CSI: Vegas 1.1: CSI on Trial

My wife and I saw and enjoyed most of CSI and a smattering of the myriad spinoffs, so we figured we'd watch the CSI reboot -- now CSI: Las Vegas -- which debuted tonight on CBS.   It was good.  Much like original.

Here's the set-up: someone tries to kill a retired and partially blind Jim Brass.  He's played by Paul Guilfoyle, whom I saw not too long ago as The Guardian of Forever (yes!) on Star Trek: Discovery.  I last saw him in the CSI 2015 series finale in the hospital, recovering from a bomb blast.  Good to see him and his character again.

Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox) is also back in Vegas, called in by Brass to help with this case.  Gil Grissom (William Peterson), whom Sara ran off to join on a boat and a lifetime relationship in the original series finale, is also back in town, as we see at the very end of this first new episode, which is part 1 of a two-part or longer story.   Also at work on this case is the current CSI head Maxine Roby (Paula Newsome, last seen by me in Chicago Med) and Joshua Folsom (Matt Lauria from Friday Night Lights).

So the cast looks good (but one suggestion: bring back Nike Stokes/George Eads), as do the lights in Las Vegas and the gleaming new equipment in the lab.  And the plot has promise.  David Hodges (Wallace Langham), a major character in the original CSI, in umpteen episodes from 2003-2015, is being framed to look like he forged the evidence in God knows how many cases in which he played a pivotal role.   Sara and Gil are of course convinced of his innocence.  Maxine and the newbies of course are not so sure.  And what's at stake are countless convictions in those very 2003-2015 span of years -- in other words, the very status of CSI itself.

I'd say that's a pretty significant set-up for the new series, more than enough to keep me watching.

Star Trek: Discovery 3: Fulfilling the Promise

Checking in with a review of Star Trek: Discovery season 3, which was on CBS All Access now Paramount+ nearly a year ago, but I just had a chance to binge-watch the past few days. 

The first 10 of its 13 episodes were a mix of good, ok, and very good.  The final three episodes were pure gold, with outstanding hand-to-hand combat, and some of the best personal stories and trials and tribulations in any Star Trek, of whatever vintage, on whatever kind of screen.

First, it was ingenuous to move the storyline in this season from before the start of Star Trek: The Original Series to further in the future than any other Star Trek narrative has been located.   I won't give away too much of the plot in this review, but I will say that although we've seen plenty of time travel in many a Star Trek season, the goal of Discovery in staying in this far future -- what it must do -- is original, unexpected, and sufficiently cosmic to motivate all the twists and turns and surprises in the story.

The continuing characters, especially Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Saru (Doug Jones), really come into their own.  And lots of memorable new characters this season, too.  My favorites were Booker (David Ajala), Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr), Osyraa (Janet Kidder), and Kovich (David Cronenberg -- yes!).   There was good integration of Vulcan and Romulus into the story, and a nice shout-out to "City on the Edge of Forever," with Paul Guilfoyle (CSI's Jim Brass) playing the Guardian of Forever.

I've come to realize -- and I may have said this is in an earlier review, but it's worth repeating -- that the Star Trek franchise is more than a superb one-of-a-kind series of television series and movies.  It's a blueprint for our future, a blueprint which is helping that future come into being, by being such a continuing inspiration.  Or, as I said my essay, The Missing Orientation, published late last year, "my lifelong commitment to doing what I could via writing and speaking to help lift our species off this planet was baked in for life by Star Trek in the mid-1960s."

The third season of Star Trek: Discovery amply continues that inspiration.  I'll be back here with a review of the fourth season, which will start on Paramount+ on November 18, and everything Star Trek that comes after.

See also Star Trek: Discovery 2: Tour de Force Story and Characters ... Discovering Star Trek: Discovery ... Star Trek: Picard: Non-Pareil

Colony 1.6: The Provost

A really top-notch Colony this past Thursday - episode 1.6 - in fact the best since the debut of the series, and one which finally begins fleshing out some much needed details.

Proxy Snyder, under Will and Katie's protection as the Resistance is closing in on them, divulges all sorts of information, including the number of colonies on the West Coast, how the territory between the colonies is someplace "you don't want to be," and how he knows nothing else about anything beyond this West Coast.  (This last part may or may not be true.)

Snyder says that he met the alien conquerers, but says nothing else about them, because the conversation is interrupted.   This is something of a cheap narrative trick, but it's still good to know that at least someone has seen the aliens, because that means we have a chance of sooner or later seeing them ourselves (assuming, again, that Snyder isn't lying).

But in some ways my favorite part of this whole interrupted conversation is Snyder's revelation that he was Provost at Stanford University before the aliens arrived.  I just love this.  Often professors are seen as bad guys on television - which annoys me, since I'm a professor, and, as far as I can tell, I'm a good guy - but I can't recall the last time a university administrator was featured, and aptly cast as a bad guy, at least for the most part.  I have no objection at all to that casting.

Meanwhile, it's a great episode for Katie, who kills one of the resisters, to save Will, which makes perfect sense, but now leaves her branded as a double-agent by Quayle (and I've been meaning to say that it's good to see Paul Guilfoyle back on the screen after his many years on CSI).

I'll be watching Colony more enthusiastically than ever from now on.

See also Colony 1.1: Aliens with Potential ... 1.2: Compelling ... 1.5: Questions


not exactly aliens, but strange enough ...  The Silk Code

#SFWApro