The following contains moderate spoilers for the first three episodes of ‘Star Trek: Picard’ season two, but not much more than what was seen in earlier teasers and trailers.

The first season of Picard was controversial, to say the least. Many fans were happy to see old friends again; others weren’t so thrilled at the grimdark direction Starfleet and the Federation went in the 20 years since we’d last seen their 24th century incarnations. Still, we got a look at how technology evolved, met some intriguing new characters and in the finale, at least, everything seems to have been put right.

It’s that brighter world where the second season of Picard begins, with synthetic beings now legal — which is handy, given that at the end of last season Jean-Luc Picard was transferred into an android body. It left me and much of the audience wondering if and how this would affect future stories. The answer comes pretty quickly in season two, now with new showrunner Terry Matalas at the helm. It doesn’t really matter. It’s not made clear exactly who does and who doesn’t know, but Jean-Luc Picard is still subject to the ravages of age while enjoying all the legal protections he would have had as a flesh-and-blood being (he still owns the vineyard, for one thing). Even Q, when he inevitably appears, treats Picard as the same being he’s always been.

CBS

Viewers may be familiar with the “Ship of Theseus” thought experiment, recently brought up in the finale of last year’s WandaVision. Basically, the idea is that if you slowly replace the parts of a ship over time, and then reassemble the old parts into another ship, which one is the original ship? In Picard, they suggest that the essence of a human being is their intelligence, so the real Jean-Luc Picard is the synthetic being that’s walking around on Earth right now. The problem with this, however, is that this hasn’t always been how Star Trek worked. While characters like Miles O’Brien and Harry Kim were replaced by duplicate versions of themselves, “Thomas” Riker was decidedly not given the same courtesy. It seems that duplicates are acceptable only when they replace someone we’ve otherwise lost.

During press interviews, even Patrick Stewart admitted the synthetic body issue was “a real mess.” Thankfully, the show smartly moves past it. It’s been at least a year and a half since the events of the first season, meaning we’re now in the 25th century. Picard has returned home and assumed the chancellorship of Starfleet Academy. Both Rios and Raffi have gone back to the fleet, and even Elnor is now attending school as a cadet (as the first full-blooded Romulan at the Academy). It’s the nice shiny future we’ve always loved to see on Star Trek, complete with some banging costume design and fun updated tech. Last season I noted how nice it was to see the continuation of the “synthetic being” storyline that ran through The Next Generation, and having all the characters settled into new positions leaves plenty of room to explore other facets of 25th-century technology and society.

CBS

However, Picard hasn’t become a happy show overnight. A new crisis quickly emerges, with a rift in subspace demanding Picard’s attention and putting the entire fleet at risk. This is where Q comes in, shunting Picard and his close compatriots over to an altered timeline where the genocidal “Confederation” rules the Alpha Quadrant with an iron fist. This isn’t the Mirror Universe that we’re familiar with from previous shows like the original series, Deep Space Nine and Discovery. In this version, Earth is still very much in charge, having wiped out multiple species with the Borg next on its list.

It’s not entirely clear in the first three episodes how this alternate reality was created, or why Q picked the La Sirena crew over any of Picard’s friends from the Enterprise-D. But it’s really just a tool that lets the show dabble in another Star Trek mainstay: time travel. Rather than create some new device or strange spatial phenomenon that sends the crew back in time, their method of traversing through the centuries harkens back to a method seen in the original series, one later repeated in the The Voyage Home. The ship slingshots around the sun, a technique that requires precise calculations that only someone like Spock can provide… or the Borg Queen, in this case. It’s not necessarily scientifically accurate, but it is a nice callback for a franchise spanning over 60 years, especially when fans have a tendency to try to square every inconsistency with their own theories instead of just embracing the chaos.

CBS

And chaos awaits the crew as they slide into the fair year of 2024, just a notch ahead of our own time so there’s very little difference in tech to worry about. Raffi and Seven are aghast at the poverty on display in 20th-century Los Angeles, which points to why the show’s writers chose this year instead of 2022 or 2023: 2024 is the date of the infamous “Bell Riots” as seen on Deep Space Nine’s “Past Tense.”

