SpaceScotsman
@SpaceScotsman@startrek.website
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x08 "Orders of Magnitude" 19 hours ago:
Maybe she was an undercover romulan, sent to report if enterprise go too close to finding the cloaked ship, and now that Reeger is likely no longer a threat, and enterprise probably isn’t going to want to follow up, her job’s done so she’s off.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x08 "Orders of Magnitude" 23 hours ago:
M’Benga covering for Kirk is really good, I like that the setup for this was laid a couple of episodes ago. Kirk fighting on behalf of the crew to keep them from doing war crimes - it shows the level of camaraderie this crew has, which admiral reeger likely never experienced, and helps continue to cement Kirk as a member of the enterprise.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x08 "Orders of Magnitude" 23 hours ago:
I really enjoyed this one. The core moral dilemma of orders versus morals, captured in a strong A story and a decent B story. Genuine character growth, and an out for M’Benga that made sense, was in character, and felt justified. The direction was really nice, it captured the tense nature of the episode. The treknobabble for the A plot was pretty decent, and in the B plot I enjoyed the cave set - it felt used and full, not bare like they sometimes do. I really enjoyed the acting here - the Andorian leader gave me a hint of cardassian in his analytical takedown of humans, and the badmiral was really enjoyable from his upbeat arrival to steady decline into madness. The two Kirks getting along really well was enjoyable, and the synchronised walk and talk at the end was a nice way to wrap up the episode.
From this season’s approach, I’m guessing this episode drawing from old war films, in particular I am getting flavours of submarine hunts, chasing after wakes, and handling big questions of WMDs, the sanity of the chain of command. This is exactly the way I like those references embedded, allowing the trek to shine through, rather than the gimmick taking over.
My only immediate quibble in this episode was when Uhura went Rambo in the caves, it did feel like the Andorians went down a little easy, but I wasn’t that bothered by it. A’Sha leaving is fine, I guess, she didn’t feel very present throughout the season anyway.
Please, more of this type of episode.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x07 "Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass" 1 week ago:
I agree that Pike’s retrospective of his alternate life was a good idea to explore - its the kind of thing that older trek series would quickly shuffle on after that week’s episode (like O’briens stint in virtual jail). Pike has done a lot of thinking about coming to terms with his vision of his own future, so thinking about his alternate future was a necessary next step.
I just wish it had been given a better story in which to bubble about. If it’s a serious character point, let it be told in a serious story. Let us see his job as a captain of a discovery-science-diplomacy ship lead him down that path of self reflection. Adding a comedic glamour filter on top of everything, in my opinion, cheapens the end result. It bugs me that so far we had erica/scotty needing to be drunk to learn to get along, spock needing to be dreaming / nightmaring, and now pike and co. stuck in a Q game in order to grow as people.
I actually had no idea who Deidre Hall was, though from the visual language I got the impression she was meant to be “someone important”. I assumed they had picked a random actress and were making a meta-joke about guest actors on TV shows. I was half expecting her to vanish at the very end.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x07 "Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass" 1 week ago:
One of the things I love about Star Trek is when it allows us to see the best of humanity when faced with hard sci fi, working together despite adverse circumstances. TNG exemplified the utopian vision of humanity struggling against the odds but working together to get by. Voyager took aliens-of-the-week to an extreme yet still kept space for good character interactions alongside the sci-fi. Even DS9, which in its conception is closest to a soap opera, managed to mix family dynamics with spacefaring adventure. I will accept these older series had their fair share of stinkers, but all of these series were able to blend pastiches of classic film and stories into their episodes without it being hammy and grating.
Now, this episode. The key line is “Space adventures leave little time for humans to deal with their inner struggles”. This line is important because it is wrong.
