Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x01 - "The Broken Circle"

[Citiprime]

I honestly don't give one whit whether the characterization of any of the folks we see in TOS are consistent with that portrayal. The series is now close to 60 years old; I expect a more modern spin on the characters. I do want the characters to be consistent within the show though, which is why this episode was in part a failure for me. The whole M'Benga/Chapel fight sequence with the Klingons was not only nonsensical, it was in no way rooted in what has been established regarding their characters.

But this goes back to my problem with using the Gorn in season 1. If you don't want to be consistent, there's no reason you had to use these characters and story elements.

Create new ones! They've already created a Khan descendant for this. Why would it be so hard to give M'Benga a nurse we've never heard about?

There's no reason this had to be Chapel. It could have been some other nurse that you give these attributes to and establish a relationship with Spock pre-TOS, just like you could have created a new alien species to be Xenomorph/Predator lizard hybrids instead of putting all that stuff on the Gorn.

 

[El Maestro]

One random thing:

Starbase 1 orbits Jupiter….I wonder when/why it moved because it most likely wasn’t there when a giant Borg unicomplex showed up 150 years or whatever later.

It’s a cool base…the domes are neat!

 

[KirkusOveractus]

To be fair to that reviewer, in the same episode Pike is going to fly to a far sector in a shuttlecraft. It's true that he says it'll take three days...



They're military as fuck in the 23rd century, whatever the hell they claim.

Yeah, you have a point. The shuttles probably can travel as far as the script wants them to go! In "The Menagerie", the Starbase's shuttle was running out of power chasing Enterprise and was passing point of no return.

 

[Captain Jollydark]

The bad element of the conspiracy was the motivation of those still onboard the ship made no sense. They were on a suicide mission; the Bird of Prey would have blown them up. That doesn't comport well with hyper-capitalists who are just in it to make profit. You need ideological or religious fanatics for that, and we aren't shown that here.

But even the regular Joe Klingons are all die-in-battle wannabes aren't they? It's cultural. And maybe they had no intention of being caught? Or maybe those on board had been tricked into believing they wouldn't be the first to be sacrificed if something went wrong. Or maybe, they were going to launch and fake attack remotely but M'Benga and Chapel's interference upped the stakes and messed with the timing. I can supply lots of plausible reasons it works. That didn't seem an issue to me. Greedy people can always find other greedy people to do the dirty work.

 

[Yistaan]

Other than starting with M'Benga's supersoldier juice (which arguably is somewhat rooted in medicine) nothing we see about their combat seems rooted in any way in the characters being medical professionals, which is what I have a big issue with. It's okay to have a doctor who throws a punch, but like...have them understand anatomy very well given medical training; actually show off medical skill or something.

I'm not sure what you want. I mean, at the end of the day a doctor in a combat situation is going to do what anyone else does to get out alive. They're not going to go out of their way to show off medical knowledge or do things in a "medical" way when their life is in immediate danger and anything else beyond getting to safety is irrelevant.

There's just no time for someone to say "OK, if I punch them in this artery or attack this limb this would disable the attacker instead of killing them" or whatever.

 

[fireproof78]

One random thing:

Starbase 1 orbits Jupiter….I wonder when/why it moved because it most likely wasn’t there when a giant Borg unicomplex showed up 150 years or whatever later.

It’s a cool base…the domes are neat!

After the Organian Peace Treaty.

 

[Oso Blanco]

I think M'Benga is an excellent character and well portrayed by Olusanmokun. If they get a "Dr. M'Benga: M.D." spin off I would be quite happy.

I absolutely agree, he is one of my favorites in SNW ... although it's hard to believe he's supposed to be the same character as the M'Benga in TOS.

 

[Jedman67]

Ok, I watched it last night...
First complaint: Commander Pelia dressing down the crew for being novices at stealing a ship from under Starfleet's nose...wait, no that was actually awesome.
Second Complaint: The crew mingling on the klingon planet sticks out like - wait no, they were in disguise.
Third Complaint: M'Benga and Chapel kicking ass and taking names....wait no, that was great.
Fourth Complaint: Babs speaks so softly that sometimes I need to turn on CC to know what he said. They gotta crank up his dialog in ADR. That's my nitpick.

