Entertainment
How Star Trek Tried To Redeem Its Most Boring Character
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Pop quiz: Who do you think is the most boring character in Star Trek? The franchise is filled with annoying characters like Wesley Crusher and Neelix, but those characters were at least grating in memorable ways. Unfortunately, Voyager had one character whose lines, line deliveries, and plotlines were guaranteed to put you to sleep.
We’re talking about Chakotay, the former Maquis rebel leader who has all the personality of an unsalted cracker the moment he becomes Captain Janeway’s first officer. However, Voyager did their best to correct the problems with this character very early on. For example, the forgotten Season 2 episode “Initiations” was written largely to make Chakotay more interesting to audiences.
The Most Boring Man In Starfleet
Some quick context about the episode: “Initiations” begins with Chakotay (played by Robert Beltran) taking a shuttlecraft out to conduct a ritual honoring his father’s death. But he takes custody of a young Kazon before both are captured by a larger Kazon vessel. There, they are forced to escape in a rollicking adventure that gives these two very different characters plenty of time to discover more about each other’s respective cultures.
Incidentally, exploring Kazon culture was one of the goals of “Initiations” and Season 2 as a whole. But the episode was also written in large part to make Chakotay a more interesting character. As revealed in the sixth issue of Star Trek Monthly (remember magazines, kids?), the producers felt that Voyager had underutilized Chakotay in the first season.
Rebranding Chakotay As An Action Star
Episode writer Ken Biller understood the assignment because he agreed with the producers that Chakotay was a pretty weak sauce character in the rest of Season 1 compared to how he was portrayed in “Caretaker,” the series premiere. Biller told the Official Star Trek Voyager Magazine that Chakotay is “like a real action hero in the pilot” and that “I think we need to give him some action stories,” something he was hoping to do with “Initiations.” That’s why the episode features this first officer getting into multiple fights, escaping captivity, and even offering to let his newfound ally kill him.
Why was it necessary for the writers and producers to make Chakotay a more interesting character? The short answer is that early Voyager, like The Next Generation before it, was hesitant to feature much conflict between characters. Therefore, even though the show’s premise was that Starfleet officers would be forced to work with Maquis terrorists, everyone mostly acted like one big, happy family after the first episode thrust them together.
Facing Off Against The Entire Delta Quadrant
In “Caretaker,” Chakotay is a Maquis leader who tries to help his crew escape the pursuing Voyager. After both ships are transported to the Delta Quadrant, he proves himself in and out of battle, eventually becoming Captain Janeway’s first officer. This was a practical choice because of Chakotay’s skills and Starfleet experience, but it was also a symbolic choice that underscored the need for both crews to work together to survive.
This was a recipe for juicy conflict between these two very different characters, but that never happened; Chakotay quickly became little more than Janeway’s yes man in Season 1. The writers tried to make him more interesting in subsequent seasons, but this led to mixed results because Voyager increasingly relied on the fraudulent Native American consultant Jamake Highwater to craft Chakotay stories. At any rate, Chakotay actor Robert Beltran came to hate how his character was written, and he reportedly began phoning in his performances later in the show due to what he saw as poor scripts.
While Chakotay never became a very interesting character, “Initiations” remains a very solid episode full of action, adventure, and a cameo from Deep Space Nine’s Aaron Eisenberg. In helping to flesh out the Kazon, this episode lives up to the Star Trek mandate to seek out new life and new civilizations. Unfortunately for the fans and Beltran alike, though, Voyager would soon run out of strange new worlds to explore with Chakotay, who soon cemented himself as the most boring character in the entire franchise.
Entertainment
NYT Strands hints, answers for July 23, 2026
Today’s NYT Strands hints are easy if you’re a veteran.
Strands, the New York Times‘ elevated word-search game, requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There’s always a theme linking every solution, along with the “spangram,” a special, word or phrase that sums up that day’s theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically.
By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections.
If you’re feeling stuck or just don’t have 10 or more minutes to figure out today’s puzzle, we’ve got all the NYT Strands hints for today’s puzzle you need to progress at your preferred pace.
NYT Strands hint for today’s theme: Hail to the chief petty officer
The words are related to the military.
Mashable Top Stories
Today’s NYT Strands theme plainly explained
These words describe military titles.
NYT Strands spangram hint: Is it vertical or horizontal?
Today’s NYT Strands spangram is vertical.
