Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live- ... ss-1294704

From the article:
"The streamer has handed out a straight-to-series order for Star Trek: Discovery spinoff Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The drama will see Anson Mount, Ethan Peck and Rebecca Romijn reprise their respective Discovery roles as Capt. Christopher Pike, Spock and Number One as the series explores the years the former manned the helm of the Enterprise. The show follows the trio in the decade before Capt. Kirk boarded the Enterprise as they explore new worlds around the galaxy."

I loved their portrayal of the characters and was hoping we'd get to see more of them! This is super exciting!
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Darn you BC, I wanted to make this announcement! :club: :lol:

But in any case, I'm thrilled. I really liked Mount and Romijn as Pike and #1, and I was fine with Peck as Spock (although there can only ever be one true Spock).

I just hope they don't make too many trips to the well. The old management did that in the past, and it remains a risk now. But CBS is getting ready to expand All Access and they definitely want Star Trek to be a big part of that.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Did anyone seriously not see this coming? Still mildly surprising that they actually listened to the fans for once. Hopefully this new series will quickly eclipse Discovery. The sooner we move past that disaster masquerading as 'Star Trek', the better.

For now, I'll adopt my usual stance of guarded optimism regarding Strange New Worlds. It will be interesting to see if they establish the timeline of the series to be pre or post Discovery events. If done before, we could potentially be looking at seeing the full new version of The Cage, which would be super cool. If done after, I wonder how much Pike's foreknowledge of the fate that awaits him will affect his behaviour. I don't really want a show about a Pike battling depression, but on the other hand I see some good opportunities for storytelling in there, including Pike searching for ways to alter his own destiny.
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Sorry Olorin! I was just excited I finally got the jump on you on announcing something!!!

I saw it coming on one hand, but I totally saw the fan response being ignored in order to do some producer's random Star Trek love child, like Section 34, the Tal Shiar meets Obsidian Order love child of Section 31 (or something crazy)

I am, with Val, i have some guarded optimism, mainly because Anson Mount's Pike was just wonderful, so I really am looking forward to his show away from Discovery.
Maybe Strange New Worlds can be the prequel we wanted (or didnt actually want, but definitely not what we got) and Discovery can do anything and everything they want now that they are so far in the future they cant jack up the canon too much... or can they?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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BladeCollector wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 6:27 am they are so far in the future they cant jack up the canon too much... or can they?
You're clearly forgetting how much Trek writers love time travel (Discovery being the latest case in point) and how canon means nothing when you can muck around with timelines even if you're far into the future. You know they won't be able to resist.

My main beef with Discovery as a whole is just that: the desperate and arrogant need that this show seems to have to try and make everything in the Trek universe about itself. They are bending over backwards to retcon certain things to justify this show's existence, and to make themselves appear clever in the process. As awesome as the whole concept of the MCU has been for movies and television, it's also infected writers and producers with a driving need to show how interconnected everything is because... apparently nothing happens independently anymore?!? I still have my money on Discovery's writing-on-the-wall attempt to give itself credit for inventing the origin of the Borg, and for tying the Synth Overlord beings from Picard to Control.
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I've always been curious as to a canon origin of the Borg. I know there are non-canon stories, involving V'ger, and things of that nature... but I dont trust Discovery the Discovery writers. Although I do not disagree with you, Val, on Discovery trying to do it.

But yes, Discovery seems to be hell bent on being the center of the Star Trek universe, with all other series, being spokes emanating from the Discovery central hub, so to speak.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Random thoughts....

I wasn't hugely surprised. The new Enterprise crew members were a big hit with the fans and Alex Kurztman said they wanted to be able to do a show. The three actors wanted to do it, and all three came back for Short Treks. And of course, CBS All Access is always looking to expand the franchise. Still, sometimes things don't always align (where is National Treasure 3?). So, even though I wasn't hugely surprised, I was a little surprised. Let's just say it was exciting and a nice pick-me-up.

The Borg.... In some ways I'd like to think the franchise will never put forth a canon origin story for the Borg, as I suspect it might be underwhelming. At the same time, I'm not naïve enough to think it'll never happen. Given that eventuality, my druthers would be that only the show that introduced the Borg should be the one to present their origin story, to be written by the writers who invented and developed the Borg. Unfortunately, TNG has been off the air for 26 years, and the Q Who and Best of Both Worlds writers, Maurice Hurley and Michael Piller, are both dead. Obviously, TNG has a successor series, Picard, and Brannon Braga and Ron Moore, who took the Borg a quantum leap forward, are still around. Yet the first season of Picard already dealt heavily with the Borg, albeit as a sidebar, which makes me think it's unlikely they'll deal with them again. I don't know how may seasons it will run—Patrick Stewart is 80, after all—and it's kind of hard to imagine that they'll want to devote another season of what is therefore likely to be a limited run to the Borg. And Braga and Moore have gone on to other things, and might have no interest in coming back to Star Trek, even if the current management humbled themselves to ask. So, we'll get what we get in terms of a Borg origin, if we get one. I'd prefer Discovery or even Strange New Worlds not be the venue for that, which is no judgment on the quality of either. Rather, it's a matter of how many times we'll have to accept that Starfleet came into possession of truly monumental information and managed to lock it down so tightly that no one knows about it. Cases in point: the NX-01's encounter with the Borg, the Hansens, the Spore Drive, the starship Discovery, Section 31, Control... Oh, and Spock has a sister.

But getting back to Strange New Worlds, I suspect it'll pick up right after the end of Season 2 of Discovery. Also, I'd be very surprised if that mysterious Starfleet officer who debriefed Pike, Spock, and Number One (and was seen only from the mouth down) doesn't play a role at some point. So I don't think we'll see a do-over of The Cage. And honestly, I wouldn't want to. It was done just fine the first time, and I doubt they could avoid mucking it up in a re-do. I mean, as much as I liked the Talosian episode of Discovery, you have to admit that it seriously defanged them as uber-scary villains. They seemed almost benevolent, and not nearly as Machiavellian.

Early word from the production is that the show will be more episodic and less serialized than either Discovery or Picard, and also that it will try to recapture Star Trek's sense of optimism and will not have the dark tone of Discovery and Picard. And I must say, I like the name of the series. You know, it's funny, just a day before the news broke, I read an article where someone was speculating about this becoming a series and saying that an announcement would be imminent. They were right about that, but totally wrong in another area. They were calling the show Star Trek: Enterprise. Did they somehow not realize there was already a show by that name?

Unrelated notes.... I just read that Jeff Russo, the composer of the modern era of Star Trek, is recording each member of the orchestra individually from their homes, due to the COVID pandemic, and will combine it into an orchestra in the mixing process. That's how quite a bit of popular music is done these days, but I think it'll be more challenging with a 50-piece band vs a 5-piece band.

Finally, Discovery. I don't hate the show. I don't dislike it. I don't have to grind my teeth. In fact, I like it pretty well, despite its manifold problems. Yes, it does get a bit out there at times and in various ways but even when it comes up with something rather jaw-dropping for not necessarily the desired reason (i.e., the spore drive), at least it's trying to be science fiction and do something new. And while we've had to swallow quite a bit, with a pointless Klingon redesign, a war the Federation came within moments of losing yet no one talks about even ten years later, and Section 31 being a known agency in this era but unheard of later on, it's given us good characters and actors. Of course Michael Burnham is the center of the show, but Saru and Tilly are great characters too, and the Terran Georgiou is deliciously bad. I enjoyed the slow-developing relationship between Michael and Ash Tyler that went so bad, Tilly's nerdiness (yes, it's possible to do a smart character without being annoying, Wesley I'm looking at you), and Saru as the latest incarnation of the Spock/Data/Odo outsider. And even considering its bad parts, it has been successful and re-established Star Trek on television, its proper home, which has given us Picard and will later in a pandemic-free world give us Strange New Worlds. So yeah, it's kind of the hub of the Star Trek universe right now.