At that point, the poor and indigent residents interned in “Sanctuary Districts” in San Francisco struck back against the degrading conditions they were forced to live in, eventually prompting higher level changes that would eventually lead to the Federation we all know and love. Whether Picard and friends will end up playing a role in those pivotal events remains to be seen, but the third episode hints at Rios getting some taste of injustice as an undocumented Latino man –though he’s undocumented for a time travel reasons and not because of immigration.

Overall, the beginning of Picard plays like a greatest hits reel: We’re treated to the return of classic baddies like Q and the Borg, other characters are referenced in passing for some fun Easter eggs, and time travel episodes of Star Trek tend to be a blast so I hope that this will be a good storyline. In a way it’s a warm blanket of nostalgia to calm the audience after the mess that was season one. But if you were hoping to actually explore the galaxy and see more of the 25th century, season two looks to be yet another letdown.

This article contains a reference to suicide.

Right now, we’re living in a golden (micro) age of prestige TV adaptations depicting notable startup failures. In the first half of 2022 alone, we’re getting shows about the rise and fall of Uber, Theranos and WeWork all fronted by A-list talent. It’s a sign of how far the public’s tastes have changed that the travails of a tech, well, “tech” company is now mainstream entertainment.

Yesterday, I binge-watched seven of the eight episodes of Hulu / Star’s The Dropout, Disney’s adaptation of the ABC podcast series of the same name. It stars Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the fraudulent blood-testing startup Theranos. Holmes is currently awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of committing fraud, while Seyfried can probably expect to pick up a number of plaudits for her performance come awards season.

The series covers the broad strokes of Holmes’ life in roughly chronological order, albeit with the odd timely flashback where necessary. We meet Holmes as a WASP-y teen with dreams of Stanford, backed by her Enron-executive dad and Washington insider mom. From there, Holmes travels to China to study abroad, where she meets Sunny Balwani, her future business and life partner. When she gets to Stanford, she’s frustrated at senior academics who tell her that her biotechnology idea is unworkable, and drops out to start her own company.

Given Theranos’ penchant for secrecy, it amused me that Disney asked critics not to reveal any “surprising plot points or spoilers.” I’ll keep details to a minimum here, but obviously it’s hard to imagine a large number of people not already knowing the bones of this particular saga. In fact, since Theranos closed in 2018, it’s already been the subject of a major podcast, a book, an Alex Gibney documentary and a long-gestating Adam McKay movie in development at Apple.

Going in, I was concerned that The Dropout would suffer the same problem as The Founder, 2016’s biopic of Ray Kroc. It’s a fine film, but one that doesn’t know if Kroc is its hero or its villain, despite the stock rags-to-riches tropes it wheels out. In some scenes, he is portrayed as a try-hard who saw an opportunity and built an empire, in others, a ruthless conman who stole the business out from under the McDonald brothers. The tonal whiplash made the film offer two competing arguments, neither of which were very well-explained.

There’s no such problem here with The Dropout, with series creator Elizabeth Merriweather always being clear-eyed about Holmes’ problems. It’s almost a minor-key parody of those rags-to-riches stories, aided by the fact that Holmes’ went from riches to, uh, more riches. Moments that, in any other story, should be triumphant are undercut with dissonant music and there’s always a sense that there’s something not quite right about all of this.

Beth Dubber / Hulu

None of that would work without Amanda Seyfried’s performance which manages to sell Holmes as both a well-meaning neophyte and a cold, calculating monster. In the series' most shocking moment, Seyfried somehow makes you feel abject pity and outrage at the same time. And the show works hard to keep reminding you that this isn’t just about some elderly Republicans who got fleeced backing a boondoggle but, in a phrase repeated throughout the show; “real people.”

