IN THE DARK REVIEWS

Last week in streaming, the 21st century's best "Star Trek" series returned for a second season on Paramount+, and the honorary godfather of superhero comics was treated to a highly sympathetic documentary on Disney+.

In some corners of the internet, I saw the second-season premiere of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" described as "underwhelming," and I can only wonder what alternate timeline version of this show those people were watching.

Just as its first season did, the return of "Strange New Worlds" hits the ground running and is just plain fun, without feeling saccharine or lightweight.

One of the unforeseen benefits of this prequel drawing its Enterprise crew from a mix of younger versions of established characters and completely new creations is it can open an episode with three of its major characters scattered to the winds, and introduce yet another new crew member along the way, and the group dynamic still sings.

The second season of "Strange New Worlds" looks to be more serialized than the first, as Capt. Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) heads out to parts unknown, to get his former first officer, Cmdr. Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), out of trouble with Starfleet for violating rules against genetic augmentation, all of which leaves a young Spock (Ethan Peck) as acting captain of the Enterprise.

When long-absent bridge officer Lt. La'an Noonien-Singh(Christina Chong) finally checks in, with a distress call that Starfleet doesn't grant Spock permission to respond to, Spock's solution is to inaugurate what's since become the time-honored tradition of saying "screw you" to Starfleet and stealing the Enterprise.

While the subsequent story teases serious consequences, the action that ensues is a delightful thrill ride, with each member of Team Spock contributing their own vital skills to saving the day.

After the keenly felt loss of Lt. Hemmer (Bruce Horak) last season, the Enterprise finally gains a new chief engineer in Cmdr. Pelia (Carol Kane), a mischievous and quirky member of a virtually immortal alien race known as the Lanthanites, who just so happens to be friends with Spock's human mom.

Yes, anyone who's perused online fanfic will recognize Pelia as a Mary Sue, but she manages to be entertaining without overwhelming the rest of the cast, which makes her a positive addition in my book.

We also get a surprising shared backstory for Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), whose service during the original Federation-Klingon War appears to have crossed the line between "front-line combat" and "full-blown war crimes."

But it's Ethan Peck as Spock who's the MVP of this episode, not only receiving an origin for his Vulcan lute-playing, thanks to some sage counsel from M'Benga, but also cementing his moral convictions early in his career as a Starfleet officer, even when he's still figuring out how much to trust his gut.

As in the first season, Peck eschews any attempt to imitate Leonard Nimoy in the role, and instead seeks to capture the underlying truth of who Spock is, and in the process, delivers what must surely count among Spock's most boss moments in canon, matter-of-factly explaining why he hijacked the Enterprise to senior Starfleet officers, without apology, all while nursing a hangover from having preserved the peace with several rounds of Klingon Bloodwine.

'Stan Lee'

Moving onto another feel-good tale, I should preface any review of the documentary "Stan Lee" by noting that the artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, who co-created the core of Marvel Comics with Stan Lee as their writer and editor, had no shortage of disputes with Lee's accounts over who deserved how much credit for (and for which parts of) those comics' stories and characters.

Indeed, a Google search will turn up several recent articles devoted to the criticisms that Jack Kirby's adult son has voiced over this documentary, and his complaints have plenty of merit.

But "Stan Lee" is told from Lee's point of view, and while it won't reveal anything new to those who are already fans of the man and his work, it makes marvelous use of all sorts of archival footage of Lee in interviews, at conventions, on talk shows, and even captured candidly on home movies, to give us a sense of his perspective and what drove him.

Several anecdotes are so familiar that the fans among us could recite them ourselves, such as how Lee was saving his birth name of "Stanley Lieber" for the critically acclaimed high-brow novels he imagined himself writing one day.

But one dimension of Lee's insecurity that comes to the fore is how his father's frequent bouts of unemployment when Lee was growing up, coupled with the expensive tastes of Lee's wife - Lee compares himself and Joanie to Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, as bookish guys who landed gorgeous models well out of their league - led to Lee always feeling like he needed to keep working, to prove his worth.

A simple but effective narrative tool that's employed to bring Lee's tales of his youth to life is, ironically enough, the use of static miniature figures, and surrounding dioramas, to depict specific scenes and moments, from Lee being raised on swashbuckling movie serials that made him wish he was Errol Flynn (Lee's subsequent mustache and hair replacement measures make more sense in that context), to the editorial bullpen of Marvel Comics (true to life, Steve Ditko's art table is shown as always including a note that read, "THINK").

Even within a film that's been dismissed as pro-Lee propaganda, it's revealing to see the in-house editorial cartoons that were published during these guys' peak periods of working together, which showed Kirby and Ditko grousing over Lee's self-aggrandizement even back then, not to mention the clips of Jack Kirby's live radio interview on his 70th birthday in 1987, during which Lee called in, and didn't exactly cover himself in glory.

If you know nothing about Lee, or if you do know his history, but you just miss the sound of his voice, this is a perfectly pleasant chance to hear from the man himself, but I would also absolutely recommend taking the time to hear out Kirby and Ditko's accounts as well, after you're done.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]