Once upon a time, there was TNG, which in its first two years was usually little better than crap. There were a lot of people who sneered at it and called it Trek Lite (and that was one of the kinder things probably), and some of them never came around. There are still people who think that Star Trek ended forever in 1969. Yet TNG became something great and was the foundation of Star Trek's great flowering in the 1990s. Most of its successor series of that era also took a few years to hit their strides, too. There were people who said of Enterprise that at least they got it right by not calling it Star Trek (in its first two seasons). I hope Discovery grows the some way those shows did. Season 3 is supposed to be more Trek-like and more optimistic (in spite of a Federation apparently in tatters), and Jonathon Frakes has nothing but praise for his experience in directing a number of upcoming episodes. So I want to be hopeful about that, and I want to give myself the opportunity to appreciate Star Trek told in ways different from what I'm used to. At some point I realized there was the stereotype of the crotchety old guy raging at a world he doesn't understand anymore, and honestly I've been pretty close to that when it comes to music. I don't want to be that way with Star Trek and thus far, Discovery, different though it often feels, has never made me feel it wasn't Star Trek. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've been around with Star Trek for a very long time (I saw a few episodes of TOS in first run, though I was too young to really understand it), I've seen it have many incarnations and travel a lot of bumpy paths, and to date I've seen nothing that makes Discovery anything but part of that heritage.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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I enjoy Discovery, but it's cathartic to unleash what I don't like about it with you guys that what I like :)


As far as TNG seasons 1 and 2... Whew... If you're trying to introduce someone to star trek, skip TNG seasons 1 and 2, they can come back and watch after they are into it.

TNG picked up after the uniform change in season 3, just like DS9 for me, picked up when Sisko went bald and grew a goatee :)
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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BladeCollector wrote: Sat May 16, 2020 6:41 am I enjoy Discovery, but it's cathartic to unleash what I don't like about it with you guys that what I like :)


As far as TNG seasons 1 and 2... Whew... If you're trying to introduce someone to star trek, skip TNG seasons 1 and 2, they can come back and watch after they are into it.

TNG picked up after the uniform change in season 3, just like DS9 for me, picked up when Sisko went bald and grew a goatee :)
Carthatic, LOL, I'm guessing that you as a medical professional know the other meaning of that term. Sometimes it seems like there's a whole lot of catharsis on the Internet. (generally not here, though)

I thought DS9 was always good and just grew better as time went on. TNG's improvement was revolutionary, while DS9's was evolutionary. But Sisko.... Perhaps the fact that they finally let Brooks grow the beard and shave his head (and OMG is there anyone who after a nanosecond glimpse of the new look wouldn't realize it was SO much better?) meant they had developed enough confidence in the show and the character that not only were they comfortable with the change in appearance, they were ready to let the writers make the character edgier.

I wonder if Jonathon Frakes had to plead to grow his beard? There's another character that looked so much better with a beard. He had such a baby face back then that putting that hair on it automatically made him look older, more authoritative, and more to be reckoned with. Prior to that, he was more just a pain in the butt.

Thinking back about these older shows makes me regretful, for the umpteenth time, that DS9 and Voyager will almost certainly never see the light of day on BluRay. I mean, there's about no way they'd spend the money to go totally back to the drawing board like they did with TNG. But I'd even settle for an upconvert. The upconverted DS9 footage in the recent doco looked pretty darned good, and certainly a whole lot better than the DVDs or the streaming version on CBS All Access.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Further thoughts on the new show....

I hope they develop good backstories for Pike and Number One. And they first step in doing that is not wasting time developing backstory for Spock. Spock already has more backstory (thanks in part to Discovery) than any other character in Star Trek. I totally get that he's a popular character but he's pretty well fleshed out already. Contrast with Pike, where all we know about him is he's from Mojave, CA, and he got an F in a class. And as for Number One, we know really nothing, not even her full name. It was Discovery that dubbed her Una (and I thought that was pretty clever), but is that her first name or last name? Suffice it to say, both Pike and Una are very blank slates, which is ironic considering they are such iconic characters. So let's come up with some good backstories, guys!

I wonder what other characters will populate the crew of the Enterprise? None of the Kirk-era crew were shown aboard the ship during The Cage, but if the show indeed picks up after the end of Season 2 of Discovery, The Cage would be 4 years in the rear-view mirror, so new crew could've rotated aboard. I think my pick for a familiar face would be Scotty, since he was aboard by the time of Where No Man Has Gone Before.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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BladeCollector wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 8:54 am
Valkrist wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 8:19 am
BladeCollector wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 7:46 am Agree with everything you said!

Do you have an scotty actor in mind?
Anyone but Simon Pegg.

Love the guy but that was one serious piece of miscasting.
Probably the worst recast of the TOS crew, in my opinion.
Yep.

Not to revive an old debate, but I'd say Anton Yelchin (may he rest in peace) was a close tie. Never for one second did I buy him as Chekov. Not sure what show they were researching to get his personality and mannerisms right, but it wasn't TOS.

On the Strange New Worlds episodic vs. serialization, I'm ok with a mix of the two approaches as there are pros and cons to both. I think episodic will allow them to get a little closer to the spirit of older Treks, so I'm a big fan of the fully encapsulate episodes, but I also want character development and see some real consequences of previous events and actions follow the ship and crew from week to week. Just please, no season-long complex story arcs about saving the universe while rewriting history once again and then giving us disjointed, disappointing conclusions after all that work and time.
This Space for Rent

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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I don't have any prognostications about who they'll pick to play potential TOS roles, and really no preferences either. I'm not very good at envisioning who I'd want in a part, probably because my tendency is always to go toward a favorite actor that's a very good actor. But I don't think Ian McKellen should play Scotty, for example.

As for the actors who were in the Abramsverse movies, I think by and large they eschewed trying to copy the originals. Chris Pine explicitly stated he was not going to try to copy Shatner's mannerisms, for example. I'm sure there was a fear it would be perceived as parody, since Shatner's dramatic pauses have been parodied to Timbuktu and back. As for the others, the only two that I think came reasonably close to conjuring the spirits of their predecessors were Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban. Of course, at least to me, 90% of doing Spock is just being Vulcan. I know there's more to a character than that, but the Vulcan characteristics loom so huge to me that they are hard to see past. So, Zachary Quinto did a good Spock, Ethan Peck did a good Spock, and Tim Russ did a good Spock even though he wasn't playing Spock. As for Karl Urban, I thought he totally nailed McCoy. To me the only way he didn't nail McCoy was simply a physical characteristic, eye color. De Kelley had those piercing blue eyes, while Karl Urban's are dark brown. So that stood out to me. But in terms of mannerisms and the way he spoke, he nailed it. It's unfortunate the writers usually went overboard in having him conjure McCoy's histrionics and country expressions. That verged on parody, unfortunately.

