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Lots of highs and lows for me this time around.

I won't get into the highs because they run along the same general things as the rest of the season: the quality of the show, stories, cast, acting, etc, have all been top-notch.

The lows... well, to say the episode was "a tad derivative" is being extremely generous. The word 'homage' is being thrown around, but I call outright theft when I see it. The elements from the first three Alien movies abounded: chestbursters, Spocks' Ash-like commentary on the Gorn, creatures using the vents, fake-Newt talking about the 'monsters', having something different happen genetically depending on the host, the dog-like appearance of the larger Gorn at the end, Hemmer's backwards death-dive... I could go on, but it was like an Alien greatest hits, mixed in with a bit of Predator with the thermal vision perspective. It was all a bit much and too on the nose for me. I also had a lot of trouble reconciling these Gorn with everything else we know about them, which is admittedly sparse, but still.

I'm certainly no xenobiology expert, but I'm having trouble accepting that a species so vicious, primal, and animalistic that it automatically feels compelled to brutally eliminate all of its siblings for dominance upon birth could ever evolve into a race that is capable of achieving space flight technology and establishing a hegemony of worlds as a government. It felt like a bridge too far for me. It is mentioned that they are highly intelligent, but then the same can be said of many species of animals on Earth, yet they're not all building spaceships and competing with humans for dominance. If this is how they are when young, how did they ever survive long enough and become numerous enough to get anything done? Also, if their method of reproduction requires impregnating a host organism with their young, that opens up a whole host of questions about their early development as a species and how they can continue to survive in such a fashion. Must they have a constant supply of other creatures in order to propagate their species? Unwieldy at best; unfeasible at worst. It works for the Alien, which was essentially a bio-weapon; it doesn't work for a sentient, space-faring race. I think this is yet another clear case of the writers not thinking far enough ahead and just writing in the moment with what they thought would be cool while ignoring the repercussions. Obviously we are required to accept that as they mature, the Gorn chill out quite a bit (at least enough to cooperate with one another), but man... I'd hate to see what their daycare system is like.

Moving on... yeah, Hemmer's death was sad and unexpected. The Enterprise D also went through a revolving door of Chief Engineers before they settled on Geordi, but this just felt out of left field. The character deserved so much more. I'm interested in finding out why the actor left the show - if it was just a story decision, or if he left for another reason. Oh, and by the way, he jumped off the cargo bay opening at the back underside of the engineering hull, not a nacelle as you said.

La'an's departure was also a surprise, coming one episode before the finale. Will we see her again or did they decide to quickly wrap up her role on the show? As she is a brand new character (one with a very distinctive name) that does not appear in any later Trek, they would have to sweep her under the rug at some point, but this seems too soon? With Uhura also leaving, it looks like we'll be getting a bunch of new faces next season, which I'm not really a fan of. One character I wish had departed would be Ortega. I thought she was great at first but her smarmy, gotta have a smartass response to everything shtick wore out it's welcome by ep 3 or 4. It just feels grating and tiresome after the 100th time. Ok, we get it, you're witty and the Captain puts up with it. Be serious for once because that can't be your only defining trait as a character.
This Space for Rent

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Yep, everything you said about the episode. I didn't say all of it because I wanted to leave something for you to say. ;)

My biggest problem with the episode, beyond all the ramifications that you mention, is that yes, it is theft, not homage. And the big problem with that is that is says that they can't think of new things to say. Gene Roddenberry once said that when someone asked him if he wasn't afraid of running out of stories to tell, he said no, because their canvas was the galaxy, so how could they run out of stories? He also wrote a bunch of edict's into TOS' bible, like no space battles, no mad scientists, etc, because he felt they'd already been overdone, and he didn't want to be telling old stories. I have to think he would not be pleased by this. Of course, the other day TrekCulture ran a video on things Roddenberry hated about Star Trek, and I have to say, he was opinionated. He was entitled as its creator, of course, but most of his gripes were after he lost control of it, so I think that has something to do with it.

Nacelle vs. cargo bay. Yeah, I saw a clip of that in a review video and realized it wasn't the nacelle. I though, aw hell, Val is going to point that out! BTW, I was being totally sarcastic when I said "a tad derivative."

I can't imagine La'an won't be back...she has far too much potential as a character and I think the actor is really good. Ortegas...the first time she said anything in the first episode, I said, she's going to get old really quick. Amazingly, I got used to it and don't think that much about it any more.

Completely unrelated to Star Trek, but it's Independence Day here, and about 10 pm local time. I'm being treated to non-stop whizzing, popping, and banging from all sides. You'd never guess fireworks are illegal in my state! But on the positive side, Jasmine has outgrown being afraid of them. Until I got up to come into the library and my real computer to type this, she was lying beside me on the couch, contented and totally unconcerned.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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I enjoyed the episode overall, but it I agree with all the criticisms you've both mentioned, I mean for the love of all things LEAVE THE CHESTBURSTERS TO ALIEN!!!

I guess since we only have one type of intelligent life, its hard to know if a primitive, cannibalistic, parasitic, etc etc, juvenile/newborn could ever evolve into something intelligent and capable of spaceflight... but then again, we are talking about a show/series with all kinds of things that dont/won't ever exist.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Let's hope that they never exist! :shock:

So, the season has finished. When I first saw a clip from the season finale...oh wait,


SPOILER ALERT!!!

and saw they were riffing on the classic episode Balance of Terror, I assumed it was in the current timeline of the show and so I figured the episode would annoy me. I mean, if Pike and Co encounter the Romulans attacking outposts with this brand new weapon, how could this possibly be a surprise to anyone when they do the exact same thing seven years later? So, I went into the episode expecting to be irked that the lazy writers said let's do this, it'll be neat, who cares about continuity?

Oh, was I wrong. What proceeded to unfold was the best episode of Star Trek in 20 years. Seriously, though Strange New Worlds has given us some decent episodes this season, this one was head and shoulders above the rest, and head, shoulder, torso, hips, and thighs above anything we've gotten from Discovery or Picard. Once Pike walked into his quarters and found older Admiral Pike, I was on the edge of my seat and stayed that way for the rest of the episode. I have not gone back and rewatched it yet to see if there was much they got wrong or to nitpick but that said, I thought it was pretty well brilliant. That's a word I don't use often, and certainly had not about Star Trek in its recent incarnations. But this episode just did so many things well. Firstly, it gave us a great "what if" version of Balance of Terror. Second, it successfully recaptured the dread of Yesterday's Enterprise by putting the Federation into a war that it was never supposed to be in. And finally, it brilliantly took the premise of City on the Edge of Forever, sacrificing someone you love to save the future, and turned it on its head by sacrificing yourself to save someone you love...and save the future too. And on that topic, they are really doing a good job building the Pike/Spock bond. Spock being the man of great honor he is, as of this point they have already established enough to explain why he would risk not just his career but his life in The Menagerie to take Pike to Talos IV. And yet I have no doubts they will continue to show us the strengthening of that bond over the course of the series.

What else was good? We heard Scotty! IMDB shows an actor as "engineer" so apparently they used an actually voice actor. However, I thought he sounded so much like Scotty that they had used that AI program that recreates voices, like was used for Val Kilmer for the new Top Gun and for James Earl Jones for Obi-wan Kenobi.

And Kirk.... I thought they did a good job of capturing his boldness, decisiveness, and the aura of extreme competence that surrounds him, without ever cresting over into excess. It will be interesting to see him again next season, in his proper incarnation in this timeline.

Oh, Una, what's going to happen now? We know she will be off the ship by the time Kirk takes charge, but hopefully they will have her around for the entire run of this series.

Actually, a couple minor quibbles after all. First, apparently the Neutral Zone is only 100 yards wide, as the two fleets were supposedly on their respective sides, yet staring down each other's muzzles. Second, I always thought the Farragut was a Constitution class ship, but researching it quickly right now, apparently that was never established in canon.

EDIT: Once I posted this and got up from the computer, I grabbed my copy of The Star Trek Encyclopedia and looked up the Farragut in it. It says Constitution class, and I would consider the Okudas to be more authoritative than the online sources I was looking at. Of course, the vampire cloud incident happened 2 years before the time of the main Strange New Worlds timeframe, and if that incident somehow wrecked the ship (crucial crew died and couldn't stop a warp core breach, maybe?), there would be plenty of time to christen a new ship Farragut, especially by the time of Balance of Terror. Apparently it just wasn't Constitution class.