- We’ve barely had any space adventures
- The best star trek does allow time for humans to deal with inner struggles
I enjoy Rhys Darby but not in this one. I’m glad they didn’t make this one be all a dream in the end and I like that the final scenes show some real character moments, but Uhura and M’Benga (and possibly also Pike) could have had their conversations in amongst non-gimmicked episodes. Also, the ship has a counsellor? Either they’re new, or haven’t been doing their job very well. How many times has Spock broken up with someone now? Didn’t care for the gimmick this episode. I fast forwarded through parts of it.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x06 "Off-Hour" 2 weeks ago:
I was wondering if this was meant to be the “origin story” of the dermal regenerator.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x06 "Off-Hour" 2 weeks ago:
For a moment I did wonder if pelia was going to be the one who goes out to take the readings, and it would be her going out with a bang.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x06 "Off-Hour" 2 weeks ago:
This one felt like we were halfway towards a proper episode. The plot had a big ethical decision, it had opportunity for growth, a decent if treknobabbly sci fi threat. But this episode really suffered from prequelitis - it never really felt that Chapel was going to do anything other than try to save Mbenga, we know mbenga survives in some capacity anyway, and Chapel’s decision is made within seconds with little room to explore “when should you let a patient go”. Ditto Spock’s grand sacrifice going out into the radiation, and a lack of tension around the pod being ejected. There was a lot going on here, possibly too much. The clear stand outs here are Scotty getting his drive and motivation to own engineering on enterprise, and nurse chapel getting the push to likewise take more agency of her life on enterprise.
I guess this is meant to be borrowing from the 24 style of show - the only 24 I’ve ever seen was when the Simpsons parodied it. Overall I didn’t really like that particular style of direction / editing, but it wasn’t terrible. It kind of bugged me that we only learnt what the threat we were counting down to was half way through the episode. This episode would probably have worked just as well without the counter, it didn’t add anything for me.
Random notes:
- The reference to the lift sketch was amusing
- Getting a bit more scortegas friendshipping is cute
- Good we managed to avoid some lizard space babies at warp limit
- Once again our Vulcan cadet comes up with a line that sounds superficially vulcan but which under scrutiny makes no sense (“I’m a vegetarian, therefore the thing you said about meat is illogical”).
- Lastly, this is probably one of the first instances where the crew acknowledge that starfleet ships apparently do not having proper electrical wiring and grounding on the control panels. That got a laugh out of me. They should fix that.
- Comment on How IMDB Users Rate Season 4 of SNW 2 weeks ago:
Worth noting that the trendline in that plot would be pointing down anyway, before you include season 4. That tends to happen for every long running TV show.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x05 "Level-Five Transporter Accident" 2 weeks ago:
It can be a bit difficult to get a read on what Vulcans are thinking as a viewer, It can’t be easy to act them out. I did think ethan peck was good in this one
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x05 "Level-Five Transporter Accident" 2 weeks ago:
“high jinks” might be intentional, and meant to be the vulcan’s way of being dismissive of the human’s nonsense by deliberately pronouncing it as two words.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x05 "Level-Five Transporter Accident" 3 weeks ago:
I went into this episode blind, but the moment Scotty mentioned the puppet was going to be the transporter payload I knew we were in for a tuvix situation. I did not realise it would be quite on this scale. I don’t hate the premise of the episode. It reminded me a lot of the TNG episode where they all get turned into children, and this is a universe where Tom Paris got turned into a lizard after all. I do absolutely hate the cop-out at the end where it turns out it was all a dream. It means that spock was the only character that had opportunity for development and growth, and no-one else gets to share in that. Either go all in on the zany adventures, or dont, but never waste the audience’s time like this.
But hey, you want puppets, I’ll judge you on the puppets. I think they were generally well designed. While the “body language” was expressive, I don’t think the faces were as good as they could have been - There were only a handful of times where changes in eyes and eyebrows really stood out. I also feel that the writing and voice acting for the puppet character’s dialogue was not great, but that gets hand-waved away at the end where we realise as puppets they’re not quite the same people The endpoint of letting go and embracing the madness was a nice resolution to the absurd situation, however I did not feel like the cartoon physics played through.
The orion plot was OK, used as the necessary antagonists to drive the plot. But other than some moments from Joe Lo Truglio, who was a perfect choice for an empathetic male orion, the invaders could have been any invading alien species and nothing really specific to orions was needed. I’m also confused by the huge orion vessel, unless I’ve misread the scale, there should be hundreds at least but at no point did anyone think to help out the 3 or 4 orions actually invading the enterprise. But maybe none of this matters, because hey, it was all a dream.
With some of the other gimmicky episodes, I’ve instantly wanted to re-watch them once I finished. Here, once was enough, which is not a great indicator for the episode overall.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x04 "A Case of Chiaroscuro" 4 weeks ago:
Kor was good. When a new Klingon character is introduced, they need something to differentiate themselves from the stereotype of the honor-bound aggressive wine-guzzler. Kor here stood out in his approach to running the occupation and his presence on the screen.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x04 "A Case of Chiaroscuro" 4 weeks ago:
This is the first episode this season that I’ve really enjoyed.
