Spoilers Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1x08 – “The Life of the Stars”

[Dar70]

1/10.....they tried to be poignant with the Doctor and Sam. But meh we have been here before in other Treks. Living a lifetime with my barely any time passage etc .At least Picardo had some decent screen time..

Also the weird chaotic character development continues. Jay-Den is still all over the place. They can't decide if he's a pacifist or a Warrior. There is a lot of other complete WTH moments when it comes to the way these characters behave. But I don't even want to go through them. The whole theater thing to deal with their "trauma" was just dumb.



Just a weird weird written show people. It's like the writers don't even have conversations which each other.

 

[Ceridwen]

Jay-Den is still all over the place. They can't decide if he's a pacifist or a Warrior.

He's a pacifist. He just enjoys his people's art, and a lot of his people's art is about warriors.

My people (Americans) also make a lot of art about warriors (we call them action movies and war movies). Enjoying these as entertainment or appreciating them as art doesn't undo one's bona fides as a pacifist. It's a mild contradiction at best, caused by each of us being a product of our environment and culture.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So... Have the Kasq just dead ended?

Because going by the math, 73,000 years have passed for them since the Burn, they should have absolutely reached godlike alien status by now.

Why? There is no timetable to "Godhood"

 

[Farscape One]

1/10.....they tried to be poignant with the Doctor and Sam. But meh we have been here before in other Treks. Living a lifetime with my barely any time passage etc .At least Picardo had some decent screen time..

Also the weird chaotic character development continues. Jay-Den is still all over the place. They can't decide if he's a pacifist or a Warrior. There is a lot of other complete WTH moments when it comes to the way these characters behave. But I don't even want to go through them. The whole theater thing to deal with their "trauma" was just dumb.



Just a weird weird written show people. It's like the writers don't even have conversations which each other.

I mostly agree with this. Except for Jay-Den. He's actually been pretty well done overall. Particularly compared to how the other cadets have been written.

 

[Ceridwen]

Why? There is no timetable to "Godhood"

Unless your name is O'Connor, but that was more of a personal thing.

 

[Michael]

He's a pacifist. He just enjoys his people's art, and a lot of his people's art is about warriors.

My people (Americans) also make a lot of art about warriors (we call them action movies and war movies). Enjoying these as entertainment or appreciating them as art doesn't undo one's bona fides as a pacifist. It's a mild contradiction at best, caused by each of us being a product of our environment and culture.

Yeah, one has to keep in mind that Jay-Den probably listened to stuff like Klingon opera or Klingon myths in his formative years as a child. He can’t fully escape having been brought up on the values, beliefs and traditions of his people, it’s just that he’s decided as a young adult that he’s not going to live by them. The way he’s portrayed seems much more realistic to me than if he just were some pacifist monk running around eschewing absolutely everything about the culture of his people.

 

[Ceridwen]

Possible reason I couldn't give this episode a 10, on reflection:

Still no Dzolo.

 

[Michael]

And no Lura Thok either. After we already only had her as a voice cameo in last week’s episode.

 

[Romulan_spy]

Yeah, I wondered what the idea behind that was. Was that indeed supposed to be the planet itself? Or some Dyson Sphere-esque outer hull around the actual planet? Some kind of force field perhaps?

We do see the cube open up when the shuttle arrives. So yeah, it might be a dyson sphere, but cube shaped, around the star. Or maybe the cube is the entire "world" and they live in a planet sized cube.

 

[BigJake]

Did anyone else notice that Sam's homeworld was a big cube? Kind of reminded me of a Borg cube.

It's definitely not a cube. Possibly a decahedron, seen from a certain angle?

 

[Michael]

Whatever it was, I am the kind of weird fan who actually kinda likes that they didn’t tell us. Fires the imagination.

 

[Ceridwen]

And no Lura Thok either. After we already only had her as a voice cameo in last week’s episode.

I have a feeling they're going to save her screen time for big moments going forward due to the makeup involved.

Similar to how there keep being reasons for the Khionians to be in their humanesque form.

 

[Klingon Empire]

I've read through a bit of the thread, but wanted to give my reactions to the episode first.

I think, very rarely does Star Trek manage to do an episode like this, and pull it off well. It elevated The Doctor's story to one who's arc is complete, perhaps, or perhaps he'll find new places to go.

I am a Tilly fan, and loved any scene with her, or her and Reno, or her, Reno and Ake...I didn't even mind the theater to heal part, as art is a breeding ground for healing.