Fucking loved it, 10/10

 

[Jedi Marso]

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2013/space-human-body/

many fallacies about space have emerged. Outer space is often depicted in film as a cold, inhospitable place, where exposure to the perpetual vacuum will make your blood boil and your body burst; alternatively, if neither of those things happen, you’re bound to instantly freeze into a human-popsicle. Meanwhile, many of these same films conveniently ignore the slightly more subtle, yet highly relevant hazards of prolonged spaceflight even in an enclosed vessel at normal atmospheric pressure.

One common misconception is that outer space is cold, but in truth, space itself has no temperature. In thermodynamic terms, temperature is a function of heat energy in a given amount of matter, and space by definition has no mass. Furthermore, heat transfer cannot occur the same way in space, since two of the three methods of heat transfer (conduction and convection) cannot occur without matter.

What does this mean for a person in space without a spacesuit? Because thermal radiation (the heat of the stove that you can feel from a distance, or from the Sun’s rays) becomes the predominant process for heat transfer, one might feel slightly warm if directly exposed to the Sun’s radiation, or slightly cool if shaded from sunlight, where the person’s own body will radiate away heat. Even if you were dropped off in deep space where a thermometer might read 2.7 Kelvin (-455°F, the temperature of the “cosmic microwave background” leftover from the Big Bang that permeates the Universe), you would not instantly freeze because heat transfer cannot occur as rapidly by radiation alone.

The absence of normal atmospheric pressure (the air pressure found at Earth’s surface) is probably of greater concern than temperature to an individual exposed to the vacuum of space [1]. Upon sudden decompression in vacuum, expansion of air in a person’s lungs is likely to cause lung rupture and death unless that air is immediately exhaled. Decompression can also lead to a possibly fatal condition called ebullism, where reduced pressure of the environment lowers the boiling temperature of body fluids and initiates transition of liquid water in the bloodstream and soft tissues into water vapor [2]. At minimum, ebullism will cause tissue swelling and bruising due to the formation of water vapor under the skin; at worst, it can give rise to an embolism, or blood vessel blockage due to gas bubbles in the bloodstream.

Our dependence on a continuous supply of oxygen is the more limiting factor to the amount of time a human could survive in a full vacuum. Contrary to how the lungs are supposed to function at atmospheric pressure, oxygen diffuses out of the bloodstream when the lungs are exposed to a vacuum. This leads to a condition called hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation. Within 15 seconds, deoxygenated blood begins to be delivered to the brain, whereupon unconsciousness results

Good piece. I think the second to last paragraph is the one that would cause the most problems, and I also think that there is a good chance that someone explosively decompressed and exposed to vacuum for several seconds would suffer permanent blindness as a result, although maybe not with Trek-levels of medicine. In any case, the hard part for me is not the notion that it could be survived with rapid transport, but that the victim would be up, walking around, and behaving normally minutes later. This would be a lift-threatening, critical-care requiring event that would likely result in the victim spending a week or more in sickbay.

 

[Jedi Marso]

I think that was the point. There is more to M'Benga and Chapel and their shared history than previously suspected. My guess is they were involved with some borderline ethical bio-research. Perhaps to make humans and other Federation combatants equal to Klingons.

If so, then they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and why isn't their Popeye-juice standard issue throughout the fleet? Didn't seem to have any ill effect on them, and they wiped up an entire ship full of Klingons.

 

[fireproof78]

I absolutely agree, he is one of my favorites in SNW ... although it's hard to believe he's supposed to be the same character as the M'Benga in TOS.

That is a common comment but one I don't share.

If so, then they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and why isn't their Popeye-juice standard issue throughout the fleet? Didn't seem to have any ill effect on them, and they wiped up an entire ship full of Klingons.

