LDZ/Vivi: Latvia Trip, 10-16 September 2026

This was a tourist trip combined with train action; I've been hoping to go to Ukraine for some years, but until that is a possibility that doesn't involve the risk of air raids, Latvia was the next best option.

Latvia currently has no loco-hauled passenger services; the services to Belarus and Russia have not run since 2020 for obvious reasons. The electric services are operated by Skoda Vagonka 16EVs; Russian gauge versions of the RegioPanter. The main thing of interest to an enthusiast is the DR1 DMUs, built in Rīga during Soviet times, they have been modernised post-independence and operate on the non-electrified lines.

The passenger operations of LDZ operate under the name "Vivi"; this is an abbreviation of the Latvian phrase "vienā vilcienā", meaning "on one train". I suspect it sounds better in Latvian.

Riga itself has no metro system - the local populace having successfully objected against a Soviet plan for one, not wanting any more Russians in their city. It has a tram network, which still uses a considerable number of Czechoslovak Tatras, typically operating in pairs. This, along with the trolleybus and regular buses network, is operated by Rīgas Satiksme.

I asked Vivi about photography before they went; they were OK with me taking pictures of the trains and general shots of stations, but not specific infrastructure shots. There was also signage at Rīgas Centrālā requiring coordination for any photographs and filming there. With Russia next door and a drone incursion in recent weeks, concern about the bear is high and air raid shelters are publically designated, as well as available on the Latvija 112 app. Military recruitment adverts are very common on the train... and I also saw adverts for the upcoming parliamentary elections on there, as well as in places you would not see them in the UK.

Speaking of apps, both the Vivi and Rīgas Satiksme apps only work with Baltic (i.e. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) mobile numbers. Vivi has no ticket machines that I saw at all and you will probably need Google Translate or similar at the ticket counters at Centrālā; no other ticket offices seemed to be open at all. The tickets are glorified receipts with QR codes

Rīgas Satiksme sell electronic card tickets that can be topped up, including at branches of the Narvesen newsagent chain. I bought a five-day unlimited travel pass for €10; however, this does not cover Vivi services, which have their own zonal tickets. You have to tap on when boarding; validators are present at all the doors.

Thursday 10 September

Got an early morning Uber to London Gatwick for Air Baltic flight BT652 to Riga International. This was provided by YL-CSF Alytus, an Airbus A220-300 registered, like all their aircraft in Latvia. We pushed off at 09:38, 28 minutes behind schedule and arrived at 14:18 local time.

With Starlink WiFi on board, there was no issue with Internet browsing, although I mainly stuck to watching a previously downloaded episode of the OG Mission: Impossible for the LOLs. They also provided in advance information on our arrival gate and luggage belt.

Flying over Latvia on the approach, two things became quickly apparent - Latvia has a lot of trees and many of the roads were a light brown, indicating that they weren't tarmaced.

The Riga Conference was on and I saw a German government jet on the stands as we arrived. EES is in operation at Riga; there was a bit of a queue, but not a massive one. I tend to be at the back of those anyway as I usually visit the gents after deplaning.

I'd pre-booked a taxi to the Eurostars Metropole (recommended by Seat61) via Booking.com. My driver turned out to be one of Riga's many Russian speakers; it should be pointed out that the vast majority of Russian signage that was once prevalent here has gone, but can still be found in some places.

After checking in, I had a look around the old city, which is an UNESCO world heritage site. The hotel is near the station, which has a decent array of eating and shopping places, including of the street food variety. Pretty much everywhere takes card payments.

Friday 11 September

This was a tourist day, which saw me using the buses mainly, but my return from the Ethnographic Museum to the city centre involved a ride in Tatra T3 35250. As I was transferring between the bus stop and the start of the tram route, I got passed on the highway by a four-wheeled green vehicle that I am pretty sure was an old Soviet BRDM-2 scout car, almost certainly privately owned.

I also tried some kvass here; it was decent enough, but it's not my first choice for a drink.

Saturday 12 September

I'd booked a tour of the former nuclear bunker at Skaļupes before I came, thinking that it would be a fairly easy case of getting a bus or a Bolt from the nearest station; Uber doesn't operate in Latvia. I got a return to Līgatne from Centrālā, which consisted of two single tickets at €3.60 a piece. Public transport remains cheap by Western European standards, but food is now at roughly British prices - Eastern Europe got hit badly by Ukraine-linked inflation.

My outbound train was DR1AC-187. This is my first 1524mm gauge train, although I'd ridden on a tram of the same gauge on Friday. The wider gauge results in some very spacious trains, with 2+2 seating and a wide aisle, although the steps from the low platforms are a challenge even for the fit. The DRA1Cs have an on-board vending machine - and the biggest toilets I have ever seen on a real-life train. You couldn't quite swing a cat, but you could certainly swing a yo-yo in there.

A somewhat bouncy ride through the countryside followed, with a grip from a conductor called Deniss. It was also rather warm inside, with an internal temperature of 23.5 degrees Celsius, in excess of the outside temperatures, which were in the high teens. Notable sights included:

• A policeman with an assault rifle at Garklone.
• A sleeper carriage, 06206, parked in a siding
• An army convoy waiting to cross the track.

I arrived at Līgatne... or rather I rushed off the train when I saw the sign. The display screen had gone faulty and lost track of our location.

I soon found that the bus that I thought ran on Saturday did not in fact run on Saturday at all, although a return one did. The station building is closed and the toilet is a portaloo with no handwashing facilities. Good thing I bought wet wipes.

I walked into the nearby town to kill some time, then tried to order a Bolt and found none available. Two taxi firms failed to yield a result - I am not sure they understood me. I made my way to a shop in one of the housing estates, having to rely on Google Translate Russian as the shopkeeper didn't speak Latvian... and then got offered a lift by a local. One ride in the passenger seat followed, with minimal leg room, little conversation and me deciding I would hit him with my backpack if he turned out to be an axe-murderer. The whole thing had a bit of an Ealing comedy air about it that I've experienced on other rural parts of trips recounted here. 

He got me there alright though, and ended up €20 better off as a result.

