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

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I'm always fighting Autocorrect. It'll constantly change a word on me, sometimes even if I go and put it back, but it won't catch it/fix it when I miss the spacebar and put a "C" or "V" between two words

Then there are times I'll catch my own mistakes, go back and fix it, then it'll put it back to the thing that wasn't a word! I miss having a physical keyboard on my phone. That's what messed me up most, tiny keys, fat fingers, and no physical "center" on the keys to aim for and strike.
 
Also, when auto correct changes words to other words, sometimes the sentence still kind of makes sense and as there is no obvious spelling mistake it is easy to ‘miss’ words that have been auto corrected. This in particular is a problem for people like me who like to post ‘walls of text’ which are difficult to read through again on a small phone screen whilst ‘on the go’. :D
 
Not only Kirk, I also thought the outpost guy and the Romulan commander had better performances in TOS. Much more dramatic. SNW outpost guy was just standing around, TOS guy showed sheer terror!
not to mention that that explosion effect with the guy rotating was ludicrously bad.

By the way, in this altered timeline Sam Kirk isn’t on Deneva for some reason.
 
Also a big deal was made in TOS that the cloaked bird of prey could only use impulse power (presumably they can't warp while cloaked)? Regardless in SNW the praetor can have an entire fleet suddenly warp in on short notice. Far more ships even than seen in TOS Enterprise Incident.

The Praetor said this was a test of the Federation. All those ships may have been there the whole time cloaked.

Pike’s future was laid before him in this Discovery episode and he saw his own fate - Captain Pike is to be seriously injured and disfigured one day in an accident requiring his permanent use of a life support chair. This incident will occur on a mission where Pike will heroically save a group of Starfleet cadets - one of them being an older Maat Salah. This is all too much for Pike to emotionally process so he leaves the meeting quite abruptly. Luckily, his friend Spock is there to help reassure him as he wonders down the corridor yet again contemplating his terrible fate.

It wasn't a "mission". It was training exercise


hat he would never put his fate ahead of the fate of the entire galaxy so must put right what has now gone wrong. Future Pike whisks our Pike in to the future, placing him in to a scene that should have been led by another future Captain of the Enterprise - Captain James T Kirk. In this future, Kirk never took command of the Enterprise after Pike became unable to fulfil the role due to his injuries. We learn later that James T Kirk is Captain of the USS Farragut, his first command which he has has now not left.
Kirk got the Enterprise BEFORE Pike was injured, not because.
 
This was a great end to a great series. I laughed my ass off that they gave us Scotty's voice only. I also liked the little cliffhanger.

Now on to a period of what 6 months with no live action Trek after having back to back to back and overlapping series.
 
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If someone makes a Hamlet cinematic universe and the 15th sequel returns to the time period of the classic movie Hamlet 3: It's Hamlet Time (89% on Rotten Tomatoes) but reimagines it because his neck is too long to be acceptable to audiences in the year 2052 and he doesn't have enough symbols down the arms of his iconic coat, then I wouldn't give a damn, because I am not a Hamlet fan.

But I would have a lot of sympathy for Hamlet cinematic universe fans that are frustrated by this retcon.
Changing the actor or updating the sets or props isn’t a retcon. It’s a surface level change. It’s like claiming you have a new house because you repainted it.
 
I do love that we got 5/8ths of the original TOS cast in this episode. (Just missing McCoy, Sulu and Chekov) as we got Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Chapel and Scotty.
 
True, but we can't always accept the information that appear on those datascreens at face value, either. In "Cause and Effect" [TNG], Geordi's medical records screen gives his mother's name as Alvera K. LaForge. In "Interface," when we finally saw her as a character, her name had become Silva.

EDIT: Never mind. I just saw Noname Given's quote of your post with a clearer shot of current Kirk's datascreen.

There's no discrepancy. Prime-Kirk is officially born on March 24th in Enterprise and SNW.
Thank you.
And you still got it wrong, it's March 23rd, not 24th. :)

Great episode. My first 10 score of the season.

But one thing that bugged me was that Kirk didn't become the Captain of Enterprise because of Pike's accident. Kirk didn't even know about Pike's accident until Menagerie. So the alternate timeline doesn't quite make sense (Kirk should still be the Enterprise Captain during this event even if Pike escapes his fate). Is this a screwup by the writers or is there a good explanation for this? And to be honest I didn't think of this until after the episode was over. While watching it everything made sense.

