Hello, friends!

I am a little discombobulated this week, because I had to go interstate for a work trip that lasted a few days, and it feels like I’ve been running in place but trying to catch up ever since.

And next week’s issue might be late, because I am going to a music festival on Friday (very off-brand for me, I know), and may need the weekend to be, well, dead.

Let’s watch TV! This week, I’m talking about new eps of:

FIRST, it’s not just me. As we reached the scene where Teddy ties up Tom Hiddleston and tortures him to demonstrate his loyalty to the guerillas he is preparing to betray, my flatmate said, “Do they know? That this is homoerotic? They have to know, right?”

SECOND, it was only in the final ten minutes of the episode — as Roper shot Teddy, as the diversion plane was uncovered, as Olivia Colman’s daughter discovered her body while Tom Hiddleston fled into the jungle — that I thought, “Hey, I wonder if there’s going to be a third season?”

AND NOW FOR SOME ANSWERS.

According to this Radio Times interview, the showrunners did intend for Tom and Teddy to be in love. (I had guessed this by Teddy’s death, tbh; it feels like we are firmly back in the era of Burying Our Gays. I have applied the “would I be equally annoyed by this if Teddy was a woman?” test, and the answer is yes.)

On the other hand, the piece also describes the relationship between Hiddles and Roper as that of a “surrogate son” and father, so they weren’t fully aware of what they were doing. “I miss your smile.” I’m sorry, that did not sound paternal. Come on, guys.

Second, yes, there is going to be a third season. I assume it will involve putting Tom Hiddleston under a microscope to figure out why he’s so charismatic that everyone falls in love with him.

I’m looking forward to it! Season 2 has been what I, a humble TV watcher, am going to call “jolly fun”. And Indira Varma is still alive, which is always a thrill.

I’m still not ready to go into full detail about this series, but I will concede that I have begun to find it mildly charming. And the episodes are so short that, just as I begin to get bored, it’s all over.

I must, however, note that episode 4 (which dropped early because the Americans are doing a sports on Monday) did not have a single speaking role for a woman at all. Not one. This is an impressive new low!

This has been widely hyped by people with screener access as the best of the season so far, and I am here to say: is it, though? Is it really?

My hot take is that “Series Acclimation Mil” is an overall good episode, has moments of utter greatness, and is the weakest of the six episodes provided through screeners.

Lemme explain.

This episode sees holographic cadet Sam struggling with her role as the emissary of her people to the Federation. Her makers are micromanaging her mission, do not understand her perspective, and insist that she enrol in an advanced course for which she is not ready.

So far, this is an effective story about a college student trying to break away from her helicopter parents, while also being a first-generation immigrant exploring a culture that her family doesn’t understand.

Her attempts to enrol in the course lead her to discover another Emissary: Benjamin Sisko, known to Trekkies as the captain/lead of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, and a lot of fan service ensues as Sam attempts to solve the mystery of his fate and come to terms with her own identity.

Meanwhile, the adults attend an awkward dinner party.

As a love letter to Deep Space 9, to Avery Brooks, and to the Black fans and creators of Star Trek, this is a brilliant episode. It both honours what has gone before and the work taking place now, and passes the baton to the new generation coming in. As an episode of Star Trek, steeped in lore, it absolutely functions.

As an episode of Starfleet Academy, a series designed to introduce new viewers to the universe, it’s … maybe less successful? Browsing TrekTok, I’ve seen young viewers saying it’s time to finally watch DS9, and others lament that this felt more like Gen X/Millennial nostalgia than the other episodes. Both responses make perfect sense to me.

More than anything, I feel like the fifth episode is way too early for this story. In general I think the script does an excellent job of making this Sam’s story more than fan service, but it’s so exposition-heavy in parts that it feels unnecessarily clunky. I wish the concept had been held back for at least a season.

As for the adult storyline, I was mildly perturbed by it on my first viewing, strongly disliked it on the second, and felt like I finally understood it on my third. This ambiguity isn’t a bad thing, especially in a series which had Admiral Vance explaining the subtext just a few episodes ago, but the dynamic felt more like comedic workplace bullying with a dash of xenophobia than I assume was intended.

