Massive comic book review for 2015

So, following this year's ruckus over the Hugo Awards, I resolved to put in some nominations for next year's awards instead of just waiting for the shortlist like I normally would.  Me and everybody else, I suspect.  However, I was determined not to simply fall back on creators whose work I already know and who happened to have done something eligible in 2015, but to sample widely and make some properly informed nominations.  As I've previously remarked, this is a costly undertaking in terms of both time and money.  So I decided to pick one category and focus my efforts on that.

Folks, I picked the Best Graphic Story category.

I realise that as a response to the 2015 Hugos hijack this is completely rubbish, since this was the category the slate-makers showed the least interest in, but you know what, stuff it.  It's a category I'm interested in, which is more than I can say for any of the short fiction categories.  The pool of available material is less dauntingly large than for the other fiction categories, and consequently even at the prices most retailers charge for comic book trade paperbacks (TPBs) I can survey this category more cheaply than Best Novel, and find and acquire the material more easily than I could a lot of short fiction.  (And in fact, thanks to the import mark-up New Zealand retailers put on books, a new TPB typically costs me less than a new novel, which was never true back in the UK.)  It takes me a fraction of the time to read a TPB that it would take me to read a novel or watch a TV series or film.  Basically, I'm better able to assess this category for nomination purposes than any of the others.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

The Hugo rules specify that a serialised work is eligible for the year in which the final part is made available - in the case of ongoing comic books, this applies to story arcs within the series, and comics creators nowadays tend to tailor their story arcs to about the size of a TPB, which is convenient for all concerned.  I can wait for a couple of months after the completion of a series or story arc within a series and pick up the eligible work in a single, durable volume, which suits me better than wrangling individual comics issues.  (For self-contained graphic novels, of course, it isn't a concern.  Nearly said "issue" there, ho ho.)  In a couple of cases, however, that does mean I haven't yet been able to catch up with a promising work whose final part came out late in the year.  I'm waiting on at least one TPB that isn't due out until the end of January, which I should be able to squeeze in in time to assess it for nomination purposes, but which therefore isn't listed below.

I've made an effort to track down comics with a specifically science fiction or fantasy theme - granted, all superhero comics are arguably fantasy, but beyond that there's a surprising wealth of genre comic books that I think are overshadowed by the multiple flavours of Batman and Spider-Man and the rest that get churned out each month.  I'm not mad fussed about conventional superhero comics anyway, although one or two more unusual items did catch my eye.

Readers may note a preponderance of items published by Image Comics in the list below.  This isn't down to any bias on my part in favour of the publisher, but simply reflects the fact that Image publish a lot of non-superhero SF/F comic books, bless 'em.  Naturally representation of DC and Marvel below is going to be extremely poor because they publish nothing but superhero titles.  Anyway, there it is.  I certainly don't claim that this round-up is definitive.

Finally, I'm not going to list out the (maximum of) five comics I intend to nominate, but I do offer opinions on all of these books.  It's a review post on a personal blog, and there wouldn't be a lot of point in it if I withheld my opinions.  Readers may be able to spot one or two likely candidates for my nomination ballot based on my comments, but that's life.  Readers are urged to support their local library and/or comics shop by tracking down any items that sound interesting to them and to make up their own minds.

Here, then, is the massive write-up of comics I've read that are eligible for the 2016 Hugo Awards.

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Annihilator
Publisher: Legendary Comics
Writer: Grant Morrison - Artist: Frazer Irving
Graphic novel/miniseries originally serialised in 6 parts.
Premise: Ray Spass, a decadent screenwriter struggling with his latest project, is diagnosed with a brain tumour.  Then Max Nomax, the Jerry Cornelius-esque protagonist of his new screenplay, shows up at his house to tell him that the "tumour" is a data packet Nomax fired into Spass' reality in order to escape from his own, but that he needs Spass to keep writing the script to help him remember its contents.
Blather: Fooling around with notions of reality and fiction and characters talking directly to their creators is something Morrison has a lot of experience with, but I don't think this book matches up to his previous work in that area.  None of the characters are particularly likeable or relatable.  The story - at least, Nomax's story - has a kind of pulp mythic feel to it which may appeal.  The artwork is OK, with occasional expressionistic bursts when appropriate to the story.

The Autumnlands vol 1 ("Tooth and Claw")
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Kurt Busiek - Artist: Benjamin Dewey
Collects issues 1-6 of an ongoing series.
Premise: A future-fantasy world of Grandvillean animal-people faces social collapse as its reserves of magic start to run out.  Gharta the Seeker, a maverick warthog-headed sorceress, tries to save the day by reaching back through time and retrieving the Champion, the almost mythic figure who supposedly introduced magic into the world in the first place.  What she actually retrieves is Master Sergeant Steven Learoyd, a foul-mouthed human soldier with no obvious magical abilities whatsoever.
Blather: A book with artwork you can really luxuriate in, and you'll have time to, because the pacing of the story is rather leisurely.  A lot of this first volume is spent adding definition to the world of Keneil, the floating city on which Gharta stages her magical feat and which is sent crashing into the heart of bison-headed raider territory when the project backfires.  A lot is spent too on setting up the antagonism between Gharta and Sandorst, a preening owl-headed sorceror who causes the project to blow out by bungling the one small contribution he was asked to make, and who succeeds in shifting blame onto Gharta in order to further his own political ambition.  Meanwhile the Champion and a young dog-headed citizen he befriends try to move the people of Keneil on to safety, but at this early stage they feel secondary to the overall story - in fact, it already feels by the end of issue 6 as though the whole question of somehow getting the Champion to bring magic back to the world has been dropped in order to focus on the smaller scale political bickering instead.  A richly textured but somewhat frustrating volume.

Batman '66 vol 3
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Jeff Parker - Artist: Jonathan Case et al
Collects issues 11-16 of an ongoing series.
Premise: A Batman comic book based specifically on the '60s TV show.  Popular villains return, drawn to resemble the actors who played them (or, where a villain was played by more than one actor, to resemble the one who played the part around the time the particular story is set).  A few other villains, familiar from other comics but who weren't used in the TV series, are introduced and given appropriately goofy origin stories.
Blather: The '60s TV series is my preferred iteration of Batman, so I was at least interested by the idea of this.  My particular interest in vol 3 is that it includes a story in which False-Face tries to discredit Batman in the public eye by running a TV series about his adventures, only here the "real" Batman is the wholesome Adam West version and the TV Batman is transparently meant to be Frank Miller's hypergrim Dark Knight.  So that was a delicious dig at other leading brands of Batman and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  Other stories are pretty straightforward riffs on the TV show itself.

Birthright vol 1 ("Homecoming")
Publisher: Image Comics/Skybound
Writer: Joshua Williamson - Artist: Andrei Bressan
Collects issues 1-5 of an ongoing series (unusually, presented here as a single continuous piece without issue breaks).
Premise: A year after his disappearance, little Mikey Rhodes reappears, only he's several years older and armed with dozens of medieval weapons.  He claims he was chosen by destiny to save the magical world of Terrenos from the evil God King Lore, and has returned to Earth in pursuit of five war criminal wizards.  His family and the police have a hard time believing this - in a twist revealed to the reader in the first issue, it turns out Mikey actually is deceiving them, but not in the way they think.
Blather: A good story well told, and nicely drawn.  Flashbacks to Mikey's time in Terrenos are distributed artfully through the story, and the growing disparity between what Mikey tells his family and what those flashbacks reveal is handled well.  I'll be interested to see whether subsequent volumes can live up to the promise of this first one.

Bitch Planet vol 1 ("Extraordinary Machine")
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Kelly Sue DeConnick - Artist: Valentine De Landro
Collects issues 1-5 of an ongoing series.
Premise: In a "five minutes into the future" dystopia, any women who fail to conform to the expectations set for them by a patriarchal society are arrested and shipped off to the Auxilliary Compliance Outpost, also familiarly known as Bitch Planet.  A group of inmates are offered the chance to put forward a team to compete in the popular spectator sport known as Megaton - for the authorities, it's a cynical PR exercise, but for the women, it's an opportunity to get out and strike a blow against the Fathers.  This first volume sees them begin to formulate their plan and suffer their first major setback.
Blather: So, y'know, casual readers may perhaps have missed the subtle critique being offered of the ways in which modern society harms women.  The first page offers only a glancing blow, with nearly adjacent panels showing a minor character being spammed by conflicting holographic ads reading "You're Hungry" and "You're Fat"; the rest of the book goes much deeper and much angrier than this.  The creative team make much use of the exploitation film technique of overplaying common cultural tropes in order to subvert them (most obviously here, scenes that expose and sexualise female bodies for the gratification of male viewers, represented here by the voyeuristic wardens).  Issue 3 is stand-out good - the backstory of an unashamedly overweight woman is presented in the grand ol' comic book tradition as a "secret origin", complete with visual pastiche of old four-colour printing techniques in the flashback sequences, thus granting her the status of a hero - although issue 1 with its sucker-punch twist might be my favourite.  Anyway, the overall story looks like it's going somewhere interesting.  More thought-provoking than the average comic, and recommended for readers who enjoy that.