FURTHER EDIT: Somehow I forgot to mention one of the best things about this episode. I had been dissatisfied with Pike's ruminations over how to avert his future. Look...he has already briefed Starfleet Command on what happened to Discovery. He could just go to the very few people who know and say look, my experience with the time crystal showed me the future. Not only am I going to become horribly disabled, but people are going to die. Decommission that ship now! Well, this episode finally addresses that, or any other possibility. He can change his fate...but only with galactic consequences. Maybe that's too tidy, but once you decide you are going to reuse a character with a known fate and show him that fate (and why would you not, and deprive yourself of that dramatic arc?), you have to do something to explain how he still comes to it. Time is a cruel mistress in science fiction. Mess with it, and it messes back. So, I don't have a problem with the concept that changing his fate is going to be major bad news for others.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Well, this time you really didn't leave me room to add anything... lol.

That was indeed the best episode of anything bearing the name Star Trek in many, many years, All the positives have been well highlighted already, so I'll just reinforce it all by saying it was a wonderful setup to help us further understand how and why Spock would risk everything years later for Pike. It also neatly puts to bed the whole question of whether they wrote themselves into a corner by having Pike see his fate. We now know it is not written in stone, but the consequences of avoiding it will be dire for everyone, and given who Pike is as a person, his fate is sealed. I think it would be wonderful if one day they close out the series with an epilogue of him and Vina on Talos IV. I've always wondered what happened after that closing shot in the Menagerie. Or maybe it's best left to the imagination?

Oh, and though Ortegas was downright nasty as a stand-in for Lt. Styles, I was blown away how refreshing it was to have the character be serious and professional for once, and not just here and there, but for the whole episode. I really wonder what happened in the intervening years to change her, but it can't come soon enough.

My very, very few negatives:

- Did not like the updated look of the maroon uniform from TWOK. The shiny fabric and mini logos everywhere work on the new classic uniforms, but the change was jarring and distracting on the movie-era ones. The whole elegant and sharp look is ruined by the additions, which looked garish and out of place. I could have lived with the arm modification, but the shoulder was too much. TrekCulture jokingly wondered if it was an update for the series in general in pace with everything else, or if the consequences of Pike changing the future actually trickled down to some tailor at Starfleet deciding on a slightly different look to the uniforms.

- More of a general comment than this specific episode, but I continue to despise the pew-pew lasers effect that Star Trek has settled on for phaser fire, whether it's hand weapons or starships. Actually, I think it started as far back as the Defiant in DS9, but at least that ship was fairly unique. Now, everything functions that way and someone should really tell the people in charge that it's completely and totally unrealistic. Sure it looks cool and is very actiony, but that's not how directed energy weapons work at all. Between the origin and target, there has to be a continuous, unbroken stream of energy/light because once it leaves the emitter, there is no way to make it continue to the target cohesively without it instantly dissipating. Just dumb. Thanks a lot, George.

- James Kirk.

I think the story would have worked just fine without introducing him. The point of the episode was more about Pike's presence on the Enterprise at that point in time than Kirk's absence, necessarily. I think it was too early to introduce the character and they just couldn't help themselves. Anyway, I hope it's a one-off because the character portrayal felt flat, and though the actor was fine and did not ape Shatner, I didn't feel like I was watching Kirk. Much of the charisma was lacking. Loved all the easter eggs though.

There you go... still found lots to say after all. :crazy:
This Space for Rent

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Well you certainly kept us on tenterhooks long enough, waiting to hear if you liked it! :D

I also thought that it would be wonderful if when the series wraps, they include the epilogue with Pike and Vina on Talos IV. I just hope the writers have that in mind!

Yeah, I didn't like that they darkened Ortegas' character like that, though they toned it down a bit from how Styles was, I believe. As both you and TrekCulture pointed out, who knows what experiences she will go through in seven years, but still, you don't like to see one of the crew going down the wrong path.

I also noticed the change to the TWOK uniform and while I thought it was unnecessary, I found it easier to ignore than you did. Oh by the way, on TrekCulture, these are always referred to as "monster maroons," at least by Sean Ferrick.

Yes, Star Wars is totally to blame by the "pew-pew" phaser effect. While you could certain design the weapon to fire like that, why would you? If it fires a continuous beam, that helps you guide it onto your target if you missed initially. But whether pew-pew or continuous, both franchises get something wrong. If this is a laser or next-generation (no pun intended) laser, you would not see it moving toward its target. It's moving at the speed of light. You'd either see it on, or see it off, but not see it on its way. I guess the way they do it is a necessary bit of license from hard science.

Kirk.... Buckle up, there will be more of him next season. Now, while I quite liked the new actor and the way he honored Kirk's decisiveness, etc. without trying to clone Shatner, for me, nobody will ever be Kirk except Shatner. Ditto Spock/Nimoy, etc. I grew up watching these people. I mean that literally. I saw some episodes of Star Trek in first run in the 60s when I was in my single digits. I will always connect the character to the original actor, no matter how good the replacement actor. That said, oddly enough I suppose if someone were suddenly to say "Obi-wan Kenobi," I would immediately think of Ewan McGregor. I of course adored Alec Guinness, but after the first movie we saw so little of him. In contrast, we had the three prequels in which Obi-wan played a large role, and of course now we've had the series. So, McGregor has had a lot more time on-screen in front of my eyeballs. And actually while I'm on this (off) topic, the actor who voices Obi-wan in the Clone Wars animated series sounds so much like Ewan McGregor that I had to look at the credits to see that it was not McGregor.

And to bring it back to Star Trek, I'm torn on Pike in terms of actor. I will probably always think first of Jeffrey Hunter, but he played Pike once, and played a version of him who as filled with doubts about the responsibilities he was shouldering, and always came across as angry and snappish. Compare and contrast with the wonderful Bruce Greenwood (who excels at everything he plays) in the Abrams movies and the wonderful Anson Mount we have now. Their portrayals are of a Pike that you'd love to work for, and part of that is you would know that if you screwed up you'd feel worst about it by having disappointed him, versus having your ass bitten off by the Hunter Pike. In any case, I guess this makes Pike possibly the luckiest character in Star Trek. He appeared in one episode only, but has now been reincarnated twice, by actors giving immensely more charismatic performances.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Ok...you all have intrigued me not a little bit with your reviews (and the spoilers don't bother me) because TOS will always be "My Star Trek".
And if this series is good enough to get positive comparisons to TOS, well maybe it's something I might want to watch.
So, the $10 question here is: will this [eventually] be available on DVD/BD/insert-latest-tech-medium/ whatever at some point?
I dont' stream stuff (at this time I won't go into the reason why) so I am wondering if I can eventually view it on disc (of whatever kind).
(And if that hope is never realized, well, I'm OK with that too.)

"Eternity is an awful long time, especially towards the end."

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.
It also depends on what sort of person you are.” -- CSL