It helps that the show has assembled a murderer’s row of talent to appear alongside Seyfried in the series. As well as Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani, there’s (deep breath) William H. Macy, Elizabeth Marvel, LisaGay Hamilton, Michael Gill, Laurie Metcalf, Kurtwood Smith, Kate Burton, Michael Ironside, Nicky Endres and Anne Archer. Deserving extra praise is Stephen Fry, however, who offers some fantastic work as Dr. Ian Gibbons, the chemist who worked with Holmes at the start of her career and died by suicide during a patent dispute. Fry, towering over the rest of the cast and looking every inch the crusty academic in a world of waxen silicon valley models, acts as the warm and inviting voice of conscience when things start to hit the slide.

Disney is marketing The Dropout as a drama, but the sort of drama where the satire is razor wire sharp and the jokes are beyond morbid. Succession fans will find much to love about the series dark humor, especially the all-out fourth episode, which borrows Alan Ruck to guest as Walgreens’ executive Dr. Jay Rosan. In other places, however, the satire of both Silicon Valley and investment culture in general is far more subtle. Only in this series can two characters declare their love for each other while creating a pact for mutually-assured blackmail at the same time.

There is, rather obviously, a gendered element to the endless speculation and hand-wringing about Holmes’ motives and actions. The press never seems to need to psychoanalyze why Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are dick-wagging with their competing space projects. Merriweather chooses to highlight this disparity, mostly through the voice of Laurie Metcalf’s Dr. Phyllis Gardner – the Stanford professor who initially told Holmes that her ideas couldn’t work. She pops up several times in the show to offer meta-commentary on what we’re watching.

One of the things the show serves to highlight is how much of an easy ride Theranos got from investors and the press. Despite refusing to justify any element of its technology, it took far too long for regulators and officials to really interrogate what was going on here. I mean, in 2015, Holmes was appointed to the board of fellows at Harvard Medical School! The scale of the fraud, the scale of the lie, became so great that most people just felt that they had to believe it.

It’s funny, I’m reminded of a story I wrote for Engadget back in 2016 which just summed up John Carreyou’s Wall Street Journal reporting. But despite just citing and quoting Carreyou’s work, I was on the receiving end of a 21-email nastygram from Theranos’ then-PR representatives. The company’s image management team jumped hard on any and all criticism. When Holmes and Balwani were charged by the SEC, I emailed that same PR person to ask if they had any comment on their previous statements. It was the most delicious “no comment” I have ever received.

A common complaint of Peak TV is that most shows could be done and dusted in a third of the time actually allowed. Despite watching almost all of The Dropout over a single day, I actually felt like the show could have been longer. There’s plenty that, by necessity, has had to be cut, glossed and generally trimmed to get things down to a tight eight hours. I could easily have watched another couple hours with more context and detail, but then I’ll admit, I am a nerd. You won’t be able to, however, since Hulu is releasing the first three episodes on March 3rd and then the rest on subsequent Fridays through the start of April. That’s a smart decision, since the first three are more or less designed as a cohesive whole, while subsequent episodes can be enjoyed individually.

Fundamentally, The Dropout is well worth your time, and Amanda Seyfried offers some truly stellar work bringing the duality of Holmes to life.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Crisis Text Line can be reached by texting HOME to 741741 (US), 686868 (Canada), or 85258 (UK). Wikipedia maintains a list of crisis lines for people outside of those countries.

Spotify has released the first episodes of a new audio format it's calling the "bookcast" with help from Dolly Parton and James Patterson. The pair co-wrote a novel titled Run, Rose, Run, which has been blended with an original soundtrack written, recorded and produced by Parton.

The bookcast format brings together audio storytelling with sound elements and original music. Spotify says it delivers "an immersive listening experience."

Run, Rose, Run tells the story of a musician who moves to Nashville to chase her dream of making it in the music industry. Her songs are inspired by a "brutal secret" that threatens to thwart her plans.