Spock had surmised that Pike's lack of injury from the training accident resulted in Pike remaining captain of the Enterprise. I imagine that when Pike returns from his time jump into the future he has already decided that Jim Kirk would be the correct captain for this encounter and would put a plan in motion to get Kirk command of the Enterprise in the corrected timeline. On Pike's "first pass" thru the alt-timeline he wasn't aware of Kirk as an option for the Enterprise.

This episode showed what happens if Pike does NOT accept the Fleet Captain promotion. He's never there (and in fact someone says there was no explosion in this time line). He keeps the Enterprise, so that when Kirk is up for a Captaincy, the Enterprise in not available, it has a captain. Kirk gets (or keeps) the Farragut. In the real timeline, Pike accepts the promotion, Kirk gets the Enterprise and some time after, Pike is in the injured in the explosion.
 
Great episode. My first 10 score of the season.

But one thing that bugged me was that Kirk didn't become the Captain of Enterprise because of Pike's accident. Kirk didn't even know about Pike's accident until Menagerie. So the alternate timeline doesn't quite make sense (Kirk should still be the Enterprise Captain during this event even if Pike escapes his fate). Is this a screwup by the writers or is there a good explanation for this? And to be honest I didn't think of this until after the episode was over. While watching it everything made sense.
That jumped out at me immediately. Kirk met Pike when Pike was promoted to fleet Captain (and presumably when Kirk accepted command at the same time?).

Season summary for me: Overall, I'm disappointed in how the new characters have been handled. I know more about Kirk, Uhura, M'Benga, Chapel and Spock than I ever did before. The problem is that I didn't tune into this show for them. I already had a fantastic show about them. I wanted to learn more about...

Pike: okay they did a great job fleshing him out. Solid win. I just feel he was stuck with a chilling plot device from Discovery that the character didn't need in the long term (seeing his fate).
Number One: I wasn't pleased with that they gave me, especially since I'm not sure it was part of the original plan. And I hated the change in her eyebrows to make her "alien."
La'an: other than "the Gorn slaughtered your family" we know almost nothing, and so far there's zero relevance to her being a descendant of Khan's family. Other than pushing the "Khan button" as this franchise likes to do, at present she could be La'an Magillacuddy for all it matters.
Ortegas: man what a waste of a charismatic actress. She's great to watch (she's so f'n cute and fun) but so far she's the wiseass comedy relief or the buddy to prop up Uhura.
Hemmer: best new character in the series. Alas...

I also wanted to learn about Jose Tyler, Phillip Boyce and Yeoman Colt. Again, alas...

However, that's fine, crew come and go. What I felt was more important was a chance for more original stories and new species. They started off strong, but then it went south. I didn't need reconfigured Gorn into Xenomorphs, rewrites of far superior classic episodes, the doctor's daughters storybook fantasy, and endless episodes of The Spock Family bickering. The fan service is strong and maybe a lot of people want to see that (everyone loves callbacks, amirite?). I get that even classic Trek adapted prior stories, movies and stuff or based aliens on Earth societies to make a point, but I have a problem when Trek goes back and rips itself off or reimagines an iconic (if cheesy) species into another species easily recognizable from another (hopefully) ongoing sci-fi franchise and calls it an homage. It shows lack of creative originality. And just because "that show did it" doesn't make it amazing. It's lazy. It's "wouldn't it be cool if..." Fine, the original series did "The Enemy Below" and "Moby Dick" but those were one-off adventures, not making Klingons like "War of the Worlds" Martians or Romulans like Dr. Zaius. The Gorn will be an ongoing threat that will now always be an an Alien/Predator hybrid ripoff. And yet, the excuses for it come like a tide... Have at it, but I find it annoying.

I may come back for season 2. Maybe they'll embrace more originality. Maybe they will do something about Ethan Peck to make him less robotic (anyone thinking he "nails" Spock must be seeing Spock for the first time because he's way off). Maybe Pike will be a little less "hot fun dad." One great thing about the finale was the "stand down!" moment. Finally, the familiarity bit him on the ass.