Chew vol 9 ("Chicken Tenders") & vol 10 ("Blood Puddin'")
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: John Layman - Artist: Rob Guillory
Collects issues 41-45 (vol 9) & 46-50 (vol 10) of an ongoing series (issue 60 is currently expected to be the last one).
Premise: Detective Tony Chu works for the FDA, which is the most powerful federal agency in America following a food scare involving chickens and an as-yet unexplained plague.  He's also one of a large number of people who have food-based superpowers - in Chu's case, he can tell the history of any organic substance if he puts it in his mouth.  These two TPBs bring to an end the story arc of Chu hunting down the Collector, a serial killer with the same superpower who's been absorbing other people's weird abilities by eating bits of them.  Vol 9 sees a disastrous attempt by several other characters to take down the Collector, and vol 10 is the Collector's final showdown with Chu.
Blather: This is a very silly, very colourful series with a sick sense of humour, and I'm still enjoying it after ten TPBs.  It's not without its problems, but just in terms of the art and all the little throwaway details it packs in, it's refreshingly different from most other comic books.  I've particularly loved seeing Poyo - a vicious cybernetic luchador rooster - grow from being a minor character to nearly taking over the series, and these two volumes are almost as much about him as they are about the Collector.  Vol 9 sees Poyo get a ridiculously indulgent double-page spread in every issue, but vol 10 seems to mark the end of his story.

Copperhead vol 1
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Jay Faerber - Artist: Scott Godlewski
Collects issues 1-5 of an ongoing series.
Premise: Single mother Clara Bronson arrives in the mining town of Copperhead to take up her post as sheriff.  Her first week sees her dealing with the rowdy Sewell clan, the corrupt owner of the mine, a mysterious wandering gunslinger and a group of natives who want to retrieve their stolen religious artefact.  The twist: Copperhead is sited on the frontier planet Jasper, and the majority of the characters - including the natives, the Sewells and Bronson's deputy - are various species of alien.
Blather: So, this is a Western comic in which some of the characters have been drawn as aliens, and only somewhat tenuously a SF comic.  But what the hell?  It's a lively read, the art's good, the writing's good.  Bronson presents a good, solid arsekicking heroine around whom the supporting characters can revolve.  Said supporting characters start out in broad strokes, but by the end of this book there are already nuances starting to show.  The backmatter shows the creative team are completely unashamed about the fact that they're just redressing the cliches of Western fiction, and, well, fair enough I suppose.

Descender vol 1 ("Tin Stars")
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Jeff Lemire - Artist: Dustin Nguyen
Collects issues 1-6 of an ongoing series.
Premise: A futuristic multi-species community of nine worlds is ravaged by gigantic robots that the survivors refer to as "the Harvesters".  A destructive backlash against all robots ensues.  It's subsequently discovered that the Harvesters had the same base code as the man-made TIM series of robots, designed to act as child companions for human families.  Ten years after the apocalypse, the robot TIM-21 wakes up on a distant mining outpost; various parties take an interest in his call for help.
Blather: "Perilous journey of the all-important child" is a story Lemire's had some success with before; here's a rather promising space opera variation on that theme.  The plot is painted in broad strokes, but there's a more complex back story unfolding behind it.  I'm strongly reminded of The Metabarons, an association reinforced by the "painted sketch" European style of art Nguyen provides.  A strong first volume in a series that looks like it's going places.

The Divine
Publisher: First Second
Writer: Boaz Lavie - Artists: Asaf Hanuka & Tomer Hanuka
Graphic novel, c.150 pages.
Premise: Two American ex-military explosives experts take on a contract job "lava tube denuding" a mountain in a South East Asian country.  They run up against a group of child soldiers who believe the mountain is the home of the dragon spirit that gives their leader's brother magical powers.
Blather: Contemporary political comment blended with magic and mythology.  Apparently this book was inspired by a photograph of a pair of East Burmese child soldiers, on whose likeness the twin brothers leading the group in this book are clearly based.  The artwork is beautifully done; the story actually feels a bit thin, as if after a well-paced first half it then rushes through to the finish.  Another hundred pages or so might not have gone amiss.

The Infinite Loop
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Pierrick Colinet - Artist: Elsa Charretier
Graphic novel/miniseries originally serialised in 6 parts.
Premise: A story of forbidden love between two women.  Their love is forbidden because one of them is a member of an organisation that polices linear time and eradicates anomalies, and the other is an anomaly.
Blather: This book overplays its equal rights message with sledgehammer force, but it's beautifully drawn.  It actually feels as if it's been translated into English, even though I believe Colinet wrote it in English rather than French - the dialogue has that slight clunkiness to it.  Still and all, the message continues to be relevant and bears repeating.  It's the art that really carries this book, though.

Injection vol 1
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Warren Ellis - Artists: Declan Shalvey & Jordie Bellaire
Collects issues 1-5 of an ongoing series.
Premise: Once upon a time, a think tank of five people with unusual skills and interests created an AI and let it loose on the Internet.  Now they're called in as consultants to investigate a series of weird events that sound a lot like Celtic myths come true.  Is Fairyland breaking through into the real world, or is their AI trying to get their attention?
Blather: Some interesting ideas and Ellis' customary bitchy dialogue here, but the idea of an AI that can warp reality is one that needs more setup and/or elaboration than is allowed in this volume.  Ellis is apparently now in the habit of playing the long game with his readers, drawing out scenarios and withholding explanations in order to sustain intrigue across multiple collected volumes - whether or not this is a good thing will depend on the individual reader.  Given my comics reading habits, I imagine I'm more inclined to put up with this than other readers.

Low vol 1 ("The Delirium of Hope")
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Rick Remender - Artist: Greg Tocchini
Collects issues 1-6 of an ongoing series.
Premise: It's the far future and humanity now lives in habitats at the bottom of the ocean, the only place safe from the radiation from a bloated sun.  After millennia, a deep space probe has returned to Earth with possible details of a new world for everyone to escape to, but it's crashed on the deserted surface, and human society on the ocean floor has become so decadent (having long since given up hope of any of those probes returning) that hardly anyone is interested in travelling up to retrieve it.  Only Stel Caine, widow of the last Helmsman, is ready to make the journey, which will also bring her into contact with her estranged daughters and the pirates who stole them.
Blather: Point 1, the art on this is very, very gluggy, to the point that I could often hardly tell what I was looking at, and that's a bad thing.  Point 2, although this is nominally Stel's story I can't help but notice how completely sidelined (and incompletely dressed!) she is while her son does all the heroic business later in the book, so here's a female hero lacking all agency in her own story, and that's another bad thing.  Point 3, they couldn't even bother to write an accurate back cover blurb for this book.  I mean, for crying out loud.  On a positive note, the story (at a high summary level) is interesting, and the relentless godawfulness of Stel's life is an unusual line for Remender to take, but I'm not sticking around to find out if it will pay off in the long term.

Lumberjanes vol 1 & vol 2
Publisher: BOOM! Box
Writers: Noelle Stevenson & Grace Ellis - Artist: Brooke Allen
Collects issues 1-4 (vol 1) & 5-8 (vol 2) of a series originally planned for 8 issues, but subsequently picked up as an ongoing series.
Premise: Five friends at a summer camp for adventurous young women investigate spooky goings-on in the surrounding forest.
Blather: The overall feel and style of this book owes much to the Hanna Barbera cartoons of yore - the writers admit in an afterword that Scooby-Doo was a significant influence.  Readers may find themselves spontaneously humming songs by The Monkees over the action scenes; alternatively, anyone who picks up the hardback omnibus edition (as I did, for sound economic reasons) has the alternative of looking up the suggested playlists at the back of the book.  The script and art are both anarchic, bordering on slapdash; I found this a little jarring at first, but once I made the Hanna Barbera connection it quickly grew on me.  There's a lot of fun and a lot of charm to be found here.

The Multiversity
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Grant Morrison - Artists: Various
Collects all 9 issues of a limited series originally published under several titles.
Premise: It's A Very Grant Morrison Crisis.  Sinister forces from outside normal reality plan to invade all the worlds of the DC multiverse - including yours, dear reader! - using a self-aware comic book called "Ultra Comics" as their bridgehead.  ("Ultra Comics" is, of course, a part of the series and included in this volume.)  The heroes of multiple parallel Earths band together to save reality itself from the invaders.
Blather: Unlike a lot of "Crisis" event/books, this one doesn't seem to have been designed to kill off or reset any of DC's current range of titles, and it doesn't depend on the reader knowing decades of back history (although I imagine it would help).  So that's nice.  But I'm not here for the apocalyptic crossover event stuff, I'm here to see Grant Morrison doing his fiction vs reality schtick, and on that score this book delivers very well.  The "Ultra Comics" issue is possibly the single purest example that Morrison has produced to date, and it's wickedly funny.  The book overall is kind of disjointed - I'm not quite sure what part some of the middle issues play in the larger story, and at times this comes across more as a prospectus of possible ongoing titles Morrison is pitching to DC.  Still, it's all enjoyable.  The artwork is very good but less varied than I would have expected given the large number of artists credited - presumably DC has a particular standard of artwork that they're all used to working to.

The Private Eye
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Brian K Vaughan - Artists: Marcos Martin & Muntsa Vicente
Graphic novel, c.300 pages, originally serialised online at panelsyndicate.com in 10 parts from August 2013 to March 2015.
Premise: A noir detective story set in the 2070s, in a world where the press are responsible for law enforcement, where the Internet was abandoned decades ago after everybody's personal information was leaked and anonymity is so highly valued that everyone wears masks in public.  The hero, an unlicensed detective who trades under the name of P.I., investigates the murder of his latest client and uncovers a world-shaking conspiracy.
Blather: A terrific combination of the form of a noir thriller with a colourful vision of the near future.  The art is bold and stylish, the dialogue sharp, the story solid and engaging.  The print edition is very lovely, but it would be remiss of me not to point out that the whole thing is still available digitally from panelsyndicate.com on an "honesty box" basis, allowing even the cheapest of my readers to sample it for themselves.

