#starfield is big but it's so empty and what is there is the same thing over and over again

[madegeeky]

Epic Free Game (til 26 Dec 2023, 10am ct)

Lost in transit while on a colonist ship bound for the edge of the galaxy, you awake decades later only to find yourself in the midst of a deep conspiracy threatening to destroy the colony. Explore the various planets and locations of Halcyon, including the mysterious Gorgon Asteroid and delightful distilleries of Eridanos. As you encounter various factions, all vying for power, the character you decide to become will determine how this player-driven story unfolds. (Includes all dlc.)

(Geeky note: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. This game isn't for everyone but considering that this is free, you should definitely grab it if you're interested. It's made by the people who did Fallout New Vegas (which was not Bethesda) and it's got a quirky sense of humor. While overall I think it's a great game, I think it's real strength is in the character-work for the npcs.)

[averagereviews]

Starfield and the problem in general

Intro

Hello fellow gamers out there in the galaxy. This will be my first ever review I done in the first blog I ever created so dont expect much there, but there is just so much fustration piled up in me about the gaming industry, that I have to write it out of me.

Disclaimer

First thing first, there are far worse games out there than Starfield, but this game was the trigger point that made me do a blog, so I will make a honest review from the game. I will only focus the problems here, as official platforms are not highlight them out enough, and since I did not played the game I cant say much about the story either. My review is based on what I seen from Youtube and other streaming platforms so if you want to hear an in depth version, you might look somewhere else.

But hey, you did not play the game, how can you do a review about it, you might ask the fair question. Well my answer to that, you dont taste poop either to know its gonna be bad. I will belive to my fellow gamers that this game has some potential and has good moments, but generally it is another product that was not created with a soul, with the desire to be good.

Technical issues

First of all lets state the obvious, this game was in development for 5-7 years. In 5-7 years they came out with a core game that can be done in about 30 hours, if you focus on the main story quests only. They used the same engine as they are using since eternity and was out of date already at the time of Fallout 4, so it shows its mark on bugs, glitches and on performance as well. While the game runs on a steady 30fps on consols, the PC version suffers a lot. With an upper mid range setup like an I5-10400F+RX6700XT and 32GB ram + an SSD the game barely runs at 40 fps on ultra at 1080p during city walk and gunfights. This is just ridiculus to say the least, while better looking games like CP77 and BG3 or RDR2 runs way above 60 fps all the time. You might think that it may be my system that is weirdly not compatible with the game, but even better rigs suffer from this.

What is more funny in a bad way, that Todd Howard said in an interview, that they put a lot of effort into optimalization and that you may need a better PC to experience this game to the fullest. I dont know about this guys, for me its just feels as a big fat lie onto my face, as said before, better looking games runs better than this. Its not ugly or anything but more like a buffed up Fallout 4 in space theme. Here is some examples:

While you may find better looking areas, your major part in the game will live with this.

Lazy work

Another point I would like to highlight is the use of AI. It was a bad idea back then at No Man's Sky and it was certanly a bad idea here as well. They put 1000+ planets into the game that was generated by the AI depending on where you land on the planet, and most of the time its barren, empty, lifeless. It feels like they gave out the order to the AI, to use these assets on planets and create 1000+ of them. What you can find on them are most of the time rocks, some creatures put into the area randomly and without any real purpose. And yes I admit, if you would travel to 100 planet you would probably find rocks and barren lifeless areas, but as a gamer its boring. It may be fun and interesting for the first couple of times, but it gets boring to the eye very fast. What I would love to see is more planets with life on it, more vegetation, more creatures, better and meaningfull stuff on the surface or marks of a fallen civilization. And we might see this later like 7 years or so just as in No Man's Sky was very bad at the start and they hammered it until it became a good space exploration game. As of right now however this game is without a soul. Also the harsh reality why they do not changing the engine they use, because they know they can create a base game, with a lot of empty suff, and then rely on modders whom will do the hard work and fill up the empty or missing elements for free. They say its a gamer/modder friendly attitude, but its just about saving money and resources which is unacceptable in my book. Create a good game then let the modders live out their hobby, but do not rely on them to make your garbage playable while only you profit on it.

Marketing vs Reality:

This game was marketinged as a very good space exploration + RPG game where you can freely explore hundreds of systems and planets and find interesting stuff on most of them. While on reality this game restricts you from exploring, since you cant land manually on a planet just everywhere (like in No Man's Sky for example), but you have to choose your landing location from a planet view, then loading screen, and you are there in your 4x4km barren field that you can explore with some point of interest you can visit on foot (Because if they would give you wehicle, then you would realise easier that how small the area they let you "explore") These point of interests varies between "kill some pirates, or creatures", "explore this cave with 3 loot nodes inside" or "scan this or that" "Explore the lab" type of activity. Again maybe the first 10 will be interesting, then why would I want to do stuff like this for hours? Where are the crypt like systems that Skyrim offered with full of interesting puzzles? Where are the npcs that did something in previous games around you? Where are the secrets you can discover? Where is the wilderness? Where is life? Its a game its not a space simulator that offers you the same kind of experience you would do in real life. It should be full of fantasy to sell itself. Again it was marketinged like this and not as "Empty planet viewer simulator 2023"

And after all of this, we arrived to the real problem that is not Starfield's only fault. Its the era where we live and what we get for our money. Im sure some of you have much better gaming rig than me and you dont even have to care what you spend on your 70-100 bucks, but there are people, whom like to do gaming and has to think twice where they put their hard earned money. And this game with many others in my eyes are not worth the full price. The general problem is that developers are probably forced to make the games to deadlines that are way too short. I accept that creating an AAA game is not 1-2 years now, especially if you want to make it uniq in some way. Developers are pushed to their limits, they dont have enough time to create something that has a soul nor they have the time to test the games properly looking for bugs and glitches, and they rely on technologies like FSR and DLSS to avoid the need of optimizing. All because the publishers are not gamers, they only looking for money, they dont care about you people. They put a lot of investment to marketing/false marketing to generate hype, and when they got their paycheck they are happy and get the conclusion, they can sell games this way too, why bother with all the details and polishment? Fanbase will always buy it, defend it, as I encountered this with Starfield too. I asked people, what makes Starfield better than even Fallout 4 if it has so many flaws and missing elements? They could not give me a correct answer. All they said it has a good story and ship and base building is very fun, and modders will make this game better anyways, so I will belive them that story may be better, but again its not up to the modders to polish a game or make it playable, interesting, especially not for free even if this was the general case with Skyrim, Fallout series in the past (except that those games had more content by default than Starfield). In other cases I was immediately banned from some forums for said reason "I was trying to generate flame" Well if asking the hard questions is flame generation then yes I was doing that. Is this what we will get from now on? That companies will sell their leftover soul for more money and the gaming industry will only have 2-3 games per 10 years that are really outstanding and was created with passion? What are your toughts about this? Tell me in the comments below.

[pooepw]

i have traveled the ends of the world

i have played and talked about the greatness of arcanum, and now, in a masochistic fever dream, i played a bit of starfield. i am midway through the story, and i have not paid attention to a single thing that is happening. yet somehow, i still comprehend what is happening: acquire many mcguffins. omg! now there is someone here to take away our mcguffins! oh! we have to steals the mcguffins? the story mode is just a bunch of glorified fetch quests. you know the story is bad when at some point you are playing the single player of among us as one of the quests. i just click random shit with every dialogue prompt since nothing really feels like it matters. characters still interact with you regardless of what is happening. the quest where you were supposed to steal an artifact? i was so done with the bs that i just immediately went for attack and kill. does barrett still team up with me? YES.

though i have not gone through the entire game, i assume that there are no intelligent alien races that the player interacts with (otherwise the player could have had the cool choice to BE those races). it is disheartening that bethesda decided to choose the hyper realistic approach to sci-fi in assuming that there are next to no aliens that humans could interact with within a large sect of the galaxy. what is the point of constructing a game around sci-fi if one of the coolest parts of the fi is absent? dumb ass game.

the story and the lack of cool aliens is really small pebbles to the big boulder that is the content held within the game. and when i say big boulder, i mean the crater that such a boulder would cause upon impacting a surface. this game is empty. with this game, bethesda seemed to be determined to top their previous huge empty world, daggerfall, only, when i play daggerfall, i can at least instant transmission wherever i want to. now every single thing is a cutscene. enter chair of cockpit? cutscene. go into space? cutscene. sit in chair inside office? cutscene. the ingenious thing about the cutscenes is that the skip cutscenes mod cannot even skip some of the cutscenes because the game breaks when you try to skip them. i recall that the landing cutscene COULD be skipped if you pushed certain buttons, but doing this would crash the game.

back to the subject matter of emptiness, planets can be summed up into two categories: ones with life and ones without. ones without life are pretty bland; obviously if there are no signs of life on the planet, that has to be boring. however, the ones with life are functionally equivalent to the ones without life because all alien life in this game is the same. just animals varying from small to large. and all of them feel like they simply come out of the game spore. plant life already becomes inherently samey because of the materials being mostly the same across planets, but did they have to go ahead an copy and paste them across different solar systems? did plants discover the perfect form to take in any environment?

the final thing i have to say before i enter truly unhinged territory is that the procedural generation used for the planets is garbage. the content of the planets outside either lifelessness or existence of life can easily be categorized as follows: cave, raider place, worthless structure with shit held inside of literal shit. the caves in this game are the worst things i have ever seen. they are equivalent to the mines in skyrim, except there are no npcs within them. just ore. on the off chance there is a lifeform within, it is usually an easily dispatch-able spore creature. there is no point in entering these randomly. going a bit out of order, the worthless structures are a slight step above caves; rather than going into a chamber placed behind a loading screen, the player can find resources by looking for the local dung pile in these structures. you can also get experience from these, but the reason i dub them as worthless is because they parallel the experience of the plants and the animals. they are copied and pasted across the galaxy, sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally. if i am to believe that there are no sentient beings for me to interact with, then why are there so many structures that are shared across the galaxy? there is probably some dumb reason like a human did it, but it would have been cooler to interact with aliens. finally, the raider places are the only other part of planets. i would have said interesting, but these are completely copy and pasted. once the player has completed a single uc base, they have done all of them. enemy npcs in this game are stupid and boring, and the experience of going into these places reflects that.

i actually lied when i said that those were the three categories. there is a 4th category for areas on a planet, and that final category is the places where npcs exist. with the big towns, there is some amount of fun to be had doing the quests. but the real issue with the big towns is how few and how harsh it is to be in them. this game is not well optimized; every time i enter new atlantis, the experience is either that my computer has no trouble, or that my computer thinks this is crysis. i AM in fact using high power specs, but also i am not running this game with super high graphics: no raytracing, no 4k; just 2k with ultra.

