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This was a really fun romp. I think they are being very clever in the development of the Spock/Chapel romance. It plays perfectly into the scene in the Naked Time.
I really liked Chapel being a ninja with a hypospray in season one but I was not a fan of her being a competent combatant this time. She's a civilian scientist. I don't think you have to make classic female characters gung ho when modernising them. Let her be a scientist who needs defending in a crisis.
I did think Peck was totally channelling Nimoy with his highly strategic smiles.
I really don't think M'Benga can be the same character as TOS though, surely? He worked on a Vulcan ward, he didn't serve with Spock for years. He was also much younger - I would have thought a brother, son, or nephew was more likely.
The other characters have a lot of affable charm. Carol Kane is a delight, although I'm not familiar with her species. Surely Flint's age would have been less shocking if there are other comparable species knocking around.
I would prefer that too, but again if they did completely original characters there would be calls for "Where's *fill in the blank*?" Why didn't they bring back so and so. Or, this doctor could have been Boyce, or Piper or M'Benga so why not cast them?
It's an untenable position. For me, while I would prefer less connective TOS tissue, I also realize that a prequel can give us a different perspective on what we thought it was always like.
After the planet wide jizzing fest that took place after the extremely flimzy reintroduction of the Enterprise D I have lost all hope of non-connected Trek.
After the planet wide jizzing fest that took place after the extremely flimzy reintroduction of the Enterprise D I have lost all hope of non-connected Trek.
Same here and it's disappointing to me for sure. It's clearly the biggest thing that gets many Trek fans excited is these interconnections. Which is fine but please don't tell me that Trek is about exploring strange or new. Don't tell me it's about expanding ideas or concepts. What it is is utilizing familiarity, safety and connections to past events to make it feel good. It's the decadent dessert of the scifi world.
I really don't think M'Benga can be the same character as TOS though, surely? He worked on a Vulcan ward, he didn't serve with Spock for years. He was also much younger - I would have thought a brother, son, or nephew was more likely.
I believe M'Benga's Vulcan residency is now clarified to predate both SNW and TOS. There is also no dialogue ruling out that M'Benga served with Spock or Chapel before in TOS.
I agree the age thing is jarring but Trek has cast characters who look younger than they are. For example Bruce Maddox in Picard has to be at least 83 (and even that's assuming he was a 25 year old prodigy like Kelvin timeline James Kirk when he had power over Data's Starfleet Academy application), yet was played by 50 something John Ales.
And they've age casted in the other direction too--Zefram Cochrane is canonically 31 in First Contact.
A 10 - (I may stop rating only because if they keep this up, it'll get monotonous.)
I LOVE this new season already. THIS is how to do STAR TREK. What they did here BLOWS PICARD S3 out of the water. They had a single story that made sense, used elements from this specific Trek era - the mid 23rd century - beautifully. This is how to mix nostalgic elements while introducing totally new and unknown elements (both WRT Federation politics and stuff we never knew about legacy characters until now, while still remaining true to the core of these legacy characters; all the while still introducing new and interesting characters.
LOVED:
- The recaps. Quick and curt catch up from S1 that tells a viewer everything they need to know going into this episode.
- That they picked up right where they left off and continued with their various character arcs without missing a beat.
- That they FINALLY acknowledge ONCE AND FOR ALL the Federation does have and makes full use of "Money" in the 23rd century and PROFIT is still a major driving force and consideration for Humans (including Starfleet officers.) <--- Which comes directly from various episodes of TOS as well, even though in the Berman era they heavily attempted to try and recon this fact.
- Spock 'stealing the Enterprise' for the first time;
and as we all know it won't be the last - and hell the story in this episode even ties into the 'future' TOS STVI: The Undiscovered Country feature film in a way
and getting away with it.
- The manner in which they introduced Carol Kane's new character. (And it's an interesting character too. Can't wait to learn more about her.)
-La'an drinking a Klingon under the table. (Also liked that they didn't drag out the 'Returning the lost child to her parents. Yes, it took months, but a great way to use the interviening period between S1 and S2 from the audience perspective.)
- The soldier backstories of M'Benga and Chapel - and showing that yes, the war itself was significant to the era, and there were personal consequences. Also really enjoyed the 'Human Augment to be able to fight Klingons' in that it must be some sort of temporary gene therapy (similar to what they did in the first episode of SNW S1); and that YES, it's probably VERY frowned upon by Starfleet Command, but they probably 'looked the other way' during the war and they needed it to be able to fight Klingons during the war. And again, it's VERY 'TOS' in that TOS stories had no issues showing that the Federation and Starfleet were often both practical and hypocritical; and not always a 'Paragon of Virtue'. (And the upper Brass of Starfleet Command had no issues with it.)
- That we saw various types of Klingons (good and bad, honorable and dishonorable, heroic and cowardly); and they weren't just all one note personalities ready to kill themselves at the drop of a hat. I very much liked the exchanges between the D7 Captain and Spock at the end of the episode. (I do wish they threw us old TOS fans a bone and had a 'smooth headed Klingon' somewhere, but yeah, probably not going to happen - and that's okay.)
