I don’t like to admit it. It’s sort of embarrassing.

But I really love Canva’s terrible background graphics. Every week I tell myself that this is it, I’m going to find a tasteful background and stick to it. And every week I find some new aesthetic horror.

Worst of all, I have no plans to stop. I think next week I’ll plug “1970s wallpaper” into the search box and see what I get.

Let’s watch TV!

The season ends with an episode I rather enjoyed. It had two whole women with speaking roles! (Their personalities are Sex Worker and Girl.) But it also had some politics, which is what I enjoy most about the Westeros setting.

It also ends with a diversion from the novella which is (a) predictable and (b) intensely stupid. I assume GRRM is drafting an irate LiveJournal post at this very moment.

I'm running out of fresh ways to objectify Idris Elba, so this week I'm gonna share my big criticism of season two of Hijack: killing off his son. You have this big fun dumb series where Idris Elba hijacks a train, and that's great, but then you have this really serious, sad, real pain.

Season one word because Sam's motivation – to get back to his family, who did not want to see him – made him a little pathetic. He's a good guy, but he's also extremely divorced. The stakes were high, but also heightened.

Now he's dealing with a very intense pain of losing a child, but he's also hijacking a train. It's a contrast. Some men will do anything to avoid therapy, etc, but I feel like this blackmail story would have worked on its own, without killing the kid.

Remember Paradise? Way back in my second-ever post, I said this about the first season finale:

Now to go through my notes about the opening three episodes of season 2:

Okay! So maybe I have less new ground to cover than I thought.

Which is actually unfair, because season 2 opens way outside the bunker, and instead follows a new character as she survives the apocalypse by checks holing up in Graceland and living off Elvis Presley’s vintage canned goods?

This show is so dumb. I love it. How is Georgia above water when a mega-tsunami took out Washington DC? Don’t ask questions. It’s more important that Shailene Woodley is very compelling as Annie, and that as the post-apocalyptic climate improves, she is visited by three wise men a bunch of nerds who are roaming the United States, safely shutting down nuclear reactors and other infrastructure that’s dangerous when abandoned. Should we be concerned that in real life it takes decades to shut down a nuclear reactor? Don’t ask questions. What is causing Hot Science Guy Link’s headaches and nosebleeds, and who or what is the Alex he wants to kill in Colorado? Now we’re talking!

(Can I just say that if I was living alone in Graceland after the apocalypse and a bunch of nerds rolled up, I would be asking why there are no women in their reactor-shutting-down project. Like, that to me is a red flag, and the fact that they are nerds who can cook doesn’t reduce the risk of being raped and murdered, you know? Is that just me?)

Some months after Link and his team have moved on, Annie is heavily pregnant (of course) and watching out the window when a plane goes down nearby. It contains our man Xavier Collins (of course), and so the new character’s story intersects with the hero.

Episode 2 follows Xavier’s adventures between leaving the bunker and meeting Annie. They’re short and grim: the same headache and nosebleed that Link is suffering (oh), navigation on his Cessna is screwy, and then he crashes. But he doesn’t meet Annie right away — first he encounters some creepy silent children, and also some homicidal men. And we get a lot of flashbacks to his first meeting with the woman who would become his wife.

This is a great example of how you need the right actors to sell a story that would seem gross in the wrong hands. Xavier is in hospital, recovering from a knee injury in Secret Service school, while Teri is a PhD student, preparing for spinal surgery to correct scoliosis. He’s smitten; she wants nothing to do with him. Luckily Sterling K. Brown is delightful, and it’s easy to see why Teri is warming to him — even before the surgery leaves her temporarily blind. Xavier visits her in hospital every day, they form a bond, it’s a very sweet romance. And necessary — if finding Teri is Xavier’s motivation for this season, we need to see her as a character, and to be able to cheer for their relationship.

Episode 3 takes us back to the bunker at last. The new president is an oaf with fashy tendencies (oh), while Samantha is recovering from her gunshot wound and also locked out of power. By the end of the episode, secretly evil Secret Service agent Jane has slit the fashy president’s throat, while Samantha is going through a serious BFF-break-up with her former friend Gabriela. Also the previous president’s son has been snatched by goons and taken down to the secret holding cells for political prisoners, which are absolutely the first thing you want to build into your apocalypse bunker.

With Hijack about to end, I am so glad that we have a show which is somehow even sillier, and on a grander scale. That’s art, my friends.

A couple of weeks ago I discussed Tarima’s abilities here, and my friend Ellie (her new book is out today, go order it) messaged me to say, “Liz! Tarima is a banshee!”

And then I engaged in a few minutes of negative self-talk, because how did I miss that?

In Irish mythology, a banshee is a feminine spirit whose unholy scream is a harbinger of death. She is often depicted with streaming red or dark hair, and in some variants, she’s a ghost.

This episode sees Tarima return to school after the events of two episodes ago. She has a new implant to suppress her abilities (did she get a choice?), has been transferred from the War College to the more academically-inclined Academy (she did not get a choice) and is strongly advised to pursue a specialty in sciences (it is unclear whether she gets a choice).

