Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x01 - "The Broken Circle"

[Jax]

I loved SNW S1, it was some of the best Trek ever produced.

But this was a dreadful episode (sure the SNW police will jump on me). It felt such a random half baked episode with bizarre behaviour from the crew. Swinging from stupid humour to deadly serious plot like the episode was wrote by a drunk. What the hell was with the super drug that allowed 2 humans to fight a dozen Klingons ? The new engineer is a horrendous character.

Spock felt like he was wrote by different writers.

It felt like a spinoff of SNW.

Pike is the heart of the show, don't leave him out of a season opener.

 

[Mudd]

It's a good ensemble. They can do without Pike for a week.

 

[Citiprime]

Also, what the hell kind of "Crossfield" class was that?

I'm guessing that's what the standard Crossfield Class starship looks like, and Discovery (and the Glenn) were highly modified versions of the class where the stardrive had to be different for the spore drive.

Although... If we go with the idea of visual retconning that some have, whose to say this isn't the way Discovery always looked?

I've been told that it's an "open canvas." And since they could have easily just put the CGI model for the 23rd century version of Discovery into this to save money, or changed the dialogue to identify it as some other random class, if we go with that train of thought, that anything which proceeds this is open to a visual retcon to fit the style of the series, maybe this episode is a visual retcon of Discovery in seasons 1 and 2.

 

[fireproof78]

It's a good ensemble. They can do without Pike for a week.

Yup.

Although... If we go with the idea of visual retconning that some have, whose to say this isn't the way Discovery always looked?

Good. That would only be an improvement.

 

[Mr Awe]

Can't believe I am writing this but I now wish new Trek was a reboot just for this Spock/Chapel ship to continue, Pike to be saved from that chair and Nurse Chapel to not revert back to that 1960's TOS stereotype. Or better yet not name the character Nurse Christine Chapel!

Fortunately, thanks to The Menagerie, we already know that the Telosians save Pike from the chair with an assist from Spock!

 

[Richard S. Ta]

My take-away from this thread is a lot of people seem to have a deeper idea of what M-Benga was like in TOS than I ever did.

He literally had no character to speak of in TOS.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

OMG, that was awesome! I've read a number of people who have mentioned this looks like STVI. I agree. Not only the Klingons -- one of whom is a dead ringer for Brigadier General Kerla -- but moreover the look and music. There was a lot of Dining on Ashes in that. Also, I distinctly heard some STiD notes too.

12/10! Good start to the season.

 

[Mr Awe]

I found the whole battle serum klingon kombat sequence to be really silly and out of character for the show, but I still loved the episode regardless. Hardly the first time Star Trek has made me roll my eyes.

Agreed. It was out of character and out of the blue. While I enjoyed the episode overall, the cheat solution was my least favorite portion. A more creative solution would've elevated the story.

 

[Mr Awe]

You clearly don't know Army nurses.

Hey, I saw what Houlihan did to her trunk!

 

[Mr Awe]

Sure but it's all in how the ingredients are mixed together. Nostalgia is like lumps of flour-mixed right it gets a good rise. Mixed wrong it creates white spots that taste bland.

SNW Season 1 worked not because i was thinking about TOS; I was engaged with the characters and what has happening on the screen in the moment, for the most part. That's ok. But don't make it the whole meal.

I don't understand why this is hard to understand.

It's just different strokes for different folks. There's no correct answer to understand. Some people like nostalgia more than others.

In terms of the TV and film industry, it makes financial sense because revisiting successful ventures is seen as less risky than a new venture. We've all seen the Rise of the Sequels dominate the box office. Series revisiting themselves is a similar phenomenon.

 

[Arpy]

Hey, I just wanna throw out a reminder (and invitation) that we'll be discussing the season premier of SNW via Zoom later today at a 9 PM BST (British Summer Time), 4 PM EDT (Eastern Daylight Time). The link will be posted in the thread at the time of the event. Come one come all!

 

[Mr Awe]

i must say I am feeling a little bit vindicated to see more people now saying some characters are doing things not really in line with their profession,

I'm actually totally fine with M'Benga and Chapel having self-defense skills. I think making them combat medics is an interesting addition to their characters. I hope to see more of that. I thought M'Benga's trauma was palpable at points in this episode. So, that's all good.

However, using an injection as a quick solution is lazy writing. I'd have vastly preferred a more creative solution. Inject with this magic solution to get out of a tough spot just doesn't cut it for me.

 

[Gilora]

People really underestimate the training nurses go through. I'm a mental health provider and I'm trained in self defense as part of my job.

My formerly thuggish baby sister just got her BS in nursing. She's 5'9" and about 180 lbs. and could probably own a few people in hand-to-hand combat, but I think she would try to talk a belligerent down now as opposed to during the time of her wayward youth.