The bunker, hidden beneath a sanatorium originally built for the Latvian SSR leadership and now open to the general public, is well worth doing - it makes a good compare-and-contrast with the UK ones I have visited. It is far more intact than most former USSR facilities in Latvia as it remained on the secret list until 2003; the others were looted in the 1990s, especially for their copper.

I was able to get a bus back to the town and after a walk down the unpaved road to the station, I saw 2M62UM-0117, a rebuilt 2M62 operated by LDZ, hauling a fuel train, probably bound for Lithuania judging by the "Lietuva" on the wagons. This was the only active locomotive I saw on the whole trip.

The journey back to the capital was on DR1AM-291, a 1990s modification that lacked the modern features of the DR1AC. No AC, no display screens, no vending machine, smaller toilet. The trip was a rather bouncy one, the train rattling a fair bit at speed.

Sunday 13 September

A tourist day that involved the Aviation and War Museums. 

The former has a great collection of old Soviet aircraft, including the only Tu-22M "Backfire" bomber not in a war zone at the moment, although they are not in great condition and are open to the elements. The museum's owner is in his 80s, although he can still ride a bike. 

The War Museum was also very interesting, including an exhibit on drone warfare with a couple of captured Russian examples, but has just shut for a refurbishment that will last until early next year.

The only public transport I used was buses; one route goes out to the aviation museum, but it's only hourly, so I ended up waiting for in the nearby village with its Soviet-era apartment blocks built for the old military base,

Monday 14 September

I bought a day pass covering the A to B zones including most of the coastal city of Jūrmala, even after the booking office lady said it was "expensive". I suppose €6.90 is expensive on Latvian terms, although I pay more than that for a one-way Tube journey in London.

I got the 1000 service to Vaivari, formed on 16EV-0026; there are ticket validators when you board the train, but the fact I'd not seen it the first time proved not to be an issue when I was gripped. The line is double-tracked and electrified, I believe going back to the 1960s when it was a highly popular holiday resort for people across the USSR, including the Soviet leadership. The trains run generally every thirty minutes to Sloka and hourly to Tukums II.

Jūrmala is a very long sandy beach separated by trees from a long string of what I assume are holiday homes. The beach was not hugely busy - it was the tail end of the season, a Monday and pretty cloudy. Quite a few of these are boarded up and fenced off; many look like they wouldn't be out of place in a slasher movie if Latvia made them, which so far they haven't.

(Latvia's biggest movie to date is the 2024 Oscar-winning animated film Flow and there were a lot of souvenirs related to it.)

I took a long walk through the area, during which I learnt that Air Baltic had entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US i.e. gone into administration, although the airline said my flight would still go ahead. They are now making the cabin crew clear the rubbish to save paying the local cleaners.

I eventually made my way to Melluži for a ride to Dubulti. The latter has a large art space in the station building, currently hosting an exhibition about volunteer "sheriffs" in Ukraine before the Russians took over their town.

After lunch at a Georgian restaurant and a long walk along the wooden path on the beach, I got to the shopping area of Dzintari, called Edinburgh until 1922 after Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, who had married Nicholas II's daughter Maria. However, with time running short, I walked to that station, the footpath right next to the tracks with no fence (!) and then got the 1629 service to Centrālā, formed of 16EV-0019. This arrived slightly late.

Tuesday 15 September

The tourist day here involved the Occupation Museum (well worth visiting) and a walking tour of Riga with a focus on the Soviet Union period, conducted by a guide who had grown up in the 1990s, with his grandfather having spent time in Siberia in the Stalinist period. This ended outside the Russian embassy on the Street of Ukrainian Independence, with a poster showing Putin partly as a skull on the medical museum opposite. I decided against the old KGB HQ as I felt I'd done enough in that area.

I then went to the Latvian Railway History Museum. Compared to the NRM, this is a fairly small affair. There's a medium-sized collection of railway vehicles in the yard outside, including a "Stolypin" prisoner transport and a luxury carriage used by Latvian communist leadership. Interior tours are available, but they require a minimum group size of three and forty minutes. I had neither of those, so I couldn't do them.

I rode more trams today, including one of the modern low-floor ones.

Wednesday 16 September

A late checkout, followed by some walking around the local area, including up to the viewing platform of the Latvian Academy of Sciences - a Stalinist "wedding cake" structure that is the little niece to the Seven Sisters of Moscow and Warsaw's Palace of Culture and Science.

I got a pre-booked taxi back to the airport, where I'd paid extra for the fast lane at security and also priority boarding. One very expensive zero-alcohol beer helped kill the time as I worked on another project ahead of boarding. 

The flight to London was BT 653 on the Estonian flag-liveried YL-CSJ Tallinn, which departed 1544 UK time, getting airborne at 1547. I'd ordered a wrap burger as well, which was hard to hold (squirting cabbage juice out) and overpriced.  Not helping was the fact that I'd managed to acquire a bad cold from somewhere, something that didn't shift for over a week afterwards. We had the seatbelt lights come on due to a turbulence warning, but nothing really happened there.

Touchdown at 1639 UK time and a relatively quick move through the passport gates before collecting my luggage. I decided to get Southern instead of Thameslink from Gatwick station, riding 377209 to Victoria. Then I got the joys of the evening peak as I returned home...

Conclusion

Latvia isn't the place to go for haulage; there's not really a great deal of variety there. But if you want to see an historic European city while getting a taste of Russian gauge, it's well worth visiting.

Stephen

A question for my Gen Z readers

So, a "baddie" is an attractive confident woman. If this woman is an assassin, does that make her more or a baddie or less of one?

Space, the whitest frontier (Review: 'Star Trek' Pilot: "The Cage")

Star Trek has turned 60. "The Man Trap" first aired in Canada on 6 September 1966 and in the US two days later. To mark the occasion, albeit a day late as I was watching Strange New Worlds, I watched the first pilot of the show made in 1964, called "The Cage". A good chunk of the material here was later used in the two-parter "The Menagerie", but this is the first time I've seen it in its original form.

My honest opinion? It's like I'm watching something from the 1950s, not the 1960s. The whole look of the show - big TV screens, paper reports, the uniforms etc. looks less refined and futuristic than the series itself would. The characters on-screen are entirely white with one exception, a transporter assistant with no lines. I'm reminded of White Christmas of all things. Even the much-parodied Orion slave girl scene has a rather white-looking Middle East.