so if there are few huge towns to get immersed into, how else do i interact with npcs? the other way is to find the preston garvey like settlements that need your help. i cannot believe i have to say anything good about fallout 4, but, by some miracle, settlements in fallout 4 are more interesting than the ones in starfield. where fallout 4 forces the player to go to an interesting location in the world, starfield's npc settlements will send the player to one of the many copy pasted structures on the planet to do dumb bullshit that can easily be messed up. my experience can be summed up by this anecdote: i was given the quest to find someone in a random spot on the planet (i believe it was a cave), and when i found them, they followed on me. walking back (yes indeed the adventure is over already, nothing interesting happens in this game), the guy i had to save dies to the local wildlife. when i say dies in this scenario, i really mean, walks headfirst into danger and pauses so that it may take him. it was not even funny at first, just aggravating.

there is a slew of other issues with the game that i have not gone over yet like the lackluster spaceship usage, the lack of good npc combat, the lack of cool weapons, etc., but i wanted to enter unhinged territory with this last point. i rarely play sci fi games. the biggest one i enjoy is fallout, but the game does not lean into sci fi involving space for the most part, but rather post apocalypse. a game that i do enjoy that is entirely about space is star control. so it was to my great dismay that when i entered the procyon star systems that there was no reference to the chmmr, chenjesu, or the mmrnmhrm. not even the smallest thing like silicon based life or a seemingly abandoned space station. instead this game had references to among us (yes i consider the quest where you do chores on the eye to be a reference to among us; heck the imposters come soon after and kill a main character (trying not to spoil)!). and for this reason, i consider this game to be below the mariana trench in terms of quality. every turn where bethesda had the choice between making a good decision and a bad decision, the company chose the bad path.

i implore you, do not buy starfield. this might be one of the moments where it is more ethical to steal this game rather than pay for it if you really want the experience, and i reserve this action for few games (actually it is just one game: the sims 4 and all of its dlc; also, just wait for starfield to go on a huge sale before purchasing it. a game of this caliber does not deserve to be $70 when games like arcanum and fallout 1 are single digit prices.). (I WILL ALWAYS STAND BY THE CONCEPT THAT IT IS MORALLY CORRECT TO STEAL ALL OF SIMS 4. IT IS SIMPLY EVIL THAT A COMPANY CAN CHARGE LITERALLY OVER A THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR WHAT IS FUNCTIONALLY A COUPLE OF MODELED ITEMS, MAPS, AND CLOTHES) the hinge on the door is broken now.

edit: just in case there is one last screw on the hinge holding the door, i am going to leave a batshit insane prediction on what bethesda is going to do with the game with its dlc. after the absolute tease that is the several mech ruins, but the lack of mechs in the game in general, bethesda is going to release a dlc that lets you have a mech, but it is not going to be interesting in any way since there is nothing interesting to kill with such a cool mechanic. it will use the same system as the spaceships in terms of constructing them and will have the same issue in that there is nothing interesting to do with them. if you want to have the illusion of fun, you better pay more!

[athenaalexandria]

Ok so stories. Why are some stories kind of empty despite great stakes and plot and characters? Because of scale. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially around the current Multiverse hyperfixation the media has.

Ok so like humans are what make good books. And I don’t just mean AI writers are bad. I mean your book will not be good if it doesn’t have a human element. Honestly I don’t think it’s even possible to write a story completely devoid of the human touch simply because the language we use to communicate our ideas inherently puts things through the human lens. But more human equals better story. So let’s think about this in a few ways.

If we go with movies, let’s do marvel and everything everywhere all at once. Both have multiverse. Marvel has big epic fights with crazy special effects, super blockbuster. But the problem with say end game is the sheer scale. You can’t feel the humanity in time travel and half the universe being dead and a war of CGI armies. You can even see this in the memes and favorite scenes. People like nebula and Tony at the start. We make memes of hope giving a taco to antman. Because we resonate with those character and human moments on the small scale.

Now compare this to everything everywhere all at once. It also has crazy fights and super cool special effects and multiverse shenanigans. But the difference, and why it’s the better movie, is that it’s not actually a multiverse story. It’s a story about a family, generational trauma, being queer, how love can save you, letting go and trusting your loved ones, and so much more. It’s a family drama with a multiverse background.

And this even carries over to other media as well! Video games is a big one, and the best example in my mind is Skyrim VS Starfield. They are made by the same developer with the same engine and the be same design philosophy. But Skyrim is just so much more loved. Why? Because Skyrim may have dragons and wars, but it’s also a much more human story of a people in the north battling to keep their ways in a changing land with an existential threat to their way of life with only you as protection from this threat. Starfield is jumping across barren moons for 3 hours. It’s too expansive, there’s not human touch, and you can’t connect with this world when it’s at such a scale. Skyrim is the Nordic lands, Starfield is thousands of planets. The scale, THE SCALE.

I first got this opinion when I started reading Xianxia and other Asian stories online. You can think of this through the lens of dragon ball. It starts with fighting in fighting tournaments where people kick hard, and ends with spirit bombs that can destroy a planet. Xianxia is the worst offender (I’m looking at YOU “I Eat Tomatoes”) where at the start you find a pet rat and learn to move fast at fight good with a sword. By the end you’re controlling the very fundamental laws of the heavenly dao to wipe out universes with trillions of lives just snuffed out because some dude said you had a small dick. Like shit is crazy.

Anyways I kinda lost the plot and focus went whooeee but basically write your books to be about people, keep the world and crazy rules in the background. Make us care about your characters and use the eye divine cybermancy background to make your characters and their arc even cooler and better. Also metaphors and shit with background but my thumbs are hurting so I’m gonna stop typing now.

[gikairan]

I've been playing Starfield properly for a week now, and some thoughts:

I think the most important thing to say is: I am having fun. I am enjoying playing this game.

But i do worry about the games... legs so to speak. I played Fallout 4 for like... a whole year. By the time i felt like i was running out of base game, the first expansions were dropping.

Starfield is... a different beast. It doesnt have one big, large, handcrafted map. Its got a lot of procedurally generated maps, with random bits and pieces. And so there isn't much exploring. And its the exploring i kinda like with Bethesda? The only other games i've played that have made an open world feel so alive are.... BOTW/ TOTK. Like, open world is a dime a dozen these days, but most of them are empty Ubisoft-likes (what i call "checklist open worlds").

But Starfield, by virtue of being a space exploration game, cant quite have that handcrafted touch I know and love from Bethesda. Like, theres only a handful of ways to do a space exploration game and thats: - you limit the exploration to a handful of locations, each with a handcrafted map. But you lose the feeling of the vastness of a galaxy (This is what ME: Andromeda and The Outer Worlds did) - You lose the open world maps, and go with more focused areas. You get a chance to show more planets, but you lose the exploration feeling. (.... This is what the first ME Trilogy did, and theyre not exactly exploration games) - You procedurally generate as much content as possible, and only add handcrafted touches when theres a specific quest. You get the vastness of the galaxy, but it loses many places of actual interest. This is what Starfield has done.

And so... one atmosphere-less planet is kinda the same as another? The colours may change, but largely youre only there because you have a quest there, or you need a specific resource that that planet has in abundance. The places of interest just arent that interesting. And most of them are atmosphere-less planets (Because... thats most planets we've discovered after all)

The game also does take a whiillle to start to open up. I've got over 24 hours of playtime clocked up (though i imagine a good 3-4 hours are just idling on menus as i do things like... cook) and i've largely just travelled between Alpha Centuri and Sol.... I've just made the trip to Akila, i've spent all of 5 minutes in Hope Town, and I have no idea where Neon even is. Theres nothing really between those places, its just fast travelling everywhere. And i'm usually a fast travel abuser, but sometimes the best moments in a Bethesda game are when you slow down and take the scenic route, yaknow? Locations needing fast travelling between them kinda ruins that a bit. And theres generally not 2 settlements on the same planet, despite that probably making a lot of sense (if Jamison is good for human habitation, why is New Atlantis the only settlement we can visit?), so theres not exactly any real random encounters on the ground maps.

My hope that the roleplaying in this game was better than FO4 because they ditched the voice protagonist was in vain. Theres kinda 2 options to continue most conversations, and anything below the first 2 (maybe 3) options are Questions to learn more - but not to move the conversation to the next part of the tree. I havent seen a huge number of skill related dialogue options, except like... medicine? Thats the one ive seen pop up the most.

Performance wise, i've largely not had any issues. Couple of crashes, but thats par for the course with Bethesda. .... But i noticed some obvious frame rate dips in Akila. Like, something in that location the xbox just did not like. But nowhere else. I also paid for a month of game pass ultimate so i could swap between my pc and xbox and see what i liked. ... I havent even tried to play on pc, because i'm happy enough on xbox. That, and the pc keybindings are... uuhh a problem. The game has so many different controls going on that i cant move WASD to any other controls without breaking some other system. Arrow keys are vital somewhere else. IJKL is vital somewhere else.... I'm not playing with WASD, because thats uncomfortable (i'm using the wrong hand for it!). And theres no point in playing on a controller on my pc, lol. I may as well play on the comfy sofa if i want to play with a controller. Will probably mess with my ability to play many mods, but honestly... i'm still uncertain about how much i'll care about the game by the time people start making some real good mods.

IDK man. I'm having fun, i'm enjoying the game. But it probably is a 7/10 game, yaknow? Theres a lot of things holding it back, but those things are also fairly central to the actual vision Bethesda had. Jurys still out on how much blorbo thoughts i can get out of this, mostly because I still dont quite know enough about the world to get a backstory going on. And thats going to be the thing that really makes everything else click. But even then, I could get an okay enough backstory out of The Outer Worlds and that never clicked, because the game just didnt have enough content for me to Really Care.

[foxgirlintestines]

Which one is the best monowhite budget commander? Can you build a list?

Well this is a tad bit vague. There is no definitive best budget mono-white commander as you can build white in different archetypes. Mono White is usually associated with aggro and equipment. There is a problem with those in budget. Good equipment can get expensive, same with their support cards. Stoneforge Mystic was just unbanned in Modern so that will definitely make Voltron White a bit less accessible. Aggro on the other hand is cheap, but also very soft in Commander. White weenies turning sideways often is just too slow to get there when you have three opponents and life totals start at 40.

(Decklist at the end)

That makes me want to build a Mono-White deck in one of two ways if I had a pretty low budget in mind: Stax and End the World control. Of these two options, Wrath tribal does not overlap witrh Modern in the types of cards you want so it will probably be cheaper. So, first off, we want our Commander to synnergize with the idea that every permanent is temporary, so there are three creatures that really catch my eye: Heliod, God of the Sun, Oketra the True, and Mageta the Lion (honorable mention to Avacyn who would be here if she was budget). The two gods are indestructible allowing them to safely live through the end of the world, and Mageta is a Wrath of God on legs. The problem Mageta runs into is the lack of card draw in white limits how well you can use him, you can simply run out of cards to discard. The other problem is since you are going to be running a lot of wraths he will be caught in the crossfire. That narrows it down to the two gods.

Heliod and Oketra operate pretty similarly. They are creatures that are basically turned off until you add permanents to the battlefield. One cares about white symbols, and the other cares about creature count. They both produce an army of creatures, but Oketra can animate herself while Heliod cannot. Heliod on the other hand makes larger creatures and has Enchantment synergies. You can honestly go with either one, but I will choose Heliod for the ability to have an enchantress subtheme as a way to keep him animated with permanents that aren't creatures and as another control element.

