Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 4x07 - "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass"

[Starkers]

I do love that Q judges and proctors all wear mid-to-late 21st century Earth Postatomic Horror gowns. At some point Q recreating the 2079 courtroom gets latched onto by the Continuum and they decided, "hey, this kinda works and we like the fashion. Let's use it for judicial proceedings among our own kind."

I guess it's kinda how Obi Wan's desert hermit outfit was somehow latched onto as "Oh that's how all Jedi dressed"

I enjoyed it. Bit crap in places (which may have been the point) but it did make me laugh out loud a couple of times. Loved Peck as Sybock and La'an can wear that outfit all the time for my money! Not my favourite episode of the season, probably mid range?

What I did really like was the Juliet stuff. However brilliant The Inner Light is, the one let down is that (odd flute cameos aside) we never really see Picard dealing with the aftermath of living a whole other life, so that was a nice call back to the fantasy Batel crafted for Pike.

One question, where was Scotty?

 

[Starkers]

By the way, I had a thought about all the gimmick/fun episodes this season, and apologies I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest this.

Do we think they're having fun this season because S5 is going to a lot darker?

 

[eschaton]

By the way, I had a thought about all the gimmick/fun episodes this season, and apologies I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest this.

Do we think they're having fun this season because S5 is going to a lot darker?

My understanding is from the guy who leaks on Reddit from production there's only a single comedy next season.

The horror writer/director team who did Episode 2 this season are returning, but otherwise, it's supposed to be straight-ahead Trek stories.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

What I did really like was the Juliet stuff. However brilliant The Inner Light is, the one let down is that (odd flute cameos aside) we never really see Picard dealing with the aftermath of living a whole other life, so that was a nice call back to the fantasy Batel crafted for Pike.

Do you think knowing he's not really Kamin and this wasn't an extension of his own life made it easier or harder for Picard to deal with?

Pike, on the other hand, got a fake life with a real woman and friends he already knew, plus an imaginary daughter with that woman and a son-in-law to be who's the son of a friend. A lot of it was grounded in reality, if extrapolated into the future.

Do we think they're having fun this season because S5 is going to a lot darker?

Some last fun with non-TOS characters before some may die?

 

[Starkers]

Do you think knowing he's not really Kamin and this wasn't an extension of his own life made it easier or harder for Picard to deal with?

Pike, on the other hand, got a fake life with a real woman and friends he already knew, plus an imaginary daughter with that woman and a son-in-law to be who's the son of a friend. A lot of it was grounded in reality, if extrapolated into the future.



Some last fun with non-TOS characters before some may die?

And before Pike meets his destiny

 

[Cap'n Calhoun]

So how long is Pike going to be on Talos IV with Vina before illusions of Batel and Juliet start popping up?

What, like, 5 minutes?

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Pike immediately reacting to the diegetic music with musical PTSD was hilarious

 

[eschaton]

Another thing that's been irking me more and more as the show goes on is how hyperaware the characters themselves (not just the writers) are regarding the 20th/21st century media tropes.

I mean, in this episode, Pike both asks "Are we in the musical, again?" and explicitly knows what a soap opera is. This seems quite odd for a guy from the 23rd century. Like a random person understanding the picaresque literary form today. Sure, some people are that literate in hundreds-of-years-old media forms, but not everyone.

Really feels like Henry Alonso Myers wishes he was still writing for The Magicians and could drop self-aware pop culture references in left and right.

 

[Sakonna]

See, as a parent, that scene in New Life and New Civilizations just came across as a complete nightmare. Like imagining "waking up" from my life and being 18 again. Sure, I could have fun being young again, but no matter what I do, my kids will never, ever exist.

That's what I'm saying though. Until this episode decided to revisit it, to my reading, that daughter did exist and still existed. It wasn't that Pike woke up from an unreal dream. He lived an entire life, died, and then was returned to a prior moment in time in another universe to keep living another life.

But the family he created in that other life kept going, in their own universe, just without him, because he had basically died naturally of old age. Exactly as it would have happened if it had all been taking place in the prime timeline.

It resonated with me because it was exactly the wish for our real families: we get to live full lives with them, and then eventually we move on and (hopefully, barring tragedy) the younger ones keep going without us.

