The guy who is an ace with a gun in ASIP, is reduced and held at gunpoint like nothing here, and contributes nothing while badass Sherlock and Irene kick the goons asses. Falls for a dumb seduction trick because he's an idiot. Cannot tell apart real shock from Mrs Hudson just pretending.
In The Sign of the Three, Sherlock realizes Mary is pregnant before Watson, WHO IS A DOCTOR does.
These characterizations I have been talking about are very dominant through series 1 and 2, but then something curious happens on s3: without any warning or connection, the series starts acting like the characterizations of the UP have been the show's characterizations all along.
It begins with Sherlock's characterization; he's back and itching to see Watson, not realizing that he would have moved on in two years. Mycroft tries to warn him to break the news softly to him, but Sherlock doesn't understand; all he can think about is what a lark it will be to show up out of nowhere! There's no real meanness in it, just childish joy. This goes on through TsotT, with his anxieties about his speech, his difficulty to prepare and deliver it and following through the ceremonies, his surprise and emotion at being chosen as best man and called Watson's best friend, his promise to keep Mary safe and his efforts to save Watson in s4, and even his realization about Eurus' emotional needs in the series finale.
Not that the original ASIP characterization doesn't show up here and there again and again, through things like Sherlock's edgy comments about religion, his complete distraction and lack of attention at Rosie's baptism, his mysoginy and use of Jeaninne in HLV, etc.
Same happens with Watson. The narrative keeps doing its mockery thing, and will lay VERY THICK the whole "Watson is just an adrenaline junkie" with Mary's secret and how Watson married her because he's attracted to danger and that makes it all his fault somehow... it will also show Watson being bored by his job at the surgery. BUT the main storyline of the Sherlock-Watson relationship only makes sense through the UP characterization. It is, in fact, spelled out loud in TsotT: Sherlock solves puzzles, Watson saves lives. The back-cases of the episode show Watson being intelligent, competent, and helpful, specially as a doctor. Sherlock believes that he's been saved by Watson through their friendship. The case at the end is solved through both Watson's saving of lives and Sherlock's solving of puzzles (we are even shown that Watson has another friend! who is also a recluse!). Watson is at peace in his relationship with Harriet. We are even shown that Watson is secretly drinking more alcohol during his bachelor bender, to not disappoint Sherlock's calculations about his alcohol tolerance, and so "ruin" his fun and the work he put on it.
This goes on through HLV as well; Watson gets some PTSD flashbacks, then manages firmly and competently the "rescue" of Isaiah Whitley, and even shows some of that colder and a tad cruel side that was hinted in the UP. He has authority enough to make Mycroft leave when he tells him to. He's in on the plan to reveal Mary's past as a spy, and even later on is the one to suggest Sherlock puts a tracker on her before she drugs him and leaves, which shows both practicality and foresight. He even jokes with Lestrade about Sherlock being like a baby!
Even though The Abominable Bride only happens in Sherlock's mind and therefore doesn't really count towards Watson's characterization, it is worth noticing that in it Watson is so much more involved in monitoring and containing Sherlock's drug problem than he has proven to be till that point (sure, Watson got Molly to test him in HLV, but nothing came of it, and the treatment of the matter in TLD is even worse).
The only way to make some sense of The Six Thatchers and TLD, Watson-wise, is to play along with this idea of Watson as supremely practical, competent, and mature. His being rather checked out about Mary (he spends the whole morning (9 hours) of what seems to be one of his free days just proving with a balloon that Sherlock doesn't need him, while his wife is dealing with a very young baby, for example), and his emotional affair are to be understood not as part and parcel of the character we've seen through series 1 and 2, but as a moment of weakness of the character they say he is in s3.
It's not just the only way to understand not only his intense guilt, but the way the narrative tries to present the infidelity as "well, it is what it is, we are all human" down to Sherlock telling Watson that even Watson is human. That's not what Watson actually is, though, through most of the series. He's a callous, violent, horny idiot, which the narrative calls human, and that's the resolution of the opening scene of TLD about things being wrong and being able of calling them wrong. They are just what they are and we are all human.
The finale is all about Sherlock and Eurus, and so Watson's development ends here.
And the thing is, that I would have liked to see much more of the potential the characterizations in UP showed. That would have been an interesting dynamic. I think the casting of Martin Freeman for Watson was great, and that he elevates whatever he's in (yes, even The Hobbit movies), but was ultimately wasted, and for what?
Maybe it is that the BBC demanded those changes to bring in a lighter tone and comedic relief. Maybe they really wanted a sort of loose remix of House M.D. (which is what the Sherlock-Watson dynamic is most of the time in this show) instead of the Sherlock Holmes adaptation Mofftiss wanted to make. Maybe only after the show became wildly popular they were allowed to do what they wanted that way. But it was too little, too late, and mixed in with a steep decline of the quality of the writing of everything else.
Even within the limits of that generous reading of what happened, it is still stories they wrote and signed, where what could have been a compelling character with many interesting things to explore, from an actually accurate portrayal of PTSD (and not the "actually it is civilian life that is giving him PTSD because he's an adrenaline junkie, surprise!), and a war injury and physical disability being taken seriously, to his grounding role in Sherlock's life, a development of his deductive abilities, a more equal and complex relationship with Mary... we got an idiot whose function in the plot most of the time was narrative punchbag and high contrast to Sherlock's übermensch.
And that's such a pity.
#ask#apesoformythoughts#sherlock#sherlock meta#listen this isn't anywhere near as coherent and polished as I wanted it to be#but I've been working on this reply for so long#I have reached the#it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be posted#stage of things#and for that I apologize#and will be happy to clarify/discuss specific points
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I’ll be fucking honest with you: it’s fucking pretty clear that Bryke, who had the final creative control, were always planning on Kataang. The unaired pilot already strictly hinted at Kataang. The original series bible had Book 2 feature a love triangle between Katara, Aang, and male!Toph while saying nothing about a relationship between Zuko and Katara(strangely, it also says nothing about ships in its segment on Book 3).
ATLA continually hints at Kataang throughout all three seasons; I don’t necessarily like this writing the best, since I don’t really like doing “will they or won’t they” for the entire length of a show and then only having characters get together in the last five seconds, but that’s a me thing. Within the structure of television, it was painfully obvious that Aang and Katara were going to get together, especially since the writers offered no potential alternative partner for Aang, the main protagonist.
By contrast, “Zvtara”-baiting moments were incredibly rare (well, unless you want to count the rapey ones) and were limited comedic moments focused on the absurdity of the ship, with June claiming that Zuko was after his girlfriend instead of the Avatar being one example. “The Ember Island Players” clearly mocks Zvtara, one episode after the episode that Zvtarians claim totally proves their ship was intended to be canon. Katara and Zuko are never shown to spare one thought for each other in the long interval between “The Crossroads of Destiny” and “The Western Air Temple.” Once Zuko joins the Gaang, the series becomes a rapid fire set of “Zuko goes on a field trip with someone to get them to like him,” with no time or interest to spend on introducing and developing an entirely new ship. “The Southern Raiders” isn’t particularly different from “The Firebending Masters” or “Boiling Rock Parts 1 and 2″ in this regard, with the most time actually being given to Zuko’s relationship with Sokka! Toph and Aang are written as the members of the Gaang most understanding of and compassionate toward Zuko. It’s also notable that the writers had Zuko not join the Gaang at the end of Book 2 since they thought he wasn’t ready, obviating the opportunity to have Zuko and Katara together for a full season.
It’s interesting to also discuss Mai. Some sort of childhood crush between her and Zuko is hinted at twice in early Book 2, long before Zuko and Katara have any significant non-hostile interaction. It’s not clear what exactly the writers were planning on doing with this, especially with Zuko not planned to return to the Fire Nation with Azula until late in the writing of Book 2, but the crush between Mai and Zuko looks very much like a chekhov's gun that some writer expected to go off eventually somehow.
You can ship Zutara all you want. I don’t hate the ship, and I think Zuko and Katara could be a nice couple. Some of the people involved with the show probably thought that Zuko and Katara could be a nice couple, most notably Dante Basco. However, it is abundantly clear that, for whatever reason, the vast majority of creative decisions made were on the premise that Aang and Katara would end up together.
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South Park Headcanons: Pip & Damien Edition!
Pip
-He didn’t know there was more than one type of tea before he was sent to London, where Pocket introduced him to the variations for throughout the day (like a strong black tea in the morning, and chamomile in the evening). He was very excited about this.
-One of his biggest fears is thunderstorms. He doesn’t mind rain on its own, he quite enjoys it, but the rumbling and flashing of thunder and lightning makes him jumpy. If he’s alone and the storm continues on, he will eventually start to cry. His fear worsens as the storm worsens.
-When he was living back in England (before he became a gentleman or met Estella), he caught scarlet fever. He survived by the skin of his teeth. This has left him with some prolonged respiratory issues, but they’re not too bad, since he was around 7 years old when he got sick.
-He has various burn scars from when Damien blew him up. He also has a bite mark scar on his arm from when he was turned into a zombie (s1ep7). He’s also got a few from when he cracked his head open (namely, the Unaired Pilot).
-Although the other 4th graders don’t really appreciate his efforts, he has stayed apart of the school’s dodgeball team out of pure enjoyment. The kids don’t make fun of him as much during the games, as they don’t want to be on the receiving end of his surprisingly strong throwing ability.
-He still practices archery when he can with a bow he found behind Jimbo’s Guns, but fencing is a bit harder to do, since finding a proper sword to do so is a bit difficult to find in a place like South Park.
-He’s not very prideful, but always keeps his hair well groomed, taking special care to wash, brush, and style it to his liking. The other boys make fun of him for it, saying it makes him look like a girl, but he lets their comments slide, if only for his hair.
