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

[Captain Jollydark]

Have to say I never wanted to see Spock dancing. The flamenco dance in Plato's Stepchildren mortified me the first time I saw it at 13, and I cringed (like I was still 13) when La'an was teaching him in WBB. The tango in this episode was okay (forgiving camera angles and all), pretty sexy, but I like my Spock to be quietly sexy - self-possessed, not overt. Maybe he was? Eh.

But now that I've watched the episode again I'm not sure how I feel about how fast this maybe-romance between Spock and La'an is happening. I get that perhaps there has been more time passed then we are aware (and if so they should have indicated as much) but it feels like it's barely been a minute since Christine. And I felt it had barely been a minute between T'pring leaving and Christine entering. I'm uncomforatable with what this suggests about his character. I mean that in the ethical sense. Even if I think of him in human terms, like a 20 year old college student just experimenting, I'm not sure how I feel about Spock turning into the romantic lead or figurative pratfall guy.

I hope this is going somewhere evolutionary towards Spock becoming the man we know from TOS. I'm not as trusting as I was in season one, however.

I still love the fuck out of the show though.

 

[Greg Cox]

That’s so funny you say that.

The whole time I was thinking “TOS fans are going to hate this!”



I don’t know if that’s actually true or not, but it was definitely in my mind watching the episode…

I'm about as shameless a TOS partisan as there is, and I thought it was a lot of fun.

 

[GothicPudding]

Anyone else notice that scenes purportedly within the in-program The Last Frontier, had an aspect ratio of 16:9 (1.78:1), compared with the 2.39:1 of other scenes? I'm guessing they considered going all the way to 4:3 (1.33:1) to match TOS, but decided against it for some reason.

This is the opposite of what happened in Lower Deck's "Crisis Point", where the holodeck was at 2:39:1 and the regular aspect ratio of the show was 16:9.

I understand and I appreciate your response. Interesting way to look at it. Thinking about your specific example I would say that with “Our Man Bashir” I didn’t really feel that they did the spy movie genre all that bad. Plus, it was clever in the way they subverted some of those expectations that come with the genre (like Bashir in the end saving the day by actually destroying “the world”), whereas I didn’t detect much subversion of Murder Mystery tropes in “A Space Adventure Hour”. It just seemed to play them kinda straight.

Although I will admit that a lot of this in the end just comes down to how well each one of us individually think the humor works in any given episode. The Murder Mystery bits in “A Space Adventure Hour” largely felt devoid of any actually funny moments in my view. So I guess I would have just appreciated if at least the whodunnit itself would have been clever.

Different topic, but didn’t it feel kind of ironic also when Uhura-as-the-agent talked about how their Trek stand-in show used science-fiction trappings to cleverly tell stories full of meaning and topical commentary that it was said during an episode of Trek that didn’t really have much to say about anything really? At least the Holodeck story felt that way to me.

I started ignoring the Murder Mystery once I started realizing there was something wrong with Spock in the holodeck. I figured something was wrong when Spock declared that all the characters were working together and later when Scotty didn't mention not being able to reach Spock when he went to the bridge. Uhura's character's speech seemed a bit awkward when I was distracted and trying to figure out if Spock had been replaced before the holodeck program even started.

Perhaps if the Murder Mystery had been more compelling I wouldn't have noticed the issues with Spock.

So we're the bloopers actual bloopers, or were they staged to be presented as bloopers? I felt like they were planned, written and acted to appear as bloopers. So to me they were clever but not funny .

I assumed that they needed a extra couple minutes of content to show under the "real" title sequence, so they scripted some irrelevant holodeck "bloopers" for fun.

However, I will contribute a logical nitpick:

The holodeck was programmed with the biometric data of those crewmembers who have been through the transporter a lot.

One of them is a guy who doesn't even serve on the ship. He's been aboard all of three or four times over the course of a year.

The PADD that Scotty handed to La'an listed showed all the other series regulars plus Kirk, so presumably in-universe, Scotty figured that those were the best eight for the simulation. The dialogue only seemed to suggest that they needed the person to still be in the transporter pattern buffer. It's unclear why Kirk would still be in the buffer since we haven't seen him on the ship since "Subspace Rhapsody" several months prior, and they transported hundreds of others in "Hegemony, Part II".

 

[Therin of Andor]

Not to mention the necessity of having to locate an extremely rare species of space tardigrade which may actually already be extinct by the 24th century just to make it work.

