Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2

The Klingon War is over and the USS Discovery is poised to begin a new mission of discovery and exploration. But a fresh crisis erupts when unusually powerful signals are detected originating from distant parts of the galaxy. Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise takes command of the Discovery on a temporary assignment to investigate the source of the signals, taking the Discovery and her crew into some very strange places indeed.

The first season of Star Trek: Discovery was a mixed bag. It had utterly spectacular production values, a very solid cast and a willingness to do things differently to any Star Trek series that came before it. It also had muddled storytelling and characterisation, and sometimes overcame narrative roadblocks by simply blasting through them and damning logic, a similar approach to some modern episodes of Doctor Who (and, in its latter seasons, Game of Thrones). Discovery at its best was fun enough that you didn't care about the lack of coherence in the storytelling, but at its worst it was wince-inducingly contrived and trying to be dark for the sake of it. The fact that it was still the third-best opening season of a Star Trek show (after the original show and, arguably, Deep Space Nine) says rather more about how poor most first seasons of 1980s and 1990s series were then about Discovery in particular.

The second season is a moderate, but only a moderate, improvement. It has a much more charismatic and interesting captain in the form of Pike, played with absolutely stellar conviction by Anson Mount (who is probably thanking his lucky stars that Inhumans was cancelled). Mount plays Pike as a captain with sound judgement, ready to take risks but not crazy ones, and who absolutely trusts his crew rather than second-guessing them all the time. Ethan Peck also joins the cast as a younger version of Mr. Spock, a more rigid one suppressing his human side than the character we know from the original franchise. Peck's performance is excellent, overcoming the usual "Spock problem" of having to unleash lots of exposition and technobabble through his dramatic presence. He is probably a better Spock than Zachary Quinto (as solid as he was in the neo-Trek movies), and a fine heir to Leonard Nimoy.

The second season also dials back on the Klingon storyline, only touching base with it in a few episodes, and instead focuses on a fresh mystery, a scientific conundrum which our heroes have to solve through investigation and exploration, concepts much truer to the Star Trek mythos.

Cumulatively, these changes are all for the better. The show feels more like Star Trek, the cast is working better together and we get more of an exploration of the side and background characters, making the cast feel more cohesive as a team.

However, the show still manages to sabotage itself. The plotting and main story arc is still muddled and somewhat confusing, and the writers prefer to blast through under-developed plot points in a blaze of technobabble and hoping for the best. This isn't exactly new to Star Trek (the same problem bogged down Voyager for almost its entire run) but it feels more egregious in the modern TV age. Characterisation for the regulars is mixed, with Michael Burnham still feeling a little too under-developed as our key protagonist but the scripts getting into the motivations and psyches of characters like Stamets and Saru in a more interesting fashion. Tilly, a highlight of Season 1, does feel a little too readily used as comic relief and like an over-indulged child in several episodes, which is a disservice to both the character and actress.

The plotting problems culminate at the end of the season in two episodes which feel contrived at best, with the writers more interested in resolving fan questions about canon rather than organically developing a logical conclusion to this story arc. It's not helped that the final big space battle is a confusing mess of beams and explosions that even Michael Bay would find nonsensical.

The second season of Star Trek: Discovery (***�) is therefore a bit variable in quality: outstanding sets (especially the recreation of the Enterprise bridge), actors and effects, but confused storytelling, continuity and characterisation. The way the story falls out does make sense (even if the route there doesn't always) and it does leave the series with a very interesting new setup to explore in Season 3, but it does feel a little frustrating that show still isn't hitting the high points of the shows that came before it, or even those of the other big space opera series on the air, The Expanse, which is comprehensively owning space at the moment. Discovery is available to watch on CBS All Access in the United States and Netflix in much of the rest of the world.

Russian Doll: Season 1

Nadia Vulvokov is celebrating her 36th birthday - the same age at which her mother passed away - at a party thrown by her friends in New York. Tragically, she is run over by a yellow cab shortly afterwards. But then she wakes up back at her party again, with the exact same sequence of events playing out (unless she changes them). She makes it to the next day, only to die in another freak accident and wake up back at her party. Nadia realises that time and fate are playing a strange game with her, and she rushes to try to find an answer to the mystery of why her life is now going in circles.

Many are the TV show and movie which have "done a Groundhog Day", trapping a lead character in a time loop and seeing how they escape from it. It's a concept rooted in science fiction but played out for both humour - as the character can do what they want without consequence, as the timeline will just reset again - and tragedy. Many of these takes on the same concept are worthy (most recently, the surprisingly solid SF film Edge of Tomorrow) but few of them explore it to the depth of Russian Doll.