I thought Simon Pegg was fine as Scotty. The Star Trek movies were the first thing I ever saw him in, so he was new to me and I didn't have any preconceptions based on his past roles. As with McCoy, sometimes the way they used him verged on parody, but I don't blame him for that. I also think they were aiming at the later Scotty. The Scotty of TOS had a wry sense of humor, no doubt, but he tended to be a terser, more serious character, as opposed to the older, looser, more jocular Scotty. In fact, by the later original cast movies and Generations, Scotty was unfortunately used too much for comic relief. For example, when the producers realized they couldn't get the entire original cast together for the prologue of Generations, they chose just to go with Scotty and Chekov, because "they were the funniest."
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Olorin wrote: Wed Sep 08, 2021 3:11 pm Per the presentation just now on Star Trek Day, additional crew members will include Cadet Uhura, Nurse Chapel, and Dr. M’Benga.
I'm going to assume you're not mentioning the elephant in the room on purpose?

La'an Noonien-Singh?

Are these people for real?

With that name present among the crew (or in the show at all) they've just ensured that I will not bother watching. I don't care about "giving it a chance". When all you can come up with are hammer-over-the-head retcons that sloppily attempt to rewrite 50 years of established Trek history - like Spock having a sister that is superior to him in every way imaginable - then it's just hot garbage that I don't have time for. It does seem Spock is pretty stupid after all, since in Space Seed he developed amnesia and completely forgot he'd served alongside someone with a very familiar last name to the tyrannical madman they just found floating in space. Good one, Spocko. Anything else you forgot to tell your friends? Oh wait, maybe he'll be sworn to secrecy over this too, just like the existence of the USS Discovery? Right.

I'll find something better to do with that one hour of my life every week. Make that two, as I won't be watching Discovery anymore either. Michael Burnham is going to single-handedly save the galaxy again, apparently. How many times is that now? I think I've lost count. Oh, and Picard is going back in time to present-day Earth! That sounds very original too.

Alex Kurtzman needs to be fired. Please.

:barf:
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Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Olorin wrote: Fri Sep 10, 2021 2:17 pm I think I didn’t mention it because it didn’t quite click at first what the name was. I think I had heard it as Noonien Soong , as in Data’s creator, which was enough of a stretch on its own.
I would have infinitely preferred that they had somehow shoehorned and ancestor of Data's creator into Pike's crew than the sheer nonsense and stretched impossibly beyond believability notion that is getting us to believe that a descendent of Khan's just happened to serve on the Enterprise.

I can understand and appreciate a plotline like the Augments in the episodes of ST: Enterptise, that made use of others like Khan being out there, but this is just a bit much. Again, these writers feel that everything and anything in this universe just has to be connected somehow, otherwise no one will 'get it'.

Now watch as Cadet Singh, or whoever the crap this person is, plants a homing device on the Enterprise that will conveniently draw the Botany Bay to it in five year's time or something dumb like that. :rolleye:
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Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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WhatCulture's TrekCulture YouTube channel did a video on the Strange New Worlds promo yesterday. They commented on the name and said sure, it could be unrelated to Khan, but the chances the character would be unrelated with a name like that are vanishingly small. It really makes no sense, though, for them to do this. Sure, Khan probably had a harem of women and had various off-spring. But for them not to have been rounded up and either executed or at least neutered, being the children of an augment, seems not very likely. The Federation still bans augmentation 300 years later, and the governments of Earth would have had to have been even more jumpy about it right after the Eugenics Wars. But say a child escaped getting slaughtered, and had a family, and so on. With the Federation being opposed to eugenics, why would anyone go by that name and draw attention to yourself? It would be like going by the name Hitler. OK, sure, there's some weird people that would be proud of such a heritage. But would Starfleet let them join?

All I can say is, like Lucy, the writers have got some 'splainin' to do.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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I guess you'll just have to tell me about it.

Out of the three shows (I'm not counting the two cartoons), I think I will give Picard one more chance and that's it. I had such huge hopes for New Worlds, but this one small thing managed to completely and utterly ruin it for me out of the gate.

As admiral what's-her-name said: "The sheer effing hubris" of these writers...
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Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Quite honestly, I doubt I'll see the point in telling you about it, since you've already decided not to like it. I'm not being critical of you. Only you can determine what you do or don't want to watch...you do you.

I used to really try to get people to like things that I liked, but I'm getting away from doing that. I've come to a place in my life where I no longer feel the need to try to make someone like something just because I do. This is partly because I see other people I know in the real world who crave the validation of being the center of a group and, heaven help us, an "influencer." But I've come to be more comfortable in liking what I like and not caring if other people like it (as long as enough like it that it doesn't get canceled). Moreover, it is a responsibility and potential liability to assure someone they'll like something (especially when they've already evinced a strong bent toward disliking it. If I tell someone, oh you'll love this, and they end up hating it, then they will disrespect my taste and devalue my opinion.

I'm not sure what I'll make of it myself. But for me, they built up such good vibes for Pike and Number One (Una Chin-Riley...hey, if you're going to have a main character, you've got to give her a name, so might as well make it a doozy...) and created so much anticipation for this show, that I'm going to watch it. And with Uhura, Chapel, and M'Benga among the crew, that makes me even more interested. That they appear to be making a story-telling decision so far-fetched as to sink the whole, er, enterprise concerns me, but I'll watch and see. If it wrecks the show, I'll move on. As for Picard, on the whole I quite liked the first season. The new trailer concerns me, admittedly. Time travel is possibly the most worn-out of Stat Trek's many worn-out tropes. Every series has indulged in it. Seriously, the show should have been called Time Trek instead of Star Trek (and scored alliteration points to boot). The new trailer conjured an image of a dusty, rutted road already trod by The Voyage Home, First Contact, and the Voyager 2-parter Future's End. We'll see. And Discovery, well, I'm liking it mostly for the characters, primarily Saru and Tilly. I'm still hoping the show will find its legs, like TNG did, and that I'll like the legs it finds. I did like the new character of Admiral Vance. We'll see what else they can do in their new future.

Ironically, the more Star Trek they put out there, the more diluted my interest in it becomes. Back in the acknowledged Golden Era of Star Trek (the TNG-DS9-VOY-ENT sequence), quality of an existing show seemed to suffer as they diverted staff toward developing and launching a new show, and they never had more than 2 shows (and maybe a movie) ongoing at any one time). Now they've got 5 shows, and even more in the pipeline. I suppose my expectations are lowering in the face of the odds they're stacking against themselves. And beyond that, we are on the cusp of what appears to be an absolutely jaw-dropping movie adaptation of Dune and a stunning-looking streaming series of Foundation. With the two unquestionably all-time greatest works in all of science fiction about to debut in my living room (Dune will be on HBO Max), Star Trek is a very distant third place in my entertainment matrix (oops, another pun).

And to divulge even a bit more, I have suffered and am suffering such affronts to my sensibilities and priorities in my actual life this year that I don't have the emotional energy to get too exercised over Star Trek. Nearly all my focus is consumed by trying to hold it together for a few more years until I'm ready to retire. I have learned not to wish away precious days and years of life to get past unpleasantness. Like Picard, I have become aware that there are more days behind than there are ahead. But some days it really is a challenge to keep my eyes on the prize, choose the mountains that I'm willing to die on (clarifying, in light of the increasing darker tone of this post, that that is only just a metaphor), and outmaneuver the nitwits with whom I'm forced to coexist.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Has anyone actually given Strange New Worlds a watch yet? 2 episodes in, I am rather enjoying it. Maybe I just have a soft spot for Anson Mount.

