By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 38 seconds ago

When casting for Starfleet Academy was first announced, fans were shocked and delighted by the return of Robert Picardo. His holographic Doctor was a fan-favorite character on Star Trek: Voyager, and his presence on the new show has been mostly awesome. However, the writers surprisingly tweaked this comedic character by making him a tragic figure who is occasionally overcome by grief at the thought of the friends and even family he has lost over the years.

The episode “Life of the Stars” healed that pain in the most unexpected way: holographic cadet SAM starts glitching out because she has no memories to help process trauma, so the Doctor volunteers to raise her for the equivalent of 17 years. If Starfleet Academy gets its intended four seasons, it could be very rewarding to see the Doctor transformed into a father figure working alongside the child he raised. But given the persistent rumors that the show will be canceled after Season 2, I can’t help but think Star Trek ruined the Doctor by changing his personality and then giving him an arc that may never actually play out.

Star Trek’s Funniest Character Gets Serious

Just to be clear, I’m not opposed to the idea of changing up the Doctor’s character. Over eight centuries later, it would actually be a little strange if he were exactly like he was back on Star Trek: Voyager. Plus, Robert Picardo is an amazing actor, and he’s just as good at drama as he ever was at comedy. But as with so many things in Starfleet Academy, the writers have struggled to find the right balance with this character.

For example, the Doctor is still called upon for laughs, only he is expected to be part of this show’s broader comedy efforts. That’s why any given episode will have him mugging for the camera while singing for the opera or cracking snarky jokes about cadets’ bowel movements. In a particularly low moment, he played the insanely annoying host of a dinner party, which came to a premature end thanks to a farting fish (no, really).

But he is also meant to be a haunted, tragic figure whose dialogue hints at past trauma that he is still processing. Heck, he opens up “Life of the Stars” with a noir-flavored monologue about how many dawns he has seen and how time is a “beast” that bites everyone differently. It’s a cool way to start an episode, but it forces me to ask, once more, whether the writers of Starfleet Academy expect him to be the comedy relief or to be an edgy, brooding legacy character.

Big Changes For Your Favorite Character

“Life of the Stars” ended with a major change for the Doctor: he decides to help fix a glitching SAM by raising her for the equivalent of 17 years. This is meant to give her the emotional resilience she will need to handle various situations as an adult while helping the Doctor move on from the trauma of losing a holographic daughter over 800 years ago. Should Starfleet Academy get four full seasons, it could be very rewarding to see how Robert Picardo handles this latest permutation of his character.

Unfortunately, Starfleet Academy is going to almost certainly end after Season 2. When that happens, one thing will be very clear in retrospect: they really squandered the Doctor, one of the most beloved characters in Star Trek history.

It’s obviously rewarding to watch characters grow and evolve over time. We got to see it happen in previous shows with young Star Trek characters like Wesley Crusher and Nog, and that’s presumably the idea with Starfleet Academy: to watch our youthful characters grow and mature into proper Starfleet officers. However, such character plotting only really works if the writers have enough runway for this dynamic storytelling to take off.

Star Trek’s Future Looks Bleak

While nothing has been officially announced, the future for Starfleet Academy looks bleak: the show consistently fails to make the Top 10 for Nielsen streaming or even Paramount+’s own Top 10. It’s also frighteningly expensive to produce (like, at least $8 million per episode), making its future doubly uncertain in the wake of Paramount’s merger with Skydance and possible acquisition of Warner Bros. Given these factors, many fans are worried the new show won’t get confirmed for Season 3 (it was long ago renewed for Season 2), and even members of the cast treated shooting the Season 2 finale like a bittersweet farewell.

There would be many repercussions of a sudden cancellation, but I can’t stop thinking about what this news would mean for Robert Picardo’s Doctor. Originally, his return was one of the reasons I was most excited about Starfleet Academy; like many, I loved his acid sarcasm and cynical sense of humor on Voyager. I was alarmed early on that this new spinoff treated him as the worst-written comedy relief of all time, but there were still enough glimmers of the old character to keep me tuning in.