This series has a LOT of potential. They have an amazing cast, fine directors and some talented writers. But I never felt Alex Kurtzman or Akiva Goldsman were particularly good at creating solid genre entertainment on their own. I still think this is the best of the Kurtzman Era Treks but that is truly damning with faint praise.

(NOTE: I expect very few people here to agree with any of the above).
 
Now on to a period of what 6 months with no live action Trek after having back to back to back and overlapping series
doesn’t lower deck season 3 come out in a month or so and The second half of prodigy season 1 sometime before the end of the year?

And there is still the Orville tin the meantime! ;)
 
the "Kirk didn't become captain because of Pike's accident" is easy enough. So Pike stayed on the Enterprise as a way to avoid his fate. Or maybe he was so overjoyed at avoiding his fate, he decided to stay.
 
Admittedly, I'm not a writer, but I have no idea how it's become so fucking hard to write some good Star Trek and the only thing anyone can apparently think of is stripping old Star Trek for parts.

Maybe, just maybe, other people don't view it as "stripping old Star Trek for parts." Other people enjoy the current direction of Trek. If you don't ... that doesn't mean they're ~stripping old Star Trek for parts.~

There are five different Trek shows on right now. If you can't enjoy any of them, whatever old has-been Trek that you do enjoy is available. But if you can't enjoy anything out of five shows, the problem isn't with the showrunners.
 
I liked this episode far better than the previous two episodes. My memory of the TOS episode is vague. Some people wonder what Trek newbies who don't know the backstory would make of it, and I think they'll be fine.

My nitpicks are:
- the Kirk actor didn't work for me, at all. In any other role, he'd be fine, and the writing was good, but... just no.
- I hated how they made Ortegas so ooc (and also kinda dumb)
- I'm tired of the chosen one/ unescapable fate tropes. Yes, I know it's been widely used in Trek. No, that ndoesn't make me like it any better

Alll in all a good episode, 8/ 10.

Contrary to almost everyone else, my enthusiasm for SNW is waning a bit, and I'm not exactly sure why. I can point to a few things:

While I can't say that are I can't say they're badly written or acted, the emotional beats often don't hit me as they should. Like Hemmer's death, for example. Even though I didn't want to lose him, it somehow left me cold. I recently watched a review of episode 9, and some of those dudes has a similar reaction. He doesn't quite know why, either.
That said, it's not always the case. This time, the Pike/ Spock exchange (You're important to me, too) definitely got me.Very nicely done.

I also find that I'd like to see the new characters explored more. (I'd include those original TOS characters that we know little about ffrom the previous shows and films: Pike, Una, Uhura, M'Bengue). Instead, the focus seems to shift more and more to Pike/ Spock (+maybe Kirk). The latter being the most explored character(s) of Trek already. Also, I get that a male duo/ trio as the center of the show is very canon/ TOS, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in seeing it... again. I don't like if the rest of the cast is reduced to almost guest characters (not in the credits obviously) and, if female, mostly featured as current/ potential love interests (one-sided or not).

Some of all this may be the curse of the prequel, of course. Still.

It's sad because I agree it's the best written live action Trek show. I'll see how I like the first episodes of season 2, I guess.
 
And you still got it wrong, it's March 23rd, not 24th. :)
Heh ... Try again ....

March 22nd, 2233.

JTPTN9g.png


Thank you for playing, but you DON'T get the (Enter) prize.

:nyah:
 
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Maybe he is in command of the Grissom?
Probably a sweet assignment until the 80s
Una jailed for years and even prevented from keeping contact with her friends ?
Thats solitary confinement and one of the inhumane treatments / torture you can do to social beings !

I dont like that writing. The Federation schould not act like this !
Do we know why no one gets to see her? Could be Una herself refuses visitors.
That jumped out at me immediately. Kirk met Pike when Pike was promoted to fleet Captain (and presumably when Kirk accepted command at the same time?).
If Pike is never promoted or never accepts the promotion, why would he meet Kirk in 2264 or when ever the transfer of command took place?
 
Do we know why no one gets to see her? Could be Una herself refuses visitors.

I'd presume it's a "special treatment" they give "Augments." But even how Burnham's prison experience looked in Ep2 of DSC looked out of place/tone for this future Earth/The Federation. You'd think for even theist severe cases even in the case of crimes in Starfleet imprisonment would be very sociable, livable and not something with aspects of cruelty.
 
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