Roche Limit vol 1 ("Anomalous")
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Michael Moreci - Artist: Vic Malhotra
Collects issues 1-5 of an ongoing series.
Premise: Two people investigate the disappearance of a young woman in Roche Limit, a decaying human colony built inside the distant planet Dispater.  The disappearance may be connected to a drug called Recall whose production process is a closely guarded secret, to an apocalyptic phenomenon known as the Black Sun, or to a trio of husk-like figures haunting the colony.
Blather: A kind of noir space opera.  I found the artwork in this book to be rough, bordering on just plain bad, and the story didn't entirely grab me.  The writing's pulpy, which I suppose is a fit for the noir aesthetic.  Still, there's going to be a second (post-apocalyptic) volume, so clearly somebody liked it.

The Sculptor
Publisher: SelfMadeHero Books
Writer/Artist: Scott McCloud
Graphic novel, c.500 pages.
Premise: Struggling sculptor David makes a deal with Death - he gains the fantastic ability to shape any material however he wants using just his bare hands, but he only has 200 days to use it, after which he's going to die.  Then he falls in love.
Blather: A beautiful rumination on art, love, death and all that big human stuff.  McCloud is every bit as good at walking the walk as he was at talking the talk in his famous non-fiction book Understanding Comics.  A couple of experimental moments, but by and large the art is used conventionally in service to the story, and very nice art it is too.  The fantastic premise provides some visual spectacle in its own right, as well as driving a story that's more heavily focused on the characters and the relationships between them.  A satisfying read that packs a solid emotional punch.

Sex Criminals vol 2 ("Two Worlds, One Cop")
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Matt Fraction - Artist: Chip Zdarsky
Collects issues 6-10 of an ongoing series.
Premise: Jon and Suzie independently discover that when they orgasm, time freezes around them and only unfreezes when they're "ready for round two".  They meet each other, realise they share this bizarre superpower and decide to use it to rob the bank Jon works at so that they can bail out the library Suzie works at.  It's at that point that they learn there are others with similar abilities who've formed a kind of "sex police" to stop people like them drawing attention by doing things like robbing banks.  And that was vol 1.  Vol 2 sees Jon and Suzie finding out more about the "sex police", being victimised by them and trying to build a resistance movement among their fellow sex criminals, as well as developing their relationship past the honeymoon period.
Blather: This second book continues to do the interesting things with subjective presentation and comical background details that I liked in vol 1 (although it'll be hard for Fraction and Zdarsky to equal the "Fat Bottomed Girls" scene in vol 1, and I don't think they do in vol 2).  The story itself continues to be funny, honest, smirkingly filthy and, well, charming in a way that I probably wouldn't have expected a sexually explicit comic book to be if you'd asked me hypothetically about it 2 years ago.

Star Trek/Planet of the Apes: The Primate Directive
Publisher: IDW Publishing/BOOM! Studios
Writers: Scott Tipton & David Tipton - Artist: Rachael Stott
Graphic novel/miniseries originally serialised in 5 parts.
Premise: Don't the words "Star Trek/Planet of the Apes crossover" cover it?  Well...  The Klingons, led by the one who was played on TV by John Colicos, are looking to expand their empire into parallel universes since their treaty with the Federation prevents them from conquering worlds in their own universe.  The Enterprise follows a Klingon ship through their dimensional portal and discovers an old enemy selling machine guns to the gorillas on the Planet of the Apes.
Blather: I bought this book expecting some big dumb fun, and I would have been happy enough with that.  In fact it goes a little further in using the crossover to retcon a couple of the otherwise mysterious developments between the first three Apes films - the shift in power towards the gorilla Ursus in film #2 and the appearance out of nowhere of a chimpanzee space program in film #3.  The writers do a good job of mixing all this together, and the artist provides convincing likenesses of all the major characters, so I guess that's mission accomplished.  Throwing together the optimistic Trek and pessimistic Apes universes could have provided some interesting philosophical material, but that clearly isn't a direction the writers were interested in and it isn't dwelt on.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
Publisher: Penguin Books
Writer/Artist: Sydney Padua
Collects several items previously published online at http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/, all of them redrawn and/or expanded to some extent, as well as a large quantity of new material.
Premise: Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage succeed in building a working analytical engine, and the two of them go on to have a succession of comical misadventures.
Blather: The proportion of new to pre-existing material alone would make this volume eligible for the 2016 Hugo Awards, but I was pleasantly surprised to note that Padua has given the old material a makeover too.  It's all meticulously annotated, and even the endnotes are a delight.  Fun is the focus of this volume, which the author even "justifies" with an origin story for her comic book parallel universe and a faux-scientific explanation of how it works.  The old material can still be found at http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/, so interested readers should go there first for a taste.

Trees vol 1 ("In Shadow")
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Warren Ellis - Artist: Jason Howard
Collects issues 1-8 of an ongoing series (by cracky, you get your money's worth by weight with this one).
Premise: One day, without fanfare, a number of oil-rig-like tripodal edifices appear around the world.  They stand there and do nothing, beyond occasionally spilling horribly corrosive goo down their legs and all over any human settlements nearby.  People dub them "Trees".  Ten years after their materialisation, they've become just a part of the scenery, something that people live with, like the weather.  By the end of this book, a research team on a remote Norwegian island will have discovered that the apparently inert Trees are doing something alarming to the ecosystem...
Blather: ...but stone me, it takes a long time to get there.  Warren Ellis is a remarkable comics writer and I feel I ought to trust that he's taking all of this somewhere, but he's being extremely leisurely about the set-up.  Vol 1 is spread across half a dozen different sets of characters, most of which are just concerned with going about their lives in the shadow of a Tree, so that's a valid comment on the way in which people normalise things that they probably shouldn't normalise, but it doesn't really seem to contribute much to the ongoing story.  Doesn't make for a lively read, either.  It's interesting, but I imagine it'll look better in retrospect when the rest of the series is out and it can be considered as a complete story.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vol 1 ("Squirrel Power")
Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Ryan North - Artist: Erica Henderson
Collects issues 1-4 of an ongoing series, plus the 1990 issue of Marvel Super-Heroes that first introduced the character of Squirrel Girl.
Premise: Squirrel Girl, formerly of the parody super-team the Great Lakes Avengers, goes to college and gets her own title.  She has "the proportional speed and strength of a squirrel" and commands an army of actual squirrels, but is more likely to defeat villains by finding out what they want and talking them round.  This first story arc pits her against Galactus, the well-known devourer of worlds.
Blather: The cartoonish art and perky tone make this an obvious choice of entry-level superhero comic for young readers, but it has broad appeal beyond that.  The analysis of Galactus' modus operandi is well-observed and very funny, as is much of this series' take on superhero storytelling.  Readers with extremely good eyesight will also be able to enjoy the tiny comments at the bottom of each page.  The shamelessly over-the-top choice of Galactus as the antagonist for the first story arc suggests the creative team are getting all of the usual superheroic stuff out of the way now so that they can take future story arcs in different directions, which bodes well for this title in the long term.

Wayward vol 1 ("String Theory")
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Jim Zub - Artist: Steve Cummings et al
Collects issues 1-5 of an ongoing series.
Premise: Half-Irish teenager Rori migrates to Tokyo to move in with her Japanese mother.  She discovers a previously latent ability to perceive magic, falls in with a small team of assorted magical beings and runs up against the unpleasant yokai her mother was working for.
Blather: Notable for the fact that line artist Cummings actually lives in Japan, and Zub certainly knows his yokai, so the Japanese fantasy on display here is probably as authentic as it can be without actually being created by Japanese writers/artists.  I suppose if Studio Ghibli branched out into American-style comics, the result might look a bit like this ("Japanese Buffy" seems to be another popular verdict).  Hard to judge the quality of the story as this first volume is largely set-up for the series, but the art is pretty.

The Wicked + The Divine vol 2 ("Fandemonium")
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Kieron Gillen - Artist: Jamie McKelvie
Collects issues 6-11 of an ongoing series.
Premise: Every 90 years a dozen teenagers are gifted the powers and identities of classical gods.  They get two years of divinity, to use as they see fit, then they all die - at least, those of them who haven't already been killed.  This happens in the present day, and naturally the new gods all choose to become celebrities - spoofing pop culture is a part of what this book is about, but not the whole story.  Laura is a fan who gets invited to one of the gods' after-show parties, gets close to several of them and discovers that there's a shadowy figure behind them (the manager?) who may be manipulating them for some other purpose.
Blather: YES.  MORE, PLEASE.  It's hip, it's beautiful and it does innovative things with its presentation and layout.  Although vol 1 is copyrighted 2015, the final issue of that volume appeared in 2014, so only vol 2 is eligible, but that's fine by me.  Vol 2 includes issue 8, a rave centred around the first appearance of Dionysus, "the dancefloor that walks like a man", possibly the single best comics issue I've read this year for both style and content.

"Nothing Is Sad Until It's Over - Then Everything Is" - Doctor Who, Series 9 (2015 season)

Spoilers!  Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.  Anyone who's read this blog before will already know that I'm about to discuss the latest season of DW without the slightest regard for whether or not I blurt out major plot points, but still, it's as well to make allowances for potential casual passers-by.  Those allowances amount to this paragraph warning about spoilers.  On we go, then.

I'm not sold on some of this year's paired episode titles, which seem to be veering into 1960s Batman territory.  Among these, "Heaven Sent/Hell Bent" and "The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar" commit the further sin of having no obvious relevance to the episodes they're attached to.  These episodes are doomed for evermore in our household to be referred to as "That One Where X Happened".  "The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion" is at least neat, even if my mind insists on replacing "Zygon" with "Penguin's".

There's some heavy hinting at a season arc about "the Hybrid", but this is ultimately puffed away, and fair enough too.  The real arc here is the game of consequences that starts with the Doctor's decision to defy death at the end of The Girl Who Died and ends with him betrayed to the Time Lords, following which he nearly breaks reality to save Clara because he still hasn't learned his lesson.  (And indeed, is unable to learn his lesson because his memory of it is wiped, which neatly echoes his own handling of Kate Stewart in The Zygon Inversion.)