Now, near the very end of Season 1, Starfleet Academy has changed the Doctor by making him a father to SAM, but we’ll barely get to see that relationship play out if the show gets canceled after Season 2. That means that the new Star Trek show brought the Doctor back only to neuter his comedy while saddling him with an unexpectedly traumatic background story. All of this was presumably in service of his arc with SAM, one that the writers will barely get a chance to explore if the show doesn’t get a third season.

It’s Dead, Jim

Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but I can’t help but think that this has been a supreme waste of both the Doctor and Robert Picardo. Star Trek brought back its funniest character and made him spend half of Season 1 taking part in poop and fart jokes, and the other half brooding about something that happened 800 years ago that he never cared about before. All of this to pave the way for a “Doctor Daddy” storyline that will go nowhere after Starfleet Academy gets quietly canceled, a la Prodigy.

Ah, well: maybe the failure of Starfleet Academy will convince Alex Kurtzman (or whoever, God willing, replaces him) to finally give us a Star Trek Legacy show featuring characters like the Doctor. Such a series might actually respect both Robert Picardo while finally giving the fans what they want. Until Star Trek can start appealing to the fandom rather than soulless executives, though, this franchise will receive the diagnosis made famous by its original Doctor: “It’s dead, Jim!”

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By Robert Scucci
| Published 43 seconds ago

My favorite kind of psychological thrillers are bottle stories because they have to make good use of their limited surroundings to generate real suspense. More often than not, stories like this can be shot on a shoestring budget and lean heavily on dialogue. An exception to that rule, 2022’s Fall is technically a bottle story, and relatively low budget given the reported $3 million that went into its production, but our protagonists aren’t chit chatting over coffee and unpacking their trauma. They’re sitting atop a 2,000 foot TV tower.

They’re still talking about their past traumas on that tower, but at least they earned that trope here because they had to climb for it.

While Fall spends most of its runtime unpacking grief at an extreme altitude, it never loses sight of what’s actually at stake. Two young women climb to the top of a decommissioned tower that becomes structurally compromised, and they have no way to get back down. Their friendship is tested, and so are their wills when they realize they have no reasonable way to contact their loved ones and let them know what kind of trouble they’re in.

Becky’s Grief And Shiloh’s Influence

The source of Becky’s (Grace Caroline Currey) trauma in Fall takes place one year prior to the TV tower incident. When her husband, Dan (Mason Gooding), falls to his death during what should have been a routine climb with her and her best friend Shiloh (Virginia Gardner), she becomes a husk of a human being, abusing her prescriptions and self medicating with alcohol. On the verge of suicide on the anniversary of Dan’s death, Becky is confronted by her father, James (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who desperately wants her to snap out of her spiral and continue living her life because Dan would have wanted her to.

Becky is finally pushed to confront her fear of climbing when Shiloh pays her a surprise visit with what she frames as the opportunity of a lifetime. Now working full time as an online influencer and adventurer, Shiloh, always proudly sporting a tight tank top so she can get more eyes on her live streams (her words, not mine), urges Becky to tag along on her next adventure. The plan is simple in theory and insane in practice. Climb a decommissioned 2,000 foot TV tower and scatter Dan’s ashes from the top.

From here on out, we get the expected dynamic between Becky and Shiloh. Becky is trapped in and defined by her trauma, while Shiloh constantly misquotes Dan’s positive platitudes as a way to convince her this is exactly what she needs. Eventually, Becky agrees.

They make the climb without realizing how many structural faults the tower has due to being decommissioned. After they reach the top, the rusted ladder system collapses beneath them, cutting off their only clear route down. With no cell service because of the tower’s interference and limited supplies, Becky and Shiloh have no way to contact their friends, families, or even Shiloh’s followers, who are periodically seeing updates from the adventure, but are used to waiting for delayed posts when she goes off the grid.