I'm going to try to limit all the cards in this deck to $5 or less unless they are important for the deck to function (some cards to save up for).

So, first off we need the removal suite. 1-for-1 removal should be kept to a minimum as you can't really keep up trading like that in a multiplayer game especially with less than ideal card advantage. Swords to Plowshares and Generous Gift will be the targeted removal suite outside of the ones that will come from enchantments. Next up is the big kaboom. We want to be able to really be the old testament god on one hell of a rampage. You should be able to control the board by having access to a wrath when needed after you hit 4 mana. Now to make the numbers work you need to kind of factor in how much card draw you have at any moment's notice and that will not be a super high amount. Somewhere around 10 with 12 being more comfortable is what you will need to have a wrath on hand at most times. If people are rebuilding fast and you need multiple wraths to stay on top of the board you'll need around 15. Lets just see how many we can fit in: Wrath of God, Austere Command (I found a copy for less than $5 so it counts), Day of Judgement, Rout, Fumigate, Cleansing Nova, Hour of Revelation, Akroma's Vengeance, Planar Collapse, Sublime Exhalation, Phyrexian Rebirth, Planar Cleansing, Myojin of Cleansing Fire, Nevinyrral's Disc, End Hostilities, Mageta the Lion, Martial Coup, Waking Sun's Avatar, Descend Upon the Sinful, Hallowed Burial, Urza's Ruinous Blast, Winds of Abandon, and Tragic Arrogance. Whats that? 23 but we only need about 15? I SAID THE OLD TESTAMENT HELIOD! If it bleeds it can die, and if it doesn't we'll send the whole fucking planet into oblivion! You made a black mage make a mono-white deck so its your fault for thinking this would end any other way.

Ahem... That seems decent enough. Some card draw, pillow fort, and mild stax should help round it out from there.

The enchantment package should be mostly defensive and geared towards stalling, but some heavy hitters to end the game should also be included. First off the payoffs for enchantments: Sigil of the Empty Throne, Mesa Enchantress, and Sphere of safety provide control, creatures, and card draw off of your enchantments giving you engines. Parallax Wave can temporarily mess with creatures, or save things from your constant wraths, it also forms an infinite exile combo with Starfield of Nyx. Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, Ghostly Prison and Aurification provide you with some early defenses, and Phyrexian Unlife combined with Solemnity create temporary imortality. They can be peiced together with Plea for Guidance, and on their own they are decent though narrow. Rule of Law, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Curse of Exhaustion, and Spirit of the Labyrinth will help against the unfair decks that otherwise ignore your wraths. Overwhelming Splendor can help if someone really needs to just stop. Nevermore and Gideon's Intervention can pinpoint cards that might take you down or lock a commander thats problematic out of the game. Martyr's Bond can be a heavy Stax engine acting as a Grave Pact on steroids. Finally True Conviction, Starfield of Nyx animating the Enchantments, and Ethereal Armor on Heliod can close out games.

The deck has solid "meat" but will need support from card draw and ramp. Draw is limited, but Endless Atlas is pretty good and Mind's Eye is slow but solid for budget reasons. Mentor of the Meek and Skullclamp can turn Heliod's Activated Ability into card advantage but they are a bit slow. Staff of Nin is expensive but you can't get picky. Though it only grabs lands Thaumatic Compass is good for consistent mana and its flip side is excellent for a deck like this. Treasure Map will filter draws and provide cards after it flips. Sadly some of White's best answers to its limited card advantage are quite pricey. Your main advantage will come from depleting your opponent's resources with a single card answering their full boards and breaking up their own card advantage.

Ramp is also limited, but since the best ramp is actually artifacts it’s not that bad. Sol Ring is the always present auto-include. Smothering Tithe is one of the few out of budget cards but its honestly one of the best white cards for commander and synergizes as it’s an enchantment so it’s one of the few cards to go out of your way to get. Starfield Mystic will discount your Enchantments and Pearl Medallion will discount all your colored spells. Solemn Simulacrum just got a reprint and is a decent land ramp. Most of your ramp should take you from 2>4 though so you can get your wraths online so you should stick to 2 cost rocks like Mind Stone and Marble Diamond. Arcane Signet will be an option but it might end up a chase card from the brawl deck.

Finally we can use Sun Titan as a random finisher with value attached.

Lands will mostly be basic, but we will have Emeria the Sky Ruin (another budget stretch that you can justify), Myriad Landscape for ramp, Mistveil Plains for recursion, Flood Plain and Grasslands as extra cards for Sun Titan recursion and to find the Mistveil Plains. Arch of Orazca and Cryptic Caves provide a little flood protection. Hall of Heliod's Generosity will return your destroyed Enchantments or create a loop of apocalypses with Planar Collapse. You could add more utility lands as you like, but otherwise its a simple 28 plains from there.

I learned from this exaercise I am terrible at budget decks. I wanted thios onbe to be less than $100, but...

As for how to play, its pretty simple; it is tap out control. Cast your cards sparingly, ramp and get in card advantage when you can, but most of the time you are the demolition crew. Most of your wraths will be one sided as you run very few creatures andmost of your spells only hit creatures. There are a few that hit everything and that exile which will catch Heliod. Basically you want to either try to cast those before you set up other permanents or as a last resort.This deck is a budget deck, its obviously not going to dominate a table of competitive decks or your standard pub-stompers. However, it should be solid in a meta that is reliant on creatures and combat. Lower power pods tend to resort to creature strategies, so thats where this fits in as a control deck. Sadly, the lack of interacting with the stack makes this deck very weak to combo or some other types of control like Superfriends. Either way, if you enjoy seeing a nice orderly clean table with no pesky permanents on it you should have some fun with this.

Upgrading this deck would be pretty standard. Take out the clunkier wraths, and add in the higher power Enchantment cards like Serra’s Sanctum, Academy Rector, Idyllic and Enlightened Tutors, Greater Auramancy and so on. Start adding the heavier stax cards and the Armagheddons.I purposely did not include land destruction as budget groups have less options to handle them so its just going to make people not enjoy the deck, but as power level goes up its one of the few ways White can really contend with the other colors through mana denial.The deck should look something like this:

Commander: Heliod, God of the Sun

-Creatures:

Myojin of Cleansing Fire

Mageta the Lion

Waking Sun's Avatar

Mesa Enchantress

Eidolon of Rhetoric

Spirit of the Labyrinth

Mentor of the Meek

Starfield Mystic

Solemn Simulacrum

Sun Titan

-Artifacts:

Nevinyrral's Disc

Endless Atlas

Mind's Eye

Skullclamp

Staff of Nin

Thaumatic Compass

Treasure Map

Sol Ring

Pearl Medallion

Mind Stone

Marble Diamond

-Enchantments:

Planar Collapse

Sigil of the Empty Throne

Sphere of Safety

Parallax Wave

Starfield of Nyx

Oblivion Ring

Banishing Light

Ghostly Prison

Aurification

Phyrexian Unlife

Solemnity

Rule of Law

Curse of Exhaustion

Overwhelming Splendor

Nevermore

Gideon's Intervention

Martyr's Bond

True Conviction

Ethereal Armor

Smothering Tithe

-Instant:

Swords to Plowshares

Generous Gift

-Sorceries:

Wrath of God

Austere Command

Day of Judgement

Rout

Fumigate

Cleansing Nova

Hour of Revelation

Akroma's Vengeance

Sublime Exhalation

Phyrexian Rebirth

Planar Cleansing

End Hostilities

Martial Coup

Descend Upon the Sinful

Hallowed Burial

Urza's Ruinous Blast

Winds of Abandon

Tragic Arrogance

Plea for Guidance

-Land:

Emeria the Sky Ruin

Myriad Landscape

Mistveil Plains

Flood Plain

Grasslands

Arch of Orazca

Cryptic Caves

Hall of Heliod's Generosity

Plains x28

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

Star Trek Episode 1.16: The Galileo Seven

AKA Lord What Fools These Humans Be

Our episode begins with a captain’s log telling us that the Enterprise is traveling to a planet called Makus 3, or Mockus 3 according to the subtitles. Specifically they’re going there to deliver some medical supplies, but they happen to be passing by a phenomenon called Murasaki 312, which Kirk describes as being a quasar-like formation, and “a priceless opportunity for scientific study.” It’s pretty, I’ll give it that. Especially in the remastered version.

[ID: 1. A swirl of bright blue-green vapor glowing in the middle, in the midst of a starfield. 2. A large green cloud with a disc-like formation in the middle of it shot through with a beam of white light.]

Also, they have onboard one Galactic High Commissioner (now there’s a hell of a title) Ferris, who’s overseeing this whole medicine delivery business. Ferris has just now come up to the bridge, where Kirk is communicating with a shuttlecraft (you know, those shuttlecraft that they’ve definitely had all this time) about to launch, and boy, he looks like a fun guy.

[ID: Ferris, a white man with very short graying brown hair, wearing a blue uniform with an elbow-length cape on the back. He is standing just in front of the lift doors on the bridge, looking off to the side and somehow managing to look both grumpy and smug at the same time.]

Ferris is not happy about the Enterprise stopping to look at the glowy space cloud when they’ve got medicine to deliver, and on a tight schedule too. They’re supposed to be having a rendezvous with...somebody...to hand over the supplies so they can be transferred to the New Paris colony. Kirk says that that’s all very well, but he also, for some reason, has standing orders to investigate all quasars and quasar-like phenomena. Anyway, it’s a three day trip to Makus 3 and the rendezvous isn’t scheduled for another five, so they’ve got a two-day window, time enough for a roadside stopover.

This whole thing strikes me as odd. Not that such a formation would be scientifically interesting, I’m sure it would be. But the way Kirk talks about it, it’s as if this was some unexpected opportunity that they have to take advantage of because it won’t come again. But quasars (and, presumably, quasar-like phenomena) aren’t exactly the kind of thing that pop up one day and are gone the next. Also, they’re pretty hard to miss, and there’s no indication that they’re out in unexplored space or whatever. You could perhaps pass this off as the writers not knowing what a quasar is—likely--except that the thing has a name, which indicates that whatever it is, it’s been officially noticed and has stuck around long enough to be cataloged. So there’s no apparent reason why the Enterprise wouldn’t have been well aware, in advance, that this thing was going to be along their way, and no apparent reason why they have to study it right now. Are Kirk’s ‘standing orders’ so important that they supercede anything else the Enterprise happens to be doing at the moment? If the Federation cares about quasars (and quasar-like phenomena) so much, why not have dedicated science ships out there studying them instead of just making other ships stop and look at them whenever they get the chance?

