Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x03 - "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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I'm thinking what I would do if I actually met someone whose last name was "Hitler". At first I'd think it was a joke, then some disbelief that he never thought to change it. Then probably it would be a little awkward, because I certainly wouldn't call him "Mr. Hitler".
But I definitely wouldn't blame them for the Holocaust. Even if he was a direct descendant of the perpetrator.
But I definitely wouldn't blame them for the Holocaust. Even if he was a direct descendant of the perpetrator.
In the court room episode La'an said that she still carried super human traits, but it's never been nailed down how she is more than human.
Being capable of punching through an inch thick plate of steel with a bare fist, is more than just carrying a surname around, so I'm really curious if la'an and her family are not allowed to change their name until they are far more baseline human.
She really does have an indelible scarlet letter.
I don't believe that the agent sent La'an because only she could reach Khan. I think he arrived on the Enterprise by accident and just lucked out.
Possibly because Time (or Q or Organians or the Writers) wanted La'an to do this.
My take on the subject is that La'an's family was probably fairly proud and Augmented up until the last few generations. It's also only recently that the Federation has gone through a renewed case of Anti-Augment bigotry as these things tend to run in cycles of extremism.
It may be why she was on the Puget Sound, because Grandma Noonien Singh wanted to be a place where they can live free of bigotry.
indeed. On real life all surviving family members of Hitler changed their name to Hiller and even vowed to never have offspring to let the family line die off completely. In fact even all totally unrelated Hitlers have either changed name or died off by now.
Sadly, a family tried to name their son Adolf Hitler and the government called that child abuse. Which is to say people suck.
A couple of funny possibilities:
1. La'an's brief encounter with Khan changed him to a far more benevolent dictator, like the one mentioned in "TOS"
2. Kirk and the crew were all very forgiving to Khan in "Space Seed" because La'an was someone they all knew.
I felt that La'an being able to open the door with some genetic scan was a bit stupid.
Surprised too that Brent Spinner didn't show up seeing as his PIC 2 character was working on project Khan.
Surprised too that Brent Spinner didn't show up seeing as his PIC 2 character was working on project Khan.
Remember the ancient gene in Stargate?
Adam Soong's story doesn't start until 2024.
Someone here said that this story was set in 2022, but I can't confirm that.
I just feel like 300 hundred years is too big a gap to have to wrestle with such things. It would be different if La'an was a princess or head of Khan co. and directly profiting from her legacy but what is happening here is similar to me bullying every person I meet named Cromwell or Ginkel.
I love La'an as a character with the exception of this back story. She already has one traumatic back story with the Gorn which is more than enough to work with.
Adam Soong was already working on project Khan when we meet him.
Indeed. They've just been delayed. Eugenics wars delayed by 50 years, followed up by WW3.
With Eugenics Wars in the 2040s, and perhaps WW3 being a shorter war in the 2050s, First Contact could still happen in 2063... However the altering of those events means we have a very different population of survivors on Earth, ultimately leading to different people (or different versions of people compared to TOS) being alive by the 23rd century.
Interesting to consider.
Man I would love to ban the word “distraction” from this board. It’s such a cringe catch-all and lazy criticism. Every time I see a poster use it I automatically take them 95% less seriously.
Like I said, this is the "George McFly is a successful author" timeline. Its close enough to the original that the Federation exists and most of its original cast.
Why the original cast?
Probably because of temporal intervention.
It does explain why Captain Pike has gone from being a misanthrope sexist to being the most progressive and awesome Space Daddy of them all.
A thirty year old hard copy?
That may have been a starting point for Kore, but he turned left early on, because Kahn and Kore are very different finished products. 10 years of his science had been erased, that was based on project Kahn, so he had to start over in 2024.
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I stopped caring DURING T2. But the ending of T3 was amazing. Just not worth watching T3 for. The Sarah Connor Chronicles was really good.
But TOS set the apocalypse "a long time from now". Who knew the show would be so popular that that time would be in the past when the show was running?
But you're right. Nonsense like "We can't tell hopeful stories because our times are SO dark" falls really flat for me when TOS was being shown in the late 1960's. And now we have SNW. It can (and should) be done.
Nope. It started with the conflicts of 2021 (not just Jan 6) which became the Second Civil War which became the Eugenics Wars which became WWIII. I'm not saying it makes a tremendous amount of sense but he also doesn't say the bombs were dropping on that day either.
Owen Lars.
Nearly blank slate. We know they're reptiles and we know Kirk had never heard of them. If you want to get really precise about that then the name Gorn does not immediately bring to mind "Hey, Gorns tried to kill Sam and have blown up a few Federation ships!"
If they made the Gorn into bunny rabbits you can't say "Hey, the Gorn are a blank slate!" We know one or two things about the Gorn total. And they decided to mess with one of those things.
I actually care less that they did it than the people who keep trying to tell me "Hey, they didn't change ANYTHING." Also: "Continuity is too complicated to tell stories!"
A global war taking place in the 1990s is hard to write around. A species that showed up in one episode in TOS (yes yes Enterprise, mentioned a few times, etc.) should be pretty easy to steer clear of. But they decided they wanted a "recognizable" name.