Against this is a running theme of characters successfully cheating death: not just Ashildr/Me, but Davros, the Daleks never dying but only liquefying in their sewers, the Fisher King being mistakenly pronounced dead, Osgood never dying so long as there are Zygons willing to take on her identity, characters in Sleep No More metamorphosing into sentient dust, Riggsy eluding his death sentence in Face the Raven, and the Doctor himself in Heaven Sent.  It's a very coherent season.  Granted, characters not staying dead is a perennial trope in Moffat Who (death isn't just the equivalent of "man flu" on Gallifrey!), but there seems to be more of a point to it this year.

There's also the running effort to make the Doctor into a kind of rock star, with the "sonic sunglasses" and Peter Capaldi playing his electric guitar all over the place.  I'm hoping this won't stick in the long term, although I expect it'll crop up again in the 2016 season.

All in all, I prefer the variety of the 2014 season, but still, the 2015 season is another good one.  The show is feeling fresh and full of potential again.

The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar
Now, this just looks like somebody wasn't satisfied with only having one season finale and decided to write a second finale, then decided to open the season with it.
Missy's reappearance is more than a little reminiscent of the end of the third series of Sherlock.  (On that note, the New Year's episode of Sherlock was more than a little reminiscent of Last Christmas.  Is Moffat overstretching himself?)
And hey, look, it's Every Dalek Ever on the screen again!  Only this time, the giant-sized plastic Daleks introduced five years ago weren't invited!  Looks like we're all basically agreed that Victory of the Daleks never happened, then.
The idea of the Dalek machinery suppressing the personality of the creature inside is an interesting one, but it kind of undermines the notion that the Daleks themselves were genetically engineered not to have any personality beyond just being hateful gits.  On the other hand, I can see how it follows on from last year's Dalek story, with its suggestion that you'd be able to change a Dalek's mind if you could just switch off certain bits of the machinery inside its helmet.  At this point, we're probably within an ace of giving the Doctor a Dalek companion.
The Daleks don't feel very dangerous here, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  In-story, I think we're meant to infer that the Dalek empire has gone into decline with Davros, and the whole tone of the story supports this.  More broadly, I think that making the Daleks look a bit impotent is a valid statement on what they represent - fascism can be dangerous, but it's also pathetic.  All of which is capped off by the rich metaphor of the Dalek sewers: at the heart of the Dalek empire is a cesspool of bubbling, hate-filled effluent that the Daleks themselves both devolve into and are ultimately drowned by.  Which is nice.
Having Davros open his organic eyes must have seemed like a terrific coup de théâtre to Steven Moffat, but honestly, what the hell?!  It's like having him whip his left hand out from underneath his chair's control panel, or climb out of the chair and stretch his legs for a bit.
Michelle Gomez continues to be a complete delight as Missy, and between her performance and Moffat's script I can genuinely buy into this Doctor/Master pairing.  The scene where she explains their "friendship" to Clara just shines.
A good couple of episodes, but still only middling by this season's standards.  I'd have to rate it behind the Zygon two-parter and the last couple of episodes of the season.

Under the Lake/Before the Flood
Probably the most disposable part of the season, a monster siege story with characters being picked off by rote, same old same old.  The script overall didn't feel entirely worked through - that whole "ha ha, fooled you, that 'ghost' was a hologram!" business had more than a touch of scriptwriter desperation about it.  And honestly, who didn't guess the twist with the suspension pod?  Nice to see a deaf character though (and played by a deaf actor, too) - Jo was impressed with that.

The Girl Who Died/The Woman Who Lived
Really two separate episodes in the unfolding story of Ashildr, aka Me, but presented as a two-parter.  They make an uneven pair - the first one is quite lively, spiced with moments like the Monty Python and the Holy Grail visual reference and the replay of the villain's defeat as a Benny Hill Show chase, but the second one is dragged down by a stodgy mulch-plot about leonine aliens trying to invade the Earth and a rotten performance by the guy playing highwayman Sam Swift.  And while both episodes are essential to this season overall, neither is what I'd call essential DW.
Interesting to see the Doctor put himself forward as a sort of Regimental Sergeant Major for the Viking farmers after all the business in 2014 of Danny Pink taunting him for his officer-like behaviour.

The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion
Easily the best two-parter this season, although I'd be hard pressed to choose between it and Heaven Sent for the top spot.  There's so much going for it: the topicality, simultaneously rendered in broad strokes and yet not softened for the family audience; the massive showboating anti-war speech for Capaldi to get his teeth into; a double role for Jenna Coleman, especially pleasing after she took such a back seat in the previous couple of stories; all the lovely business inside Clara's mind; the proliferation of strong female characters in a UNIT story, that most macho of DW story types.  Turning Osgood into the living embodiment of the human-Zygon truce - a job as much as a character - is an interesting move, and refusing to reveal to the viewer or to any of the other characters whether she's the original or the Zygon duplicate - refusing, in effect, to allow greater value to be placed on one over the other - is a nice touch.
One sticking point for me is the suggestion that this is "the sixteenth time" the Doctor has wiped Kate Stewart's memory after having allowed her to choose whether or not to commit genocide.  Or more to the point, after she's chosen not to, but without understanding that the Doctor would never really give her that choice in the first place, a test that the Zygon insurgent leader passes without obviously having chosen not to commit genocide herself.  I'm not sure that we're meant to infer fifteen previous instances of this exact story, just fifteen previous occasions on which Kate has similarly disappointed the Doctor.  The thing is, how can she be condemned for not learning when she's not being allowed to learn?
On the other hand, it amuses me to imagine the Pertwee Doctor wiping the Brigadier's mind after each '70s UNIT adventure, which would also go some way towards explaining the Brigadier's shift in character from competent military leader to complete duffer during that period.

Sleep No More
Nice minimalist score from Murray Gold - lovely atmospheric stuff all over the place.  Perversely, I noticed the music more on this episode than on any of the others.
The phrase "experimental Mark Gatiss episode" isn't exactly one that trips off the brain.  Gatiss is a relentlessly conventional DW writer, and that sets up an interesting tension with the experimental aspects of this episode.  For a start, the script toys in a self-aware way with the question of how DW stories are filmed and to what purpose, but this is overplayed for a couple of minutes and then discarded.  This, together with the general conventionality of a Gatiss monster runaround, makes the experimentalism feel more like mere gimmickry.  And then we're told that the whole runaround was staged by the monsters for the viewer's benefit in order to distract us from their real plan - a bog standard DW antagonist performing a bog standard DW story because that's simply what the viewer expects.  Which is brilliant as the subject for a learned fan-academic essay ("The Use Of Mark Gatiss Scripts As A Transnarrative Weapon"?), but ridiculous in superficial story terms.  "None of this makes any sense!" exclaims the Doctor, which looks like a Message From Fred if ever there was one.
It's a baffling blend of high and low DW, which alone makes it worth at least one rewatch.

Face the Raven
An interesting story is set up, full of Gaimanesque Fantasy London touches, only to be dropped abruptly in order to write Clara out and shunt the Doctor off to the next episode.  It's a brutal sacrifice of Sarah Dollard's script to the functional requirements of the production office.  The whole thing is effectively reduced to Clara's big dramatic send-off (and hang on, how long was that, five minutes? how long did it take that flipping raven to get there?!) and the Doctor's big dramatic monologue to Me.  Like Sleep No More, this episode basically boils down to "antagonists set up the entire story as a lure with a one-line pay-off", which is a storytelling device that I'm not finding very satisfying.
Still, it was a very nicely written send-off scene, so there's that.

Heaven Sent
Probably the best episode of the whole season, and a tremendous character piece for Capaldi.  It's dark, with the Doctor recycling himself through the same day over and over in order to grind his way out of his prison, but also hopeful in that he does eventually succeed.
The idea of the castle resetting itself behind the Doctor's back doesn't entirely work - the wall he's trying to punch his way through never resets, the octagonal flagstone he's removed from inside the castle is allowed to stay buried in the grounds and the message that (presumably) some earlier version of himself wrote on it is never erased.  The phrase "closed energy loop" offers better cover, but then there are all the skulls at the bottom of the lake which suggest an unlimited supply of new matter from outside the loop.  Best not to think about the mechanics of it too much, I suppose.  It's just a great bit of TV.

Hell Bent
I quite like the fact that Rassilon, last seen in full-on powerful villain mode, is resurrected here as a ranting old man with delusions of messianism ("Rassilon the Redeemer!") who can't even watch the Doctor being shot by a firing squad.  As with the season opener, an authoritarian antagonist is undermined and their flaws exposed.  Having been exposed, he's quickly sent packing, which I think is the right choice - we've had the macho posturing, now let's cut to the character-driven plot.
Nice to see Television's Donald Sumpter, by the way.
The visual effect used on the scene of Clara's extraction from time is an interesting choice - the kind of red-green-blue split you get (well, I get, anyway) when you catch a flatscreen TV at the wrong angle.  Once again DW nods to its own status as a TV programme.
Is the Doctor shooting the Castellan a dodgy moment?  Fair enough, death can certainly be readily worked around on Gallifrey even if it's not quite the "man flu" the Doctor casually suggests, but did he really need to shoot anyone to make his escape?  It's an awkward way to engineer a situation where you can show a transracial/transgender regeneration just to prove the point.  And fine, perhaps for more conservative fans the point still needed to be proven (what price Sophie Okenedo to take over as the Doctor?), but even so.
The presentation of the Capitol Cloisters and mention of a "Cloister War" are highly intriguing.  Nice to see Moffat putting the '70s Gothic aesthetic back into the Time Lords.
The weird thing about the story's resolution is that apparently it doesn't need resolving - Clara is clearly at liberty to travel for as long as she likes, so long as she doesn't mind having no pulse (how similar is her predicament to Captain Jack's?) and provided she's returned to the moment of her extraction at some eventual point.  The Doctor seems to mind her not having a pulse (how similar is this to his reaction to his first sight of immortal Captain Jack - is Clara now "just wrong" in the same way?), but it's not obvious why this couldn't be worked around.  In real world terms, obviously Clara has to be written out somehow, so hey.  Pleasingly, Moffat does the opposite of what RTD did with Donna's exit, giving Clara the upper hand and letting her decide her own fate and wiping the Doctor's memory instead.  (We'll see how long his amnesia lasts, eh readers?)