-His newsboy cap was a late gift from his mother. He received it after she and her husband had already passed on. This is his most prized possession, and he would be devastated if anything happened to it.
-When he died, Butters was the only one to show up to his funeral and burial service and is one of the only recurring visitors to his gravesite.
-As he ages in Hell, his final height reaches 6’6”. He’s slim and lanky, but still moves with a gracefulness that he pays no mind to. His hair reaches the middle of his back, and he sometimes ties it into a loose ponytail that sits between his shoulder blades.
Damien
-His nails grow in naturally black and sharp like his father’s.
-He puts up a tough front, but he’s actually quite sensitive, which is why it’s difficult for him to make friends. Very few have seen this vulnerable side, Pip being one of them.
-During the plot of the movie, his relationship with his father was very strained, since Satan chose to spend more time with Saddam than his own son. This rift caused Damien to resent his father for a long time, but their relationship is on the mend after Saddam was killed (again).
-Damien pretends he hates when Kenny shows up in Hell but is actually relieved and excited that he has someone his own age to play with (and someone to pay attention to him) for a while before Kenny revives.
-He fucking hates Saddam. And Chris. Not as much with Chris, but he still does, as his father goes right back to ignoring his existence.
-His favorite music includes a mix of Sammy Hagar, ICP, Stormtroopers of Death, and Metallica. He secretly listens to Frank Sinatra after Pip introduced him to it.
-When he was younger and his powers were just awakening, his favorite thing to do as a toddler was to set anything and everything on fire. As he gets a bit older, he claims he just likes to set things ablaze, but this is just a cover for him not fully understanding how to use his powers still. For example, he could point at something with the intent to flip it, but will set it on fire instead, and claim “that’s what I meant to do the whole time!”.
-Damien’s learned to be more compassionate with the help of Kenny and (more so) Pip, but it still takes a long time, considering the way and the place he was raised.
-Out of the hundreds of sentry dogs his father has as apart of his army of evil, Damien’s favorite is a young three-headed hellhound named Luci, who he sneaks out to see at night, even though no one’s supposed to interact with the dogs to keep them war-ready. His heart melts for the dog, and she’s able to bring a smile to his face on even the hardest of days.
-He doesn’t do much when it comes to styling his hair, but he does what he can to keep his sideburns looking good, as they make him look more “badass”, as he claims.
-When he becomes an adult, he stands at 9’1”, and is built like his father, just without the goat legs and red skin. He has a full beard and black horns that grow straight upwards and is able to summon a pair of bat-like wings and a spear-tipped tail on command.
-He can speak fluent Latin, but no one knows it.
Dip
-As children, Pip teaches Damien how to ballroom dance (as per Damien embarrassedly asking him how after watching him). It takes him a while to learn, but he eventually gets the hang of it, and turns out to be quite a good dancer. (During their wedding reception when they’re older, their first dance is the same one Pip initially taught him, and to the same song they learned with).
-During the events of the movie, Damien spends a lot of time up on Earth to avoid Saddam and his father and spends most of his time in the movie theater. They reunite during a showing of “Asses of Fire”, and later bond over ideals of La Resistance, being the outcast, and an unstable parental presence. They grow close by the end of the film.
-Satan has an “earth house” that he and Damien occasionally move to when the devil wants to live somewhere with nicer scenery. When they are residing on the surface, Pip comes to live with them, much preferring to sleep under their roof than the dilapidated roof of the orphanage on the outskirts of town.
-Pip is always amazed by Damien’s powers, but his fire entrances him the most. Even into adulthood, Pip will sit and watch as fire dances across the other’s fingertips as if it was his first time witnessing it.
-Damien still calls him “Pip”, but not in a negative way. He saves “Phillip” for more delicate situations, good or bad.
After being made fun of for so long, Pip becomes slightly self-conscious of his heritage. When he’s with Damien, the demon encourages him to use more British phrases and dialogue to help him regain confidence and pride for his heritage.
-When they marry, Pip takes Damien’s name, only because his family name has brought him nothing but bad luck and a bad image back home, and since he was the last living Pirrip, he felt it right to end the namesake, but without ending it in death like all his brothers and his father.
-Their love language is physical touch, going all the way back to when they were 10 years old with gentle pats on the back and high-fives. As adults, they even go as far as (mainly Damien) carrying the other around their home, even if they’re just doing some menial task. To know that the other is physically there is what reassures them most.
Feel free to add more in the comments or reblog!
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Following my buffy and angel rewatches, I've decided to do a complete whedon tv rewatch - aka, I'm gonna rewatch firefly and serenity and I've already started dollhouse. I'm writing this having seen the unaired pilot and the first episode only, and it's been only slightly less than a decade since I last watched the show, so details are extremely fuzzy, and it's interesting to experience the show this way.
This is the first time I've seen the unaired pilot, and, firstly, if this is your first time watching dollhouse, do not watch the unaired pilot first. It's the superior episode, but the way the season got restructured means that it's one big spoiler for some of my favorite season one plotlines. But I do think it's stronger overall than the aired first episode. In a way it's less plot heavy - the episode is really more interested in being a pilot than standing as a one and done episode of television, so I understand why the network didn't like it - but it's lore heavy, and introduces a lot of seasonal plot content. It also explains why we're following Echo specifically way better than the aired first episode, which is more interested in selling you on the scifi premise than hinting at anything beyond that.
Both are a little clunky in different places. I feel like Boyd's introduction is much smoother in the aired first episode, but the unaired episode introduces Paul Ballard much more efficiently, through the people around him interacting with him rather than a superior telling him his own story. Same for Topher being way more telly than showy in the aired first episode. Both episodes are a little heavy on the telling rather than the showing - that's the nature of scifi to an extent - but the unaired pilot, because it doesn't have a plot™ to get to, does a better job of hiding its worldbuilding info dumps in realistic dialogue. Amy Acker's character is basically entirely missing from the aired episode as well, which is unfortunate, but I liked that Alpha is more subtly inserted than he was in the OG.
One final thought. The unaired pilot starts with a shot of Echo swimming upwards, followed by a montage of a few of her Active identities. This was a really strong beginning in lots of ways, way better than the conversation that opens the aired first episode, but I also like that it gave me sort of a birthing vibe. I don't know what the intention of the swimming metaphor was, and if anyone knows any behind the scenes info on that I'd be curious to know, but to me it symbolizes Echo's identities being "born". I thought it was interesting and I'll be paying attention to see if they use swimming more in further episodes.
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UNAIRED PILOT
season 000 : story 000 : episode 000
[23 NOV 1963] || 7 NOV 2022
Starting off... interestingly... is the unaired pilot, titled An Unearthly Child; the same as the first broadcast episode.
The mystery of child, Susan "Foreman", is clearly introduced by Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. Ian & Barbara's immediate chemistry does a lot of favours, as it firmly asserts the pair as genuine friends.
Susan's first scene is... well it's quite something.
"I like walking through the English fog... it's mysterious..."
Her otherworldlyness is effectively, if somewhat awkwardly, presented in flashback montages of her thinking Great Britain used the decimal system in money, and thinks that doing litmus paper tests as a 15 year old is incredibly basic and obvious.
This goes a bit overboard when she makes a rorschach test, draws a hexagon around it, and... jumpscares herself with it..?
To this day I doubt anyone really knew what was going on here. And if someone does, I desperately want to hear it.
Moving on...
"I feel afraid -- as if we're about to interfere in something best left alone"
The Doctor’s first scenes are quite good; he instantly has this grandfatherly quality, while also being this distant, mysterious being, toying with the wants and whims of the two Humans. Primarily Ian. Eventually, Susan properly reveals she's inside the box, and the teachers barge in...
Enter : the TARDIS
The blatant alienness that the Doctor and Susan can now display, given Ian & Barbara have now seen their ship, is quite interesting, although Barbara's adamant insistence that the pair are lying does get a bit tiring.
"We are not of this race.. we are not of this Earth. We are wanderers in the fourth dimensions of time and space" - [A line which I think, while already pretty good, is greatly improved upon in the finished, broadcast version]
"I know these Earth people better than you. Their minds reject things they can't understand"
...and the the Doctor kidnaps them.
His reasoning is sound, it's just a far cry from the Doctor we know today for him to abduct two innocent, accidental witnesses, and be so blatantly dismissive to the voices of others. And that's what makes the First so interesting.
And so, it's the first onscreen TARDIS flight... landing them here...
In all, it's a decent introduction. It establishes the key concepts of the show in a quick 25 minute runtime; alien character, the Doctor, travels throughout time and space in a police box that's bigger on the inside - at this point accompanied by his granddaughter Susan, and her school teachers Ian & Barbara.
The dialogue writing (and delivery) needs some work, but that's easy to say when you already know that the broadcast version of this episode does both much better. Despite the obvious need for improvement, this pilot already has such great chemistry and charm, with great music, cinematography, and set design.
★★★★☆
#doctor who#the doctor#susan foreman#ian chesterton#barbara wright#william hartnell#carol ann ford#william russell#jacqueline hill#doctor who review
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i know i am like 2 episodes behind but if some people think that una being illyrian when in the cage it was even hinted she was an illyrian.
On the one hand, like I understand not being mentally ill about Star Trek and knowing every piece of lore and reading all the novels etc. However if people are gonna be rude about it they could at least know wtf they’re talking about, you know? And like I get the cage isn’t *technically* canon because it’s an unaired pilot episode but still, it’s just factually wrong to say SNW writers just made it up out of thin air.