To compound the problem, Ferris tells Kirk that he doesn’t want to take chances with this medicine delivery because “the plague” is out of control at New Paris and they really need these supplies. We’re obviously supposed to view Ferris as your standard unpleasant interfering bureaucrat, and he certainly doesn’t exactly have a charming personality, but to be honest, I think he kinda has a point on this one. It’d be one thing if the Enterprise was delivering some non-time-critical supplies and he was just being a grump about meeting a schedule, but, assuming The Plague lives up to that name, they’re delivering crucial life-saving medicine, and Kirk is being real dang cavalier about it. Yeah, they’ve got time until the meet-up—even though there’s no given explanation as to why the rendezvous has to be at that time and they couldn’t make it earlier, which would surely be preferable under the circumstances—but a lot of things can go wrong in space, which Kirk oughta be very well aware of by now. One would think they’d want to leave that window open in case they’re delayed by something unexpected, but no, let’s just go fly into a quasar, I guess, what could go wrong. This is like if they stopped in the middle of Balto to investigate an active volcano.

Kirk waves Ferris off and tells the shuttle, Galileo, that they’re cleared for takeoff, so off they take. Inside the shuttle is Spock, flying it; a male goldshirt; a female redshirt; Scotty; a male blueshirt; McCoy; and a male goldshirt. That’s seven alright. Seems like a bit of an odd selection. Given it’s a scientific expedition you’d expect a primarily science-focused crew, but here we’ve got Spock (makes sense), one blueshirt (cool), McCoy (for...whatever reason) two goldshirts (one is helping fly the shuttle, which makes sense, but the other one is just...there), a yeoman (who frankly has no business being there whatsoever) and Scotty. Scotty’s always good to have along, but what, specifically, they thought he would need to be doing on this trip, I don’t know.

As they fly towards the big green glowy thing, one of the goldshirts—Latimer—gives Spock a reading, then takes it back, saying the indicator’s gone crazy. The blueshirt, Boma, says that this is because quasars are really disruptive like that. The yeoman then reports that radiation is increasing.

With things already going wrong real bad, Spock tells Latimer to stop their forward momentum. Latimer gives it a shot, but nothing happens. Spock then tries to call the Enterprise, but gets only static. Man, it sure didn’t take long for this trip to go belly-up.

On the bridge, Uhura is likewise having radio trouble, unable to pick up anything from the Galileo except scattered fragments about them being pulled off-course. Kirk wants them to get a fix on the shuttle, but Sulu says the scanners are blank and that they’re getting “a mass of readings I’ve never seen before, nothing makes sense.” So...they’re blank or there’s a mass of readings? Which is it?

The ship computer chimes in with some technobabble that apparently means Murasaki 312 has ionized the entire sector. In a nutshell, their sensors are out, along with your choice of plot-relevant ship systems. Kirk looks mournfully out into the void and says, “At least four complete solar systems in the immediate vicinity, and out there, somewhere, a twenty-four foot shuttlecraft, off course, out of control. Finding a needle in a haystack would be child’s play.” What, you mean sending a lone shuttlecraft out to investigate a giant mysterious and dangerous space phenomena that said shuttlecraft was never equipped to handle, while on a time limit, didn’t turn out well? Who could have guessed!

After the titles, Kirk gives a log that just reiterates the situation: Murasaki 312 ate our shuttlecraft and now we can’t even look for it because our sensors are busted. Ferris is going on about how he told them so, which obviously is not endearing him to anyone. Kirk says they still have two days to find it, but as Ferris points out, you can’t search four solar systems in two days. At that point Uhura interrupts to say that there’s one inhabitable type-M planet in the solar system (she does not specify which solar system). It’s called Taurus 2, and it’s right in the middle of that big glowy mess out there. Oh, that’s convenient. Of course, they have no evidence that the Galileo landed on any planet, let alone that one—it could be anywhere in the vast amount of empty space in those solar systems, or it could have landed on one of the uninhabitable planets and they’re all going to die if they haven’t already. Lots of lovely possibilities! But they gotta start somewhere, so it’s off to Taurus 2.

By sheer coincidence, it turns out that in fact the Galileo has landed in the one place survivable enough to make an interesting episode out of. The outside of the shuttle looks okay, but from the inside it’s clear they had a rough landing. Everyone’s tossed all over the place clutching their heads and so forth, and a control panel is sparking pretty badly. McCoy goes into doctor mode and starts checking everyone out, but it looks like the only casualty was a bloody nose for Boma.

So what happened? Over a handkerchief, Boma says his best guess is that “the magnetic potential of the effect was such that as we gathered speed, it was multiplied geometrically,” causing them to be shot into Muraski 312 like a bullet. Scotty’s got a hell of a job ahead of him getting the shuttle back into shape. Man, it sure is lucky that they brought the chief engineer along on this trip. For whatever reason that they did.

McCoy does a scan of the atmosphere outside and says that it’s breathable—you wouldn’t want to run a marathon in it, but it’s breathable. Spock says they’d better clear out of there so Scotty has room to work and tells Latimer and the other goldshirt, Gaetano, to take some phasers and go scout around. They do, but no one else leaves. So much for giving Scotty room to work. Instead, McCoy sits in a chair the wrong way to talk to Spock.

[ID: McCoy and Spock sitting inside the Galileo. McCoy is sitting sideways with his back to the wall and one arm propped against the back of the chair, looking over at Spock, who is sitting forward and looking at his tricorder.]

McCoy, sitting sideways in chairs like a man after my own heart.

Spock and McCoy talk about their chances of being found. They don’t look good. Spock figures  the ionization effect that hit them is going to be widespread enough to affect the Enterprise too, leaving them without instrumentation to search with, which is going to make it damn hard for them to find the Galileo.

Sure enough, back on the big ship they’re still having no luck with the sensors, even after Sulu tried hooking them up to auxiliary power. Kirk calls the transporter room to see if they’ve got the transporters back online but the operator says that they beamed down some test material and it came back “in a disassociated condition” so they don’t dare try sending any humans through it yet. Yeesh. Yeah, I quite prefer being in an associated condition myself. In the meantime, Kirk tells the flight deck to get the other shuttle, the Columbus, ready to fly out and do a search of the planet’s surface.

Having a shuttle named Columbus is a bit unfortunate, since the most prominent explorer-type person named Columbus that comes to mind was an enormously terrible guy and one would hope we would have stopped giving him any kind of honor this far into the future. But then, the show never specifies that the shuttle is named after Christopher Columbus. Three hundred years from now there could easily have been another person named Columbus that did something significant, like a really cool astronaut or scientist. That’s my theory and I’m sticking with it.

While the Columbus gets ready, Uhura regretfully tells Kirk that communication is still impossible as both their transmission and reception are out. Ferris is still hanging around making a nuisance of himself, asking whether Kirk really thinks they’re going to find anything out there. Kirk says that he’s going to keep looking until the last possible minute and damn the odds (never tell Kirk the odds!), and Ferris says alright—but only until the last possible minute and not one second after.

Columbus heads off on its search, while down on the planet Spock goes outside to do some readings or whatever. McCoy follows him and comments that for as lousy as this situation is, it’s Spock’s big chance to get his command on. Spock says that he isn’t particularly enthused by the idea of being in command, but he’s not afraid of it either; it’s just a thing, neither good nor bad. But since he is in command now, he’s going to do it logically.

Inside, Scotty is elbows-deep in the shuttle’s dashboard. Things aren’t looking good. It seems they’ve lost a lot of fuel, so much that they don’t have any chance of reaching escape velocity and making orbit unless they lighten the load by about five hundred pounds. That’s the weight of three grown men, Spock points out. McCoy is all “uhhh how about we drop some equipment instead of some people” but Spock says that there’s just not that much non-essential equipment on the Galileo to begin with. The passengers are pretty much the only excess weight they have to lose, so either some people get left behind or it’s time to go build a refinery.

Boma is not happy with the turn this discussion has taken and asks who’s going to decide who has to stay behind. Spock says that, well, he’s in command, so it’s up to him to make that call. And no, despite what Boma suggests, he’s not planning to draw lots; he’ll make a logical decision based on logical means, logic logic.

Leaving the conversation on that cheerful note, Spock says they better go outside and make sure they haven’t overlooked any minor damage. Boma watches him leave and says, “If any minor damage was overlooked it was when they put his head together.” “Not his head, Mr. Boma,” McCoy says in the most dramatic manner possible. “His heart.” Thanks Bones.

Meanwhile the goldshirts are off scouting around in a ravine while some scary growling noises echo all around them. They decide to climb up the rocks nearby, because you know what would be a great idea right now: to expose themselves as much as possible. Sure enough, as they get to the top, something big and furry throws a giant spear at Latimer, impaling him in the back and knocking him into the ravine.

The rest of the party over at the Galileo hear Latimer’s scream and Spock and Boma go running to investigate. Gaetano climbs down the rocks while shooting his phaser wildly in various directions, as poor Latimer lies dead in the ravine with the spear shaft sticking up like a tree.

[ID: Gaetano, a white man with short dark hair, sitting on an outcropping in the side of a ravine and staring at a spearhaft that extends out of frame in both directions, while Spock approaches from around the corner.]

After the break, Spock and Boma arrive on the scene to find Gaetano sitting mournfully on a rock and staring at Latimer. He says he didn’t see the attacker clearly; he only knows that it was “something huge and terrible.” But he thinks he got it with one of those phaser blasts so Spock goes off to investigate. Gaetano tells Boma that the thing was “like a giant ape” and then, when Boma says, “Poor Latimer,” Gaetano optimistically says that at least Latimer was fortunate enough to die quickly. Thanks man. Really keeping up the team spirit there. But hey, on the plus side, now we only have to pick two people to leave behind.

Spock comes back and says that he didn’t find anything. Gaetano insists that there was something there and he’s sure that he hit it, which is more certainty than he had about one minute or so ago; Spock says he’s not doubting Gaetano, but the fact is there’s nothing there now. Then he pulls the spear out of Latimer—honestly I have no idea how the thing was even staying up in the first place���and examines it, saying that it resembles a kind of ancient Earth spear, but cruder and not very efficient.  Boma gets upset at this, irate that Spock can focus on things like the efficiency of the spear when there’s a man dead on the ground. The nerve of the man, gathering information about a dangerous and unknown situation. Spock points out that no amount of mourning is going to bring Latimer back to life. Gaetano, now also ticked off, says that they at least shouldn’t leave Latimer’s body there. Spock offers to help them carry the body back, but the two men coldly refuse and haul him off themselves.

[ID: Gaetano and Boma, a black man with short hair, carrying the body of Latimer between them through the ravine. Latimer’s shirt is pulled up exposing a black undershirt.]

Well, there’s at least one goldshirt who wears an undershirt.

On the Enterprise, Kirk notes in his log that their searching has turned up nothing, and he’s beginning to feel “a sense of utter futility, and great loss.” The transporters are still not safe to use, and Engineering is working on getting the sensors back online, but without Scotty around they’re real short on miracles, and not making much progress. But Kirk, of course, is not about to give up, and as soon as the Columbus comes back from searching a quadrant he orders them to start on the next one. Ferris is still hanging around pointedly reminding Kirk of how little time he has left, kind of like an annoying quest marker in a video game that pops up every five minutes to remind you to do the thing that you’re already doing.