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Olorin wrote: Tue Jul 12, 2022 11:29 am
I also thought that it would be wonderful if when the series wraps, they include the epilogue with Pike and Vina on Talos IV. I just hope the writers have that in mind!
I hope they make it happen. It would be a very poetic end and leave it all on a positive note for Pike. I mean, we all know it's going to happen, but Mount's Pike has endeared himself so quickly to us that I really want to see him get that closure on screen.
Olorin wrote: Tue Jul 12, 2022 11:29 am
Yeah, I didn't like that they darkened Ortegas' character like that, though they toned it down a bit from how Styles was, I believe. As both you and TrekCulture pointed out, who knows what experiences she will go through in seven years, but still, you don't like to see one of the crew going down the wrong path.
My guess would be that it was related to the Romulans somehow? I wanna say that was the reason for Style's hostility, but she's not an alternate Styles - the two characters would actually coexist, so it would be odd to have the same character motivation, but who knows.
Olorin wrote: Tue Jul 12, 2022 11:29 am
I also noticed the change to the TWOK uniform and while I thought it was unnecessary, I found it easier to ignore than you did. Oh by the way, on TrekCulture, these are always referred to as "monster maroons," at least by Sean Ferrick.
Yeah, I caught that and wonder where the term came from. Is it because they are monstrously cool? :laugh:
Olorin wrote: Tue Jul 12, 2022 11:29 am
Kirk.... Buckle up, there will be more of him next season. Now, while I quite liked the new actor and the way he honored Kirk's decisiveness, etc. without trying to clone Shatner, for me, nobody will ever be Kirk except Shatner. Ditto Spock/Nimoy, etc. I grew up watching these people. I mean that literally. I saw some episodes of Star Trek in first run in the 60s when I was in my single digits. I will always connect the character to the original actor, no matter how good the replacement actor. That said, oddly enough I suppose if someone were suddenly to say "Obi-wan Kenobi," I would immediately think of Ewan McGregor. I of course adored Alec Guinness, but after the first movie we saw so little of him. In contrast, we had the three prequels in which Obi-wan played a large role, and of course now we've had the series. So, McGregor has had a lot more time on-screen in front of my eyeballs. And actually while I'm on this (off) topic, the actor who voices Obi-wan in the Clone Wars animated series sounds so much like Ewan McGregor that I had to look at the credits to see that it was not McGregor.
Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that. Oh well. Like I said, I too liked the actor, but the performance just didn't say 'Kirk' to me. I think it will be one of those roles that will forever be tied to the original actor and everything and everyone else will simply pale by comparison. You bring up Nimoy and though I'm very much enjoying Peck's take on the character, that's another one that will never be better than the original. Come to think of it, I feel that way about the entire TOS crew. Big reason why the Abrams movies never did anything for me - it was always just a bunch of Hollywood faces-du-jour playing at being the TOS crew that can never be replaced. Star Wars I'm a little less attached to, but the Han Solo movie did zero for me without Ford being in the role. I still think of Alec Guinness first when I think of Kenobi, but yeah, McGregor is right next to him now.
Olorin wrote: Tue Jul 12, 2022 11:29 am
And to bring it back to Star Trek, I'm torn on Pike in terms of actor. I will probably always think first of Jeffrey Hunter, but he played Pike once, and played a version of him who as filled with doubts about the responsibilities he was shouldering, and always came across as angry and snappish. Compare and contrast with the wonderful Bruce Greenwood (who excels at everything he plays) in the Abrams movies and the wonderful Anson Mount we have now. Their portrayals are of a Pike that you'd love to work for, and part of that is you would know that if you screwed up you'd feel worst about it by having disappointed him, versus having your ass bitten off by the Hunter Pike. In any case, I guess this makes Pike possibly the luckiest character in Star Trek. He appeared in one episode only, but has now been reincarnated twice, by actors giving immensely more charismatic performances.
See, I dislike the Abramsverse so much that Bruce Greenwood made no impression on me. Wonderful actor, but he could have played any of a dozen roles in that movie and I wouldn't have blinked twice, so him being Pike was a non-event for me. Hunter is still Pike for me, but I know that at the rate this series is going, Mount will take that crown by the end.
Deimos wrote: Ok...you all have intrigued me not a little bit with your reviews (and the spoilers don't bother me) because TOS will always be "My Star Trek".
And if this series is good enough to get positive comparisons to TOS, well maybe it's something I might want to watch.
So, the $10 question here is: will this [eventually] be available on DVD/BD/insert-latest-tech-medium/ whatever at some point?
I dont' stream stuff (at this time I won't go into the reason why) so I am wondering if I can eventually view it on disc (of whatever kind).
(And if that hope is never realized, well, I'm OK with that too.)
If you had asked me this question just a few very short years ago, I would have looked at you strangely and said "You're kidding, right?"

Today? I honestly don't know. With the pervasiveness of streaming services, cloud storage, and digital downloads, the death of physical media has been accelerating at breakneck speed. With many of the major movie studios getting into the streaming business, putting stuff out on disc is no longer something they want to do because they make way more money on monthly subscriptions than they do off of your one-time purchase of a movie or show. To use Trek as an example, and I know it feels a bit contradictory with Paramount soon to release three versions of TMP and all the other TOS movies in 4K this year, but when it comes to newer stuff, I know they'd rather you sign up for Paramount Plus than go through the time, effort, and expense to put entire seasons of shows on disc. Then there's the whole thing about companies now claiming that even when you buy a disc, you don't actually own that movie. You're just paying for the right to see it. Uh... well, yeah, but they hate the fact that they can't terminate that privilege at a moment's notice and take that away from you, and that's what they can do when you only watch that content via streaming. This is why people complain that a lot movies seem to come and go on places like Disney+ and if you think you can watch anything at any time you want, you're dreaming. They want to control it all.

I know you said you're ok if it never happens, but don't be surprise when it actually doesn't for real.
This Space for Rent

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..."but they hate the fact that they can't terminate that privilege at a moment's notice and take that away from you, and that's what they can only watch that content via streaming. This is why people complain that a lot movies seem to come and go on places like Disney+ and if you think you can watch anything at any time you want, you're dreaming. They want to control it all."

Yep...it's exactly that; the reason I hate streaming...not the concept of it but that I am subject to some corporate entity's whims concerning when or even if I will be allowed to watch something.

And let us not forget that even if you watch a specific episode of [name of series] today, it might not be quiiiiite the same episode that you watch a year from now. Oh, it will have the same same cast, the same sound track, the same end credits.
But it might not be exactly the same episode in that it may have been edited... A word here, a 2 second visual there, and maybe even an entire scene, all removed because what didn't offend political/social sensibilities [on social Media] a year ago, are now unacceptable to air.

I keep waiting for the showing of the original To Kill a Mockingbird movie (with Gregory Peck) to be aired in a bowdlerized version where the word "nigger" has been excised or, what is more likely, dubbed with the word black or African American, thereby completely and totally gutting the powerful message of Harper Lee's story.

"Eternity is an awful long time, especially towards the end."

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.
It also depends on what sort of person you are.” -- CSL

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Valkrist wrote:
Olorin wrote: Tue Jul 12, 2022 11:29 am
I also noticed the change to the TWOK uniform and while I thought it was unnecessary, I found it easier to ignore than you did. Oh by the way, on TrekCulture, these are always referred to as "monster maroons," at least by Sean Ferrick.
Yeah, I caught that and wonder where the term came from. Is it because they are monstrously cool? :laugh:
I suspect it is something along those lines, actually. I think there's a lot of nostalgia for those uniforms. They were such a huge improvement style-wise over the dreadful pale pajamas they wore in TMP. Of course, as a functional uniform for anything more physically demanding than standing at attention for review by the C in C, they probably would not be very practical. But they sure looked good with everyone assembled together for the cast photo.
Valkrist wrote:
Olorin wrote: Tue Jul 12, 2022 11:29 am
Kirk.... Buckle up, there will be more of him next season. Now, while I quite liked the new actor and the way he honored Kirk's decisiveness, etc. without trying to clone Shatner, for me, nobody will ever be Kirk except Shatner. Ditto Spock/Nimoy, etc. I grew up watching these people. I mean that literally. I saw some episodes of Star Trek in first run in the 60s when I was in my single digits. I will always connect the character to the original actor, no matter how good the replacement actor. That said, oddly enough I suppose if someone were suddenly to say "Obi-wan Kenobi," I would immediately think of Ewan McGregor. I of course adored Alec Guinness, but after the first movie we saw so little of him. In contrast, we had the three prequels in which Obi-wan played a large role, and of course now we've had the series. So, McGregor has had a lot more time on-screen in front of my eyeballs. And actually while I'm on this (off) topic, the actor who voices Obi-wan in the Clone Wars animated series sounds so much like Ewan McGregor that I had to look at the credits to see that it was not McGregor.
Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that. Oh well. Like I said, I too liked the actor, but the performance just didn't say 'Kirk' to me. I think it will be one of those roles that will forever be tied to the original actor and everything and everyone else will simply pale by comparison. You bring up Nimoy and though I'm very much enjoying Peck's take on the character, that's another one that will never be better than the original. Come to think of it, I feel that way about the entire TOS crew. Big reason why the Abrams movies never did anything for me - it was always just a bunch of Hollywood faces-du-jour playing at being the TOS crew that can never be replaced. Star Wars I'm a little less attached to, but the Han Solo movie did zero for me without Ford being in the role. I still think of Alec Guinness first when I think of Kenobi, but yeah, McGregor is right next to him now.
I really liked Alden Ehrenrich in Solo. No, he didn't make me forget about Harrison Ford but that's hardly a fair comparison. After all, Ford is only the most beloved and charismatic actor in the past 50 years or whatever. Speaking of such, today is his birthday...he turned 80. And bringing it back to Star Trek, it is also Patrick Stewart's birthday; he turned 82.
Deimos wrote: Ok...you all have intrigued me not a little bit with your reviews (and the spoilers don't bother me) because TOS will always be "My Star Trek".
And if this series is good enough to get positive comparisons to TOS, well maybe it's something I might want to watch.
So, the $10 question here is: will this [eventually] be available on DVD/BD/insert-latest-tech-medium/ whatever at some point?
I dont' stream stuff (at this time I won't go into the reason why) so I am wondering if I can eventually view it on disc (of whatever kind).
(And if that hope is never realized, well, I'm OK with that too.)
Val already covered this pretty well, so I will only add that Paramount has been among the best at supporting physical media. That said, Warner used to be, but apparently their subsidiary HBO is only releasing The Golden Age on DVD and not on BD (or 4K), as I've already griped about. But we will see. For what it's worth, Paramount has already announced Season 2 of both Picard and Lower Decks for physical media, so I remain optimistic that we will also get SNW.
BladeCollector wrote: I've enjoyed all the Pikes... I even used to get the names of the actors Bruce Greenwood and Anson Mount mixed up in my head. For me, when I think of Jeffrey Hunter, I immediately think of Jesus from King of Kings
LOL, I saw that movie when I was a little kid. I believe that was when I badly misunderstood the meaning when Jesus said, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." I thought he meant he was going to throw first, as he was sinless! It wasn't till later in life that the meaning dawned on me. Hey, I was in single digits, so.... Just to stay off-topic a moment longer I'll put in a plug for what I consider the all-time best movie/show of Jesus' life, that being Jesus of Nazareth, the mini-series from 1977. Robert Powell played Jesus as both very human and at the same time very other-worldly. Most actors stick to reverential, which Powell definitely was, but he brought so much more to it. I've read that for most people, their mental image of Jesus is Powell's depiction, so powerful it was.