Living Is More Than Just Survival

Forced to confront her renewed fear of heights, Becky has to make peace with her past if she wants any chance at a future. She’s pushed to confront her personal demons in the worst possible setting, with Shiloh’s resourcefulness acting as a temporary guiding light. Unfortunately, nearly every plan they come up with backfires. Swinging their cell phones out far enough to catch a signal proves futile, and their quadcopter drone has limited battery life, making it impossible to reach anyone nearby before it dies.

As vultures begin circling the tower, the situation becomes more urgent by the hour. If they cannot find a solution, they will eventually succumb to dehydration, starvation, infection, or the elements. Both sustain injuries during their ordeal, and with no safe way down, their options shrink fast. At a certain point, all they can do is ration what little they have and hope that some miracle puts them back on solid ground.

Solid Twist, But It’s Been Done Before

Fall offers a couple of solid twists if you’re a psychological thriller tourist, but if you’ve been around the block a few times, you may find them less shocking than advertised. I was instantly reminded of 2018’s Adrift, which strands its characters on a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific, because the structural playbook is similar with its isolated setting, emotional trauma, and narrative reveal that reframes what you’ve been watching. 

Still, if you’re a more casual fan of the genre and do not actively seek out every single entry, Fall absolutely delivers on its promises. The setup is simple, the stakes are obvious, and the execution is tense enough to keep you locked in. Sometimes that’s all you really need from a survival thriller. You know what the ride is going to feel like. The question is whether you’re willing to take it.

Fall is currently streaming on Netflix.

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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 21 seconds ago

The most recent Starfleet Academy episode made very dramatic changes to two of the fandom’s most favorite characters. When SAM begins glitching, the Doctor teams up with her people to develop a startling diagnosis. Namely, that she is unable to process trauma because her Makers didn’t implant any memories of growing up.

To fix his holographic homie, the Doctor makes the major decision to raise a rebooted version of SAM on her homeworld for the equivalent of 17 years. Doing so helps the Doctor heal from his own emotional trauma (he’s still mourning the holographic daughter he lost over 800 years ago) while giving her the emotional resilience she will need to handle pain.

This is obviously meant to be a sweet episode that establishes a father/daughter bond between two unlikely characters. Unfortunately, this episode accidentally makes Starfleet the villain because it confirms they let a child into their academy and subsequently put her in various dangerous situations.

Life’s A Glitch

When Starfleet Academy first premiered, SAM was the character that confused me the most. She had a bubbly, childlike personality that was implicit in her programming. Even though she holographically presented herself to the world as a young woman, she was only recently programmed. Therefore, she came into the world with fresh eyes, often approaching things like a hyper-teenage girl version of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

After the show’s first episode, my question was simple: “Wait, y’all let a kid into Starfleet Academy?” While different alien races must mature at different rates, it always seemed like you had to be at least the equivalent of 16 years (like young Wesley Crusher) to even apply. Therefore, it seemed weird they would accept SAM, someone who was practically born (er, programmed) yesterday.

Gathering Enough Data

Soon, I mollified myself with the notion that 32nd-century Starfleet likely saw SAM the same way that 24th-century Starfleet saw Data. To such an organization, the actual age of a person may be less important than their knowledge and relative maturity. Data knew more than probably any human from the moment he was programmed, so it’s not like Starfleet would have wanted him to arbitrarily wait 16 years before applying to the academy.

SAM, I reasoned, must be the same way: programmed with the knowledge needed to excel at Starfleet Academy and ultimately become an exemplary officer. However, what I hadn’t considered was that Data originally had no emotions for Starfleet to worry about. Combined with his extensive knowledge, that made him more or less like a Vulcan. SAM’s emotions, however, were front and center in “Life of the Stars,” an episode that accidentally reveals Starfleet as a villain.

Starfleet’s Sudden Heel Turn

In that episode, SAM begins glitching out, and things get bad enough that the Doctor and Chancellor Ake take the hologram back to her homeworld. Eventually, they realize that she is stuck reliving recent trauma that she was literally unable to process. That’s because her Makers never gave her any memories of growing up, and without learning resilience, she would be unable to handle the flood of negative emotions that come from traumatic experiences.