Honestly, did not enjoy the first half so much, as I found Tarima's parts sort of uncompelling, and inconsistent with the girl who begged Caleb to not be afraid of her. I get her headspace, trust me, I really REALLY do, but the way she was acting was a little distant from what I would have expected. I thought that perhaps it was due to her new inhibitor not allowing her to read Caleb, and that was why she was being distant.

Her ending scene with Tilly was very relatable though, and I think everyone's had a reasonable break down in the face of tragedy like that. I've the bravery to say I have, so really the unenjoyable parts were somewhat in the first-middle part.

I loved the fact that Caleb turned down her advances because she was drunk, and even more so had the maturity to realize that her state wasn't stable or herself, and that he didn't hold her words against her. A + move from the Street Rat. I think his ability to read her and get in her head a bit during this scene further proves that they are Imzadi for each other, and like Riker and Troi, will eventually end up together.

The KASQ visit was probably the best part of the show, however, and I have to say that the black and white, despite being still on the Academy set, was really, really cool.

I gave it a ten, rounded up from 9.6. This is now the highest rated first season of any Star Trek for me.

 

[firehawk12]

Which does not appear the vast majority of children's experience based on the shows.

I mean that's because it's expensive to have child actors. Prodigy is all about children and they ran Voyager. lol

The War College replaced the Academy after the Burn. Starfleet needed soldiers not explorers, they would have probably taught medicine and engineering at the time but with the Academy up and running all they need to teach are
the skills needed to be part of the black uniform security service.

It's weird because they pull Tarima to learn science instead because it's "safe", but from the laser tag episode and the simulation in this episode, Starfleet is also training the operations side of things as well... so it makes the War College feel even more redundant.

Do we know how old his son was on that planet? If he was all grown up and perhaps even had a family of his own, it's significantly different from losing a young child.

MA mentions that he was trapped on the planet for 3 years, so assuming the biology is similar, his son Jason would have been a child.

Funny enough it looks like Terri Osborne wrote a story about how he adopted this child in one of the short story anthologies from way back when.

 

[fireproof78]

mean that's because it's expensive to have child actors. Prodigy is all about children and they ran Voyager. lol

Again, exception not the rule nor beneficial to the SAM mission.

 

[firehawk12]

Again, exception not the rule nor beneficial to the SAM mission.

I mean we have no idea what Star Trek writers would have done if there weren't actual physical limitations on using child actors, so this is a case where the production informs the storytelling.

In the same way that all aliens are bipedal humans and Klingons change their makeup every few decades.

The KASQ visit was probably the best part of the show, however, and I have to say that the black and white, despite being still on the Academy set, was really, really cool.

That reminds me that one thing that stood out about the Kasq is that the "person"/entity SAM was interacting with in DS9 episode pretty much treated her like an object than as her own entity, as oppose to the one we meet in this episode.

Maybe this is meant to be from the perspective of a rebellious child dealing with a parent and not what actually happened or maybe there are different members of the species who have different attitudes.

 

[Tuskin38]

going by the stardates it started in 3193

the stardates convert to 3176 (episode 1 prologue), 3191 (episodes 3 and 4) and 3192 (this episode).

Discovery Seasons 4 and 5's stardates were 2 years off to when the seasons actually took place. Season 4 stardates were 3188 when they should be 3190, and Season 5's dates were 3189, when they should be 3191

I'm thinking the same is happening here, I think they just added 3 years to the Season 4 stardates because that's when we saw the first new SFA Class since the burn.

 

[fireproof78]

mean we have no idea what Star Trek writers would have done if there weren't actual physical limitations on using child actors, so this is a case where the production informs the storytelling.

Watching kids in Star Trek over the years has not exactly inspired great things about their treatment in the Federation.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

the stardates convert to 3176 (episode 1 prologue), 3191 (episodes 3 and 4) and 3192 (this episode).

They do but season 5 of Discovery was explicitly 3191 and it was 2000 stardates lower. So it is pretty inconsistent

 

[firehawk12]

She explains why it was worthwhile in a previous episode. It provided her structure and discipline outside of her lofty position on Betazed, which she didn't have before.

It's more of a mental barrier than physical one. It was symbolic and internal to her.

We don't see how War College is any different, other than assuming it's like a Full Metal Jacket military bootcamp.

But given that there doesn't seem to be any structure to the education at the Academy where you can just invent a new course to force your students to get therapy, maybe any structure is better than apparently no structure. lol

Watching kids in Star Trek over the years has not exactly inspired great things about their treatment in the Federation.

If that's the case, then you'd think the Kasq would want to know that.