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Hacks Appreciation Week
Day 1: Favorite Scene
I would have to say the scene that most made me want to stand up and cheer and felt the most satisfying every time I watched it was Deborah demolishing Drew on stage in episode 8.
After all the heartbreak we, as an audience, now know Deborah has been through (including all the sexual harassment and assault she’s had to face) it’s incredibly satisfying for Deborah to finally have her moment to say “you know what? no more. fuck this shit.” and rightfully destroy this piece of shit man who thinks it’s in any way acceptable to joke about drugging a woman and sexually harass other female comedians and just generally be a garbage, talentless human being.
Deborah has usually just kept on trucking regardless of how much things bothered her or unhappy they made her, but this is the moment she breaks. When she’s done just powering through shitty treatment. Great character arcs are usually defined by them realizing that the power they had to change their life was always within them. Deb is there now.
For so long, Deborah has bit her tongue about the terrible sexist treatment she’s experienced in this industry because, understandably, she doesn’t want to paint a target on her back, again. Even to the point that she perpetuated sexist jokes herself.
To me, this moment, is Deborah fully coming back to herself. The Deborah that showed up in that club was similar to the woman we saw in the unaired late night pilot but this time sharper, more shrewd...and this time, she’s not alone.
But it’s also the fact that that this scene isn’t just Deborah’s alone that also seals it for me. The intense intimacy of Ava starting to realize that Deborah took what she had to say to heart and her being the first one to realize what’s going on. It just again speaks to the intimacy of the relationship between performer and writer. There’s something special about being the person in the audience who knows where the joke comes from. I also think this is the moment in which Deborah fully became someone Ava truly admires.
Something I will maintain to my dying breath is that Ava Daniels is a good person and one of the things I most admire her is her concern about justice. It’s obvious, even though she like everybody else isn’t perfect about it, that she wants to do the right thing. She’s sensitive, empathetic and compassionate. Ava reminds Deborah of her moral values and how she could maybe use her art for good too. That is incapsulated in this scene.
I think in a more wider sense though this was the first scene that it really hit home for me that Ava and Deborah’s relationship might not just be good for them personally and their close circle...but that it might also be good for the world. Some of my most favorite couples, one that practically transcend into something even greater, tend to be ones that seem to have or had a potential for a great destiny: Jamie and Brienne from A Song of Ice and Fire, Zuko and Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Couples who’s shared values and commitment to doing the right thing in a world full of injustices make them become legendary. People would remember them, sing songs about them, their stories would become myths.
Am I saying that Ava and Deborah are on that level?
I think they could be something like that and this scene explains why.
It was the devastating look on Deborah’s face right beforehand realizing that her individual success was admirable, yes, but unfortunately systemic sexism is going to continue if people in the industry don’t speak out. For so long, Deborah was so vulnerable but now she’s clawed and fought for the success and power she’s gotten and she finally realizes maybe she can use it for good. Just like she had wanted to do in 1976. Her dream didn’t die then, it was just delayed for a long time.
But Deborah can’t do it alone. And I think along with being artistic soulmates, they may just truly be soulmates (romantic or not, in the end) in that the two of them together have almost a greater life purpose that they can only achieve together. To me, this is the moment that I feel might genuinely be the most Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner moment they’ve had so far. Two complimentary halves of an artistic soul who use both of their strengths to both entertain and to promote their values in their work.
Ava is the set up and Deborah is the punchline. Ava has the strong moral compass and writerly insight, and Deborah has the confidence, the experience and the wit to be able to get people to listen.
It is this scene that made me realize they maybe Ava and Deborah’s future as a couple (fingers crossed) might not be confined to just personal fulfillment...but to greatness. It is this moment that I think we see the best potential for Ava and Deborah to become comedy legends.
Will that happen?
It remains to be seen and maybe they won’t, but this scene makes a damn good case for what could be possible.
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The lying liars who lie
Years and years late to the party, I’ve finally gotten my hands on all the DVDs of BBC Sherlock, and I thought it would be fun to watch the extra material carefully, one piece after another, and also listen to at least some of the show makers’ commentary of the episodes. But at this point, after S4 where DVDs seemed to be a constant lying device in general, I tend to look at them with a bit more suspicious eyes...
I still love the show of course, but now that I’ve taken this deep dive into all the special features, I find them a truly hard thing to try to wrap my head around. Even this long after the fact, I’m amazed by the amount of shameless, self-congratulatory BS in the DVDs, where the people involved can’t have enough of complimenting each other and their show, while they skillfully avoid to discuss anything actually meaningful about the plot line. ;) For example, Moffat claims in the S2 DVD that “In fact, you’ll never see a more obsessively authentic version of Sherlock Holmes than this one”. But if we follow their light-hearted commentary, which basically takes the show at face value, I’d call that not just hyperbole, but an outright lie. If you want to see the ‘authentic’ stories from ACD’s work in this show, you’ll definitely need to go much deeper into the subtext and meta levels - neither of which are mentioned on these DVDs of course. Here’s my own (rather subjective) ‘review’ of the whole thing, trying to pinpoint why I view most of the commentary of the show from its own makers as an advanced art of deception.
(My musings under the cut)
Series 1 - a wealth of extra material
First of all - as many of you probably knew already - the whole of the Unaired Pilot is added to the DVD of S1. In the extra material about the making of the series, they (Sue Vertue, Mofftiss and others) talk about what things they changed between the Pilot and ASiP, claiming that many changes were necessary improvements once they knew that they had a whole series and a lot more time at their disposal.
Which I can perfectly understand and agree with in general. But I think what’s missing in their discussions is more interesting than what’s actually there (”Mind the gap” ;) ). Things that I would expect from the show makers when they go to the trouble of comparing the pilot version with the aired product. There’s not a word, for example, about the fact that they added both Mycroft and Moriarty to the story in ASiP - two characters who later turn out to play major roles and appear in almost every other episode until the end of TFP. Or about the choice that one of the screenwriters would play Mycroft.
Neither do they discuss why they chose to relocate the place where Sherlock was challenged by the cabbie from 221B to Roland Kerr’s School of Further Education. Instead they focus on the details, like for example the new design of the interior of 221B.
Not to mention the fact that almost every scene in the Pilot is mirrored in ASiP (as pointed out long ago by @kateis-cakeis X), but at Angelo’s in the Pilot Sherlock follows the events with the cabbie while looking in an actual mirror. I even noticed that in the Pilot the cabbie is offering Sherlock dark-coloured bottles with the pills in them, while in ASiP those bottles are transparent, as if the cabbie is offering Sherlock to play Black or White in the chess game that he is simulating. What’s with all these mirrors, though? Not a word on the DVD... ;)
Now, even though these rather remarkable choices are neglected together with a great bunch of minor ones, I still think that the most interesting fact about all this is that they actually included the whole pilot version within this DVD, which is sold by the franchise. Why even do this, when it raises far more questions than it answers? The only logical reason I can come up with is that they’re laying out a track of little hints that anyone with a deep enough interest in the show to actually buy the DVDs can try to follow. And it seems to me that lying by omission is one of the first steps in the long line of cryptic and misleading author comments on this show. But at the same time, they clearly want the fans to have access to it all, even the abandoned version.
Moving on to Series 2, time for bigger lies
In the extra material of this DVD Benedict himself describes how his character "faces one of his deadliest enemies in the shape of Love, and it comes in the form of Irene Adler, who is this extraordinary dominatrix [insert here a bunch of superlatives regarding Adler]...”. And then we see how Adler whips Sherlock with a riding crop (without any kind of consent, I have to add) while he’s lying on the floor, and we have Lara Pulver telling us how it was to have a go at Benedict on set. So Holmes whips dead bodies and Adler whips living; seems like a match made in hell! :))
Gatiss claims, grinning with his whole face, that “they’re clearly, absolutely made for each other”. OK, so I think we can see Sherlock being intellectually impressed by Adler, and even trying to protect her from Mycroft, and we can see John acting jealously. We can also see her being dressed and styled as a perfect, female mirror of Sherlock. But I’m still at a loss what all this has to do with love on Sherlock’s part? Especially since he’s not even responding in any fashion to her various attempts at seducing him.
And there’s more: Paul McGuigan, the director of ASiB, claims that the scene where Sherlock has a conversation with Adler inside his Mind Palace about the crime case with the car that backfires "is a part of a kind of love story, if you like...” No, I don’t. Maybe it’s just me, but if their aim really was to convey to their audience a love story between Sherlock and The Woman, I think they failed miserably. All I see is a guy ’mansplaining’ to a clever woman how to use her brain, while she’s trying to flirt with him by expressing her admiration (to no avail, though) and make deductions at the same time. Nothing new under the sun, really. John did the same thing repeatedly in ASiP (without making own deductions) and got far more attention from Sherlock, but I’ve never heard any of the show makers call that ”a love story”. But by ’lie-splaining’ the scene with Irene to the audience, they try to manipulate us all to see it as such...
In all the direct commentary of this episode, where Steven, Mark, Sue, Benedict and Lara are present, I get the impression that every time they even touch on the relationship between Sherlock and John, they hurry to add the term “friendship” or “man love” or similar words in case they forgot them at first, avoiding even the tiniest possibility that there could be anything more going on between them. They even explain that when Irene calls them “a couple” she does not mean anything romantic. This whole approach feels almost paranoic in the midst of all the laid-back jokes and light-hearted talk about the filming. It’s as if a sort of restrictive, heteronormative filter or blanket is being constantly applied, to teach the audience the ‘no homo’ lesson of it all. And the more I listen to this, the more tiresome it becomes.