Kirk orders the Columbus to expand its search radius by two degrees. Sulu points out that means they’ll be overlooking a dozen miles with each loop they make, but Kirk responds that it’s the only way they have a fighting chance of actually covering the whole planet in the time left to them. Ferris exits the bridge, but not before turning around in the lift and saying, “Twenty-four more hours, Captain,” as dramatically as he can.

Down below, Spock is offering some jury-rigging suggestions to Scotty, but of course Scotty’s already thought of all that and says it won’t work. Meanwhile, McCoy and the Yeoman are hauling some stuff out of the back of the shuttle, which should take off about fifty pounds of weight, and the yeoman thinks they can clear out another hundred pounds. A hundred and fifty pounds? What happened to there being nothing nonessential on this shuttle? Sure, that might not be much compared to the overall weight of the shuttle, but it’s a heck of a lot when you’re talking about having to leave people behind. Still, as Spock points out, even if they lose all that they’ll be another hundred and fifty pounds overweight. Hm, okay, if everyone loses twenty-five pounds we’ll be good.

McCoy can’t believe Spock is still planning to leave someone behind now that they know there are big dangerous furry guys out there with spears, but Spock points out that it’s a matter of saving one life, or six. In other words, the trolley problem. Or the shuttle problem, in this case.

Boma sticks his head in the door and says that they’re ready. Spock is confused about what, exactly, they’re ready for, and Boma says they’re doing a service for Latimer. Spock doesn’t want to lose any of their very limited time, but Boma insists that he should at least come and say a few words. In some desperation, Spock says that perhaps McCoy would be better for that, but McCoy insists it’s Spock’s place to do that, and Spock turning it down is met with hostility from everyone (except Scotty, who has bigger fish to fry, and the yeoman, who doesn’t seem to have any opinions on anything).

Call me a Vulcan, but I don’t entirely understand why this is a problem. McCoy would be the best person there to give any kind of funeral service. He’s a doctor, so he surely has more practice speaking about the recently deceased in a compassionate but formal way than anyone else there; he would be generally familiar with human funeral customs, unlike Spock, who would have an entirely different cultural background for such things; and he can more afford to spare the time because he’s really not urgently needed for anything at the moment. It might not be the most orthodox way of doing things, but under the circumstances I think we’re gonna have to skip the full formal ceremony with honors anyway.

But we don’t find out exactly how they resolved the funeral situation, instead skipping ahead to some time later. Spock and Scotty are still in the Galileo, Scotty digging through the innards of the shuttlecraft while Spock watches. Scotty grimly announces that a line has broken, meaning that they now have no fuel at all. So uh. Yeah, that’s bad. Spock tells him it’s time to start considering alternatives, to which an incredulous Scotty replies, “We have no fuel, what alternatives?” “Mr. Scott, there are always alternatives.” Like what? Black magic? “Alright, squad, I didn’t want to do this, but we’re gonna have to sacrifice Gaetano.”

At that moment, McCoy and the yeoman come running in, saying there’s something happening outside. Everyone runs outside, except Scotty, who can’t be bothered with any damn aliens or whatever when there’s an engine to be fixed. Gaetano and Boma are hiding behind a nearby rock while unsettling scraping kind of sounds echo all around them. Spock says it’s the sound of wood rubbing on leather, which Gaetano thinks means the aliens are about to attack. Boma points out that this could just be some kind of simple tribal rite, but Spock says that the artifacts prove these guys are too primitive for that. Um, artifacts? You have one. Or had one, more likely, that you looked at for like, fifteen seconds, before Boma started pitching a fit about it. There’s only so much anthropology you can do in that amount of time.

Boma thinks that if the aliens have any kind of tribal system, attacking one of them might drive the others off. Spock is like “oh, now we’re okay with having no sentimentality about life?” But Gaetano, raring to go phaser some cavemen, insists that “at least we’re practical about it.” Practical. Sure. You haven’t been practical about a damn thing since y’all landed on this rock, but now you want to start, huh?

When asked, McCoy says that Boma’s plan seems logical to him, which is a bit unusual—he’s usually the last one to be okay with any plan that involves killing, though at least he doesn’t exactly seem enthusiastic about this. Boma tries to invoke majority rules and Spock has to remind him that this isn’t a democracy. Man, Starfleet crewmembers seem to have to be reminded of that a lot. You’d think they’d go over this at the Academy.

Obviously they’ve gotta do something, but Spock is still uncomfortable with the idea of murdering the locals and decides to take a third option. McCoy and the yeoman (whose name, we finally learn, is Mears) are sent back to the shuttle to help Scotty, while Boma and Gaetano are to go with Spock. He tells them very sternly that they’re going to follow his orders to the letter and fire only at the targets he designates, which, again, doesn’t seem like a concept they should need a refresher on but here we are. Boma and Gaetano are all over this plan until Spock says that they’re only going to fire to frighten the aliens, not to kill them, at which point they go right back to sulking.

So the three of them head off into the Emyn Muil over there, skulking along through the ankle-high mist with phasers at the ready.

[ID: Spock, Boma and Gaetano approaching cautiously through the ravine, the floor of which is blanketed with white vapor.]

“Careful, boys, we’re in the land of dry ice machines now.”

Another giant spear comes flying at them, but luckily this one doesn’t hit anyone. They dodge behind some rocks and Spock fires his phaser, causing a nearby giant to drop a shield into the ravine. A shield that rather dramatically changes size between shots.

[ID: 1. Spock stands in the ravine with his phaser out, Gaetano and Boma crouched at his side. A large, crude leather shield has fallen to the ground in front of them. 2. The three men crouching in front of the shield, which is now so large all three of them can stand alongside it with room to spare.]

They get into position at Spock’s specifications, and he tells them to fire at designated angles on his command, but even now, Gaetano still wants to argue about it. His protests notwithstanding, Spock has them fire for a bit. Figuring the giants should be frightened off for now, he goes back to the Galileo with Boma, leaving Gaetano on sentry duty. He seems a bit too far from the shuttle to be serving as effective sentry duty, but maybe Spock just wanted to not have to deal with him for a while.

Back at the Galileo, Scotty has, what do you know, conjured up an alternative: he thinks he can adjust the shuttle’s main reactor to function with a substitute fuel supply. What substitute fuel supply do they have? The phasers! Of course, if they use all their phasers to fuel the shuttle, they won’t have any means of defense, but if they don’t, they’re all gonna die anyway, so there’s not much of a choice in the matter. Scotty says that if he uses up all the phasers he can achieve orbit with all remaining hands, although he won’t be able to maintain it very long.

As Spock points out, the Enterprise is going to have to leave in less than twenty-four hours now, so if they don’t achieve orbit in that time they’re screwed anyway. The general assumption seems to be that they have no chance of surviving on the planet long enough to be rescued, even if the Enterprise came right back. Which could well be true—I doubt they have much in the way of survival supplies on the shuttle, and there are hostile aliens all around. On the other hand, they haven’t yet tried actually defending themselves to their fullest capability, and the presence of those big guys would seem to indicate that there’s something to eat around here. I’m not saying they could definitely survive long enough for a later rescue, it just seems odd that everyone takes it for granted that staying on the planet will be a death sentence.

So Spock tells McCoy to hand over his phaser, which for some reason prompts a dramatic musical sting, even though they literally just went over their plans to do that, and anyway it’s not like McCoy gets a lot of use out of the thing. Scotty takes McCoy’s phaser along with Spock’s and sets about transferring their power to the shuttle reactor, which he seems to be doing by just sticking the phasers down in there and firing them at said reactor.

Up on the Enterprise, the transporter guys run a test on some objects that come back intact, and the operator tells Kirk that in his opinion, the transporter is now safe for humans. Which is not a statement that I think I would find terribly comforting if it was me going through that thing. Kirk seems alright with it, though, because he immediately orders landing parties to start going down. The transporter operator points out that he’s talking about searching a planet on foot in less than twenty-four hours, which, y’know, is really unlikely to work, but Kirk isn’t interested in hearing it.

In the ravines, Gaetano is stumbling around nervously amidst sounds of growling giants. A rock comes flying at him, hitting his hand and knocking away his phaser, followed by another spear. Rather than attempt to pick up the phaser, Gaetano tries to climb up the cliff wall, a course of action that very quickly peters out. He falls back down and cowers against the cliff while a giant slowly approaches from the end of the ravine.

I question the decision to actually show the giant onscreen because, frankly, he’s just not that impressive. Sure, he’s big, but he’s like, Andre the Giant big, not as big as you would be thinking from the size of the spear and shield. Seriously, that spear was like three times the size of Gaetano.

Also, for some reason he’s walking with his arms straight out like Frankenstein’s monster.

[ID: Gaetano backed up against a cliff wall in fear while a large furry man with arms extended walks towards him.]

Gaetano just kind of sits there whimpering while the giant slowly closes in on him and grabs him. He screams as the scene cuts to black, which is probably for the best because I don’t think there was ever a good way to resolve that particular bit of choreography.

After the break, Spock, McCoy and Boma are examining the ravine, where there is now no trace of Gaetano except his fallen phaser. Spock retrieves the phaser and gives it to McCoy to take back to Scotty. Boma is, shockingly, outraged by how Spock is “acting like nothing’s happened at all.” Yes, thank you, Boma. Spock then gives McCoy his own phaser as well to take back in case he doesn’t return—he’s going to go look for Gaetano, alone. The other two men watch him head off into the ravine. One might expect this to prompt some “oh I guess he really does care” response, but instead McCoy is just kind of like “yeah I don’t know he’s weird” and then they leave.

Spock heads through the land of fogginess and soon discovers poor ol Gaetano dead and laid out on a rock. The seriousness of this situation is somewhat undercut by Spock’s reaction, which is not so much that of a man discovering a dead comrade or even the stern stoicness of an inscrutable alien, but more a look that suggests that he just spilled a drink on the floor and is annoyed about having to clean it up.

[ID: Gaetano’s dead body slumped over a rock while Spock stands over him with his hands on his hips.]

Nimoy, my man, I love you, but why

Well, no man left behind and all that, so Spock hoists Gaetano into a fireman’s carry and takes him back to the Galileo. Along the way the giants return to throw more and more spears at him, but fortunately they are all terrible shots so none of them hit and despite having to go slow Spock makes it back just fine.

McCoy and Boma help him get Gaetano into the shuttle, and they’re not happy. McCoy points out that Spock’s super logical plan of frightening away the giants didn’t work out so well. Spock expresses open confusion about this because logically the giants should have retreated in the face of superior weaponry. McCoy snaps back that Spock’s downfall was only considering the possibility of a rational response and not an emotional one.