And finally, bringing it back to Strange New Worlds, and not responding to anyone, a final observation on the final episode. The trouble with quibbles (see what I did there?) is that they are like potato chips: once you start, it's hard to stop. I was disappointed that they used ridgy Romulans. Picard has already established that both ridgy Romulans and smooth Romulans exist, and even suggested an explanation. Do the show-runners of SNW not watch Picard? I suppose it's possible they are too busy to watch it. Anyway, there is no reason to think that the crew of the Bird of Prey is different individuals in A Quality of Mercy than in Balance of Terror, so they really should not have made them ridgy. This becomes even more true when they included the famous scene when they get their first glimpse of the Romulans, and all eyes turn toward Spock.

I think it was Sean Ferrick on TrekCulture who commented that they wished they had used James Frain to play the Romulan Commander, as he played Sarek in Discovery, and of course in TOS Mark Lenard played both Sarek and the Romulan Commander. Speaking of people I'll forever associate with a role...sigh...Mark Lenard. He was so good as the Romulan Commander, and of course utterly beyond reproach as Sarek. It was a blessing that he was able to come back for the movies and TNG.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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I thought Thursday's episode was a fine addition to the history of Star Trek's courtroom episodes. At the same time, I do feel that it's digging the hole ever deeper, of how could Spock be present at such events and all the debate of genetic engineering due to Khan and that La'an is descended from him, and yet the Enterprise crew is not more cautious once they realize they've found and revived Khan. However, SNW didn't start digging this hole. DS9 did that, with the episode dealing with Bashir having been resequenced.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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I agree.

Despite my unabashed love for this show, I really wish the Khan connection had been left out. It feels needless and I don't think the writers will be able to resist shoehorning Khan himself in some way down the road. However the whole thing is resolved, it will no doubt involve some "we must swear to never talk about this" Discovery-type shenanigans, therefore attempting to preserve the events of Space Seed in a vacuum... except it won't. In the viewer's mind, that episode will be forever tainted with all the retconning these other shows are doing. As it is, I'm already wondering why Spock would never mention to Kirk that he served with a descendant of Khan on the Enterprise. For that matter, and given that Kirk himself is about to be shoehorned into SNW as well and will be interacting with La'an, how do they explain that he also conveniently forgot all that?

As for DS9, I'm not sure I follow your thought. That's all post SNW, TOS, and TWOK, so how is it digging a deeper hole?
This Space for Rent

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Yes, but if the ban was because of Khan, it was already in place long before DS9 episode, right? All the Bashir reveal did was highlight something we weren't aware of before but didn't really contradict previous material. All the events with Number One in SNW are doing is to remind us that this is a long-established policy in Starfleet (not the Federation as a whole), or am I missing something?
This Space for Rent

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Yes this recent strange New Worlds episode happened long before the events of the DS9 episode. What I am saying however, as if we're gonna point a finger of blame for establishing a contradiction, that the crew of the enterprise didn't know about Khan when they should have because he was the cause of policy that have been in place for a very long time, DS9 was what established for the viewer that such a thing exists.. We are just now seeing that in action at an earlier point in time.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Ah, ok I think I follow now. Yes, it seems like the issue is very front and centre in the events of the last few episodes of SNW, but is it perhaps because we are viewing it through the lens of not only La'an being present on board, but also the revelation that Una is a member of an augmented race? It's like a spotlight has been thrown on the whole thing, so it seems very much at the forefront of everything when in reality most probably don't give it a second thought, happy to know the rule is in place somewhere? I know that's retconning a bit but when the later Enterprise finds Khan, it's not as if he'd been completely forgotten, it's just that no one mentions that his power grab in the past is what led to that rule existing, which of course is a later writing construct. (Sorry, long-winded way of saying you're right, just following the thread in my own mind). The elephant in the room in this whole thing, of course, is Spock and how much they're exposing the character to all this stuff now, versus the relative ignorance of that same character's experience with these events later during Space Seed.

This is why bringing La'an in as character was silly and just breaks things more than adds 'coolness' to the show. They could have had nearly the exact same character without the heritage baggage.
This Space for Rent

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I'm hoping they will pay off La'an's heritage (in some way that does not nuke canon). I think she's a very interesting character and the actress does a fantastic job. But I do agree that so far the heritage was not all that necessary.

I just pulled up the episode on the Paramount + app to confirm my recollections and...man, what a good episode. And all the actors brought their A game, compelled no doubt by Montalban's mesmerizing performance. Also, I feel a little more inclined to show a bit more mercy now on the "why didn't they know" issue. When they first recover him, they have no idea who he is, other than a frozen dude on an antique ship. When he says his name is Khan, you can kind of overlook thatas muchof a clue. It's not like Khan is an uncommon name in parts of the world. You wouldn't necessarily jump to the conclusion that he was Khan Noonien Singh than if he had said his name was Joseph and you realized he was Joseph Stalin. I mean, what are the odds? It's not until the dinner party when quite accidentally he is goaded into saying "we offered order" that they realize they're dealing with someone from the wrong side of the Eugenics Wars. After that they look him up and realize who he is and after Kirk confronts him and confirms his identity and intentions, but it's too late.

Now, did Kirk suspect prior to the dinner party? Maybe. He did wonder whether Khan was born of controlled breeding, If he really suspected that he might have a Eugenics Wars dictator on his hands and didn't immediately put him back into cryosleep, then bad on Kirk. Maybe he had an inchoate inkling but felt he needed more to go on before taking action.

In any case, I'm inclined to be more forgiving now.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Olorin wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 2:17 pm Just watched tonight's episode. OMG.
Spoilers below.

You'll have to clarify your reaction. I wasn't as blown away by the story and the big reveal as I'm sure they were intending, but more on that in a bit.

It was nice to finally see Canada depicted in Star Trek, even if it was just present-day Toronto with a fictional bridge. I don't recall the show, in its many incarnations, ever visiting up here. Of course, it had to be Toronto, the self-proclaimed centre of the universe (well, if you're from there, anyway), but I'm guessing it was convenient for them because I gather the show shoots there (like Discovery)?

The story itself wasn't really original, with the tried-and-true trope of going back in time to stop x event from happening so that y or z reality is saved. At least the writers were aware of this and poked a bit of fun at it here and there in the dialogue. You know you've done something one too many times when the characters themselves openly discuss it as it's second nature. Ultimately, it was a fun way to have a Kirk episode without breaking canon too much because... it wasn't our Kirk. I find the actor very likeable and enjoy watching him, but he's either really trying not to mimic Shatner, or he doesn't know how. Either way, it never makes me feel like I am watching Kirk, and that's not a good thing. At least I can buy into it long enough to enjoy the story, which is more than I can say for Chris Pine in the role.

Onto the meat and potatoes, I guess I must have a prize waiting for me somewhere because just a few short days ago I wondered how long it would take them to pull out the cosmic shoehorn and have Khan himself show up. I was actually beginning to enjoy watching what it was like for La'an to live under the shadow of her name, and had accepted that that was the intention behind her being on the show without having the actual boogeyman appear... but as I predicted, they just couldn't help themselves. To be fair, he was only a kid, but still. When they showed the name on the door, I started to silently repeat in my head "Don't show him... don't show him... don't show him..."... but of course they did. Sigh. One positive from all this is that they finally cast an ethnically-correct actor in the role. At least with Montalban, they made an attempt to stick to the character's south-asian heritage with how he was depicted both onscreen and in the painting seen in Space Seed. With that abomination that was Into Darkness however, he is inexplicably replaced with a very pasty and unapologetically British Benedict Cumberbatch. ***?

