Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x05 - "Spock Amok"

[Belz...]

Did anyone else catch the Star Trek motif (G C' F' E' C' A D' G') when Una clicks the checkbox on the tablet?

Of course. Immediately.

Yeah, it's almost 14 minutes. I feel there's a Discovery episode with one this long though.

The 14 minutes includes the intro graphics and the recap, however.

Potential issue with the scorch...Is it on the forward section of the saucer? You know, the part that got blown the fuck up in Discovery Season 2? How is the oldest hull panel in that spot?

I had the exact same reaction. It's insane how attached to established lore my brain is.

I really could use a full 26 episodes of this show. I wouldn't be disappointed at all.

Yeah, episodic needs more episodes than serial.

I love how the writers acknowledge Spock does indeed have a sense of humor. I can hear Nimoy saying, "I am redecorating. It is a work in progress," too.

Ah, yes! One of the things I wanted to see was Spock smirk. Nimoy did it on occasion on TOS, and I was very happy to see Peck do it here.

 

[Finn]

M'Benga is Henry Blake! Even his posture resembled him for a moment or two.

YES! That's the first thing I thought when he first stepped on the transporter pad

I think this one was the most so so of the first five. I would have tweaked it a bit.

I found the idea of signing the scorch a nice tradition/idea. Other than that, I would have had those two do different things. The transporter with the gum was a bit too...lowbrow for them.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Liked the episode a lot. However, I don't think it was as good as it could have been. I think the smart play would have been to stash the script for some time. I think it would have worked so much better as like a mid-season 3 episode or whatever, for several reasons. The most significant being, I think the main plot would have worked better after the audience had become more familiar with Peck's iteration of the character, or even after having spent more time with Sandhu. Similarly, I think the Enterprise Bingo would have been better with some greatest hits callbacks sprinkled in.

 

[Trekker4747]

Clearly the word has become more broad in application by the time this show takes place.

Just like the Twitter/YouTube/TikTok Challenge genre has morphed into something less fatal and performative with "FOOD REPLICATOR CHALLENGE" et al now that viral memetics for engagement is no longer a driving force in peoples' lives.

However, Bingo is essentially a positional scavenger hunt. It's also possible that the list she confiscated wasn't the proper board, just a checklist the Ensign was using to track progress. Not only that, but the font was already hell to read in list form. It would have been even worse in small boxes. It does feel like it's missing the point of Bingo being pattern-based and semi-random.

Eh, in a scavanger hunt you're given a list of things, or tasks, to acquire/accomplish within a certain time frame. (I can't think of the name of the game that's generally task specific and you usually help each other complete the list) In Bingo you're given a card full of numbers (or items) and need to make a specific pattern before your opponents as the numbers (or events occur in the observed shiow) are called out and dependant in the layout of your card and/or how well you're paying attention.

They were working together to do a list of oddball tasks. They were doing a scavenger hunt or that equivalent task-based game. They weren't playing anything close to Bingo.

 

[Trekker4747]

YES! That's the first thing I thought when he first stepped on the transporter pad

I think this one was the most so so of the first five. I would have tweaked it a bit.

I found the idea of signing the scorch a nice tradition/idea. Other than that, I would have had those two do different things. The transporter with the gum was a bit too...lowbrow for them.

I look forward to the endless TrekTech debates (as well as the ones in this thread) on how the transporters reflavor gum.

:they perform the transporter stunt:
"The gum is reflavored but, I dunno, it tastes like... Someone's daughter?"

 

[Coal_nete]

Vulcan's lovebirds greetings...old & new

TOS - Oldies but goodies...

Spoiler

SNW - Everything old is new again...

Spoiler

 

[Lakenheath 72]

The star chart we see in SNW is a updating of the chart seen in Star Trek: Picard, which itself is an updating of the star charts used in Stellar Cartography, which are themselves based on the earlier Star Charts book. It is interesting to see how they changed the chart between the first episode and this episode. For example, locations in the Beta Quadrant past the RSE and the KE which were colored blue (Fed) are now white (non-aligned) and an outpost (Epsilon Outpost 10) has been removed. This outpost was directly across from Balduk.

And, using this dialog from DS9's "The Ascent" as a possible guide,

ODO: You are not going to collapse. We're almost to the tree line. After that, we've only got a few more hours of climbing left before we can set up the transmitter.
QUARK: A few hours? You mean like three?

this episode is set in 2260, as Pike says that the Klingon Wars ended a few years back.

 

[DEWLine]

Keep in mind that we don't get Z-axis coordinates for this map stuff. Yet.

