That struck me as the common “team strides forth to break the Vegas bank” shot.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x08 - "Four-And-A-Half Vulcans"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
That struck me as the common “team strides forth to break the Vegas bank” shot.
That was... one of the weirdest Trek episodes I ever saw.
It didn't even feel like an episode. It felt like a weird fever dream of half baked ideas, rushed together. With guest characters like Kirk coming over like in "Friends" apartment. Also Patton Oswald was there but didn't get anything interesting to do. The music constantly played fair laughs. But none of the jokes were funny.
And that is completely ignoring the weirdly racist undertones of the premise (because frankly the episode ignores it too).
Overall.. it wasn't totally bad. But I have no clue what that actually was. I just never want to see it again.
It didn't even feel like an episode. It felt like a weird fever dream of half baked ideas, rushed together. With guest characters like Kirk coming over like in "Friends" apartment. Also Patton Oswald was there but didn't get anything interesting to do. The music constantly played fair laughs. But none of the jokes were funny.
And that is completely ignoring the weirdly racist undertones of the premise (because frankly the episode ignores it too).
Overall.. it wasn't totally bad. But I have no clue what that actually was. I just never want to see it again.
Okay, only watched half of this this morning, it just didn't grab me so I went to work. Back home. (Half day at work) And.. We'll try it again now that there's caffeine and food in me.
But.... Ugh.
There's a lot I'm willing to hand-wave away as "sci-fi" and "just a TV show" but suspension of disbelief isn't a blank check. It still has to make sense, you know?
So, they can just inject you with a serum and you become Vulcan, even with the emotional control Vulcans spend a lifetime developing (the serum was developed from Spock's Vulcan genes and.... Fine, somehow that gave our characters strong emotional suppression and high logic, whatever. We'll allow it so long as it gives us a story... Didn't feel like it was. But, we're trying again.)
Question: Did it also move everyone's heart into their gut/hip and change the Iron in their blood to Copper? Because the reason for this injection was because scans on the planet could see past the superficial prosthetic physical changes usually employed and that change is a lot to allow in a suspension of disbelief/hand-wave. Now they just have green blood and organs in different places after writhing on the floor for a couple minutes yelling about strong emotions?
I dunno, we're going in again with an open mind to see how this ends but my grade is floating at a 6 right now unless something remarkable happens in that last half.
This season is filled with a lot of okay and "gimmick" episodes, like the last season of TNG and the bulk of Voyager (which TNG is my favorite and I enjoy VOY more than DS9 (though that is a better made series with stronger episodes)) it just feels like...
Sigh, back in "the day" your TV series were around 26 episodes long so you got a lot of fluff between "big" episodes usually done around Sweeps. Here? We have a handful of episodes so we shouldn't be wasting time with gimmicks like this and puppets. Every episode should "matter." You can have character arcs, story and still episodic scenarios with no single, big, season-arc of universe-ending terror.
The musical episode (Subspace Rhapsody) was them putting a load of chips on black and "2" came up, almost could have been 0. It worked because the songs mostly explored some character dynamic everyone was faced with and met with a change.
Now, they seem to be wanting to gamble more, I feel like this episode everything went on red and "00" came up. The puppets? I say they're putting all their chips on a specific number and unless something really amazing happens, they ain't landing on it.
The first season is great for this series and is what I was looking for in a NuTrek series, S2 was okay. S3 so far? I mean, they had an extra year and this is what we get. (Don't tell me that during the strike people at least weren't thinking and talking about what to do once they got to work again.)
I don't know m SNW, you've lost some swagger. Maybe 5 seasons is enough?
And, what, Jim Kirk is just always in the area of the Enterprise?
Way to make the universe so much smaller, gang.
Hardly "boldly going where no one has gone before" when the next captain of the ship seems to beam on whenever he wants.
But.... Ugh.
There's a lot I'm willing to hand-wave away as "sci-fi" and "just a TV show" but suspension of disbelief isn't a blank check. It still has to make sense, you know?
So, they can just inject you with a serum and you become Vulcan, even with the emotional control Vulcans spend a lifetime developing (the serum was developed from Spock's Vulcan genes and.... Fine, somehow that gave our characters strong emotional suppression and high logic, whatever. We'll allow it so long as it gives us a story... Didn't feel like it was. But, we're trying again.)