Late to the party again, but anyway.
I really couldn't get into the first half (or so) of this episode (it took me more than a day to get through it; it just didn't engage me at all). Time travel has been done to death in Trek, after all, and the ep seemed a bit dull and pedestrian. It was on course to be a real letdown after the first two eps. I found myself wondering how they found somewhere to stay so easily and where they found pyjamas. There was the cliched person from the future trying to drive a car... Basically the episode wasn't doing a thing for me. Then they got to the facility where child Khan was held and it became quite a bit better.
Overall, not one of the show's better outings. I'm not really convinced by Paul Wesley as Kirk, but Christina Chong was particularly good.
I really couldn't get into the first half (or so) of this episode (it took me more than a day to get through it; it just didn't engage me at all). Time travel has been done to death in Trek, after all, and the ep seemed a bit dull and pedestrian. It was on course to be a real letdown after the first two eps. I found myself wondering how they found somewhere to stay so easily and where they found pyjamas. There was the cliched person from the future trying to drive a car... Basically the episode wasn't doing a thing for me. Then they got to the facility where child Khan was held and it became quite a bit better.
Overall, not one of the show's better outings. I'm not really convinced by Paul Wesley as Kirk, but Christina Chong was particularly good.
I'm not too fussed about it. I'm not saying continuity isn't important or doesn't matter. I really like continuity because it makes a universe feel lived in and more "real." But I care about it mostly for events contemporaneous to the characters on screen and stories being told, and less so for the background wiki-level minutiae. What's important about the Eugenics Wars (and WWIII) is that they happened long before our heroes' times and after ours. That's really all that matters. The 1990s were a logical choice for the writers of TOS to use in the 1960s because the 1990s were "only" a few decades ahead but far enough that it still seemed like a far future. That's the point of the Eugenics Wars. That we will advance far enough to make something (or someones) without considering the potential consequences and our hubris will doom us, and to make the audience think about what is coming if we aren't careful. To keep it in the 1990s and make it in the audience's past completely defangs the allegory and makes it just another sci-fi thing.
The people behind SNW have given interviews where they’ve indicated they’re not concerned about canon when it comes to the Gorn and they’ve spelled out their intentions with the Gorn, which are the exact opposite of what TOS was going for story wise when they used them.
Akiva Goldsman gave an interview just a few weeks ago where he was asked about the Gorn in Strange New Worlds and the problems of lining up what they've done in Strange New Worlds with TOS's "Arena," and he gives an answer that indicates his interpretation is the exact opposite of what Gene Coon intended with "Arena."
TREKMOVIE: So the question is: why the Gorn who have some tricky canon issues instead of using the opportunity to create your own whole new villain species?
AKIVA GOLDSMAN: Because for me, storytelling beats canon. And that may not be popular, but it’s the truth. So when they can go hand-in-hand, great. But when I was writing the pilot, I was looking for something that was just monstrous, that was Cthulhu-like. Something that was unthinking. Our shows are empathy generators and I wanted to have an element which was in relief of that. I wanted something that you couldn’t identify with, something that was utterly alien, something that was all appetite and instinct in ways that we couldn’t quite understand. And I also wanted to signal place and time in a way that personally I found interesting. So you should definitely blame me for this one.
Goldsman totally misses the point of what the Gorn are in TOS, since “Arena” is built around Kirk being able to find empathy for a giant lizard that just murdered a bunch of colonists.
Part of the twist of “Arena” is realizing the whole mess is a misunderstanding. The Gorn aren’t “unthinking.” They are not Cthulhu, or monsters, or savages, or animals or facehuggers on LV-426. They’re people making bad choices in a misunderstanding over defending their home. Gene Coon also wrote “The Devil in the Dark,” and “Arena” shares a similar theme. Instead of not being able to identify with the Gorn, the entire episode hinges around a future where humanity is able to find empathy for something alien in order to recognize that maybe the entire situation is a big mistake.
You guys call it a blank slate, but the showrunner is telling you the entire approach to the Gorn as characters is different than what they were intended to be in TOS. And beyond that, he doesn’t have an answer for why it had to be the Gorn and couldn’t have applied this to a new alien species created for Strange New Worlds.
Realistically, the Augmented genes should be pretty well diluted by now if her only Augmented ancestor was Khan. It would make more sense if her ancestors were Augments from Khan’s group who married the descendants of other Augments. She fixates on Khan as the evil Augment ancestor because he’s the most notorious of the lot but she probably has other Augments in the family tree as well.
As for her name, I have two theories. Federation Law may well forbid her from changing her name because it wants Augment descendants and any genetic advantages they still have to be acknowledged and identifiable. It didn’t prevent La’an from having a very successful career in Starfleet and being promoted every year. The complex may be more Internal than external. The other theory is that she keeps the name because Noonien-Singh was also the surname of her father, mother, and the brother who died to save her and she loves them and wants to honor them as much or more than she despises Khan Noonien-Singh.
I like La’an and her Aliens inspired back story and now her alternate Kirk romance. I hope the character ends up in a good place whenever the series ends.
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