Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 4x03 - "Human Best Friend"

[SG-17]

For me this series has more “never watching that again” episodes than any other version of Trek.

Honestly this has been all of this wave of Trek for me, outside of Lower Decks.

I've really enjoyed a lot of it but I don't find myself drawn to rewatching it like I am TOS/TNG/VOY/DS9 and the Stargates.

 

[Jayson1]

Technically he still has all five fingers on his hand since we see a stand-in provide a hand closeup in "Wolf in the Fold." Doohan was missing the finger, but the character has all of his.

Just great. Now I am going to have to head canon a visible finger in "Wolf in the Fold." The challenges they keep tossing us Trekkies never ends!

 

[cooleddie74]

Scotty's canonical right hand as of 2267.

 

[Frontis]

"Shore leave on a pleasure planet turns
dangerous when the crew’s promised escape
stops behaving like fun." - TrekMovie.com

So... Wrigley's Pleasure planet? Risa?
Somewhere else?

On Paramount+
TrekMovie.com | IMDb Page
Memory Alpha Entry​

Funny episode and generally I like it. So far I am a big fan of this series but there is one thing I have to criticize. The character of Scotty. That's just not him how they interpret him now. Scotty was always a cool Scottish man who had everything under control but just sometimes drank too much. Now they show him as some weird slapstick character who can't manage anything. That's not Scotty. If you use his character for SNW please bring back the real Scotty.

 

[Commander Antagony]

A spectacular failure.

 

[Starflight]

In a franchise where characters dress up as mobsters on a literal gangster planet, chase the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, or do just about anything seen in The Animated Series, nothing in this episode struck me as being too silly.

I think when people say "too silly", they mean the script's posture toward itself and the interest the writers have in constructing the story as a whole. "A Piece of the Action" is a comedy with a fantastical premise, but allows the situation to create real stakes for the characters, and the laughs arise naturally from that. "Shore Leave" is surreal but also a mystery with some tense sequences and a narrative payoff.

TAS is much the same - "The Ambergris Element" is about turning into mermaids, but it's also about first contact with a lost civilization. "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" is about Kirk getting into a magic duel with a Witchfinder in an alternate dimension, but it's also about the ultimate test of Kirk's morals. "The Lorelei Signal" is about the male crew getting trapped in a big vase by all-female energy vampires, but it's also an effective adventure story which results in a moment of heroism for Uhura and the revelation of a sympathetic motivation for the antagonists.

This, meanwhile, was a series of disconnected scenes, such as Chapel screaming at old women in a bingo hall before La'an ran in with a group of thugs who started beating them up. A planet with a psychedelic atmosphere isn't the silly part people object to, nor the fact that the crew get drunk and stumble into shit; the thing people aren't liking, I think, is that the script isn't interested in anything beyond very obvious, very self-insistently "zany" scenes. The bomb plot is the killer because it's the climax of the episode and yet the script doesn't even care enough to ever show the culprit on screen, nor to build up the threat before it suddenly appears.

 

[Jayson1]

Scotty's canonical right hand as of 2267.

Darn that Trelane. Just like his dad always playing tricks on a Enterprise crew.

 

[HotRod]

the thing people aren't liking is that the script isn't interested in anything beyond very obvious, very self-insistently "zany" scenes. The bomb plot is the killer because it's the climax of the episode and yet the script doesn't even care enough to ever show the culprit on screen, nor to build up the threat before it suddenly appears.

I would say what the script was most interested in was Scotty and Ortegas. Yes, it throws an increasingly outlandish series of situations at them, but those are just the backdrop. The real focus is watching them work together, realize they have more in common than either of them expected, and form a genuine friendship.

 

[Arpy]

I wanna throw out an invite to everyone to come join the Trek Zoom this Saturday, 4 PM EDT / 9 PM BST. Link will be the General Trek Discussion forum at the start time. So many diverse opinions on both Trek in general and this episode in specific. Come spew and/or praise and maybe make some new friends lol

All are welcome, nothing is recorded, and you can come and go as you like! Don’t even have to turn the video on lol

 

[Starflight]

I would say what the script was most interested in was Scotty and Ortegas. Yes, it throws an increasingly outlandish series of situations at them, but those are just the backdrop. The real focus is watching them work together, realize they have more in common than either of them expected, and form a genuine friendship.