The direction, lighting, filtering, was all great and on point. I really enjoyed the story, the A plot was a nice wartime rebel story and the B plot was pretty decent too. I was feeling shades of some of the “retro themed” ST episodes from the 90s. The set design was great on the planet.
The Klingons here are used well - seeing the way they act during wartime here they feel almost cardassian in how they treat the native population, but out also makes sense given what we’re told about how they acted during this time. I liked seeing Scotty and Ortega just hanging out. La’an getting help to deal with her problems is good, and seeing her doggedly chase down the truth was nice, though I’m a little unclear in exactly what the chain of events was with the signals and the transporter. Mbenga and una were really sharp on the planet and I enjoyed their acting.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x03 "Human Best Friend" 5 weeks ago:
Mixed bag of an episode.
I liked that we got some proper character development - Spock and Kirk coming closer together, an origin point for their friendship is good to see, and the hallucination was a useful way to explain why spock would be willing to open up to such a friendship in the first place. Ortegas and Scotty similarly got some satisfying growth, and the quite unprofessional arguing between them didn’t end drag on for too long.
I did not like the first couple of acts. I know this is meant to be a comedy episode, but none of the jokes really landed for me, it was just kind of a slog to get through. I’m not a big fan of “stoner / drunk” humour in other shows, and it’s not a whole lot better here. I am not sure if the alien host was meant to be funny or charming, but they just came across as mildly annoying. If I compare this to pleasure-planet episodes we’ve seen in other trek shows, I don’t feel the pleasure planet really added a whole lot. CG sequences aside, they were in a fancy hotel more than an actual planet.
Something that really bugged me is that despite repeated references to alternate shifts, at no point did any of the “alphas” think that maybe it might be worth handing off the negotiations or asking for help with the bomb. It speaks to a kind of arrogance that doesn’t really play well given the whole point of the episode is learning to rely on others.
The final act is again mixed. The idea of a pressure bomb, the sci fi equivalent of a landmine, is a great way of building tension, brings ortegas and scotty together fully. But that it then also provides the solution for the diplomatic problems make no sense. The aliens say that particular type of bomb is part of a peace ritual that hasn’t been seen in generations, but then why would a separatist use that for their sabotage?
Overall it was alright, but not amazing.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x02 "Griffin Incident" 5 weeks ago:
I don’t disagree with that… I guess limited character growth is one of the disappointing outcomes for any prequel media.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x02 "Griffin Incident" 1 month ago:
This was a very creepy episode, and as a standalone sci fi fantasy horror piece it works well. But it doesn’t feel trek. Here’s my conspiracy: With the dramatic different in tone, direction, the repeated references to section 12, this is a Poorly Disguised Pilot that the producers were using to test the waters for an x-files like section 12 spinoff.
Overall, I did not enjoy it. I don’t seek out this kind of film normally, and I might have enjoyed it if it had led to anything interesting happening, but ultimately it has not left them with any further progress. All the dramatic moments between the away team and the “others” they hallucinated were basically “then they woke up and it was all a dream”, so no relationship progress there. And within themselves, aside from more unresolved trauma, Spock seems no closer to aligning his human and vulcan selves, La’an hasn’t really learned anything new about her violent tendencies she didn’t already know from the last episode, and Kirk never even got to have the chat with his family because the network apparently cut out.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x01 "Valles Marineris" 1 month ago:
Vulcans can be arrogant, but they also have some personality to balance it out. I think part of the problem is we haven’t seen much, other than a sliver of backstory at the end of the episode
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x01 "Valles Marineris" 1 month ago:
I do think the away team section needed another pass, either on the writing or the direction. It had some action moments, but at the same time it didn’t feel like anything the away team actually did carried any impact,and never that they were in any real danger. The only bit that actually felt it had real energy was the archeopteryx getting punched in the face.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x01 "Valles Marineris" 1 month ago:
I have mixed feelings about this episode.
The A story, with the diplomacy, philosophising about how to encounter and deal with new species, I enjoyed a lot. The ending of the time loop was rather inevitable, it being a time loop set in the past, but it worked. It was a difficult choice and it had to be made. “Pike must suffer” I guess. The translation system leaking information through subtle differences in grammar is a nice idea, it felt a bit underused as a concept though, would have been a good topic for Uhura to explore. This kind of political, philosophical, with a hint of sci-fi, story is exactly what I want from Star Trek. More of this please.
