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Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x10 - "A Quality of Mercy"

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Was it just me, or did the Bussards of the Enterprise in the future scenes look more orange?

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by not warping all his controlled robotic ships into the Romulan fleet. They were ready made warp kamikaze ships.
I don't think the answer to "Warp Speed Ramming" has ever been addressed in Star Trek to my knowledge.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Unlike Star Wars which proves that there is a small opening for it to happen before you enter Hyper Space.
 
They never explained why Ortegas’ position was switched, did they? I guess that was done to subtly signal that this future was off-kilter, but I’d be curious to hear the thought process.

Silly me — just realized they’ve placed her in the position occupied by Lt. Stiles in BoT, as that’s the role she’s fulfilling. I’m really wowed at the amount of thought and care they put into this stuff.
 
Pike didn't hand the ship to Kirk in TOS because of his accident either. The Menagerie says that Pike got promoted to fleet captain, then Kirk took command. The handover is in no way connected to the accident at all...

You don't think a Fleet Captain can recommend someone to take command of the ship he formerly commanded prior to being promoted to Fleet Captain; or that the Admiralty wouldn't immediately honor such a request?

Remember - Pike spoke to Sam Kirk about his brother James and had doubts about Jim Kirk going into the Romulan situation. Pike got to see first hand the type of Captain Jim Kirk is - and now very much likes what he sees, has confidence in Kirk, and would probably do all he could to make sure Kirk is in the Chair of the 1701 when this Romulan incident occurs. Hell, Pike may hear of it just prior to the accident, and will certainly know how events played out with Kirk in command when he's in his life-support chair on Starbase 11.

...Also isn't Pike now obligated to tell Starfleet Command everything that happened or at least that Romulans, the Fed's oldest enemy, are an offshoot of Vulcans? This isn't classified like the Disco stuff was. He has no reason to keep it secret.
^^^
That could affect and change the timeline; and that's one thing Pike now has zero intention of doing as his future self stated that there's no variation where Spock survives. If Pike lives, Spock dies and Spock has great Galaxy saving things to do.

Pike has 100% accepted what his own fate will be.
 
Was it just me, or did the Bussards of the Enterprise in the future scenes look more orange?

Looked the same to me but maybe it's really subtle.

I don't think the answer to "Warp Speed Ramming" has ever been addressed in Star Trek to my knowledge.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Unlike Star Wars which proves that there is a small opening for it to happen before you enter Hyper Space.

An actual "warp speed ramming" hasn't been shown before but in "Best of Both Worlds" Riker was going warp speed ram the E-D into the Borg cube so it is possible, IMHO.

We've seen ships ram other ships at sublight so worst case Kirk could've commanded all the robotic ships to ram at sublight speed forcing the Romulans to fire their weapons at pointblank and possibly damage themselves. Another option is to have them all overload their warp cores and detonate as they closed.

As the story unfolded I began to wonder if they were going to kill off Kirk to really make the worst future imaginable.

Oddly I think that would've been a pretty good option too. (for the story)
 
I liked the episode but thought Kirk lost an opportunity...
by not warping all his controlled robotic ships into the Romulan fleet. They were ready made warp kamikaze ships.
Kirk: And now time for mass Holdo maneuvers!

Pike: Holdo maneuvers?

Kirk: I'm disappointed, I heard you were supposed to be a fan of old Earth sci-fi films.
 
This was a really good episode, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Especially since I watched BoT a couple weeks ago (I've started my annual/every couple years journey of watching all of the ST episodes from TOS on through). I REALLY liked hearing the music when the Romulans were first unveiled to the crew, same music from TOS. It also felt like they were trying to recreate some of the lighting from TOS where the light on someone was subdued except for a narrow band on their face over their eyes, like they were highlighting their eyes. It felt like they did this a couple times with Pike.

Overall, like I said, I REALLY liked this episode. I might say it's the best SNW episode to date. The one thing that fell flat for me was Kirk. I just didn't buy Paul Wesley as Kirk. He was fine, I didn't have any issues with his acting and thought he acted well, he just didn't feel like Kirk to me. I think rewatching TOS right now has impacted my perception of him a bit.
 
An actual "warp speed ramming" hasn't been shown before but in "Best of Both Worlds" Riker was going warp speed ram the E-D into the Borg cube so it is possible, IMHO.
I thought Riker was going to ram at STL and have the Warp Core be a giant explosive payload.
 
Agreed on Wesley's Kirk, the biggest weakness of the episode. Decent, but no Shatner or Pine.

I guess alternate timeline 33-year-old Kirk behaves more like Wesley and I could see little moments of Shatner from TOS Season 1 in there but, yeah, glad he's not a series regular. Good, but Sam is more interesting in this particular show.
Yep - unfortunately, I agree.

So far he's got the weakest/lamest take on the character of Kirk, and doesn't really embody 'Captain James T. Kirk' character as well as Shatner or Pine has. I get everyone wants to do their own interpretation, but for me, this interpretation is missing some very key elements. :(

What he said after the Kelvin was a bit muffled by the fadeout so I didn't catch it but that was a nice touch. Love that they're dialing into the Kelvin also existing in the Prime Timeline.
^^^
Remember the ship is there BEFORE the events that cause a change in the timeline. The USS Kelvin has always been a part of the Star Trek 'Prime' Timeline. :)
 
On more thought, Spock's plan to save Pike in Menagerie is made more nonsensical by this episode. Pike got fried so Spock can live to save the galaxy. Entering Talos IV was banned on pain of death penalty. If Spock was executed for taking Pike to Talos IV, Pike got fried for nothing. No wonder Pike was frantically beeping "No".
 