In the commentary Moffat does reveal an interesting detail, though: that the ‘Flight of the Dead’ in ASiB was inspired by a cut out scene in the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service. To me this is just one more reason to question the ‘authentic’ quality of this scene, as opposed to possibly taking place in Sherlock’s Mind Palace. But I digress...
Listening to the commentary in general, it’s like it’s aimed to distract the attention from what’s going on at the screen rather than highlight it and try to explain their intentions. They do mention that Irene didn’t actually ‘beat’ Sherlock in the end of ASiB, but there’s no explanation of this obvious deviation from canon, where Adler does indeed fool Holmes, taking advantage of his prejudices.
The rest of the extra material of S2 is mostly about technical stuff, special effects and such, and also about filming techniques and Benedict’s delivery of fast deductions. But the part I really do love is the one where Andrew Scott talks about how much he enjoyed playing the scene where Moriarty dances before breaking into the Crown Jewels. That’s one of my favorite scenes of he whole show. :) Also, the takeaway message from this DVD is Moffat’s words at the end:
“These are still the formative years of Sherlock Holmes, and the most important thing about this series is not that it’s updated; it’s the fact that those two men are still young and they’re still at the beginning of what they don’t yet know is gonna be a lifelong partnership”.
And then comes Series 3...
...and its extra material, with the most blatant attempts at deception so far, I believe. At this point Sherlock is called a “psychopath” by both the show’s characters, John’s blog, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as if it were true, which is a big deviation from ACD canon. That simply doesn’t happen there; while Holmes is sometimes described as eccentric, no one in the books is ever claiming that Sherlock Holmes has some kind of mental illness leaning towards cruelty and egotism - not even his enemies say this about him. In the show, however, they begin in ASiP with making him torture a dying man for information (something that is not included in the Pilot). And in S3, where they avoid discussing the reason why they turned Mary Morstan into a ruthless assassin, this major shift is glossed over by the fact that in the same episode (HLV) they also turn Sherlock into a murderer, who cold-bloodedly blows the brains out of a blackmailer for threatening to make said assassin’s crimes public.
But without ever getting into the “why” of it all, the cast and crew seem overly happy and smiling describing these rather morbid choices as something positive; “fantastic”, "fresh and new” and "amazing” are their choice of words. Benedict claims that Mary, who has literally shot and almost killed Sherlock in HLV, is now "a new best friend of Sherlock’s”. Amanda claims that Mary “is protecting John” when she shoots Sherlock in the chest. Now they’re both psychopaths, and poor little John is forced to stomach them both because he’s addicted to danger. In Amanda’s words, Mary also “kind of gets in between the two of them, but she wants them to be together as well”. Which is a load of BS considering that Mary tries to kill the protagonist of the story.
Lars Mikkelsen thinks it’s “such a good script” because “you’re mislead as an audience”. But he never gets the chance to expand on what the misleading actually contains, because then Mofftiss cut in to express how much they love playing with “what ifs”. As if this whole mega-budget project of a show were just a big experimental playground without any actual story to tell.
Benedict repeats his line from HLV that Magnussen “preys on people who are different” and Moffat also says he “exploits people who are different”. Which is really confusing, considering what we can see Magnussen actually do in the show. Lady Smallwood and John Garvie are two well-established, powerful governmental politicians whom Magnussen blackmails by finding their respective pressure points. In Garvie’s case his pressure point seems to be alcohol problems in his past, but according to media he’s later arrested on charges of corruption. Lady Smallwood is blackmailed on the basis of her husband having sent compromising letters to a minor many years ago, in spite of later claiming that he thought she was older and stopped when he found out the truth. And then Magnussen is blackmailing an assassin who recently threatened to execute him but shot Sherlock Holmes instead, in order to try to get at Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, another powerful governmental figure.
But what does media seeking out dirt on certain people in power and their families have to do with “people who are different”? Despicable as the method may be, isn’t this unfortunately how political power play usually works in our society? Or are TPTB somehow a repressed minority group now? Unless this whole “people who are different” accusation is actually about something entirely different, something that none of the show makers even cares to mention... ;)
In these DVDs, none of the involved persons is ever discussing the change of roles with regards to canon, though, or the (lack of) logics in this turn of events, or even a hint about the narrative motivation behind them. It’s all about the great Drama, the extraordinary visual effects and the aim to endlessly “surprise the audience”. Which is fine by me to a certain extent, but when this is all that’s being said, it feels extremely superficial, as if the audience is merely seen as a bunch of consumers that have to be triggered more and more by horror, special effects and cliff hangers to be able to appreciate the show. (“Warm paste” indeed, like Gatiss has later criticized some viewers of wanting...) While the "why”; the idea behind this surrealistic adaptation, made by self-proclaimed fanboys of ACD, is not even touched upon. Around this, the silence is total and therefore totally confusing.
Maybe I shouldn’t even go into Series 4...
...but why not, since I’ve already started? :)
First of all, there’s a lot of extra material on this DVD and I particularly love the parts about the music and composing and Arwel Wyn Jones’ work with the design and build-up of John’s and Mary’s flat and the interior of 221B. Those bits are truly enjoyable. What I could live without, though, is the leading commentary that kind of instructs us, the audience, how we should interpret the show.
Benedict is on it again on this DVD, telling us that in TST they picked up where they left off in S3 and “It’s a very happy unit of three people that then become four.” Why does he feel the need to make this statement, considering how S3 ended? Actually, if there’s anything I totally fail to see in S4, it’s happiness. The banter between the three of them may seem entertaining for a while, but who could have a relaxed, warm relationship with someone who tried and almost succeeded to kill you less than a year ago? Without any sign of remorse? Now there’s a dark tone of discomfort and mean jokes that feels forced and not even a bit happy to me.
But Martin tells us how excited John and Mary are about starting a family and Amanda mentions how much they’re looking forward to the baby. Again and again it’s repeated, as though trying to rub it in: “they’re in a good place, they’re a loving, married couple”. Yeah, right - a child that (judging by TSoT) wasn’t at all planned and now with an assassin for a mother... Twice we see the new parents complain that their daughter has the mark of Satan on her forehead and debate which horror movie she’s from. The clichéd hypocrisy of it all is sickening, and I’m willing to bet that it’s really meant to be. ;)
But Gatiss chimes in, deciding for us all that the christening of Rosie is “a funny scene” and “they’re enjoying each other, enjoying being on adventures as a three”.
An interesting detail is that Gatiss also tells us that the working name of this episode was “The Adventure of the Melting power Ranger”. So this little blue guy was that important? :) And - even more interesting - is when he says: “Cake is now the code for violent death”. So how should we interpret Sherlock, John and Molly going out to have cake in TLD then, on Sherlock’s (supposed) birthday?
These might be jokes, though, but when they tell us that Sue cries every time she sees Mary’s death I strongly believe they must be joking. How could anyone feel truly moved by this overly sentimental long monologue where far more efforts are put into reacting to Mary’s speech than saving her life? And John’s mooing like a cow, is that also moving? :)
One thing Martin says about TLD that actually disgusts me is regarding the morgue scene where John assaults Sherlock and Sherlock lets it happen: “From there, really, their relationship can only sort of rebuild, that’s the absolute worst it can get”. As if outright physical abuse would be something that makes you want to rebuild a relationship? Wow - just wow... How far can they go with this crap?
Anyway, when we finally arrive at the absurdity of TFP and Sherlock’s ‘secret sister’, everything is of course discussed as if she actually does exist on the given premises, and everything she does is ‘real’, no matter how impossible it would be in real life. The abandonment of any attempt to have the story line make logical sense is skillfully covered up by more distraction with fascinating technicalities of the film making process. This is where Gatiss makes his now almost classic statement that after Sherlock and John jump out of the window at 221B when a grenade explodes there, it’s just “Boop! And they’re fine.”
Of course there’s no serious attempt at explaining this logically. Except perhaps Gatiss claiming that they both landed on Speedy’s awning - whatever good that would do to them, since the awning is leaning downwards, but never mind... But we never even saw that happen, did we? A great deal of time is then dedicated to show all the precautions to have Martin and Ben jumping safely at low level onto a madras supported by empty cardboard boxes.
Sian Brooke did say something interesting about Sherrinford, however, that got me thinking. She said that Eurus “wants revenge for the years and years that she has been held captive” there, isolated, and that in TFP the Holmes children are now “lab rats” and “it’s an experiment”. On a meta level, I think we can indeed see this episode - and maybe the whole show - as a kind of experiment, but maybe we, the audience, are also lab rats? Since Sherrinford is slightly shaped like a film camera (not commented in the extra material, of course), it leads my thought to all the adaptations through the years and years where Holmes and Watson have not been allowed to be together. A whole century when Sherlock Holmes has been held captive, restricted by the very same sort of heteronormative filter that all this extra material imposes; it’s like Sherrinford, isn’t it? Which gives all the more meaning to Moriarty’s arrival to the island, accompanied by Freddy Mercury’s “I want to break free”...
I think I’ll let the final words in this little exposé come from Mark Gatiss in The Writers’ Chat (my bolding):
“Moriarty is a fascinating thing in that in our sea of ongoing lies, one thing we’ve genuinely been completely consistent about is telling people he’s dead. But no-one believes it! And it’s a rather brilliant thing.” Again - self-congratulatory statements. But instead of providing some actual evidence of the death of this character, who has kept popping up in almost every episode since his supposed demise, they think that the more a confirmed liar repeats something, the truer it gets? And the more we’re supposed to believe them? Well, all we can do is wait and see. :)
Tagging some people who might be interested:
@raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @gosherlocked @lukessense @sagestreet @thepersianslipper
My earlier meta on a similar topic (X)
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The Two Thank Yous
Upon my re-examining the dialogue of ASiP, there are two passing statements that I think are incredibly significant.