The B story, down on the planet, with the dinosaurs, didn’t grab me. First off, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just fly the shuttle right to the wreck, why did they need to deal with the Rex? Other than getting the drive, this entire section could have been cut and the episode would not have lost anything. I get the feeling the VFX artists had a lot of fun with that section though.
Overall, it was an okay opener. Extra remarks:
- Our new vulcan is a flanderisation of vulcans, and not in a good way. “I am familiar with all earth dialects”. Really? All 7000+ of them? I hope they get their comeuppance at some point soon.
- Pelia’s voice seems much raspier this season. She makes another DW reference. Didn’t work for me, it felt a bit too obvious and in your face. If they’re going to keep making these, something more subtle might have worked, particularly for this episode given DW has had a few dinosaur episodes.
- I am really enjoying the Scotty vs Ortegas game. Looking forward to more of this
- La’An’s business looks interesting, though I hope wherever this goes is distinct from the stuff we’ve already covered with Bashir, Una, and Khan.
- Comment on X could be banned in UK amid sexualised AI images concerns 7 months ago:
I want it banned. Then I want to see all the MPs who have continued to use it these past years figure out where they’re going to get their “engagement” from now.
- Comment on Anon is a fan of GabeN 8 months ago:
are you complaining that smaller devs get a bigger cut than larger devs? That’s certainly an interesting gripe…
Smaller devs have to pay 30% of their revenues to steam. If a game sells well enough, their revenue share increases and steam takes a smaller cut, 25 or even 20%. This greatly benefits publishers of big games and unfairly punishes smaller developers. I think that’s a perfectly fair gripe.
- Comment on Anon is a fan of GabeN 8 months ago:
Forgot about steam’s forced DRM on purchases. Forgot about their inconsistent policing of content in games they sell. Forgot about steam not wanting accounts to be inherited when you pass away. Forgot about their 30% cut for small devs while bigger devs get a smaller cut. Forgot about a lot of things.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x10 "New Life and New Civilizations" 11 months ago:
Pike got his “that’s rough buddy” moment.
I am very glad we got to revisit this storyline. There was a lot left to explain in that dimensional prison, and using it as a finale to neatly wrap a lot of different plot threads was great. I was really interested in that guardian figure from the earlier episode, knowing now that it ended up being Batel in a kind of asymptotic time loop is pretty crazy, but it is a very poetic ending. She can’t really live a life with Pike, and this is an ending that gives her meaning.
When Batel’s hands started glowing for a moment I genuinely thought she was going to regenerate à la time lord. And in the end I guess she kind of did! I half expected her to start babbling about some cosmic koala when she had stars in her eyes, I’m glad she didn’t. The ending took a serious tone, and that worked very well.
This episode uses what is effectively a dream sequence and those you have to be careful with. It works well here because the concept of time, cause, and effect have already been established as in play here so even if it never turned out as the actual in-universe outcome, it still feels like it has meaning. I note that the show giving us Pike’s alternate future had he not (will he have had not? tenses are hard with time travel) got in the accident for me cements the fact that he really is going to end up as his future vision told him. There’s no avoiding it now.
I am not sure I really followed a lot of the treknobabble in this one. I don’t get how the entity managed to reconstruct itself, nor why there was a whole debate about phasers being complementary instead of additive. But as a plot device to get things moving it was serviceable. Also, just a note, if you’re firing a stream of ANTI protons into the atmosphere, one would expect the antimatter to annihilate on impact with the upper atmosphere. I did find it hilarious that there’s two massive red lasers with the same power as a star beaming in through the balcony and none of the natives there were bothered by it enough to get out of their seats!
The planet design was really cool, the big floating churchey architecture was giving me Halo vibes. It’s interesting that the planet has no warp travel but still makes contact with alien races. I wonder if then the Feds would bother to help them out in the aftermath, or if they just left them to it. They kind of should take responsibility, given it was them that unleashed the evil in the first place. Even if it’s just to loan them that eye regeneration thing for a few hours.
Overall, this was a nice finale, and given it didn’t end on a pointless cliffhanger, and wrapped up most of the threads well, one of the better ones as TV dramas go.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x09 "Terrarium" 1 year ago:
I really enjoyed this one.
We finally get some real movement on the Ortegas trauma that was set up earlier in the season and the solution, forced exposure therapy, is pretty wild. Ortegas managed to overcome it fairly well, which does back up the “she passed her psych eval” stated in an earlier episode. Not only does she overcome a personal problem, but she actually manages some form of diplomacy across multiple alien species. Way to go.