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NYT Strands spangram answer today
Today’s spangram is Navy Ranks.
NYT Strands word list for July 23
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Recruit
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Admiral
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Ensign
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Navy Ranks
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Lieutenant
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Commander
Looking for other daily online games? Mashable’s Games page has more hints, and if you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now!
Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Strands.
Entertainment
The World’s Richest Man Just Promised An AI Version Of The Odyssey, But It’s Never Going To Happen
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Every day, we get another reminder that the internet isn’t real life. For example, right-wing voices have been hating on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey for months, backlash that mysteriously began when the director cast a Black woman and a trans man in prominent roles. The haters spent plenty of time, energy, and endless social media posts trashing the film and predicting it would fail because it’s woke garbage. Of course, when the movie actually premiered, it was a critical darling that made over a quarter of a billion dollars in its first weekend.
In a sane world, that would have ended the discussion. The movie thousands of people thought would fail succeeded; end of story, right? Well, you’re not in a sane world, bucko, you’re in Hellworld. Case in point? Spurred on by comments from his loyal army of sycophantic followers, Elon Musk has now pledged to use his pet AI Grok to create a more “historically accurate” version of The Odyssey. His fans are excited, but I’ve got some bad news: not only would such a film be a critical and commercial flop, but there’s no way in hell this movie ever comes out.
The Odyssey: Video Game Cutscene Edition
Why am I so confident that Elon Musk’s Grok-powered version of The Odyssey will never come out? Simple: while Musk has achieved massive financial success (he was, for a moment there, the world’s first trillionaire), he has spent much of the last decade promising things that just never happened. Like, he previously promised SpaceX would be landing humans on Mars by 2025 at the latest; not only did that never happen, but SpaceX’s stock value is currently tumbling following several engine failures and an aborted flight.
The list goes on. Fully self-driving cars straight out of a sci-fi movie? He made the promise, but that never happened. The Hyperloop, announced in 2013? The project shut down in 2023. The pledge to have a million robotaxis on the streets by 2020? Yeah, that project died quietly amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. For all of his successes, this is who Elon Musk is: a relentless hypeman who promises more than he can deliver and tries to cover up his failures with more breathless announcements that he thinks his biggest fans will respond well to.
This AI Movie Is Its Own Trojan Horse
That’s what this AI Odyssey announcement is about. After years of being lauded by liberal fans as a real-life Tony Stark, Musk went fully right-wing, complete with pivotal endorsements of Donald Trump and a temporary role in Trump’s government. As such, Musk has become one of the most popular figures in conservative circles. While his political allegiances shifted, one thing never changed: Musk’s absolutely palpable desire for people to like him. Accordingly, he spends plenty of time on X, engaging with conservative fans and platforming both conservative thoughts and movies (like Citizen Vigilante). By and large, his fans hate Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, so he has pledged to give them an alternative.
Once again, Musk is telling his fans what they want to hear. Hate that “woke” movie everyone’s talking about? Well, he’ll make his own, and he’ll do it without help from Hollywood! That’s the promise, at least, and Musk’s fans are eating this up with a fork and spoon. None of them seem to think that this project, like so many others, will quietly disappear. Or that the man who has spent years running a social media platform into the ground might not actually be the best guy to deliver an actual film and not sloppy shorts that look like a PS4 cutscene.
Elon Musk’s Movie Is Already History
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Musk actually makes his more “historically accurate” version of The Odyssey. Why does anyone think this thing will be watchable, much less better than Christopher Nolan’s version? Not only does the proof of concept suck, but Musk’s rejection of Hollywood has seriously reduced his talent pool for things like voice acting, art design, and so on. Plus, the very announcement brings up an obvious question: why has Musk given himself until the end of the year to make this film? Nolan shot a real movie with real people in only three months, so why will it take Grok’s prompt engineers almost twice as long to make their own?
The answer is simple: this movie is never going to see the light of day. Elon Musk’s biggest fans are frothing at the mouth about Nolan’s The Odyssey right now, but soon enough, they’ll have something new to obsess over, like Spider-Man saying something too woke in Brand New Day. As they move on, the once and future (?) trillionaire will move on as well, making even more promises he never plans to keep. With any luck, all of the people demanding an AI version of The Odyssey will start clamoring for an AI adaptation of another ancient text. May I suggest The Bible, complete with a historically accurate, very brown Jesus Christ?
