Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x04 - "A Space Adventure Hour"

[DarKush]

Nimoy even states that Spock was very much a heart throb character for female fans from some of the fan mail he got. He found it unexpected and yet it persisted despite how he played Spock.

That's the real world, not the world of Star Trek. Spock had romantic entanglements here and there and even Dax was crushing on him, but his love life was not a driving aspect of his character. I wouldn't call Nimoy's Spock, within the world of Trek, a stud muffin.

Yes, the rationale will be how he was in "The Cage" and this is younger Spock, but SNW is getting pretty close to the Original Series now. And when the SNW creatives try to hang their depiction on "The Cage", its often funny to me because they can be cavalier about canon at other times.

 

[DaveyNY]

Wow ... Talk about being on the nose.

So many call backs to actual people involved with and Trek history itself in the real world, it's quite overwhelming at first.

I had to pause the episode and think about what it meant to my own personal history with the show.

I ended up giving it a 9, but I'm not sure at this point if the episode is eventually going to end up being one of my favorites or not.

A whole lot to digest.

Am I the only one who saw the holodeck characters as being representations of Roddenberry, Lucille Ball as well as Shatner?

They even gave the most important speech about what Star Trek represents to the character who portrays Nichelle Nichols.

 

[fireproof78]

That's the real world, not the world of Star Trek. Spock had romantic entanglements here and there and even Dax was crushing on him, but his love life was not a driving aspect of his character. I wouldn't call Nimoy's Spock, within the world of Trek, a stud muffin.

Yes, the rationale will be how he was in "The Cage" and this is younger Spock, but SNW is getting pretty close to the Original Series now. And when the SNW creatives try to hang their depiction on "The Cage", its often funny to me because they can be cavalier about canon at other times.

Canon should be cavalier at times. TOS often did so in some degree. But, real world will have an impact on these things and now Spock has had 4 love interests...oh my goodness! Stop the presses.

 

[Charles Phipps]

That's the real world, not the world of Star Trek. Spock had romantic entanglements here and there and even Dax was crushing on him, but his love life was not a driving aspect of his character. I wouldn't call Nimoy's Spock, within the world of Trek, a stud muffin.

Ehhhh....

On TOS there was:

* Cloud City Girl
* Chapel Lusting After him
* The Romulan Captain Honey Pot he performed
* The Cave Woman wanting him
* The Spore Girl
* T'Pring

Spock clearly didn't need to wait for mating season.

 

[DarKush]

Ehhhh....

On TOS there was:

* Cloud City Girl
* Chapel Lusting After him
* The Romulan Captain Honey Pot he performed
* The Cave Woman wanting him
* The Spore Girl
* T'Pring

Spock clearly didn't need to wait for mating season.

T'Pring pitted Spock against Kirk in a death match to be rid of him. That's not a great romance. It was SNW which added depth to their relationship and allows us to see it more in context.

 

[eschaton]

It was a paint-by-numbers holodeck malfunction episode ripped from TNG or VOY. They use the same grid for the holodeck as TNG. They even call it a holodeck. They also re-use the same plot point of asking the computer for a challenge like Data did in TNG's Elementary Dear Data. It all seemed very lazy creatively to me. They tried to explain the use of holodeck so early that it was experimental and Scotty says at the end that his report will not recommend the holodeck, to explain why we don't see the holodeck again until the TNG era. But I don't think that explanation works. If the tech was not ready then why would Starfleet resurrect the same tech, with the same grid pattern, same name, 75 years later? Tech improves over time. We would expect TNG to use an upgraded version of the holodeck we see in SNW. So I think it would have worked better if they had used a different name and also made the "holodeck" look more primitive, for ex: using blinking TOS style lights instead of a grid. Then, we could believe that the TNG holodeck is a future version of what we saw in SNW.

I think you miss the point here. The episode is meant to be a pastiche of several of the best holdeck outings (Bride of Chaotica, Elementary Dear Data, Our Man Bashir, arguably Picard's Dixon Hill adventures). Right down to the end, where Scotty suggests maybe they can just put the holodecks on a different power system (which they eventually did on Voyager to explain why the crew spent so much time using them).

It's not trying to be original - it's tropey, as the kids would say.

 

[DarKush]

Canon should be cavalier at times. TOS often did so in some degree. But, real world will have an impact on these things and now Spock has had 4 love interests...oh my goodness! Stop the presses.

Love interests are not the problem. Already said I was more okay with Spock-La'An and I also didn't mind the nuance given to Spock's relationship with T'Pring. I don't care for the Chapel-Spock relationship because it doesn't square with the Original Series. I do wish though they would find something more to do with Spock than hook ups and comedy episodes. I would even be fine with SNW putting Spock in the background and focusing on their original characters or the less developed characters.

 

[DaveyNY]

I think you miss the point here. The episode is meant to be a pastiche of several of the best holdeck outings (Bride of Chaotica, Elementary Dear Data, Our Man Bashir, arguably Picard's Dixon Hill adventures). Right down to the end, where Scotty suggests maybe they can just put the holodecks on a different power system (which they eventually did on Voyager to explain why the crew spent so much time using them).

It's not trying to be original - it's tropey, as the kids would say.

I think a lot of folks missed the point here.
Everyone seems to be focusing in on the tale itself and completely missing the deep but obvious thing that the show was actually representing ...

It's all about Star Trek the Television Show.

 

[Charles Phipps]

T'Pring pitted Spock against Kirk in a death match to be rid of him. That's not a great romance. It was SNW which added depth to their relationship and allows us to see it more in context.