My biggrumble with this episode is the ending. I saw it coming a mile away, there’s no practical way to end it other than finding some excuse to write out the good!gorn. I think the episode did not even need the aliens running things behind the scenes, it would have been perfectly fine to just have the spatial anomaly and a crash landing as the setup.
I hope that Ortegas remembers that La’an killed the Gorn, that will make for some nice drama later. I also hope that Ortegas remembers enough that she could try to advocate for the Gorn. While this episode wasn’t quite “Darmok”, Ortegas shows a lot of aptitude for cross-species communication, and that needs to be used alongside her piloting.
The Uhura-Pike drama was a bit less enjoyable. At the end of the episode pike basically says he would have stayed anyway, which undermines the whole B-Plot of the episode. If anything it should have been a Pike-Una debate. And with a more pressing need than “These people need a vaccine absolutely right now but also they can wait a couple days if need be”.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x08 "Four-and-a-Half-Vulcans" 1 year ago:
Another comedy episode? You know what, if that’s what SNW is, a comedy series, maybe it doesn’t bother me. If I lower my expectations and just lean right into it, the fact that we have a slightly lower rate of “serious” episodes is fine. Maybe if I keep repeating that to myself I’ll start to believe it.
The whole episode was fun, taken as a series of “what if” vignettes, and I did enjoy it, but it is lacking that spark that makes Star Trek great.
The plot setup is totally contrived, and I am a bit miffed that we missed out on a “how can we avoid breaking the prime directive” episode. And it does seem a bit like a rehash of the episode we already had with spock. As fun as it was to see the other actors do the whole “I’m a different person for an episode” episode. I have no idea why their hairstyles changed so suddenly but I love it anyway. Especially Pike’s JoJo’s-Bizarre-Adventure hair.
This is purely my personal preference - I really am not a fan of montage scenes set to songs in TV episodes in general. So the marching scene at the start just felt awkward to me. Not very trek. I don’t mind this kind of thing so much in films, or in “musical” episodes, but it didn’t really click for me here. It does fit a bit better when I realised this was going to be a comedy episode.
Patton oswalt was great here. For a moment I wondered if the storyline they were going to go for was that Una had been mind-melded into falling for Doug, as a b-plot to mirror what happened with Uhura/Beto. It seems very easy to basically date-rape-drug humans for a vulcan to take advantage of them. I feel like this story idea merits deeper exploration. As it is, we never really get an explanation other than “they’re really into each other”, which is fine I suppose.
All of the new vulcans being mean to spock contrasting with what must be the only vulcan there, Doug, who is envious was an interesting choice but never goes anywhere. Doug never gets a chance to chastise them on their bullying, and I am sure he would have been able to derive a punishingly logical reason why bullying is bad.
The writing completely skipped over the mind melds and catra explorations into 3 of the 4 characters. What did they talk to spock about? How much of a push did Pike need to realise he was hurting his crew? How did uhura initially react when she realised she had brainwashed someone with the intent to further a relationship with them? How did chapel come to terms with the fact that she’ll have to give up her science experiments? This all would have helped to develop the characters. And in the one we did see, given how driven La’an was to become a mirror universe character, I don’t understand how a dream sequence dance with spock was enough to change her mind. Maybe there are some visual metaphors in the direction I’m missing. Or maybe it was literal and Spock dream danced with Pike to change him back too!
Some stand out scenes with Kirk and Scotty. Also Batel speaking out against power, challenging perceptions, and then getting recognition and a job offer all while struggling with a new medical disability. That was a nice outcome.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x07 "What Is Starfleet?" 1 year ago:
I really did not enjoy this one.
The “documentary” that ends up being made feels like the worst kind of propaganda that tries to feign a sense of “there’s two sides to every argument”, all while clearly pushing in favour of the agenda the documentary initially tried to critique anyway. It felt at moments like a military recruitment advertisement. I would not choose to watch such a documentary in real life, and watching it within a star trek episode just feels like I’ve wasted my time.
