Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x10 - "A Quality of Mercy"

[JRoss]

He's not Kirk. Not yet. But soon.

 

[blssdwlf]

What I'm more surprised about is why we don't see the Plasma Cannon Ball launcher more often in the future.

Was the close-range weakness too much to over-come or adapt to?

Or did the existence of the Plasma Torpedo largely negate the value of the Plasma Cannon Ball in the future?

"Close-range" it's not (at least in TOS) as it had a 1-2 minute warp range. It went out of favor when Starfleet shields could tank them at under 100,000km in "The Deadly Years".

 

[cooleddie74]

Never forget that both Gary Mitchell and Kirk himself described Jim's younger self as more serious and grim. A stack of books with legs. This Kirk is closer to that Kirk since the timeline is different and the series of events that led to him being Captain of the Enterprise by 2265 just didn't happen in this one.

 

[fireproof78]

ESP was very ingrained in SF of the time. And it wasn't all Campbell's fault.

And? That doesn't make it harder. Even Starship Troopers raised eyebrows for me.

Star Wars derived from Flash Gordon serials. Trek came from contemporary and earlier litSF, a connection I've literally spent the last ten years chronicling.

Ok. I don't agree about treating it as hard as fans insist I must.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

"Close-range" it's not (at least in TOS) as it had a 1-2 minute warp range. It went out of favor when Starfleet shields could tank them at under 100,000km in "The Deadly Years".

But the Plasma Cannon Ball gets weaker with distance, so the further it travels, the weaker it is.

 

[Rainard Fox]

Okay, now Captain Pike have information about another inevitable future event. His decision to delete the letters removes the alternate timeline, but does nothing about the actual information he has in the present about the Romulan race, society, war strategy, and the vulnerability of the outposts to Romulan weapons.
It seems that now he alone is more effective than all the Federation intelligence service. Let's see if the writers can chew the piece they took.

 

[wayoung]

Okay, now Captain Pike have information about another inevitable future event. His decision to delete the letters removes the alternate timeline, but does nothing about the actual information he has in the present about the Romulan race, society, war strategy, and the vulnerability of the outposts to Romulan weapons.
It seems that now he alone is more effective than all the Federation intelligence service. Let's see if the writers can chew the piece they took.

Chew? They'll ignore it. You'll never hear of it again.

 

[fireproof78]

Episodic TV for the win.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Haven’t read the whole thread yet.
But did anyone pick up on not only musical cues, but whole shots, camera angles/moves and lighting heavily emulating the original ones from BoT? Especially the Romulan reveal scene.
But also the way Pike was shot and lit up during his close up shots, looked extremely TOS to me.
I would really like to see a direct comparison., with both shows next to each other.

 

[Tuskin38]

Okay, now Captain Pike have information about another inevitable future event. His decision to delete the letters removes the alternate timeline, but does nothing about the actual information he has in the present about the Romulan race, society, war strategy, and the vulnerability of the outposts to Romulan weapons.
It seems that now he alone is more effective than all the Federation intelligence service. Let's see if the writers can chew the piece they took.

He would violate starfleet regulations by revealing the future.

 

[wayoung]

Haven’t read the whole thread yet.
But did anyone pick up on not only musical cues, but whole shots, camera angles/moves and lighting heavily emulating the original ones from BoT? Especially the Romulan reveal scene.
But also the way Pike was shot and lit up during his close up shots, looked extremely TOS to me.
I would really like to see a direct comparison., with both shows next to each other.

People read these entire threads?!?!

 

[blssdwlf]

But the Plasma Cannon Ball gets weaker with distance, so the further it travels, the weaker it is.

In TOS it didn't start "dissipating" until 10 seconds before impact so it was probably still lethal at 1min 50s. And ~2 minutes of warp travel time is potentially alot of distance. Certainly more than 100,000 km (or 1/3 a light second).

 

[Tuskin38]

People read these entire threads?!?!

I do, so I don't accidentally repeat something.

 

[fireproof78]

I do, so I don't accidentally repeat something.

Same.

 

[Jedi Marso]

While I liked the episode I think I have has enough of the TOS call backs or forwards when it comes to the characters or situations. I want this to be Pikes journey and his current crew. I don't need Scotty or to even see Kirk again. This is Pikes and his crews time to shine.

