Spoilers Strange New Worlds 1x02 - "Children of The Comet"

Got to the end of it. The plot didn't grab me, the characterization did. I'll split the difference and call it a 7.

 

A very enjoyable episode. My bar is going to be higher for this series than for discovery or Picard. That's how it goes. There will be 9's and 10's i suspect. I'll give this an 8.

random thoughts:

I always liked the break-room singing/lute playing scene between Uhura and Spock in TOS. This has some interesting lead up to it.

Pike is rapidly becoming my favorite captain. He has folks over to his quarters for dinner, and its not the stuffy uncomfortable dinners of Archer. In some ways has has some similarities to the Sisko. Both are fated beings, though Sisko does not know exactly how his fate will play out (in fairness, neither does Pike, fully). Both seem to enjoy cooking and have a sense of being more attached to their home on Earth than the others. Both are persons able to bend rules as it suits them for their own understanding of greater good. Archer, for instance, would have let this world die. And last week's for that matter.

It's cool having a new Aenar character.

I thought they would just reuse the spacesuit designs from Disco but they find a way to actually incorporate elements of the goofy TOS spacesuits into the design that somehow looked good.

 

Easy 8, just like the premiere. Silver stuff.

 

He's gonna look at the lives he's gonna save many times. They'll have Spock and Pike be aware of what's gonna happen, Pike's gonna take painkillers before it happens, Spock plans ahead to take him to Talos.

They should've tried singing Slim Whitman, that would've dsetroyed the comet

Sometimes you have to bow to the absurd!

203 in Cage and in Brother

no medium in space.

The suits have used these TOS elements in Disco already

The Enterprise is also empty inside (Q&A)

Perhaps Pike told April to turn the mess hall into his personal quarters if he wants him back in the chair

So true. ENT had the perfect design. But it has to be ridged and rigid now, because "it's 2022"!

 

The ship makes an impression. Just not sure if it's a good one yet. The rooms are large and industrial. Like a big hospital or something. It doesn't have that "warm" comforting appeal of the TNG set with the engine hum where you watch Picard sit down and enjoy a cup of earl grey. Maybe it will grow on me. The Captain's cabin.... seems so open.

 

It's funny how everyone will have differing opinions. TOS Enterprise was my favorite ship(edit.. fixed typo) because of how crowded and business-like everything looked. They recycled the same motifs and colors.

I never liked the Enterprise-D interiors. They looked they were flying an 80's Hyatt Regency. But I get why people do like them. I just didn't. The SNW interiors are to me a good mix of TOS/ TOS Movie Era and Kelvin Verse interiors. They're not afraid of lighting, anymore, nor a color pallet that isn't hide-mistakes-dark, reactor-leak-blue, or Your-Dad's-88-Ford-Taurus Interior Beige.

"I like this ship. It's exciting" -Scotty

 

Rated 6. It gets the mood of Trek very well - humour, crew interactions, touch of philosophy.

Unfortunately the story is quite predictable. We have seen multiple variations of this before. I am hoping with just 10 episodes per season the writers can think of fresher storylines. Because they are getting so many other things just right.

 

Okay. So, I really enjoyed this episode. Hit a lot of the right notes for a second outing. And so pretty to look at. But then I started thinking (as one does) that I wish they hadn't given Uhura a tragic back-story. Coming off the heels of last week with the awfulness of La'an's backstory, it just seemed like - I don't know, an unnecessary motivation? It's kind of like the trope they give male action heroes - his wife and child were murdered and now it's personal etc - only the lady version.

As we may remember from our own youths (or me anyway), young people can be uncertain about what they want to do with their lives without having lost both parents in a shuttle accident. If Number One has a tragic back-story next week I might be a little annoyed. If Chapel has a similar tragic backstory (not Roger Korby related) then it will definitely seem like a unwelcome trend. And a bit lazy.

I'll get over it though because STAR TREK STAR TREK STAR TREK WHEEEEE!!!!!

 

No one makes it to command level without at least a 50% untimely death ratio in their family.

 

By the way who else got Paradise Syndrome vibes when Sam Kirk touched that thing inside the comet?

 

I know of a discussion on page 7 of this thread about the Preservers, I'm sure there are others.

 

I was getting vibes of Wesley, Picard and the cargo shuttle captain from "Final Mission" on the environmentally hostile planet and the fountain protected by a hostile force-field.

 

strengthening my hypothesis that in the near-utopia of the Federation, the only people they can get to join Starfleet are screw-ups and people with traumatic pasts that can't fit in back on their delightful home worlds.* And the ones that can't get into Starfleet, wash out at the Academy, or are too individual to even want to try end up in the colonies.

*and 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation etc members that just stay in the family business

 

I wonder what the range of the Telepathic Communication between Spock & Hemmer extends to?

Can Spock & Hemmer use Telepathy to communicate when one is on the Bridge, and the other is in Engineering?

Even in a crisis where regular comms are down?

Or does Spock need line of sight with Hemmer for his Telepathy to work?

 

not necessarily: Kirk diverted asteroids to save worlds as well.

 

I think that diverting an asteroid is an acceptable breach of the prime directive as long as the planet’s population don’t actually see it happening? If they did see it, then they might start believing in UFO’s or even start worshipping the Starship as a god? This would effect the populations natural societal development even if in a small way this breaching the Prime Directive. I guess that there would have to be some exceptions in the interest of saving a world though, the crew couldn’t watch the destruction of a planet without intervening, they should have some morals.

 

One of those “kids” Pike is destined to save is going to be an ancestor of a known legacy character. I’m calling it.

 

Kirk saw a general Order One as a guideline. Picard saw it as a strict rule. That’s one of the differences that differentiates those two people. If Kirk could save someone who was about to die, he would. Picard may not depending on the circumstances.

 

True. Unfortunately I feel many of them looked very videogamey.

thought exactly the same!

 

thanks. Since you provided explanation I’ll post an example I’ve always loved!

This piece sounds unpleasant (or at least REALLY “wrong”) to our hears, but it would have been pleasant to someone living in Europe in the late 1500s.
Notice how different the keyboard is, also, with separated flat and sharps: in fact one of the reasons we got to today’s systems (note the plural) is to make playing music easier by compromising on intonation.


I’ll also add that major third intervals were not considered consonant, pleasant, or in fact used at all (in favour of fourths) until we got to the beginning of our current harmonic system.