The big down for me here is that it humanized Khan too much to show him as a young, frightened child. Of course he must've been at some point, but I don't find that he's a character that I need to feel sympathy for, not after decades of knowing him as Star Trek's best and most memorable villain. To me, Khan, even at that age, should have been full of arrogance and self-confidence already, but I think what we got is more a product of today's sensibilities and need to bring compassion and empathy into everything. I'm sorry if it makes me sound cold, but I didn't need to see Khan diminished or 'evolved' in that way. Ultimately though, the episode wasn't about him, but about La'an, and how despite seeing him as a frightened child rather than the monster that he will one day become, that she resists the temptation to end his life there and then and spare the world the horror of the Eugenics Wars. I'm curious to know if it was more that - selflessness in ensuring history would unfold as it should despite the consequences - rather than a simple act of preservation in knowing that if she killed him, the alternate Kirk's reality would become the true one and she would cease to exist? I wish they had addressed that, or if she did at the end with the temporal officer, i must've missed it.

Aside from them showing Khan, the biggest issue I had with the episode was this: why did this happen to La'an specifically, and I'm asking beyond the obvious connection to Khan. The first temporal agent could have appeared anywhere, to any of billions upon billions of beings, so why her? it strikes me as impossibly coincidental and convenient, unless of course it was on purpose, and if so, then why not simply recruit her in the first place as the person best suited to thwart the Romulan plot? In the end, the whole thing came off as a very contrived and convoluted way to have La'an confront her worst fear in the flesh, but who or what was guiding these events and selected her for something that had every appearance of being random? I'm left full of questions over that. :huh:
This Space for Rent

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I have unexpected time to post this evening. I thought I was going to be mowing my yard this evening, but I was so weak and tired from being knocked flat by the flu this week that I was only able to mow about a third of it. Also, this was the first time I mowed in 6 weeks, due to drought. It's quite sticky outside today too, with a dewpoint of 73°. I decided better to stop and worry about the rest of it later than pass out or have a heart attack.

I'll reply to your questions/comments in order, Val.

Yes, SNW shoots in Toronto. A studio there has one of those wraparound screens for displaying backgrounds, the name of which escapes me at the moment. The scenes in which Kirk and La'an were in the car used that for the background. When they decided to do this episode and shoot on location in the city, they didn't initially intend for it to be Toronto. Toronto doubles for a lot of places, so this would've been one more example of that. But then they said, why shouldn't it be Toronto? And yes, I was glad to see Canada depicted, and loved La'an's comment about maple leaves, politeness, and poutine. Also loved it later when they were eating and Kirk said, "This has gravy? I love it!" I've never had poutine and as a vegan, can't have true poutine. I'm sure there's some sort of workaround for the cheese curds, but I've never bothered to research it. I think I'm still scarred psychologically by the cheese fries at a place in Columbia, Missouri when I was in grad school. Heart attack on a plate. I digress....

It wasn't original, in that time travel is a tried-and-true-and-damned-near-threadbare trope in Star Trek. I've long thought the show could equally accurately be called Time Trek. But I've accepted that it's going to happen at least once in each series (that's series in the American sense, the show, not the British one, a season). And as long as it's well done, I'm good with it. And I thought this trip to the well was well worth it, as it finally definitively formalized what everyone has been conjecturing for some time, that all the time incursions have shifted the events of the Eugenics Wars into the 21st Century. I'm sure when Space Seed was written, no one had any idea that Star Trek might still exist in a 1990s free of GMO tyrants, and the 1990s were selected because they were far enough off to be futuristic and yet close enough to give the concept urgency, that in the lifetimes of many viewers, Earth would be ruled by augments, leading to a ruinous war. And since the 1990s, with all the times Star Trek has traveled to that decade or within a few after, with no sign of tyrants or a Eugenics War, it really was necessary to do something to explain this, if viewers were to be able to accept that this is their future. Previously, I had thought, maybe the Eugenics Wars were more covert and were actually more about terrorism than large scale global conflict. But that doesn't square with "entire populations being bombed out of existence." And so, the altered timeline is the perfect solution. The event is too great to prevent; time flowing like a river will navigate past your disruption and fate will belatedly take its course.

Wesley's Kirk vs. Shatner's Kirk. You need to start watching the Ready Room, if it's available in your area. Wil Wheaton interviewed Paul Wesley, who explained that he didn't want to ape Shatner, and he also didn't want to present the fully formed Kirk that we know from TOS, which is a few years down the road in the timeline. He wants to give Kirk room to grow into his later self. And I think that's the approach that all the actors on this show are taking with the legacy characters, as currently those characters are little like the ones we remember. I think that's wise, and I look forward to seeing the experiences that grow them into their later selves. All that aside (and I love Chris Pine as Kirk, btw), for me there will only ever be one Kirk, and that's William Shatner. There will only ever be one Spock, and that's Leonard Nimoy. There will only ever be one Han Solo, and that's Harrison Ford. Lather rinse repeat. It doesn't matter how good the recastings are; when you are dealing with such iconic characters that are seared into your psyche, no one can take on that role. When roles are recast, you just have to roll with it (use of homonyms totally accidental).

I guess I am just not as bothered by bringing Khan in as you are. My attitude can probably be summed up as, as long as it doesn't break canon, it's fine. I made piece with Khan being revisited and redone because of your absolute fave Trek movie, Into Darkness. I was incensed when they redid Khan, as he is largely regarded as Trek's all-time great baddie. Then my cousin said, well Batman redid the Joker, and Heath Ledger was better than any prior Joker. And I also thought, I've accepted them recasting the entire crew, so why should I have a problem with Khan? And yes, I'd have much preferred a south Asian actor play him in the movie, but the prevailing sentiment/excuse is that studios are not going to shell out the money the production wants unless the production casts actors that can fil seats. Perhaps betraying my ignorance here, but how many big-name south Asian actors are there that are well-known in the West? So, they cast Cumberbatch and died his hair black. At least they stopped short of putting him in black-face. And above and beyond all of that, since Khan is embraced by most Trekkers as the all-time great villain, why wouldn't they revisit him from time to time? Look how many times we've revisited the Borg Queen. True, if you do it too often, it becomes farcical, but more selectively and it can work.

I hear what you're saying about humanizing him too much by showing him as a child. I think that was certainly an issue with the Star Wars prequels when they started with Anakin as a little boy. I guess it's supposed to make the eventual fall that much more tragic, but whatever. Getting back to Khan, I don't feel they jeopardized his standing as future baddie all that much by the two minutes we spent with him. Of course, he's frightened...he heard a big fight in the hallway, ending with gunshots, and then a strange woman stalks into his room with the gun. After she leaves, he's free to go back to pulling wings off flies or stealing the other kid's food or whatever a future tyrant does at that age. And yes, he is probably predestined to follow a dark path, because as Spock observed, superior abilities breed superior ambition. But could that path be not so dark? I'm sure that was one of the things going through La'an's mind as she found herself unexpectedly confronting her ancestor.

I don't know that it's a modern need to bring compassion and empathy into everything. I do think it's an interesting question to ask, can this person turn out some way less dark than we expect? I think such possibility has been present throughout history, that different life experiences result in different outcomes, and we are just more cognizant of that now. Thus, I think it was completely appropriate for La'an to react the way she did. It's easy to say, I'd strangle Hitler in his crib, but when you are actually standing there looking at a child who is as yet sinless, it becomes not so easy. And there is always the very real possibility that removing him from the timeline could result in a worse outcome than a better. And with a person so enormously pivotal to history as Hitler or Khan, removing them will have equally enormous...and unpredictable...consequences. I always say that if I traveled into the past, I would not change a thing, so matter how tempting, because however bloody and messed up the history of our world is, we have not had a nuclear war. Yet, anyway.

Also, as a mechanism for causing La'an to confront her heritage head-on, it's hard to think of anything that could equal meeting Khan. And meeting an adult Khan, ruling a quarter of the world with an iron fist, would certainly not change her preconceptions. Seeing an innocent child does. And this was very much a pivotal episode for La'an. I think she's been a great character from the beginning, any misgivings about her ancestry aside, and Christina Chong pulls it all off with aplomb, whatever is thrown at her. And when the tone of the episode totally shifts as she meets Khan and realizes she is completely through the looking glass, it brought me near to tears.

Why didn't she kill him? I doubt she trusted the Romulan agent's claim that the future tech in her pocket would protect her and she would continue to exist. Beyond that, she knew from her discussion with Kirk that the presence/absence of Khan was the difference between the "socialist utopia" of a UFP centered on Earth in her timeline, or the dead Earth of alt-Kirk's, and thus there was only one decision that she could make. And this is a place where the writers did wring some originality from the tired time travel trope. The central premise of The City on the Edge of Forever was that a saintly person had to die to ensure the future. The central premise of this episode was that an evil person had to live to ensure the future. So it is simultaneously a polar opposite and yet at the same time a message that sometimes bad must triumph first for good to triumph later.