 

[eschaton]

This was a very well done take on the "lighthearted romp" trope in Trek. Like most Trek comedies though (at least for me) I didn't find the episode really laugh-out-loud funny, even when it was being cute or witty (I think I chortled under my breath once). It was absolutely the tonal shift that this episodic show needed to make after the very high-stakes, heavy drama of the previous week however, and it showed off the versatility of the writing team in spades.

As was the case in all of the previous episodes, this one focuses on a character (Spock naturally...it's right there in the title) allowing them to have a coherent character arc across the "A plot" of the episode. Essentially we see Spock learn to be a better partner by opening up to his faience - though we have to get through some body swap hijinks first to get there. I like that they gave T'Pring some characterization here besides "demanding, cold-hearted bitch" which is what we got from her in Amok Time (and what the pilot hinted at). We shouldn't see the seeds for the unraveling of their relationship happen so quickly after all, since it is years until we will reach the endpoint in TOS. This has to be the best portrayal of a Vulcan relationship I have seen to date, as both actors really nail the essence of being a Vulcan isn't lacking emotion, but barely suppressing expression of it.

But this episode isn't just about Spock and T'Pring of course. As with last week, it does feel like more of an ensemble than anything. Una and La'an get a true B plot being hived off on antics in a nearly empty ship. There's not really a character arc here, but it's nice to see the two most buttoned-down members of the cast (other than Spock) get a chance to let their hair down a bit (figuratively anyway). Pike gets put in the backseat, but it was nice to have some stakes to the episode with the diplomatic sideplot, which was very TNG-esque (reminded me of all the crazy alien ambassadors) and a "Pike speech" at the end. Some of the cast was mostly or entirely absent here though. No Hemmer at all, and Uhura literally just sat in a room during diplomatic negotiations (I don't think she had a line here). M'Benga just...got to go fishing, and Ortegas basically served as Chapel's wingman.

But yeah, more on Chapel, because she was quite clearly the secondary character here - someone who even got something of an arc. This was very much appreciated, because heretofore she was probably the least developed of the main cast (goes back to Ortegas again now). She arguably also had a character arc here as well, insofar as at the beginning of the episode she was a happily (?) uncommitted woman who didn't want anything serious, and by the end we see the beginnings of her infatuation with Spock through the development of a real friendship and some intimacy between the two of them. I am left wondering how Korby is going to factor into all of this eventually, but the series has plenty of time to explore this later on.

I feel like the quality curve of the series is steady in the B+/A- range for me. Every episode is good, has lots of enjoyable elements, and no flaws in basic storytelling, characterization, or execution. But it always is just slightly short of greatness - at least for me - which may be down to how everything is in some respect a reprisal of something we've seen already. Still, I'm plenty entertained, and anxious for next week.

 

[Campe]

When Spock and T’Pring switched bodies, I admittedly feared the worst. But this episode ended up being a lot of fun. The diplomatic story was very interesting and it was nice to see April again. And it was nice to dig into the Spock/T’Pring relationship a bit. Both sets of Una/La’an and Chapel/Ortegas scenes were also a lot of fun. I really am digging Chapel.

I rarely give out 10s and the lack of Hemmer and what felt like a deleted storyline for M’Benga meeting someone brings this down to a 7 for me.

 

[Vale]

That was a fun episode. I'm still not entirely sold on Ethan Peck as Spock, but I quite like Gia Sandhu's T'Pring. I'd almost rather "Enterprise bingo" had been the A-plot rather than the B-plot.

 

[Trekker4747]

When Spock and T’Pring switched bodies, I admittedly feared the worst. But this episode ended up being a lot of fun. The diplomatic story was very interesting and it was nice to see April again. And it was nice to dig into the Spock/T’Pring relationship a bit. Both sets of Una/La’an and Chapel/Ortegas scenes were also a lot of fun. I really am digging Chapel.

I rarely give out 10s and the lack of Hemmer and what felt like a deleted storyline for M’Benga meeting someone brings this down to a 7 for me.

Yeah, when they switched bodies I was really worried where that would go but they handled it pretty well.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

What was Spock‘s reaction again when Kirk bodyswapped in Turnabout intruder?
Edit:
I looked it up:

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Pretty sure what he thinks after the meld is: „This veers dangerously close to hijinks!“

 

[Romulan_spy]

I am probably in the minority but this ep was average for me.

