TV Talk: ‘Meltdown’ revisits Three Mile Island; ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ premieres

The near-catastrophic 1979 accident at the nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pa., gets the Netflix docu-series treatment in the four-part “Meltdown: Three Mile Island,” now streaming.

Unlike plenty of past Netflix shows in this genre (think “Tiger King”), “Meltdown” is relatively right-sized with only the fourth, 45-minute episode feeling somewhat repetitive.

Directed by Kief Davidson (“The Ivory Game”), “Meltdown” chronicles the incident using interviews and some dramatic recreations — a nuclear reactor control room was built in Los Angeles for filming some scenes — and centers on the story of whistleblower Rick Parks, a nuclear plant operator and nuclear power advocate who came out against the company charged with cleanup efforts for shortcuts that Parks says put the safety of the entire East Coast at risk.

Viewed through a contemporary lens, there’s a clear analogy between the FAA’s lax oversight of Boeing’s controversial 737 Max design and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s hands-off approach to the Three Mile Island operator — a little bit of history repeating.

But “Meltdown” violates the maxim “correlation is not causation,” most notably with the suggestion that cancer rates rose in the area because of radiation exposure (radiation monitors were not in operation, and studies on Three Mile Island’s impact conflict with one another). Various interviewees also allege wire-tapping, planted evidence and a break-in perpetrated by those seeking to quash resistance to efforts to restart Three Mile Island, none of which is proven.

Still, “Meltdown” delivers an absorbing cautionary tale about the partial nuclear reactor meltdown, the flawed response and the investigation that was critical of TMI management.

In a phone interview Monday, Davidson said Parks was key to telling the story.

“He was threatened, he was put through the mill and he had every reason to become anti-nuclear, and he’s quite the opposite,” Davidson said. “He still very strongly believes in nuclear power. Where he comes from, nuclear is still very much needed alongside green technology to solve the energy crisis … but he believes it can’t be a privatized industry that does not have government oversight and the NRC clearly wasn’t doing its job at the time.”

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’

“Star Trek” producers have been promising that “Strange New Worlds,” the Enterprise-based series set during the pre-Kirk Capt. Pike (Anson Mount) era, would be more episodic and less serialized than other recent, live-action “Treks” have been.

And it is.

But the series premiere, now streaming, backs into any sense of adventure with a too-long preamble about what state viewers find caring, charismatic Pike and logical-as-ever-but-also-lustful Spock (Ethan Peck) in at the show’s outset. After what feels like 20 minutes, the show finally gets to the story of Number One (Rebecca Romijn) being held as a hostage by a pre-warp society. Here, “Strange New Worlds” finally feels like the original 1960s “Trek,” delivering commentary via Earth’s own “second civil war,” featuring news clips from our present day.

The second episode, told from the point of view of Cadet Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), unpacks Uhura’s backstory on her first away mission to a comet that’s headed toward an inhabited planet. The plot ultimately turns on questions of faith and fate, which also plays into Pike’s story: He has seen his future — “Trek” fans know Pike ends up mute and in a wheelchair, as seen in the original “Star Trek” episode “The Menagerie” — and is trying to come to terms with it. It’s a storyline that lightly serializes “Strange New Worlds” in early episodes.

Of all the current live-­action “Trek” shows, “Strange New Worlds” feels the most like an ensemble, which is emphasized by allowing a different character to narrate via log entry in each of the first five episodes.

Number One, who, like Pike and Spock, was introduced in episodes of “Star Trek: Discovery,” finally gets the spotlight in episode three.

“Strange New Worlds” introduces two more OG “Trek” characters, Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), and a few new characters, including helm officer Ortegas (Melissa Navia) and the mysterious La’an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong), who is related to the villainous Khan Noonien Singh.

“Strange New Worlds” comes closest in tone and story­telling style to the original series and the 1990s “Next Generation”-era shows, but its too-long episodes sometimes feel as plodding as the other recent “Treks,” as if producers are scared to revert to simpler, less ponderous storytelling.

“Strange New Worlds” is at its best in its fifth episode, which delivers more cheeky fun and short bursts of character development with economy that are more meaningful than the paragraphs of breathless character exposition found in the first four episodes.

PFO fundraiser

The nonprofit Pittsburgh Film Office, which is instrumental in bringing big-budget TV series and film production to Western Pennsylvania, will hold its annual fundraising event at 6 p.m. June 3 under the rotunda at The Pennsylvanian in Downtown Pittsburgh.

Details and tickets to Summer Swizzle are available at pghfilm.org.

Kept/canceled

Apple TV+ renewed “Pachinko” for a second season; Amazon Freevee did the same for “Bosch: Legacy.”

The CW canceled “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow” after seven seasons.

Channel surfing

Now streaming on BET+ and inspired by real events, the eight-part 1920s-set drama “The Porter,” starring Alfre Woodard, follows Black train porters and their efforts to unionize. … Comcast is in the midst of its 10th annual Watchathon Week, offering subscribers on X1, Flex and Stream free access to dozens of network and streaming service shows, including the first two seasons of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and the first season of Amazon Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” among others. … This week, Amazon Freevee announced three additional cast members who acted in the first season of the upcoming Greg Garcia comedy “Sprung,” filmed in Pittsburgh last year: Kate Walsh (“Grey’s Anatomy”) plays a corrupt congresswoman; Garcia’s son, Camden Garcia, plays Collin, a congressional aide; and Andre Jamal Kinney plays Collin’s boyfriend, Brett. … Carnegie Mellon University grad Victoria Pedretti exited Hulu’s upcoming series “Saint X” over creative differences, per Variety. … KDKA-TV anchor/reporter Meghan Schiller gave birth to a son this week. The name is still to be determined.