I'd agree with you that that's the hook the episode is hung around, but IMO there's not much of a plot framework surrounding that theme. The episode forces them together, sure, but then just pushes them through a series of largely-disconnected scenes and presents them with the bomb threat at the eleventh hour, which isn't connected to anything that happened before.

The connective tissue on their journey is Chapel fighting old women in a bingo hall, Una singing a Bonnie Tyler song in Klingon, Scotty dressing as a Mugatu, Spock hallucinating plants, etc. There's nothing wrong with any of those in isolation (though admittedly, the Chapel and Una scenes were both a bridge too far for me) but the episode exists largely as a vehicle for those, rather than for any kind of coherent story that emphasises Scotty and Ortegas' connection, which itself mostly pops into existence at the end.

I'm guessing they wanted to emulate the vignette-based structure of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (Ortegas' waking up scene felt like it was almost homaging that) but didn't really manage to emulate the gradual descent into mania which that film was able to achieve.

 

[Tuskin38]

A spectacular failure.

Hardly

 

[Mudd]

I feel like I know all these guys well enough for this to work. LOL

 

[eschaton]

I think when people say "too silly", they mean the script's posture toward itself and the interest the writers have in constructing the story as a whole. "A Piece of the Action" is a comedy with a fantastical premise, but allows the situation to create real stakes for the characters, and the laughs arise naturally from that. "Shore Leave" is surreal but also a mystery with some tense sequences and a narrative payoff.

TAS is much the same - "The Ambergris Element" is about turning into mermaids, but it's also about first contact with a lost civilization. "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" is about Kirk getting into a magic duel with a Witchfinder in an alternate dimension, but it's also about the ultimate test of Kirk's morals. "The Lorelei Signal" is about the male crew getting trapped in a big vase by all-female energy vampires, but it's also an effective adventure story which results in a moment of heroism for Uhura and the revelation of a sympathetic motivation for the antagonists.

This, meanwhile, was a series of disconnected scenes, such as Chapel screaming at old women in a bingo hall before La'an ran in with a group of thugs who started beating them up. A planet with a psychedelic atmosphere isn't the silly part people object to, nor the fact that the crew get drunk and stumble into shit; the thing people aren't liking, I think, is that the script isn't interested in anything beyond very obvious, very self-insistently "zany" scenes. The bomb plot is the killer because it's the climax of the episode and yet the script doesn't even care enough to ever show the culprit on screen, nor to build up the threat before it suddenly appears.

I think part of the difference is while Kirk was sometimes completely befuddled by the shit he was put through, he always treated his missions with deadly seriousness.

Pike, in contrast, is very clearly not a serious captain. At this point, I'd take Season 1-2 Archer over him. He's just a chill guy who lets everything slide and half-asses the missions, because it's all in good fun, right?

 

[TRON JA307020]

Really thought it would end with Scotty and Ortegas sleeping together. She’s the only one that hasn’t had any action yet.

Im glad they didn't. Im tired of all the hookups on this show. Better they stay friends/colleagues. I want Star Trek not Days of Our Lives. Lol

 

[Mudd]

Pike's my favorite.

I mean, I know everything there is to know about Kirk.

And i'm loving this episode.

 

[FredH]

Star Trek does Farscape!

 

[fireproof78]

Pike's my favorite.

I mean, I know everything there is to know about Kirk.

And i'm loving this episode.

Pike is peak.

 

[Mudd]

Star Trek does Farscape!

Sort of like, isn't it?

 

[Reanok]

Funny episode it was a hoot. I enjoyed seeing this one. Seeing Scotty and Erica working together to figure out what was happening to themselves and their crewmates and trying to put the puzzle together was enjoyable .I laughed alot watching this one.I liked this show better than The Griffin.

 

[Greg Cox]

Feels like Farscape is high praise in my book.

Back in the day, FS often made Berman-era Trek feel rather stuffy and staid by comparison.

Indeed, as far back as the nineties, I was occasionally arguing that Trek needed to loosen up a bit. And I love that the new shows and movies have remembered that Trek is supposed to be fun as well as high-minded and "cerebral."

Just to get on my hobby horse, for a moment.