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Black Mirror: The National Anthem (2011)
Not believable and not entertaining.
The Prime Minister receives a threatening ransom video of a kidnapped Duchess crying for help with one demand - before 4PM, he must have sex with a pig on air, unstimulated, with no video effects present. The video origin is stated to be from an encrypted IP. It was uploaded publicly and thus has already been spread across the internet.
News channels react with uncertainty and hesitation. After broadcast, public opinion indicates that a majority believe the humiliating demand should not be entertained. There is a weird and unresolved arc about one UKN reporter sending nudes to an undisclosed source.
Police and secret service teams search for the Duchess with no success. Meanwhile, the Home Secretary attempts to create a fake video of a porn star having sex with the pig instead. One traceback supposedly finds the video upload location, which is an abandoned school. A search party is instantly deployed but it finds nothing. The aforementioned UKN reporter had run to the scene. She is mistaken for the suspect, and subsequently shot by officers. Worse -through a Twitter photograph of the porn star hire, the kidnapper seemingly finds out about the secret video plan. He sends a finger-in-a-box to UKN, and it's indicated to be the Duchess's finger. This incident reverses public opinion, and now a majority believes the horrific ransom should be paid.
Time runs out. It's 4PM, the Prime Minister goes and screws the pig. The Duchess is released. She has been staggering around in the city for half an hour, but no one noticed because their eyes were stuck on their screen. That finger wasn't hers; a DNA test shows it belonged to a man. A year later, the kidnapping has been revealed to be the work of a deranged artist. The PM's approval rating still stands, but his wife doesn't want to talk to him.
The plot is probably intended to be dark comedy, but it comes off as being ironically realistic (I can imagine a hostile government asking for something economically meaningless but also humiliating) while the response and reactions are unrealistic. The ending shows that this kidnapping was an art project by a twisted social commentator. He wished to display the extent to which people would pay attention. This is completely nonsensical as he didn't have to actually kidnap the Duchess and essentially humiliate his nation for something petty and abstract. There are no public addresses by the PM himself. Realistically there should have been some attempt of communication. You know, don't ever negotiate with terrorists but do try to talk to them and gain clues. There is also not nearly enough attention placed on the political aspects of this kidnapping - terror groups' names are thrown around, but other international entities are not. This is odd considering the consistent mention of social media. Social media is, unpleasant as it may be, international and without account for cultural barriers. Many enemies would see 'death of a Duchess vs. PM has sex with a pig live' as a win-win situation. Also, no one noticed the Duchess for thirty minutes? That's impossible because even during the most anticipated ballgames, there are always humans on the street. Where are the television haters? The homeless dudes? The randos who truly have no care about politics? Did no one look outside a window?
The technological aspect of the plot is also underused. The video origin was already stated to be encrypted, yet the traceback is instantly referred to as "we got him." This seemed to happen too quickly to be true. Encryptions can be broken - even the most complicated SHAs, with enough CPU power, can be decrypted. See VPNs and Tor Browser route decryption attempts. Even if there was not enough time to find them by 4PM, the kidnapper likely would have been found eventually. He could have been threatened with severe punishment, but this is not discussed. The attempt to make a fake video is pointless as it both circumvents the demand, putting the Duchess in more danger, and would not deter national humiliation.
The subplot of the reporter sending her own nudes is dropped. The Prime Minister's wife is, for no apparent reason, written in a deeply unsympathetic way. She doesn't try to get her husband out of this very real ordeal, but she is displayed as the victim in the final scene of the episode.
I gave this episode three stars because the acting and pacing were decent, but its plot is unenjoyable. Unpleasant topics should be given exposure, but a resolve must consider unpleasant reactions too and preferably offer solutions for the real world.
Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019)
Not awful at all, but not comparable to the first movie
The film centers on the daughter of the two main characters of the first Iron Sky. She and her team seek a magical medicine as well as a powerful energy source. There are dinosaurs and lizard people involved. Overall it's much more character driven and less recognizable/ archetypal than the original.
I should add that it's quite easy to understand this film without watching the first, as there's a recap, for those interested. The acting is decent and the settings are diverse. There is a unexpected ending.
If you want to know what happened to the characters of the original, and are interested in a action fantasy story with sarcastic narrating- watch this film. If you liked the pulpy entertainment and political intrigue of the original- you won't find it here.
JoJo no Kimyô na Bôken: Dio the Invader (2012)
Immensely entertaining
This episode is a good exposition. It introduces viewers to the Joestar family and the mystery of the stone mask. The narration is very catchy whether subbed or dubbed (I've seen both haha) and the animation is fluid as well as stylistic. If you like the weighted lines and boldness of older Japanese action anime you'll like this show's style. It's also quite violent but the violence works both for entertainment and plot IMO. I have no regrets picking up this series
Enterprise: Vanishing Point (2002)
What happens when you're reassembled by the transporter?
The transporter is always an interesting topic. This episode ended surprisingly and I think it's worth watching. The dialogue is not memorable but the visuals are pretty decent.
This episode gave Ensign Sato some characterization as a dedicated crew member, which is good. Previously she had been characterized as sulky and complaining all the time which is a shame as she's played by a beautiful actress. In this episode, Hoshi boards the transporter in an emergency. After getting off the transporter, she starts imagining herself phasing through materials and being mistaken dead. She is the only one who discovers that aliens are about to blow up the Enterprise. To save her ship, she boards an alien transporter. Everything turns out to be her imagination, and she returns to the point when she arrived back on board. I liked the surprise ending.