The whole conversation is, to be honest, kinda stupid. Spock’s handling of the situation is portrayed as a downfall of his prioritizing logic and not considering anything else (the writing of which doesn’t really fit Spock’s actual character, but we’ll get to that later). He expected the giants to react logically and the episode lets us know that that was the wrong option. The problem is, they’re dealing with a completely unknown, unstudied, alien race here. There’s no way, logically or emotionally, to know how they would react to anything. Sure, Spock assuming that they would retreat in fear rather than retaliate in anger turned out to be wrong, but they have absolutely no way of knowing whether following Boma’s plan would have worked any better. It’s entirely possible the giants would have been more angered by one of them being killed. Hell, it’s possible that none of this had anything to do with either fear or anger; it could have been motivated by something else entirely. For all they know the giants are just hungry. McCoy’s response isn’t necessarily surprising; McCoy’s always going to have a strong reaction to someone dying while he’s around, which he often expresses by lashing out, and Spock’s the closest possible target. But in the context of the arc of the episode we’re clearly supposed to take this to mean that Spock screwed up, when really, any choice in this situation was always going to be a gamble.

Anyway, things are quiet for the moment, and Yeoman Mears wonders why. Spock thinks the giants are probably studying the Galileo. Of course, as soon as he says that, the shuttle starts to shake. Aww, it’s like a mini Star Trek Shake. Adorable.

Turns out the shuttle is shaking all over the place because a giant is hitting it with a rock.

[ID: The shuttlecraft Galileo sitting among cliff walls while a giant stands over it with a large boulder poised to strike.]

Spock is just really surprised by all this, musing that he’s “made the correct and logical decisions all along...and yet two men have died!” And now the giants are attacking! And McCoy and Boma are mad at him! How strange! He seems to just be kind of mildly perplexed about all this, as if it’s a crossword puzzle he can’t quite figure out.

Up on the ship, there’s a brief interlude in which Kirk laments that the landing parties haven’t found anything, the instruments still aren’t working, there’s really nothing they can do, and then Ferris reminds him of how much time he has left. About the only purpose it serves is to tell us how much time has been passing, which I’ll admit is helpful because there’s absolutely no way to tell that from the rest of the episode. Apparently it’s been almost two days, but you’d never guess that if you just watched the sections taking place on the planet, which really give no indication at all that they’ve been down there that long.

Back in the still-shaking shuttle, Spock abruptly seems to get an idea and asks Scotty what shape the shuttle batteries are in. Scotty says they’re fine, but the batteries aren’t going to be making that shuttle take off in any circumstance. That’s not what Spock is up to, though. He wants to know if the shuttle batteries could electrify the exterior of the shuttle. Scotty immediately catches on and gleefully says that oh yes, they can. Really? Why can they do that? Who designed this?

So while everyone huddles on the floor carefully not touching anything metal (good thing this shuttle is carpeted), Scotty takes a panel off the wall and whacks the batteries with a wrench a few times. Sure enough, this causes quite a lot of electricity to go sparking across the outside of the shuttle. The giant is remarkably persistent even while being electrocuted, but eventually the shaking stops.

They’re clear for the moment, but there’s no telling how long the giants will stay away. In the meantime, Spock tells them to keep on clearing out the shuttle and lighten the load as much as absolutely possible. Of course, there’s one non-essential thing on board that comes immediately to mind: Gaetano’s body. It’s unfortunate but they’re going to have to leave him behind.

Boma insists on at least having a burial for him, but Spock points out that’s a big risk since the giants are not very far off. They’d be risking the safety of those who are still alive. But Boma starts getting really worked up about this, coldly telling Spock that, “I would insist upon a decent burial even if your body was back there.” McCoy and Scotty immediately reprimand him for going too far, but Boma doesn’t seem deterred.

Seriously, you gotta wonder what the deal is with Boma and Gaetano (or what was the deal with Gaetano, rather). Of course the situation is bad and they have every right to be uncomfortable or upset about it. But throughout the episode the two of them act like this is the first time they’ve ever had to even consider that they might have to make sacrifices or do hard things for the sake of getting as many people out alive as possible. If they were civilians thrust into this situation it’d be understandable. But we’re talking about trained military personnel. You’d kind of expect them to have at least some familiarity with ideas like “sometimes you may have to leave a dead man behind for the sake of those who are still alive.” Spock’s decisions throughout this episode are sometimes harsh but they are, well, logical for the situation they’re in. Sure, he could be more tactful about it. But tact is not a priority here! Boma and Gaetano seem to have just decided in advance to take issue with everything Spock does, and we’re supposed to see this as some conflict of emotion versus logic instead of them just being totally unwilling to deal with anything they don’t like.

On the Enterprise, one of the landing parties beams up with one dead crewmember and two injured ones. The leader of the party reports to the bridge over a viewscreen and tells Kirk they ran into some big furry cavemen; the dead crewmember got speared while another one somehow dislocated their shoulder. If the planet is populated by such aliens, the party leader points out, things don’t look real good for the Galileo crew.

Kirk is still loathe to give up hope, but at that point Ferris comes onto the bridge to tell him that the forty-eight hours are up and he’s assuming the authority granted to him by a special ordinance. In other words, they gotta go. Kirk doesn’t want to, but he has no choice but to call the search parties and the Columbus back and lay in a course for Makus 3.

After the break, Kirk gives a quick log to say that I don’t wanna leave but I guess we HAVE TO UUUUGHH. Uhura says that their sensor beams are now working, but everything else is still dead. Their course is set, and they have twenty-three minutes left before the Columbus gets back onboard.

On the Galileo, the yeoman is trying to contact the Enterprise, but predictably is not getting an answer. Scotty tells Spock that if they take absolutely everything they can out of the shuttle they can achieve orbit for a few hours, and if they’re real careful they might be able to manage a controlled re-entry—but, of course, the only place they would be re-entering is this dumb planet, so that’s not really an appealing backup plan. At any rate, Scotty figures they can take off in eight minutes—precise--so Spock gives the rest of the crew ten minutes to bury Gaetano. Not much time for a service, but it’s the best they’re gonna get. Meanwhile the Columbus has returned to the Enterprise and everyone’s ready to go, so it looks like Kirk can’t delay any longer. He tells Sulu to proceed to Makus 3...at space normal speed (whatever that is). Oh, and to direct the sensor beams behind them as they go. After all, he has to leave, but he doesn’t have to leave quickly. I mean, except for the plague victims and all that.

The Galileo crew gather in front of a couple of mounds, all set for their speedrun funeral service. (I have no idea what they dug the graves with.) Before anyone can even break out a eulogy, though, the proceedings are disrupted by the return of the giants. Oh, it’s almost like Spock was right about this being dangerous. Fancy that.

Spock yells at everyone else to get back inside the ship while he throws one of the spears back at the giants in an extremely last-ditch move that fails to accomplish anything. He promptly gets hit by a boulder that pins his leg, and tries to order the rest of the crew to leave him behind. They don’t, of course; McCoy and Boma run back to move that terribly heavy and definitely not polystyrene boulder off of Spock, and the three of them beat it back to the Galileo.

As soon as they’re inside, Spock immediately chastises them for not leaving him behind, as if McCoy would ever let anyone out-martyr him that easily. Unfortunately, the delay has given the giants time to surround the shuttle, and now they’re holding it down so it can’t take off. Spock has no choice but to activate the boosters, which gives them enough power to break free...but the spent fuel cuts down on the amount of time they’ll be able to maintain orbit. As he grimly tells McCoy and Boma, by saving him they may have destroyed their own last chance for survival. McCoy tells him to zip it.

Incidentally, I note that for all the talk of lightening the shuttle as much as possible, they didn’t remove the seats. I’d say that was for safety reasons, but since the things don’t have seatbelts I don’t really know how well they’re actually going to keep anyone from bouncing around the cabin.

According to Scotty they can make one orbit and then they’re going down, and since they used the boosters, they don’t even have enough fuel to make a controlled landing. That is one heck of a quickly decaying orbit. I’m no astrophysicist, but I think once you actually make it into orbit you’re usually good for a while.

Yeoman Mears protests that she doesn’t want to die up there. Well, no. I doubt anyone else does, either. Scotty reminds Spock of that thing he said about how there are always alternatives, and Spock admits that he may have been mistaken about that.

[ID: Spock sitting in the foreground while behind him McCoy, one hand on his chin, looks off to the side and says, “Well, at least I lived long enough to hear that.”]

For all that McCoy is usually the first one to protest at length about how space is gonna kill them all, when it looks like he actually is going to die in space, he’s remarkably calm about it.

They reach orbit, and Scotty says they have forty-five minutes, so you’ve about got time to write a will if you don’t own too much. Spock makes one last effort to contact the Enterprise, but nothing. Then he notices a switch. What’s this? ‘Fuel jettison’? I wonder what that does?

Spock flips the switch, jettisoning and igniting all their fuel. Naturally everyone is all wtf man. But on the Enterprise, Sulu looks up and sees a bright green line suddenly streaking across the planet behind them. Kirk immediately tells him to TURN THIS SHIP AROUND MISTER.

[ID: The viewscreen of the Enterprise, showing a rocky planet shrouded in green clouds, with a single bright green line trailing across it near the equator.]

All our sensors still no match for looking out the window.

As the crew of the Galileo waits for their doom, Scotty realizes what Spock’s idea was. It was well done, he says, but Spock doesn’t think there was anyone there to see. Their orbit begins to decay, and things start burning.“It’s getting hot,” Mears says. Thanks, Yeoman Obvious.

But then, amid the smoke filling the cabin, there is at the last moment a sparkle of gold. On the bridge of the Enterprise Kirk sits tensely in his chair, waiting, waiting—and then the transporter officer reports in. Moments before the Galileo disintegrated entirely, they beamed up five people.

Five people. It’s good news, of course, but seven people went out on the Galileo. I wonder what went through Kirk’s head in the time before he found out who didn’t make it back.

Well, we’re never gonna know about that. They head off to finally deliver that plague medicine, and sometime later McCoy’s up on the bridge chatting with Kirk, seemingly quite chill about that whole near-death experience they just had. As Spock walks by, Kirk flags him down to ask about that whole igniting the fuel business. After all, there was virtually no chance of them being seen. So it had to be an act of desperation, and desperation is an emotion, right? You did something emotional, right?

Spock says no, it was a logical act. And, well, it kinda was? Sure, it had barely any chance of working, but they had absolutely no other options, and it was the only thing that had any chance of working at all. It was either do that and risk dying soon, or not do it and definitely die in about forty minutes. But everyone is all ha ha, we got ya, you did something emotional! And the episode ends on a group laugh. Could be a stress laugh, I suppose, but it feels distinctly awkward considering we’ve still got two men dead, whose families will never get their bodies back.

No one really gets served well in this episode. The writing for Spock especially feels skewed distinctly out of character. Yes, he’s all about the logic, and sometimes he struggles to understand humans and their whole deal, but this episode takes it to an extreme. Spock’s far from completely ignorant of emotions—much as he might like to claim otherwise—and he’s certainly not stupid enough to think that doing things logically always guarantees success, not when you can’t control all the variables. His bewilderment that rational thinking didn’t automatically work just comes off as outright silly. The episode tries to set up this whole arc in which Spock tries to solve problems only with logic, fails, and then finally succeeds by committing an emotional act, but it fails for multiple reasons: first, because most of the emotion vs logic conflicts in the episode feel contrived and overwrought and make everyone else look way more unreasonable than Spock; secondly, because the final ‘emotional’ act is actually pretty logical; but mostly, because it feels far too simple a lesson for Spock to need to learn at this point. Yes, it’s his first command, but he’s an experienced Starfleet officer who’s been living and working with humans for over a decade. I could easily see him having some difficulty commanding humans for the first time, and that would have been a good episode if it was done more subtly, but as Spock Learns That Some Things Are Illogical For The First Time Ever, it just doesn’t work.