As to your last point, why La'an, other than the connection to Khan, I think it was precisely because of the connection to Khan. The first temporal agent failed, and in his dying moments he knew he had to get someone to take over who could get to Khan and protect him when the assassin came. It needed to be someone with the right DNA markers, and he knew La'an would have those. Obviously she's however many generations removed from Khan, so there could've been countless other Noonien-Singhs who could've been pressed into service, so either she will later be so a big player in history that he knew she could do it, or he knew enough about her moral compass that he knew she could do it. Or maybe she was always fated to do it, so it just had to be her. I do not know. I just went with it.

So I think I've addressed all your misgivings, and I'll move on to some closing thoughts of my own. I thought this was possibly the best episode of SNW so far (out of a total of 13) and truly cements that it is on the true Star Trek path. I also thought it was a near-classic episode for all of Trek, and stands among the better time travel episodes. In its hour it set up and paid off a more interesting and impactful plot than DS9 did with the Bell Riots 2-parter or Voyager did with its Future's End two parter. It has smoothed over the issue of the Eugenics Wars. It was well paced, humorous, and clever. And it was written by people who clearly know and love Star Trek. Case in point: Kirk raising money by whipping people at chess. Remember, in Where No Man Has Gone Before, Kirk beat Spock of all people at the much more complicated 3D chess. And even when I thought it had slipped up (crossing the border without papers...I couldn't have done that on my last visit to Canada in 2004, let alone now), they explained it, and with a few seconds of words instead of a more lengthy scene that would've actually showed it, turning the Show Don't Tell rule on its head to reserve screen time for more important things. There are a lot more things I could say, but I'm starving and need to shower before I can fix supper.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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It occurs to me that there are additional benefits in having retconned the Eugenics Wars up into, say, the 2040s or wherever they are now, beyond the root issue that they have not occurred in our real world during the originally stated period. First, it removes the confusion when Spock refers to the period of Khan's rule as the time of the third world war. If the Eugenics Wars are now in the 2040s and World War III culminates in 2053, it is essentially one long conflict. Of course, this doesn't do anything about Spock's ludicrously low death figure (in, I think, a different episode) of 37 million. What was that writer thinking? Obviously, I guess, that WW III was non-nuclear, despite all expectations to the contrary. I guess it could refer to the earlier, Eugenics Wars phase of the conflict, before it fully bloomed into WW III.

Also, consider the Botany Bay. Though a sublight ship, it obviously had a drive advanced enough to carry it well beyond Earth's solar system in the time allotted. We've got nothing like that now and we certainly had nothing like that 25 years ago. One could argue, I suppose, that brilliant augment minds developed it (and the other technologies I'm about to mention) secretly. But setting that aside, nothing launched from Earth in 1996 would be beyond the solar system. The Voyagers, launched 20 years prior to that, are only just now on the edge of the solar system (precise boundary depends on your definition). I heard recently that scientists are hard at work on a fusion drive that could be available in the not-too-distant future that would have the ability to cover the distance from Earth to Mars in 4 days. It's hard to overstate how huge that would be. Not only would it open up the entire solar system to crewed exploration by cutting down on the food, oxygen, etc needed for a much longer journey, but also it makes it possible by vastly reducing the amount of exposure to solar radiation. What we've learned from studies on the ISS is that solar radiation is a much bigger issue than previously thought. Getting back to the Botany Bay, it had some sort of advanced drive, not available in 1996 but in 2046 maybe/probably. The Botany Bay also appeared to have artificial gravity. That's something we don't have now and didn't have 25 years ago. I actually kind of doubt we'll have it in 20 years, but put those augment minds to work on it.... And the same goes for the last technological wonder the Botany Bay possessed: suspended animation. That's something we don't have yet, and something that now seems more distant than ever, given a recent article I read that suggests it's just not going to be doable with human anatomy.

One much smaller item: If the Eugenics Wars happened in the 2040s instead of the 1990s, all the various references over the years to the wars happening 200 years prior to TOS are suddenly not so far off.

Thinking about these things and needing to check the First Contact date for WW III, I ran across something else from TNG lore: the Post-Atomic Horror, as depicted in Q's kangaroo court. That lasted at least until 2079, according to TNG . That means, though I guess I had not been thinking of it with that precise terminology, that First Contact occurs early on in the Post-Atomic Horror. That makes sense, of course, because first contact was the thing that pulled us together and put us on the path to paradise. I just hadn't thought that much about the people of Cochrane's encampment, ragtag bunch though they were, as being part of that. I guess being in an isolated area, they escaped the worst effects of the way...once you somehow rationalize how a nuclear missile silo was not targeted and destroyed, and that its missile was never launched. Apparently our side took out the enemy's missiles targeting that silo first.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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I scrolled really fast through this thread, just wanted to pop in and say, I havent started this season. With the wedding coming up... 1 month from Today... eeek!!! and getting her moved in and a lot of my extra stuff moved out, and doing my doctoral program, its been crazy times, but I definitely plan on catching up soon!
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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SNW basically ripped off an Ursula K LeGuin short story for one of its best episodes last season, the one where the utopian society profits from plugging a child into their computer to run their society. YouTuber Steve Shives talks about this:

https://youtu.be/p-eiN0UGfoU

It's about 40 minutes so you may not want to watch all of it. But in essence all the beats of the short story are included in the episode and wrapped in a Star Trek frame. Alex Kurtzman is aware of the story as he cited it as an inspiration for Discovery season 3, but no credit has been given to LeGuin for the SNW episode. Steal from the best they say, and she was definitely one of those. She herself cited others as inspiration for her story. In any case, finding out that the episode took so much from somebody else's work really deflated my estimation of it.

And then there was this week's return visit to Rigel VII, which initially left me a little cold until I read that it was based on a story from Homer. Then I thought it was pretty cool, that Star Trek was adapting classical literature.

So how is it that one borrowing made me feel negatively and another one made me feel positively?
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Olorin wrote: Sat Jul 08, 2023 5:32 am ....
And then there was this week's return visit to Rigel VII, which initially left me a little cold until I read that it was based on a story from Homer. Then I thought it was pretty cool, that Star Trek was adapting classical literature.

So how is it that one borrowing made me feel negatively and another one made me feel positively?
Which story by Homer?
(I could ask which story by which Homer, but would you get the joke? :laugh: )

"Eternity is an awful long time, especially towards the end."

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.
It also depends on what sort of person you are.” -- CSL

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Valkrist wrote: Sat Jul 08, 2023 7:41 am
Deimos wrote: Sat Jul 08, 2023 7:26 am
Which story by Homer?
(I could ask which story by which Homer, but would you get the joke? :laugh: )
DOH!!! ;)

It's based on the Lotus Eaters, which I seem to recall as being part of the Odyssey?
Right on all counts.

The title of the episode was, Among the Lotus Eaters.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Deimos wrote: Sat Jul 08, 2023 11:51 am Thankee, both.
(and you also got the joke ;) )
I think anybody born after about 1987 would have caught the reference to Homer Simpson. What's not clear is how many people born after that year would know who Homer was. :?: We never studied mythology in our high school, a small, rural school where the teachers had their hands full trying to get most of the kids to learn the 3 Rs. We had a mythology book at home, the classic by Edith Whatshername, which I read all those years ago, and don't remember most of. I've never straight-up read Homer, though.

OK, she deserves better than Whatshername. I looked her up. Edith Hamilton.

Getting back to the episode, I think it would've been better with a simple line that clarified that the radiation kept them from accessing their memories. As it was, one might infer that the radiation simply destroyed those memories, but they later miraculously came back. A minor quibble, I suppose.

The Lotus Eaters, stemming from classical mythology as it does, is somewhat of a touchstone in our culture, yet one that flew past me. I was aware of the phrase, having seen references to it from time to time. I never bothered to look up what it meant, though, and I had the mistaken impression that it meant either someone who was very enlightened or someone who was very snooty and dismissive of lesser folk. Now that I know what it means, things will take on a whole different meaning. For example, R.E.M. had a song called Lotus. Some of the lyrics include "Oh, I ate the lotus/Say, haven't you noticed?" and there are further references to washing away sins and bringing back the happy. So, yeah, Michael Stipe is a learned dude.

According to Wikipedia, that reservoir of all knowledge, lotus has multiple meanings in Greek, one of which being the one that most people automatically think of, the beautiful water lily. But it's unsure which Homer was referring to. Wikipedia says it contains an alkaloid with mildly sedating effects, though I'd think you'd have to eat a mountain of it. Its root is used in Asian cuisine. Cut in slices, it has a distinctive appearance:
Image

But the scare of the alkaloid within it was enough to get it banned in several Eastern European countries, including Russia. It's absinthe all over again, LOL.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Olorin wrote: Sun Jul 09, 2023 6:19 am
Deimos wrote: Sat Jul 08, 2023 11:51 am Thankee, both.
(and you also got the joke ;) )
I think anybody born after about 1987 would have caught the reference to Homer Simpson. What's not clear is how many people born after that year would know who Homer was. :?: We never studied mythology in our high school, a small, rural school where the teachers had their hands full trying to get most of the kids to learn the 3 Rs. We had a mythology book at home, the classic by Edith Whatshername, which I read all those years ago, and don't remember most of. I've never straight-up read Homer, though.

