'Important issue'

'Kari understands the challenges facing Arizona families'

'The sandwich was made up to Subway standards'

'serious questions about the politicization of BOP'

"The truck then crashed into the hydrant."

'Rules aimed at destroying traditional energy providers'

'Pounce on this like a ninja'

'Howie. I still love you. Please forgive me'

Movies & TV Star Trek: Discovery The Breen Mile — Star Trek: Discovery’s “Erigah” The latest episode attempts to give us some genuine insight into the Breen By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on May 9, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share The Breen have never been interesting. There, I said it. First mentioned as a throwaway “other nasty empire” in a few TNG episodes here and there, we finally saw one in DS9’s “Indiscretion,” where they were pretty much just generic bad guys who looked like Leia’s disguise in Return of the Jedi. Later, DS9 had the Breen enter the Dominion War on the side of the Dominion, but even there, they were just a plot device—something to make it clear that the Cardassians were just one of many species subsumed to the Dominion and that the Gamma Quadrant empire would do whatever was necessary to win and expand. But we’ve never once gotten any sense of what the Breen are, or who they are. Supposedly, that was the point, that they were mysterious, wearing their encounter suits all the time and such. To me, though, it just felt like they were a plot device—and a cheap one, at that, because the fact that they don’t have comprehensible dialogue means you can just hire extras to play them and not pay them as much. (Given that pretty much every episode of the last two years of DS9 had guest-star lists longer than one’s proverbial arm, you can see why they wanted to cut corners, but still.) Both “Mirrors” two weeks ago and “Erigah” this week make an attempt to finally change that, to give us some genuine insight into the Breen. And, well, they’re still not interesting. Credit: CBS / Paramount+ Folks in the comments of “Mirrors” pointed out that having the Breen be just another set of Forehead Aliens is disappointing, having expressed hope that they might be more complicated than that. As an example, author David Mack—who, full disclosure, is a close friend of your humble reviewer—established in the Typhon Pact novel Zero Sum Game that there are multiple species in the Breen Confederacy, and that “Breen” is a culture, not a species. Dave did this by way of explaining the contradictory facts that had been established about the Breen. (Indeed, Dave’s notion is still compatible with what’s been revealed on Discovery so far, since L’ak and L’ak’s uncle remain the only Breen we’ve seen without the encounter suit.) But the Breen culture we get is one of factions all vying for power, and didn’t we already do this with the Klingons in season one? And L’ak is important because he’s a scion of the royal family, so we get yet another alien species that has futuristic technology alongside medieval notions like primogeniture and the political importance of genetics and bloodlines over more relevant criteria, and bleah. It’s been done before and nothing interesting is done with it here. On top of that, we get some other tired clichés here, including one of my least favorite: Incompetent Starfleet Security. Moll moves to escape sickbay after L’ak distracts everyone by overdosing on tricordrazine. (How the super-duper 32nd-century technology can allow a patient to possibly overdose themselves is left as an exercise for the viewer. Especialy since it winds up killing him.) The two nameless security guards are taken out in nothing flat, and then Culber tries to stop her and he actually does better than the trained security personnel, mostly because he’s an opening-credits regular and therefore a bigger badass than the trained security personnel. Sigh. I do like that Moll isn’t really able to get anywhere on the ship because even she’s not that good. And it’s good to see Rachael Ancheril back as Nhan in charge of the security detail holding Moll and L’ak. Credit: CBS / Paramount+ Okay, I’ve spent almost 600 words dissing the Breen and this episode, so I should probably at this point mention that I generally actually liked this one. In particular, I enjoyed the negotiating done by T’Rina, aided by Vance, Burnham, and Rayner. T’Rina is the one doing it because Rillak is elsewhere and so she delegates it to Ni’Var’s president. By the way, this makes absolutely no sense. It was established back in “The Galactic Barrier” that Rillak has a vice president who would be in charge in her absence. But I’m willing to accept it because Tara Rosling just kills it in this episode, and her steel and her logic and her resolve are all magnificent. Anyhow, we get some more background on Rayner, as we find out that one of the Breen factions subjugated the Kellerun people a while back, and Rayner was under their power. But it also means he knows a lot about how that faction works, and they’re able to use his knowledge to convince the Breen standing in front of them that they’ve negotiated with another faction to turn L’ak over. In the end, Moll convinces the Breen that she’s L’ak’s wife—and they have the tattoos to prove it!—and is therefore part of the royal family now, plus she has information about the Progenitor technology. The Federation agrees to let the Breen have Moll in exchange for the Breen’s incredibly big ship not opening fire. (Burnham and Rayner saw a possible future with Federation HQ destroyed by the Breen in “Face the Strange,” and so everyone’s priority is, understandably, to avoid letting the shooting start.) Now it’s a race. Moll doesn’t have any of the physical evidence or clues, but she has knowledge, and now a big-ass Breen ship. Starfleet has the Romulan notebook, most of the puzzle pieces, and a ship with a spore drive. The B-plot is more of what Discovery does best, which is figure shit out. Tilly and Adira discover that the piece of metal that they found last week is, basically, a library call slip. Back in the 23rd century, Reno was part of a gaggle of rare-book enthusiasts who kept things in a traveling library. It’s still around nine centuries later, and Reno doesn’t know anyone connected to it now, obviously, but it’s enough to get them moving in the right direction. Credit: CBS / Paramount+ Something Discovery has continued to excel at is intense discussions, negotiations, debates, whether it’s Osyraa and Vance in “There is a Tide…” or the grand debate about how to approach Species 10C in “…But to Connect” or the T’Kal-in-ket in “Unification III.” T’Rina’s negotiations with the Breen live up to that standard, and it’s beautifully done, making the climax of the episode far more intense than a shooting war would be. (And if you desperately need action, there’s Moll’s escape.) Next week, it looks like we’re back to the chase for the Progenitors’ tech. Cha cha cha.[end-mark] The post The Breen Mile — <i>Star Trek: Discovery</i>’s “Erigah” appeared first on Reactor.

