Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x10 "New Life and New Civilizations"
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 9 hours agoI wanted to sleep on this one too see if there would be anything I would appreciate after some reflection, but…no, not really.
I thought that the way they came to understanding what was going on was a little rushed and a bit too speculative
I think this is a big part of what didn’t work for me. They really wanted to get to the fireworks factory, and sidestepped most of the interesting potential in order to get there.
The extended fantasy/hallucination was the strongest part of the episode, but…it seemed to be entirely about Pike. Did Batel even experience it? The episode seemed completely uninterested in what she might be going through as she prepared to sacrifice herself.
And the conflict itself suffers from the “pah wraith problem” - I’m fine with the idea of a conflict between primordial good and evil…but it’s hard to make it interesting. All you can really do is focus on how it affects the people involved, and they were only semi-successful at that.
khaosworks@startrek.website 8 hours ago
I keep finding questions coming up in my head. Why would her chimerical DNA make Batel and the Vezda recognize and attack each other? Is it some kind of genetic memory, in which case any race that had encountered the Vezda would have the same reaction, and does that mean a Gorn or an Illyrian would have the same reaction? Or is it only a combo thing?
I was expecting, given what happened in “Through the Lens of History”, that it was actually the Gorn part of her that reacted. And that could have led into a revelation that the Gorn were created or designated as Vezda killers, a predator species to rid the galaxy of them. Which would then explain why they turned their predator instincts on the rest of the galaxy once the Vezda were apparently gotten rid of for good.
Or, the ancient race that imprisoned the Vezda created this telepathic alphabet that would send a message to the descendants of the people who helped them the first time around - so M’Benga and Uhura would read the messages as Swahili, La’An in Mandarin (which means La’An, despite being related to a Sikh, is ethnically also Chinese), maybe Scotty would read it as Gaelic, who knows? That would certainly make more sense than the random inscriptions somehow being related to M’Benga for whatever reason.
Or Batel would actually travel back in time to be the Beholder and we see her setting up the messages in a sort of bootstrap paradox - the messages were there because they were always meant to be there. A bootstrap paradox is hinted at in Batel’s dialogue but never quite explicated.
I don’t know. The more I think about the flaws in the plot the more I think it could all have been fixed with a little bit of thought and effort.
observantTrapezium@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
You are thinking it over way more than the writers did. This hole-ridden plot is just there to justify the action scenes. But I think it’s implied that Batel left the messages. Why were they vague and in those other languages? Just because!!
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 8 hours ago
That seemed to be the implication. In which case, I think it might have been better to have Batel get more fully “possessed,” and take the angle that she knows exactly what’s going on, and what needs to be done. It would take her agency out of the episode, but…the episode didn’t really give her any agency as it is.