It has to be reviewed by top men.

 

[Jedman67]

To be fair to that reviewer, in the same episode Pike is going to fly to a far sector in a shuttlecraft. It's true that he says it'll take three days...

That's what the shuttles were designed for (and already established in DSC): Short and Long range transport for a small number of personnel.
He could also be taking commercial transport, I don't recall if he specified.

I'm glad they showed Klingons who acted differently. The idea that the entire galactic empire is made up of space vikings is utterly stupid.
The fight scene was a bit over the top though.

I agree. And I loved every minute of it.

One random thing:

Starbase 1 orbits Jupiter….I wonder when/why it moved because it most likely wasn’t there when a giant Borg unicomplex showed up 150 years or whatever later.

It’s a cool base…the domes are neat!

Voyager establishes the existence of a Jupiter Station. I headcannon that they outgrew the facilities and built a new Starbase further out, and this station was refurbished into Jupiter Station.

 

[El Maestro]

If so, then they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and why isn't their Popeye-juice standard issue throughout the fleet? Didn't seem to have any ill effect on them, and they wiped up an entire ship full of Klingons.

Haha!! I LOL’d at Popeye Juice

 

[Jedi Marso]

We get a casualty/fatality number for the Federation-Klingon War of 100 million, which would put it around twice the amount of dead for World War II, which given the interstellar nature of the conflict is arguably not that bad in the bigger scheme when each sides starships arguably have the ability to glass a planet with anti-matter based weapons.

I thought it was a fair number. Interstellar war between peer enemies like the UFP and Klingon Empire would be absolutely devastating to anyone caught in the path of it. In Obsession, Kirk used a magnetic bottle and a few grams of antimatter to blow off half a planet's atmosphere and probably render an entire hemisphere devoid of life. A single warship in Trek is the equivalent of a soft Death Star in SW- capable of glassing the surface of entire worlds. A war under these conditions is gonna leave a mark- the only thing keeping the casualty numbers down would be the low population density on the frontier worlds of both sides where most of the fighting took place.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Haha!! I LOL’d at Popeye Juice

Someone else coined that earlier in the thread, but I thieved it like a villain!

 

[Jedi Marso]

I think Flint, from TOS, is one of her people. Even if he didn't ever realize there were others like him.

I don't like this idea. Flint and his nature was a surprise to Spock in TOS- something he had to ferret out like a detective. I also thought Flint was an incredibly tragic and romantic character- human, but with a mysterious mutation that gave him a form of immortality. His world-weariness and soul-killing loneliness just struck a chord with me, even as a kid watching re-runs. He had shades of the Wandering Jew, and in my mind his character should always remain unique- one of a kind, never to be seen before or again.

 

[Yistaan]

The popeye juice still in their system probably helps to handwave the decompression etc. effects they should've suffered being in space as long as they did.

 

[Jedi Marso]

It has become so obnoxious that now there is talk about re-doing the ending of The Empire Strikes Back, so we, the audience, can know how Luke's lightsaber got into the possession of the alien lady in The Force Awakens and how his hand had a role in the plots of evil people in the Star Wars universe.

The easiest solution to this one is de-canonize the ST, destroy every copy in existence, and for Disney to sell SW back to GL. But that is a topic for another thread.

 

[Paul755]

Fun. Its for fun.

is it really fun though? It seems more like the writers trying to be cute and make it something that outside of Picard with “Engage” or “Make it So” was never really a thing.

 

[fireproof78]

The easiest solution to this one is de-canonize the ST, destroy every copy in existence, and for Disney to sell SW back to GL. But that is a topic for another thread.

Wow, rude.

Some of us like the ST. I will keep my copy.

And I doubt they will put Maz in to ESB since Kennedy has pretty much kept OT as Lucas had them when she took over.

is it really fun though? It seems more like the writers trying to be cute and make it something that outside of Picard was never really a thing.

Yes, it is for fun. Whether you find it fun doesn't make it's purpose less for fun.