Here, Jeffrey Hunter plays Christopher Pike, the role Anson Mount portrays in Strange New Worlds - and I don't like him. He's a male chauvinist with an excessively abrasive personality and a willingness to threaten violence that isn't countered by the charm that William Shatner has as Kirk... or indeed Mount has as Pike.

Majel Barrett as Number One - we don't get a fuller name for her here - is too cold and withdrawn. Would she sing karaoke in Klingon? I think not, even if she does fantasise about Pike. Not my cup of tea.

The best character of the lot - the only one kept to the main series - is Spock... and his eyebrows are pretty extreme here, not helped by the shorter haircut.

The plot is arguably the best thing about it, although I did think of Moopsy, but the resolution is if anything too pessimistic and frankly ableist. We also get an attempt at end of episode comedy that doesn't work at all, because all the characters are too frosty.

Conclusion

There's some interesting ideas here, but I am glad NBC asked for a second pilot and a retooling of the show. Shame we lost Number One, but we got so many better characters as a result.

5/10

'Star Trek' Table Read for Writers Guild Foundation

 

I watched this on Saturday in full - it covers not only "The Man Trap", the first broadcast episode of the show, but we also get "Mudd's Passion" from TAS. The special guests are some pretty big names in the SFF business as well.

Fiona Dourif was definitely the campest performer there - having seen clips of her in the Child's Play franchise, the woman definitely knows how to consume scenery. A great deal of fun all round.

You can buy it here for the next week or so for just $20 - it goes to a good cause too.

Tim Curry 1946-2026

Another actor who was known to multiple generations for different things - and to all of them for just how much scenery he chewed while doing it. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a classic that will live for generations to come and for me, his turn in The Wild Thornberrys was also great. 

(I don't recall if I saw him on stage in Spamalot. I don't think I did.)

He'd rather reduced his presence in recent years due to health problems, it being a pity we didn't have more of his considerable talent.

What we had though is going to be long remembered.

Rest in peace, legend.

Andy Burnham's opener

It's been just over a week since Andy Burnham became our latest Prime Minister.

I must admit that I wasn't exactly keen on Burnham coming back, especially when an MP resigned his seat solely so Burnham could return to Parliament, especially as he was still serving out his term as Greater Manchester's mayor. But he's here now and I wish him the best. We've going to need him to succeed to stop Reform.

Thoughts so far is that he seems to something of a return to the pre-New Labour Prime Ministers. He feels that the UK made a major wrong-turn with the Thatcher era and the neoliberal period that followed it. Of course, he was part of the Brown government, but that's politics.

We have a real problem with social care - it needs to be sorted out properly before it collapses due to insufficient taxpayers to fund the system. Immigration does help in that, but we can't keep increasing our population ad infinitum; we already import a lot of our food as is.

Also, there is a need to get the NEETS to stop being NEETS. Many of them can work with the right incentives and support. I myself hold down a full-time job despite being on the autistic spectrum. If nothing else, people sitting around at home are ripe to be radicalised, especially with social media as it has been for a while.

Halting the prisoner release scheme is the right move. It needs a major review and we're probably going to have to build more prisons. We might even have to go back to the "hulk" principle by chartering some ships and turning them into floating prison for a while. There is a feeling that crime is out of control; this may not be true, but perception is often more important than reality.

Foreign policy seems to be largely the same. A decisive break with Trump is a risky move; a rupture might not be easily fixed even after his departure. Until we can defend Europe from the Russians without American assistance, we're kind of stuck.

Anyway, it's early days - we've got the summer ahead of us, Farage's stunt in Clacton and then the party conference season.

One thing that has to be a priority - going carbon negative. We need to get the excess carbon out of our atmosphere as the impacts are already.

This is probably not entirely coherent. But I'll leave it as is.

Review plans

I've decided not to continue the episode by episode reviews of Fringe, mainly due to lack of time. A pity, because the first episode of Season 2 features no less a figure than the Duchess of Sussex herself, that is Meghan Markle, as an FBI agent.

What I will do instead is take a similar approach that I am taking with Buffy, of reviewing one episode a season and I've already selected the one I'm going for based on the description I found...

Once the current Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season is done, I intend to finish off The Animated Series and move onto The Next Generation. The plan is to watch the three 24th-century Trek shows (The  Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager) in US broadcast order, to fully appreciate any links between them. I am also intending to watch and review "The Cage" for the 60th anniversary itself.

I've forgotten to do a post on Andy Burnham - I'll try to do that this week.

Analogue Leverage (Review: 'Mission: Impossible' 2.13, "The Astrologer")

Good morning, Mr. Smith. The man you are looking at is Bruce Geller. Geller was the creator of the Mission: Impossible TV series that eventually spawned an eight-movie franchise. He doesn't have any plans as, unfortunately, he died in a plane crash in 1978.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to review an episode from the second season of the original television show. As always, should you or any of your blogging force be caught or killed, Hayley Atwell will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

Please destroy this message in the usual manner. Good luck, Stephen.

The original Mission: Impossible is available on Amazon Video, which is rather like a video store in a way with an eclectic collision of movies and shows from as far back as the 1930s. There's the good, the bad and the just-plain-odd; some free with a Prime membership, some available for a relatively small fee.

The show, produced originally by Desilu until its acquisition by Paramount, ran on CBS from 1966 to 1973 and revolved around the Impossible Missions Force, an American covert operations unit that was tasked each week with a dangerous mission to bring down a hostile force planning to do something against the interests of the free world. Those forces could be a leader trying to rig an election, a secret police chief trying to bring down his leader, or a criminal syndicate that's fixing horse races. Sometimes these missions would take place in the USA, other times in (mostly fictional) foreign countries.

The IMF, not to be confused with the International Monetary Fund, would use gadgetry, disguises and general psychological manipulation to ensure the baddies were dealt with - frequently permanently. Shooting the villains was not the done thing - oh, no. No, the trick was to get the villain shot by another villain, often by framing the former as a traitor or genuinely exposing him as such. The team are highly competent at their jobs and have little personal life seen outside their work.