OK, she deserves better than Whatshername. I looked her up. Edith Hamilton.

Getting back to the episode, I think it would've been better with a simple line that clarified that the radiation kept them from accessing their memories. As it was, one might infer that the radiation simply destroyed those memories, but they later miraculously came back. A minor quibble, I suppose.

The Lotus Eaters, stemming from classical mythology as it does, is somewhat of a touchstone in our culture, yet one that flew past me. I was aware of the phrase, having seen references to it from time to time. I never bothered to look up what it meant, though, and I had the mistaken impression that it meant either someone who was very enlightened or someone who was very snooty and dismissive of lesser folk. Now that I know what it means, things will take on a whole different meaning. For example, R.E.M. had a song called Lotus. Some of the lyrics include "Oh, I ate the lotus/Say, haven't you noticed?" and there are further references to washing away sins and bringing back the happy. So, yeah, Michael Stipe is a learned dude.

According to Wikipedia, that reservoir of all knowledge, lotus has multiple meanings in Greek, one of which being the one that most people automatically think of, the beautiful water lily. But it's unsure which Homer was referring to. Wikipedia says it contains an alkaloid with mildly sedating effects, though I'd think you'd have to eat a mountain of it. Its root is used in Asian cuisine. Cut in slices, it has a distinctive appearance:

But the scare of the alkaloid within it was enough to get it banned in several Eastern European countries, including Russia. It's absinthe all over again, LOL.
Oh...alas and alack....It appears that you missed the joke entirely. What a dreary thing to learn :(
I wonder if Val also thought I was referring to Homer Simpson.

I read Edith Hamilton when I was about 12... but not for school.
I discovered her when I became interested in astronomy (about age 10) and learned that the constellations were based on mythological characters and stories.
At that time I read the more age appropriate (read "bowdlerized" ) versions of the myths, but those didn't quite match up to what the stars were [mythologically] depicting.
So I moved on to Hamilton to get "the real story". ;)

"Eternity is an awful long time, especially towards the end."

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.
It also depends on what sort of person you are.” -- CSL

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Olorin wrote: Mon Jul 10, 2023 2:04 am What were you referring to?

There has always been some question(s) about the identity of Homer, whose byline appears, most famously of course, in the Iliad and Odyssey
From Wikipedia: The Homeric Question concerns the doubts and consequent debate over the identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, and their historicity (especially concerning the Iliad). The subject has its roots in classical antiquity and the scholarship of the Hellenistic period, but has flourished among Homeric scholars of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Much scholastic ink was spilled over it in the mid-late 19th C.; so much that the more well known literati (Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, GK Chesterton to name a few) made jokes and witticisms about it.

“The poems of Homer were not written by Homer himself, but by another man of the same name.” (Mark Twain)

"I have my own theory about the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey: it is that they weren’t really written by Homer, but by another person of the same name.’ (Lewis Carroll)

My comment: "I could ask which story by which Homer" was a riff on that situation.

"Eternity is an awful long time, especially towards the end."

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.
It also depends on what sort of person you are.” -- CSL

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Olorin wrote: Mon Jul 10, 2023 7:29 pm Ah. I believe I've heard of the Homeric question, but did not know what it is. Similarly, there is debate about who really wrote the works of Shakespeare.
Yes, but they finally settled that one. The plays were written by Shakespeare, or by another man with the same name. :thumbs_up

And, judging by Val's "Doh!", I'm guessing that he also thought I meant Homer Simpson.

"Eternity is an awful long time, especially towards the end."

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.
It also depends on what sort of person you are.” -- CSL

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I get that these characters are at a younger, more impetuous stage in their lives than they were in TOS, and certainly if Spock and Chapel had some sort of attraction, or dare we even say, fling, back in the Pike days, I could see Chapel still pining away for Spock in the TOS era, which in fact she was. Yet in TOS that was portrayed as essentially one-sided. Sure, Spock is still growing into his Vulcanness, as evidenced by the grinning and shouting Spock of the Cage compared to the stoic Spock of TOS, with SNW Spock somewhere on the spectrum in between. But if he had had feelings for Chapel, dare we even say, had a fling with her, could he hide that so totally by TOS times? I understand the writers' desire to explore the Spock/T'Pring/Chapel dynamic and push it as far as they can, but I worry that they are going to press it past credulity.

I would not want T'Pril for my mother-in-law.

On the Ready Room, Jess Bush told Wil Wheaton that the image on that AR wall moves every time a camera moves, and it was giving them all motion sickness. I would not be able to act in front of one of those. I get motion sickness so easily, ugh.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Agreed 100%.

I found the episode fairly light and enjoyable, though it bordered on Three's Company in space slapstick at points, but whatever.

Two observations: was it explained why Spock suddenly forgot how to 'act' Vulcan? I get he was genetically fully human for the duration of the episode, but there was nothing wrong with his memory, correct? So why did he have such an impossible time channeling the sense of self that he's lived with all his life? Everyone on the ship was coaching him, so how was it that the real humans knew how to mimic being a Vulcan, and the actual Vulcan was terrible at it, or was the point that Spock (not Peck!) is a bad actor? Secondly, I think they missed an opportunity to explore Chapel's moral dilemma on whether or not to change Spock back to normal. Of course she did the right thing, and she made a good case as to why, but I wish there'd been a bit more of an inner struggle as surely she realized that the human version of Spock was practically gift-wrapped for her. In the end, her choice speaks to her exemplary moral compass, but I wonder if that was 100% realistic given the personal stakes and innermost desires.

As for where they're going with all this, just add it to the list of things they will have to 'fix' by the time the series ends and there is an inevitable transition into the ship's TOS era. Hard to infer what might of happened given that MB's version of Chapel was fairly one-dimensional, but they may be opening doors here they might wish they had left shut. Honestly, I was good with the entire episode up until that final minute and scene, and wish they hadn't gone that far. I don't feel it fit Spock's character, especially when his Vulcan DNA was supposed to return pretty much immediately, and it'll only make it all the more tragic when he eventually has to dump Chapel to resume his courtship of T'Pring, unless they're going to retcon that as well.

One last thing I just remembered: aren't Vulcans only supposed to be sexually active during Pon Farr, or is that a misconception? If so, I think that's twice now they've broken the rule (if it is a rule) on this show.
This Space for Rent

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OK.

No, I do not recall them addressing why Spock was suddenly unable to act Vulcan. I assume that it was suggesting that some innate part of our behavior is controlled by our genetic makeup, our hormones, etc., and with the sudden change, it threw him totally off-kilter. A female friend of mine had been having issues with depression and lack of energy and her doctor told her that she didn't have enough testosterone. This was the first time I learned that the human body produces small amounts of both testosterone and estrogen outside the gonads. In any event, they put her on a small dose of the pure plutonium that is testosterone and it helped. Another example...an uncle of mine had to lose his gonads because he had prostate cancer and the testosterone was causing it to grow. I only saw him once after that and I don't know that he acted any different but he certainly looked different. His beard had stopped growing and his skin thus look smooth and soft like a baby's, an odd look for a man almost 80. But perhaps I'm giving the writers too much credit; maybe they just said he's human now, so he wouldn't be able to pull it off any more than someone who'd always been human could. But that would be silly, as human actors are playing these parts. I'd wager that any Star Trek fan could act Vulcan (assuming any acting talent and give or take the ability to raise just one eyebrow).

As to exploring Chapel's moral dilemma, I thought the point was raised that now he could love her, but it was the complex, hybrid Spock that she was attracted to. Or maybe I'm imagining that.

As to fixing, I think/hope they will do some fixing, but don't look for it to occur to our full satisfaction. Case in point: they have said (and I don't recall if this was in an article or on The Ready Room) that they are not going to take the female characters fully into alignment with their TOS depictions. Their depictions in TOS were appropriate for a 1960s view of women but now it's the 21st century and women who are totally demure and submissive are not credible characters. That's a paraphrase, but that's what they said. I don't have a strong feeling about that theory one way or the other. Part of that is, like I've alluded before, Chapel will always be Majel Barrett and Uhura will always be Nichelle Nichols and even if these new actors aped them perfectly in every way, they won't be quite the same person. Another part, I guess, is that SNW is making them into incredibly skilled crew members and so I find that more than an acceptable trade-off. One thing I think they are going to have to fix is the appearance of the Enterprise, at least its exterior. A TOS-era Constitution Class starship was shown at the Fleet Museum in the final season of Picard, and it looked exactly like the TOS Enterprise, so it's not like they can just say "it always looked like it does in SNW, you just didn't know it." And honestly, this would be an easy fix, in-universe and out. Just swap out the nacelles and support struts. Sure, there would be other differences but minor enough that I'd accept them.