Many people read the iconic dinner scene at Angelos as the first introduction of Sherlock and John's sexual orientations, but see it only as a nod, a reference to it, and nothing more. I would argue that the two passing "thank yous" that both John and Sherlock express say otherwise.
The first thank you comes from John who first tells Angelo that he is not Sherlock's date. However when Angelo comes back with a candle to make things “More Romantic”, John thanks him.
Angelo reappears, sets down a candle between them, lights it. John looks at it - tiny bit uncomfortable.
JOHN Thanks.
JOHN Right. Okay. Unattached. Like me. Fine, good. Sherlock looks at him a moment.
SHERLOCK ... John, you should know, I consider myself married to my work, and while I’m flattered by your interest I’m really not looking for any kind of --
JOHN No, no, I wasn’t asking you out, no! I’m just saying, it’s all fine!
SHERLOCK Good, thank you.
Here I would argue that the “Thank you” is not as much of a pleasantry but an implicit acknowledgment and tacit understanding of each other's situations.
John, who at first denied being Sherlock’s date, concedes to Angelos “romantic candle” and thanks him for Angelo's discernment of his true desires. As we continue to see later in the season, it is obvious to everyone around them that they are an item.
Sherlock, who understands himself to be outed after John seems to come onto him, thanks John that he at the very least accepts all of him however complicated and difficult it may be to do so.
When Angelo came back with the candle, John could have said nothing in response, it did not warrant one. We know this is true because in the Unaired Pilot John doesn’t say anything! Sherlock, similarly, could have just ended his statement with “I know it’s fine”, and not responded to John's exclamation, as he often doesn’t in his convos with John.
As usual, it is about what is said, and what remains unsaid. What they have always meant to say, but never have.
All pictures obtained from kissthemgoodbye.net
#JohnLock#Unaired pilot#Unaired gay pilot#gay pilot#Sherlock#A Study in Pink#Series 1#Angelos#not really my area#Meta#Sherlock Meta#johnlock meta#tjlc meta#tjlc#Maris quiry
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Dark Greetings this Spooky Season Ms. V. Can we get a list of your favorite Halloween movies and specials? I know you have seen *everything* and I am trying to go beyond my usual rewatches this holiday month.
V. AIMMYARROWSHIGH’S CRITERIA FOR HALLOWEEN EPISODES
Does the Halloween element combine convincingly with the usual universe of the show (ex: Lizzie McGuire 2x09 “Those Freaky McGuires” is not good as a Halloween episode because it changes the rules of the Lizzie McGuire universe, whereas Community 2x06 “Epidemiology” is a GREAT Halloween episode because it manages to logically introduce zombies to the regular Community universe)?
Does the Halloween element advance the plot of the episode/series (ex: the reason Boy Meets World 5x17 “And Then There Was Shawn” is literally the best Halloween episode ever made is that it uses the horror movie tropes it satirizes to provide a CRUCIAL turning-point to the plot of the show)?
Is the Halloween episode in the forefront enough that it’s clearly a holiday episode (ex: HAVING ONE JACK-O’LANTERN ON A DESK DOES NOT A HALLOWEEN SPECIAL MAKE, LAW & ORDER 16x03 “GHOSTS”! You gotta go ALL-IN, like Bob’s Burgers 3x02 “Full Bars”!)?
Does the Halloween theme balance well between spooky and warm-n-fuzzy (ex: Criminal Minds 11x21 “Mr. Scratch” is too fucking bleak, but Criminal Minds 12x06 “Elliott’s Pond” has a joyous/celebratory tone to the ending despite being a genuinely scary episode)?
Is it generally a well-written, acted, and designed episode of television (ex: Saved by the Bell! 3x26 “Mystery Weekend” is seriously, not exaggerating, the worst thing I’ve ever watched in my life; Psych 1x15 “Scary Sherry, Or Bianca’s Toast” is a triumph of the medium)?
THE BEST, bar none, Halloween special ever made is Boy Meets World 5x17, “And Then There Was Shawn.” Period. There can be no argument, except MAYBE Community 3x06, “Epidemiology,” but I like “And Then There Was Shawn” better because the parody and homage as less… biting? And because I think it continues and addresses the emotional core of the regular BMW season better than “Epidemiology” does for Community s3. “Epi” DOES plant the seed (…heh) for the Season 3B major plot arc of Shirley’s pregnancy and Chang Deciding To Murder, but it gets some major minus points for mocking Yvette Nicole Brown’s weight with other characters’ responses to her costume, tbh. And “And Then There Was Shawn” is just fucking iconic. It is THE Halloween episode manual, IMO, if there were to be a textbook on how to write a perfect Halloween episode for your sitcom.
HOWEVER, I also have to give major props to Bob’s Burgers and Psych, as complete series, for their CONSISTENTLY excellent Halloween episodes. A lot of series that have multiple Halloween eps really phone it in after one or two, because they don’t have any more ideas for how to incorporate Halloween pastiches while maintaining the overall feeling of the series (tbh B99, while the Halloween Heists are excellent in general, is/has been coming very close to this line, and I think that if they HADN’T had to switch out the Heist to Cinco de Mayo in s6, they would have jumped their Heist Shark [and I think they know it, too, because it was lampshaded in the episode itself]) or they just straight-up don’t have any more ideas for what or how to have the characters they’re bound to parody or pay homage to a Halloween thing after they’ve already done one or two. And let’s be real: those one or two have probably been either The Shining or Rear Window, because those are pretty much the two that every show starts with.
Bob’s manages to make every Halloween episode feel very fresh and organic to the series, which I think they do have some leeway to do because of the nature of cartoons keeping the Belchers living a kind of loop of never aging, yk, but amazingly they’ve only done the “Tina feels too old to trick or treat, maybe? Nope, she’s not 14 yet, so there’s still time!” thing in a way that felt tropey once (in 3x02 Full Bars). They’ve been able to address Tina being 13/in 8th grade, and worrying about it being almost too late for her to keep trick or treating, in ways that were in-character and added to the overall episode in 4x02 Fort Night, 5x02 Tina and the Real Ghost, and 9x04 Nightmare on Ocean Avenue Street, without me rolling my eyes at the screen and going “TINA, EVERY SINGLE SHOW WITH A TWEEN IN IT HAS ALREADY DECIDED THAT THE AGE AT WHICH YOU MUST STOP TRICK OR TREATING IS FRESHMAN YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, COME ON NOW” which… at this point, is a Feat. Because like, I’ve POSTED over a thousand Halloween episodes, right? But I’ve watched and screencapped ::checks folder:: 3,905 Halloween episodes since 2014. Which is, um, a. lot. The ACTUAL BEST Bob’s Burgers Halloween episode is 6x03, “The Hauntening,” which is just… achingly perfect television. I know I’ve posted about it before (probably a couple times tbh) but the way that it aired originally back-to-back with The Simpsons 27x04, “Halloween of Horror,” so that the evening of Sunday cartoons juxtaposed eight-year-old Louise whose family worked so hard to scare her like she wanted with nine-year-old Lisa’s family working so hard to keep her from being too scared and make sure that she felt safe… reader, I FUCKIN CRIED. Little girls being deeply loved while also Spoopy Things!!!!!! IS WHAT HALLOWEEN SPECIALS ARE!!! FUCKIN!!!!!! ABOUT!!!!!!!
Psych, though, has the benefit of not really having any, like… central tone to the series? Beyond “friendship” and “having fun with joking,” tbh? So it’s able to do what a lot of series get docked “points” for in my Foolproof Halloween Special Ratings System That Is Completely Subjective To My Tastes And Mood, which is really just run full-tilt into parody and homage without really worrying about overall tonal connection to the rest of the season or series. 1x15, “Scary Sherry, or, Bianca’s Toast,” while it DOES fall victim to the way-too-common Halloween episode trap of making mental hospitals into a Scary Thing (they are a medical normality and a necessary thing for health for many people and should not be feared), is delightful Spooky Fun AND has the benefit of having Shannon Woodward in it.* We all know by now that if an episode of any show has Shannon Woodward as the guest star, it will by default end up being one of the best, if not THE best, episodes of that series. It’s just how having Shannon Woodward as your guest star rolls. I also really like, with Psych’s Halloween episodes, that quite a few of them understand the underlying thematic scope of Horror, which is “The Monstrous Feminine Is A Thing And All Horror Tropes Are Actually About Women’s Interior Lives Because Men Can’t Write Women And Fear Women Always,” yk, in a way that is neither TOO Actual Horror, which I am too afraid of to Do, or too trite and demeaning, which is the other basic trap that Halloween stuff falls into A Lot. Like, Scary Sherry is very much about women villainizing other women, avenging other women, and being in very specifically-female pain, even though Shawn & Gus are still the lens through which we solve the mystery, and so are 4x04 The Devil Is In The Details And The Upstairs Bedroom and 6x03 This Episode Sucks. But they give their Monstrous Females dignity and breadth, which is impressive, ESPECIALLY since they’re one-off guest characters. Also, 3x15 Tuesday the 17th is just plain funny and well-done, like, just give it props for the title alone.
*(Speaking of Shannon Woodward, another amazingly good Halloween episode is Raising Hope 4x07, “Murder, She Hoped,” which is among my very favorite Rear Window homage episodes and has probably the funniest gag in ANY Rear Window ep, in Martha Plimpton floating across the screen in the Grace Kelly silk nightgown and peignoir and announcing that it was on sale at Walmart, can you believe?! and honestly, yes. Perfection.)
Also excellent:
• The Addams Family (1991) + Addams Family Values (1993)
• Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School (RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU WERE GAY FOR SIBELLA AS A CHILD!)
• Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE GAY BECAUSE THE HEX GIRLS!)
• Halloweentown + Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge
• Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire!
• Z•O•M•B•I•E•S (to a lesser extent, Z•O•M•B•I•E•S 2)
• Clue (1985)
• Coraline
• Corpse Bride
• 6teen 2x00 Dude of the Dead
• Arthur 21x00 Arthur and the Haunted Treehouse
• Lamb-Chop in the Haunted Studio
• Arthur 8x04A Fern-kenstein's Monster
• Arthur 10x02 The Squirrels
• WandaVision 1x06 The All-New Halloween Spooktacular (I KNOW YOU, SPECIFICALLY, DEAR @plavoptice, HATE MCU!WANDA AND I DON'T BLAME YOU, YOUR REASONS ARE VERY VALID! But this is a good Halloween special so I'm putting it on my list In General.)
• Boy Meets World 2x06 Who's Afraid of Cory Wolf?
• Ghostbusters (2016)
• Gravity Falls 1x12 Summerween
• Leverage 4x02 Ten L'il Grifters Job
• The Loud House 2x40 Tricked!
• Mockingbird Lane 1x00 Unaired Pilot
• It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! (Classic, etc.)
I'm SURE I'm forgetting some that I'll rewatch this year myself. I'm a big Halloween Baking Championship fan, tbh, which is on Discovery+ now so I recommend that if you like mostly-relaxing nice people baking cakes that look like bats and such.
I'm also IMMENSELY INTENSELY EXCITED for The Muppets' Haunted Mansion on Disney+ next week!!!
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Have you ever done a ranking list of your favourite episodes?
not really , the thing with me is that i never rewatch tv shows . i binge through them once and then just watch few scenes in yt , but never rewatch any of it even if it was one of my favourite show. Glee is the only exception , though i really only watch very few eps from the earlier seasons and rewatched s5-s6 twice , though i’d skipped 100, new directions and the wedding during both my rewatches. there are eps like new new york and wonderful that i watch time to time as comfort eps playing in the background . from s3, first time and big brother are the only eps i have rewatched
i’d only watched glee for the first time last year , so like it’s not been that long to warrant a rewatch , but since i’d binged most of it in one stretch ( had taken a one month break b/w s3ep7 and ep8 because of how much i was getting tired of the shitty storylines of s3 , hence it being my least fave ) i forgot a lot of the non klaine stuff.
but i’ll try to rank the eps , just know that i’m very biased to klaine/kurt/blaine storylines . and the seasons too are ranked in the order i like them
6 . season 3
22. i kissed a girl
21. pot o gold
20. prom-asaurus
19. yes/no
18. i am unicorn
17. mash off
16. the spanish teacher
15. asian f
14. on my way
13. props
12. choke
11. hold on to sixteen
10. saturday night gleever
9. michael
8. goodbye
7. big brother
6. nationals
5. heart
4. extraordinary merry christmas
3. dance with somebody
2. purple piano project
1. first time
5. season 1
22. the rhodes not taken
21. funk
20. showmance
19. vitamin d
18. hairography
17. ballad
16. mashup
15. throwdown
14. the power of madonna
13. mattress
12. acafellas
11. dream on
10. home
9. pilot
8. hell-o
7. sectionals
6. preggers
5. bad reputation
4. wheels
3. journey to regionals
2. theatricality
1. laryngitis
4. season 4
22. britney 2.0
21. sweet dreams
20. lights out
19. shooting star
18. all or nothing
17. feud
16. thanksgiving
15. the role you were born to play
14. glease
13. swan song
12. sadie hawkins
11. naked
10. makeover
9. girls and boys on film
8. diva
7. glee,actually
6. i do
5. dynamic duets
4. the new rachel
3. break up
2. guilty pleasure
1. wonderful
3. season 2
22. britney/brittany
21. the substitute
20. comeback
19. special education
18. a very glee christmas
17. the sue sylvester shuffle
16. night of neglect
15. new york
14. funeral
13. never been kissed ( except for the klaine part, the whole ep is a mess)
12. rocky horror glee show
11. rumours
10. audition
9. sexy
8. grilled cheesus
7. blame it on the alcohol
6. prom queen
5. born this way
4. silly love songs
3. duets
2. furt
1. original song
2. season 6
13. the rise and fall of sue sylvester
12. hurt locker part 1
11. child star
10. homecoming
9. we built this glee club
8. what the world needs now
7. hurt locker part 2
6. a wedding
5. dreams come true
4. 2009
3. jagged little tapestry
2. transitioning
1. loser like me
1. season 5 ( i’m not going to rank the quaterback )
19. opening night
18. 100
17. tina in the sky with diamonds
16. city of angels
15. bash
14. a katy or gaga
13. new direction
12. end of twerk
11. previously unaired christmas
10. trio
9. movin out
8. the back up plan
7. puppet master
6. love love love
5. old dogs new trick
4. untitled rachel berry project
3. frenemies
2. tested
1. new new york
now top five glee episodes over all
5. original song : don’t ask me what happened besides klaine in this because i truly don’t remember . but the klaine parts are pure heavenly. s2 klaine is something i missed a lot and didn’t appreciate enough during my first watch but rewatching some klaine centric eps has made me appreciate their friendship a lot more. even the stuff leading upto the kiss is fantastic , it’s also an ep that shows how rachel and blaine can get similar but how they react to criticisms and how blaine tries to include everyone when pointed out unlike making a fit out of it with rachel is where they diverge and makes these incredibly different personalities .and the kiss was just to good and sparks were flying everywhere and it is something that glee could never recreate with any other couple. and “ reminds you of your mom’s funeral doesn’t it “” the casket was bigger but yes “ just proves that they are equally dumbasses that fit each other so well
4. wonder-ful : this is just pure comfort ep. it’s so bright and upbeat in the middle of the previous dark eps. so much kurt and klaine . a bit more focus on kurt’s mental health issues, which will later be forgotten but it’s good over here. supportive blaine as always just highlighting how much they understand each other. a lot of burt which is always a plus . a very good mercedes plotline which should’ve been given more time but still is one of the better ones she gets.just seeing how light and loving kurt turns once burt is finally in the safe zone. and ‘you get kinda cute when you get nervous’ and ‘with you in it a wondeful life’ and whatever homoerotic stuff that is going on b/w rachel and cassie
3. Loser like me : the pure angst . i love storylines where they hit the rock bottom from such a happy place and have to find their way to the top by leaning in on each other and supporting each other. great klaine scenes, s5b we where pushed to believe that kurt had it all together, but we finally got to see kurt being an absolute mess and realizing how he contributed to their relationship not working out instead of pitting it all on s4 cheating . confident got help all by himself in a better position blaine , rachel finally getting a storyline that’s interesting and makes her one to root for . This ep always gives me the chills and makes me excited for the rest of the season
2. Tested : It’s genuinely one of the funniest eps ever. amazing rachcedes moment . the guys presenting one of my fave family dynamics in the show. great samcedes and klaine plotline . and i love the way liab is shot , such a well choreographed performance and it really looks like chris and darren had so much fun doing it.
1. New new york : this ep is the perfect mixture of fluff , comedy and angst. And on top of that we get never tried before combination of dynamics like rachel and artie as well as our favourite dynamics like klaine, blam, kelliot . also , out of all the klaine plotlines, this feels to me the most realistic one and really shows how much they want to work out their highschool relationship into an adult setting but they’re still young clueless inexperienced couple who doesn’t really know what they’re doing but still trying to work it out the way they think is the best one to protect their relationship , showing how much they care for each other as we enter into the crazy hard parts of their relationship. also , to see these whole set of highschool friends trying to navigate their way into this busy adult life is so fun to watch .
#mer answers#1908jmd#thanks a lot for the ask#i'm really sorry for responding late#this has been in the works for the past two days working out each seasons one by one lol#also i've not been the best mentally and physically#i've got this terrible cold that i'm trying to contain before i have to travel#and i'm just emotionally drained for absolutely no reason#but yeah this was fun to do and think about#but i'm pretty sure all of this ranking will change once i get to rewatching the show maybe several years later
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When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.
Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, but the performatively patriotic Trump did no damage to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this manner. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.
Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral. (These sources, and others quoted in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House did not return earlier calls for comment, but Alyssa Farah, a White House spokesperson, emailed me this statement shortly after this story was posted: “This report is false. President Trump holds the military in the highest regard. He’s demonstrated his commitment to them at every turn: delivering on his promise to give our troops a much needed pay raise, increasing military spending, signing critical veterans reforms, and supporting military spouses. This has no basis in fact.”)
Trump’s understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. According to sources with knowledge of the president’s views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)
When lashing out at critics, Trump often reaches for illogical and corrosive insults, and members of the Bush family have publicly opposed him. But his cynicism about service and heroism extends even to the World War I dead buried outside Paris—people who were killed more than a quarter century before he was born. Trump finds the notion of military service difficult to understand, and the idea of volunteering to serve especially incomprehensible. (The president did not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War because of the alleged presence of bone spurs in his feet. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases constituted his “personal Vietnam.”)
On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.