There's a formula to all this that was fairly rigidly followed:

• The title sequence showing flash frames of the action coming up in the episode - something copied in the film series.
• The tape scene: Jim Phelps (from Season 2 onwards) listens to a tape in an isolated location, the tape then self-destructing or having to be thrown in a fire, acid bath etc.
• The dossier scene: Jim picks his personnel via selecting a series of large photographs of them from a black folder. The cast largely stays the same between episodes, although occasionally an outsider would be brought in.
• The briefing scene: The personnel discuss some of the aspects of the mission and show off a gadget that they're going to use, generally while some of them smoke cigarettes.
• Then onto the mission itself. Gadgets, safecracking under tension, holding your cover when things go sideways... and more smoking of cigarettes. There is a lot of smoking in this show, including while assembling the gadgets.
• The mission concluding and the team driving off just as things go distinctly south for their target.

In "The Astrologer", first broadcast 3 December 1967, the IMF are tasked with rescuing a revolutionary from the Eastern European country of Vesca before he can be returned there by secret police chief Stahl and also retrieving a piece of microfilm containing the names of people who supporting him.

(For the Gen Z readers here, a microfilm is basically like taking a photograph of a document with a camera phone, but with an actual film camera, then using the film itself as the storage medium. You can conceal the film in lots of places, but make sure you don't put the trousers in the wash with the film still in it.)

To do this, they make their way to Orly Airport in Paris, where Cinnamon Carter (Barbara Bain) pretends to be a famous French astrologer, getting close to the Deputy Chancellor of Vesca, who "predicts" the death of the Chancellor... which then they then save... by having an IMF agent pretend to be the Chancellor.

The agent in question is Rollin Hand (Martin Landau, then married to Bain[1]) a master of disguise. We've not yet gotten to the magical face masks associated with the film franchise.... disguise here involves time-consuming facial prosthetics to make Rollin look like the man he's impersonating. But not here... Landau just operates on the end of a telephone, with effects literally added with a tape player by Barney Collier (Greg Morris). Barney is a black tech millionaire and from this white man's possibly incorrect POV, an even better case of representation than Uhura from Star Trek, literally made on the same studio lot. However, he does end up frequently stuck in the van because in most countries, a black man would stick out; if he has to do an in-field role, it usually involves a questionable accent, of which there are a few.

Fans of Leverage can see him as a 1960s Hardison... and the whole thing can come across as an analogue version of the show. We've got computers with lights indicating status instead of VDUs, a surprisingly lax attitude to airport security, a full-sized telephone literally carried to a table in a VIP lounge, ashtrays on planes with the "no smoking" light being off when in the air[2] and astrology via use of a reference almanac accompanied with a "manual computer" i.e. two bits of card/plastic attached by a pin[3].

You also got a lot of "assembling" sequences, where someone drills holes, solders etc. accompanied by the late Lalo Schriffin's distinctive score, one of the most memorable bits of the whole franchise. This can get rather tedious.

The action then takes us to a Vescian government plane, which looks like a Lockheed DC-4, but feel free to correct me on that. This basically involves Carter distracting the two officials with horoscopes so Rollin and Barney, snuck on via a steamer trunk, can swap the revolutionary for a dummy (who is then removed from the equation in a clever way) and the microfilm for a substitute containing the names of the Deputy Chancellor and some other officials who are actually loyal to the junta. The implication is that Stahl will end up getting himself killed when he tries to arrest all these people, but we don't see it, unlike in other episodes. The whole thing is fairly pedestrian in a way; and we don't even see any bumpiness during take-off or landing, when Rollin and Barney are free to move around.

Then the episode ends with Jim Phelps and team muscle Willie Armitage (Peter Lupus, a genuinely big chap who was also a bodybuilder) picking up Carter in the guise of two military officers[4], with the revolutionary rescued and the real microfilm safely destroyed.

Then the credits roll. Mission completed, although they still need to leave the country, something occurring off-screen. It's actually a fairly easy one too; none of the team is in any serious peril during this.

Conclusion

Like the team itself, this is competent, but unspectacular.

7/10

[1]Juliet Landau was a product of this union; best known for playing Drusilla in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[2]We should also mention "Gellerese", the Eastern-European style language designed to be understandable to an audience who can't read Cyrillic or most Slavic languages. One example here being "Belten Atachin", which should be self-explanatory.

[3]I have an astronomical example from the 1990s used for working out what stars are visible in the sky and versions are still used in aviation as a backup.

[4]Soviet-style uniforms feature a lot in this show.

Exit Sir Keir Starmer

On Monday, the UK gets another Prime Minister. We've been having rather a lot of them lately. We're not exactly First Republic Italy yet, but the reputation of the UK for political stability is kind of gone.

Ultimately, Sir Keir was perhaps unsuited for the top job. He was at the end of the day a lawyer and not a politician. His election as Labour leader after the 2019 defeat was a case of being the most popular candidate in an mediocre batch and no-one really thought that Labour would be back that quickly. Then again, I didn't exactly think that Boris Johnson would self-destruct in the way he did.

The 2024 election was a case of "the Government losing" and Labour's landslide coming on a very low share of the vote.

Ultimately, Sir Keir made some massive missteps. Winter Fuel Allowance changes went down like a lead balloon - it's a third rail of British politics, along with the triple lock for pensions it seems. Immigration was always going to be an issue. "Two-tier Kier" will stick with him for the rest of his days, regardless of the truth of the matter. I definitely feel we could have done more on Gaza and should still do more.

However, what ultimately holed him below the waterline was the whole Peter Mandelson scandal. I don't know whose idea that was to appoint him as ambassador to the United States, but it was in retrospect a stupid one. John Healey resigning over defence spending was just the magazines exploding.

I have thoughts on Andy Burnham, our Prime Minister-elect, but I'll save those for next weekend once his government is in place.

Review: 'Star Trek: The Animated Series' Season 1, Episodes 11 to 16

I'll be reviewing these six here, before moving onto the six episodes of Season 2 in another post.