- Starship porn. I liked the cobbled together Crossfield Class ship. (And yes, the visual continuity of the Blue Bolt type Ship Phasers it was armed with. I honestly wish they had kept the 1701's Ship's Phasers blue for this show; but yeah that ship has sailed too. In the original non-remastered version of TOS S1 The Corbomite Maneuver - which was actually the first regular episode filmed after the two Pilot episodes, the 1701's Ship's Phasers were red colored, so yeah, there's canon to support their color choice for this era of the 1701's existence. )
Overall the story was interesting and exciting; and I loved it wasn't predictable overall. (Which is something the Berman Era Trek writers VERY RARELY were able to do. And yes, I'm harping on that a bit because this type ofm story was what many a TOS fan hoped that TNG would be/have done in 1987 when it started.)
I think what they did here is the best way to handle serialization in the Star Trek Franchise. Serialized character arcs and hints of a possible major season story thread (Fed/Gorn War that the top brass is hoping will not happen and are doing all they can to both be ready, but still try to prevent it); but keep the adventures self contained with some thread connectivity IF/WHEN it makes sense for the individual episode.
Everyone's saying they didn't need to make these guys into Chapel and M'Benga and Uhura, etc. and you know what? I'll go contrary and say they didn't go far enough!
The Klingon captain that Spock celebrates with at the end should've been young Gorkon! The Klingon that M'Benga interrogates should've been young Kruge!
It worked for Macross. The movie following the original series was called "Do You Remember Love?" and was a re-telling of the series with alterations and changes to some of what happened in the original series.
When the first full-length sequel series set in the Macross universe happened (Macross 7) it was stated that the DYRL movie was actually an in-universe movie retelling of the events of the original series.
Like others have said I'm kind of curious the need for creating a new race for Pellia when a long-lived race looking entirely like humans and having spent time among humans on the Earth already existed in Star Trek canon (The El-Aurians)
To me, the differences between how M'Benga and Chapel are depicted in SNW and TOS comes down to the different focus of the shows. SNW is more of an ensemble show and TOS isn't. TOS concentrates mainly on Kirk, Spock, and McCoy so the spotlight rarely leaves those three.
Chapel was an awful character on TOS, so I don't mind the re-imagining here. Honestly near everything TOS did with women looks pretty dreadful in retrospect.
I do think that the episode would have been a lot better if M'Benga and Chapel had to somehow defeat the Klingons with medical knowledge, not hand-to-hand combat though. The lack of rootedness in the characters is what made the "action" parts of the episode kinda suck. It could have been anyone throwing those punches.
Chapel was an awful character on TOS, so I don't mind the re-imagining here. Honestly near everything TOS did with women looks pretty dreadful in retrospect.
I do think that the episode would have been a lot better if M'Benga and Chapel had to somehow defeat the Klingons with medical knowledge, not hand-to-hand combat though. The lack of rootedness in the characters is what made the "action" parts of the episode kinda suck. It could have been anyone throwing those punches.
This is a really, really minor nitpick, but I disliked how this episode fell into the old trope of freezing in space. You wouldn't freeze in space very rapidly, even if it was cold out. You'd be dead of lack of oxygen long before that. The problem is basically space can be cold, but it's also a near vacuum and the internal heat from your body would have a hard time radiating out into it. Hence a much bigger issue in spaceflight is actually finding a way to dump excess heat; to stop from overheating.
For the most part, exposure to vacuum isn't any worse than holding your breath for a few minutes. It could cause severe lung damage if you don't empty your lungs before depressurization, and your eyes could get fucked up, but besides that, it's just the whole not being able to breathe thing.
This is a really, really minor nitpick, but I disliked how this episode fell into the old trope of freezing in space. You wouldn't freeze in space very rapidly, even if it was cold out. You'd be dead of lack of oxygen long before that. The problem is basically space can be cold, but it's also a near vacuum and the internal heat from your body would have a hard time radiating out into it. Hence a much bigger issue in spaceflight is actually finding a way to dump excess heat; to stop from overheating.
For the most part, exposure to vacuum isn't any worse than holding your breath for a few minutes. It could cause severe lung damage if you don't empty your lungs before depressurization, and your eyes could get fucked up, but besides that, it's just the whole not being able to breathe thing.
Also, they hid in a pretty hard radiated planetary debris ring with a starship going nuclear a few meters away. They should have been hard boiled instead.
Well, I think we've all learned something today. And I trust that the next available opportunity to space someone comes up you all will know the appropriate biological reaction to take in such a situation.
Well, I think we've all learned something today. And I trust that the next available opportunity to space someone comes up you all will know the appropriate biological reaction to take in such a situation.
Well, I think we've all learned something today. And I trust that the next available opportunity to space someone comes up you all will know the appropriate biological reaction to take in such a situation.