The episode's main weak point is in the dialogue. Nearly every main character talks way too much. Captain Archer's awkward address to Mr. Sato following Hoshi's death was absolutely painful to watch. I like Archer, I wish the writers didn't keep writing him as a screw-up. The pacing is also slow and irregular.
Now, what actually happened when Hoshi Sato was dissembled by the transporter? Here's a somewhat dark theory:
The transporter dissembles life forms and creates exact copies. The original is killed and an identical one is created. The copy has a different consciousness but it's identical to the original and behaves in exactly the same way. This is logical because the molecules in the brain must be taken apart in order to re-materialize.
I think the sequence in the episode was what the original Hoshi Sato imagined in the last moments before her death. She thought about how her family would react to her dying, and she feels guilty for leaving the other bridge officers to worry about her. The act of boarding the alien transporter in the dream was the original Hoshi accepting her death and giving up her life to save Enterprise.
Enterprise: Twilight (2003)
Just okay, not as great as I'd hoped.
Other reviews claimed this was one of the greatest episodes in the show so I was excited to watch it. Unfortunately I was not too impressed. The story takes place twelve years after an anomaly devastates Enterprise and leaves Captain Archer with short term memory loss, caused by a parasitic infection. Archer wakes up in what appears to be someone's living quarters and T'pol is in the kitchen, with a completely different appearance and holding a plate of oranges. This looks interesting. She then explains that the mission in the Delphic Expanse has failed, and all but 9000 or so humans were killed. Here is where the story unfortunately gets uninteresting. T'pol's explanation raises more plot questions than it raises the probably-intended emotions of tragedy and desperation. How could the other crew members fail their mission THIS badly? Why are humans still fighting the Xindi? Oh hey, humans now live on Ceti Alpha V, look at that Easter egg. After that we see Ambassador Soval scoff at T'pol wearing a Starfleet uniform and dissing humans - more correctly than ever. T'pol makes some comments about how Vulcans could have helped humans by giving them weapons - disturbing comments especially coming from her of all people. Soval and Phlox, along with the readers, are now fully aware that T'pol is in love with her former captain, Archer. Sadly this all comes off as part of this season's rewiring of her character as needy and overemotional.
It's taken Doctor Phlox over a decade, but he's finally figured out how to remove the parasites from Archer's brain. The parasites live in non linear time and the only way of removing them, short of killing them (and Archer) in a subspace implosion, requires a machine which emits series of antiproton bursts. (Oh god, isn't this the same treatment used in Voyager's infamous 'Threshold' episode?!) Upon destroying some of the parasites, Phlox goes back to his old scans and finds that they've been altered, as if the parasites had never existed. He hypothesizes that destroying all the parasites will cause time to revert to the moment before Archer was infected, curing him and rewriting time.
Finally, a Xindi vessel appears in pursuit of Dr Phlox. The humans think they are only here to finish their genocide of humans, a subplot which is mentioned multiple times but then dropped. The Xindi offense destroys Phlox's machine and kills T'pol. Archer then overloads the plasma manifolds to kill himself, which erases every last trace that the parasites ever existed. We're back to the beginning of the episode, but this time, there are thankfully no parasites.
I'm tempted to compare this episode to TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" due to the alternate timeline nature. "Twilight" had none of the emotion of "Yesterday's Enterprise." The desperate situation in "Yesterday's Enterprise" is revealed slowly, and heavily. There is a continuous, constant sinking feeling that culminates in a meaningful sacrifice. In "Twilight" the situation is directly described by T'pol, and although it is dire, it fails to engender any emotions or ideas on how to get out of the situation.
'Yesterday's Enterprise' had heavy undertones of reviewing your own history and acknowledging sacrifices. The fact that the story took place in an alternate past, not an alternate future, was indispensable. 'Twilight' gives little meaning to its story. Tasha Yar sacrificed herself to save the Enterprise-D in another timeline. Yar gave up a relatively comfortable life to give Enterprise-C a slightly better chance in what she knew was a suicide mission. In 'Twilight', Archer kills himself in a plasma overload, seting time back twelve years and give humanity another chance, but this seems like the better option rather than a sacrifice. In Archer's case, the Xindi were already going to kill him so his sacrifice wasn't written as emotionally. In the words of more than one English teacher I've had - so what? Why is this episode important? What's the message it sends? Is it only supposed to entertain? Because it didn't really do that either, sorry.
I think some people like this kind of episode, but I sadly didn't find it entertaining or meaningful. I do like the concept of nonlinear parasitic infection and the opening scene, but the plot could have been much better.
Enterprise: The Shipment (2003)
Good characterization and pacing, reasonable development in plot
The team arrives on a planet supposedly harboring a Xindi weapons facility. Archer and Reed interrogate the head of a kemocite refinement facility, who is paid an early visit by shady clients. The dialogue between the facility's head scientist and the crew members is heart warming even if a bit abrupt. It's a strength of Enterprise that there are some sympathetic or respectable individuals among enemy species (previously the Suliban, now the Xindi.) In contrast, Voyager never did that with the Kazon.
The side plot about Tucker, Phlox, and T'pol disassembling a Reptilian rifle makes a slight net gain for the crew, one which is reasonable and important. The caterpillars in the rifle are pretty darn awesome.
Although I like the idea of the Delphic Expanse, I wasn't too happy with this season being so serialized. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed this episode and it's made me more interested in the serialized story. Definitely the best episode of Season 3 so far.