Going back to the story here makes this whole arc so mean and ugly. They didn't have to lean into the dark and cruel read of those events.

This episode could have just as easily leaned into the opposite. It could have confirmed the daughter lived on in her own timeline. The jumping off point could have been a classic soap return from the dead where Batel is suddenly in Pike's quarters again.

It was also such a stupid choice to tell this story through a completely false "Uhura is my lost daughter!" frame. Like, who could possibly care? There's no resonance to something that nakedly contrived. Bringing back Batel would have actually allowed some real scenes to be played.

 

[I am not Spock]

I liked it. Mainly because of the emotional gut punch at the end with Juliet. Anson Mount was really good in this episode .

Didn't expect this one to hit so hard emotionally. Good stuff

 

[eschaton]

That's what I'm saying though. Until this episode decided to revisit it, to my reading, that daughter did exist and still existed. It wasn't that Pike woke up from an unreal dream. He lived an entire life, died, and then was returned to a prior moment in time in another universe to keep living another life.

But the family he created in that other life kept going, in their own universe, just without him, because he had basically died naturally of old age. Exactly as it would have happened if it had all been taking place in the prime timeline.

It resonated with me because it was exactly the wish for our real families: we get to live full lives with them, and then eventually we move on and (hopefully, barring tragedy) the younger ones keep going without us.

Going back to the story here makes this whole arc so mean and ugly. They didn't have to lean into the dark and cruel read of those events.

This episode could have just as easily leaned into the opposite. It could have confirmed the daughter lived on in her own timeline. The jumping off point could have been a classic soap return from the dead where Batel is suddenly in Pike's quarters again.

It was also such a stupid choice to tell this story through a completely false "Uhura is my lost daughter!" frame. Like, who could possibly care? There's no resonance to something that nakedly contrived. Bringing back Batel would have actually allowed some real scenes to be played.

I was curious, and went back to look at the script:

Batel: Living our lives like this, we got lucky. You've given me everything I needed. And more than I could've hoped for. I needed to have this first. So I can say goodbye and still remember you. Still remember us.

Then later:

Pike: Captain's personal log, supplemental. With the Vezda gone, the people of Skygowan are recovering. As if waking up from a terrible dream. We remember, but it's over. ( sighs )

I dunno. The implication to me was clearly it was all a dream - all fake. Not a baby universe. None of it was real, just created by Marie because "she needed it." Out of her own selfishness to want to have a full life and a family with Pike, regardless of the consequences it would leave on him.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

It might explain why he's able to be with Vina later - the illusion is for both of them to live out their days without infirmity together, not a cozy memory to keep her warm at night without him while he pines for her.

 

[Markonian]

Enjoyable!
In principle, I don't like the idea of having each episode be centred on a gimmick. But so far, I enjoyed this season. It's a breath of fresh air to return to an episodic live-action show after years of mystery box seasons.

Counselor Chivers: I welcome more department colours, and teal works as the medical subgroup psychiatrists uniform department color. But did I'm not a fan of people wearing non-standard uniforms. Dr. Chivers' outfit has a completely different cut from the rest of the crews'.

The cereal ad at the end - what was the point? Why wouldn't an omnipotent being like Trelane be able to know what cereals are? Was it meant to be a non-sequitur skit?

 

[Verteron]

I cannot believe how completely these writers have lost any interest in dealing with the actual characters on this show.

So far this season we have:
-- one episode that is mostly hallucinations
-- one episode that is probably a dream
-- two episodes where the characters are so altered by sci-fi devices that there is nothing present of the characters we know in their behavior and it just becomes an excuse for everyone to do silly heightened bits

And we could maybe throw in "Chiaroscuro" as an edge case - they spent the whole time pretending to be other people, but at least they remembered who they actually were, remained in control of themselves, and the undercover performance related to existing character elements instead of just being random absurdity.

The actual characters on this show are great. Why is writing actual stories for their actual characters the absolute last thing this writers room is interested in doing?

It's a symptom of weak show-running.

They probably did a writers room to set the tone for the season, then left each writer to pen their 'pet' episodes in isolation without checking in against an overall development arc for the season. This means they only know the state of each character up to the end of the last season and can't rock the boat too much because it would create inconsistency for the other episodes to essentially not reset to the status quo at the end of each story.