I don't like relationship tropes where couples fight because one is too busy and the other feels neglected. And the body switch did not really work for me either because they are both Vulcan so it did not feel like a body swap. For a body swap to work, the characters have to be very different because the comedy comes from them acting out of character. We did not get that here since both are Vulcans. They both acted basically the same as before. It was nice that they got to learn about the other which paralleled nicely the theme of empathy of the aliens. I do think the show overdoes the Vulcan speech pattern of talking robotically and always saying "it is logical". Vulcans control their emotions, they are not robots. Controlling your emotions or preferring logic over emotion does not mean you have to talk like a broken robot all the time or that you have to point out that everything is logical every other sentence.

And it is probably a silly nitpick but it kind of takes me out of the show every time the characters wears civilian clothes because it is so obvious that they are just wearing contemporary street clothes from today. It is supposed to be the 23rd century but the characters are obviously wearing 21st century clothes. It feels like the actors walked on set from their trailer and forgot to change into their costume.

The subplot with Una was ok. It was kind of fun.

My favorite part was the diplomatic negotiations with the aliens. The idea of radical empathy was good and I loved the alien ship with the solar sails. Una and Singh on the saucer section seeing the alien ship unfurling the solar sails and moving off was beautiful. I loved that.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I don’t think I agree.
Trek‘s idea of civilian clothing has either been stupid onesies or skimpy cloth made of nothing for too long.
It wasn‘t until Jake grew up that we got something that was halfway believable. He had a particular style, that I don’t see everyone wearing, but it wasn’t too different from contemporary.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Really looking forward to this one. I'm a sucker for comedy episodes and judging by this thread this is a good one.

It'll be difficult to top last week though.

 

[Romulan_spy]

I don’t think I agree.
Trek‘s idea of civilian clothing has either been stupid onesies or skimpy cloth made of nothing for too long.
It wasn‘t until Jake grew up that we got something that was halfway believable. He had a particular style, that I don’t see everyone wearing, but it wasn’t too different from contemporary.

I am not suggesting SNW do some silly onesie. I agree what Jake wore was great. I want something like that! It worked for me because the colors and style did not look too contemporary. The civilian outfits that Ortega and Chapel wear clearly look like street clothes people wear today. It just takes me out of the show. That's just me of course.

 

[Sakonna]

I was a little disappointed in this one, but only because I was SO into the Spock/T'Pring story, and comparatively much less interested in Una and La'an's arc.

That body swap was a delight! As were all their scenes as themselves. They are so delightful together, I wish I didn't know how badly it ends. I just wanted so much more of this story than we got, I was a bit frustrated by the untapped potential.

That being said, as problems go, that's a good one to have.

A minor detail I was happy to see: a great design for Streaming Era Bolian's! Frequently awful alien makeups have been the achilles heel of the production work since Disco, so on the rare occasion a classic alien gets a modern refresh that is somehow NOT terrible, I breathe a sigh of relief.

And it is probably a silly nitpick but it kind of takes me out of the show every time the characters wears civilian clothes because it is so obvious that they are just wearing contemporary street clothes from today. It is supposed to be the 23rd century but the characters are obviously wearing 21st century clothes. It feels like the actors walked on set from their trailer and forgot to change into their costume.

I don’t think I agree.
Trek‘s idea of civilian clothing has either been stupid onesies or skimpy cloth made of nothing for too long.

I am also not worked up about it in the grand scheme of things, but I agree with @Romulan_spy on this. The costuming has generally been fantastic all throughout the modern era, except when it's just off the rack pieces from 2022, which are fine but do knock me out of it slightly. I definitely think there is space here for these talented costume designers to come up with a new take on civilian wear in the 23rd/24th/etc centuries, and I want to see what it is.

Though now that I think about it, there have been some interesting updates of the old concepts here and there, mostly in Picard season 1... Bjayzl wore a modern iteration of the old onesie, and the synths outfits on their homeworld made me think of a new take on the Edo.

 

[Campe]

For a body swap to work, the characters have to be very different because the comedy comes from them acting out of character. We did not get that here since both are Vulcans. They both acted basically the same as before.

I don't know. There were some differences. How they carry themselves. Their vocal stylings. T’Pring is a little more soft spoken than Spock and Ethan Peck and Gia Sandhu played that off well I thought.

 

[farbeyondthestars]

Ditto, I am loving their relationship. And yeah so far each episode has been character centric
1 - Pike
2 - Uhura
3 - Una
4 - La'an
5 - Spock

And Spock is the one who says "previously on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds"! The pattern is continuing.

Did I hear "Lt. Detmer" is the guy who Chapel was going out with? If so that's a nifty link to Disco - maybe he's a brother. I wonder if he was the one Disco Detmer addressed her goodbye message to in the S2 finale.

I wonder how they are going to address Roger Korby. If they're doing an episode about every character I reckon Chapel's could be about that - it's a pretty major part of her backstory.