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

Rate the Episode

  • 10 - Excellent

    Votes: 68 26.9%
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    Votes: 96 37.9%
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    Votes: 48 19.0%
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    Votes: 26 10.3%
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    Votes: 7 2.8%
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    Votes: 4 1.6%
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    Votes: 1 0.4%
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    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 1 - Terrible

    Votes: 1 0.4%

  • Total voters
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They need to stop using their franchise to politicize. Picard is egregious with this but this episode says something like , "It began with a fight for freedoms (Trumper sings prominent in background) and ended up a nuclear war. Well! Either the Trump movement CAUSED all the trouble or the trouble was a punishment for daring to oppose certain parties. This strikes me as silly and childish of the writers.
You haven't really watched a lot of Star Trek in the past 50 years have you?:shrug:
 
To be fair, tragic back story is pretty much built in to Trek:
Kirk: witness to a massacre.
Spock: Bullied as a child due to his mother being human.
McCoy: euthanized his father.

The comics didn't didn't any favors to any of the TOS characters, reveling seemingly in dysfunctional relationships.
TOS Sulu and Uhura, "At least you had backstories."
 
It takes place 5 years after 'The Cage'. Enough time for Boyce to have retired or transferred off the ship. That isn't a contradiction.
Ah, thank you for the correction!


Tuskin38 said:
Amok Time says no such thing. That isn't a contradiction.
Of course it does! Why would Spock only have a picture of T'Pring as a child? Heck, the dialogue during the koon-ut-kal-if-fee implies as much.


Tuskin38 said:
Episode 1 states that she was on civilian exchange, she isn't in Starfleet. That isn't a contradiction.
(why she has a uniform with rank, who knows, maybe it's provisional)
So a contradiction.


Tuskin38 said:
None of the shows ever stated they never have sex outside of Pon Farr. That isn't a contradiction.
It's very much a contradiction! Spock explained the Vulcan "mating rituals" quite well.
 
Of course it does! Why would Spock only have a picture of T'Pring as a child? Heck, the dialogue during the koon-ut-kal-if-fee implies as much.
Why assume it's his only one?
Which part is that?
Amok Time said:
SPOCK: This is the land of my family. It has been held by us for more than two thousand Earth years. This is our place of Koon-ut-kal-if-fee,
MCCOY: He called it Koon-ut what?
KIRK: He described it to me as meaning marriage or challenge. In the distant past, Vulcans killed to win their mates.
MCCOY: And they still go mad at this time. Perhaps the price they pay for having no emotions the rest of the time.
KIRK: It's lovely. I wish the breeze were cooler.
MCCOY: Yeah. Hot as Vulcan. Now I understand what that phrase means.
KIRK: The atmosphere is thinner than Earth.
(Spock strikes a gong.)
MCCOY: I wonder when his T'Pring arrives.
SPOCK: The marriage party approaches. I hear them.
KIRK: Marriage party? You said T'Pring was your wife.
SPOCK: By our parents' arrangement. A ceremony while we were but seven years of age. Less than a marriage but more than a betrothal. One touches the other in order to feel each other's thoughts. In this way our minds were locked together, so that at the proper time, we would both be drawn to Koon-ut-kal-if-fee.
(A jingling sound gets louder, and Spock strikes the gong again. Two men enter shaking contraptions with lots of bells, followed by a woman carried on a chair. T'Pring and others come behind her.)
KIRK: Bones, you know who that is? T'Pau. The only person to ever turn down a seat on the Federation Council.
MCCOY: T'Pau. Officiating at Spock's wedding?
KIRK: He never mentioned that his family was this important.
(T'Pau's chair is placed on a dais, and Spock greets her. She gives him a quick mind-meld.)
T'PAU: Spock, are our ceremonies for outworlders?
SPOCK: They are not outworlders. They are my friends. I am permitted this.
(She gestures for them to approach.)
SPOCK: This is Kirk.
KIRK: Ma'am.
T'PAU: And thee are called?
MCCOY: Leonard McCoy, ma'am.
T'PAU: Thee names these out worlders friends. How does thee pledge their behaviour?
SPOCK: With my life, T'Pau.
T'PAU: What they are about to see comes down from the time of the beginning, without change. This is the Vulcan heart. This is the Vulcan soul. This is our way. Kah-if-farr.
(Spock is about to strike the gong again, when T'Pring intervenes.)
T'PRING: Kal-if-fee!
 
OK I'm a bit late to the game (I've been ill). First off, I have to say we've seen more character development for Uhura in this very episode than in all the other Treks featuring her put together! I liked how they showed her musical side and how it ultimately helped save the lives of herself, Singh, Spock, and Lt. Kirk as she interfaced with the M'hanit (the comet-like spacecraft that threatened Persephone III). Like her Kelvin-counterpart, she is quite a skilled linguist and we learn about some of her family history - again which we barely even know about in canon-Trek. This is yet another thing Strange New Worlds has done that has surpassed the Kelvin movies.

We don't see Hemmer much, except that he's not exactly a very warm and social person. He also HATES it when people refer to his blindness as a disability, as Spock points out to Uhura. To an Aenar, it's not really a handicap at all, his other senses more than make up for it - he doesn't need a VISOR or ocular implants like Geordi La Forge does. I have mixed feelings about his position, although to be fair, La Forge was NOT initially chief engineer on the Enterprise-D on TNG. One really interesting fact though is the actor who portrays him - Bruce Horak - is blind in real life! It's not the first time Trek has had an actor/actress with a disability: in the TNG second season episode "Loud as a Whisper," Howie Seago, who portrays the deaf mediator Riva, is also deaf in real life.

