Serva

I've now watched through The Next Generation, Voyager and Deep Space Nine somewhat back-to-back. For me DS9 rates slightly above Voyager, while I enjoyed TNG the most - TNG is also the only one I want to rewatch. My favorite part of DS9 is the initial seasons, especially season one, before the Dominion war story arc takes over. For me this arc is the least interesting part of DS9 which is unfortunate since it dominates the show. Star Trek isn't good at doing bad guys, and the Dominion is no exception. There is nothing interesting about them, they are just evil, and their reason for being so makes no sense.

What makes really good science fiction stand out is when you can suspend your disbelief and engross yourself completely in the world. DS9 fails here since the sets and costumes look so dated. It also doesn't help that this is a very ugly show. The Terek Nor set has such drab colors and the design is impractical. Take for example the "turbo" lift in operations, it moves extremely slow and just comes to a stop when its roof reaches the floor. In later seasons they wisened up to this and always cut away before this happens.

As far as characters go DS9 thankfully has none that I actively dislike (like Tom Paris and Neelix in Voyager), so that is a big plus. The closest is Jadzia Dax, mostly because the actor can't act to save her life. She is just there to be pretty, and it doesn't help that she is supposed to be someone who has lived multiple lifetimes, which is a hard thing to portray. She also gets put into situations where she is supposed to do the "tough" act, like being part of a Klingon crew, which falls flat. The Trill were a good concept for *one* episode of TNG, less good of an idea as a character in 173 episodes. My favorite characters are Odo and Quark since they have interesting dynamics beyond the other goody-two-shoes Starfleet officers. But all the other actors do a fine job.

DS9 was innovative in the sense that it had a continous storyline throughout the show as opposed to the alien of the week structure of TNG. As mentioned I just wish that storyline was more interesting. Roddenberry wanted Star Trek to portray a positive vision of a utopia where money does not exist etc, and DS9's obvious departure from that in that it incorporates religion and has a heavy focus on war doesn't really gel with me. My favorite episodes tend to be contained and don't have much to do with the Dominion war: "Duet", "Shadowplay", "Life Support", "Trials and Tribble-ations" and "Far Beyond the Stars".

If you are a die-hard trekker completionist, go ahead and watch DS9, but for anyone else I would not recommend it. There are many bad episodes that are a struggle to get through, for example the Ferengi centered ones. Ultimately this show is about war, but it can't portray it in an interesting enough way like for example Star Wars or Starship Troopers does.

The Covenant is decent as a movie but is marred by practical aspects of filmmaking that brings it down. It's obvious that no real guns were used, and while it is impressive how relatively real they have made the firefights look and feel, you can tell it's all CGI. It has that uncanny valley look to it. I understand that it is a safety concern, but it takes all the energy and impact out of these scenes.

It's also obvious that this isn't Afghanistan. I'm sorry, but Spain has way too much vegetation to be able to portray the arid desert terrain of Afghanistan convincingly. I assume this is a concession for budget reasons.

There are some cliché scenes especially towards the end. But the one shot that stood out to me was when they tried to excuse a certain Wikileaks war crime shot. That made me a bit disgusted and knocked some points of the rating.

The anime reboot of Sailor Moon starting with Crystal became very hit or miss. The first nine episodes of Crystal are as good as they possibly can be, but then it becomes a meaningless exposition dump. Something very similar happens in Cosmos, where the first part largely is ok where we get to spend time with the sailor senshi that fans know and love. But then they are replaced with endless and extremely tedious exposition of new characters, places and events. Part of me wonders if this might be a cultural thing, or at least an anime convention. But coming at it from a western perspective, you should never use exposition in the later parts of a movie. It will remove all agency and suspense, at this point the viewer should have all the information, and we should just be able to follow the events unfolding.

I always thought the Sailor Starlights were weak and their outfits look awful. It's so strange that them changing gender when transforming is not brought up at all. Is it some kind of censorship? I though Eternal was great, and that arc isn't *that* much better than the final one, so a let down that Cosmos was unable to hit the mark. The animation in Cosmos is great, but even Sailor Moon needs more than that.