Agreed. I misremembered the quote. Yes, 2 billion is a huge number.
Possibly too large. One thing I think COVID has illustrated is how badly society is damaged when you lose even a relatively small percentage of the population. I'm honestly not convinced that the economic infrastructure necessary to keep the survivors alive would itself survive if 2 billion people died. Although, maybe that 2 billion number was spread out over time, encompassing deaths from the conflicts before they went nuclear, the direct nuclear deaths, the fallout deaths, and the decades-spanning chaos of the post-atomic horror in other parts of the planet. That could reconcile things with Riker's line in
First Contact -- maybe 600 million was just the direct death toll from the nuclear blasts in circa 2053.
So, this less-advanced species on par with us detected some warp signatures "nearby" and just reverse-engineered the technology and weaponized it inside a year or so?
That's a lot to swallow.
I mean, is it any more to swallow than Zefram Cochrane inventing warp drive only 40 years from now but in the context of a society whose technological infrastructure has largely collapsed to pre-2020s levels?
And I don't think it's clear if the Kileyans were on part with us in real life or if they were a few decades ahead of us.
Pike's wife? Girlfriend? Nightly Fling?
Given the nature of Pike's relationship with Vina in "If Memory Serves," I would assume that Pike and Batel are close friends who are occasionally sexually intimate but not in a committed relationship.
Calls the communicator a "phone?"
Given that Pike appears to have designed his house in the style of an early 21st Century home, complete with a flat-screen television and what might have been a Western Electric Model 500 telephone set, I think it's pretty clear that Pike was going for a 20th/21st Century vibe and she was playing along with that.
As I think about it mire about the episode really comes out a good handball of the goods outweigh the nitpicks and stylism/dislogue/behavior quibbles I have.
Yeah. I've got some quibbles -- seriously, no guard on the Kileyan scientists? No one called security? -- but on balance it's a great opener.
Ortegas:
"Course captain? What's the mission?"
Pike:
"Our mission? We explore. We seek out new life and new civilizations. We boldly go where no one has gone before."
Uhura:
"Cool!"
^That sequence of dialog at the end of the episode, is a microcosm of what's wrong with it.
No, it's a microcosm of what's
right with it.
It's difficult to explain, but the whole thing lacks a certain science fiction dryness.
Science fiction has no obligation to be dry, and works that carry that dryness are frankly incapable of reaching the greatest heights of artistic accomplishment precisely because of it. Ditching the dryness is good.
This is emo-Trek. With sentimental music spread throughout.
.... no. First off, "emo?" Really? Emo hasn't been a thing except in nostalgia nights at the clubs for like ten years now.
Secondly, while SNW is more emotional than TNG, its first episode is frankly
far from being that emotional. There are numerous films and television programs more emotionally affecting than "Strange New Worlds" (the episode). Which is fine -- it's the first episode and they're setting up their default vibe. But if you compare this to, say, S1E1 of
The Expanse, you see how much "Strange New Worlds" is pulling its punches and working to create a feeling of emotional reassurance and safety for its audience than "Dulcinea" did.
Well, I get the complaint about characters acting immaturely, because that's been one of the things that's consistently bugged me about Discovery. But it's a question of degree, and in this first episode of SNW, I found characters acting enthusiastically, but not immaturely. We'll see how it goes into the rest of the season.
Agreed -- except that I don't think the characters on
Star Trek: Discovery are immature (except when they're meant to be immature).
I also like Lt. Singh, the chief of secuirty - I wonder if someone got my message about putting someone like that on the Enterprise from all those years ago after ST09, and finally listened.
This seems extremely unlikely. A more probable scenario is that Goldsman, Lumet, and Kurtzman sat down, thought about the department heads we typically see on ST, and noticed that TOS did not feature the
Enterprise's chief of security.
Not to mention they made that mini-dress uniform FAR more believable and classier than what Mr. Abrams and company did.
