Logline
A distress call from Lt. Noonien-Singh compels Spock to disobey orders and take the USS Enterprise and its crew into disputed space, risking renewed hostilities with the Klingons in a bid to aid their shipmate.
Written by Henry Alonso Myers & Akiva Goldsman
Directed by Chris Fisher
A note about episode discussions on startrek.website
Right now, the plan is to post the /c/startrek discussion when the episode drops on Thursdays. Once the global community has had some time to watch and digest what they’ve seen, the /c/daystrominstitute discussion will go live on Sundays for a more in-depth analysis. This is subject to change as we evaluate what works best for the community as a whole.
Ortegas inverted her controller settings as everyone should 🎮
Honestly Inverted Stick for Flight controls makes so much more sense on controller because that’s what you would do with an actual flight stick
- I am 100% here for the chaotic energy that Carol Kane is going to bring to this show.
- The Klingon captain had exactly the right amount of swagger and sassiness that a TOS-era Klingon captain is supposed to have. I’m glad that they’re moving on from some of the Discovery Klingon characterization while also resisting the urge to jump right to them behaving like TNG Klingons.
Hemmer was my favorite character from season one, and is very difficult to replace in my heart. But Carol Kane is one of those actors you just can’t help but love to see on screen (in any capacity). It’s going to be very hard to be upset knowing she’ll be around.
Pelia is like “I have been alive for hundreds of years and I’m going to make that everyone else’s problem.”
Really delighted with this episode.
No complaints. Can’t really buy into the nitpicks on this one. It seemed completely Trek, and gave many of the ensemble their moments to shine. Production design gorgeous, virtual staging more seamless, costumes excellent, vfx great.
I like how M’Benga has hoarded the green vial as part of his lingering trauma. Better, we finally see a physician giving himself the juice instead of Kirk or some other command officer. In fact, one has to wonder if McCoy carried a stash provided by M’Benga.
Spock’s unresolved feelings for Chapel are well crafted and mirror the lingering pain we see her left with in TOS. It makes those scenes with Chapel in TOS comprehensible instead of cringe-inducing.
Regarding Nurse Chapel almost dying - this is one of the TV/movie tropes that I think is such a cheap and terrible device and I am tired of it. Discovery was full of these scenes where they make you believe a main character really almost died, only to survive after all, and having their crew mates weep for them (I am looking at you Burnham). There are much better ways to create good drama.
I loved that they gave Dr. M’Benga some screentime front and center and showed that he can throw down if necessary, even if it was with the help of some super serum stuff. And while I even loved his (and Nurse Chapel’s ) elaborate fight scene and enjoyed the way they filmed it, I’m also not sure if it quite fits with Star Trek. Just not sure yet with the excessive slow motion. The camera angles however were some great artistic choice. But overall one great start to season 2.
Thoughts and observations written as I watch- I’ll be putting this on both Reddit and Lemmy, since infinity diversity/infinity combinations:
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Wheeee, NCC-1701 in the Star Trek tag!
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Previously: Last season happened.
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Little ships flying!
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Wonder who the lawyer that Una and Pike have tried to reach is.
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Oh, hey, the Vulcan musical instrument whose name I can’t remember!
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“Fascinating.” “Isn’t that usually his line?”
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The fellowship on archeological medicine? Is that a reference to Dr. Korby?
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“We must steal the Enterprise.” Buddy, if I had a nickel every time someone had to steal the Enterprise, I’d have several nickels.
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Lt. Mitchell gunning for series regular next year with how much screen time she’s had early on this episode.
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Okay, having Carol Kane is already paying dividends.
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And, yeah, Carol Kane doesn’t need alien makeup to be an alien. She’s already an alien.
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I’m still not sure if the emphasis one the warp catch phrase is amazing or annoying, but this scene was funny.
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KLINGON UPDATE: RIDGES!
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So clearly La’An’s augmented ancestors were genetically engineered to drink a lot. Which, y’know what? Fair.
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Ah, the borderlands, where utopian rules go away and everyone becomes a Ferengi.
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Congratulations to Uhura on graduating from the Academy.
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Ah, the old “I have technology that I’m totally not making up that will blow you up” bluff!
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New transporter chief?
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Okay, so the angry borderlands people are trying to do some sort of false flag thing.
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Redundant Klingon organs, the old standby.
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Roided-up doctors can tell you what bones they broke as they break them.
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These are obviously Discovery sets.
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This action scene, while well-done, is way too long.
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A D7!
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“We’ve gotten out of worse.” “No, not really!”
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“This I’ve got to see!”
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I wonder if “Lanthanite” is a synonym for “El-Aurian”
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Pelia knowing that being on the Enterprise means adventure is further proof that those ships are goddamn weirdness magnets.
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Gorn. Yes, it stretches canon but fuck it the Gorn are awesome we’ll come up with an explanation later.