There's been a few issues over the last couple years since the show went into development, but so far, its reminding me of the "episodic sense of discovery" Trek vs a season-long season long single story Trek that has been the norm the last few years.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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I have been watching it and enjoying it. In fact, on the basis of the first episode it became the highest-ranked Star Trek series on Rotten Tomatoes ever. I'd expect that to change as more episodes come out, LOL. But the two stories they've done so far have been classic Trek. Also, like you, I can't get enough Anson Mount as Captain Pike. He has a charisma that Jeffrey Hunter never had. I pondered how to reconcile the two very different takes on the character and decided that Hunter's Pike was very disillusioned, having just lost a lot of crew battling the Kalars and feeling guilty about it. Of course, Mount's Pike has seen his own horrifying future and is struggling to come to terms with it, though in a much less surly, sour way than I imagine Hunter would have.

Did you catch the big retcon that was embedded in Pike's speech to the aliens in the first episode? It is the thing that relates to the thing I mentioned in the Picard thread. It's actually a good retcon as it endorses a fan theory that has grown up over the years to explain a big inconsistency that has developed in Star Trek's timeline.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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I'm extremely pleased with the show so far, and yes, it finally feels like I'm watching something that resembles Star Trek after I don't know how many years. A gazillion people online have expressed those exact same feelings, although many a cynical soul has pointed out how unimpressive that feat is in retrospect considering how low the bar has been set of late. Sadly, I can't say I disagree with that particular bucket of cold water, even if it does not detract from my enjoyment of a show that has been a joy to watch so far.

If I have any nitpicks, and the two of you that read this thread know me well enough to know that I always do, it's to do with the following two points:

1 - My enjoyment of the show thus far has majorly hinged on my dismissal of the Khan crewmember's presence. So long as it remains just a name, I'm going to keep my fingers firmly stuck in my ears and singing 'lalalalalala' and ignore her. The small revelation of her background thus far has been ok, even if it retcons the Federation's history with the Gorn and 'Arena' a bit, but you can bend things just enough to make it fit. However, you don't put someone with that name on the ship unless you plan to somehow shoehorn you-know-who in, so when that moment inevitably comes and canon utterly gets flushed down one of the Enterprise's never-seen toilets, that's the moment I may turn the TV off.

2 - The Spock and T'Pring scene bothered me. I feel it somewhat retcons 'Amok Time' - I always got the impression that Spock had not seen her since their betrothal, hence why he is staring at her picture as a 7-year old, but ok, it's left vague enough. Yet, it really forces you to look at the TOS episode in a very different light upon re-watching it, and one thing I'm not interested in doing at this point in my life is to add new, unasked for angles into something that's been comfortably shelved away in my mind for several decades in its current, unalterable state. Even accepting that Spock possibly had a very active relationship with T'Pring prior to TOS, the entire scene felt awkward and much too human in its depiction of a date between two Vulcans (yeah, yeah... Spock in only half Vulcan and not fully logical at this point, but it felt jarring). The scene was full of emotion and barely repressed sexual desire (horniness, if you will) and it just felt out of place. A single line of dialogue to indicate they were at the moment of one of their 7-year cycles would have explained it, but no. Whatever happened to the subtle display of affection we'd seen before, like the two fingers touching? I get sensibilities have changed and you can't compare what you'd seen in the 60's on a TV show like TOS to what people expect now, but the problem here is the precedent you've established over 50 years of detailing an alien species and culture. I tuned in to watch Star Trek, not Bridgerton, and the whole thing felt like a cheap and easy opportunity to sexy up the show in a way that felt forced and unnatural. If you're going to do that, use the human characters, or Deltans, or whatever. Instead it was a case of "Oooh... polls show the ladies think the current Spock is hot stuff! Let's write a scene where he takes his shirt off and is about to get it on!!! Yeah... ratings, baby!!!"

On a final and positive note while speaking of the current Spock, and the scene above notwithstanding, I am floored by how well and naturally Ethan Peck has fallen into the role immortalized by Nimoy. He's got the mannerisms down, and the voice for me is uncanny. There are moments when I can her Nimoy speaking, and have done the test of closing my eyes when Peck is onscreen and I can picture in my mind that it's Nimoy speaking. Kudos to CBS for finding this gem of a man for the role. I never bought Quinto as Spock (heck, other than Karl Urban, I found the Kelvin actors mostly miscast), but Quinto's Spock is amateur hour compared to Peck's.

As for Anson Mount as Pike... well, that goes beyond perfection.
This Space for Rent

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So now that I know that the only two people on our forum who follow Star Trek have seen the show, Spoilers Ahead!

I thought it was very good that the first episode essentially officially retconned the period of the Eugenics Wars. Fans have been speculating since Voyager visited a remarkably unnuked 1996 Los Angeles that all the time treks had altered the timeline, and of course the Temporal Cold War arc of Enterprise provided ample opportunity for interference. Pike didn't mention any dates as I recall, but the early phases of it, as shown by footage of Trump's insurrection, obviously put it in the 21st Century. At the same time, it was chilling to hear this future history of our problems developing into World War III, and that's all too real a possibility even without genetically engineered superbeings. If there is a second civil war, there is no way that Russia and/or China would not try to take advantage of the situation, and that only leads to one horrifying conclusion. Stepping back from that cheerful thought, I also thought it was clever that the first episode of SNW and the last episode of Picard addressed the same topic, with the latter showing Adam Soong dusting off is Project Khan folder. I guess it's not too much of a leap that since Arik Soong was interested in Augments that one of his forebears would have started the whole disaster. I'm sure if the writers of Enterprise had known 20 years ago that a new series was going to suggest a Soong as an original creator of Augments, they might have mentioned it in their episodes. They did not, as far as I recall.

One might quibble about how too on-the-nose this reference was by calling it Project Khan, but it reminds me of naming Michael Dorn's character in ST VI Colonel Worf. The writers agonized over how to clue in viewers that the character was an ancestor of someone who was not yet even a twinkle in his father's eye, until someone said "name the character Worf." In the case of SNW, they could have called it Project Augment or Project Superhuman or something like that, but who needs subtlety? Oh well, a small quibble.

Spock and T'Pring....I think the writers wanted to explore what a Vulcan date would be like, and especially the reproving commentary from one of the partners. Whether this evinced too much emotion or not is in the eye of the beholder but that aside, I found the back-and-forth enjoyable. Regarding Vulcan mating, Spock pretty firmly assured the lovely Droxine, daughter of the administrator of Stratos City, that there was no mating outside the 7-year cycle, but to give him the benefit of the doubt and not call him a liar, I'll choose to think he was letting her down easy. I've always had the impression that while mating during Pon Farr was compulsory, mating at other times could happen. And here's what I found on Memory Alpha.
One way to interpret pon farr is that Vulcans only have sex once every seven years. However, TOS writer and continuity story editor D.C. Fontana once explained that pon farr is not the only time Vulcans feel romantic attraction, 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 which are not seven years apart." – D.C. Fontana (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages)
It's been quite a while since I watched Amok Time, but my memory strongly suggests that yeah, they haven't seen each other since the betrothal. But the beauty of Paramount Plus is that I can grab my phone, pull up the episode, and scan through it. I don't think it does more than imply that they had not seen each other in all that time. So, I think this is an instance of the writers deciding they don't want to let something get in the way of the story that they wanted to tell. How I receive those decisions depends on how important the thing in question is. If for example, they decide Khan's name was actually George, I'd have a big problem with that. On the other hand, if they're suggesting my assumption about something that was never carved in canon stone was wrong, I'll roll with it.

