It’s been a fair break, but back into it to catch up to live Trek. Spoilers.
I’ve been away for a while now, and either it was rose-coloured glasses for the first two episodes or this is just a stinker. It redeemed itself a little bit in the second half when we get into the heist-style sequence, but most of this is banal cliche rubbish.
There is some potential in a prank war - but it has to be earned in the rivalry. It’s an end-of-semester thing, not ‘we just met the War College’. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the laziness of the writing.
And then to top it off it’s really not a good character episode. All the growth goes to Darem, and everyone else basically gets nothing this week. And that growth is the most base ‘leadership is more than being the best’ stuff that isn’t even well implemented.
Quick hits:
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If the objective of the opening was to make me hate several of the students, well done! They are a bunch of try-hard idiots.
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I am very unclear about what ‘War College’ is. Is it an alternative to the Academy? Normally a war college is the postgrad. That’s what I thought at first, but it’s increasingly confused.
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Was he using a towel to dry his shorts there?
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Starship Troopers style adverts now?
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‘Visit from the oversight committee’ is some very cliche writing.
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Why is this not Parrises Squares? Or some other thing that has been in Trek before.
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“Nerd/Jock hybrid” is a solid line, first thing I’ve liked in the 17 minutes of this episode.
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OK, back to Starship Troopers vibes with the obstacle course.
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This game seems like War College, not Academy.
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Actually, Kyle means ‘straight or channel’. The more you know!
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The ‘romance music’ is making me want to launch things out the window.
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The captain is the best player is such a bad concept. I hope it’s going to be subverted with ‘actually it’s about leadership’.
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Oh good, ‘teachers should encourage the bullying’, another wonderful trope.
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Note to the writers - there’s meant to be a scene between the ‘I don’t want to be a part of this’ and the ‘all right I’m in’ beats.
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I would wear those pajamas.
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And now it’s a heist episode. It’s an improvement at least.
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I feel like there should be better detection for this kind of rapidly growing plant.
972 down.