Submitted 3 weeks ago by ValueSubtracted@startrek.website to startrek@startrek.website
A visiting instructor arrives at the Academy and uses an unorthodox method to help our cadets process the emotions of recent trauma. At the same time, a cadet faces an unexpected challenge that will alter the trajectory of her life forever.
Written by: Gaia Violo & Jane Maggs
Directed by: Andi Armaganian
There is no spoiler protection in the episode discussion threads, and spoiler tags are not necessary!
Since we didn’t really get to see, I wonder how Sam’s personality is going to change in next week’s episode. A whole 17 years, having an actual childhood, being added to your life could make for an interesting transformation.
Kasq looks like a location straight out of No Man’s Sky. What a creepy vibe it has.
I wonder how Sam’s personality is going to change in next week’s episode.
I was thinking the same thing. In theory, she shouldn’t have any memories of her time at the Academy to date…maybe the Doc was able to describe it to her in excruciating detail.
They mention she was going to have both sets of memories, but definitely having a childhood of her own will change her perspective on both her previous experiences and what comes next.
The Makers stated that she would retain both sets of memories.
Not sure how that would work but she’s not an organic being. Perhaps her original memories would have been encoded and available for access as she matured.
I was not ready for the callback to “Real Life”.
I mentioned to my wife, after Sam had asked, that the Doctor had, in fact, been in love at least once, and maybe three times, but I wasn’t sure one of them counted.
Seems I was wrong. That one did count.
Well they couldn’t show anything from “Blink of an Eye”. They never showed his son.
“The only thing that allows me to bear my infinity is not having to love anyone” may be one of the most devastating lines I’ve ever heard.
So… I cried
10/10. No notes.
In my view, perhaps the strongest episode yet.
Just goes to show that YMMV remains a truism.
I wonder why the old TOS fans like me are less impatient with fundamentals of human existence are presented through the growth of young adults?
Sincerely, like resilience in the face of trauma is something many 30 and 40 year olds struggle with. I didn’t see this as sophomoric at all.
So, I wonder why episodes like this aren’t landing as well for folks 20 or even 30 years younger than I…
I don’t have any issue with seeing young adults growing and dealing with trauma. This episode has a lot of pieces working together in the overall storyline, I just don’t think it was that compelling within the episode.
The drama class half of the episode didn’t really go off. Maybe because I only know the play from what the episode told me about it, but I think it’s more like the actual growth part got cut off. We spend time with drunk Tarima (yawn) and then short cut the cadets actually performing the play with each other. That would have been the climax of that story, them getting into character, relating to it, working through it and reaching some sort of understanding or catharsis but that scene gets hand waved. Probably needed a full 45 minutes to do right too.
Or the Sam story, which was closer to the mark but still failed to create tension or consequences and ended up getting resolved neatly with a happy ending. Give Sam half an episode to be dead, for people to be sad, and the Doctor half an episode to reflect on it, resolving to do better before tying it up with a bow and it could have been great.
I love that the show isn’t constantly balls to the wall action and we’re getting a lot of character focus but the story juggling bit this episode in the ass and it isn’t the first to be trying to do too much and fumble the execution.
I only know the play from what the episode told me about it
I was unfamiliar with it too, but I feel like I got what I needed to from the description.
I unfortunately found Tarima’s messy response to her trauma very…familiar, on multiple levels.
I wonder why the old TOS fans like me are less impatient with fundamentals of human existence being presented through the growth of young adults?
I’m a TNG person myself. One thing that I very much liked about TNG, DS9, SNW, and to an extent VOY was the competency porn. (And then totally inverted in LDK)
This show doesn’t have much of that. It doesn’t even have what ENT had, which learning to be the professionals we want to see. This is still kids learning to be adults. That’s a different journey entirely.
Don’t get me wrong, I quite like it. But it has issues. But then, don’t they all?
this is great Trek, among the best Trek, all about how to keep going after loss and failure, with help, and, just as important, by giving help if you can.
it got me all face wet like the end of TNG “The Offspring”, Data’s daughter, but the focus there was more on loss than what Data learned and how he grew from his loss. This ep was a celebration of that resilience after trauma.
Maybe I’m just getting too old and grumpy for this teeny drama emotional crap, but for me this was the worst episode yet. I get that this was effectively trauma therapy after the Miyazaki incident, but boy was is not entertaining. It’s all just “oh, we are so damaged, nothing will ever be the same”. There’s nothing really at stake, no tension, no climax, just whining and speaking way too much in metaphors for my liking. I’m still watching Star Trek here after all and not some artsy independent movie.