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“For Nichelle”
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Overall, while not one of the better episodes, it still was a good start to the season. It wrapped up one of the hanging threads of last year (La’An), we continued to see some of Young Spock’s struggles with his emotions before he became the more-Vulcan Spock that Nimoy was in the main TOS series, and we got our first look at Carol Kane as the nutty new engineer. Overall, I’ll call that a win!
“For Nichelle”
I cried. I also teared up a little bit when Celia briefly channeled Nichelle early on in the episode.
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Enjoyed pretty much everything in this episode except the magic super steroids. The sequence went on for so long… I assumed that I had forgotten something from last series because there’s no way they would have had this to hand the whole time and never thought to use it during any one of the many life and death emergencies?
That aside. Loved the rest of the episode and looking forward to where things go from here (plus really really happy to have weekly Trek again!)
there’s no way they would have had this to hand the whole time and never thought to use it during any one of the many life and death emergencies?
Ah, yes, the star trek classic!
I do agree, though. It was too long and too effective. A quick burst to make their way past the medical guards and into a turbolift would have been more believable and better paced.
I want to see some serious side effects from that play out to explain why people don’t use it more often.
Reminds me of a character in The Expanse who gets illegal hormone gland implants that can be activated for a burst of heightened awareness. The drawback is twofold. When the activation wears off the user experiences debilitating nausea for several minutes. Over the long term the illegal part comes into play because you know those things aren’t rated for health and safety. This character requires regular blood transfusions/dialysis due to toxin buildup from shoddy workmanship.
Anyway, that’s an entire tangent. I’m excited to see if there are interesting complications from a doctor who’s strapped with combat drugs of questionable ethics.
Upon further reflection, I feel like this episode undermines the plot of “The Galileo Seven”. Spock is a very able commander in 2x01 when years later he struggles on an away mission…
My gut feeling is that with a couple changes this episode would have hung together better-
- Have them take a shuttle instead of the Enterprise. This lowers the stakes for our command crew and simply makes more sense than half the crew (that wasn’t on leave) agreeing to steal a ship. It also means they need to figure out a different way to deal with the fake Federation ship at the end of the episode is some way other than ‘shoot it with bigger guns’
- Have Chapel and M’Benga do something within their character strengths to escape instead of magic drug that lets them hand-to-hand fight their way through a dozen or more Klingons.
That said, there were a lot of things I DID like about the episode, including the Klingon Captain at the end and the new Chief Engineer.
@StreetcornPips @startrek I like the shuttle idea. I almost stopped watching when Spock said, “steal the ship,” and then again when everyone said “Hunh. Okay!” It always kills me when a story revolves around an organization as large and powerful as the Federation allowing stuff like this (or the myriad of examples of rule breaking, insubordination, etc.) to happen.
If there’s one thing that is consistent about the Federation show-to-show and season-to-season is that they pretty much always allow officers to break literally any of the rules as long as the outcome is good. How many times has a ship been stolen for a rescue mission, orders been ignored, senior officers been bamboozled and sidelined, and it’s almost always totally forgiven because it turned out OK in the end. Hell, Janeway straight-up murdered Tuvix as he begged for his life and everyone was like “oh, um, fine?”
I used to think it was lazy writing, but now I think it’s actually just the way the Federation is characterized. The Federation being theoretically utopian and egalitarian but functionally utilitarian makes things like Section 31 make sense, the same way that TNG Klingons claim to be about honor but really they’re treacherous schemers no better than any other species.
I think this got things off to a reasonable start, but it doesn’t feel like the strongest episode out of the gate. Maybe it’s because the show deliberately chooses not take on the cliffhanger of the last season in the first episode. Starting the season with only part of the cast undertaking the mission I think also makes the episode feel a bit slight.
It’s also a bit of a darker episode than the last season, but I’m not sure if engaging with the Klingon civil war aftermath is actually necessary in this episode. In fact, leaving out the Klingon stuff here would make it a bit less stodgy to me. I guess there is some curiosity as to what SNW characters were doing during the war, but it really feels like here, the only reason they framed this entire episode around the war was so that M’Benga and Chapel could juice themselves up with a substance that they never quite introduce before using it and Die Hard Klingons for a chunk of the episode. There’s maybe some M’Benga trauma, but giving the character another trauma moment where some (particularly Ortegas) remain comparatively lightly characterized feels…meh.
It’s probably all the Discovery elements, both in plot and in set design on screen, that make me feel this way, but I was hoping that Discovery would learn the best lessons from Strange New Worlds. This episode has me slightly worried that instead of that, Strange New Worlds may be learning some bad lessons from Discovery. That said I’m hoping things get better across the season. I thought this was good but just not quite what I wanted from the season opener.
I liked it, but it didn’t have enough Pike.
Always need more Pike!
I’m not entirely sure if I have to spoiler tag this since this is in the discussion thread but I will anyways since the rule doesn’t say the threads are an exception to the rule.Edit: Thanks ValueSubtracted for the clarification on this.Really disliked this one. And I loved just about all of season 1.
