Yes I know I’m behind everyone else!
First the away team spends a long time debating if they should proceed or… step outside for five seconds to call the ship. They ultimately decide that stepping outside for five seconds is not feasible.
But then literally one minute later Ensign Gamble is somehow beamed up. Presumably they must have called the ship to do this? Did they just… leave out the part about the (now obvious and real) danger? Was there a scene where Pike said “ok yeah his eyes are gone but you can keep going”?
Then later in the episode the away team spends a long time talking about trust and friendship while debating if they should walk on an invisible walkway instead of just like, I don’t know, tapping it lightly with their toe or throwing a pebble on it first?
The Ensign Gamble B-plot was good and freaky and featured some great acting by everyone involved. But the A plot felt like it was vibe-scripted! I love SNW but come on.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 9 hours ago
I think “vibe scripted” is harsh. The writers were bumping against the restriction that they need ::: spoiler spoiler Chapel blood next to anybody when they enter or exit the place. That’s why the alien buys it. Scaredy pants tries to go out on his own and gets fried. They wanted to avoid another entrance/exit on screen to keep us guessing how this Star Trek Inception works. :::
It’s a version of “commander, you better take a look at this.” It keeps the suspense up for the audience as Riker saunters over, maneuvering over multiple chairs, to take a look at the corpse of the mortal enemy of the federation. In a real military, Worf would say something like “heads up, Romulan casualties on the premise, everybody be on the lookout.” That’s to prevent the commander or anybody else from getting shot by a possible half-dead Rom in the rubble. But that’s not great television. It’s just script writing 101.