Saw an interview with Anson Mount recently. He talked about when he read for the part. It was the typical scenario of not knowing what character he was reading for. When he found out he had landed Pike, he was ecstatic.

Well, enough for now. I've got to get out to Target and pick up my groceries, LOL.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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My take on La'an, very briefly. Her "colony ship" was another sleeper ship fleeing the aftermath of the Eugenics Wars. That's what the Botany Bay was, after all, a colony ship. She was a child and doesn't know her heritage. Her Augment constitution allowed her to survive being tossed back out into space alone in an escape pod, or whatever they put her in, until she was rescued. Since Khan is 200 years in the past at this point, nobody at Star Fleet reacts to her name Noonien Singh, any more than meeting someone today named Hanover would immediately make us think of George III.

Or something like that! I really hope they give her a good backstory, not just to avoid the problems we all fear, but because I really liked the character based on what we've seen so far, and I'd hate for that to be wasted.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Your theory is a sound one, and my issue is not with how the connection would thus be established. My problem lies with how it unequivocally retcons 'Space Seed' in a way that makes zero sense.

You can bet that if she is indeed an augment, that is going to be revealed at some point in this series because otherwise why even have her on the show? That's fine, but the problem then becomes why Spock, Uhura, Chapel, M'Benga, etc, years later, would not make a single mention of the fact that not only did they work with a relative of the man currently trying to take over the ship, but that any of them would neglect the fact that she too was an augment from the Eugenics period. Not something Pike or Spock would fail to mention to Starfleet, the records for which Kirk should have then had access to.

The whole thing is just too problematic to reconcile, and if they pull another Discovery in that they have to cover it up yet again and no one can ever talk about it... sorry, but that's getting old. Also, you really think Spock would keep quiet with the ship and his friends in jeopardy from Khan? Not bloody likely!
This Space for Rent

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Valkrist wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 6:02 pm
Olorin wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 5:31 pm Suffice it to say, the show has certainly set itself a challenge.
Yes, but... needlessly so.
Thank you for so nicely teeing up another observation I wanted to make. I am sure that the prospect of writing an arc for this character was so appealing that they may not given full consideration to how they would explain the conundrum that you point out. The arc could be classic Star Trek storytelling, analogous to Data’s struggle to become more human. Should she be held accountable for the actions of the other Augnents? Is she the master of her actions, or is her DNA? Is she fully Augment, or is she perhaps only half or 1/4 Augment, and the rest normal human? There are so many things to explore that regarding whether her presence on the Enterprise now should’ve been a warning to the crew of the Enterprise later was shoved aside with something along the lines of, we will figure that out later. I like the logic of stories to be airtight and not run afoul of things previously established, but I could certainly understand the writers’ excitement with wanting to tackle these issues and not blame them too much for forging ahead without properly plotting out the endgame.

As for the possibility that this may be another hush hush scenario like Discovery, perhaps Pike will be the only one on the ship to know, and given his fate, that would tie off that loose end.

Which reminds me of how badly the original series failed to predict advances in medicine, that somebody in Pike’s condition would only be able to express himself by flashing yes or no. Someone like Stephen Hawking could be said to have been in an analogous situation, and he could use his eye movements to control his wheelchair and type sentences for the voice simulator to read. I guess this is on the area where Star Trek fortunately failed to predict the future very well.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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SciFi tech in Trek is one of those odd conundrums where they are supposed to be hundreds of years in the future but in 1960s the tech wasnt all that great to begin with :P so in some instances we've flew by some of that tech by light years and some of that tech is still light years away.. But yes, the Chris Pike injury really should have been able to been cured/or had a better way of communicating (ie Hawking). A bit of an off topic tangent that's always "bothered me" is the universal translator... I mean i get the idea behind the technology and its an easy way to explain why everyone is speaking English (and makes it just easier than having subtitles for every language) but, if someone is speaking Klingon, we hear English because of the translator, but wouldnt their lips still be moving in Klingon? Shouldnt we be seeing a weird old school dubbed voiceover?

As far as Spock/T'Pring, yea it goes against established canon but to be fair, those early days of Trek were kind of fast and loose with canon back then, not that that should be used as a "deus ex machina" to get out of trying to keep continuity. I mean Khan recognized Chevok in Wrath of Khan, but Chekov wasnt on TOS until season 2, but the stardate of Catspaw (Chekov first appearance) occurs before Space Seed, another one of those "fast and loose with canon" situations.

The augment character, that could come back and bite them in the proverbial butts. Thats the issue with prequels, writers ALWAYS have to sneak in some nod to a characters name or something. I get the nostalgic name drops but there's a time and place
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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I'm not a fan at all of Abrams Trek or Discovery and Picard. I think they're terrible. I heard people saying SNW was a return to 'classic' Trek so I thought I'd check it out. Just looks like more of the same to me. Bad characterization and CW level dialogue. It's like a group of friends take a joyride on a starship than a professional military/science crew.

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That is the 'normie' perception of Captain Kirk, yes. Kirk was certainly a suave, debonair captain but he was never the tail chaser that he gets parodied as. Sure, he wooed some women in the original but it's been so exaggerated over the years. He always captained like a professional. The Abrams films made him a Pepe Le Pew caricature.

Shatner knew when and how to turn on the charm and when to be buttoned up whereas Anson Mount's Pike throws in quips at every opportunity to the point where it's not believable.

Spock is way too robotic and the dialogue between him and T'pring is just awkward. Again, the misperception is that because Vulcans purge emotion, that's how they should be portrayed: emotionless. That's actually what a lot of actors get wrong. The trick is to show some emotion.

Then you have the new Number 1 who outshines the entire crew and even manages to make Spock look dumb. There's Uhura, whose vibe is that of a teenager on a field trip. Nurse Chapel who is a medical professional but acts very immature compared to Mccoy or Crusher.

At this point, the Orville is closer to authentic Star Trek than anything from CBS or Paramount.

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These characters are also a lot younger than in TOS. I would argue that if anyone was super robotic was early Nimoy. Most people I've seen complaining about Spock and T'Pring was that it was "too intimate" and/or it wasn't Pon Farr.
I agree with Val, Ethan Peck has done a wonderful job so far with his portrayal of Spock. I can envision him being the person who is later played by Nimoy.

Pike doesn't want to be there, he's got a lot of crap to get thru. If you told/showed me future and what I was going to experience and it was that traumatic, I'd probably be lashing out as well. I guess some people graduate from college/whatever academy and go straight into 100% adult maturity, but Uhura being "fresh faced" and all that is, to me, more realistic of a portrayal.

I dont get your criticism of Pike throwing out quips yet you say McCoy is an upmost medical professional, but was the king of quips.


I also find it hard to "write off" a show 2 episodes in these days, but I guess that is the current "binge era" of TV and streaming. If I would have given up on ANY trek series after 2 episodes, I would only have seen 2 episodes each of TOS, TNG, DS9, ENT, and Voyager. the first seasons of those shows were cringe worthy. Nowadays, if its not a hit in the first 15 minutes, time to move on.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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I don't want to come off as telling anybody they have to like a show and the problem is all theirs if they don't, but of course I will always try to find reasons or smooth-overs for the faults they find with the show (unless I think those are problems too). Everyone is different and has different tastes, and if SNW doesn't do it for you, that's totally fine. But as BC said, if you write a show off after two episodes, you'd have missed most of the Star Trek series, as they tend to take a while to find their legs.