Meanwhile we’ve got Kirk, for whom arguing with bureaucrats and bending rules to save his crew is hardly out of character, but the urgency of their larger mission makes his flippancy about it seem uncharacteristically callous. McCoy complaining about things and arguing with Spock is perfectly on track, but some of his comments edge uncomfortably out of ‘vitriolic friends’ territory and into just plain vitriol, especially him being willing to go along with some of Boma’s nonsense. Maybe I’m biased about that, but this episode feels as if the writer was given descriptions of the characters but didn’t really understand what made them actually work in practice.

Well, except for Scotty. Scotty was alright.

TREK TROPE TALLY: We have two goldshirt deaths in this episode with Gaetano and Latimer. Next time we’re in for some serious fop with a side of dandy in The Squire of Gothos.

[teamrealitystanza9]

Doctor Who: Dalek Attack

SO! MANY! WORDS!

Check under the read more for this super in depth ride description love! [ written by the brilliant Pi on my Cake featuring art by the sharpie queen Tegan pilots a chicken]<3

~Loading Platform/Ride System~

Guests exit the TARDIS and enter into the cargo bay of a Dalek spaceship.

This serves as the loading station for the ride. Guests go forward and see Team Members in Torchwood Institute uniforms here to help them into the ride vehicles. [ The Torchwood Institute is a team of alien hunters and paranormal investigators based in Cardiff. They have helped the Doctor a few times before. ] The ride is a mini-EMV style system similar to Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Although both for capacity reasons and to add more motion/rotation, the ride vehicles are a bit larger. One other difference from Pooh is the use of showstops throughout to increase the ride time and enhance the experience.

Visually, they look like Daleks. The story reason for this is that we are using the shells of old, broken Daleks to be able to sneak through the ship undetected.

~Scene 1~

Guests begin their journey by being almost immediately stopped by a Dalek. The vehicles rotate to face the imposing, yet simple animatronic figure.

“HALT! THE DALEK SHIP IS ON FULL LOCKDOWN! ALL DALEKS MUST BE SCANNED!” - Dalek Guard

The Eleventh Doctor’s voice can be heard over a radio assuring us that the shells we are riding in will pass any scan. The Dalek’s weapon begins to charge as if he is about to shoot.

“Well, in theory they can pass any scan.” - The Doctor

“SCAN COMPLETE! CONTINUE ON, FELLOW DALEK! MORE GUARDS ARE NEEDED TO WATCH THE PRISONER AND THE ULTIMATE EXTERMINATOR!” - Dalek Guard

“Ultimate Exterminator? Don’t like the sound of that. But let’s focus on finding me first.” - The Doctor

~Scene 2~

Guests then continue on through the foreboding ship. A few other Daleks can be seen standing guard. Weapons seem to follow us.

This appears to be an armory of some sorts. Decommissioned Dalek shells broken down and scrapped for parts mixed in with new weapons and GunSticks [ the little laser doodads that Daleks have. ] This is a quiet scene. A calm before the storm. But tension is rising and seeing the Dalek armory raises the tension and establishes just how dangerous they can be.

~Scene 3~

Next is the Dalek Prison Block. Most of the cells are empty since Daleks don’t typically take prisoners. But we do see the 10th Doctor in a cell!

This is another showstop as our vehicles park in front of a large screen showing the 10th Doctor.

“Sending the calvary in repurposed old Dalek shells, brilliant! I am one smart fellow! Well, I will be one smart fellow. Well, I am one smart fellow and my future regeneration will be too. You know what, you all get the gist. Open this cell we have work to do.” - 10th Doctor

The cell opens up and The 10th Doctor steps out holding out the Sonic Screwdriver to scan the room.

“Now, the Daleks have some sort of super weapon and I’m gonna need some back up. One smart fellow is great, but two! That’s when things get crazy. Of course, the calculations required for two versions of myself to exist in the same time and place take a very long time. But if I start now I should be done in…” - 10th Doctor

The ride vehicles turn around to face a different screen where a TARDIS is appearing. As it is appearing, the Eleventh Doctor’s voice can be heard.

“...137 years, 2 months, 4 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, and 42 seconds. Hello, me. Long time no see.” - The Eleventh Doctor

~Scene 4~

Alarms start to blare! Dalek troops are everywhere [ optical illusions and screens are used to make this section of the ride look much larger and much more full of Dalek. ] We see the two Doctors going around on the screens outsmarting and tricking Daleks to save us. It can be stuff as simple as basic pranks [ like the 10th Doctor tapping a Dalek on it’s right “shoulder�� when really he’s on the left side ] to more aggressive stuff [ like the 11th Doctor knocking a lubricant on the floor and “This is Sparta” kicking a Dalek down down the slippery hall. ]

This scene is pure fun crazy chaos and absolutely captures the spirit of light-hearted, epic adventures that make Doctor Who so great!

~Scene 5~

Next we enter the room with the Ultimate Exterminator! A giant Dalek Super Weapon! Both Doctors are standing nearby gloating and exchanging some fun, cocky banter. This is another showstop in front of a large screen. They explain that the reason they captured the 10th Doctor was that they wanted to use the Temporal Energy generated by Timelords to power the weapon. But what they don’t understand is that time isn’t linear, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.

Since time isn’t simple and linear, anything using it as a power source can have that power taken away. A weapon made for explosions, can instead cause an implosion! All they need to do is reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!

This whole scene works as an homage to the technobable filled inspirational hero speeches the Doctor is known for!

Guests then follow a glowing pipe towards the engine of the Ultimate Exterminator.

~Scene 6~

As we head towards the engine for another show stop in front of a large screen, we see it already pulsing with energy and getting ready to implode!

Suddenly there is a big blast and wind blows through the room! A hole was blown in the wall of the ship! Daleks are seen flying out into space and the ride vehicles use it’s motion base to simulate the feeling of trying to hold on!

“Allons-y!” - 10th Doctor

“Geronimo!” - 11th Doctor

The scene quickly becomes a short simulator type sequence as we get sucked out into space! Daleks out in the void with us as well as a lot of debris. We see the TARDIS flying around in the distance. Although as we get a bit further from the ship things start to slow down leading to another slower scene.

~Scene 7~

This scene has a bit of peaceful stillness as everyone is calmly floating out in space. Lights line the room creating a beautiful starfield. A miniature of the wrecked Dalek ship is here creating the optical illusion of it being off in the distance. A couple of Dalek figures are floating in space [ the supports are hidden in the darkness. ]

The peacefulness is interrupted by the Eleventh Doctor’s voice over the radio.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? I’ve been travelling through here for a thousand years and the sight of the stars still hasn’t gotten old.” - 11th Doctor

The sound of the Doctor’s voice alerts a nearby Dalek that was aimlessly floating out in space. It starts to flail and panic and shoots it’s laser wildly hoping to “EXTERMINATE” the Doctor! 

With a flash of light and a sudden jerking motion from the vehicle, it seems like the guests were hit! The vehicles start spinning as they careen into the next room!

~Scene 8~

This scene uses a speed tunnel effect [ basically a wrap around projection tunnel ] like Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. This allows the guests to be surrounded by a high speed space battle and hurtle through the stars as Daleks try to EXTERMINATE them! The vehicles are turned backwards here to help add to the chaos and excitement of this sequence.

Among the space debris flying by during this scene on the projections, Jmmy Neutron’s ship and George Jetsons’s ship can be seen as Easter Eggs to the past inhabitants of this showbuilding.

After a bit, the star projections give way to a time warp tunnel! With two TARDISes flying through it! The Doctors rescued us and we are now warping safely back to earth!

~Scene 9~

Guests then head to one final show stop facing the TARDIS in an alley behind the museum that served as the queue. The door opens and behind it is a screen with the Eleventh Doctor standing in the doorway here to say goodbye.

“You’ve done splendidly. Absolutely breathtakingly fantastic. Fantastic. Faaaannnntttaasstic. It sounds weirder when I say that then when I said it. Oh well. Point is, you did an amazing job and you saved a lot of people. Now, go treat yourself! You earned something special. Maybe get a nice fez. Fezzes are cool.” - The 11th Doctor

The TARDIS then disappears [ What we saw was just a Pepper’s Ghost reflection, so making it disappear is easy. ] After that, guests head towards the unload station which continues the alley theming. The voice of beloved Doctor Who side character and star of the Torchwood spin off, Captain Jack Harkness, comes over the radio.

“Before you head home, me and my buddies at Torchwood wanna check in with you. Just a quick debrief and you can be on your way. And I’m a master at debriefing.” - Jack Harkness ;)

This short message sets up the story for the gift shop and gives a nice segue for guests exiting the ride and heading to the store.

[lifeofaliterarynerd]

Anticipated Releases: April 2017

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The End of Our Story by  Meg Haston (Apr 4) // Bridge and Wil have been entangled in each other’s lives for years. Under the white-hot Florida sun, they went from kids daring each other to swim past the breakers to teenagers stealing kisses between classes. But when Bridge betrayed Wil during their junior year, she shattered his heart and their relationship along with it.

Alex, Approximately by Jean Bennett  (Apr 4) // Classic movie buff Bailey “Mink” Rydell has spent months crushing on a witty film geek she only knows online by “Alex.” Two coasts separate the teens until Bailey moves in with her dad, who lives in the same California surfing town as her online crush. A charming teen spin on You’ve Got Mail.

Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer (Apr 4) // Juliet Young always writes letters to her mother, a world-traveling photojournalist. Even after her mother's death, she leaves letters at her grave. It's the only way Juliet can cope. Declan Murphy isn't the sort of guy you want to cross. In the midst of his court-ordered community service at the local cemetery, he's trying to escape the demons of his past. When Declan reads a haunting letter left beside a grave, he can't resist writing back. Soon, he's opening up to a perfect stranger, and their connection is immediate. But neither Declan nor Juliet knows that they're not actually strangers.

Gem & Dixie by Sara Zarr (Apr 4) // Gem has never known what it is to have security. She’s never known an adult she can truly rely on. But the one constant in her life has been Dixie. Gem grew up taking care of her sister when no one else could: not their mother, whose issues make it hard for her to keep food on the table; and definitely not their father, whose intermittent presence is the only thing worse than his frequent absence. Even as Gem and Dixie have grown apart, they’ve always had each other.  