The writing makes use of the idea of military censorship and a film that jump cuts around to not so cleverly hide the fact that the writers are missing a plot. We are presented with a people in conflict, who abuse a creature to create a weapon. We have no other information about the conflict, beyond “there’s mass casualties”. No explanation of why starfleet is involved beyond “starfleet is here to help”. No explanation why they chose to make that kind of weapon in particular. On the matter of the alien war we are left to fill the gaps ourselves entirely, and because our in-universe director is acting in the role of an unreliable narrator, we have no idea if any of what ended up in the film they ended up making can even be trusted. That FOIA disclaimer at the start could be just as real as those films that say “based on a true story” when they are anything but.
We did get some good character development, particularly with Ortegas finally being up front and open about what she’s been through recently. But not really enough for it to feel like it matters. Ditto Uhura and Spock. Furthermore, despite self-harm and suicide being a central theme of the episode, other than an incredibly brief argument with the alien scientists about whether thier victim should be allowed to commit suicide, it’s not really debated. The crew just accept that they need to do an assisted suicide, and that’s that. Fair enough, if that’s how human morals work centuries from now, but then it leads again to an episode without a useful plot. For contrast, multiple past star trek series have had their take on this topic and done a much better job.
After watching this I am left unsure what wider contribution this episode is meant to make to the series. For all the silliness of the comedy episodes, at least they were entertaining to watch and usually had at least one major plot development by the end. This one could have been cut from the season roster and nothing would have been lost.
Random assorted notes:
- The decoded alien vocalisations kind of sounded like whalesong to me. Perfect opportunity for some cetecean ops, right? nope.
- Beto is shown to be incredibly manipulative, especially with recording people who don’t want to be recorded. Why on earth is he not in the brig?
- Many times in the episode the direction attempts to foreshadow someone dying. I thought for a moment the writers were going to be brave and kill off someone in the crew. Particularly when chapel and spock are stretchered in with uhura standing there in shock. Nope, it’s the random alien of the week instead.
- The alien visuals, both the CG and prosthetics were very nice. I like the idea of a species that, like some animals on earth, begins life underwater and then metamorphoses into something that lives in a completely different environment out of water. That was possibly the only highlight of the episode for me.
Looking forward to the next one, it can’t possibly be worse than this.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x06 "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail" 1 year ago:
I enjoyed this one, though I feel it could have been better. The metaphor in the title and used in the episode is a perfect one for the situation.
I was convinced up until the reveal that the “alien” was a sort of scavenging species 0 of the Borg, with the robotic look and the ability to adapt to phaser fire. I’m not sure how I feel about the writers going in a different direction. It fits with the theme OK, but the ending scene where they’re all reminiscing about this forgotten crew of humans past didn’t go down well for me. It’s a generational ship, none of the original “good guys” were still on it, and it is very tempting to do the maths that for the 7000 on that ship, many thousands more have probably died and would die on the planets they’ve killed.
The ultimate lesson, of needing to have empathy even for your enemies is a very important one. Seeing how that is used to help Kirk grow is nice, and from what I remember, it is something he embodies quite a lot in his captaining. However, I am very confused why everyone is so bothered by the fact that they were humans. Surely they didn’t need to be humans for this lesson to be learnt. They’re all part of a federation of different species, and Kirk’s captain literally is not a human.
The phone setup is a hilarious, and really clever solution to a problem, but plot-wise it fails to achieve anything because when the Enterprise crew actually need to use the phones, the alien ship and the comms jamming has already been disabled. But they use the phones anyway. I question whether a closed airlock decompressing would have quite enough inertia to balance out a chemical thruster, and if it was, why did they need the chemical thrusters at all in the first place. I felt like what was going on on the Enterprise was much less interesting than what we saw in the Farragut. I wonder how the episode might have turned out if it was shot entirely from the Farragut’s perspective, with no hints of what happened on the enterprise.
Random other thoughts:
- Getting to see more of Scotty is really nice, especially his acerbic dialogue.
- Doctor M’benga, head medical officer, warzone survivor, having little screentime other than running phone cables and joysticks around is funny.
- Ortegas getting a light scolding for being a wee bit suicidal is all we got for her ongoing sub-plot.
- La’an has shown a previous liking for Kirk, but we didn’t really have a chance to explore what her new thing with Spock means for that.
- I hope the transporter buffer wasn’t affected by all this now that it’s holding a literal horror from beyond in it
- Comment on Hmmm... 1 year ago:
I like this as a replacement for the Winnie the Pooh tuxedo image macro
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x05 "Through the Lens of Time" 1 year ago:
Given it’s been established the only person who can really help control Batel is Spock, and he is incommunicado for the whole episode, both Batel and Gamble should have been in confinement as soon as possible.