I will disagree somewhat with your characterization of Kirk's skirt-chasing as being just a stereotype. Yes, the Abrams movies really played that up, but if you go back and watch TOS, the number of episodes where he had a romantic involvement, re-encountered a woman with whom he had had a past relationship, or was reminded of a past relationship, there are a fair number. Is that a bad thing? No, I'm not slut-shaming. It's only bad if it's with someone under your command, which is a huge conflict of interest.

Also, what is "professional"? Is that someone who is stiff as a board and never has fun? I am a professional and I work with other professionals. We are very good at our jobs, but we also know how to relate to each other on more than just a strictly "just the facts" basis. Camaraderie strengthens bonds and improves the working relationship.

And another example. Patrick Stewart likes to tell the story of how uptight he was in the early days of TNG. He came from British theater so his approach was all business. He was appalled at how much the rest of the cast cut up and had fun. He felt like they were all there to do a job and if they were having fun, they weren't doing what they were getting paid to do. He eventually figured out that having fun was not antithetical to being good at your job, and no doubt also realized that the camaraderie built between the actors informed the relationships between their characters.

I don't want to belabor the point any more, so those will be my two cents on the topic.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Olorin wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 11:27 am ...

I will disagree somewhat with your characterization of Kirk's skirt-chasing as being just a stereotype. ...There are a fair number. Is that a bad thing? No, I'm not slut-shaming. It's only bad if it's with someone under your command, which is a huge conflict of interest.
Yeoman.Janice.Rand.

Oh, and what makes it even more egregious is that (assuming Star Fleet regs are similar to the US military regs), his dalliance is with an enlisted person. (Yeoman is an enlisted rank...).
Fraternization between officers and noncoms (and lower) is strictly forbidden on pain of court-martial.

"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: Thu May 19, 2022 2:12 pm Ok, so scratch my theory on La’an.
Hmmm... feeling a bit ambiguous about this episode but also that it was the weakest of the three so far while still being quite good.

The augment in the room has finally been addressed, for which I am glad as I was beginning to suffer anxiety as to how long it would take them to get around to this. The revelation that Una is the augment, not La'an was an interesting twist, and they managed to diffuse the controversial aspect of La'an's ancestry and presence by turning it into a nothing-burger. It came across basically as if everyone knows who her ancestor is, and that it's not a big deal, unless of course you are La'an and had to endure the stigma of that family name growing up... you'd think they would have changed the name by now though, which is a bit odd and silly.

With this in perspective, a rewatch of 'Space Seed' reveals numerous cues that Khan's identity and past were not really a secret even before the briefing scene, the point of the episode being that they found his ship rather than the fact he even existed at all. The only slight inconsistency remaining is Spock not making mention of La'an to Kirk or even Khan, though as she is now revealed to not be genetically-enhanced, it feels like a pointless observation for him to make. It remains to be seen whether they will make more of this character's background or leave it at that (stuff about the Gorn - fine; more Khan references - no).

It feels like a rather big deal to make this connection only to then make a minor moral point about bigotry three episodes in, but the overall family relation is so canon-problematic that I'm really kinda hoping that they do leave it there. The main plot of the episode was about Una's heritage after all, and La'an's ancestry was used as a story device to shine a light on that rather than be the focus. It was clever, but didn't fully answer for me why they felt they had to go to Trek greatest all-time villain to explore that. As a writer myself, you have to carefully analyze each element introduced into a story and ask the question of "Why is this here and how does it make the story better?" The presence of La'an has so far failed to answer that, and if they don't move past this episode with that, there will be no answer beyond the obvious fan-service, but if they do, then they run the risk of really messing up continuity and that's exactly what I don't want to see. So, with that in mind, I hope the La'an train stops here.

As for the rest of the show, the Una reveal was interesting. Gene Roddenberry had wanted Number One to be an android early version of Data, but I much prefer this alternative. After TNG and now Picard, I think Trek fandom is a bit burnt-out on synthetics, so I much prefer this, even if they had to dip into the Khan well to illustrate a point. The Illyrians have appeared before, in ST:ENT specifically, and they looked very different, but it is explained in this episode that they physically adapt to the environments they live in, and with the genetic augmentations, you can shrug off why Una looks human. Even when she's looking at the images of Illyrians on the screen, you can spot one with the physical appearance of the ones in 'Damage'. I am more curious now to see how this plays into her eventual fate in Starfleet, and how such an exemplary officer would no longer be aboard the Enterprise when Kirk takes over, or how there is no further reference to her. The episode ends with a clear sense of her inner conflict, and I wouldn't be surprised that she would leave Starfleet after Pike has his accident and the ship is turned over to someone else.

Lastly, the M'Benga subplot... not sure about this yet. Felt awkward and a bit macabre, to be honest. I mean, I get the extremes a parent might go to, but this feels beyond the pale. Transporters are an equal parts marvelous and terrifying piece of technology. Over 50 tears of Star Trek have been plenty to give us more than enough transporter-accidents and anomalies to shake a stick at, so trusting one to preserve the life of a child... yikes! I mean, if they already had reliable cryogenics in 1996 (or the 2020's if you go with the timeline retcon), would that not be a much safer alternative for the doctor's daughter than to put her inside a transporter buffer? I suppose that perhaps the buffer is a 100% true form of suspension whereas with cryogenics you might still experience minute cellular activity, but if it can buy Khan centuries, surely it could/should have been tried? The advantage of what we see of course, is that he gets to spend a bit of time with her once in a while, but if he does have to rematerialize her every so often to prevent pattern degradation, is the disease not slowly progressing every time she comes back? She clearly has memory of the last time she was material, so it's not like he's bringing back a time-frozen copy each time. And what if the ship loses main and backup power at the same time? Just an awful risk to take. They did address that a bit by Una stating that the medical transporter would be getting it's own power source from now on, but surely M'Benga had to know the risks of being aboard a starship and how quickly things go wrong before this.

I don't know... it was interesting concept (totally stolen from 'Relics' btw), but it didn't feel very well-thought through.
This Space for Rent

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I think it remains to be established how closely related to Khan that La'an is. If she is in fact not an augment from another sleeper ship, then should could be many generations removed from him and not all that different, if any, from anyone else. I did notice in the few seconds for recap at the beginning that when she introduced herself to the captain, it was as "La'an Noonien." She dropped the Singh part. Perhaps her arc this season will be making peace with her shady ancestry and embracing her full name.

I had not made the connection with the Enterprise episode until a TrekCulture video pointed it out. Yeah, those Illyrians looked nothing like Una, but as you say, genetic engineering. What fate the writers have in store for her, I do not know. She was about as close to a blank slate as one could have from a legacy character, not only in terms of racial origin but really just about anything else, beyond being female and very smart.

On the whole, I thought the episode was pretty decent, although it did somewhat fall into Star Trek's "mystery disease strikes the ship" trope. In the age of Covid, I guess the writers couldn't resist. I wasn't quite clear on the connection with the Sickbay transporter. Did it somehow prevent the biofilters on the main transporter system from working? I didn't quite catch that. I thought they were about to run afoul of canon when M'Benga said there was no limit on how long you could store someone in the pattern buffer, remembering the modifications Scotty had to make to the system in Relics, but he fortunately said you just have to materialize the person periodically. I suppose getting to spend a few minutes with his daughter periodically, with the concomitant progression of the disease during that time, is either a trade-off he's willing to make to spend time with her, or a reflection on his confidence that he will eventually find a cure.