11. The Terratin Incident

I must admit that when I saw the description of this one, I was expecting it to be a bit silly, but it actually worked very well indeed. It's a classic Trek concept - nasty thing happening to the Enterprise is in fact means of communication by a group with no other way of getting their message across. The concept is one that would fall over in live-action even today, but works very well in animation form. Mostly - sometimes the cheapness is still there. They definitely have some interesting lab animals too!

9/10

12. The Time Trap

Watching this Enemy Mine-style episode, where the Enterprise has to work with a Klingon vessel to get out of a space Bermuda Triangle, I had a distinct memory of reading a comic like this at primary school. Now that was many years ago. Indeed, I did - there's a similar, but not identical, plot from the Gold Key comics - published the year before! The episode in itself is pretty mediocre - the voice acting of the guest characters (Nichelle Nichols doing three of them!) is pretty poor, the twists unsurprising when they come and some logic issues that also turn up. One particular amusing moment is the sudden cut to the aftermath of an Orion dance we don't see - this was a U-rated show!

6/10

13. The Ambergris Element

Frankly, this one is rather silly. We've got rather quick mutations, the Enterprise being able to predict and influence quakes via phaser, documents holding up fine after centuries underwater, underwater creatures in silly outfits with more flat voice acting and a shuttle that can also be a submarine. Also, people taking a very long time to suffocate. Also, ambergris is basically whale laxative!

4/10

14. The Slaver Weapon

Now, I've most definitely heard of Larry Niven, but I hadn't known that he'd adapted a short story of his into an episode of this show. Only featuring Spock, Scotty and Sulu, this seems them investigating a "stasis box" and having to keep its contents out of the hands of the Kzinti, a cat-like alien race that Niven used extensively in his Known Space universe; although one also became a regular character in Lower Decks. A master of the genre, Niven's tale is far better than the sum of its parts (which include a pink spacecraft, possibly as Hal Sutherland was colour-blind) and his stuff here about AI is actually a good idea. One of the best of the run.

9/10

15. In the Eye of the Beholder

When I saw the description, I immediately thought of Moopsy, one of the most memorable creatures from Lower Decks. This is not that zoo; the owners are clearly smarter enough not to house that thing, although not smart enough to use writing or realise they're dealing with sapient life quite quickly. Then again, we had "human zoos" in the 20th century, so we can't exactly complain. A well-written tale with some interesting plot mechanics to get around the limited budget, which is obvious when you see Kirk speaking.

8/10

16. The Jihad

A high-concept affair involving the search for a missing religious artefact where Kirk and Spock have to work together with a variety of aliens - and a human woman with a thing for Kirk. However, this one is badly let down by the execution; the creatures are unconvincingly even in animation, there's some real logic holes here and the twist comes out of nowhere like a massive slam on anteaters. Would you have this title today?

6/10

250 years of the United States

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

It's one of the most famous lines in human history - and one of the most hypocritical, considering the number of slave owners who signed the Declaration of Independence.

That kind of sums up the United States - high ideals and frequent failure to live up to them. From Jim Crow to the Trail of Tears to the Chinese Exclusion Act to the internment of Japanese Americans and more, the American Dream has been largely one for white people. With the current US adminstration, I am amazed that anyone would want to claim asylum there right now. Then there's the actions perpretrated by the American government overseas, Vietnam being a classic case in point, not to mention their support for Israeli human rights violations.

Yet people still keep coming to the country and want more from it. Vietnam is now an ally of the United States. American-produced movies still dominate the global box office. When foreigners speak English, it's frequently with an American accent - indeed many foreign actors go to the US and end up playing Americans!

I've been to the US four times myself - my main memories are of the size of the portions and the fact they don't put the sales tax on the sticker price. A sweatshirt I acquired in New York as a teenager still fits me over 25 years later and I've put on a fair bit of weight since then.

I might go back in future. I'd particularly like to see Los Angeles, although not in the summer!

For all its evils - and there are many - the United States isn't the worst empire that you could have as a superpower. It still is a democracy with free elections and freedom of speech. Many who criticise it do so on social media platforms run by the very billionaires they rail against. Donald Trump is a vile, venal and corrupt man, but he could easily be a lot more dictatorial than he actually is; he hasn't sent the tanks into Minneapolis. Iran would be in a lot worse shape if the US was like Russia or China.

I am not sure the United States will see its 300th anniversary; the red v. blue state tensions are real and growing. What comes after Trump might easily be worse and could start a Civil War by accident, if not by design. The world might well be poorer without it.

The US isn't necessary a force for good... but it's not necessary a force for evil. It's an empire of complexity. 

To misquote Monty Python and the Life of Brian - "What have the Americans ever done for us?"

It's 1997. It's dinner time. She's wearing hoops. (Review: 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' 2.9 and 2.10, "What's My Line?")

OK, what on Earth was Bianca Lawson doing with that accent? Jamaica? You should have stopped her!

История не повторяется, но она рифмуется. (Review: 'The Internship', 2026)

Or "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes". 

It was that or "Don't mind me, I'm just here for Megan Boone".

US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding

This conflict must be considered a clear strategic failure for the United States and it is down entirely to one man; Donald Trump. He failed to build a regional coalition in advance, kept threatening things he was never going to deliver and has now simply gotten bored.

I am doubtful this agreement holds in the long-term, especially if Israel and Hezbollah keep trading attacks.

Capital Ring Section 3

A murder in progress in Beckenham.

Or "I was walking with a limp when I got home - and the following day too".

The first trillionaire in history

Which just goes to show you that money can't buy you taste, humanity or popularity.

Also, Elon, you can't take it with you, even if it was actual cash rather than just shares in a company that is reliant on its systems actually working.

The Death of Doctor Who?

The announcement of the cancellation of the 2026 Christmas special and the show going out to tender is like the death of a relative. An old obese one that had been smoking for years. It's a surprise, but in the same way not a surprise.

Here's my post from last year on the show. At that point, I'd not seen The War Between the Land and the Sea, which ended in one rather stupid manner. "Survival" beats it hands down as a show ender.

Russell T Davies has clearly lied somewhere - he says there was no script, but in a Doctor Who Magazine column earlier this year, he teased three words from it. We might not know the precise details of the breakdown in the relationship for some years, but Bad Wolf has left the building and the far-too-big TARDIS set they built will soon be no more.