Whatever the fuck Chrstine and Joseph shot up on in order to beat the everloving shit out of dozens of Klingons bare handed should probably be Starfleet standard issue.
Also I would like the next Star Trek movie after Section 31 being about them in the Klingon war and it's basically the movie Crank.
Every episode shows something we didn’t previously know about TOS. That’s all. Every single example that people have pulled out of SNW, DSC or ENT as “doing violence to what’s established” — for many years now — has struck me as “What the hell do you mean there used to be an Ottoman Empire? I watched every single episode of Law & Order and nobody ever mentioned it; there’s no such thing!”
I love this. “What the hell do you mean there used to be an Ottoman Empire? I watched every single episode of Law & Order and nobody ever mentioned it; there’s no such thing!” 100% using this in the future, thanks.
In fairness, the idea that Spock could ever have risen to the rank of Lieutenant Commander and become executive officer of the Enterprisewithout having so much as commanded a landing party/boarding party before never made any sense.
Also, the new engineer (Pelia) feels like she walked off of another show and clashes in every scene she's in (feels like a "poochie"). I don't know who instructed her to use that raspy Eastern European voice, but it sounds appropriate to play Baba Yaga, and doesn't match with the pretty understated costuming of her character. The lines as read on the page, they're fine, I just think Kane's being directed horribly in regards to how to present her character.
Spock switching back and forth between emo/comic relief. I have never been a big fan of Ethan Peck's portrayal and once again he does nothing for me here. I just can't see how this guy grows into the Leonard Nimoy version. It's the only consistent thing about SNW I dislike.
You know, I have never quite been able to think of Ethan Peck's Spock as being the same character as Leonard Nimoy's. He seems somehow fundamentally less... well, less self-hating. Less damaged, less lonely. And just a tad too playful. But. I still really like his character, and I adore his scenes with Jess Bush's Christine. I just try to take Peck's performance for what it is and not worry about trying to fit it in too much with Nimoy's.
I was just gonna say.... Maybe I'm showing my ever growing personal bias, but I enjoyed this episode far more then any episode from Picard season 3.
It had action, emotion, humour, and Starship porn galore. It had everything I personally want from an episode of Star Trek. But, most importantly, it was fun!
Was it perfect? No. Few things are. But dammit, it was great.
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Lord Terry could stand to learn a thing or two from Strange New Worlds...
I think Strange New Worlds and Picard Season Three have different creative goals, and different creative styles. Both are appropriate for their respective goals and there's room enough in the Star Trek Universe for both creative voices.
Yep. I didn't used to like the DIS Klingons, but I've grown fond of them -- even as I acknowledge that ultimately, I prefer something more like the design we see in SNW S2.
One thing I did really appreciate about the SNW Klingons, though, is that they carried over an element from the DIS S1 Klingons -- the skulls of SNW Klingons are still extra-elongated in a way Berman-era and Bennett/Meyers-era Klingon skulls never were. So elements of Bryan Fuller's redesign are still being used.
There is one possible continuity issue here. The Vulcan harp is already in Spock's quarters when Michael visits the Enterprise in Season 2 of DSC and is also visible in SNW Season 1, though his quarters now look radically different on the inside.
Was it Spock's all along and he just used it as a wall decoration to display his Vulcan heritage and M'Benga retrieved it from Spock's quarters when he wasn't looking? He never plays it until now?
Simple fix: M'Benga asked Spock if he could borrow it the harp before, had meant to give it back to him already, and then just decided this was a good opportunity to suggest Spock play it to help regulate his emotions.
More likely she was just using parallel grammar alongside "Klingon soldiers" to refer to Starfleet officers. I mean, if someone says, "American ground forces," that doesn't mean they're talking about some other agency than the United States Army.
Can't believe I am writing this but I now wish new Trek was a reboot just for this Spock/Chapel ship to continue, Pike to be saved from that chair and Nurse Chapel to not revert back to that 1960's TOS stereotype. Or better yet not name the character Nurse Christine Chapel!
I'm about ready to say that TOS should just be treated as out of continuity with the rest of Star Trek and that only the broad strokes apply. Like this Spock/Christine thing is just too delicious to be confined by continuity.
- That they FINALLY acknowledge ONCE AND FOR ALL the Federation does have and makes full use of "Money" in the 23rd century and PROFIT is still a major driving force and consideration for Humans (including Starfleet officers.) <--- Which comes directly from various episodes of TOS as well, even though in the Berman era they heavily attempted to try and recon this fact.
I mean, I think DIS S1 already did this in the person of Harry Mudd. And also this dilithium mining colony seems not to be part of the Federation per se.
- That we saw various types of Klingons (good and bad, honorable and dishonorable, heroic and cowardly); and they weren't just all one note personalities ready to kill themselves at the drop of a hat.
- and hell the story in this episode even ties into the 'future' TOS STVI: The Undiscovered Country feature film in a way
(Also liked that they didn't drag out the 'Returning the lost child to her parents. Yes, it took months, but a great way to use the interviening period between S1 and S2 from the audience perspective.)