Agreed -- I'm happy to see them find a way to feature uniform skirt variants (dare I point out that having a female variant uniform can be described as "gender-affirming" for women?) without being sexually objectified. The female uniform variants from ST09 looked more like dresses for a nightclub than uniforms for a space service.
Now -- we just need to see a trans woman wearing those skirts.
I do wonder about Chapel's genome altering capabilities - will that be a technology that ultimately has bad side effects?
I mean, right off the bat we see it's somewhat unreliable. And it's an extremely painful procedure. The only reason they did it was that the Kileyans had the capacity to do non-invasive genetic scans.
Oh and it was interesting the Kirk-twist - you think it was the one we all know but it was really his brother! I agree, there was nothing in canon about him NEVER being in Starfleet.
It's a little too small-universe for me, but we'll see where it goes. It could still be done well.
100%.
The whole thing has a meta undercurrent to it.
A little bit. Certainly Pike's solution to the question of what to do about the Kileyans was foreshadowed by Klaatu in
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
I don't think the creators of CBS Trek are interested in just telling a good story. They have more of a corporate mindset. It's about appealing to demographics X, Y and Z, trend-chasing, and course correcting each show/season to appease complaints about the previous iteration.
I hate to tell you this, but that's true of
every Star Trek production. They
always have to think in terms of what works for a mass audience that can sustain a television program. If anything, the creators of the streaming shows today have more freedom to cater to a smaller audience with more distinct tastes than they had back when the shows needed to maintain audiences of being 5 to 10 million.
The only character that didn't land for me was Nurse Chapel (which seems to be a minority opinion thus far).
I feel like this era of Star Trek requires a quirky young character in every single iteration, just like the previous requirement was always "a non-human character who we can explore various facets of humanity through due to their differences."
Chapel is basically just the SNW Tilly/Adira/Jurati...at least the way they presented her here.
I really don't agree. She's not "quirky" -- she's assertive, confident, and playful. Tilly's thing is that she's just starting out and learning how to become a leader; Adira's thing is that they're recovering their past and figuring themselves out; Jurati's thing is that she's insecure and lonely. Chapel is not just starting out -- she's clearly in her late 20s or early 30s. The only person who's new is Uhura. Chapel is clearly not insecure. We may yet learn that she's lonely, but given how blatantly she was flirting with Spock and La'an both, I think it's unlikely.
she certainly doesn't behave like the character namesake on TOS.
I mean, there is literally no characterization they could give her that would
not be different from her characterization on TOS, since her characterization on TOS was somewhere between "piece of cardboard" and "dutiful housewife-type."
I think it's more than that. It's that what Trek has provided to us from 1966 to the end of VOY is a hopeful, positive and tolerant world we can aspire to. DSC and PIC are brooding and melancholic, and downright cruel at times, a symptom of modern television, but not something that feels like what Trek has tried to give us over the decades.
It is true that DIS and PIC are a times brooding and melancholic. However, you are ignoring the fact that they fall in the tradition of another ST show -- DS9 was
often brooding and melancholic! Like DS9, PIC and DIS are interested in interrogating some aspects of the Star Trek ethos, in putting their characters through the wringer, in exploring darker themes. But, like DS9, DIS and PIC are ultimately still posit a hopeful, positive, and tolerant future -- they're just a bit less direct in how they get there.
Neither DIS, nor PIC, nor DS9, were "cruel" except in the sense that sometimes good writing requires some cruelty to your protagonists.
Having said all that, I do agree that fans are reacting to SNW's tone. And I do think that modern Star Trek needs SNW's brighter, more overtly hopeful tone while
also needing PIC's darker, more melancholic tone. (DIS has basically evolved into something that's midway between SNW and PIC in terms of tone.)
I also think that some fans project things onto shows based on tone that aren't actually present.
We now know that the Eiffel Tower from the base up had to be reconstructed. Although many classical works of art and literature seem to have escaped destruction so by 2053 perhaps many of them had already been shuttled off to more secure locations in case of war or terrorist attack.