Pon Farr. My recollection is that one of the Berman-era series established that Vulcans can be sexually active at any time but they must mate during Pon Farr or die (or kill somebody). This gives all sorts of new and not necessarily welcome meaning to the current phrase "ride or die." Of course, if we accept that Vulcans can have sex any time, then we have to accept that Spock lied to the lovely Droxine, daughter of Plasus, Administrator of Stratos (I nearly called it Cloud City, oh my!) in The Cloud Minders. Well, let me back off on that a bit. I remembered that she was quizzing him about the seven year cycle and he said it was unbreakable. But I just re-watched that part of the episode. She asked if there was nothing that could disturb it. He sat down next to her and said that extreme feminine beauty was always disturbing, causing us to wonder what was about to happen, but Kirk interrupted. So perhaps TOS never said that Vulcans could only mate every 7 years. OK, here is what the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia says:

Despite popular opinion, TOS writer and story editor, D. C. Fontana, insists that pon farr is not the only time that Vulcans feel sexual desire or engage in sexual activity:

"Vulcans mate normally any time they want to. However, every seven years you do the ritual, the ceremony, the whole thing. The biological urge. You must, but any other time is any other emotion—humanoid emotion—when you're in love. When you want to, you know when the urge is there, you do it. This every-seven-years business was taken too literally by too many people who don't stop and understand. We didn't mean it only every seven years. I mean, every seven years would be a little bad, and it would not explain the Vulcans of many different ages that are not seven years apart."
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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I thought last night's episode was pretty decent, even though it trod pretty familiar turf. I did groan a bit inwardly, though, when person who's been hallucinating and everyone is starting to believe to be crazy rushes onto the bridge and says "we've got to destroy this refinery that Starfleet has set as an ultimate priority" and Pike just says, "ok." I think the conversation he had afterwards with the admiral would've been interesting to hear....
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Thanks for all your insights on my questions and ruminations thus far, Olorin. It's been most helpful and enjoyable to hear your thougths, as always. :thumbs_up

Gosh... that sounded more Vulcan than Spock! :O

Anyway, yeah, this week's episode was just ok for me. It felt like a very long and roundabout way to set up the final scene, where Kirk and Spock meet for the first time. If any of us ever wondered how that moment went, well... now we have the official version. As for the rest, pretty average fare, except again, they went there with Kirk meeting La'an and giving us a hint of things to come. I guess not just Spock, but also Kirk had some serious amnesia during Space Seed, because he knew La'an by her full name, and if he ends up having a 'thing' with her, which I'm sure the writers are ticked pink by the irony and won't resist going there, I'll be severely disappointed with it. I mean... c'mon... with trillions of beings in the ST universe, it's the very specific, direct descendant of Kirk's all-time greatest nemesis that has a thing for him (or will potentially have a relationship with him)? Seriously?!? And they're ok with the fact that there's zero mention of this later on? Of course those old episodes came long before this, but the dangers of retconning too much and the need to scramble later and align things as best they can with TOS are turning from hills into mountains. I get the challenge is appealing, but I'm beginning to find my credulity seriously stretched, and it bothers me that it alters my viewing experience of those older episodes now. Example: no Star Trek fan can ever watch Amok Time the same way ever again, and Space Seed is quickly drawing even.

Last observation: not sure how I feel about being able to see from one end of the interior of a starship nacelle to the other. Ever since TOS, I'd wondered if any part of a starship's nacelles and support pylons' interiors were physically accessible to the crew, and I believe that was finally answered in an episode of TNG when we see someone (Geordi?) working inside a small control room in one of the Enterprise's nacelles. Even so, I was left wondering... do they have to beam in there? The pylons don't exactly look built for turbolifts, and I figure they would be filled with whatever energy passes between the warp core in engineering and the nacelles. Yet in this episode, there appears to be a very long tube ladder, and then just a giant empty space with pretty lights between the spinning helix at the front and the exhaust ports at the very back. Say what? Not at all what I pictured. Though I have no clue what it should look like, that was not it. :huh:
This Space for Rent

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Any time someone does a prequel, there is always the risk of creating a continuity conflict with the original show. This was perhaps less a problem with Enterprise, as it was set so long before TOS that there was little possibility, short of time travel, Nexus, etc., of meeting TOS characters. With Strange New Worlds, the possibility for adding continuity headaches is definitely much larger. But so far, at least for me, I think they have avoided that. Like I mentioned, at this point we definitely know why Chapel pined over Spock in TOS. What we don't yet have there is a reason why he was able to put all that so far away that he shows no hint of a past dalliance in Amok Time. We also have a greater understanding now of why T'Pring shows such aloofness to Spock, beyond the fact that she's a Vulcan, and why she has lined up Stonn to take his place, beyond the fact that she doesn't want to be the ultimate work widow. Thus far, the writers have not take this one a bridge too far for me. Except maybe for the fact that in Amok Time, Spock is staring at a picture of T'Pring as a child. Setting aside the fact that that's a bit squicky in and of itself, it suggests that he has not seen her since they were betrothed as children. I don't recall that that was said in the episode, so I can overlook this.

Space Seed is admittedly more complicated. But even with knowing a relative of Khan's a few years prior to finding him (yes, it came out in Una's trial that La'an is related to him), you wouldn't necessarily jump to the conclusion that someone you found on a sleeper ship was Khan Noonien-Singh, one of the augment tyrants of the Eugenics War. What would be the chances? At the end of the war, it was kept secret that 70 or more augments were unaccounted for. Earth's population at large would have no reason to believe he was still alive. History would presume him dead. 200 years later, he's only a name in a history book to most people. Even with Una's trial making the Federation genetic engineering ban fresh in Kirk's and Spock's minds, or even with Kirk possibly dating La'an, it's not like anyone is remotely expecting Khan to be
still alive somehow. So when they find him in that tube, there's no reason for alarm bells to go off immediately. Once they start to learn bits, they become suspicious and rapidly figure it out. Maybe it is precisely because they knew a Noonien-Singh that they are so rapidly able to deduce his identity. But by the time they do, it's too late. So I guess even with Space Seed, I don't think they've broken credulity yet, at least not for me. Now if some point they have La'an saying, "oh yeah, everyone thought Khan died but it was known in our family that he escaped Earth in a DY-100 sleeper ship with 70-odd followers and they must have reached the vicinity of the Ceti Alpha star system by now," that will be a bridge too far.

The nacelles....In an episode of Enterprise, the crew had to take refuge in the nacelles as they were the only part of the ship well shielded enough to protect them from the effects of whatever part of space they were in. It was only mentioned that they could not be in there when they were active, as it would rapidly become too hot. In that TNG episode, it looked like you could be in the control room while the nacelle was operating, as there was a forcefield to shield you from whatever radiation resulted from the plasma streaming the length of the nacelle. I don't recall from either episode how people got up there, but I think it's reasonable to assume a Jefferies tube. And the nacelle pylon isn't filled with plasma; it's confined to a conduit. Admittedly, Star Trek has never really defined the nature of the energy that powers the nacelles. They just refer to it as electro-plasma. In real life, if you combine matter and antimatter and do it in such as way as they completely annihilate each other and the reaction doesn't force some percentage apart and keep them from reacting, you get pure energy and possibly a few subatomic particles. In Star Trek, the role the dilithium crystals play is to mediate the reaction and make it more efficient, i.e., I guess to try to accomplish bringing all particles together for complete annihilation. But the description "electro-plasma" sounds like something a little more conventional. Plasma is just ionized matter and as such, can carry a current or be manipulated electrically. OK, sorry, we are way down the rabbit hole here. And full disclosure, I'm not a physicist, though I do have degrees in science, which involved a lot of physics and chemistry. In any case, what they depicted in this episode was reasonably in keeping with what has been depicted in tech manuals and posters, and the previously mentioned episodes. So apparently, getting up there is not too difficult or dangerous, though personally I don't think I'd want to be up there where all that weird science was going on. Recently with all the press over the Oppenheimer movie, I recalled a family vacation to the South in the 1960s and a tour of Oak Ridge National Laboratories. If memory serves and my mind isn't just making this up, I recall that you could walk on a catwalk over the top of one of the reactors and see the thing sitting down in its pit of water, glowing blue with Cherenkov radiation as radiation escaping the core interacted with the water and caused light to be emitted. Hey, in the 1960s radiation was our friend! Too cheap to meter! etc. etc. It's a bit squicky to think about now!
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."
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