“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”
I’ve asked numerous general officers over the past year for their analysis of Trump’s seeming contempt for military service. They offer a number of explanations. Some of his cynicism is rooted in frustration, they say. Trump, unlike previous presidents, tends to believe that the military, like other departments of the federal government, is beholden only to him, and not the Constitution. Many senior officers have expressed worry about Trump’s understanding of the rules governing the use of the armed forces. This issue came to a head in early June, during demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in response to police killings of Black people. James Mattis, the retired Marine general and former secretary of defense, lambasted Trump at the time for ordering law-enforcement officers to forcibly clear protesters from Lafayette Square, and for using soldiers as props: “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”
Another explanation is more quotidian, and aligns with a broader understanding of Trump’s material-focused worldview. The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don’t pursue riches are “losers.” (According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”)
Yet another, related, explanation concerns what appears to be Trump’s pathological fear of appearing to look like a “sucker” himself. His capacious definition of sucker includes those who lose their lives in service to their country, as well as those who are taken prisoner, or are wounded in battle. “He has a lot of fear,” one officer with firsthand knowledge of Trump’s views said. “He doesn’t see the heroism in fighting.” Several observers told me that Trump is deeply anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who have suffered. Trump recently claimed that he has received the bodies of slain service members “many, many” times, but in fact he has traveled to Dover Air Force Base, the transfer point for the remains of fallen service members, only four times since becoming president. In another incident, Trump falsely claimed that he had called “virtually all” of the families of service members who had died during his term, then began rush-shipping condolence letters when families said the president was not telling the truth.
Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades, but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.
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My essential Star Trek episodes
@velociraptors-in-hats asked me for a list of essential Trek, and this is gonna be way too big for a text message, so here we go.
The Original Series (TOS)
While a lot of the show holds up surprisingly well for being over 50 years old, the pacing and aesthetic is incredibly dated. There’s a lot you can skip here.
Highlighted episodes:
“Charlie X”: If anyone tells you Kirk is a womanizer, point them at him teaching found teenager Charlie to behave himself.
“The Corbomite Maneuver”: If you wanna see Kirk do what Kirk is best at, this is a good place to start.
“Balance of Terror”: an antiracist cold war submarine drama in space (borrows heavily from movies like Run Silent, Run Deep)
“The Menagerie”: This was an excuse to recycle the unaired pilot, but the unaired pilot is a pretty good story and it’s framed by courtroom drama and Spock going rogue for a good cause.
“The Galileo Seven”: another really good drama centered on Spock.
“Space Seed”: I know I already said that this isn’t necessary to understand Wrath of Khan, but it’s a great episode anyway. If you have an opportunity to watch Ricardo Montalban act, it is best not to miss it.
“City on the Edge of Forever”: arguably the greatest Star Trek episode of the entire franchise.
“Amok Time”: You wanna see Kirk and Spock wrestle in the sand. You know you do.
“The Doomsday Machine”: more great writing.
“I, Mudd”: illogic bombs everywhere.
“Journey to Babel”: Father and Son drama, the beginning of “Spock doesn’t talk about his family until they’re standing in front of you”
“The Trouble with Tribbles”: the biggest space romp ever.
“Patterns of Force”: one of many Space Nazi episodes (there’s even more than one with literal Nazis), but the best one.
“Spock’s Brain”: there’s probably a drinking game for this one. Do not follow any rules about drinking for the word “brain” or you will die.
“The Enterprise Incident”: It’s hard to remember this is third season TOS because they were actually still trying here.
“All our Yesterdays” is pretty cool sci-fi. Time travel, marooned, going native-ish.
The Next Generation (TNG)
The first two seasons are the most skippable Star Trek has ever been, but if you wanna get a sense of it, I recommend considering any of “Lonely Among Us”, “The Battle” (gets a sequel seven years later), “The Big Goodbye”, “Datalore”, “Too Short a Season”, The Arsenal of Freedom”, and “We’ll Always Have Paris” from the first season, and “Where Silence Has Lease”, “Elementary Dear Data”, “The Measure of a Man” (civil rights courtroom drama, referenced heavily in the recent Picard series), “Q Who” (first Q episode I actually recommend, introduces the Borg), and “The Emissary” (starts an arc with Worf that will last into Deep Space Nine).
I do not recommend “Shades of Gray” unless you are really interested in what you missed from skipping the first two seasons. It doesn’t even have the So Bad It’s Good that The Enterprise Incident does.
I’m gonna have to get really discriminating here or this is gonna get really long now. I grew up with TNG and more than half of the episodes are ones I have some reason to love. (narrator voice: he did not get more discriminating)
Probably any Q and Borg episode from here.
“Yesterday’s Enterprise” is an alternate universe drama where we shift into a darker timeline where the Federation is losing a war with the Klingons (who are our friends now normally).
“The Offspring” - Data makes a child and it goes better than could be expected until it doesn’t.
“Sins of the Father” - this is where Worf’s arc really gets going.
“Allegiance” is just a good episode.
“Captain’s Holiday” is a bit pulpy. It was written because Stewart was complaining that the captain doesn’t do enough shooting and screwing. But it’s fun. Vash is fun.
“Sarek” has a great scene for Patrick Stewart showing Picard have another man’s breakdown for him.
“The Best of Both Worlds”: for the best effect, watch part one, then wait three months before watching part two.
“Family”: partly an epilogue to Best of Both Worlds, but a great story for Picard. And I think it’s another one in Worf’s main saga.
“Brothers”: this is the quintessential Data episode. If you only watch one episode with Lore, watch this one.
“Reunion” seeds the Klingon Civil War arc.
“Final Mission”: you are probably not going to see Wesley at his worst, but this episode is Wesley at his best. It is his final episode as a regular.
“Data’s Day”: literally a day in the life story, but Data is a lot of fun.
I personally really like The Nth Degree.
“The Mind’s Eye” is an “It’s very good but I would rather not rewatch it please” episode, but as with Chain of Command, torture stories are not a good time for me.
“Redemption” 1 and 2 brings home the Klingon Civil War and also ties in Yesterday’s Enterprise.
“Darmok”: Good science fiction predicts the internet. Great science fiction predicts communication through memes.
“Unification” 1 and 2: remember how the Vulcans and the Romulans look alike? This is important.
“Ethics” is well-written moral drama, but one of the two debates it engages with is assisted suicide, so you specifically will probably want to pass.
“The Inner Light” is a bit of a one-off, but you get to experience a man’s entire life as Picard experiences it.
A lot of people will tell you that “Time’s Arrow” is the weakest season cliffhanger, but I just think that running around San Francisco in the time of cholera with Mark Twain and Jack London is a lot of fun.
“A Fistfull of Datas”: Would you like to watch a spaghetti western where every character is played by Brent Spiner? Of course you would!
“Ship in a Bottle”: a sequel to “Elementary Dear Data”
“Tapestry”: possibly not actually a Q episode. Picard gets to face an old regret and see how his life would be different if things had gone another way.
“Frame of Mind” is a psychodrama where Riker’s reality falls apart.
I like high concept stories about time. “Timescape” is Clockstoppers before Clockstoppers.
Watch “Attached” if you find yourself shipping Jean-Luc and Beverly.
“The Pegasus” sees Riker forced to face the ghost of a past shame he thought was buried.
“Sub Rosa” is another one that everyone hates that I like. I’m just a sucker for the Scottish Highlands In Space setting, but to be fair to its detractors it was literally plagiarized from an Ann Rice paranormal romance novel.
“Lower Decks”: the characters we usually spend time with are up in the stratosphere in terms of the hierarchy on the ship. This episode takes the perspective of some junior officers.
“Masks” because Brent Spiner needs to set records for “most characters played in a single episode”.
“Emergence” is a creepy weird high-concept episode I really like.
“All Good Things” is unmissable. When you feel like you’re at home with TNG, watch the finale.
Deep Space Nine (DS9)
Again, the first few seasons are a bit awkward before the show finds itself. However, “Emissary” is possibly the best series premiere the show has ever done. This is a highly serialized show (for its time), so the deeper into the show, the more you should really watch them in order.
“Move Along Home” is another in the “so bad it’s good” pile. Get to know the show before you watch it.
Most people will tell you that “Duet” is one of Deep Space Nine’s best episodes. What would you do if you just arrested Josef Goebbels?
“In the Hands of the Prophets”: the Scopes Monkey Trial in space kind of.
“Whispers”: creeeepy. O’Brien is firmly cemented as the show’s designated sufferer.
“Shadow Play” is one of the early episodes that probably would’ve worked better for TNG, but I kind of like it.
“Blood Oath”:probably the beginning of Jadzia Dax being everyone’s favorite lesbian (/bi/trans) icon.
“The Maquis” two-part story is kind of a mission statement for the show.
“The Wire”: one of the two most Garak/Bashir episodes of the entire run.
“The Search” is a big reveal that has consequences for the entire rest of the series.
“The House of Quark” is a really fun episode pairing Ferengi and Klingon culture like oil and vinegar making salad dressing.
“Equilibrium” is a great episode for getting into the whole deal with Dax’s Trill gimmick.
“Civil Defense:” they trigger a lockdown protocol the Cardassians meant to use to suppress a Bajoran riot.
“Past Tense”, two parts. Please oh please don’t let the real 2024 look like this. One of DS9′s most prescient episodes (inspired by the Rodney King riots).
“Destiny” is one of the best episodes in the “Sisko has to reckon with being the Bajorans’ messiah figure” arc.
“Improbable Cause”/”The Die Is Cast” (DS9 is a bit averse to putting the same title on every part of a multipart story): dark, plot-heavy, and pretty important to what’s coming up soon.
“Family Business”: I think this is the introduction of Quark’s mother, the Ferengi feminist.
“The Adversary” is big for Odo.
“The Way of the Warrior” is basically the show’s second pilot episode.
“The Visitor” is a one-off story about the bond between Ben and Jake Sisko.
“Rejoined”: Give Jadzia A Girlfriend
“Little Green Men”: a one-off romp at the 1947 Roswell crash.
“Our Man Bashir”: Bashir and Garak are gay at each other while larping Bashir’s James Bond fantasy, only it turns deadly because the camera wandered into the holodeck again.