It also leaves us, the audience, with quite a bit to ponder. The M'hanit foresaw the maneuver Spock was going to pull to alter its trajectory so that it wouldn't harm the planet but instead help the life on the world thrive by releasing water vapor into the atmosphere, as if Spock played a heavy role in the comet-spacecraft's "destiny" in changing the environment of Persephone III for the better.

They still go into Pike's premonition as he's curious about the cadets he saves in the incident that leads him to his paralysis in the wheelchair - or "Pike-mobile" as some fans like to call it.
 
Have you forgotten Pike doesn't die but stays in a beeping wheelchair? Pike would take it easier if he outright died. A Klingon would never go for that. Worf tried to kill himself over less when he was paralyzed in that TNG episode. At least he could still talk beyond yes/no beeps.

This make me think that maybe Pike and his lover still live on that planet in TNG era. Hey, Picard can meet Pike in Star Trek Picard if they want to, actually. Or even Discovery crews can meet with Pike again if they come to the planet where Pike live in illusion with that woman... Vina? Actually that meeting can become a good ending for Discovery, when they finish the show, I think.
 
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I love continuity as much as any hardcore fan and analyze the shit out of these series but if I don't see any continuity-breaking canon violations in the T'Pring thing then there isn't one. ;)
same here. If anything what was added so far makes Amok Time seems much less backwards: instead of two children forced to marry we now have two adults that consent to it.

One really interesting fact though is the actor who portrays him - Bruce Horak - is blind in real life! It's not the first time Trek has had an actor/actress with a disability: in the TNG second season episode "Loud as a Whisper," Howie Seago, who portrays the deaf mediator Riva, is also deaf in real life.
also on discovery Aurellio is wheelchair bound for real due to ALS.
 
This episode was fine. Was expecting a deeply cringe "Charlie X" style song from Uhura to save the day but thankfully they didn't go beyond humming.

Highlight:

SAM KIRK: Yahtzee! *dies*
 
I finally gave this episode a try. I hadn't been particularly impressed by the pilot, but was told I couldn't judge the show on one episode.

I'm afraid #2 didn't do it for me either. It felt weirdly paced, oddly relaxed and jocular when I expected tension, the f/x was really unconvincing, and the pew pew scenes were really bad. Also, I don't think the showrunners know how orbital mechanics do.

I liked it when Mount wasn't on the screen, which is problematic since it's his show. He had two modes this episode: smarm and flat. Peck was better. He doesn't sell me as "Spock", or even "young Spock", but I appreciated what they were doing with him.

I liked the reference to the musical note activation in "The Paradise Syndrome", but I feel that scene would have been a lot more compelling had it not depended on an accident. Instead of Uhura humming nervously to activate the machine, I would have written something more along the lines of:

Uhura: Spock, do you see how the carvings are all regularly spaced? There's something about it...double width for some lines, half again for others, third widths again for some. It reminds me of graphs of harmonic wave patterns, almost like.."

Spock: Music.

Uhura: (hopeful smile) Exactly!

Spock: Cadet, I do hope you reconsider your indifference regarding your chosen career.

Uhura: Is that a compliment?

Spock: It is a statement of fact.

Uhura: Wait 'till you hear me harmonize...

---

I think that would have underscored better Uhura's talent and brilliance. This show, and most modern Trek, suffers from the Apollo 13 syndrome. Everyone wings things by the seat of their pants, snarking and accidenting their way through success.

Oh well. I get that it's entertainment and folks like it. It's just not for me.
 
Real solar system comets. But how would you call a larger, icy world like Pluto if it started having a coma while roaming near a star?


I have read some interesting articles and videos from an alternative/fringe take on the physics of cosmology, that suggests that the massive coma and tail are actually a product of an object approaching another celestial object too closely, that maintains a different charge potential, and interacting electromagnetically to produce spectacular light shows, like the Northern Lights are a product of solar wind interacting with our magnetosphere. And, after all, we landed a probe on a comet, and found no ice anywhere, just a charred up, sooty rock. This would also be why they don't melt forever on a close approach to the sun, and instead flare as soon as they get close enough for interaction, and go dead when leaving the area.

But yes, I am completely agreeing with the concept that a rocky world like Pluto would flare like a comet, when approaching a star. Absolutely.

[A rogue dwarf planet. Real planets can have tails and it doesn't make them comets.[/QUOTE]

The same alternative take, suggests that any object, regardless of size, could interact, by flaring or by exchanging electrons in search of neutrality, in the form of celestial lightning. These plasma discharges machine debris off of terrestrial surfaces, creating circular craters, lichtenberg patterns, or just plain knocking debris out into the solar system. The idea is that nothing is in its point of origin, and that the random planetary debris that we call comets, asteroids, and meteors are from the same origin, but we do not correlate this space debris properly as we look at them as separate objects. Big rocky spheroids in our solar system, whether Mercury, or Ganymede, or Ceres, or Titan, or Venus, all would have originated orbiting gas giants, and the fact that some of them orbit the Sun now is irrelevent to their point of origin. Orbits are in search of neutrality, and are self adjusting, and coma's, cratering, and the occasional planetary cataclysm are just natural aspects of this.

It might be fantasy, but its by far the most intriguing take on things I've read about in a long time.

I know everyone will just tell me how wrong I am and what a crackpot I am..... Alas. shrug. Interesting things to think about, though.
 
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We know Yahtzee survives into the early-to-mid 23rd century. This opens up the possibility Hungry Hungry Hippos is still being played in the times of Archer, Pike and Kirk. :)
 
He is. James Kirk obviously thought he was the only one that called him “Sam”.
I’m waiting for the 4K blu ray in May. The Halo one was really good quality so I’m expecting the same for that,
 
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