Similarly, the "Equinox" crew had been harvesting bio-energy from nucleogenic creatures, slaughtering dozens of creatures just to enhance their warp drive, so they could traverse 10,000 light years in two weeks.

 

[Maurice]

She green lit the production. Herb Solow had a lot more to do with it. Lucy's involvement in Star Trek is greatly exaggerated.

Yes. Moreover, as she was the majority shareholder, if she voted for or against anything, that was the deciding vote.

Sulu: Appeared first as an Astrophysicist, then Botanist, then Helmsman and an experienced combat officer (per Spock) with an interest in Botany.

Sulu was never portrayed as a botanist, merely an enthusiast in one sequence in "The Man Trap," but he was on the bridge later and at the end (first at Uhura's station, then at his usual spot at the helm). He was the helmsman from the first regular production episode to go before the cameras.

It was very obviously a bottle episode to save money, something that shows are going back to doing because production budgets have bloated into insanity.

Bottle shows don't build as many sets as this episode appears to have and make as much new wardrobe as depicted. It might qualify as a bottle show if the sets used for the holodeck program were already standing sets from another production on the lot.

 

[Pauln6]

I just feel that La'an is a doomed character. She will either be forgotten by EVERYONE by some wierd twist or she'll be one of those "starfleet secrets" that is classified and no one ever talks about. So I guess they can have at it right now where she's concerned. She's played by a very charismatic actor, so I don't blame them.

She's going to change her name to Leila.

 

[NCC-73515]

The biofilters in "The Enemy Within" failed to prevent the Kirk transporter duplicate from being created, and that was in a story set five years AFTER this week's Strange New Worlds.

Wasn't that some yellow mineral dust? Need a GEO filter for that, not bio

But other than that I was baffled by some of the writing choices. Want to make a Murder Mystery? Fine, but then make it something clever and not this hodgepodge of stereotypes and trite dialog. There’s definitely a kernel of a cool idea there, but it didn’t come together at all and just kind of ended at some point. What exactly was it about that even more stoic and computer-like Spock that made La’an realize she’s got the hots for him? They really forgot to add some kind of scene that made that resolution make sense, I feel like. And am I the only one who immediately suspected that that wasn’t really Spock in the simulation?

Or was this supposed to be a comedy? Then I have to wonder — if I might be so blunt — why did they forget to add any fucking jokes? The idea of the Trek-stand-in in-universe sci-fi show is cool and all, but that opening scene went on for waaay too long and I kept wondering if it was supposed to be funny. The writers seem to think that all they need to do is create these kind of colorful, outlandish situations and then it just magically has to be funny. But unfortunately that didn’t work here at all, just as it didn’t with the whole Trelane nonsense. The writing just isn’t there.

Oh man, hopefully it’ll be back to form next week.

My thoughts exactly. The acting, VFX, designs, are all great, but the writing is so odd not even Frakes could save it.

Pike can't say "recreation?" It's a new word for him? "Reee-creation?"

The joke is the dual meaning (relaxation / duplication)

Only thing i would change about the holideck is why the TNG style grid lines.?

Seing how often computer software interface changes in today's age, not realistic that would look the same a hundred years later.

That was such a lack of even basic creativity. Just come up with something different, anything a little different, instead of copy-pasting stuff from 100 years ahead or 40 years before

Riker grew up in a log cabin in the middle of Alaska, right? What would he know of holodecks? He did his Academy training through mail order.

It is possible only the big long-duration explorers got them. The Equinox didn't have one, IIRC. What ships was Riker on before? Maybe they all didn't have one.
But in general I think of holo evolution like this: 23rd century holonovels are like Doom or Quake, while 24th century holonovels are like Doom 4 or Quake 4.
This one had only interiors, much like the first 3D FPS games only had walls and nothing else. When Riker saw the outdoor scenery with a reflecting watery lake and dense leaves and branches, his impression was like the one we had coming from vegetation and water in say, ST Generations (Bersus III) and then seeing FarCry for the first time. Anyone remember seeing the HL2 E3 presentation for the first time? That kind of reaction

 

[Mudd]

The last thing I want is to see Peck's Spock turn into Nomoy's. Peck's performance is vivid, surprising, and moving. The TOS version is played out.

 

[Qonundrum]

She's going to change her name to Leila.

Why? Is she ashamed of her current one?

 

[Qonundrum]

The last thing I want is to see Peck's Spock turn into Nomoy's. Peck's performance is vivid, surprising, and moving. The TOS version is played out.