“Homefront”/”Paradise Lost”: again, a very Relevant episode where a terror attack on Earth causes the enactment of martial law.
“Bar Association”: Quark’s brother reads Das Kapital and starts a union. No seriously, that’s the episode.
“Body Parts”: Quark gets misdiagnosed with a terminal illness, sells his remains as is the Ferengi custom, and hijinks ensue (possibly triggering because he considers putting a hit on himself to get out of his dilemma).
“Broken Link”: this is a very big Odo story.
“Apocalypse Rising”: carries on from the not-really-a-cliffhanger in “Broken Link”, but it’s more about going undercover in the Klingon empire.
“Trials and Tribble-Ations”: Let’s go full Back to the Future Part 2 on a fan favorite TOS episode.
“For the Uniform”: explores the lengths Sisko will go to against a traitor.
“Doctor Bashir, I Presume”: Julian Bashir gets outed. The basis of the “Julian is transmasc” theory/metaphor.
“Children of Time”: high concept morality play. The crew meet their descendants from the crash they haven’t experienced yet.
“In the Cards”: notably, the A story is a breather romp and the B story is Plot Arc stuff.
Take “Call to Arms”, “A Time To Stand”, “Rocks and Shoals”, “Sons and Daughters”, “Behind the Lines”, “Favor the Bold”, and “Sacrifice of Angels” as a six-part arc. It’s not exactly one long story, but they were written as a short arc and play through each other.
“You are Cordially Invited”: Klingon Bachelor Parties are almost as bad as Klingon mothers in law.
“Statistical Probabilities”: following on from what we learned in “Doctor Bashir, I Presume”, Bashir tries to help some institutionalized augments find a greater purpose than being locked up in an asylum.
“Far Beyond The Stars”: a one-off where Sisko has a vision of being a pulp sci-fi writer in the 50s trying to get a story about a black man commanding a space station published.
“One Little Ship”: just some fun with a negative space wedgie that shrinks people.
“Wrongs Darker than Death or Night”: Kira learns what her mother did to keep her family safe.
“Inquisition”: Bashir gets accused of having been brainwashed into an unwitting spy.
“In the Pale Moonlight”: how many lines will Sisko cross in order to win the war?
“His Way”: Odo gets mentored in dating by a 50s lounge singer hologram.
“Valiant”: a crew of cadets that think they can do anything go cultish when their senior officer dies and they have to run the ship by themselves behind enemy lines.
“Take Me Out To the Holosuite”: the war is pretty grim, let’s play baseball against Sisko’s academy days bully.
“Treachery, Faith, and the Great River”: Odo escorts a defector who sees him, like all of Odo’s kind, as a god (because that’s how Odo’s people control them).
“The Siege of AR-558″: the War is Hell episode of the War Is Hell series.
“It’s Only a Paper Moon”: Quark’s nephew escapes reality in the 50s lounge singer’s world after losing a leg in the war.
“Prodigal Daughter”: It’s season seven, so Ezri Dax gets a lot of focus because they only had one season to get to know her. But this is one of the best Ezri episodes.
“Badda Bing, Badda Bang”: Deep Space Nine does Ocean’s Eleven.
The ten episodes after that are the Final Chapter arc, which ties up all the stories they had in the air for the last seven years.
Voyager (VOY)
“Caretaker” sets up a lot of things, some of which will even actually be followed through on.
“Faces”: an alien scientist splits the half-Klingon/half-human engineer into her human and Klingon halves.
“The 37s”: I don’t remember much of this one aside from they find Amelia Earhart and others from that time cryogenically frozen on a planet on the other side of the galaxy, and we get to see the ship land for no particular reason.
“Projections”: Doctor episodes are great in general. This one has the Doctor’s reality breaking down.
“Twisted”: weird space stuff warps space inside the ship.
I really like the Q episodes on Voyager, but if discussion of suicide is triggering, you should know that “Death Wish” is about a Q (not The Q, another one. They’re all named Q and so is their species) who wants the right to end his immortality.
“Deadlock”: Voyager is duplicated by a negative space wedgie, but only one can survive because reasons.
“The Thaw”: a great episode about facing Fear. Guest starring Michael McKean as a personification of Fear.
“Resolutions”: Hey, did we set up romantic tension between the captain and her first officer? Let’s put that to bed.
“Flashback”: Janeway and Tuvok go inside Tuvok’s memories of the five minutes Sulu was in The Undiscovered Country.
“Sacred Ground”: this episode kind of defines how I see the relationship between faith and skepticism.
“Future’s End” (two parts): Remember The One With The Whales? We’re doing it again twelve years later, but with Sarah Silverman instead of whales.
“The Q and the Grey”: Q (yes actually that one) gets Janeway involved in a Q Civil War because somehow making a Q baby is going to end it and he wants Janeway to be his baby mama.
“Coda”: Janeway gets stuck in dying dream after dying dream.
“Before and After”: Kes is jumping backwards in time.
“Worst Case Scenario”: episodes where the cast get to play evil versions of their characters are fun.
“Scorpion” (2 parts): Janeway makes a deal with the devil.
“Year of Hell” (2 parts): they wanted to do an entire season of this, which in turn was inspired by what they’d originally planned for the show all along before the suits decided it should be a safe TNG knockoff.
“Message in a Bottle”: They find a way to send transmissions across the galaxy, but for Reasons, text and video messages can’t get through, but a hologram can, so the Doctor has an away mission to the Alpha Quadrant.
“Living Witness”: a one-off episode with a backup copy of the Doctor in the far future setting the record straight on Voyager’s involvement in a war between two planets.
“Timeless”: Chakotay and Harry made it home, but the rest of the crew died in a crash. So now they’re on the run from the law to send a message back in time to put it right.
“Latent Image”: the Doctor’s memories have been tampered with.
“Bride of Chaotica!”: a holodeck Buck Rogers fantasy goes off the rails.
“Course: Oblivion”: the ship and crew start to fall apart.
“Someone to Watch Over Me”: Voyager does My Fair Lady.
“11:59″: As an Indiana native I am legally obligated to recommend this story about what Janeway’s ancestor was doing on New Year’s Eve 1999.
“Relativity”: Time chase. Somebody’s trying to blow up Voyager in the past.
Equinox (Two parts): What if Voyager hadn’t held onto its ideals in their quest to get home?
“The Voyager Conspiracy”: good sci-fi anticipates the internet. Great sci-fi anticipates people finding patterns that don’t exist in the information overload.
“Pathfinder”: Remember Barclay? His latest awkwardness is his obsession with Voyager.
“Fair Haven”/”Spirit Folk”: these aren’t directly paired, but they’re both set in holographic Ireland. In the first one, Janeway tailors her holographic boyfriend to exactly what she wants, in the second, the characters have been running for so long they start to get the sense that there’s something strange about the out of towners.
“Life Line”: The Doctor gets transmitted across the galaxy to save his creator from an illness.
“The Haunting of Deck Twelve”: Neelix tells the Borg Children a ghost story that maybe really happened.
Unimatrix Zero (two parts): I don’t remember much of this, but it’s one of the biggest Borg stories in a show that overused the Borg.
“Imperfection”: Seven of Nine is practicing being human on the holodeck and starts to have a systems failure.
“Critical Care”: the Doctor gets captured by an alien hospital and fights against the stratification of their healthcare system.
“Inside Man”: Barclay again. He sent a hologram of himself to help Voyager get home.
“Flesh and Blood”: a hologram rights story.
“Shattered”: the ship is fractured in time, and Chakotay is roaming the ship through different time periods trying to reintegrate it.
“Lineage”: B’elanna goes a little overboard tinkering with her baby’s genome.
“Q2″: It’s a Q episode, and nobody’s suicidal.
“Renaissance Man”: The Doctor does more than he was ever designed for.
“Endgame”: the end.
Enterprise (ENT)
I’ve only watched most of these once. I really don’t know the show that well.
I can tell you that the first two seasons are a bunch of one-offs with the major theme being “we’re out here to make friends and introduce ourselves to the neighborhood”. The third season is Star Trek’s answer to 9/11 and it goes really Jack Bauer. There are some one-offs, but it’s very focused on the Xindi threat. The fourth season is short arcs where they got around to being a prequel show and did a lot of the good kind of callbacks to TOS.
Discovery (DIS, Disco, DSC, definitely not ST:D)
Modern-era Star Trek is very serialized. It would take less time to say which episodes of Discovery are skippable. I’ve only seen the first season once, and I’m still not done with the second season. Captain Pike from the original TOS pilot is the captain in the second season and he is the best thing about modern Trek.
Picard (PIC?)
There’s only one season so far, and it is 100% serialized. It doesn’t have filler episodes, it has filler spread out through all the episodes. They told a four or five episode story in ten episodes. Though really not much happens between the end of the first episode and when they pick up Seven of Nine. The stuff on the Borg Cube is highly skippable until episode 6.
Lower Decks (LD?)
This is currently in its first season. It’s an adult-oriented animated comedy by the guy who did TNGs8 on Twitter and his most notable professional work before this is Rick and Morty. It’s a loving tweak on the nose of Star Trek.
The future
There’s a Nickelodeon show coming up called “Prodigy” that we don’t know much about. It’s animated, it’s for kids, and it’s about a ship crewed by cadets.
Discovery season 3 is coming very soon, again going in a completely new direction from the first two seasons.
Picard is going to get a second season eventually. It doesn’t seem to have been part of the plan, but there it is.
There’s also Strange New Worlds, a... Discovery spinoff? Centering on Discovery’s version of Pike commanding the Enterprise with Number One and Spock, and it’s planned to be more episodic. Also coming whenever the world isn’t on fire.
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