The Last Things You Said by Sara Biren (Apr 4) // Last summer, Lucy’s and Ben’s lives changed in an instant. One moment, they were shyly flirting on a lake raft, finally about to admit their feelings to each other after years of yearning. In the next, Trixie—Lucy’s best friend and Ben’s sister—was gone, her heart giving out during a routine swim. And just like that, the idyllic world they knew turned upside down, and the would-be couple drifted apart, swallowed up by their grief. Now it’s a year later in their small lake town, and as the anniversary of Trixie’s death looms, Lucy and Ben’s undeniable connection pulls them back together.

Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray (Apr 4) // Noemi Vidal is a teen soldier from the planet Genesis, once a colony of Earth that's now at war for its independence. The humans of Genesis have fought Earth's robotic "mech" armies for decades with no end in sight. After a surprise attack, Noemi finds herself stranded in space on an abandoned ship where she meets Abel, the most sophisticated mech prototype ever made. One who should be her enemy. But Abel's programming forces him to obey Noemi as his commander, which means he has to help her save Genesis--even though her plan to win the war will kill him.

Shadowcaster by Cinda Williams Chima (Apr 4) // Alyssa ana'Raisa is the reluctant princess heir to the Gray Wolf throne of Fells, a queendom embroiled in a seemingly endless war. Hardened by too many losses, Lyss is more comfortable striking with a sword than maneuvering at court. After a brush with death, she goes on the offensive, meaning to end the war that has raged her whole life. If her gamble doesn't pay off, she could lose her queendom before she even ascends to the throne.

Definitions of Indefinable Things by Whitney Taylor (Apr 4) // Reggie Mason is all too familiar with "the Three Stages of Depression." She believes she’s unlocked the secret to keeping herself safe: Nobody can hurt you if you never let them in. Reggie encounters an unexpected challenge to her misanthropy: a Twizzler-chomping, indie film-making narcissist named Snake. Snake’s presence, while reassuring, is not exactly stable—especially since his ex-girlfriend is seven months pregnant. As Reggie falls for Snake, she must decide whether it’s time to rewrite the rules that have defined her.

Zenn Diagram by Wendy Brant (Apr 4) // Eva Walker is a seventeen-year-old math genius. And if that doesn’t do wonders for her popularity, there’s another thing that makes it even worse: when she touches another person or anything that belongs to them — from clothes to textbooks to cell phones — she sees a vision of their emotions. She can read a person’s fears and anxieties, their secrets and loves … and what they have yet to learn about calculus. This is helpful for her work as a math tutor, but it means she can never get close to people. Then one day a new student walks into Eva’s life. His jacket gives off so much emotional trauma that she falls to the floor. Eva is instantly drawn to Zenn, a handsome and soulful artist who also has a troubled home life, and her feelings only grow when she realizes that she can touch Zenn’s skin without having visions. But when she discovers the history that links them, the truth threatens to tear the two apart.

Speak of Me As I Am by Sonia Belasco (Apr 4) // Melanie and Damon are both living in the shadow of loss. For Melanie, it's the loss of her larger-than-life artist mother, taken by cancer well before her time. For Damon, it’s the loss of his best friend, Carlos, who took his own life. As they struggle to fill the empty spaces their loved ones left behind, fate conspires to bring them together. But when the two join their school’s production of Othello, the play they both hoped would be a distraction becomes a test of who they truly are, both together and on their own. And more than anything else, they discover that it just might be possible to live their lives without completely letting go of their sadness.

Geekerella by Ashley Poston (Apr 4) // Geek girl Elle Wittimer lives and breathes Starfield, the classic sci-fi series she grew up watching with her late father. So when she sees a cosplay contest for a new Starfield movie, she has to enter. The prize? An invitation to the ExcelsiCon Cosplay Ball, and a meet-and-greet with the actor slated to play Federation Prince Carmindor in the reboot.

But Then I Came Back by Estelle Laurie (Apr 4) // Eden Jones, a 17-year-old girl, feels lost after surviving a near fatal accident. Unable to connect with her family and friends, Eden forms an unlikely relationship with Joe, a boy who comes to the hospital to visit Jasmine, a friend who may soon be gone forever. Eden is the only person who can get through to Jasmine, but is she brave enough to face a world that’s bigger and more magical than she ever would have allowed?

Always and Forever Lara Jean by Jenny Han (Apr 4) // Lara Jean is having the best senior year a girl could ever hope for. She is head over heels in love with her boyfriend, Peter; her dad’s finally getting remarried to their next door neighbor, Ms. Rothschild; and Margot’s coming home for the summer just in time for the wedding. But change is looming on the horizon. And while Lara Jean is having fun and keeping busy helping plan her father’s wedding, she can’t ignore the big life decisions she has to make.

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence (Apr 4) // At the Convent of Sweet Mercy young girls are raised to be killers. In a few the old bloods show, gifting talents rarely seen since the tribes beached their ships on Abeth. Sweet Mercy hones its novices’ skills to deadly effect: it takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don’t truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls as a bloodstained child of eight, falsely accused of murder: guilty of worse.

The State of Grace by Rachael Lucas (Apr 6) // Grace has Asperger's and her own way of looking at the world. She's got a horse and a best friend who understand her, and that's pretty much all she needs. But when Grace kisses Gabe and things start to change at home, the world doesn't make much sense to her any more. Suddenly everything threatens to fall apart, and it's up to Grace to fix it on her own.

Who’s That Girl by Mhairi McFarlane (Apr 7) // When Edie is caught in a compromising position at her colleagues’ wedding, all the blame falls on her – turns out that personal popularity in the office is not that different from your schooldays, and if the groom is the head boy, Edie is closer to the geek with NHS glasses and purple braces. Ostracised by her colleagues, her boss suggests an extended sabbatical and has the perfect project to fill it – ghostwriting an autobiography for hot new talent, Elliot Owen. All she has to do is keep her head down, get on with the star and not snog him. Easy, right?

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli (Apr 11) // Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love. No matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful.Then a cute new girl enters Cassie’s orbit, and for the first time ever, Molly’s cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Molly's totally not dying of loneliness—except for the part where she is. Luckily, Cassie's new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. If Molly can win him over, she'll get her first kiss and she'll get her twin back.

Given to the Sea by Mindy McGinnis (Apr 11) // Khosa is Given to the Sea, a girl born to be fed to the water, her flesh preventing a wave like the one that destroyed the Kingdom of Stille in days of old. But before she’s allowed to dance – an uncontrollable twitching of the limbs that will carry her to the shore in a frenzy – she must produce an heir. Yet the thought of human touch sends shudders down her spine that not even the sound of the tide can match.

Literally by Lucy Keating (Apr 11) // Annabelle’s life has always been Perfect with a capital P. Then bestselling young adult author Lucy Keating announces that she’s writing a new novel—and Annabelle is the heroine. It turns out, Annabelle is a character that Lucy Keating created. And Lucy has a plan for her. But Annabelle doesn’t want to live a life where everything she does is already plotted out. Will she find a way to write her own story—or will Lucy Keating have the last word?

The Takedown by Corrie Wang (Apr 11) // Kyla Cheng doesn't expect you to like her. For the record, she doesn't need you to. On track to be valedictorian, she's president of her community club, a debate team champ, plus the yummy Mackenzie Rodriguez has firmly attached himself to her hip. She and her three high-powered best friends don't just own their senior year at their exclusive Park Slope, Brooklyn high school, they practically define the hated species Popular. Kyla's even managed to make it through high school completely unscathed. Until someone takes issue with this arrangement.

Alex and Eliza: A Love Story by Melissa de la Cruz (Apr 11) // 1777. Albany, New York. As battle cries of the American Revolution echo in the distance, servants flutter about preparing for one of New York society’s biggest events: the Schuylers’ grand ball. And when Alex and Eliza meet that fateful night, so begins an epic love story that would forever change the course of American history.

Fireworks by Katie Cotugno (Apr 18) // It was always meant to be Olivia. She was the talented one, the one who had been training to be a star her whole life. Her best friend, Dana, was the level-headed one, always on the sidelines, cheering her best friend along. But everything changes when Dana tags along with Olivia to Orlando for the weekend, where superproducer Guy Monroe is holding auditions for a new singing group, and Dana is discovered too. Dana, who’s never sung more than Olivia’s backup. Dana, who wasn’t even looking for fame. Next thing she knows, she and Olivia are training to be pop stars, and Dana is falling for Alex, the earnest, endlessly talented boy who’s destined to be the next big thing.

Meg & Linus by Hanna Nowinski (Apr 18) // Meg and Linus are best friends bound by a shared love of school, a coffee obsession, and being queer. It’s not always easy to be the nerdy lesbian or gay kid in a suburban town. But they have each other. And a few Star Trek boxed sets. They're pretty happy. But then Sophia, Meg’s longtime girlfriend, breaks up with Meg. Linus starts tutoring the totally dreamy new kid, Danny—and Meg thinks setting them up is the perfect project to distract herself from her own heartbreak. But Linus isn’t so sure Danny even likes guys, and maybe Sophia isn't quite as out of the picture as Meg thought she was.

Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology by Danielle Binks (Apr 24) // With brilliantly entertaining short stories from beloved young adult authors Amie Kaufman, Melissa Keil, Will Kostakis, Ellie Marney, Jaclyn Moriarty, Michael Pryor, Alice Pung, Gabrielle Tozer, Lili Wilkinson and Danielle Binks, this all-new collection will show the world exactly how much there is to love about Aussie YA.

The Whole Thing Together by Ann Brashares (Apr 25) // Summer for Sasha and Ray means the sprawling old house on Long Island. Since they were children, they’ve shared almost everything—reading the same books, running down the same sandy footpaths to the beach, eating peaches from the same market, laughing around the same sun-soaked dining table. Even sleeping in the same bed, on the very same worn cotton sheets. But they’ve never met.

The Wonder of Us by Kim Culbertson (Apr 25) // Riya and Abby are: Best friends. Complete opposites. Living on different continents. Currently mad at each other. About to travel around Europe.

Legion by Julie Kagawa (Apr 25) // Dragon hatchling Ember Hill was never prepared to find love at all--dragons do not suffer human emotions--let alone the love of a human and a former dragonslayer, at that. With ex-soldier Garret dying at her feet after sacrificing his freedom and his life to expose the deepest of betrayals, Ember knows only that nothing she was taught by dragon organization Talon is true. About humans, about rogue dragons, about herself and what she's capable of doing and feeling.

North of Happy by Ali Alsaid (Apr 25) // Carlos Portillo has always led a privileged and sheltered life. A dual citizen of Mexico and the US, he lives in Mexico City with his wealthy family where he attends an elite international school. His friends and peers-fellow rich kids-have plans to attend college somewhere in the US or Europe and someday take over their parents' businesses. Always a rule follower and a parent pleaser, Carlos is more than happy to tread the well-worn path in front of him. When his older brother, Felix--who has dropped out of college to live a life of travel--is tragically killed, Carlos begins hearing his brother's voice, giving him advice and pushing him to rebel against his father's plan for him.

The Dead List by Jennifer L Armentrout (Apr 25) // When Ella is mysteriously attacked on her way home from a party, her entire life changes as she finds herself at the center of an attempted murder investigation. Ella tries to move on, but her attacker isn't done yet.