Russian Doll is a Netflix series co-created by Natasha Lyonne (who also stars as Nadia). At first it appears to be a comedy, with Nadia's time loop played for laughs. Very quickly it expands beyond that to incorporate elements of family drama, romance and tragedy. The show handles the tonal variation with skill, propelled by Lyonne portraying Nadia as an unflappable, hard-bitten New Yorker who's seen it all but has deep-seated insecurities and vices. In its second half, the show expands to become more of an existential exploration of depression and addiction, and certainly becomes a lot heavier-going. But the show avoids disappearing up its own posterior by refusing to get dragged down into cynicism. The ultimate message of the show is upbeat and hopeful, which is what elevates it beyond being yet another modern TV show wallowing in grimdark.

Russian Doll is a fascinating show to watch, a puzzle which the viewers can unpick at the same time as the characters. Is the time loop being generated by Natasha herself due to her tragic family backstory or an external force? Is the building's unusual history to blame? Was is the drugs Natasha was taking at the time? Was it one of the people she spoke to at the party? Each of the show's eight episodes adopts a fresh take on the concept and develops it further, going far beyond the usual surface exploration of the idea that movies can allow. But the show avoids repetition smartly by throwing a few massive curveballs into the story, which gives it new angles to explore and keeps things fresh up until the end of the story.

Russian Doll is also brilliantly paced. Eight episodes, each less than 40 minutes long, means it has time to explore the concept but not get too bogged down in the details. Each scene feels necessary, well-thought out and vital towards resolving what it is going on. The only major downside to the series is one that is more potential than actual: Russian Doll was pitched as a three-season show and I literally can't see where two more seasons would take the story. They certainly aren't necessary, as Season 1 ends in a strong manner. At the same time, after this season I wouldn't bet against the production team producing something else worthwhile.

Russian Doll (*****) is a thought-provoking meditation on life, death and existence. It's part science fiction, part hipster dramedy and part existential thriller. It's the best thing Netflix has put out in a good few years and is well worth a watch. It is available worldwide on Netflix now.

Narcos: Season 3

1993. Pablo Escobar is dead, leaving a vacuum for control of Colombia's lucrative drug supply market. The Cali Cartel has taken up the strain, making absurd sums of money, and its leaders know to live under the radar rather than attracting attention like the publicity-hungry Escobar. The Cartel's leader, Gilberto, proposes that the Cartel abandon the drug trade in six months to focus on legitimate business, to avoid Escobar's fate, leading to a race against time for DEA Agent Javier Pe�a as he tries to bring down the Cartel before its leaders can escape justice.

The third and final (in this incarnation) season of Narcos focuses on the fight between the Colombian authorities, "aided" by the American DEA, and the Cali Cartel in the early 1990s. This is a different kind of battle to the one fought against Escobar, which was bloody and merciless, with the Cali Cartel at least initially trying to fly under the radar and not carry out such huge acts of blood-letting. As events unfold, however, the various factions lose control of events and chaos returns to the streets of Colombia.

Boyd Holbrook's character of Steve Murphy has returned to the USA (perhaps thankfully; Holbrook was something of an anonymous link in an otherwise splendid cast), leaving the considerably more charismatic character of Pe�a (Pedro Pascal) to pick up the slack, which he does brilliantly. The voiceovers and semi-docudrama feel of the first two seasons has also been dialled back, with Pascal providing occasional context-setting voiceovers but not to the same degree as in previous seasons. This makes Narcos much more of a traditional drama, with a larger cast of characters and multiple storylines unfolding in different areas.

The result is a rich drama, packed with excellent performances (Matias Varela as tormented security chief Jorge Salcedo is particularly outstanding) and paced expertly, with less of the repetition of story beats that slowed the previous seasons. However, it does feel like some characters and subplots are less well-serviced, and none of the new antagonists can really match Wagner Moura's Escobar for charisma and presence. The storyline revolving around Maria Salazar doesn't feel like it really goes anywhere and it's odd that the show goes to the trouble of casting the legendary Edward James Olmos as Pe�a's father and then gives him almost nothing to do. Eric Lange's CIA agent character is also an annoying kind of reverse deus-ex-machina, constantly on hand to thwart the DEA's plans at the last minute because of some realpolitik motivation which usually doesn't make much sense. Of course, Narcos is a prisoner of the real historical events which sometimes don't obey the laws of drama.

Overall, the third season of Narcos (****) is a very watchable, compelling drama that is highly watchable and constantly fascinating, although it can't quite match the tension of the hunt for Escobar. It is available on Netflix now.