Entertainment
R-Rated Supernatural Thriller Hides Its Dark Truth In The Tapes
By Robert Scucci
| Published
2024’s Shelby Oaks is a unique watch because it effortlessly integrates found-footage filmmaking into a more traditional storytelling framework. Much of the first act plays out like a true crime documentary, establishing the mystery and the characters navigating it. Then the perspective shifts to the footage the documentary is about, and suddenly we’re in a straight-up supernatural thriller. While I’m a huge fan of found footage and analog horror, I can’t recall another film that switches filming styles depending on the scene, which makes Shelby Oaks, as far as I can tell (but please correct me if I’m wrong), a sample size of one.
Granted, I haven’t seen every found-footage film ever released, and I have my blind spots like everybody else, but my main takeaway was that Shelby Oaks earns serious points for its camera work and the layered storytelling built around it. While the ending was a bit predictable for my tastes, everything leading up to it was solid, and I’m glad I sat down with this one because it’s incredibly fluid in its delivery, allowing its mystery to unravel naturally.
From YouTubing To Doom Snooping
Shelby Oaks starts out like a documentary, introducing us to Mia Brennan-Walker (Camille Sullivan). Mia’s younger sister, Riley (Sara Durn), disappeared 12 years earlier while working on a project for her YouTube series, The Paranormal Paranoids. While investigating a prison, three of Riley’s collaborators, Laura (Caisey Cole), David (Eric Francis Melaragni), and Peter (Anthony Baldasara), also disappear. Their bodies are eventually recovered, horrifically mutilated. The only lead police have is one of the group’s two recovered video cameras, which contains footage of Riley during what many assume were her final moments.
This entire opening sequence blends documentary and found-footage filmmaking while establishing Shelby Oaks’ central conflict: Mia believes Riley is still alive, everybody else thinks the YouTube channel was an elaborate hoax, and her husband Robert (Brendan Sexton III) is ready to leave her because her obsession with the case has consumed her life after years without answers.
That all changes when a man later identified as Wilson Miles arrives at Mia’s doorstep carrying a tape labeled “Shelby Oaks,” the town where Riley was last investigating. After handing over the tape, Wilson tells Mia, “She finally let me go,” before blowing his head off on her front porch. It’s a horrific sequence that comes completely out of nowhere, but it’s enough to convince Mia that whoever “she” is may have imprisoned Riley as well.
While examining the tape and some of Riley’s personal effects, Mia comes to the horrifying conclusion that Riley had been stalked by a demon ever since suffering night terrors as a child, and that those experiences likely fueled her fascination with the paranormal in the first place. Her amateur sleuthing sends her down a twisted path involving demonic hellhounds, incubi, and the revelation that Riley, and possibly Wilson, were caught up in something much larger involving forces she doesn’t begin to understand until she discovers what, who, and where Wilson escaped from.
This Could Totally Become A Franchise
Everything about Shelby Oaks is expertly crafted, but I’m most impressed by how effortlessly it shifts between filming styles. It almost feels like the camera zooms out from the initial source of terror, giving us a more conventional supernatural mystery centered on Mia and her investigation. She repeatedly combs through the recovered footage for clues, but those investigation scenes aren’t presented as found footage themselves. That approach lets you experience Riley’s terror firsthand before stepping back to piece everything together alongside Mia.
Once I got to the big third-act reveal, I was a little underwhelmed because my immediate reaction was, “Oh yeah, that makes sense,” and then… that was it. Sometimes that’s just how movies go, and I’m not too upset about it because Shelby Oaks takes enough creative swings to make the entire experience worthwhile.
What I’m more interested in seeing, though, is a prequel that unpacks what else is on those tapes. Shelby Oaks ends in a way that hints at a sequel, though it works perfectly well as a standalone film. A prequel, however, would be next level. My thinking is that the tape Mia receives from Wilson is just one of many recorded during the 12 years Riley was missing. A found-footage compilation built around those tapes could make for some incredible worldbuilding that pushes Shelby Oaks into franchise territory, and that’s something I’d absolutely like to see.
I’m just spitballing here, however, and right now all we have is Shelby Oaks. Overall, I was impressed with the filmmaking and the buildup leading into the third act. I’ll admit I was a little underwhelmed by the conclusion, but I’ve also seen a ton of movies like this, so maybe I’m just being a tad cynical. I’d definitely recommend it to my horror-loving friends.
As of this writing, you can stream Shelby Oaks on Hulu.
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