Aside from all the fan service and some genuinely exciting guest appearances, the highlight of the episode, for me, is the whole “The gang goes out drinking” subplot. It was a great blend of comedy, pathos and romance, and really captured the “we are young adults going out drinking for the first time, and we are DEFINITELY grown-ups, look at us, we are SO grown up, ask anyone” vibe of university students on the town.

And with that … we are done! For the season, I mean; obviously there’s a third season coming, and it feels like a lot of season 2 has been set up for the next one.

Which is not to say nothing has changed — we now know that Robert House was right about Cooper being a(n unwitting) player in the end of the world. He gave cold fusion to President Clancy Brown, who immediately passed it on to the Enclave, who ended the world. That’s rough, dude!

But I was right about Cooper and Barb not really being estranged in the beginning; he has taken the fall, while she protected Janey. Somewhere along the line I became very invested in Cooper’s marriage. Apologies to the Ghoulcy shippers: I see you, I respect you, but I think Cooper is a one-woman ghoul.

Question: is Clancy Brown going to appear in season 3? This is a universe where a little thing like a nuclear apocalypse followed by two hundred years is no barrier to life, and he seems like a big name for one appearance. On the other hand, until the last five minutes, it looked like Macauley Culkin was going to be a one-episode supporting guest star, sooooooooooooooooo.

Actually, speaking of big name guest stars who should be coming back, where’s Ron Pearlman at? He turned up, saved Cooper’s life and noped out again?

And this is kind of where I’m going to criticise season 2: it felt like a lot of pieces were being moved on the board, but maybe at the expense of story and character. And, at the same time, there’s a reluctance to actually kill off popular characters. I feel like Hank should be dead at the end of season 2, but instead his mind has been wiped. Does that serve the story, or is it simply a series that’s unable to kill its darling? I won’t really have an answer until season 3, but I have doubts.

Similarly, Norm’s storyline feels kind of pointless. He has gone to the surface, met a nice girl and encountered some easter eggs from the game, but I’m starting to feel like the whole purpose of this exercise was to get him out of the triple-vault so he’s not around when Stephanie/the Enclave launch phase 2.

None of this is to say that I haven’t enjoyed season 2, but now that we have it in full, it feels very much like a middle chapter.

Look, no disrespect to Idris Elba, whom I support absolutely in all things, but you can’t just swear at your hostage? It’s like, a real power imbalance? He should treat his hostages with more respect?

This show is so dumb, and I love it.

HOW ARE WE A THIRD OF THE WAY THROUGH THE SEASON ALREADY? Fifteen weeks is not enough! I need a return to the good old days when season 2 of A Country Practice had 92 45-minute episodes. Yes, half the cast, crew and writers ended up in hospital with exhaustion and overwork-related illnesses, but no one had to go without!

Ahem.

The good news is that Dr Robby and Langdon are cooperating; bad news, they’re cooperating in … not great medicine? The waitress with an infected foot is back, and this time it looks like something very bad. “Flesh-eating bacteria!” I said, because I live in Victoria, but actually they suspect necrotising fascitiis.

But at no point do they communicate that with the patient, and that, my friends, is bad healthcare. Robby and Langdon are brothers in avoidance, but you gotta communicate with your patient, guys. Even if she’s high strung and anxious. She’s been whisked off to surgery (after Robby sliced her leg open without warning or pain relief to prove his diagnosis), and may wake up an amputee.

MEANWHILE, Santos is struggling with her charting, and Dr Al-Hashimi recommends she give generative AI a whirl. This is a terrible idea, and at this point I am eager for Dr Al to learn an important lesson about being a tech-brained jackass.

With Santos focused on admin work, she’s also doing a half-assed job of supervising Ogilvie. Who is, let’s be real, the white male Santos but without the charm, charisma or competence, but he still doesn’t deserve Santos’s combination of disinterest and hazing. And the audience did not deserve the on-screen poop. There has been a lot of poop on my TV lately, and I just want to say I think this is a bad trend and should stop. Anyway, make sure you get enough fibre in your diet and look into stool softeners if you’re taking opioid pain relief.