RTD was the right man for his time in the 2000s, but the wrong man in the 2020s. He shouldn't have been trusted with the show in retrospect and some can justly say "I told you so".

I suspect we are not likely to see any more live-action Doctor Who until Donald Trump is out of the White House i.e. 2029. If we see any more at all.

At least we've still got the CBeebies show...

As a final point, with no Trek show now in active production and the Stargate SG-1 revival axed, we are now in a world where the only live-action space show currently being made is "Serbs in Space" aka The Ark and I am not sure what state that is in.

Brave heart, people. We're going to need it.

Anthony Head 1954-2026

Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Uther Pendragon in Merlin and many more. Even his guest turn in Doctor Who was memorable. He was loved by many and his death at 72 from pneumonia will be a shock to many.

He will be deeply missed.

Rest in Peace.

Eurovision 2026

Not planning to watch this tonight. Not for any reason related to Israel's participation (which has arguments for and against it) but because it's just not really my cup of tea. Especially because it goes on so long and finishes far too late. I have things to do in the morning.

Apparently we're 19th highest in the odds market with Look Mum, No Computer deciding for some reason to have a German song title... 

I doubt we'll do well at all - especially as we're liable to do awfully on the televote - we got nil points on that last time.

Antisemitism in the UK

The Palestinian movement is not in itself antisemitic, but the amount of antisemitism that is present in it is a serious problem that needs fixing before it brings the house down - and the people it is supporting with it.

There is no way to achieve Palestinian rights and statehood without Israel agreeing to it. That is made harder because of the antisemitism, which causes genuine fear among some and makes for good deflection material for others. 

Antisemites are ultimately serving Israel with their hatred.

Some recent pictures that I took

 Because why not. Pictures bring visitors.

Iran ceasefire

Right now, which could of course change, this is looking like a tactical victory for the United States, but a strategic one for Iran.

Donald Trump has only himself to blame for that.

On Netflix, everyone can hear you scream (Review: 'Agents of Mystery' 1.4-1.6, "The Deep Sea Mystery")

Ian Fleming could be a bit of a racist, to put it mildly. He saved some of his worst bigotry for Koreans in Goldfinger - Bond considers them "rather lower than apes" and Goldfinger considers them "the cruellest, most ruthless people in the world".

Anyway, one wonders what he'd make of K-content, because it is clear that stereotype is nowhere near the truth.

One of Netflix's crown jewels is Squid Game, but they've got a veritable branch of Ernest Jones in what is known as "K-content", the array of content produced by and set in the Republic of Korea, aka South Korea. Some of their stars, including the lead actor from Squid Game, have broken out into non-Korean media, such as The Acolyte and The White Lotus.

One show that popped up in my suggestion list there or on YouTube, I forget which, was a show called 미스터리 수사단 (Miseuteori susadan) or "Agents of Mystery". Falling into the rather large area (these days) of "reality show", this show can be described as "six Korean celebrities doing a very large escape room".

The central shtick of the show is that our cast of celebs are "Agents of Mystery", working for a mysterious organisation that investigates strange occurrences around the world, travelling via a teleportation device, aka a lift that shakes a lot.

Once they get to their destination, they have six hours to solve the case - with the added complication that their ride won't be available until five hours later. Each mystery plays out over three episodes - this is the second one from Season 1 and the recently released Season 2 has three mysteries in total.

This one sees the agents sent to a deep-sea research submarine. Of the six life signs on board, five are no longer present and the sixth is decidedly odd...

Now, I didn't know the cast from Adam. For one thing, my knowledge of K-pop frankly starts and ends with "Gangnam Style", although I have at least heard of BTS and Blackpink, the latter via The White Lotus. So, I had to look them up on Wikipedia. They consist of singers, comedians and actors, including two K-pop singers (K-poppers? That sounds like something you buy in a nightclub that isn't exactly legal) and a Korean-American who did rather well on American Idol.

Fortunately, you do get to learn their names fairly quickly, helped by the subtitles. They take it seriously enough, but still have plenty of (slightly nervous) laughs at the situations that occur, including multiple references to the first episodes, where two of the guys ended up tied up in a wagon.

One standout is Karina, a singer, rapper and model, who is the youngest of the group. With over 22 million followers on Instagram, she's well, the kind of person who gets a lot of followers on Instagram. Not that she is scantily-clad here - they're all wearing jumpsuits and wore suits for the first mission. Karina ends up being the team's walking inventory, picking up a whole bunch of useful items that will help them.

We also have Lee Yong-jin, a comedian who comments that he served in the navy, South Korea having national service, but never went near a submarine. Which is not much use here.

I was very much reminded of a point-and-click adventure game by the nature of the puzzles that the team have to solve. Including the bit where you have to trudge half way across the map because you've forgotten something needed to progress. Also, in this case, I would have been calling for hints more than once. Fortunately, the team have a digital camera that they can use to record clues they encounter. Also, a number of clues require knowledge of English, with documents even having phrases in Latin script in the midst of all the Hangul - they have an American with them, but they're actually reasonably decent on their own. One doozy involves waking up the sub's computer using a wake word that definitely isn't available on your average home assistant.

The horror scenario here gives a good opportunity for a few jump scares and some gore. Or more for the audience to see the agents themselves get jump-scared by finding various bodies etc. then quick replays of them screaming out loud - indeed, these also act as a commercial break point. There's a particularly well-realised main monster as well. 

One must give a shout-out to the two-storey set. It's a highly detailed one where they even had salt water present for added realism - there's a bit where pulling on a vent results in a torrent of it landing on Eun-ji, soaking her through to her panties as she insists on telling everyone. Twice. We also get a great bit where the entire sub (or perhaps just the section they were in) tilts over a full 90 degrees, which props and people sliding stage left - or stage down, rather.

The climax, which involves a race against time, involves a surprisingly simple method of dealing with the monster and then a rather sudden ending that reminded me of the OG Mission: Impossible. That reminds me, I probably ought to review one of those at some point.

Conclusion

A highly enjoyable show for when you want something a bit different from dark and miserable - the cast really make it work.