The Husbands of River Song
What is up with Alex Kingston's acting in that pre-credit scene?
Like the 2015 season finale, I feel as if Moffat is revisiting some of RTD's later work here - in this case, I'm strongly reminded of Voyage of the Damned, with its cruise ship, its meteor strike and its cyborg villain.  Instead of saving the ship and killing off everyone except the bastardous character, Moffat fills the ship with bastardous characters and crashes the whole lot with evident glee.
The focus of the story is apparently on writing out River Song once and for all, and this together with the "happily ever after" ending strongly suggests Moffat was expecting this to be his last year on the show.  I've seen it suggested that he'd planned for the possibility but later downplayed it.  It wouldn't have been a bad note for him to go out on - a fine, strong season and a fairly solid Christmas episode too - but hey, I'm interested to see where he goes from this point in 2016.
So, goodbye to River Song - she had her good moments, but I'm not entirely sorry to see the back of the character.  My main objection to her during Matt Smith's run on the show was that she always seemed to bring the guns, so I'm bemused by the sonic trowel.  It's clearly a step back from all the gunfoolery, but she still uses it as if it were a gun.  (A bit like Matt Smith with his sonic screwdriver, then.)  Beyond that, she's still the morally dubious mercenary character she was in the 2011 season, a character that Moffat clearly revels in - echoes of Eric Saward and his fetishisation of dodgy mercenaries?  At least she's good for a laugh - the reveal of the liquor cabinet hidden in the TARDIS was a nice moment, and the suggestion that she follows the "Damsel" Doctor around and borrows his TARDIS when he isn't looking opens the way to all sorts of fun speculation.
But anyway, roll on 2016.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 7

Welcome, gentle reader, to the last in a series of 7 blog posts about Star Trek: The Next Generation.

For convenience, I'll be using the standard fan abbreviations to refer to Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) and the original series (TOS).  Also, probably best to assume that a Spoiler Alert remains in effect at all times, just on general principle.  I'm not precious about giving away details of a TV series broadcast 20 years ago (or of films released more recently!).

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Hey, what no Guinan?!  Perhaps they spent the whole year's Whoopi Goldberg budget getting her into Star Trek: Generations, I don't know.  But still, her absence from this season is noticeable and just a bit miffing.

In terms of quality Season 7 is pretty much on a level with Season 6, but the writers continue to try to turn TNG into a grim, realistic show about hardarse military officers making difficult choices with some character stuff as window dressing, when really I get the feeling the character stuff was originally supposed to be the core of the show and the military stuff was the window dressing.  Season 7 doesn't exactly feel like TNG taking one more victory lap - it feels a lot more like the series is consciously winding down.

"Descent, Part II"
Plays out pretty much as the first part would suggest.  TNG can and should be better than this.
"Liaisons"
The one in which Larry, Curly and Moe try to learn about human emotions from the Enterprise crew.  Picard's "Misery in space" experience is a particular lowlight.
"Interface"
The one in which Geordi La Forge's mother goes missing, never to be mentioned again.  The business of Geordi remote controlling a probe is generally well handled.  The story strikes me as two separate ideas that the writers couldn't spin into full episodes on their own, and I don't think they really gel into a cohesive whole.
"Gambit, Part I" & "Gambit, Part II"
A sort of heist story with the Goblin King from Labyrinth leading a crew of bandits on a quest for an ancient Vulcan weapon.  Not at all bad, largely thanks to the second episode.
"Phantasms"
This is the "Data's dream" episode I remember.  Lots of nice weird imagery, including a couple of suggestive bits.  (So Dr Crusher is sucking Riker's brains out?  Ooooookaaaaay.  Worf enjoying his slice of Troi cake is easier to factor away in light of later developments.)  Data stabbing Troi in the shoulder (because making Data look like a psychopath is important to the current writing team) is an awkward moment, but overall this is a great episode.  Bonus points for making Sigmund Freud a figure of fun.
"Dark Page"
The rather unexpected Lwaxana Troi "tears of a clown" episode.  See, this is what I mean about TNG's writers in this season - let's take Lwaxana Troi of all characters and give her repressed memories of having had a previous child who drowned.  Gah.
"Attached"
In which it turns out that - gasps! - Picard and Dr Crusher secretly fancy each other!  Which must have come as a complete surprise to anyone who hadn't previously seen Season 1.  The rest of the episode is wasted to set this up, and it wasn't worth the effort.
"Force of Nature"
The big climate change allegory.  Considering how significant a warp speed restriction (even in limited areas of space) would be, it's surprising how little reference is made to this after this episode.  I previously remembered the lack of follow-up more clearly than anything in the episode itself.
"Inheritance"
The one with Data's mother.  Dr Soong's biography is getting increasingly cluttered and harder to make sense of - just how much of his cutting edge cybernetic equipment was he able to flee Omicron Theta with, anyway, and exactly how many "unique" androids did he make?  (Don't under any circumstances) see Star Trek: Nemesis for further muddying of these waters.
"Parallels"
Colourful SF mayhem as Worf finds himself slipping between alternate realities.  I suppose the main point of this episode is to underline the possibility of Worf and Troi having a relationship, building on several broad hints over the last season or so.  Several nice incidental touches help to lift the episode.
"The Pegasus"
The one with Captain Picard Day!  Oh yes, and the illegal Federation cloaking device.  A good political drama.
"Homeward"
The one with Worf's foster brother, you know, the one we've never heard of before.  His solution to his adopted culture's problem may run against the Prime Directive, but it's brilliant; I'm not sure why the Enterprise crew would prefer to sit and watch an entire planet die from the comfort of their bridge.
"Sub Rosa"
Dr Crusher's spooky Mills & Boon story.  The mock Scottish setting is a risk, but the episode manages to restrict itself to only one really over-the-top cliché Scots character, so it's less offensive than the Irish parodying in "Up the Long Ladder".  A strong showing for Gates McFadden, and it's always nice to see TNG playing around in other genres, but still, not a great episode.
"Lower Decks"
An episode that really digs into the characters of some of the junior crewmembers, as well as those of their supervising officers.  The strong implication that Picard knew full well that Wesley Crusher's old Academy buddy wouldn't come back from her secret mission is more than a little uncomfortable.  But outside of that, this is a lovely episode.
"Thine Own Self"
The one where Data loses his memory and gives an alien village radiation poisoning.  Also the one in which Troi becomes a command officer, which looks more like it was surplus material carried over from the previous episode.  The whole business of Proper Real Officers having to order crewmembers to their deaths certainly plays into it retrospectively.
"Masks"
A bit like a cross between "The Inner Light" (alien probe co-opts an Enterprise crewmember in order to pass on the details of the culture that created it) and "Darmok" (the crew must work to decipher an alien mode of communication).  I really like this one.
"Eye of the Beholder"
The one with the haunted plasma conduit.  A good middling episode, but forgettable; even having just watched it, I have to remind myself which one it was.
"Genesis"
No, I'm not exactly sure what happened here either.  Something something de-evolution something.
"Journey's End"
The one where Wesley Crusher drops out.  Also makes questionable use of Native American characters - as the script itself is keen to point out, there are some unfortunate parallels here with the way Native Americans have been disenfranchised in the past, and this story doesn't really offer a positive response to that.  Probably most notable as the episode that sets the scene for the appearance of the Maquis in "Preemptive Strike", and so really the first hint of groundwork being laid for Voyager.
"Firstborn"
The one with Future Alexander.  Alexander's story here is actually pretty ridiculous, and it's a long-winded way of getting Worf to be a less pushy parent.
"Bloodlines"
Unexpected sequel to Season 1's "The Battle".  I can't see that it adds anything much to that story or to this season.
"Emergence"
In a series where fictional characters on the holodeck and Wesley Crusher's science project can achieve sentience, it's about time we had an episode where the Enterprise itself becomes sentient.  I really wanted to like this episode more than I actually did - somehow the execution of the ideas falls a little short for me.  But it is a good idea, and there's some nice weird imagery here.
"Preemptive Strike"
Oh yeah, Ro Laren, she used to be a character on this show, didn't she?  This episode is fine in and of itself, but kind of depressing.  It's a shame that Picard can't seem to find a way around the ethical minefield the Federation has created with the Maquis, and essentially ends up driving Ro away.  TNG's days as a whimsical series about wonder and self-exploration really are up.
"All Good Things..."
A high note on which to finish (and, lest I forget to mention it, the other TNG episode to win a Hugo Award).  The cast are all giving their best in three distinct time periods, Q is well used, and although the story has an air of "It was all a dream", it hangs together well.  Q's final message, that the real voyage of discovery is an inner one that never ends, resonates with several of my favourite (and therefore, the best ;) ) TNG episodes.

Rankings, from favourite to least favourite:
"Masks"
"Lower Decks"
"All Good Things..."
"Phantasms"
"Parallels"
"Emergence"
"The Pegasus"
"Force of Nature"
"Preemptive Strike"
"Homeward"
"Journey's End"
"Eye of the Beholder"
"Interface"
"Sub Rosa"
"Inheritance"
"Gambit"
"Bloodlines"
"Firstborn"
"Dark Page"
"Thine Own Self"
"Attached"
"Liaisons"
"Descent, Part II"
"Genesis"

Episodes that I remembered seeing before: 4 ("Phantasms", "Force of Nature", "Masks", "All Good Things...")