There's only so much one can do with the Vulcan stoic trope, I agree. Plus, it's a prequel. Just line it up in the way we know it'll end up in the end and voila.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

But now that I've watched the episode again I'm not sure how I feel about how fast this maybe-romance between Spock and La'an is happening.

A hallmark of an inevitably doomed romance. They are both on the rebound and dont process these things very well.

 

[Tosk]

Is it still a rebound if you were never actually in a relationship to begin with?

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Does rebounding not simply refer to emotions than labels?

Spock was deeply in love with Chapel, La'an was deeply in love with the alt Kirk she shacked up with. Both got hurt because of it and are more in need of comfort than they would admit to.

My prediction is it will not last long and not develop much before they both realise this.

 

[Pauln6]

Why? Is she ashamed of her current one?

She has stated that she feels judged for her name, which is silly, since pretty much every Sikh man is called Singh.

Someone recently pointed out that Leila Kalomi met Spock in 2261, which is the current year of SNW.

 

[Quantum21]

This episode was in fact fun, it wasn't a landmark as expected, and I give a solid grade of 7. For me that's a good grade for an episode, but generally means it didn't reach the heights of that top 1/3rd tier.

The Trek franchise parody is bound to rankle a few feathers, though I think the majority of it was a parody of legends, rumors, and common misconceptions about the series, and deliberately so. I don't feel any intention to bite the hand that feeds, because as we know, the producers love the show.

The holodeck story itself as a murder mystery barely works. There's a few questions left as to when holo-Spock actually does the dirty. I love the genre so much though I'm willing to overlook the obvious nature, and cliché.

Where the episode does work is the actors. They're hamming it up but still in manner that's fitting for this episode. Chong again impresses most, she takes the lead and as with every episode so far, she demonstrates why she's the revelation of this series.

Despite the obvioussness of much of this there are some clever bits:

The holodeck prototype is directly linked to La'an, it can tell better than she does how she feels about the closeness she's feeling with Spock...not love I'd say, but certainly attraction. It uses it to its advantage. Her instructions to the computer were much like Data's in Elementary, Dear Data, and it runs with it.

The moment she touches the Spock construct clinches her suspicion this is not the real Spock, and is a wildcard in the program. Pretty good resolution to a standard mystery, I must say.

There is no real meaning for this, other than a character pivot for both La'an and Spock. It was much needed in Spock's case as I mentioned last week.

There are a few moments of 4th wall surrealism. I think the idea was to convey the message of TOS was good even if the production was weak.

The humor: Those moments are mostly successful. Wesley as Kirk was parodying the Shatner Parodies and legends. The actor's stress on "diction" made me burst out laughing, but it's the ending that was a real hoot. Star Trek, as we know, made its own gag reels, and this felt perfect.

The production design for the Space show felt like an earlier scifi era, not 60s Trek, though this may have been intentional...to not hit it on the head too obviously.

Overall though, this episode does not quite make it to the best holodeck episode list. It aspires to be nothing more than a great looking TNG episode, and while entertaining enough, I probably won't think about it first out of all the holodeck episodes.

So while a 7 is decent, this has been the lowest series of grades I've given to any of the Kurtzman Era live-action Star Trek shows, which to me, are more consistently good than legacy Trek. Hopefully the next 6 can reverse this trend.

 

[Mudd]

Does rebounding not simply refer to emotions than labels?

It's a definite emotional phenomenon with many people.

Dunno about "labels" in this case. We do label everything.

 

[nightwind1]

That’s so funny you say that.

The whole time I was thinking “TOS fans are going to hate this!”



I don’t know if that’s actually true or not, but it was definitely in my mind watching the episode…

I've been a fan since I was five years old, since September 8, 1966- and I loved it!

 

[cooleddie74]

Is it my favorite episode, even of this season? Nope. But I'm a TOS fanatic and I had some rollicking fun.

 

[V'Lias]

That’s so funny you say that.

The whole time I was thinking “TOS fans are going to hate this!”



I don’t know if that’s actually true or not, but it was definitely in my mind watching the episode…

I know a few other people already answered, but I'm a TOS fan, (it was my first introduction to Star Trek) and I enjoyed this episode! I don't think it was perfect, but it was still a lot of fun and gave us some more character story. I've been having a difficult time deciding whether to go with a 7 or 8 though.

 

[1001001]

I've been a fan since I was five years old, since September 8, 1966- and I loved it!

Of course it's not 100%, but you know what I'm talking about...