victor-cypert Reviews

Star Trek: Picard (2020–2023)

Long-Time Trek Fan: This Show Makes Me Sad

[3/10 · 17 March 2022]

It's clear that the writers neither know the characters of Picard and Riker nor basic contemporary science. An examination of both:

In season 1, they portray Picard as a kind of galactic troublemaker who is always in trouble. His interactions with other major characters from TNG are warped by this; Picard was always an organized, disciplined, and law-abiding man, not a Loki-esque trickster. In season 2, they portray Picard as always late; the man was always the definition of punctuality.

In season 1, they portray Picard and Riker as a pair of bullies because they have penises. This was so Deanna Troi could scold them about their incivility because--you know--writing for women means men must always be shallow as opposed to women being written well.

I just stopped watching season 2 after one of the characters made a reference to "early ozone erosion" in the year 2024. Um...no. Not quite, sweetie. We've reversed the damage to the ozone layer; it's a great thing and something we should be proud of because it reveals that we can heal the planet and that we should. But it's more important to scold the viewer based on scientific ignorance than it is to acknowledge we've done something good for the planet. The writers either didn't do their research or just felt that it was more important to throw in an environmental morality lesson that we don't need in order to sell their product.

Overall, the series is poorly written. Several characters (mainly women) come off as horrible hypocrites in terms of what they say as opposed to what they do. This isn't strong character development for female characters--it's just bad writing and incredibly shallow.

Here's a good lesson for the writers of the Kurz-Trek-verse: stop injecting your politics into everything because it's making for stupid TV. You know neither politics nor science.

Leaving Picard now. One to beam out.

Buck Breaking (2021)

A pack of lies

[1/10 · 24 August 2021]

Being gay is not an agenda; it is a fact in nature. The events depicted here never happened.

Yes, slaves were sexually abused by their illegitimate owners. However, the practice of "Buck Breaking" is so absurd in its legal ramifications that it's clear it never happened.

Tariq is just a bigot.

The Narrow World (2017)

Moving, Disturbing, and Deeply Inspired

[9/10 · 2 May 2020]

I am a lecturer in both popular fiction and psychology. If any short film should've telegraphed its ending to me (and many have), it should've been this one--it didn't.

A giant alien mech falls to earth and takes up residence wandering Los Angeles.and three people are interviewed to the event's meaning:

Raymond Davis -- Head of Research for the Department of Homeland Security Dr. Emily Filed -- Professor of Clinical Psychology Col. Gus Wilson -- Department of Defense

Raymon Davis is the first to experience the event. Dr. Field explains people's fears related to the event. And Col. Wilson is convinced the event is a threat.

By film's end, some will realize that Dr. Field and Col. Wilson are having one conversation while Mr. Davis is having another.

This is a poignant and genuinely heartbreaking story about how we treat the mentally ill.

Hellier (2019)

Wealthy elitist frauds spook themselves with a tin can

[1/10 · 28 April 2020]

Amazon's docuseries, Hellier, details an investigation by three apparently terribly ignorant "paranormal researchers" into the presence of small "goblins" living in a mineshaft near the moribund mining town of Hellier, Kentucky. Despite being rife with pseudoscience and obvious bad actors (as in agents, not hired thespians), the show emphasizes the growing and alarming disparity between members of the nonessential luxury-class (the paranormal investigators) and the working-class citizens of the town they visit to conduct their research.

The show makes it a point to highlight the general lack of education and rampant ignorance in the poor mining community by failing to edit out the absurd claims of one resident who asserts he doesn't believe men landed on the moon. The resident goes on to ask why we never visited the sun, and then he claims there are closer planets than our moon and that the moon would be too cold for humans to visit. Less laughable than pitiable and even alarming, this vignette reveals the depths of desperation and need for educational opportunities in coal country and other parts of rural America where once good-paying manual labor jobs have vanished to leave behind little more than economic hardship and dangerously unstable infrastructure on the verge of collapse.

The biggest problem I have with Hellier thus far is its overt in-grouping of the ignorance and superstition displayed by the investigators and the out-grouping of the ignorance and superstition displayed by some of the residents of the town of Hellier. That is, the bourgeoise pseudo-science that advocates belief in ghosts, extraterrestrial abductions, and cryptids is elevated by the series, while the conspiratorial belief that man never walked on the moon (and the simply erroneous assertion that there are planets closer to the earth than our moon) are merely tools used to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of the group of wealthy strangers come-to-town. Hellier is a study in class disparity between people who have monetary resources and ample freetime to squander on a snipe hunt in a community where many people face grim economic hardship and few opportunities for either growth or escape.

Further, the Hellier team presents common psychological concepts in occult terms. Throughout season one, the investigators speak of synchronicities and even present a quote from Carl Jung about the phenomenon. Unfortunately, the quote is taken out of context and does not apply to mere coincidence. When Jung coined the term, he placed synchronicity within the context of psychoanalysis. While it is true that synchronicities are meaningful coincidences, they only emerge during therapy, when unconscious symbols encountered by the client begin to manifest in the life of the therapist. Outside of this context, synchronicity does not exist and such seemingly important coincidences are, in fact, merely that-coincidences. Moreover, such coincidences are almost immediate; the appearance of the tin can in the mouth of the mine shaft that gets touted as a synchronicity simply isn't one at all.

Hellier does more harm than good in its ham-fisted approach to psychology, the occult, and the needs of vulnerable populations in impoverished regions of America. The investigators sport expensive haircuts and pricey toys, view the local residents with suspicion and even fear, and generally come off as entitled, privileged children who have no use for genuine education or compassion. It illuminates the arrogance of the wealth-privileged as they disdainfully judge and mock the citizens of small-town America.