This.

 

[Jedi Marso]

I just take it not that Pike is inacpable/incompetent in that kinda situation he just didn't have the rights kind of command mechanism for it to work out the way it needed too. From what we've seen of him up to this point he's pretty much of the mentality of "we can work together to find a common ground and make this work" and, actually, that thought process almost works here. It's just that in this circumstance it takes Kirk's special kind of way of dealing with things fir stuff to work out "right."

It's not a situation where Pike's friendly approach will work. It's like Jelico in Chain of Command, him being put there wasn't to speak against Picard's or Riker's command styles it's that Jelico's experience with the Cardassians was the specific key needed for that situation to have the best possible chance of working.

This episode isn't saying Pike is a poor commander just not the "right" one for this to work.

And agreed, Wesley is no Kirk.

Everyone is also forgetting that the way Pike handles this situation might be different if he hadn't 'quantum leaped' into it with a terrible foreknowledge that there was some 'end of the world' stuff at stake. I think it hobbled his decision making, in that he was somewhat paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong decision and sparking a catastrophe. I think Anson Mount projected this into his performance in this episode- you can see he is sweating the load, hard.

One thing that surprised me about his decision to go for a peaceful solution was that everyone who was a tactical thinker, including Spock, urged him to attack and destroy the Romulan vessel. They were right. Ultimately, when push came to shove, the Romulans were just not the 'reasonable' enemy Pike was gambling they would be- they did see his efforts as weakness, and that sparked the war.

 

[Dukhat]

He would violate starfleet regulations by revealing the future.

What regulation is that? And when did anyone actually follow it?

 

[David cgc]

Everyone is also forgetting that the way Pike handles this situation might be different if he hadn't 'quantum leaped' into it with a terrible foreknowledge that there was some 'end of the world' stuff at stake. I think it hobbled his decision making, in that he was somewhat paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong decision and sparking a catastrophe. I think Anson Mount projected this into his performance in this episode- you can see he is sweating the load, hard.

True, and I think it was a mistake not to make it a real flash-forward so there wasn't this extra complicating element that nothing was done with, but Future-Pike's visit at the end seems to indicate this is pretty much how things went down in the timeline where Pike didn't skip seven years to get to "Balance of Terror."

One thing that surprised me about his decision to go for a peaceful solution was that everyone who was a tactical thinker, including Spock, urged him to attack and destroy the Romulan vessel. They were right. Ultimately, when push came to shove, the Romulans were just not the 'reasonable' enemy Pike was gambling they would be- they did see his efforts as weakness, and that sparked the war.

And it makes Pike look really, really dumb. Ironically, while earlier episodes have seemed to make Kirk look like in a putz in "Arena" for seeing the intrinsic value of the Gorn captain's life, especially since last week's xenomorph pastiche pretty conclusively turned them from "belligerent aliens" to "invasive pests," this one does the same thing to Pike within the same episode, having him try to negotiate with a ship that's already been rampaging through the sector destroying almost half-a-dozen space stations. And then he gives a "Let's let bygones be gone" speech to them, while in hot pursuit, after having been bushwacked themselves? It's lunacy.

 

[ichab]

A really good finale to the season. A great callback to a classic episode and a great end to Pike's conflict .The only reason I can't give it a perfect 10 is the actor playing Kirk. I just couldn't buy him in that role.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Yeah the space battle portion was a bit of a let down. There were a ton of missed phaser shots at close range.

But a key point from "Balance of Terror" seemed to have been overlooked by Kirk and Pike and that was the firing of the plasma torpedo. In "Balance of Terror" Kirk had the Enterprise warp in reverse in an attempt to avoid getting hit by the torpedo. We know in SNW's version the plasma torpedo can be dodged by warping away. So a missed opportunity.

This is the problem with depicting warp speed to be like hyperspace in SW. The way warp speed in SNW is depicted, you will never see a battle fought at warp, only at sub light speeds. Although battles at warp speeds never made much sense to me anyway, because changing course even a micron would put ships instantly out of weapons range of one another.