She’s in a bad place. So are most of the kids who were involved in the Miyazaki crisis two episodes ago. Spring break gave them a reprieve, or at least a change of scenery, but the initial trauma is threatening to settle in and become PTSD. Recognising the problem, Captain Ake brings in the big guns: former Star Trek: Discovery regular Sylvia Tilly.

Tilly was introduced as a cadet herself, eventually earning promotions to the rank of lieutenant and leaving the ship to become an instructor in the space-dwelling soft launch of the new Starfleet Academy. In Discovery, she developed a skill for reaching difficult or troubled cadets, which makes her the perfect person for this job. But I did not expect her to help the kids out via … theatre.

“What if we study a play and it’s actually very relevant to our lives?” is a classic television trope, especially for young adult media. And “let’s give a bunch of talented actors a playscript and let them do their thing” is classic Star Trek. So I settled in for a good time, especially when they chose to do Our Town. But I was not prepared for this episode to become one of Star Trek’s all-time greats.

Tarima is suffering and making it everyone else’s problem. Sam is suffering and keeping it secret — she is not recovering from the injury she sustained on the Miyazaki, and by the time she finally collapses, she is beyond the ability of the Federation to repair. The Doctor and Ake take her home. She may not return.

(Shout out to this Tumblr user for discussing the ways Sam’s story aligns with the way Black women are expected to be publicly joyous and heroic, while suffering in silence.)

The two stories diverge and intersect around Our Town. Sam is hungry for life, for experience, for learning and growth. Tarima just wants to escape the role of ghost girl, moving through life without agency while people either stare or look through her. And the Doctor and Ake, both immortals, occupy the role of the Stage Manager: existing outside of time, on the edge of the community, observing but only now and then able to effect change. Until the Doctor, at least, is forced to become part of the story, and we learn why he has assiduously avoided Sam’s overtures all season.

This ties in with a mid-season Voyager episode, and I am somewhat unconvinced by that, but also I am obviously going to rewatch it in the coming weeks.

When a franchise has been around as long as Star Trek, and has encompassed so many different types of storytelling, it’s difficult to pick one single best episode. Over 900 have been made, plus films. But even accounting for recency bias, I feel like “The Life of the Stars” is easily in the top 25. It tugs at the heartstrings and makes us feel things, but it also executes its story more than competently. It’s actively good. It says something about the human condition and the characters as individuals.

And Tarima and Sam’s stories are specifically young people’s stories. I have complained about media which is marketed as being for young adults, but the characters behave like thirty-somethings — well, this is a story where the teen characters feel like teens. And the adults, and immortal adults, feel the weight of their years.

I used to have a job working in legal transcription, and while most of our work involved digital audio files, one day a certain government agency sent over a crate of cassettes, and I had to teach my younger colleagues how to turn over a tape, and how to fast forward and rewind.

I had a flashback to that day when I was watching The Pitt this week, and specifically the bit where the fax machine is brought out. And the moment where someone (possibly Victoria?) doesn’t recognise the sound of a modem. And when Joy asked Abbott if he trained in “the 1900s”.

Anyway. Loved the whole “we’re going old school” thing. People are predicting that Al-Hashimi’s AI is what caused the cyberattack, and I give that as much credence as the prediction that something would go terribly wrong with Santos’s Deaf patient and Trinity would be sued and fired by the end of the season. (Each season is ONE DAY, guys.) I’ve learned a lot about cybersecurity in the last year at work, and honestly, AI apps are an afterthought in terms of all the ways an organisation can be breached.

(Watch me be wrong.)

Standout patient of the week: Howard Knox, the fat patient who has to be intubated while conscious. As much as I wanted to reach into the TV and punch Ogilvie in the face for his fatphobia, I loved seeing everyone else treat Howard with dignity and respect. And it is McKay, who had to be called out for her fatphobia in season 1, who passes the lesson on to Ogilvie.

Standout doctor of the week: I actually gotta give it to Dr Ellis, who stops by to give Mel an illegal pep talk ahead of her deposition. As predicted, this lawsuit stems from the antivaxxer mom of the measles patient in season 1, and Ellis reassures Mel that she did nothing wrong and the lawsuit is frivolous. It’s a kindness that Mel needed.

Standout nurse of the week: Dana for ringing up the cops and giving them an earful for expecting special privileges themselves but not picking up rape kits. But Princess teaching the (conscripted) clerks how to use carbon paper is a close runner-up. We need to preserve the old ways, guys.

Standout nightmare fuel of the week: so many choices! Is it the eye stroke? The horrifying burns caused by checks exposure to lime juice in sunlight? These are all horrifying, but I’m going with Girl Whose Tongue Looks Like The Grand Canyon (thank you, Trinity) because that was so upsetting that I had to look away rather than appreciate whatever tensions were happening between Trinity and Langdon.

The Dr Michael “Robby” Robinovitch Award For Achievements In Petty Bitchiness: take a bow, Dr Robby. It’s not Al-Hashimi’s fault that hospital admin called her about the cyberattack instead of you.