The disembodied Illyrian colonists reminded me of the disembodied bad guy wraiths from the TNG episode Power Play. Fortunately these entities turned out to be benign. I think that was an intention subversion of expectations on the writers' part, so good on that, but I deduced right away that they were going to be the Illyrians. They did name the episode Ghosts of Illyria, after all, though of course that is also an obvious reference to Una's plight.

It's interesting to see what sort of endgame they will right for Una. It's obvious she will be off the ship before Kirk takes command, but I hope it is not because she is court-martialed. We know that as of Dr. Bashir's time many decades later, the ban on genetic engineering remains in place, so I suppose Pike is just going to keep it hush-hush. If Star Fleet bends the rules for her, and again later for Bashir, well, it's not much of a rule. So keeping it secret may be the best bet. On the Ready Room aftershow, Wil Wheaton asked Rebecca Romijn why Una deleted her log. Beyond the obvious reason that you don't provide evidence of your transgression, I can't believe he, or the people who write for him, didn't draw the connection to Sisko deleting his log at the end of In the Pale Moonlight.

I also wonder what will happen to M'Benga. We know he will still be on the ship after Kirk takes over, as he appeared in two episodes of TOS. Since he was Chief Medical Officer under Pike, apparently he was demoted when McCoy came aboard. It will be interesting to see if we ever get that story.

Lastly, the TrekCulture video pointed out that the show is building the relationship between Pike and Spock. Spock, who struggled so hard to be more Vulcan than Vulcan, was willing to risk everything, even his life, to get Pike back to Talos IV to be freed of his body, so we may get to see what goes into that bond.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Thoughts on this week's episodes. Spoiler alert, of course!

On the whole, I thought it was a pretty strong episode, but I had a few quibbles. When Pike orders shields up and is told they can't because the tunnel to the other ship is still connected, he just gets a deer in the headlights look and says, oh no. It would have been a lot more impressive if he would have said, jettison the tunnel, even if there are still people in it, and raise the shields. I think it would have been a better idea to protect the Enterprise, which has so many more people on it, and sacrifice a few.

They may have introduced a little bit of a continuity error by including the mind meld. In the TOS episode Dagger of the Mind, Spock makes a big deal out of doing the meld with a human. I don't remember the dialog, but thinking about it, it felt like it was something he hadn't done before. But now, he has. Oh well.

I am now more curious about how many people know that Una is an Illyrian. When she had to be operated on, if there were any anatomical differences, those would surely have come to light. Not to mention a cross-species blood transfusion. I guess we just have to assume that some of these details got worked out off-screen, but it would be good to know.

Sean Ferrick on the TrekCulture YouTube channel was a little off-put by establishing that the Gorn have one of those pop-and-click languages, when in Arena all we heard was a lot of snarling and hissing. Perhaps the Gorn have quite a collection of sounds they make. Perhaps what we heard in Arena was just the Gorn's sounds of exertion as he struggled along like a mummy in one of the old horror movies. It's been too long since I watched Arena to recall if we heard Gorn speech underneath the synthesized voice of the universal translator. On a similar note, La'an's brother must have been truly brilliant if he worked out the Gorn's light pulse mode of communications and wrote it up in a See It and Say It in Gorn diary. They needed him in Discovery when they were trying to communicate with Species 10C. I guess the guy inherited a healthy dose of Augment intelligence genes.

Ferrick also said that having Hemmer and Uhura trapped in the cargo bay with a crisis to solve summoned up memories of the TNG episode Disaster. I had not thought of that, but he was totally right. I just wish he'd kept that observation to himself, as I thought that was a pretty poor episode. But getting back to SNW, what was that gadget Uhura and Hemmer were working on? Was it some sort of reactor? Hemmer said if it blew, it would be an atomic blast. Is it not enough that Starfleet has to wire bridge control panels with high voltage that throws sparks and electrocutes people whenever there's a problem? Do they have to build stray nuclear devices into random places also?

With the recent reveal of the photo of our galactic core, the black hole Sgr A*, I've been seeing a lot of videos on black holes and reading a bit about them. It's thought that the gas and debris in the accretion disk is moving at close to the speed of light and has a temperature around 10 million degrees. Not exactly the kind of environment that the poor, banged-up Enterprise would be wanting to get into. Did they fly over it and then swoop down between it and the event horizon to do the sling-shot?

In the kudos department, I thought they did a good job of using the Gorn without showing the Gorn. I also like La'an's line that it wasn't true that no human had ever seen a Gorn; rather, many had, but had not lived to talk about it. I also thought the episode did a good job of capturing the "submarine movie" feel of Balance of Terror and Wrath of Khan. Spock's invention of the way to track the Gorn was interesting, too.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Olorin wrote: Sat May 28, 2022 6:04 am Thoughts on this week's episodes. Spoiler alert, of course!

On the whole, I thought it was a pretty strong episode, but I had a few quibbles. When Pike orders shields up and is told they can't because the tunnel to the other ship is still connected, he just gets a deer in the headlights look and says, oh no. It would have been a lot more impressive if he would have said, jettison the tunnel, even if there are still people in it, and raise the shields. I think it would have been a better idea to protect the Enterprise, which has so many more people on it, and sacrifice a few.
I agree, but I would have been shocked if he could make such a deadly decision that quickly. They're going to great pains to paint him as a captain that is deeply affected by the loss of every crewmember, so it's likely he took a few moments to consider that the Enterprise could take a few hits while unshielded versus the immediate sacrifice of lives before taking that chance. Also, wasn't La'an in the tube at that moment in time, or did she run back before the Gorn ship fired? Can't recall.
They may have introduced a little bit of a continuity error by including the mind meld. In the TOS episode Dagger of the Mind, Spock makes a big deal out of doing the meld with a human. I don't remember the dialog, but thinking about it, it felt like it was something he hadn't done before. But now, he has. Oh well.
Someone pointed out that if canon was broken on this subject, it'd already happened on ST:Ent, which had an ep where a Vulcan mind melds with a human. I don't recall the line in Dagger of the Mind, so yes, if it was to do with Spock specifically, then they messed up, but if with Vulcans in general, then it had been done before and likely Spock didn't know about it.
I am now more curious about how many people know that Una is an Illyrian. When she had to be operated on, if there were any anatomical differences, those would surely have come to light. Not to mention a cross-species blood transfusion. I guess we just have to assume that some of these details got worked out off-screen, but it would be good to know.
I had the same thought, but then it was stated previously that their enhancements make them undergo physiological changes that could go well beyond how their faces look (the different Illyrians seen on those computer records). It could very well be that Una looks as human on the inside as she does on the outside. I agree though, they should have made that more clear, but if not, I am reminded that if by the time of the Picard series, Starfleet medical and security still can't seem to distinguish between a Vulcan and a Romulan, then 150 years earlier, I'm not too surprised that Una's medical scans show that she's human.
Sean Ferrick on the TrekCulture YouTube channel was a little off-put by establishing that the Gorn have one of those pop-and-click languages, when in Arena all we heard was a lot of snarling and hissing. Perhaps the Gorn have quite a collection of sounds they make. Perhaps what we heard in Arena was just the Gorn's sounds of exertion as he struggled along like a mummy in one of the old horror movies. It's been too long since I watched Arena to recall if we heard Gorn speech underneath the synthesized voice of the universal translator.
Yeah, that was annoying and needless. They could have just had the kid hiss and gotten the same intended effect on the story. The possible explanation I heard is that the Gorn in Arena was reacting vocally to a different situation and maybe the hisses as growls are more indicative of a threatening, combat posture versus the clicks when communicate amongst themselves? Who knows. Maybe if the Gorn are featured again (and hopefully remain unseen by the crew), the hisses will make a return.
Ferrick also said that having Hemmer and Uhura trapped in the cargo bay with a crisis to solve summoned up memories of the TNG episode Disaster. I had not thought of that, but he was totally right. I just wish he'd kept that observation to himself, as I thought that was a pretty poor episode. But getting back to SNW, what was that gadget Uhura and Hemmer were working on? Was it some sort of reactor? Hemmer said if it blew, it would be an atomic blast. Is it not enough that Starfleet has to wire bridge control panels with high voltage that throws sparks and electrocutes people whenever there's a problem? Do they have to build stray nuclear devices into random places also?
I don't recall much about the TNG ep, so that's probably a good thing. I think the device they were trying to diffuse was the one that Hemmer was quizzing Uhura on at the beginning of the show, which explains how she had some knowledge on how to work on the thing? I'd have to watch the explanation again, but yeah, there are definitely a 1000 ways to die on a starship.
With the recent reveal of the photo of our galactic core, the black hole Sgr A*, I've been seeing a lot of videos on black holes and reading a bit about them. It's thought that the gas and debris in the accretion disk is moving at close to the speed of light and has a temperature around 10 million degrees. Not exactly the kind of environment that the poor, banged-up Enterprise would be wanting to get into. Did they fly over it and then swoop down between it and the event horizon to do the sling-shot?

