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I don't like this news about SNW season 3 from Screen Rant

There is no difference between a space ghost controlling people and "a magic spell" - not in terms of science, plausibility, or story logic.

None.
The difference is that when an intelligent being is controlling people I think:

'Aha, I know why they're doing the things, it's because someone is deliberately manipulating them in a certain way.'

And when it's an improbability field linking them to a dimension where people communicate in song I think:

'But that doesn't explain the music they can all hear. Also why are they forced to sing? And how are they coming up with lyrics and dance routines that everyone seems to all know like they've been rehearsing? And an improbability field is an impossible concept anyway as you'd need an intelligent being to deliberately intervene in order to make unlikely events more likely. That's like something you'd find in a Douglas Adams story or Red Dwarf, and even they didn't do a musical. Why are the crew accepting this bullshit explanation so quickly?'

And then half the episode's gone by and I wasn't paying attention and I don't accept any of it as being real anyway.
 
Why are the crew accepting this bullshit explanation so quickly?'
They didn't.

Pike certainly didn't. He had a look on his face of "what the hell is this?"

When you're trying to weigh which of two impossible things is more impossible than the other, you've made a mistake. That's because in fact they're equally impossible. There aren't any shades of improbability here, because it's all imaginary fiction that is flat-out not possible to real.
This.
 
Or maybe he doesn't like musicals. There's no requirement to like musicals. I like musicals, good ones at least. But no one has to like musicals.

I would find it a more honest criticism.

Warp ten turned Janeway and Paris into salamanders, and a warp experiment took the Enterprise-D to a place where thoughts became real. The galactic barrier can give people godlike powers. Why can't subspace make people sing?
 
Or maybe he doesn't like musicals. There's no requirement to like musicals. I like musicals, good ones at least. But no one has to like musicals.

I would find it a more honest criticism.

Warp ten turned Janeway and Paris into salamanders, and a warp experiment took the Enterprise-D to a place where thoughts became real. The galactic barrier can give people godlike powers. Why can't subspace make people sing?
I'm a SNW fan who didn't care for 'Subspace Rhapsody'. I wrote elsewhere today it'll probably be my favorite episode a year from now. I didn't like it at the time I was watching it. It's totally fine. I re-watched 'Memento Mori' and was perfectly happy.
 
Something influencing behaviour, inhibiting REM sleep, causing hallucinations, that's all pretty easy to believe. You don't even need a space anomaly to mess with a person's mind, you can do that on Earth.

Making someone sing their innermost thoughts, that's trickier, but if Charlie Evans can make Spock recite poetry it's not impossible. Making them come up with proper lyrics on the fly that other people join in with, that's definitely a step above. Especially with actual choreography. But also not impossible for those folks from Plato's Stepchildren, if they'd written it out in advance and did a bit of rehearsal with their friends to figure out how it would work. And of course anyone can compose and play music, that's well within our technology even today.

Right, so what we need is powerful telekinetic psychics with a bit of prep time and a music system. Did the episode have that? No. Did it at least have an intelligent nebula with an interest in kids fantasy story books? No. Talosians? No.

I don't buy it.
 
Something influencing behaviour, inhibiting REM sleep, causing hallucinations, that's all pretty easy to believe. You don't even need a space anomaly to mess with a person's mind, you can do that on Earth.

Making someone sing their innermost thoughts, that's trickier, but if Charlie Evans can make Spock recite poetry it's not impossible. Making them come up with proper lyrics on the fly that other people join in with, that's definitely a step above. Especially with actual choreography. But also not impossible for those folks from Plato's Stepchildren, if they'd written it out in advance and did a bit of rehearsal with their friends to figure out how it would work. And of course anyone can compose and play music, that's well within our technology even today.

Right, so what we need is powerful telekinetic psychics with a bit of prep time and a music system. Did the episode have that? No. Did it at least have an intelligent nebula with an interest in kids fantasy story books? No. Talosians? No.

I don't buy it.
You don't have to.

It doesn't make bad Trek, or that the show is going the bad direction. It's just...

...

...an episode people don't like.

I don't like it either but that is due to less interest in the presentation than the MacGuffin of the week.
 
Pike: So... that happened.

La'An: Reports of musical outbreaks have come in from every deck.

Kirk: Honestly, I assumed it was something you had all rehearsed, but I sang, too.

M'Benga: So did I. And I do not sing.

Pike: The surge came from your subspace fold. Help me connect the dots.

Spock: We sent a series of transmissions through. The final one was a song.

Una: You sent in a song, and then we all... sang?

Pike: Why are we singing?

Spock: I believe the song created a resonant frequency and dislodged something from the fold, a quantum uncertainty field.

Pike" Okay, why would that make us sing?

Spock: Imagine an area of space where quantum uncertainties collapse so rapidly and randomly
that new realities are created. In one such reality, people sing uncontrollably.

Pelia: A musical reality.

Spock: Indeed.


The above is about as Star Trek as it gets.
 
The above is about as Star Trek as it gets.
I don't think anyone's disputing that they said technobabble words.

Though I respect that you left in Pike saying "So... that happened." You could've trimmed that line off to make the dialogue seem better and no one would've thought anything of it, but you presented the start of the conversation exactly as it was.
 
I don't think anyone's disputing that they said technobabble words.

Though I respect that you left in Pike saying "So... that happened." You could've trimmed that line off to make the dialogue seem better and no one would've thought anything of it, but you presented the start of the conversation exactly as it was.
Never said they were. But it's a rather typical Trek problem being solved in a typical Trek fashion. And don't see why a "wizard" has to step from behind the curtain to make it work.

Pike's line is crucial to the scene. A very honest reaction to the event.
 
It's the second lowest rated SNW episode on IMDb, so I'm not completely alone in my thinking. (Though IMDb voters picked Elysian Kingdom as their least favourite, while I'd go with A Quality of Mercy).

You are confusing bad with not liking something.
Bad is when the writing is terrible, or the acting, or the directing, or the editing. None of that applies here.
Yes, it was silly. But saying that some random anomaly caused it is bad writing is invalid, since that's half of Star Trek's episodes. BTW, not saying that's your argument, but its one being used a lot.

The lower ratings are because Trekkies are hurt in their Trekkie because they feel Star Trek is a very, very, VERY serious show (in any incarnation). Which it isn't. And it never has been. Silly is part of Star Trek.

Now, you are quite in fine in disliking this episode because it's not your cup of tea. But that does not mean it's a BAD episode.
 
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