It doesn’t not sound old and grumpy…
It’s disappointing worldbuilding that there is no advanced mental/medical health services everpresent already that people just use whenever. Why isn’t trauma recovery a medical procedure? Why isn’t there a holodeck for use as a therapeutic tool? The hologram ‘experiencing a childhood’ is literally a version of that already. 1k years in the future and people need theatre to teach them to manage their mental health…
But such things would require the showrunners to give a shit about the science fiction part of startrek and not abuse the IP for a modern day teen character drama set in a generic tech fiction setting. The technology and the world in this show is not treated as a meaningful character itself, the science and technology is written for the convenience of the plot and does not form a cohesive of consistent world. This lack of object storytelling is a modern writing issue that makes the stories lack grounding in shared reality. Each episode of this show might as well just be a dream one of the characters had.
The way it is done is very much Trek, though. Geordi didn’t get his blindness “fixed”, even though Pulaski gave him options to do so. In contrast to the genre of cyberpunk (which you brought up in a different comment), Trek is not about overcoming what it means to be human, but fully embracing the full human nature. Disabilities are not meant to be overcome or erased (but to what degree this is true could of course be debated), but accepted.
Likewise, I guess the process overcoming trauma is considered as the goal, because you learn something from it. Of course everybody could just take a happy pill every day, but likewise, they could create genetically enhanced superhumans that try to take over the universe. But this is not what Star Trek is about, and it never was.
But I agree that the psychological treatment is a bit subpar in this episode, and it is weird that they did not introduce a trained psychiatrist/counselor, but instead a Lieutenant who bears her own share of trauma. Definitely educational, but solely from a therapeutic perspective, probably lacking.
Yeah, I think this one didn’t really come together as well as it could have. Should have focused on the Sam story more and do more to make it feel like she was in real danger. When she was dead I involuntarily yelled “yeah right!”. Lo and behold it lasted like under a minute. The drama and Caleb/Tarima story could have more easily been cut short without losing anything.
Probably one of the worst eps, but I’m happy to say that’s actually a pretty high bar for this show so far and this is more meh than truly bad (here I’m flashing back to like 20 different Discovery episodes where the episode ended and I was tearing my hair out over how stupid they were - that’s the real trauma here)
Also happy to speculate that, with two episodes left, the pendulum seems likely to swing back to excitement next week and I’m here for it.
Maybe it was because of Mary Wiseman, but for some reason this felt like a Discovery episode, and not in a good way. I liked Tilly on Discovery, but here she just annoyed me for some reason, felt very smug in all her dealings with the cadets.
I agree that I felt this was the weakest. This felt like actors writing an episode for actors about the healing power of ACTING! Just…calm down and see a real mental health professional.
Cableb and Tarima have negative chemistry, and I wish the writers would stop trying to make that happen, but here we are.
The stuff with SAM was great and should have been the A-plot.
Overall I’m still liking the show but this was definitely one of the weakest so far.
Just…calm down and see a real mental health professional.
I think it’s clear that, much like Nog in “It’s Only A Paper Moon”, the cadets (particularly Tarima) have not been receptive to conventional therapy, which is extremely predictive of whether said therapy will be effective.
If anyone is curious as to why the Protostar crew have only had a single mention, Aaron Waltke has clarified that PRO was being written at the same time as SFA.
I think overall a solid episode. I agree with some commentators, the SAM plot should have been the main focus (basically because that would make it a Doctor episode). The stakes were indeed low, because you know SAM won’t die. I’m also intrigued in how she’ll behave from now on.
The theatre plot, no idea. Why do they need Tilly to do it? Especially if all she does is ask “What do you think this line means?” Like a high school literature teacher. You’d think they bring her because she experienced trauma herself, but it’s not even brought up really? Anyway, their therapy consisted of reading the lines, some drunk shouting and reconciliation. Not sure this is how it works.
The previous episode is still the weakest of the season to me, by far. This one again felt like two plots that were a bit cut short. I think the idea of dealing with trauma in these young people is a good theme for an episode, but I’m not sure what the episode is trying to tell me. I think it would have been more interesting to see the War Academy’s approach to trauma therapy (I mean it’s one of their cadets that died) and compare it to SFA, and then maybe we’d get something out of this. Overall, a 7/10 for me with a tendency towards 6.
Annotations for 1x08 are up at: startrek.website/post/36104352
@ValueSubtracted I had hoped there wouldn't be such toxic fandom on this platform once I left others.
I think any platform has its share of colourful characters. The Fediverse is largely pretty good, IMO, even when we don’t always agree.
@ValueSubtracted There is good discourse, and then there is anger for anger's sake simply because people can't be objective beyond their expectations.
great episode. I do wish the actress who plays Tarima was better acting. I think her scenes were the weakest
Maybe I just haven’t noticed up until this point, but this episode it was definitely noticeable.
showmeyourkizinti@startrek.website 2 weeks ago
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bgainor@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
I literally spent the whole episode whispering “don’t kill SAM, don’t kill SAM” to myself