Spock clearly did have an emotional attachment to her, though.

 

[aquova]

I understand why people didn't like it, but honestly I felt this was actually my favorite of the episodes so far this season. Having the holodeck at all I do think is a quite a large problem, and continues this show's weird disregard for canon, but once we move past that I thought it was fun. I think my issue with most of the wacky episodes of this show is that they actually happen to the characters. Spock turning into a human or Freaky Friday-ing with his fiance are events that I'm never really able to suspend my disbelief about. I was more at ease accepting the holodeck versions of characters rather than the mind wiped versions of them we got two episodes ago.

Seeing young Scotty as incredibly competent, but still having room to grow was a good choice, and feels like a natural evolution (or de-evolution) of his character. Paul Wesley's Shatner impression was quite amusing I'll admit. I've been pleased with his performance as Kirk in other episodes, so I'm happy to let him have a little fun with it. The intro for the fake-Trek show was actually pretty interesting, I could see why that would be annoying and pandering if it was the whole episode, but I'm surprised we didn't see more of it.

That being said, there's some big downsides. The holodeck's existence just shines another light on the fact that making a pre-TOS show is more of a mess than it's worth. The fact that it looked exactly like TNG's holodeck almost makes it worse. While I did like the concept of the show, I'll admit I couldn't follow the murder mystery at all. There were too many players, too many plots, and I really couldn't understand who was who. I pegged Spock as being a hologram immediately, so while I wasn't surprised at that reveal, I was surprised that he was the killer, which feels like would be a really terrible conclusion if I was actually in La'an's position, trying to solve a mystery. Finally, I really hate this La'an x Spock relationship. I think the Chapel x Spock one had way, way outstayed its welcome, and to immediately put him into another is frankly exhausting. Given how the others have gone, I seriously doubt this relationship will be meaningful or worthwhile, and I expect it to fizzle out unceremoneously in a few episodes. La'an already had this unrequited love with alt!Kirk, which I thought was a much more interesting concept, although I'm fine that's over too. Get Spock back into an awkward relationship with T'Pring if you must, but I'm really not looking forward to this.

 

[DaveyNY]

It seems to me that folks are so focused on the trappings of the episode, that they are missing the actual meaning it all represents.

I guess it's only meaningful to those of us that have been there from the beginning.

 

[Sakonna]

I liked it all right, though I was definitely expecting more from the buildup they gave this.

As usual with SNW, the production work couldn't be better, and the cast nails it. The flaws here lay in the script.

I didn't love the way it was structured. They didn't have enough space to fully do the murder mystery AND the 60's Trek homage. Rather than enhancing each other, the two story elements seemed to get in each other's way. The unfolding of the mystery was quite awkward, and didn't have any of the thrilling reveals you expect from this genre, because the murder beats kept having to make space for specific bits of Trek parody, or long speeches about the greatness of the show we're watching. It is hard enough to plot an engaging mystery without having to shove in so many discordant elements, and these writers weren't ultimately up to the task. They bit off more than they could chew. I liked both concepts, but by forcing them together, consequently neither one fully took off.

But, I liked it all right. The Spock/La'an development saves it from properly failing, and makes it an OK mid-tier episode. The only moment I truly HHHAAAAAAAAAAAATED was Uhura's speech about the greatness of Star Trek, which is just beyond self-indulgent to actually put in the show (at least at that length! a line or two maybe).

 

[IMC Headquarters]

They need to check the grav-plating on the Enterprise--these rebounds are unpredictable! Sp'an. Spawn? Um...

Scotty as the shy runner on the set. Dying.

 

[Quinton]

It seems to me that folks are so focused on the trappings of the episode, that they are missing the actual meaning it all represents.

I guess it's only meaningful to those of us that have been there from the beginning.

I dunno, it was meaningful as heck to me despite the fact that I didn’t hop into the fandom in a real way until the end of the nineties. I love what they were going for, here. I really do. I just don’t think it worked.

 

[Okmyx]

3.
Some interesting backstory stuff, the acting was fantastic, but I'm getting tired of the approach: let's make a musical, let's make a crossover, let's make a fairy tale, let's make a puppet show, etc, and then cramming a story into that idea.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Is it me, or the amount of Smokers amongst the Fake Cast / Staff BtS of the Trek parody a bit under-represented for the 1960's.

I believe that Mid 1960's was the peak percentage of Smokers amongst the US Population at ~40%.

Many of the Trek cast IRL were smokers according to others posts about the subject.

 

[Yistaan]

So is Batel a full lizardwoman now? Because a massive plotpoint was that she had days at best to live unless she became a Gorn hybrid, and this week we're well into a full new mission with a neutron star, a massive holodeck has been set up for testing, etc. and Batel isn't even mentioned.

Also it seemed like Anson's character was supposed to be Gene Roddenberry but he looked way more like Isaac Asimov to me

 

[marillion]

What a fun episode. I give it an 8, as I do enjoy it when SNW dares to be different. A couple of things though. Paul Wesley's hair part kept switching sides, sometimes in the same scene. That kind of continuity issue always bugs me in movies and TV. Also, where was actual Spock during the crisis?

 

[Fateor]

They weren't paying any sort of homage to the original Star Trek series here or the 1960s.

If you know you know, if you don't know you don't know.

While not up to the level of murder, the Original Series production was rife with exactly the sort of pettiness, sexism, and infighting that we saw in this episode.

 

[fireproof78]

an 8, as I do enjoy it when SNW dares to be different. A couple of things though. Paul Wesley's hair part kept switching sides, sometimes in the same scene

A reference to plate flips?