You'll be able to listen to the bookcast on Spotify for free. The first two episodes are out now, featuring excerpts from the book set to Parton's music. More episodes will arrive over the next couple of weeks, with the last six landing on March 7th, the same day the novel is released. Parton will release the soundtrack on March 4th, and the firsttwo songs are available now.

The bookcast, which comes from a pair of hugely popular creatives, emerges in the wake of some notable artists pulling their music from Spotify. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell both removed their work from the platform after the former accused the company of allowing Joe Rogan to spread harmful misinformation on his podcast. Brené Brown paused new episodes of her Spotify-exclusive podcasts, while film director Ava DuVernay this month ended her podcast deal with the company before producing any shows for Spotify.

It's possible the bookcast was in the works long before the Rogan controversy blew up, so it doesn't entirely seem to be a case of damage control. However, if Spotify's looking to build up some goodwill, it could go far worse than recruiting Parton and Patterson.

A man who unknowingly sold his Bored Ape NFT for a pittance is suing OpenSea, claiming it knew about a flaw in its platform that allowed hackers to buy unlisted NFTs at a fraction of the market price, decrypt has reported. Timothy McKimmy alleged in a complaint that he didn't even list his Bored Ape #3475 for sale, but a hacker managed to buy it for just .01 ETH ($26) and turn around and sell it for 99 ETH ($250,000 at current prices). 

The Ape is one of 10,000 limited edition Bored Ape Yacht Club primate NFTs, and supposedly in the top 14th percentile in terms of value, McKimmy said in the lawsuit. He noted that it's significantly rarer than one recently purchased by Justin Bieber for $1.3 million. Thus, he's seeking "the return of the Bored Ape... and/or damages over $1 million." 

Moreover, he claims that OpenSea knew about the bug that was widely reported in the media, but refused to halt trading. "Instead of shutting down its platform to address and rectify these security issues, Defendant continued to operate," he said in the complaint.

McKimmy was a victim of the "inactive listing" exploit on OpenSea that saw multiple users lose up to $1.8 million in NFTs. OpenSea has reportedly been approaching some victims to settle, offering them a lower price than their NFT may be worth, according to decrypt. 

The lawsuit may not be the last it faces over the inactive listing hack, as a law firm is reportedly soliciting complaints from other OpenSea users. The platform is also facing a separate phishing campaign that resulted in theft of NFTs, but OpenSea said that that didn't arise from any platform vulnerability. 

Audiences will get another chance to watch CODA, the first Apple Original movie nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, in theaters. Apple is re-releasing the film, which is about a deaf family, in a limited run of free screenings with open captions. Directed and written by Sian Heder and featuring a primarily deaf cast, the film received three Oscar nods in total. Heder, who adapted the movie from a French film called La Famille Bélier, is also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Troy Kotsur is also nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and is the first deaf man to earn that distinction.

The film follows Ruby (played Emilia Jones) , a high school student who navigates life as the only hearing member of a deaf family in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Kotsur plays her father, a struggling fisherman attempting to connect with his daughter. Ruby’s mother is played by Marlee Matlin (best known from Children of a Lesser God and The L Word), and her older brother is played by Daniel Durant, who starred in the 2015 Broadway revival of Spring Awakening.

The screenings will run in all major cities in the US and London, beginning Friday, February 25 through Sunday, February 27. You can view a list of showtimes and theater locations here.

There are worse movies than Uncharted, especially when it comes to the seemingly cursed genre of video game adaptations. But as I struggled to stay awake through the finale — yet another weightless action sequence where our heroes quip, defy physics and never feel like they're in any genuine danger — I couldn't help but wonder why the film was so aggressively average.

Sony Pictures

The PlayStation franchise started out as a Tomb Raider clone starring a dude who wasn't Indiana Jones. But, starting with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the games tapped into the language of action movies to put you in the center of innovative set pieces. They were cinematic in ways that few titles were in the early 2010s. But going in the opposite direction — bringing aspects of those games into a movie — doesn't work nearly as well.