In the kudos department, I thought they did a good job of using the Gorn without showing the Gorn. I also like La'an's line that it wasn't true that no human had ever seen a Gorn; rather, many had, but had not lived to talk about it. I also thought the episode did a good job of capturing the "submarine movie" feel of Balance of Terror and Wrath of Khan. Spock's invention of the way to track the Gorn was interesting, too.
Yeah, it was definitely an homage to BoT and TWoK, including the Black Hole cloud subbing in for the Mutara Nebula and a lot of the similar effects on sensors and shields.
This Space for Rent

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Valkrist wrote: Sun May 29, 2022 5:54 am
Olorin wrote: Sat May 28, 2022 6:04 am Thoughts on this week's episodes. Spoiler alert, of course!

On the whole, I thought it was a pretty strong episode, but I had a few quibbles. When Pike orders shields up and is told they can't because the tunnel to the other ship is still connected, he just gets a deer in the headlights look and says, oh no. It would have been a lot more impressive if he would have said, jettison the tunnel, even if there are still people in it, and raise the shields. I think it would have been a better idea to protect the Enterprise, which has so many more people on it, and sacrifice a few.
I agree, but I would have been shocked if he could make such a deadly decision that quickly. They're going to great pains to paint him as a captain that is deeply affected by the loss of every crewmember, so it's likely he took a few moments to consider that the Enterprise could take a few hits while unshielded versus the immediate sacrifice of lives before taking that chance. Also, wasn't La'an in the tube at that moment in time, or did she run back before the Gorn ship fired? Can't recall.
I know, it would have made him seem almost super-human, but at it was it made him seem paralyzed. Of course, I think all of our captains have been paralyzed at one time or another. For what it's worth, I don't think he knew whether anyone was in the tube, let alone La'an.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Just an observation of Pike. He's seen his future and all the what/when/where questions, does that allow him to take more "reckless" risks. "Lets dive into this brown dwarf and hide, I mean, clearly I'm not dying today, I saw my future." Not that Pike is reckless by nature, he seems to care about each and every one of his crew, dont think he'd be okay with the weekly redshirt death from TOS :P, but knowing you future and if you take that as written in stone, that no matter why I do my choices will lead to THAT moment, if I dive into the brown dwarf or not, my path is leads to those visions I saw.


Also, another comment, I for one, LOVE Ortegas at the helm. I think its because her comments remind me of my bluntness and wisecracks when I'm at work.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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BladeCollector wrote: Tue May 31, 2022 4:53 am Just an observation of Pike. He's seen his future and all the what/when/where questions, does that allow him to take more "reckless" risks. "Lets dive into this brown dwarf and hide, I mean, clearly I'm not dying today, I saw my future." Not that Pike is reckless by nature, he seems to care about each and every one of his crew, dont think he'd be okay with the weekly redshirt death from TOS :P, but knowing you future and if you take that as written in stone, that no matter why I do my choices will lead to THAT moment, if I dive into the brown dwarf or not, my path is leads to those visions I saw.
A good point. It also makes me wonder if his future is written in stone. I think the Klingon guardian told him it was, by say he decided to commit suicide...would he not be able to?
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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This is why I maintain that it was a stupid thing to do. I think the writers got caught up in the moment of having something neat to play with and throw in to add conflict and dimension to Pike, which was fine while he was a guest star on Discovery. Yet now that he has his own show, it raises a host of paradoxes and conundrums that don't bear up under a looking glass, and actually become a problem for how to write Pike moving forward. If they were going to have him have the vision, they should have been very clear about the rules governing it.
This Space for Rent

Re: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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So needless to say, Spoiler Alert!




So tonight we went where I feared we would go way back when La'an made that comment about the Gorn using humans for "breeding sacks." Yep, we are in full-on Alien territory, chestbursters and all. I don't know that that exactly contradicts any canon about the Gorn (more on that in a moment) but it is a place I didn't feel Star Trek needed to go. For starters, it felt just a tad, uh, derivative? As in, might Paramount be getting a call from Fox and Brandywine Productions? Beyond that, out and out horror is not a genre I typically associate with Star Trek, the montage of clips from tonight's episode of the Ready Room notwithstanding. And when it does do it, I feel it is best when it is subtle. There was a scene in this season of Picard where the cop is lured into La Sirena and sees the Borg Queen hanging from her cables. The way the shot was framed (by Jonathan Frakes, of course) she was totally a spider in its web. That was very well done.

As to canon, there was a scene in one of the Abramstrek movies where McCoy mentions performing a C-section on a pregnant Gorn. Perhaps in a different universe, Gorn reproduce differently? I doubt that a universe otherwise so similar could be so far off in that regard. Do Gorn have multiple means of reproduction? Is this a different breed of Gorn? I mean, obviously this Gorn are far more vicious, not to mention quicker, than the Gorn Kirk fought (though reasonably in line with the Gorn shown in Enterprise's mirror universe episode). These Gorn also don't seem intelligent enough to be a technological race, but these were babies, I guess. Oh, and the Gorn apparently share something else with the creatures from the Alien franchise...ability to grow from baby to adult in a matter of hours. In the Alien universe, that ultimately made sense...they were genetically engineered by a race that used nanotechnology, so you might suppose they could absorb any matter around them to gain mass. That's the only thing that makes sense to me. But the Gorn? So many questions.

And regrettably, we got to see Ripley hurl herself into the molten lead, I mean, Hemmer through himself from a nacelle. Why oh why did they have to kill off Hemmer? Especially since they never used him as much as they should have. Will Scotty join the crew next season, or will we get a different Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, er, Chief Engineer, each season?

So, very mixed feelings about tonight's episode. For what it was, I thought it was well done. I'm just not sure I'm very happy about what it was.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."
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