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Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x04 - "Memento Mori"

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They completely ruined Star Trek universe for me. The Gorn are not accurate at all to the FASA rules and no one used the appropriate starship identifying guide at all!

Ruined. Ruined I say!
I really enjoyed the FASA game and lore, but the character creation rules were a nightmare.
 
Solid episode, tense and nicely executed. There admittedly wasn’t much meat to the plot, and it was overly reminiscent of “Balance of Terror” mixed with “Arena”, but it worked and the characters are compelling.

Two minor complaints. Firstly, the dialogue sounds too contemporary at times. I never expected to hear the words “for the win” in Star Trek, and I really never want to hear the phrase “we/you/I GOT this” in Trek again. DISC has been guilty of that too. It’s far too 2022 California sounding. The former should have been weeded out the first draft (it wasn’t cute, it was jarring: I doubt anyone will use the words “for the win” in 10-20 years anymore than people still say “totes” and “amazeballs” now) and the latter can be replaced by “we/you/I can do this”. 90s Trek used language in a precise and universalistic way without contemporary colloquialisms slipping in that would date the show fast.

Secondly, at an aesthetic level, I find they’re using far too much contrast visually—both interior and exterior shots. Maybe this episode was particularly bad because the ship was in the dark most of the time, and I was watching it on my laptop, but it felt overdone, and the special effects sequences were also quite hard for me to make out because contrast felt like it had been dialled up to 2000%.

Aside from that this was an engaging and entertaining episode.

I also have a huge crush on Ethan Peck. Just thought I’d put that out there.
 
Wait, people used character creators? I thought it was just for ships ;)
Well I didn't use them, but I did read them, and they were bad. I mean, I get where they were going with it, but having to first create the character (already a complicated proposal) and then do all their academy years and tours of duty was wayyyyy too complicated.
 
Solid episode, tense and nicely executed. There admittedly wasn’t much meat to the plot, and it was overly reminiscent of “Balance of Terror” mixed with “Arena”, but it worked and the characters are compelling.

Two minor complaints. Firstly, the dialogue sounds too contemporary at times. I never expected to hear the words “for the win” in Star Trek, and I really never want to hear the phrase “we/you/I GOT this” in Trek again. DISC has been guilty of that too. It’s far too 2022 California sounding. The former should have been weeded out the first draft (it wasn’t cute, it was jarring: I doubt anyone will use the words “for the win” in 10-20 years anymore than people still say “totes” and “amazeballs” now) and the latter can be replaced by “we/you/I can do this”. 90s Trek used language in a precise and universalistic way without contemporary colloquialisms slipping in that would date the show fast.

Secondly, at an aesthetic level, I find they’re using far too much contrast visually—both interior and exterior shots. Maybe this episode was particularly bad because the ship was in the dark most of the time, and I was watching it on my laptop, but it felt overdone, and the special effects sequences were also quite hard for me to make out because contrast felt like it had been dialled up to 2000%.

Aside from that this was an engaging and entertaining episode.

I also have a huge crush on Ethan Peck. Just thought I’d put that out there.

If there were a complaint I were to fling out there it'd be that they get too flamboyant with the camera work sometimes. It almost feels like all of dutch angles in Battlefield Earth (which, oddly, actually brings up a terrible memory just thinking of that movie).

In the first episode it was the camera zoom around the back of the transporter here twice, TWICE, they started a scene with the camera upside down and then as they zoom out they turn the camera right-side up (I dunno, kind of like a weird variation of the Hitchcock Zoom?) (Once with the guy running down the corridor about to be sealed off and then when starting the scene in the shuttle)

It all just seems un-needed and silly.
 
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If there were a complaint I were to fling out there it'd be that they get too flamboyant with the camera work sometimes. It almost feels like all of dutch angles in Battlefield Earth (which, oddly, actually brings up a terrible memory just thinking of that movie).

In the first episode it was the camera zoom around the back of the transporter here twice, TWICE, they started a scene with the camera upside down and then as they zoom out they turn the camera right-side up (I dunno, kind of like a weird variation of the Hitchcock Zoom?) (Once with the guy running down the corridor about to be sealed off and then when starting rhe scene in the shuttle)

It all just seems un-needed and silly.
Agreed. It was that sort of nonsense that prevented Harvey Hart and Lawrence Dobkin from being invited back.
 
It doesn't look obsolete TO ME. But I'm a die-hard Trekkie and I don't represent the larger customer base. It's not me they have to reel in.
It's funny, but TOS doesn't look obsolete to me either. Intellectually, I know it must be. But it looks like perfection.

Of course, there's no way they could use that look now. In fact, if they had modern materials and processes back then, they'd wouldn't have gone with that look either. But they did what they could with what was available.
 
I’ve never understood this complaint, but I’ll bet credits to navy bean I’ll hear it again.
I think it's because the TOS and TNG eras tended to stick with neutral, timeless speech to avoid being too trendy. NewTrek seems like some of it will feel dated, dialogue-wise, much sooner.
 
TOS seemed very rooted in the lingo of the twenty years or more that proceeded it.

I can't say if I can think of any time dialogue in TOS stood out as being from any decade. I think they closest TNG gets to feeling rooted in the speech of the 80s/90s is the "PC" way of speaking, things like Data insisting on being called an "artificial lifeform."

Here, though, the way some of the younger characters talk does feel a little too contemporary which will stand out if people are still watching reruns of the show in 30-50 years like we do with TNG and TOS.
 
Two minor complaints. Firstly, the dialogue sounds too contemporary at times. I never expected to hear the words “for the win” in Star Trek, and I really never want to hear the phrase “we/you/I GOT this” in Trek again. DISC has been guilty of that too.

That's an absurd complaint.

I never want to hear the "stilted Star Trek language," as a staff writer at TNG once called it, ever again. And the success of this show, and STD and the other modern Trek productions guarantees that we'll never have to, again.
 
I think they closest TNG gets to feeling rooted in the speech of the 80s/90s is the "PC" way of speaking, things like Data insisting on being called an "artificial lifeform."

I'm not sure that's to do with 80s "PC-ness" as much as it is to do with Data having a pedantic and overly technical manner of speaking. Everyone else seems content to just refer to him as an android.
 
I can't say if I can think of any time dialogue in TOS stood out as being from any decade. I think they closest TNG gets to feeling rooted in the speech of the 80s/90s is the "PC" way of speaking, things like Data insisting on being called an "artificial lifeform."

Here, though, the way some of the younger characters talk does feel a little too contemporary which will stand out if people are still watching reruns of the show in 30-50 years like we do with TNG and TOS.
Eh, I used that particular turn of a phrase for a reason
DESALLE: All right, but it's there and it's real. If it's real, it can be affected. Engineering, stand by to divert all power systems to the outer hull. Prepare impulse engines for generation of maximum heat directed as ordered. Maybe we can't break it, but I'll bet you credits to navy beans we can put a dent in it
it's rooted in the shipboard life of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Here's one from the Cage
SPOCK: Look. Brains three times the size of ours. If we start buzzing about down there, we're liable to find their mental power is so great they could reach out and swat this ship as though it were a fly.
Or WNMHGB
KIRK: Terrible having bad blood like that.
KELSO: Er, I was on my coffee break. I thought I'd check up on
 
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