Episodes that I would make a point of watching again: "Masks", "Lower Decks" and "All Good Things..." are in the top rank.  I'd place "Phantasms" on the borderline, and "Parallels", "Emergence" and "The Pegasus" in the second rank.

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So now I can skim back through the other 6 posts and compile an overall Top 15 TNG Episodes list:
"Masks"
"Lower Decks"
"All Good Things..."
"Tapestry"
"Ship in a Bottle"
"Darmok"
"Cause and Effect"
"The Inner Light"
"Hero Worship"
"Data's Day"
"The Wounded"
"Yesterday's Enterprise"
"The Bonding"
"The Measure of a Man"
"Loud as a Whisper"

Just pulling the titles out of the blog posts here - it'd be tricky to actually arrange them in descending order of preference.  How would I rank the seasons overall?  Probably 5, 7, 6, 4, 2, 3, 1.  Not that that means very much, but there it is anyway.

The later seasons are undeniably better television than the earlier seasons, or at least better made - there's a clear progression in quality across the series, and Seasons 5, 6 and 7 are all very strong.  And yet Season 1 has a charm that Season 7 lacks.  The earlier seasons - with Roddenberry's hand still on the tiller, and the concomitant caveat around some of his lingering pre-'70s tendencies - are far more clearly about the thirst for exploration (both outward and inward) and joyful diversity of humanity than the later seasons, which are far more about the SF adventures of an increasingly rigidly defined crew.  The Enterprise in Season 1 is essentially a venue in which a broad and rich family/community (I think New Zealanders would say hapū rather than whānau in this context) can be formed; in Season 7 it's essentially a military starship with all the crew's family on board and a remit to chart the galaxy, and some of the stories are about how close the crew are to their military buddies.

I realise that I'm generalising there.  There are still plenty of individual episodes in those later seasons that fit in with the expectations of TNG that Season 1 gave me, it's just that by that time they seem to happen more in spite of the writers' efforts than because of them.  Watching the behind-the-scenes material on the DVDs, I was struck by just how widely Ronald D Moore's vision of TNG differed from the TNG I thought I'd been watching.  Knowing that this would be the creative mentality going in from the start, I'm less keen than I previously would have been to attempt a marathon of Deep Space Nine or Voyager.

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As a final bit of frivolity, let's touch on the TNG films, which I have no intention of ranking alongside the TV series.  By cracky, they're a mixed bag.
Star Trek: Generations
So here's the thing: the old Enterprise crew have continued to appear in TOS films while TNG was on TV.  So now, even though TNG has spent 7 years climbing out of TOS' shadow and establishing itself as the current brand of Star Trek, it has to prove itself and stake its claim all over again in the cinema.  Appropriately, it doesn't spend a lot of time waiting to be handed the torch by its forefathers but steps right in with a story about not giving in to the insidious lure of nostalgia.  I actually think this film is the closest to my newly formed concept of what TNG ought to be, and therefore my favourite of the quartet.
Star Trek: First Contact
A shameless riff on things the creative team think they got right on the TV series: ooh, the Borg; ooh, time paradox shenanigans; ooh, Data being morally ambiguous.  They also seem to be testing the limits of their vision of Picard as a slambang action hero.  Nice cameo appearance of the holographic Doctor.  This is a perfectly watchable film, but it's not All That.
Star Trek: Insurrection
Yeah, screw that Prime Directive.  If any of the films deserves to be described as "just a double length TV episode", I think it's this one.  And it would have been a pretty good TV episode, too.  It's a bit hum-ho as a film.  Starting to get that feeling of diminishing returns.
Star Trek: Nemesis
Incredibly, on a cinematic budget and with a decade of previous experience, it's still possible for the Star Trek creative team to turn out a narrative car crash.  The wedding scene at the start says it all: we've run out of new ideas and we're going to turn back the clock to somewhere around Season 3, when Riker and Troi were still a potential item and Wesley Crusher was still wearing a Starfleet uniform.  And of all the worn-out should-have-burned-the-tapes-forever ideas to dredge up again, they had to go with a Deanna Troi mind rape story.  Wankers.  What an utterly tragic note to end on.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 6

Welcome, gentle reader, to the sixth of a projected series of 7 blog posts about Star Trek: The Next Generation.

For convenience, I'll be using the standard fan abbreviations to refer to Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) and the original series (TOS).  Also, probably best to assume that a Spoiler Alert remains in effect at all times, just on general principle.  I'm not precious about giving away details of a TV series broadcast 25 20 years ago.

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So here we get not one but two mid-season two-parters.  In both cases, the episodes feel sufficiently contained and different from one another that I think it's worth handling them separately rather than as complete stories.

The trend of the writers towards grittiness continues.  Picard gets at least one full-on action hero episode this season, as well as one that glorifies his reckless Academy days when he used to get into fights and womanise, just like the Junior Kirk one suspects some of the creative team would have preferred.  The season finale is the peak to date of all their worst tendencies, and it all looks a bit grim heading into Season 7.

Also, Season 6 is the one that puts Deanna Troi in a proper official uniform with a military rank and everything - I'm really not sure if this is a good thing or not.  Yes, fine, she's a part of the militaristic heirarchy on board the Enterprise, but at the same time she's always seemed kind of outside it in her rôle as ship's counsellor, and her previous wardrobe freedom seemed to fit with that.  I imagine that if the Season 6 creative team had been in charge for Season 1, they'd have dropped the whole counsellor angle and made her a Lieutenant Commander Chaplain or something, which would have been appalling.

My overall impression: Season 6 is to Season 5 as Season 3 was to Season 2.  The level of quality is more consistent - and it's a higher level of quality now than it was three seasons ago - but Season 5 has the lion's share of stand-out episodes.

"Time's Arrow, Part II"
Yes, that'll do nicely.  This episode's basically all runaround, apart from the scenes where it uses Clemens' cynicism to restate TNG's uncynical intentions.  I might mention here that doing a backstory for a fundamentally mysterious character like Guinan is always a risky move, but the writers were smart enough not to spoil her by blurting out too much information.
"Realm of Fear"
The one with flying worm monsters living inside the transporter beam.  Howlin' Mad Reg Barclay is a hero now, so hooray for that.  Average.
"Man of the People"
TNG does The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Oh look, Deanna Troi is mentally assaulted and demeaned by a predatory male, again.  Didn't we get all this out of our systems in Season 3 and Season 5?
"Relics"
The one with Scotty.  We're obviously invited to draw parallels between him and the Dyson Sphere, but given the size of James Doohan here, that's rather cruel on the part of the writers.  Starts out by putting some distance between TNG and (as represented by Scotty) TOS, but ends up reconciling the two.  I imagine card-carrying Trek fans probably rate it highly.
"Schisms"
The one where several crewmembers unearth repressed memories of having visited the dentist.  TNG has already done at least one "alien abduction" episode, but here it goes into full-on X Files mode.  The mysterious set-up is a lot more interesting than the resolution.  Notable for featuring Data's poetry recital.
"True Q"
The one with Olivia d'Abo.  I don't have much more to say about this one.  Given a brief of "there's a Q adopted by humans on board the Enterprise", this episode turns out pretty much exactly as I would expect.  We're falling back on our baseline of mere competence again.
"Rascals"
The one where four crewmembers are youthed by a magic explosion, or something.  Shush, science.  TNG has been lucky so far with its child actors, for the most part, but it's a very risky move to ask a bunch of child actors to stand in for some of the regulars.  I think they just about get away with it.  The choice of Keiko O'Brien, Guinan and Ro Laren offers the opportunity for some interesting character work that is barely touched on before it's completely shelved in favour of an action runaround.  Hilarious scenes between little Picard and "Daddy" Riker.  A lot of fun, but it was looking a lot more interesting before those Ferengi showed up.
"A Fistful of Datas"
The TNG Western episode, but far more importantly, the start of the very short-lived Geordi's Beard Arc.  Alexander inviting Troi in on the Worfs' family time makes it look suspiciously as if he's trying to set her up with his father - watch this space.  Another fun episode.  Very cheeky last shot with the Enterprise moseying off towards the setting sun.
"The Quality of Life"
The one with Exocomps.  A bit like Season 1's "Home Soil" - mining outpost, machinery with a mind of its own, unconventional form of intelligence - but with the resources of Season 6 behind it.  Some unfortunate wirework on the Exocomps, but hey, it was the early Nineties.
"Chain of Command, Part I"
Another one of those episodes that shows why the series is what it is by showing how wrong it would have been if it had been done differently.  Captain "1400 Hours" Jellicoe is the sort of over-aggressive by-the-book captain that I can imagine some viewers might have expected to see in command of the Enterprise, but he clearly shows by contrast that cuddly man-of-the-world Picard is the right captain for TNG.
"Chain of Command, Part II"
The one with four lights.  The Captain Jellicoe material carries through into this episode, but the real focus here is on Patrick Stewart and his gargantuan acting skills.  Also very nice to see genre favourite David Warner.  A small-scale but powerful episode.
"Ship in a Bottle"
The other one with Holographic Professor Moriarty.  I was expecting this to reprise a lot of "Elementary, Dear Data", but it builds on it quite nicely.  That Moriarty has been forgotten for four years (notwithstanding real-world problems with the Conan Doyle estate) and has to fight for his rights is very much on the nose.  The resolution that apparently leaves everybody happy is actually a bit of a bum note.  We're still a couple of years away from properly autonomous holograms in Star Trek.
"Aquiel"
Murder mystery on a relay station.  Once it becomes clear that this episode's main inspiration is The Thing, it isn't hard to see what the next twist is going to be.  Unremarkable stuff.
"Face of the Enemy"
The one with Deanna Troi posing (against her will) as a Romulan.  Again, unremarkable.  The whole resolution is very pat.  Still, interesting to see this side to Troi.
"Tapestry"
The one where Picard apparently dies and meets Q in the afterlife.  A well-constructed story about accepting one's past mistakes, another nice showcase for Patrick Stewart and possibly the best Q episode.
"Birthright, Part I"
The rather modest crossover with Deep Space Nine.  Also the one where Data first dreams.  Lots of nice off-kilter imagery around that.  It's a shame there wasn't enough of this to sustain a whole episode in itself, because the material that sets up the next episode is pretty dull.
"Birthright, Part II"
The one with the lost colony of Klingons and Romulans peacefully cohabiting.  This could have been the setup for a much more optimistic episode, but instead the writers present it as a social prison based on lies that Worf must undermine with his authentic warrior ways.  I'd like to have seen the more optimistic episode.
"Starship Mine"
Die Hard on the Enterprise.  The scenes of Data first observing Commander Hutchinson and then practising his small talk on him are priceless, but - as seems to be the way with Season 6 - this material is dropped cold once the action plot kicks in.  Hutchinson disappears completely after he's been shot (stunned? killed?) and is never even mentioned again.  Still, it is a very good action plot, even though the John McClane stuff feels out of character for Picard.
"Lessons"
The one about Picard's doomed love affair.  This is a really nice episode up until it flubs it by suggesting that Picard, almost uniquely among his crew, is apparently unable to form a meaningful romance with a fellow officer because reasons.
"The Chase"
The one that explains why the galaxy is full of humanoids.  I imagine that to some fans this question may have seemed important enough to spend an episode answering it.  (Actually, I'm pretty sure TOS already did.  Maybe there's one of these for every Star Trek series?)  Biggest point of interest: spotting Maurice Roëves out of Doctor Who story "The Caves of Androzani" as a Romulan.
"Frame of Mind"
Kafkaesque shenanigans with a lot of nice surreal visuals.  I particularly like the scene where various TNG regulars stand in for aspects of Riker's subconscious.  This one would probably reward repeated viewing just from the standpoint of trying to spot clues in earlier scenes that I might have missed.
"Suspicions"
The one where Dr Crusher turns detective.  Actually develops her character meaningfully by showing her first taste of mission command.  I'm pretty sure it's the first TNG episode to tell a significant part of its story in flashback with voiceover narration - a choice that feels a bit odd.  I think I'd place this one somewhere on the border between the top and second rank for this season.
"Rightful Heir"
He's not the Klingon messiah, he's a very naughty boy!  Better than a number of other Worf-centric stories so far, with an unusual and interesting focus on Klingon religion.  I like that, even though this story inevitably has to give the mystical premise a science fictional debunking, it refuses to invalidate Worf's own spiritual experience.
"Second Chances"
The one with two Rikers.  So, like "Tapestry", another story about regrets and paths not taken - is there something the writers would like to tell us?  It's a neat idea, but what really caught my eye is the way debut director LeVar Burton gives background extras the centre stage in the first couple of scenes.
"Timescape"
Another one of those episodes that fools around with time, so naturally I expected to like this one.  There's a fun moment when Picard draws a smiley face on a frozen billow of smoke coming out of the warp core, but by and large this story just didn't grab me.  And it's all over far too suddenly, with the Romulan ship just magically disappearing.
"Descent"
The other big team-up season finale.  This year, it's the Borg and Data's evil twin!  Feels as if TNG has been assimilated by a different series - possibly one of the unpleasant "gritty" alternate versions hinted at in a few earlier episodes.  Data's first emotion is anger and he turns out to be a closet psychopath, which is the worst kind of teenage angsty fanfic guff.  Honestly, who needs Data's evil twin when you're making Data himself evil?  Rotten pulpy dialogue all over the script, too.