It would make for a good English-language show too, provided you cast people who took it in the right spirit.

9/10

Jesus the servant

It's Good Friday today and that means time for my annual Easter post. As I am sure I've said before, I hope this is decent and interesting, but it is God who ultimately brings people to Christ, not humans.

I've been doing a lot of pouring of tea and washing-up lately in connection with a major local event I am involved in over the Easter weekend. This has been hard work, but it has been worthwhile and indeed appreciated by many.

Indeed, the thought occurred to me about how they did the washing up in Jesus' time. Apparently involving a lot of sand. Clay pots didn't last very long either and were generally thrown away once broken or used as "scrap paper" for writing on. That is why we find a lot of bits of them on archaeological digs - the landfill of today is the museum piece of tomorrow. Especially with some of our forever plastics...

Jesus would have done the washing up - and a lot of manual work other too. He'd have swept the sawdust from his father's workshop, brought in the carts of wood required for his products and probably sharpened the tools as well. I'd be curious to see what a 1st century saw looked like and I might try to find out afterwards.

Jesus' final act of service before his arrest and crucifixion would have been the washing of the feet at the Last Supper. I imagine this was a task reserved for the lowest servants and slaves in Roman society. Also, you'd have seen some pretty nasty toenails in an era where steel-capped boots weren't really a thing. Yet, Jesus not only voluntarily chose to do this task, despite being master of ceremonies, indeed he actively stopped others from doing it. This was the living God reducing himself to menial status - just before he went even further.

It's this sort of attitude we should seek to emulate in our Christian life. Volunteering to put the chairs away or remove the rubbish from people's tables after the meal. Helping people take stuff out to their car. Even if they say they don't need your help, you'll feel better that you offered. Of course, one should not do something that you are completely unsuited for or which might actually cause you harm - God wants able servants, not injured ones.

If asked to do a task, you should generally accept unless you have a good reason not to. You may well moan under your breath, but remember that you were once reliant on people taking care of you... and will likely be again at some point in your future.

I will finish this post with a song we sing a lot at church.

I wish you and your loved ones all a Happy Easter.

Monsters unleashed - some thoughts on the Iran situation

 This post is going to cover my thoughts on the war in the Middle East as it enters its second month.

• Just because you contain a monster, it doesn't mean that the monster isn't still there. Or to use another metaphor, hornets still go out and sting, which Iran has been doing for decades under the three Ayatollahs. Also, what is the difference between containment and appeasement? Does it depend on which side is doing it?
• For Israel, Iran getting a nuclear bomb is an existential threat. It would likely result in a situation where they would feel they have no alternative but strike first and international opinion can do go do one. In 1996, the ICJ famously split 7-7 on the legality of using nukes if state survival was at stake, that part only being carried by the President's deciding vote.
• Declaring that the desire was to overthrow the Islamic regime was a stupid move - it set up an unrealistic winning condition.
• Donald Trump lies so often that he won't be believed even when he is telling the truth. Aesop had a few things to say about that.
• Iran is playing a similar game to Germany in both World Wars - unable to defeat the US militarily, it hopes to cause the global economy so much pain that it gives up. This is a move that risk the GCC going from defence to offence.
• The US armed forces, especially the navy, have been badly run down by underfunding and the twenty-five years of the war on terror. This is now showing in a major way.
• Reopening the Straits of Hormuz will require diplomacy or armed force likely to produce a level of US casualties that would cause massive damage to the Republicans politically. Vietnam ultimately, bar the one-term Carter presidency, kept the Democrats out of power for over two decades and their 1992 victory wasn't exactly convincing either.
• A popular uprising will not happen during the bombing campaign. It might later, but these things are notoriously difficult to predict.
• So much for a "short, victorious war".

Review: 'Star Trek: The Animated Series' Season 1, Episodes 1 to 10

1. Beyond the Farthest Star

This episode sees the ship far out in space where it encounters a long-dead starship stuck in orbit around a dead star. With another alien entity hijacking the ship and foiled again by Kirk's tactical genius, it's very Trek by numbers, just animated in what seems to be a rather cheap style. 

6/10

2. Yesteryear

While an interesting exploration of Vulcan youth, it's rather let down by a casual approach to the bootstrap paradox and time travel more generally. Also, more by a rather flat performance by 9-year-old Billy Simpson. Not his fault; his audition tape was used in the final cut, seemingly to save the cost of a 2nd recording session!

6/10

3. One of Our Planets is Missing

A race against time that goes rather quickly - there's some rather quick jumps in the course of single scenes - and the cheapness is rather obvious. Getting the computer to do the voice of the space cloud means that you don't have to hire a guest actor for one thing. This said, it's a well-written story overall and would have worked well as an audio drama. I did find myself wondering if they were planning to fly out the cloud's backside, which isn't something I thought I would write.

7/10

4. The Lorelei Signal

Another classical reference, although I had to actually look it up to see what it was - a 'siren' living in the rock of the same name on the Rhine in Germany. This is definitely an engaging episode, although possibility a bit clichéd and arguably sexist too in a way. What saves it a great deal is Uhura, who stands up and takes command when white-haired beautiful aliens aim to steal the lifeforce from the mostly helpless men. I'm reminded of "Hathor" from Stargate SG-1, where a similar thing happens - also of a few episodes of Doctor Who as well.

7/10

5. More Tribbles, More Troubles

Tribbles made for one of the most memorable episodes of The Original Series and have made no less than 20 appearances in the franchise to date, even if only as a cameo. The reappearance of Cyrano Jones, Stanley Adams, reprising his role, is admittedly somewhat limited by the cheap animation, but the whole thing is rather made up for by an excellent plot, with some clever Kirk tactics, some great humour ("throw tribbles at them") and the Klingons having a rather valid reason for their actions. A lot of fun all round.

9/10

6. The Survivor

The crew pick up a long-lost philanthropist by the unusual name of Carter Winston (voiced by an uncredited Ted Knight) - and just happens to have his fiancée on board. It turns out that Winston is definitely not what he appears and the Enterprise ends up in a pretty sticky situation, which Kirk manages to expertly get his way out of. Not the best episode of the run (especially in its depiction of the fiancée) but it still works pretty well. Spock gets an excellent zinger at the end.