And that feeds into the part of this thread about how people can change. If you can't tell, I'm very proud of her.

 

[Captain Jollydark]

I don't think it is fair to say misogyny, since it is fair to say that society sees it differently when a woman hits a man and when a man hits her. a woman hits a man, people laugh and do SNL skits, a man hits a woman, he goes to jail and his career is over. people just want a little logic and some familiarity. chapel should not even be doing any action scenes. if you say it is misogyny, you can also raise a counter argument that it is also toxic -femininity.

I think the scene with chapel here is more of like a poorly badly version of saldana's uhura in star trek into darkness and i dont like that film or how the characters were portrayed. in into darkness uhura goes toe to toe with a klingon, speaks to him and stabs him but before they could react she has back up from kirk and spock. uhura is a combat girl but she is still limited as she is written more realistically. she is not empowered magically in anyway and is not written to make a girl power statement that will defile logic. SNW here is just cliche faux girl power writing that deserves the backlash as it makes no sense in the context of chapel or any medical person. so I don't agree that the misogyny is fair.

Chapel is also a civilian, she should not be going on such dangerous task in the first place. she is there to be protected not the other way around.

I think everything I said is totally fair and this post just proved my point. So...yeah...

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Pike is the heart of the show, don't leave him out of a season opener.

So your saying SNW needs to treat Pike like Burnham rather than being an ensemble show.
No thanks

 

[Captain Jollydark]

Da fuq????
She volunteered. She got captured while providing medical aid

I think valden is an Old One from the Before Times. Or yanking our chains with this nonsense.

 

[Jedi Marso]

There were no security folks present. I'm sure if La'An was there, she'd have passed on using the Popeye Juice and kicked more ass.

Or done the sensible thing and used a sidearm. Never bring your martial arts to a gunfight.

 

[Pauln6]

The practices of the 1960s American medical field are not in any way canonically binding and they don't mean shit in terms of what kinds of combat training it is plausible for Christine to have received.

Also, the idea that she took a nurse's posting aboard a starship to search for Korby makes no sense. There's no reason to imagine a starship would be likely to find him, or that she would be in a position to persuade the commander to search for him if the ship has other duties. If she were serious about searching for her missing fiance, she would have chartered a private vessel, obtained her own vessel, or persuaded Starfleet to mount a dedicated search and rescue mission. That part of "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" should just be ignored entirely.



Who the hell still uses "Miss" as a style of address? It's the 2020s. "Miss" is already outdated in real life -- people use "Ms." There's no way they'd use "Miss" in the 2250s.



I don't think there's enough of Chapel in TOS to say she's being pivoted away from her TOS version. The TOS version is an almost entirely blank slate.

Kirk called her Miss Chapel is all I was saying. Spock as someone with multiple PhDs could be called Dr Spock. NuTrek felt the need to rapidly make Kirk a captain. They didn't start calling female officers Mister until TWOK. It seems the name check carries weight. Glad they chose to develop Uhura's career path more organically.

You may dislike the contrivances in What are Little Girls Made Of but they form part of that episode's story. You are entitled to dislike them just as I am entitled to say I would have preferred it if they had used less Klingon assailants so the medics didn't appear like superheroes in this episode. We don't need to have the same opinion based on the same information.

Chapel as a combat medic who went on more landing parties would have had me stoked watching TOS as a kid. It just feels a bit weird now given that she was nothing like that. I will also concede that many of the yeomen cowered in a fight so I do accept that sixties characterisation of female crew was a bit too passive at times. More info on the serum may square the circle though.

It's also worth noting that there were several episodes in TOS where I thought Chapel should have had a more active role based on her established skill set such as taking a lead when looking at the effects of kiranide. I also felt that Uhura's combat skills in the arena were a bit basic. I felt that Troi's apparent lack of Starfleet training as a senior officer was very silly but I would have been fine with it if she had been a civilian. I also was not expecting her to be trained enough to take down Worf. It's more a question of degree for me I think and info on the serum may cover that.

 

[Jedi Marso]

It's absolutely absurd and unbelievable that Kirk could fight back against a talking t-rex that could lift and through a boulder the size of the one it did, just by boxing its earholes.

Trek was ruined right there. I could never get into it again after that. Kirk did too much shit that no real starship captain would do.

Hey, it's not unreasonable that Kirk had the intelligence, ingenuity, and physical capability to make the gunpowder and cannon to defeat the Gorn. That's why he's the goddamn captain!

(There is a meme to this but I don't have it handy to post...)

 

[4Lights]

However, using an injection as a quick solution is lazy writing. .

I think AI wrote the damn thing.