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

Rate the episode...


  • Total voters
    98
Really weak episode but the cast do a very good job of the heavy lifting and make it actually watchable.

The concept for the planet was a bit too Rick & Morty and was half expecting Risotto Groupon to show up.

The crew of the Farragut must have feck all confidence in Kirk. The man is literally never on his ship. The writers also really seem to feel the need to spell it out like we are 3 year olds that Spock and Kirk will be friends.
 
They've mishandled that whole thing pretty badly. Spock/La'an just doesn't work, and barely gets any screentime to work. It's a really poor replacement for the Spock and Chapel stuff, especially since Chapel just doesn't have much to do without it.
The only thing I like about Spock and La'an is Star Trek is generally lacking in open or casual relationships. Yes Riker and Kirk get laid every week James Bond style but we rarely see casual between major characters.

Separately the humour on SNW doesn't do it for me normally but "my mind to your leaves" was brilliant and that was a fair bit of acting to do Bonnie Tyler in Klingon.
 
In a world where we get 22-26 episode a season, such a low budget comedy episode would have worked. But when we only get 10 episodes a season this was such a waste of time ... I did not enjoy this at all. Weakest SNW episode by far for me. So ... 4/10
 
Not necessarily. Could be a love story, tragic or otherwise, or just something involving deep emotions and relationships.

In my experience, SF fans too often dismiss as "soap opera" stories that focus on feelings and relationships instead of, say, quantum event horizons.

Not just a Star Trek thing, but an SF thing going back to the fifties at least. "Science fiction is about ideas, not personal soap operas!"
All true.
 
In a world where we get 22-26 episode a season, such a low budget comedy episode would have worked. But when we only get 10 episodes a season this was such a waste of time ...
It was funny; the characters were delightful. Thus is a great cast.

The show entertained me a good deal for an hour, which is the first most important thing a Srar Trek has to do. It was no more or less a "waste" than any episode - say. BOBW.
 
I dunno. It's hard to say, because some folks treat 5 as an average episode, while others see 1 to 10 and consider anything below 6 as a failing grade.
This is always the thing for me too. It feels like almost every episode ends up getting a really high score.

For me, on a scale of 1-10, a 5 isn't a bad score. It's average. If a show were genuinely putting out 8-10 episodes every single week, as these polls often seem to suggest, it would be one of the greatest television series ever made. Every show has average episodes, but people often seem to treat anything below a 7 as if it's automatically terrible.

So if I vote a 5, I'm not trolling or trying to be negative. I'm simply saying it was an average episode, on a scale where 10 is outstanding and 1 is awful.:shrug:

That said, I gave this one a 3. It was below average for me, and frankly I thought the concept of going to a planet on holiday to get high was beyond stupid and reckless. Another episode that does disservice to Pike as captain.

More than that though, I'm worried the season is slipping back into old habits of trying to do everything except Star Trek within the Star Trek universe. What saved the episode were the performances, which were genuinely entertaining. I actually felt last week's horror themed episode was better, because it embedded the horror elements well into the sci-fi ST setting (with some exceptions), whereas in this one, being ST was completely by the by.

Next week's puppet episode doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that this trend is changing. That's frustrating because, when Strange New Worlds launched, one of its big selling points was essentially, "Let's just do Star Trek." After a couple of successful "big swings", though, it feels as if the show leaned more and more into novelty theme-based episodes and away from straightforward Star Trek storytelling.

Don't get me wrong, experimentation, humour, shifts in style and storytelling have always been part of Star Trek's DNA episode to episode. The problem, for me, is that the balance now feels off. In a ten-episode season, there just isn't enough room for these diversions when we're only getting a handful of traditional Star Trek stories, often concentrated at the beginning and end of the season, and a load of "novelty" themes in-between.

It feels a bit like if Voyager had only produced ten episodes a season and then spent one on "Bride of Chaotica!", another on "Fair Haven", one at the resort, one at Sandrine's, plus episodes like "Someone to Watch Over Me", "Heroes and Demons", and "Virtuoso". By that point, you've used up most of the season, leaving only the beginning and the end for stories that really engage with the core Star Trek premise.

Those episodes were enjoyable and worked perfectly well as part of a 26-episode run, where they provided variety and a change of pace. What you wouldn't want is for them to crowd out the central concept of the series. They also tended to land after stretches of more traditional Star Trek storytelling, which helped them feel like a treat rather than the main event.

I suspect that if we still had longer seasons, nobody would think twice about it. In a ten-episode format, though, it just doesn't work for me. Perhaps I'm just nostalgic for the days when a show had 20+ episodes a season, and you got a new season every single year..
 
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what a 6 way lol season 4 episode 3 of strange new worlds

it storyline with eric and scotty was like the star trek verison of the hangover 1 and 2

meanwhile chris gets tattoos una sings in klingon at a kareoke bar laan starts fights christine goes to bingo and wins joseph becomes a bartender spock starts to imagine seening james and uyuta has a party
 
Certain people will always vote 10 and certain people will always go to 1 no matter what the objective quality of the episode so polls like this are really meaningless. I've always felt that the only way to get the real feel for a quality of the episode by the audience is to eliminate all the ones and the tens.
 
Upon rewatch I've dropped my rating down to 4/10. I see how it's similar to comedy movies that people seem to like, but I don't find most of the jokes funny in them or here. The complete brushing under the carpet of the bomb planter, their motivations, and a closure to that dropped it down even more.
 
Yeah. The Last two episodes are pretty much loose adaptations of other work. But the days of sci fi morality tales in star trek may be over. I.think its just moved into relationship stories inside a thin adventure. Im impressed that TOS and the Berman era shows kept up the quality of story telling as well as they did. TOS had 80 episodes and the Berman era has 600 plus. More good stories than bad. A real amazing run. The Kurtzman era it seems they have a tough time with 10 episodes per season on a show that has separate episode stories. Its so tough that that take a lot from classic trek like like trelane and the gorn and movie adaptations. Also from Alien, Harry Potter, buffy the vampire slayer etv. STD and STP did one story seasons. It seems today's writers just aren't chock full of ideas like past writers. Too bad. Well we have a Muppet episode coming up. No TV show has done that before........oh wait. Lol

With no insult to the production or actors and all seriousness, Lower Decks and Prodigy seem the only ones that do much in the same of morality plays.
 
The weakest of the season so far for me.

It had some good moments, and character development, but the whole premise? Nope, not for me. I generally dislike the idea that the only way to relax and have fun is to abuse all sorts of substances, get hammered, and forget everything by the time hangover comes. With this premise, this episode had no chance to not annoy me.
 
The weakest of the season so far for me.

It had some good moments, and character development, but the whole premise? Nope, not for me. I generally dislike the idea that the only way to relax and have fun is to abuse all sorts of substances, get hammered, and forget everything by the time hangover comes. With this premise, this episode had no chance to not annoy me.
Yeah. It was another obvious homage to another movie. The movie was much funnier and better. There a few good moments. Spock straighting out his "messy" room. But cringe moments like his seeing Scotty and Ortegas as plants more than once. It was dumb.
 
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