7/10

7. The Infinite Vulcan

Filmation were too tight to hire Walter Koenig and have Chekov appear in this series, but they did have him write an episode. It's a story in scope that would stretch the budget of even the modern show and would require extensive Volume work to realise there. In animation that can be done much cheaper. It's actually a pretty good one too - with a tie-back to the Eugenics Wars, the second reference to "Indefinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" (a mantra of the franchise) and Sulu having a lot to do as well.

8/10

8. The Magicks of Magas-Tu

[My entry here got lost somehow and I can't find my notes about this one. I recall I made jokes about "Sympathy for the Devil. If I find them I will edit this.]

9. Once Upon A Planet

A sequel to "Shore Leave" from Season 1 of TOS, which I reviewed here. This episode, with creatures created as a resort of thoughts from the characters interpreted by a computer with a misguided impression of its visitors, put me rather in mind of Rick & Morty. Of course, that show would do it in a rather different manner and with far more crudity. We actually get a pretty decent episode here, with everyone getting something useful to do. Although who wears uniform on shore leave?

8/10

10. Mudd's Passion

I'm not a fan of love potions, which I consider a fancier form of GHB. So, I wasn't disposed to this story involving one Harcourt Fenton Mudd (dressed like he's heading for a discotheque) as soon as it started heading that way. It's a pretty poor Nurse Chapel, as she does something that I am pretty sure the SNW version of her would never do and the whole plot involves a couple of vials of liquid somehow managing to affect an entire ship that should have toxin protections in its life support system. Mudd does not turn up again until Discovery in 2017, which makes sense as most of the later shows are set long after he would have died.

3/10 

Len Deighton 1929-2026

Len Deighton has died aged 97

His works were very much part of the reaction against James Bond in the 1960s, with "Harry Palmer" being one of the most famous of the characters from that time, played with aplomb by Sir Michael Caine.

I've read the majority of his works and would easily characterise him as one of my favourites. The RP I am currently running on two sites, Secret '67, is very much influenced by his work.

A spectacular literary innings. Rest in Peace.

Two lost episodes of Doctor Who found

Two missing episodes of "The Daleks' Master Plan" have been found in the estate of a private collector by Film is Fabulous! and will be available in iPlayer in April.

I listened to the full audio of the story back in 2012 and reviewed it here. With the video of the first and third episodes now there, I'm going to watch those two again and give my thoughts.

Watch this space (and time).

The end of the Islamic regime in Iran?

It appears for the second time this year that the United States has managed to remove a foreign leader they didn't like from power, with  Ayatollah Khamenei possibly killed in the large-scale US and Israeli attack on Iran.

This was an attack of choice with no Congressional backing, let alone one from the United Nations. The Trump administration is riding roughshod over international law, the US Constitution and common decency.

But not many will be mourning the death of Ali Khamenei, leader of one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, a literal inspiration for Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale. That is probably why there will be no real consequences for the US action here - the EU itself believed Iran was a threat in multiple ways.

It has not been a good century for those opposed to the United States. Bin Laden is lying at the bottom of the ocean. Saddam Hussein died the death of a common criminal. Gadaffi was killed by his own people. Maduro is in a prison cell. Assad is in exile.

But US action has unleashed horrific forces in many of the countries it has targeted. Improvements have occurred only after a massive wave of chaos and not always then. Refugees coming from Libya are probably a major cause of the rise of the far-right in Europe.

So, Iran has become the next 'victim' - and one can only pray a better government emerges there.

Rob Grant 1955-2026

 The co-creator of Red Dwarf has died suddenly aged 70. 

A comic genius, whose work was a source of joy to many millions around the world, has passed away. He will deeply missed.

o7 Mr Grant, o7.

Update - February 2026

I am continuing to work my way through Star Trek: The Animated Series, but the other Star Trek series on at the moment, which is actually pretty good, is limiting my time for that. I might put up a post when I hit episode 10, so you at least get some content.

I've got some stuff on Netflix that I really ought to finish off that's been partly watched for years. One thing that's not been on there for years and which I might review is a Korean show called Agents of Mystery.

Olivia's no longer in Kansas (Review: 'Fringe' 1.20, "There's More Than One of Everything")

Not that she was ever exactly in Kansas in the first place. The Fringe Division is largely confined to the NE United States, it seems.

Murder in Minneapolis

No sense in mincing words here. ICE is rotten to the core, an army of masked thugs with no willingness to abide by the rules of common decency.

It needs to be abolished and those in charge of it criminally investigated.

Enforcing borders is important, but it must be done humanely. ICE is incapable of doing that.

Who Mourns for Maduro? The US attack on Venezuela

There are two words that come to mind when thinking about yesterday's events. "Outrageous" and "farce".

Firstly, this is a clear and brazen violation of international law. Venezuela poses no threat to the United States - it is not even a major source of narcotics for that country, with fentanyl largely coming from other places. Donald Trump's new doctrine of foreign policy twists the Monroe Doctrine, which was in its original form meant to be about protecting the independence of the countries that had just ejected the Spanish. Not about asserting US dominance in the Western hemisphere. It's abundantly clear that this is about getting hold of the oil.

Not that Maduro is exactly an innocent here. He was a dictator who rigged elections and jailed dissidents. He's run his country's economy into the ground and forced much of his population to flee. The narcotics stuff - well Biden didn't cancel the arrest warrant, did he? The fact that Maduro was like that has meant that all we'll be getting, even from China, is "thoughts and prayers". Well, just thoughts from China, which is officially atheist even as it is heading for the largest Christian population in Asia.

Second, the United States controls precisely zero territory on the country. They don't even have a functioning embassy in the country, with relations run from Bogota. Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez is in charge and she doesn't exactly seem willing to cooperate. If the United States wants to control the country, bar a coup, it is going to need ground troops. Quite a lot of them, possibly. Especially if an insurgency starts.

Does Trump really want hundreds of US troops coming home in coffins, like what partly did for George W. Bush's presidency?

"Short, victorious wars" rarely are.

Landing stuck. Mostly. (Review: 'Stranger Things 5')

 They came. They saw. They conquered...

(Spoilers galore below)