Rankings, from favourite to least favourite:
"Tapestry"
"Ship in a Bottle"
"Starship Mine"
"Chain of Command, Part II"
"Rascals"
"Rightful Heir"
"Time's Arrow, Part II"
"A Fistful of Datas"
"Frame of Mind"
"Lessons"
"Suspicions"
"Timescape"
"Chain of Command, Part I"
"Second Chances"
"Relics"
"Birthright, Part I"
"Schisms"
"The Quality of Life"
"The Chase"
"Realm of Fear"
"True Q"
"Aquiel"
"Birthright, Part II"
"Face of the Enemy"
"Descent"
"Man of the People"

Episodes that I remembered seeing before: 6 ("Relics", "Rascals", "Chain of Command, Part II", "Ship in a Bottle", "Tapestry", "The Chase")

Episodes that I would make a point of watching again: "Tapestry" and "Ship in a Bottle", certainly.  I'd probably rank "Starship Mine", "Chain of Command, Part II" and "Rascals" in a sort of mezzanine tier between the top and second rank - close borderline stuff.  Perhaps another half dozen or so episodes below that in the second tier.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5

Welcome, gentle reader, to the fifth of a projected series of 7 blog posts about Star Trek: The Next Generation.

For convenience, I'll be using the standard fan abbreviations to refer to Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) and the original series (TOS).  Also, probably best to assume that a Spoiler Alert remains in effect at all times, just on general principle.  I'm not precious about giving away details of a TV series broadcast 25 years ago.

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The year of the shiny, shiny logo.

It's also the first season to include a two-part story mid-season.  I don't intend to be consistent about how I approach these mid-season two-parters - I think this season's works best if considered as a single story, but next season we'll get two that really work better as discrete episodes.

I can't not mention the appearance of Picard's new "smart casual" look, with his grey shirt under an open-fronted jacket.  Strangely, no one else on the Enterprise seems to be wearing a uniform in this style.

Ignoring the season-straddling cliffhangers for a minute, this season is bookended by very strong episodes, and I think (sneaking a look ahead to the remaining two seasons) it might be my overall favourite season of TNG.  It is, however, notable that it contains three stories ("Silicon Avatar", "I, Borg" and "Time's Arrow") that raise the idea of killing off an entire species or unique life form because nobody (on the Enterprise or on the writing team) can think of an alternative way of supplying their feeding habits.  Late period TNG's writing team seem to want to take the series into darker, grittier territory, and I can't say that it's a direction I want to see this series go in.