Our heroes save the day by proposing that the Doctor raise SAM until she is 17, effectively giving her an entire childhood with which to develop necessary emotional resilience. But I was struck by the revelation that SAM was programmed with no experiences or memories of any kind. Sure, she had plenty of intellect programmed in, but in every other respect, she had the mind of a child.

The Dangers Of Enrolling Literal Children

In that way, the happy ending of this episode confirmed my original suspicions that it was weird and downright dangerous for Starfleet Academy to accept a child into its ranks. She was someone without the capacity to really understand most of what she encountered, and her attempts to process something as relatively commonplace (at least, in Starfleet) as trauma nearly got her killed. Put another way, Starfleet nearly got this cadet killed because they didn’t accurately vet her during the application process!

Maybe there will eventually be some crunchy backstory to this; for example, we might get a revelation that, post-Burn, Starfleet is accepting almost every application they receive. Back in the 24th century, applicants like Wesley Crusher had to pass a psychological test where they confronted their greatest fears and showed they had the emotional resilience needed to be a Starfleet officer. In dropping tests like this and just blindly accepting SAM’s application without knowing exactly how she was programmed, Starfleet put her and her fellow cadets in danger.  

Skeezy administrators cutting corners in order to boost enrollment numbers? Maybe Starfleet Academy is more like the modern university system than any of us ever imagined!

The internet is all over Tahj Mowry, telling him to drop his digits thanks to the new Instagram pics he posted. The actor shared some selfies, and fans didn’t waste a second letting him know they were living for the up-close, personal shots.

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Tahj Mowry Just Dropped Some Selfies & The Internet Is Losing It!

Roommates, Tahj Mowry set Instagram on fire after dropping some fresh pics. The comments blew up fast with fire everywhere and heart-eyes flying. He posted two selfies in what looked like a car, one showing his side profile and the other staring straight into the camera. The ladies were feeling the energy, even joking that he went from little TJ Henderson to “Foine Man.” Tahj hasn’t addressed the fan reactions yet, but his sisters, Tia and Tamera Mowry, jumped in the comments. Fans started begging Tia to “put them on” after she wrote, “Brotherrrrrr….,” prompting one user to reply, “tell your brother I said call me.” 

Fans Are Ready To Slide Into Tahj Mowry’s DMs

After The Shade Room posted Tahj’s pics, the comments kept rolling in. Fans joked he’s always been fine, while others said they thought he was Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, at first glance.

Instagram user @therealmooney645 wrote, “He look sooo good! I BET HE STILL soooo SMART ❤️he so handsome 😩😩😩🙌🙌” 

Instagram user @djsugashae wrote, “He’s a smart guy ❤️” 

While Instagram user @therealmiyanamonique wrote, “I thought that was the Dwayne Johnson 🤦🏽‍♀️🤣🤣” 

Then Instagram user @sharleen_evett wrote, “He BEEN fine 😮‍💨😮‍💨😍😍” 

Another Instagram user @mzslimthick wrote, “Men know they look better with age! He looks good.” 

Instagram user @notyacupof_tee wrote, “Mr. Smart Guy looking good 😍” 

While another Instagram user @chioma.jpeg wrote, “Tell him we said drop the skincare routine AND the number.” 

Then another Instagram user @tamabam_ wrote, “Another slice of life, of master TJ Henderson, super intelligent, a fine young gentleman 😩” 

Finally, Instagram user @t0mmyn0pickles wrote, “Tj Hendersonnn 🤏🏽🤏🏽🤏🏽” 

Is Tahj Mowry Single Or Taken? Fans Want To Know!

For the ladies asking, Tahj Mowry hasn’t confirmed his relationship status. The ‘Full House’ star keeps his love life on the low and rarely drops hints on social media. Reports state that he was allegedly dating Naya Rivera in the early 2000s, before her passing. So for now, the girlies are going to have to do some serious detective work to see if Tahj is off the market or single and ready to mingle.

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