No one wants to talk about it. Not about how illegal immigration on the U.S. southern border, facilitated by brutal Mexican cartels, “dehumanizes” people. Not about the “broken young women,” who—hopeful for a new life and having paid thousands of dollars to the cartels—must comply “with anything” to be trafficked across the border. Not about the raped, the shot, the exploited women and children in “drop houses” on the U.S. side of the border. Not about the bar-coded bands on women’s wrists—labeled like livestock—so that they and the money they owe can be tracked by the cartels. No one wants to talk about any of it—not President Joe Biden’s administration, nor a complicit Congress. But you can see it in her eyes. This was described to me by two veteran emergency services professionals, one working in Del Rio, Texas, and the other working in the Firefly Border Patrol Processing Center at the Texas-Mexico border. The center is a soft-sided tent “city” (described as “about the size of four Super Walmart stores”) set up as a Border Patrol processing camp just off Firefly Road in Maverick County, Texas, between Del Rio and Eagle Pass, Texas. The EMS professional working at Firefly says that in addition to the obvious physical signs of rape and beatings, he recognizes the trauma in the eyes of these “broken young women,” some of whom are just teenagers, and wonders—with tears in his own eyes—what will become of them. He speculates they will be absorbed into immigrant communities all over the U.S.—ignored, lost, and forgotten by the Biden administration, the other politicians, and the self-absorbed government opportunists who, for their own political agendas, open U.S. borders and allow cartel businesses to thrive. “Their design is to get to the U.S., and it’s the price they pay for going through,” he says. “They’re either going to pay upfront (with money), or pay afterward with indentured servitude or sex service, but someone’s got to pay. What’s strange is that our government facilitates [trafficking]. Once they cross the border, they get them where they need to go.” He continued, “You can see the trauma on their faces, and they’re broken young women … . They are ‘product,’ labeled and tracked by the cartels. They’re broken people, and now they’re ours—going to school with our grandkids, in our systems and our communities.” So, who will tell her story? She will be forgotten. The long-term effects of the emotional trauma of these women—and of the U.S. medical professionals and Border Patrol agents tasked with helping them—are already being forgotten. A senior Border Patrol official in McAllen, Texas, reported to me that suicide rates, domestic violence, and alcoholism are significantly higher now among Border Patrol agents than before Biden took office. Agents have been “greatly impacted” by observing on a daily basis the abuse of illegal aliens by the Mexican cartels—rapes, killings, and assaults in “drop houses” located on the U.S. side of the border, where illegals await trafficking into the interior of the United States. Biden declared his immigration policies to be “humane, orderly, and safe.” What deception. What disregard for human dignity.   No one wants to talk about it, but this is illegal immigration: Potential immigrants, wanting a new and improved life, are emboldened by Biden’s executive orders that opened—no, make that destroyed—U.S. sovereign borders to collaborate with the Mexican cartels. No one gets across the border illegally without paying the cartels and receiving their authorization. Those who try to “freelance” across are killed. Many illegal immigrants are ignorant of the emotional cost and the potential life-changing trauma. But Biden and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas are not. Senior government officials—Democrats and Republicans—visit border communities, giving hope that officials would finally “see and understand” the trauma, the warlike zone at the border, the daily car chases, the chaos and inhumane conditions so they will finally “do something” about it. But, according to angry and disheartened border residents, when the same officials return to Washington, D.C., all is forgotten. The casual dismissal of Mayorkas’ impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate was, in their words, like “a gut punch.” For the U.S. government, “it’s not about stopping it,” the emergency services professional says. “It’s about processing [illegals] faster … and we will all have to deal with the consequences of this. Beyond the economic impact, it’s going to have tremendous psychological and health impacts—for years and years.” The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. The post Who Will Tell Her Story? appeared first on The Daily Signal.