"Redemption II"
Federation starships for everyone!  The best thing about this episode is the way Data pressures Picard into giving him one of the temporary commands on offer; the Hornblowerish adventure of Captain Data and his prejudiced first officer offers a lot of dramatic potential, but sadly no time is spent on the aftermath of that adventure.  Meanwhile blah blah Klingon Empire blah.
"Darmok"
I'm amazed it took this long for someone to point out the flaw in the "universal translator" idea - it's all very well presenting a word-for-word translation of a foreign language, but it won't mean much if you don't know the context.  If only every "first contact" story could be as good as this.
"Ensign Ro"
The one that introduces the Bajorans.  Some of the regular characters are a bit off (when did Guinan become so pushy?), but it's hard to say whether Ro is off here, where she's cartoonishly insubordinate, or in every other story she appears in, where she behaves more or less like any other Starfleet officer.  The story of underhanded dealings within the Starfleet admiralty is nothing we haven't seen before, but plays out well.
"Silicon Avatar"
A pretty good episode.  Of this season's three "kill 'em all!" stories, this is the hardest one to judge because it's so unclear whether or not the Crystalline Entity is acting maliciously and whether Picard might actually have been able to talk it into finding a way of feeding that doesn't involve destroying entire inhabited planets.
"Disaster"
The one with Captain Picard trapped in a lift with three kids.  A compelling 45 minutes of peril for several characters in a variety of situations across a crippled Enterprise.  Notably sees Troi stepping up to act as Captain on an isolated bridge with (count 'em!) three crewmembers under her.
"The Game"
Oh yeah, the '90s was the time when people really started panicking about the possibility that computer games might be damaging and addictive, wasn't it?  Exploring that idea in a Body Snatchers plot starring Wesley Crusher does not make for my favourite episode ever.  Icky.  Also, the whole business of "Robin's Laws" is just too twee, like some kind of off-the-shelf manufactured character quirk.
"Unification I" & "Unification II"
The one with the dedication to Gene Roddenberry on the front.  Probably the first notable crossover of a major TOS character - McCoy only had a blink-and-you'll-miss-him (I certainly did) cameo in "Encounter at Farpoint", and even though Sarek got a whole episode named after him I wouldn't have said he was a major character in that sense.  I'm pleased to note the script isn't too fawning around Spock, with its cheeky references to "cowboy diplomacy" (as if TNG hasn't indulged in that itself once or twice).  Probably the best bit is the random levity in the second episode with the 4-armed club pianist.
"A Matter of Time"
The one with Matt Frewer.  It's largely thanks to his performance that this episode punches above its weight.
"New Ground"
The one about Worf's parenting issues.  Eminently missable.
"Hero Worship"
The one about the little orphan boy who imprints on Data.  Nice metaphorical mirroring of his coping/denial in the business of turbulence outside the Enterprise being made worse by the Enterprise's own defences.
"Violations"
Oh dear, another supernatural rape for Deanna Troi.  I mean, all the telepathic attacks are explicitly described as a form of rape, but only Troi's is overtly presented in a rapey way.  I'm sure this episode was well intentioned, but it's horrible viewing.
"The Masterpiece Society"
By numbers stuff with a colony built on eugenics.  The dilemma for the colonists and the Enterprise crew is explored well, but I just don't care enough about the guest characters and their society.  Deanna Troi's romance with the colony leader feels contrived, and why she would want to holiday there is a mystery.
"Conundrum"
Even though there's very little character work or thematic depth to this episode, I am a complete sucker for stories that suddenly introduce a mystery character into the line-up of a SF series like this.  (See also the Torchwood episode "Adam", or the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)
"Power Play"
Well, I suppose it's been a while since we had a possession story.  Narratively more routine than other examples of the type, but the performances and the production are pretty darned good.
"Ethics"
The one about Worf's spinal injury.  Covers some similar ground to "Half a Life" but takes almost the exact opposite position, with Riker and Dr Crusher refusing outright to make concessions to Worf's request for euthanasia.  It's particularly astonishing that Riker of all people, who's spent more time in closer contact with Klingon culture than any other character barring (possibly, and only arguably) Picard, should be so vehement.  I mean, it would have been a huge shame to lose Worf, but even so.
"The Outcast"
Not only do I remember previously seeing this episode, I remember the British press getting excited about it beforehand because it supposedly had something to say about homosexuality and was therefore tremendously newsworthy in some way or other.  A bit like Season 4's "The Host", this episode has two distinct messages.  The one conveyed by the big set-piece monologue, by the whole legislative aspect of the story and by the writers to the press is about homophobia, but the one conveyed overtly by the episode itself is about the unrelated subject of transgenderism.  Actually, it seems odd that a species with no gender distinctions would have a concept of gender strong enough for them to experience it and legislate against it, but that's just one of this episode's many problems.  It's a muddle of garbled messages and flubbed opportunities.
"Cause and Effect"
A hugely popular episode back in the day, for the simple reason that you get to see the Enterprise blow up several times.  (In fact, it's possible I only watched repeat broadcasts of "Time Squared" and "A Matter of Time" because the titles led me to suppose that they might have been this episode.)  A hugely popular episode for me now, too.  All this SF mystery goodness, and some lovely character scenes too, hooray.
"The First Duty"
The one in which Wesley Crusher is exposed as a great big fibber.  It's nice to see Starfleet Academy on scenic old Earth, and it's nice to see Picard chatting with the oft-mentioned groundskeeper, and the story itself is done well - it just isn't a story I was tremendously interested in seeing.
"Cost of Living"
The one where the Enterprise starts turning to jam.  Meanwhile Lwaxana Troi takes Worf's son Alexander on a holodeck tour of the Planet of the Mudbathing Clowns.  None of this is particularly inspirational.
"The Perfect Mate"
Sweet Jesus, what have we done to deserve this sexist nonsense in the fifth year of this series?!
"Imaginary Friend"
The "imposter human" and "creepy child" tropes play out pretty much as expected.  Nothing startling here.
"I, Borg"
Ends with the nice thought that introducing the Borg to concepts of individuality and friendship might be a more effective way of defending against them than committing genocide.  Unfortunately we go through the whole genocide conversation first to get there.  Picard and Guinan are won over eventually, but not before they've spent half an hour speaking in terms of total war and looking like uncharacteristic bastards.
"The Next Phase"
The one where Geordi La Forge and Ro Laren attend their own funeral.  A competent middler, but I don't really have much to say about it.  One niggling question: how come Geordi and Laren don't pass through the floor?
"The Inner Light"
The first TNG episode to win a Hugo Award, and quite right too.  Like "Darmok", an unusual and engaging story of contact with another culture.  Also like "Darmok", it focuses heavily on Picard to the detriment of other regulars, but not much can be done about that.
"Time's Arrow"
The one with Samuel L Clemens.  A nice SF mystery and some juicy character work in the first half as everyone comes to terms with Data's mortality, leading into a solid runaround for the remaining half episode.  I think (sneaking a peek ahead to the end of Season 6) that this might be my favourite of the TNG season cliffhanger episodes.  It's got a touch of Doctor Who about it, which probably helps.

Rankings, from favourite to least favourite:
"Darmok"
"Cause and Effect"
"The Inner Light"
"Time's Arrow"
"Hero Worship"
"Conundrum"
"Disaster"
"A Matter of Time"
"I, Borg"
"Silicon Avatar"
"The Next Phase"
"The First Duty"
"Ensign Ro"
"Unification"
"Power Play"
"Redemption II"
"The Outcast"
"Ethics"
"The Masterpiece Society"
"Imaginary Friend"
"The Game"
"Cost of Living"
"Violations"
"New Ground"
"The Perfect Mate"

Episodes that I remembered seeing before: 7 ("Darmok", "Ensign Ro", "Silicon Avatar" - three episodes in a row? must have been broadcast during a school holiday in the UK - "A Matter of Time", "The Outcast", "Cause and Effect", "The Inner Light").

Episodes that I would make a point of watching again: "Darmok", "Cause and Effect" and "The Inner Light" are very fine episodes; to those I'd add "Time's Arrow", "Hero Worship" and "Conundrum".  Perhaps another half dozen or more episodes below those that I'd rank in the second tier.  It's a very strong season.

Hugo Awards 2015: A Consideration of the Sources

And so to a consideration of some of the Hugo nominees themselves.  This more or less amounts to a "Books read in May/June" post, which I've deliberately held onto until now because it didn't seem quite right to comment on my own voting choices until after voting on the Hugo Awards closed last month.  But I wanted to get this in before the results are announced next week at Worldcon.  I'll be interested to see the voting statistics when they're made available, hopefully not too long after Worldcon.

The Hugo Award categories that have been most heavily affected by the slate campaigns are all the shorter fiction categories (Novella, Novelette and Short Story), Best Related Work, both Best Editor categories and Best Fan Writer.  The Best Novel and the two Best Dramatic Presentation categories were less heavily affected by the slate campaigns (it's roughly half and half).  Hardly affected at all, probably because the slate-makers didn't take much of an interest in it, is the Best Graphic Story category.  I'll pass over the Dramatic Presentation categories and the esoterica and talk a bit more about the print categories.

Now, I'll admit that I don't read a lot of short fiction and tend not to pay a lot of attention to those categories, so as much as their hijack irks me on principle, in all honesty it doesn't make a lot of difference to me as a reader.  It's nice to be able to read a good shorter piece while considering the Hugo nominees, and it's a shame that there really weren't any good shorter pieces this year - even the small handful of non-slate nominees were a disappointment - but I'll get over it.  I put down No Award for all three categories.

The write-off of the Best Related Work category is much more disappointing, because I do love a good bit of lit. crit. and analysis around SF.  The best item on offer this year was a short article advising writers of military SF to take thermodynamics into account when writing their action scenes, which just looks like 101 stuff to me.  The rest of the nominees were vacuous dreck, and two of them weren't even related to SF, so why the hell they weren't removed from the shortlist on eligibility grounds is beyond me.  I put down No Award for this category too.

Best Novel

Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
Sequel to the previous year's winner of every award available, Ancillary Justice.  Another extremely good novel in my opinion.  It's more straightforward, playing out in one continuous narrative whereas Justice switched between "present" and "past" narratives to reveal its story.  It starts out looking like another slice of grand space opera, but partway in it becomes clear that it's actually going to be a small-scale character piece; the larger scale does creep back in right at the end.  My vote: 1st place.

The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J Anderson
First in a series that ties in with a previous, very long series of space opera novels.  I could say that this book met all my generic, uninspired Star Wars knock-off needs for the year, but that would be unfair.  It exceeded them.  My vote: 4th place.

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
One of those novels that subverts epic fantasy.  I'm in favour of this as a concept, but haven't found many examples that I like, probably mainly because I don't much like epic fantasy itself.  This is a perfectly good example, but I felt that it dragged heavily.  The cod archaic speech patterns didn't help much.  My vote: 3rd place.

The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu (trans. Ken Liu)
First of a trilogy written by one of China's top SF writers, and thus the only novel nominee this year to go any way at all to putting the "world" into "Worldcon".  Starts out as an intriguing mystery with an engaging backdrop of Maoist China, but lurches into a generic alien invasion runaround about two thirds in.  My vote: 2nd place.

Skin Game, Jim Butcher
Book #5,000,001 in the Dresden Files series.  Competently written pap.  Butcher's obviously found a formula that works for him - again and again and again - and I'm very happy for him.  I just don't see any artistic or literary merit in it.  My vote: unranked.

Best Graphic Story

Ms Marvel, vol 1: No Normal, G Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona & Jake wyatt
As a teenage superhero origin story, fairly ordinary.  Making the heroine the Muslim American daughter of Pakistani immigrants is a bit different, and certainly a welcome bit of diversity in a largely white, Anglo-American and predominantly male subgenre.  The art looks kind of fluffy, but at least it's a change from the usual photo-reference style of superhero art.  My vote: 3rd place.

Rat Queens, vol 1: Sass and Sorcery, Kurtis J Weibe & Roc Upchurch
A grungy comedy D&D-style fantasy story with an all-female cast.  Nice art, some smart dialogue.  I'd be prepared to seek out vol 2.  My vote: 2nd place.

Saga, vol 3, Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples
This is of course still terrific, but in judging it as a book in its own right - as opposed to a middle volume of an ongoing story - I find it relies too heavily on the reader's awareness of vols 1 and 2 to stand on it own.  My vote: 4th place.

Sex Criminals, vol 1: One Weird Trick, Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky
The only one of this year's nominees to do anything of significant interest with narrative form, character subjectivity and artistic presentation (notwithstanding Kamala Khan's mystic vision in issue 1 of Ms Marvel).  Also the only one that has something unusual to say, being a consideration of the ways in which we learn and talk about sex.  Heartfelt, honest, filthy and sniggeringly funny in equal measure; all this, and a SF action story too!  My vote: 1st place.

The Zombie Nation, vol 2: Reduce Reuse Reanimate, Carter Reid
Apparently a print collection of a webcomic, but widespread reports suggest that nobody has actually seen the print version.  The webcomic itself is easily found, and is nothing in any way outstanding or interesting.  There are hundreds of webcomics just like this, and dozens of much better ones.  My vote: unranked.