One of the main things for me is that the pacing felt far too quick.
For instance, when getting the injection of the super serum, they only briefly mentioned M’Benga’s issue with it and quickly moved on without any sort of issues beyond that brief line.
I also have some issues with the characterization and general way the crew acted. They seemed a lot less professional in this and unlike an actual Starfleet crew.
Spock’s emotional side, while I suppose justified in-universe, made him feel a lot less “Spock” to me. I was fine with his behavior in season 1 but this just feels a bit far, to the point of him being nearly unrecognizable. His “I would like the ship to go. Now” make me physically recoil in cringe with how unfunny I found it to be.
M’Benga and Chapel just beating up a bunch of bad guys three separate times felt incredibly unnecessary and I fail to see any sort of reason there couldn’t have been some sort of clever escape rather than bland, mindless fighting. I think I skipped a whole minute total of them just punching the bad guys with how long the scenes drew on for. And the way M’Benga’s issue with the super serum was just brushed over with a fleeting line came across as poorly executed.
La’an outdrinking a klingon seemed rather ridiculous and all I could think of was that it seemed like a bad D&D introduction to a stereotypical “cool” character. And then her burping? Did they really need a burp joke in this? It came across as uncharacteristically juvenile for the show.
That said, I did like a bit of it. Visual effects were great as always and I appreciated the slightly different intro. I’m glad the cliffhanger from last season both wasn’t immediately resolved or dwelled upon too much. The false flag operation was a neat idea and it was cool to see yet another type of ship. The Klingons looked and sounded perfect and much more similar to how they were in 90s Trek, I’m glad the design was changed to this from their design in Discovery.
Overall, I very much disliked it, despite a few positive elements to it. No hate, I just disliked those parts of it I talked about.
Finally, this isn’t any sort of issue I take with the show but they said that the false flag ship was Crossfield class. However, it didn’t look anything like a Crossfield class beyond the ring in the saucer. Did Starfleet change the Crossfield class to a different design?
I agree with a lot of your concerns. Two medical staff taking drugs and beating a mob of Klingons senseless with little hesitation and no apparent ramifications is horribly, horribly out of tone with what I’ve come to expect from Trek.
Spock is another issue. I’m fine with him undergoing growth and having a full character arc - but I really don’t see this Spock becoming the one in TOS — a Spock who disobeyed direct orders from Starfleet and was reluctantly able to potentially kill two crew members goes on to have the disastrous experience as leader in the Galileo Seven? Best I can see is he actively goes as hard as he can on suppressing his human side in the near future but that wouldn’t make him suddenly forget what emotions, illogic, and all that human baggage feels like when he’s interacting with humans later in his career.
(And for the record - I really enjoy Ethan Peck as Spock and watching his struggles with his emotional control. I just don’t feel like it’s the same character as in TOS and don’t see how he’d get there.)
Yes, this is my main complaint with this episode and SNW wrt Spock in general. I sort of get the idea that he’s going on an arc from “Smiling Spock” in the cage to TOS, but it’ll be a real weird kind of change over to TOS Spock IMHO from this. And like you said, how does he become the Spock in the Galileo Seven? At this point it sort of seems like he’d need a mind wipe or something…
I certainly would have thought something like him saying “It is illogical to require “a thing” to carry out lawful orders lieutenant.” and if pressed again something like “We do not have time to waste - carry out your orders”.
This “everyone has a thing” is stupid, and to do it in multiple series?
And Spock’s whole thing to continue to wait / worry about M’Benga and Chapel after saying their choice was logical didn’t fit for me, nor did his reaction to Chapel. How does he go from that to TOS “ignoring/not noticing” Chapel’s thing for him, and lack of interest in her?
I noticed Kirk didn’t have a “thing” in TOS. It’d be funny if he at least thought having a warp catch phrase was stupid and didn’t do it in SNW.
I must say I’m already a big fan of Pelia.
Agreed! Carol Kane is always fun to watch.
@End0fLine @LibraryLass In my head, she is always in an unintelligible shouting contest with Andy Kaufman.
I was first introduced to her in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and I’ve loved her since. She has a quality that just puts a smile on your face.
To me she will always be the witch from Princess Bride.
Edit: “I’m not a witch, I’m your wife! But after what you just said, I’m not even sure I want to be that any more.”
Is this post tagged NSFW for spoilers?
That was the idea. Is it having a visible effect?
Loved the episod! Ethan Peck owned it and now I can’t wait to see even more of Carol Kane’s character.
I am curious though, are the writers hinting at a future “Jekyll & Hyde” plot line when it comes to M’Benga and that green battle juice that he apparently keeps with himself at all times?
My thought is that his plotline this season might include some resolution of Klingon War era trauma, of which we’ve been told just a little bit in this episode, and which brings him to carry the super soldier serum on him.
