Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x03 - "Shuttle to Kenfori"

[Greg Cox]

Mendez: You know Jim, having our fleet captain get stuck in a beeping wheelchair and his captain girlfriend get turned into a feral lizardwoman has not done wonders for Starfleet recruitment.

Jim: "Let's not talk about Gary Mitchell . . . "

 

[NCC-73515]

TOS and movie Klingons were brownface, not blackface. I don't think we saw a black Klingon until Worf.

And their beards were yellowface, apparently... the ENT augments were fine.

We already had at least one true, reanimated corpse in Sub Rosa, with Crusher's nana.

Honestly, given all the goofy-ass shit in Star Trek, literal walking corpses isn't that strange. Though if you want to be pendantic, these aren't literal walking corpses, they're transgenic organisms where Klingon/Human DNA was mixed with moss and some other shit. They just don't show up as lifeforms on scan because scan is supposed to detect "animal life" and they're now partially plants.

There also was the revived remote controlled Vorta guy in DS9, and the whole crew was "zombified" in the LDS first ep, so the broad concept wasn't entirely new to the universe.

 

[Pauln6]

So let's see what they've done to our legacy characters so far this last season.

M'benga murdered a Klingon ambassador in cold blood.
Nurse Chaple lied to cover it up so is an accessory to murder.
Captain Pike after finding out his doctor and friend murdered someone on cold blood on his ship let's it slide and doesn't report it. This may make pike an accessory to murder as well.

Sigh.

I think this is a worrying sign of a shift in the psyche of the USA more towards a mainstream right wing mentality (not politically but more generally).

For example, in the Star Trek movie, it was acceptable to everyone on board that Kirk should spend time and resources murdering the crew of a crippled ship instead of just arresting them (he doesn't need their permission to arrest them).

Then we have, in Section 31, a scene where a captive asks the characters to get on and torture him and everyone just accepts that as a normal state of affairs despite the existence of truth drugs, psycho-tricorders, mind sifters, telepaths, and empaths. The writers felt justfied in normalising the expectation of the use of torture by Federation agents.

Then there is the jaded, post peak Federation in Picard.

While I applaud the depictions of PTSD and the moral quandaries of the characters in SNW, it does feel like the right thing would be for M'Benga to hand himself in by the end of the series.

You look at the way the characters are relishing killing Gorn, which is reminiscent of Stiles in Blance of Terror. It's hard to see how these same characters could impress the Metrons in Arena, although I suppose it only has to be Kirk who rises above it all at the last moment. Perhaps it's about the journey towards doing the right thing and the journey isn't over.

 

[Noname Given]

Mendez: You know Jim, having our fleet captain get stuck in a beeping wheelchair and his captain girlfriend get turned into a feral lizardwoman has not done wonders for Starfleet recruitment.

Kirk: Soooo....That's why Starfleet erased all records of Gorn contact before the Cestus III incident, and ordered any officer with knowledge of previous events to feign ignorance...Much like that Spore Drive ship..."

Menedez: "Spore Dri...Dammit Jim, who have you been talking to lately?"

 

[Fateor]

Then we have, in Section 31, a scene where a captive asks the characters to get on and torture him and everyone just accepts that as a normal state of affairs despite the existence of truth drugs, psycho-tricorders, mind sifters, telepaths, and empaths. The writers felt justfied in normalising the expectation of the use of torture by Federation agents.

You really shouldn't consider anything in the Section 31 movie canon given how badly received it was by everybody.

 

[Ovation]

You really shouldn't consider anything in the Section 31 movie canon given how badly received it was by everybody.

On screen? Produced by the IP owners? Canon.

 

[MarcKle1964]

Ortegas isn’t over Macho Grande it seems.

No, she'll never ever get over over Macho Grande

 

[Artoo Atari]

One moment in the episode that surprised me was when the Klingon commander stepped on the "zombie's" head. I instantly remembered how aghast people in the 80s were when Remmick's head and torso exploded in TNG, and I wondered what they would think now seeing her foot swish through that zombie's head like a rotten pumpkin.

 

[Farscape One]

I watched this on Thursday night, but I am avoiding saying anything because I will be in the weekly Zoom Saturday chat discussing the episode. I want the various things I have to say to be a surprise. (Which is also why I have not voted on a score yet, though I wrote it down along with my notes that night.)

After I mention my thoughts in the chat, I'll post them here.

(I plan to do this with every new episode of SNW and ACADEMY that comes out.)

 

[Nerys Myk]

Hmm. Is it me or has SNW Klingons have been.. Meh. as in most of there appearances in SNW. Not there new appearance ( But gold.. really?)

Yes, gold

 

[Turtletrekker]

Huh, I missed that.

Uh-oh. Disco style and "traditional" Klingons coexisting? But Lower Decks said the Disco style are from an alternate reality!

GENE HAVE MERCY ON OUR SOULS!!!

Where was that?

At the 39:36 mark.

 

[Tuskin38]

At the 39:36 mark.

Canada’s copy might be a bit different, 39:36 is the Enterprise doing its warp jump

 

[Turtletrekker]

Canada’s copy might be a bit different, 39:36 is the Enterprise doing its warp jump

I see that at 39:41 so go back 5 seconds.

The scene is the three of them trapped inside the force field, and then Pike says "the force field is about to come down", the scene switches to the mechanism shorting out, and right after that you see two Klingons. The one in the foreground is standard and the one right behind him is Discovery style.

 

[Tosk]

Yes, gold

That's probably a one-off though.

I doubt there are any other examples of Klingons wearing gold, even if it's just the muted-but-still-goldish top they used to wear.
And even if there were, it's probably confined to TOS. Sashes and cloth, no armor.
No way it happened in Berman-era Trek.

 

[Tuskin38]

I think read somewhere that Worf's first baldric was the original from TOS.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I think read somewhere that Worf's first baldric was the original from TOS.

I heard it was from Black Adder

 

[Yistaan]

The more I think about it, the more M'Benga's killing of Rah and getting away with it is problematic. This also raises questions about Chapel. Even if M'Benga had killed Rah for "real" as he claims, he STILL could have made up for it by making a good faith attempt to save him in sickbay, which they were in, and likely it could've worked given that Klingons have tons of redundant organs and for example Kurn was saved by immediate transport to sickbay.

Meaning M'Benga's admission also strongly indicates he didn't actually try to save Rah and Chapel was complicit in this and her coverup testimony of him. This is a far bigger can of worms than I think this episode's writers realize. Certainly if Spock discovered Chapel's complicity in this murder, it would go a LONG way to explaining his coldness to her in TOS.

At least when Anakin Skywalker killed the Tuskens, the movies basically sledgehammered to the audiences that this was a VERY bad thing despite Padme doing the same thing Pike's doing here. Yet we're not getting that moral message here in regards to M'Benga, in a Star Trek episode, other than a slap on the wrist for him and that's extremely disturbing.

 

[fireproof78]

Does the audience need hand holding?

 

[Yistaan]

Does the audience need hand holding?

If you can't find right is right and wrong is wrong in Star Trek, then where else in our media landscape are you going to find it?

 

[fireproof78]

If you can't find right is right and wrong is wrong in Star Trek, then where else in our media landscape are you going to find it?

I don't go to media for right and wrong.