Outro S5 E14 Barrage
Hello my survivor friends. How is this fine apocalyptic world treating you?
Now that the spring thaw has come, and the sun has warmed the cracked and broken ground, we can pry the hatch-door open and take a peek at the world outside. Maybe we will plant some seeds or venture down to the thaw-swollen river for fish – if there are any still alive. But be careful of the mutant river monsters and alien man-eating plants and be sure to get back before dark when the shadow monsters emerge to hunt.
If you are listening to this as it is released the date is sometime around March 15th 2025, which means I get to say ‘The Ides of March” – which is always fun. Shakespeare, Caesar, et tu Brute? – and the all that. For the yearly punch of my over-educated, bourgeois, intellectual card.
If you are a subscriber on Acast you could get the shows a week early and commercial free – just saying. I post all these comments on my website oldmanapocalypse.com with the links if you want to double click on any of these topics.
You have just listened to season 5 episode 14, which puts us ever nearer the finish line for the After the Apocalypse journey.
Let me hit the pause button and thank all of you for supporting me. It’s been very fulfilling. It’s led me to new discoveries and I’m glad I did it! 5 years goes by in the blink of an eye.
What has Chris been consuming? I did finish “Where the Crawdads Sing” Which Wikipedia describes as ‘a 2018 coming-of-age murder mystery novel by American zoologist Delia Owens’. Which seems as good a description as any. The book had the good fortune of being chosen by Reese Witherspoon for her book club, and it went viral. Going on to sell 18 million copies and it got made into an eponymous movie in 2022.
That’s quite a success story for a first book fiction writer.
Who doesn’t love a commercial success? Delia Owen’s life changed for the weird in a hurry I bet – going from academic to hit author overnight!
It’s an easy read. I found it hard to believe and silly for the most part, but there was some fine prose and the nature descriptions were filled with the author’s love. Hard to describe. But the lesson for you kids here is that sometimes these hard-to-categorize, cross-genre works catch on fire because they are different.
I am also almost finished with Star Trek Discovery.
Where to start?
Well first let me start with how it fits into the cannon timeline. In the first episodes Discovery is set in the Federation 10 years before the Original Series. Then, a couple seasons in, they jump 900 years into the future.
Each season has a narrative through-line and the individual episodes are stand alone within that arc.
It starts out nostalgic. The early seasons have Captain Christopher Pike as a call back to the original series pilot episode before Desilu greenlit the Original Series and introduced new characters like Captain Kirk.
I may have shed a tiny tear at the end of season one where there is a brief split-second flyby of another starship and you see it is NCC 1701.
They even squeeze Rain Wilson in as Harry Mudd for a couple episodes for more of a callback.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about that’s ok, it’s all old Start Trek coda stuff.
As the seasons progress the show coalesces, and is carried by, Captain Micheal Burnam, played with passion and gusto by Sonequa Martin-Green. You may remember her as Shasha from the Walking Dead. She was the one who burst out of the coffin at Negan at the end of season 7, which, ironically is about where I stopped watching the Walking Dead.
Interestingly, she had originally read for the Michonne role. She didn’t get that but the show liked her so much they created the Shasha character for her.
Following the tradition of the Star Trek universe, Discovery has a very diverse cast. And they are. After the Chris Pine character leaves there is not a single straight, white, male left in the crew.
They also have that touchy-feely “Can’t we all just be friends…” vision of the future where the goal of Star Fleet is to ‘do no harm’ and ‘have everyone live in harmony’.
The casting is great and interesting.
In the early seasons they have Michelle Yeoh, who you may know from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Everything Everywhere All at Once. On Discovery she plays an anti-hero character. It’s fun to watch her chewing scenes. They end up giving her a spinnoff of her own called Section 31.
Another notable and likeable character is the alien Siru, played by Doug Jones, who you will have seen in lots of things, probably most notable as the fish-guy in Hell Boy or a different fish-guy in The Shape of Water, or the monster with eyes on his hands in that unforgettable scene from Pan’s Labyrinth.
In the later seasons a character shows up that had me wondering “why this guy is getting so much screen time?” Turns out it is the director David Cronenberg who brought us such creepy classics as Scanners and The Naked Lunch.
Like any series, the first couple seasons were inconsistent as they figured things out but in the later episodes they hit their stride and it is action packed and emotion packed and confident and exudes all that space adventure of new worlds, new galaxies and boldly going where no umm … person? humanoid? has gone before!
I like it, it’s hopeful and fun, a good addition to the cannon, and I like it.
So that’s what I think about Star Trek discovery.
…
I’m working on book 2 of the apocalypse series for you.
Book one is available at all your favorite book sellers and you should go give it a try. I think you’ll enjoy consuming the story in the form it was created. I’m quite proud of having created it and the physical book is beautiful.
You can buy it at amazon.com or directly from my publisher at booklocker.com
If you want a signed copy, shoot me an email and we’ll take care of that.
So, as the sun rises through the swirling ash cloud, sharpen your blade carefully, set forth into the devastated world and keep surviving.
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