Director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Venom), along with screenwriters Rafe Lee Judkins, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, have crafted an origin story for the treasure hunter Nathan Drake (Tom Holland). It hits the notes you're expecting — his childhood as an orphan, his first team-up with his partner Victor "Sully" Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg), and a globe-trotting treasure hunt that defies logic — but it's all just a Cliff's Notes version of what we've seen in the games. And for a franchise that was already a watered-down version of Indiana Jones, a movie adaptation just highlights all of its inherent flaws. Watching Uncharted made me long for the basic pleasures of Nicholas Cage's National Treasure – at least that Indy clone had personality.

Even the iconic action scenes don’t hit as hard. The film opens mid free-fall, as Drake realizes he just fell out of a plane. Discerning viewers will instantly recognize the sequence from Uncharted 3. We watch as he hops across falling cargo (and wonder if that’s even possible while everything is falling), but the entire scene feels like Tom Holland is going on the world’s most extreme Disney World ride. Without the rumble of the Dualshock 3 controller in my hand, and my responsibility over Drake’s impending death, there just aren’t any stakes. It’s particularly unexciting compared to what we’ve seen in the recent Mission Impossible movies. Tom Cruise (and skydiving camera man Craig O'Brien) jumped out of an actual plane several times for our entertainment!

Still, it's somewhat surprising that this adaptation exists at all. Sony has been trying to develop an Uncharted film since 2008, starting with a loftier iteration by arthouse auteur David O. Russell. That version was going to star Wahlberg as an older Nathan Drake, as we see him in the games, and focus on the idea of family. But the project ended up changing hands several times over the last decade. By the time it was actually gearing up for production in 2020, Wahlberg had aged out of the starring role and into the older sidekick spot. (Sorry, Super Cool Mack Daddy, it happens to all of us.)

After we've seen so many video game films completely miss the mark, like Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City and Assassin's Creed, I'm starting to wonder if there's some sort of secret to making a good adaptation. Different audiences want different things, after all. Game fans typically want to see the characters and sequences they love so much legitimized on film. Discerning movie geeks may be comparing adaptations to other, usually better, films. And studio executives just want existing intellectual property that they can churn out to an undiscerning public.

There are a handful of memorable video game films, but they mostly seem like flukes. The original Mortal Kombat was iconic because of its killer soundtrack and (at the time) cutting-edge special effects. Werewolves Within doesn't have much to do with the VR title it's based on, aside from its name. And Sonic the Hedgehog was a blast, but that was mostly due to its lead performances. 

 As an avid gamer and cinephile, I'll never give up on hoping for successful adaptations. But it could just be that the two mediums are a bit incompatible. A film can never capture the interactive magic and freedom you get from a game. And when you're playing something, heavy-handed cut scenes and direction can often take you out of the experience (unless you’re Hideo Kojima, in which case gamers will argue it’s all a work of genius).

With its cinematic roots, Uncharted had a better shot at a decent adaptation than most games. It’s just a shame that, for a series that’s about exploring new lands and discovering forgotten treasure, it offers nothing new.

Peloton today launched Lanebreak, a new series of workouts that mimic a racing game for its connected stationary bike. Riders get behind a virtual wheel, race down a multi-lane highway and gain points for higher levels of output and resistance. The fitness company briefly beta tested Lanebreak last July, and is now launching the new mode as a software update to all Peloton bikes in the US, UK, Canada, Germany and Australia.

Unlike the majority of other Peloton workouts, there’s no instructor on Lanebreak offering encouragement throughout the ride. Instead, riders can choose from a selection of different pop-centric playlists to listen to in the background, featuring the likes of David Guetta, David Bowie, Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran.

For Peloton riders who are bored with the usual slate of instructor-led classes, Lanebreak adds a change of pace. It’s also the first new program that the fitness company has added to their fitness library in a while, following a major expansion in 2020 that included barre, yoga, pilates and strength training classes.