That makes sense. We know that there was apparently enough advance warning to send seed ships into space, and "Strange New Worlds" implies a very long timeline for the conflicts that culminated in World War II. I imagine that a lot of cultural artifacts would have been preserved that way.
It's still a little bit unbelievable when we constantly see Earth cities that look so much like their modern counterparts, but maybe the Vulcans helped Earth recreate old appearances.
* * *
"Strange New Worlds" marks the first reference to something called the Federation High Court, which apparently wanted to prosecute Pike for his actions on Kiley. It's unclear if the High Court is the same institution as the Federation Supreme Court, established in "Dr. Bashir, I Presume?" (DS9). I would point out that it's unusual for a
court to so openly take sides against the accused. Perhaps the High Court serves a different function? Or perhaps the Federation judiciary is structured differently than real-life courts, perhaps based on non-Earth legal traditions?
* * *
T'Pring and Spock are just a tad too infatuated with each other for my tastes. Their performance was good but I think Vulcans should be just a tad more restrained. But it does make sense that Vulcan society would probably be a little more tolerant of some forms of emotional display than fandom has tended to assume -- a society simply could not survive if, for instance, its members completely repressed feelings of love and affection.
I am surprised to see that they've gone this route though. "Amok Time" seemed to imply that T'Pring and Spock had not met since they were children. But there again, Spock is infamously tight-lipped about his family and close relationships -- he didn't even tell Kirk that Sarek was his father until Sarek was
right there. It will be interesting to see how Spock and T'Pring's relationship deteriorates over time, especially since T'Pring is due to fall in love with Stonn
and Spock is due to fall in love with Jim.
* * *
I liked Admiral April and I hope we see more of him in the future.
* * *
I have a crush on Chapel for the first time. Or is that on Jess Bush? *shrugs*
* * *
It will be interesting seeing Spock get torn between T'Pring and Christine
before realizing his true love is Jim.
* * *
Didn't like the way they used two different stardate systems. Also I assume the USS
Archer was originally supposed to be a scout ship but someone didn't tell the VFX team, because the
Hermes class is
way too big to have a crew of only three people.
* * *
They didn't get a lot of time, but Ortegas and M'Benga seem like fun characters. "Give me some wisdom, doc." "Okay. Never get the house dressing."
* * *
At first I was convinced the Gorn backstory for La'an was a break from continuity, but others pointed out to me that it actually fixes a plot hole from "Arena." And also, Star Trek has done this before -- started off implying first contact with an alien species went one way, then establishing there were earlier contacts and it was more complicated, specially with the Borg. So it does make sense that there could have been this violent contact that preceded "Arena" without it being a continuity error.
* * *
I noticed that some of the real-life footage they used to represent social unrest on Kiley featured a Ukrainian flag. It stuck out to me like a sore thumb because, y'know, things. Presumably the producers didn't recognize the flag themselves and/or didn't think it would be noticeable or that most Americans would know what it was -- I imagine the episode would have been mostly done before the Russian invasion and this just slipped through. Not a big deal, but interesting.
* * *
The writers took a smart approach to the Eugenics Wars thing. They basically semi-retconned it -- the wording is vague, and opens the door to
either interpreting it as a retcon that moves the Eugenics Wars to the mid-21st Century
or as implying that the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s bled into the Second U.S. Civil War which bled into World War III. That's probably the best way to approach things -- it lets fans who are attached to the idea that the Eugenics Wars happened in the 1990s keep that interpretation, and it lets fans who think it would be better to retcon it to later keep that interpretation, and it doesn't confuse things for the majority of audience members who don't know or don't care.
* * *
I do love the fact that SNW is implicitly equating support for Trumpism with fault for World War III. I kind of wish Pike had been more overt in identifying fascism as a problem instead of going with this "both sides have different ideas of freedom"/both-sides-are-valid rhetoric.
* * *
I kind of wish transporters were capable of doing less than we see them doing. In particular, I really disagree with seeing site-to-site transporters in the 23rd Century, even if it's supposed to be an emergency transporter. But it's not a fatal flaw or anything.
)