Getting off Pike and Time Travel for a bit, I think the episode is much more interesting in its aversion of typical Star Trek politics.

The moral lesson of, "Sometimes you need to shoot some people."
That was essentially the moral of the original episode. They had to hunt down the Romulan ship in order to stop a war. In Arena there's a repeat of this situation, though now inexplicably Spock is against the aggressive move, one of the few times the writers got Spock wrong.

Both of them are wrong! Where's Edward Jellico when you need him? He should be the captain of every starship in every time period.
Jellico is a beast!
 
On more thought, Spock's plan to save Pike in Menagerie is made more nonsensical by this episode. Pike got fried so Spock can live to save the galaxy. Entering Talos IV was banned on pain of death penalty. If Spock was executed for taking Pike to Talos IV, Pike got fried for nothing. No wonder Pike was frantically beeping "No".

I don't need an explanation. Spock cared for his best friend alongside Kirk and Bones.
 
I did like the episode. The story was good.
We’ve had nearly a year of constant new Trek. I’m going through withdrawals.

We only have probably 10 months to wait possum. Yup just 10 little short months. Only about 300 days....7,200 hours....432,000 minutes...25,920,000 seconds. Yup heh....heh. Not a long wait at all.....yup.....uh...heh yup.....yup......uh yeah yup........uh:wah:
 
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While watching the first few minutes of this episode I had such a sense of deja vu/nIb'poH. I swore it reminded me of an old episode of TOS. I was pleasantly surprised to see it play out.

I gave my first 10 of the season last week. I have to give this a 15. IMHO, this was one of the best Trek episodes I've seen in all of Trek.
 
Another winner. Like most of the episodes this season, a lot to love and a few quibbles here and there.

1. Loved seeing the monster maroons make an appearance. I wish they would have limited the leather bit to maybe the strap on which the rank insignia is pinned. Would have been more subtle but kept the 'change.' Or they could have just used the originals and not altered them at all.

2. I was surprised to see that the Farragut was not a Connie. Although never specifically tagged as such in any prior canon, almost everyone had been assuming it for the last fifty years. That aside, it makes sense as a smaller 'first command' for Kirk, and implies that in the altered future, Kirk may have taken over from Captain Garrovick after the cloud creature ate half the crew.

3. Speaking of Kirk- who decided on this actor? There was nothing about this guy that gave off any sort of 'Kirk' vibe to me. And to be frank, he also doesn't look like someone who could pull off the nefarious flying wall kick. As someone else posted, if nothing else, this guy highlighted how much Shatner brought to the character just by being himself. Wesley was a total miscast- no hate on the man himself, he just doesn't sell it here.

4. Praetor vs Laris. Okay, which is it going to be? Do Romulans have ridges or not? I am so tired of the wishy-washiness on this in Trek. Evil Romulans get ridges- sexy Romulans don't. Unless they are evil AND sexy Romulans like Narissa, in which case they also don't, unless you are Counselor Troi masquerading as a Romulan, in which case you do. If Romulans and Vulcans are functionally the same species, just get rid of the gorram forehead makeup! Other than that, this depiction of the Romulans was pretty damn good.

5. Are the decks on Romulan ships forty feet high, or what? I don't think we ever saw the overhead on the BOP. It looked pretty cavernous.

6. Did anyone else notice that in the future vision, all rank stripes were gold and corresponded to rank they way they do in TOS? Most notable on Ortegas's uniform- still red but with gold stripes making her a LCDR. I thought it was interesting that she was now at ops, but they should have had someone else at the helm, instead of the same two actors just switching seats. Stiles perhaps? Although it gave Ortegas something to do by assuming that role. I also thought it would have been neat to put a wig on Uhura, giving her her 'proper' future hair.

7. The visual FX in this ep were outstanding. I didn't like the phaser effects, but those are all over the place in Trek anyway. Loved the classic look of the BOP. LOVED the TOS musical throwback. We need more of those!

8. Although they foreshadowed it earlier in the episode, the last part with Una still took me by surprise. The whole thing gave me goosebumps- I have really come to love her character, and that took some doing after the whole 'modern major general' turbolift scene in DSC, which was about the cringiest thing I've ever seen in Trek. I think Pike's girlfriend just sealed the doom on that particular relationship. Which couldn't have been that serious to begin with, since Pike was just bedding Alora a few episodes ago.

9. When is Pike going to stop tolerating Ortegas questioning orders at every turn? He had his first blowup at her in the future vision- I wonder if this is foreshadowing something coming down the pike in S2. (Pun totally intended.)

10. Thoroughly enjoyable season finale, and the best first season of any Trek since S1 of TOS, in my opinion. It's going to be really painful having to wait for more of this good stuff.

Bottom line: This show is a winner. MOAR! Please.
 
Was it just me, or did the Bussards of the Enterprise in the future scenes look more orange?

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I think it's just you. But they did add lights behind the deflector dish now. I wonder if they'll stick around for season 2.
 
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