The fitness company, once a darling of the pandemic, has now run into financial woes due to a decline in demand. Earlier this month, Peloton replaced its CEO and laid-off roughly 20 percent of its workforce in an effort to streamline its expenses. But despite its struggles on Wall Street, Peloton's incredibly loyal customer base has a 96% one-year retention rate. The bikes are a large upfront investment, and few Peloton riders want the added hassle of reselling and moving their $1,495 bike. While it’s unlikely that Lanebreak will recruit new Peloton riders, it’ll add some variety to a fitness library that, for some seasoned riders, has become stale.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 won't hit theaters until April 8th, but a third movie is already in the works. Paramount confirmed that Sonic 3 is now in development, along with a Paramount+ streaming series based on Sonic sidekick Knuckles, starring Idris Elba. "We are delighted to announce that the third Sonic theatrical film and the first live action Sonic series for Paramount+ are being actively developed," said Sega CEO Haruki Satomi in a tweet.

Sonic 2's first trailer confirmed the existence of the titular character's new sidekick Tails, voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessy. We also saw the return of the first movie's villain, Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carry), who's seeking to gain the Chaos Emeralds. Aiding his quest is none other than Knuckles the Echidna, who demonstrates his powers and posh Idris Elba voice. Elba will also voice Knuckles in the streaming series, set to arrive in 2023.

The first Sonic film was one of the most successful video game adaptations yet, making the launch of a sequel inevitable. Paramount must be pretty confident about that to have already announced Sonic 3 and a streaming series to boot. The trailer looked promising, but we'll find out when it arrives on April 8th. 

The Disney+ Obi-Wan series finally has a release date. Disney has revealed that the limited-run Obi-Wan Kenobi series premieres May 25th (no, sadly not May 4th) on its namesake streaming service. The company didn't share much more than new poster art, but some of the key details are already well-known.

Kenobi has Ewan McGregor reprising his role as Obi-Wan, with Hayden Christensen portraying Darth Vader. The show will begin with protecting Luke Skywalker following the rise of the Empire, but it's reasonable to presume there will be much more to the story. The Mandalorian veteran Deborah Chow is directing the production.

The series could be crucial for Disney+ as it matures. As part of its latest earnings, Disney revealed that subscribers worldwide climbed 37 percent in 2021 versus 2020, but that the media group running the service saw profits plunge 44 percent. Most of the growth came from India's Hotstar and international expansions. Obi-Wan Kenobi could help Disney+ keep the subscriber count growing in many countries, especially with the help of sibling Star Wars shows like Ahsoka, Andor, Lando, The Acolyte and the recently released The Book of Boba Fett.

Spotify isn't the only streaming service to face a dispute with comedians. Both Puck and The Verge have learned the estates of Robin Williams and George Carlin have sued SiriusXM's Pandora for allegedly streaming the comedy legends' jokes without full licenses. The late comedians' representatives claim Pandora only has the licenses to stream the recordings, not the jokes themselves — and it supposedly doesn't have "any copyright."

Williams' estate wants $4.1 million in damages for copyright infringement, while Carlin's is seeking $8.4 million. Comedians Andrew Dice Clay, Bill Engvall and Ron White have also made complaints, asserting Pandora hasn't provided a "fraction of a penny" for their work.

The estates claim Pandora confessed to having improper licenses in SEC filings between 2011 and 2017, predating SiriusXM's acquisition. In those filings, the service warned investors it couldn't guarantee the company would avoid "additional licensing costs" from rights groups for spoken-word comedy. Companies frequently include risk alerts like this in filings regardless of their licensing intentions, however.

We've asked SiriusXM for comment. Pandora isn't a stranger to license battles. It paid $90 million in 2015 to settle a fight over allegations it used a loophole to play pre-1972 songs without paying labels, and was sued in 2019 for supposedly displaying lyrics from Rage Against the Machine and Tom Petty without permission. But comedy licensing problems haven't had a firm test in court, according to Puck, and the outcome of the Pandora case could affect how Spotify and other services pay comedians for their work.