Starfleet Academy suffered from this greatly too.

 

[Cap'n Calhoun]

I wonder if they can do a food network genre next. Maybe the federation holding cooking and baking contests to resolve territorial disputes. They can explore the galaxy by advertising baking and cooking contests. I bet that would attract a lot of aliens.

Oddly enough, I've played a Star Trek Adventures session with basically this plot.

Doctor Who also came pretty close to this with "The Interstellar Song Contest", though that was about... well, you can probably guess.

It's Community now, but in the Star Trek universe.

Wait till Yahoo Screen brings Strange New Worlds back for season 6.

Instead it seems like they're going with late series Sliders, where you had the Jurassic Park episode followed by the Tremors episode, followed by the [other hit movie] episode, and so on.

Mid-series, Sliders, thank you very much. Sci-Fi channel brought it back for two full seasons after the late-season 3 nonsense and cancellation.

The writers forget that this isn’t TNG. You can’t call the computer just by saying “computer”

Kirk did it in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday". Possibly others, but that one came to mind almost immediately.

and 23rd century ships didn’t have counsellors.

Was this ever said, or did we just not see any? And we definitely saw multiple psychiatrists on TOS.

For what it's worth, Star Trek Continues brought on a full-on counselor on Kirk's Enterprise as a series regular. I think they treated it as a new, but considering the show is non-canon that detail's not really an issue; the principle is that they were okay having counselors in the same time period.

I do love that Q judges and proctors all wear mid-to-late 21st century Earth Postatomic Horror gowns. At some point Q recreating the 2079 courtroom gets latched onto by the Continuum and they decided, "hey, this kinda works and we like the fashion. Let's use it for judicial proceedings among our own kind."

Indeed. And for anyone who chooses to gripe about this, blame Voyager: This comes from "Q2".

The cereal ad at the end - what was the point? Why wouldn't an omnipotent being like Trelane be able to know what cereals are? Was it meant to be a non-sequitur skit?

If I had a nickel for every episode of Star Trek that ended with a post-credits cereal ad, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

 

[eschaton]

It's a symptom of weak show-running.

They probably did a writers room to set the tone for the season, then left each writer to pen their 'pet' episodes in isolation without checking in against an overall development arc for the season. This means they only know the state of each character up to the end of the last season and can't rock the boat too much because it would create inconsistency for the other episodes to essentially not reset to the status quo at the end of each story.

Starfleet Academy suffered from this greatly too.

I believe the way that modern writer's rooms works is the entire group brainstorms "plots of the week." They then assign each of the episodes to a single writer to do the first draft. Another writer maybe does a second draft, and then there's some small tweaks to make the episodes align in continuity.

We do know that the episode placements were yanked around a bit this season. For example, Episode 4 was supposedly the second episode shot. Presumably this means the Scotty/Ortegas episode was added in post, since they were originally supposed to still be feuding at that time.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

So apparently Scotty doesn't appear in this one. Wonder what he was doing while all this was going on.

 

[DaveyNY]

I have never been a Soap opera fan, so this is never going to be a favorite episode of mine, but thy must have had a ball doing this one.

I'm giving it an 8 just because of all the intense effort the cast put into making it the best Star Trek 'Soap Opera' they could.

Tossing Tralane into the mix elevated it somewhat for me, though it's a damn shame that they didn't get Whoopie to play his mentor.

Also, it made me laugh more than a few times from the silliness of it and I so wanted this to be heard in the background with each dramatic reveal...

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[Chovak]

Wasn't crazy about this one, but I didn't find it to be as obnoxious as some of the other gimicky ones.

The counselor lady was kind of out of the blue, felt like she was presented as someone that the viewers should be familiar with, but I wasn't. Oh, luckily I googled her before posting - she's played by a well-known soap opera actress. I did not understand that reference™

Did have some laughs, liked the Qs.
The sponsors joke would have been enough once.

 

[Chovak]

So apparently Scotty doesn't appear in this one. Wonder what he was doing while all this was going on.

Scotty had his emotional problem resolved last week, so TrelaneQ gave him an episode off