[S7E4] Batter Week

Maybe the emotional battery of this week's installment would've felt more palatable if this year's political events hadn't been so unrelentingly intense, but considering how torturous and unsatisfying the Season 7 premiere was, and how frustrating much of Season 6 was, The Walking Dead's descent into nihilism was a tough slog alongside reality, even for longtime viewers.

[S7E4] Batter Week

We don't need an extended, 85-minute installment to prove to us how awful Negan and his Saviors are -- the premiere made that point abundantly clear, as did last week's prolonged attempt to torture Daryl into submission. (Further proof that Carol remains the show's one bright spot, since episode 2 was a welcome break from the despair.)

The first task was to make Yorkshire puddings, in 2 hours. The bakers used the standard recipe filled with a variety of savory ingredients and flavors. The technical challenge gave the bakers 1 hour to make 12 heart-shaped "lace" pancakes, which required them to draw a heart-shaped design with the batter. They were only allowed one practice pancake. The showstopper challenge was to make 36 sweet churros in 3 hours.[26]

The first task for pastry or pâtisserie week required the remaining four contestants to bake 24 palmiers, with two different savoury fillings and shapes. The technical challenge was to make a Savarin, a liqueur-soaked yeast cake, which none of the contestants had made before. The final challenge was to make 36 fondant fancies.[30][31]

Benjamin stalks off to the stands muttering to himself that it was a ball, not a strike, and throws himself into a seat near where Rom has been sitting the whole time. The Niners manage two outs against the Logicians at the top of the ninth inning, and Worf throws the ball to Nog at home plate just as the Vulcan batter steps across and returns to the Logicians dugout. Nog doesn't manage to tag him out, but the runner didn't actually step on the plate. Odo watches silently, and O'Brien realizes what must have happened, but Nog doesn't know which player it was! Failing any better idea, he runs to the Logicians dugout and starts tagging each one, but the last one on the bench runs toward home at the last second. Nog throws to Jake, who tags the Vulcan out as he slides in. They get the third out!

This Summer on PBS, follow the trials and tribulations of passionate amateur bakers whose goal is to be named the U.K.s best. Each week, the bakers tackle a different skill, the difficulty of which increases as the competition unfolds.

Perhaps the reason why my Trek through Deep Space Nine was on hold for a while, was because the universe knew that this strawberry milkshake of an episode would be exactly what I needed this week.

For the Signature Challenge this week, the bakers were asked to make a batch of 18 identical decorative illusion macarons in two hours. The bakers could use any flavors they wished in order to put their signature spin on this classic, but the judges wanted the macarons to look like something other than a macaron.

For the Technical Challenge, the bakers must follow a pared-down recipe they have never seen before. This week they were asked to bake 12 garibaldi biscuits, also known as squashed fly biscuits. They had one hour and 45 minutes to make the biscuits which consist of two thin layers of biscuit sandwiching a layer of currants. They were also asked to decorate the biscuits with feathered chocolate. The judges then judged the bakes from worst to best in a blind judging, not knowing which biscuits belonged to which baker.

At the other end of the scale, Carole, Maisam, and Rebs were all in contention to be eliminated. I think only winning the Technical Challenge saved Rebs from elimination. This meant that Maisam was the baker who was sent home, with her bakes being rather underwhelming this week.

Rose: I've never been in jail. I won't make it. They always prey on the weak and innocent. The others will taunt me for trying to excel at my work in the laundry. I'll fall in with a bad crowd, whose leader looks like Ethel Merman. And I'll be forced to engineer a daring prison break using my laundry cart. From that time on, I won't know a moment's peace. I'll scar my fingerprints with battery acid and I'll run from town to town, taking jobs that people have who got bad grades in school. And then one day, they'll find me, holed up in a little shack in the Louisiana bayou. And a sheriff named Bull will call my name out over a megaphone and when I make a run for it he'll riddle my body with bullets! Oh, please don't let them take me downtown! I want to live! I want to live!

Dominic Barrone of McKiernan Motors meets with Mike and Louis to ask them to quickly firm up a handshake deal he made with an old friend to buy a battery manufacturer. Louis annoys Barrone by wanting to do proper, not-so-quick due diligence and good thing, too, because they discover a problem that makes the deal a no go. As an alternative, Mike and Louis suggest McKiernan look at buying the battery division of a company called Tanaka that happens to be represented by Snidely Jack Soloff.

"Y'ERRRRRR OUTTA HEEEEEERE!!!"Sisko's old nemesis from Starfleet Academy, Solok, has arrived on the station for repairs. The two captains trade barbs as Sisko informs him that it will take two weeks before Solok's ship is back up and running. As he leaves the office, Solok takes a parting shot by saying that he's created a new holographic program that should interest Sisko: baseball.

Sisko convenes his senior staff to the ward room and announces that Solok's crew of Vulcans has challenged the station crew to a game of baseball. The crew enthusiastically agree, but none of them except the Siskos have ever played baseball before. They have two weeks to transform from a ragtag bunch of Starfleet officers into a baseball team. Calling themselves the Niners, the team consists of Sisko, Jake, Kira, O'Brien, Worf, Bashir, Ezri, and Nog. Leeta and Rom volunteer soon after and even manage to goad Quark into giving it a try. Sisko recruits Odo to be the umpire, trusting on his impeccable sense of fairness.

Producer Eric Coulter previously explained to RadioTimes.com: "Most of the exteriors will be in Shetland, and we'll have some interiors in Shetland also, but we'll do quite a lot of the interiors back in Glasgow." Out of 16 weeks of filming, the team spends six busy weeks in Shetland. Much of this is spent on the largest island, known as the Mainland. "It's a joy filming there," Coulter says. "People are genuinely supportive of the show."

During the incident, while Suryakumar did well to keep his composure and not respond to Kohli, the batter recalls that he was in a way intimidated by the sight of Kohli walking at him and sharing a long eye contact. Suryakumar added that given the importance of the match, it was important for him not to lose track of the situation and keep calm.

There will be six episodes in total, airing weekly on Friday nights until mid-April. If you need to catch up on any previous episodes ahead of the new series, you can do so on ITV Hub, where the full boxset so far can be found. 041b061a72