Question: Did it also move everyone's heart into their gut/hip and change the Iron in their blood to Copper? Because the reason for this injection was because scans on the planet could see past the superficial prosthetic physical changes usually employed and that change is a lot to allow in a suspension of disbelief/hand-wave. Now they just have green blood and organs in different places after writhing on the floor for a couple minutes yelling about strong emotions?
I dunno, we're going in again with an open mind to see how this ends but my grade is floating at a 6 right now unless something remarkable happens in that last half.
This season is filled with a lot of okay and "gimmick" episodes, like the last season of TNG and the bulk of Voyager (which TNG is my favorite and I enjoy VOY more than DS9 (though that is a better made series with stronger episodes)) it just feels like...
Sigh, back in "the day" your TV series were around 26 episodes long so you got a lot of fluff between "big" episodes usually done around Sweeps. Here? We have a handful of episodes so we shouldn't be wasting time with gimmicks like this and puppets. Every episode should "matter." You can have character arcs, story and still episodic scenarios with no single, big, season-arc of universe-ending terror.
The musical episode (Subspace Rhapsody) was them putting a load of chips on black and "2" came up, almost could have been 0. It worked because the songs mostly explored some character dynamic everyone was faced with and met with a change.
Now, they seem to be wanting to gamble more, I feel like this episode everything went on red and "00" came up. The puppets? I say they're putting all their chips on a specific number and unless something really amazing happens, they ain't landing on it.
The first season is great for this series and is what I was looking for in a NuTrek series, S2 was okay. S3 so far? I mean, they had an extra year and this is what we get. (Don't tell me that during the strike people at least weren't thinking and talking about what to do once they got to work again.)
I don't know m SNW, you've lost some swagger. Maybe 5 seasons is enough?
And, what, Jim Kirk is just always in the area of the Enterprise?
Way to make the universe so much smaller, gang.
Hardly "boldly going where no one has gone before" when the next captain of the ship seems to beam on whenever he wants.
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That was... one of the weirdest Trek episodes I ever saw.
It didn't even feel like an episode. It felt like a weird fever dream of half baked ideas, rushed together. With guest characters like Kirk coming over like in "Friends" apartment. Also Patton Oswald was there but didn't get anything interesting to do. The music constantly played fair laughs. But none of the jokes were funny.
And that is completely ignoring the weirdly racist undertones of the premise (because frankly the episode ignores it too).
Overall.. it wasn't totally bad. But I have no clue what that actually was. I just never want to see it again.
I still liked this more than the Gorn season premiere.
At least this now explains how McCoy gave Kirk Romulan ears and eyebrows so quickly in TOS. Serum shot.
I want to complain about the things I didn't like and agree with a lot of some of the comments in the thread but I can't. It was just too fun and silly, enough that I can't be objective about it. Pike taking a lirpa on a mission to fix a nuclear reactor and his conehead voice doing the theme voice over, taking away the leek sorbet after it is insulted; I can't be objective at all. Gave it a 9 which feels both earned and absolutely over-inflated at the same time.
And, for me, the Lower Decks cross-over, that for me on the level of "Shades of Gray," No reason to watch whatsoever.
Yeah, no.
Apparently the DNA was enough. Totally contradictory in multiple ways. We know that Vulcans need a lot of meditation and practice to acquire that degree of logic to control their emotions. Indeed, in this episode they start out right after the injections with overwhelming emotions. Yet those magically fade in moments. Okaaaay.
Vulcan Pike does the intro but still splits the infinitive at the end, would have been a "cute" touch if he didn't.
Kind of.
Una's log after the opening titles says Spock's emotional control was transferred to them via the serum. Which... Fine, we've allowed far sillier things to happen through DNA changes in the franchise.
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The comedy worked. The logic of various plot points may not really work (like, the four serum-Vulcans automatically acquiring Kolinahr doesn't make sense, Kirk turning up here doesn't make sense), but it gave me some damned hearty laughs. It's great to watch everyone cut loose and have fun -- La'an, Spock and Una are MVPs and the Kirk-Scott excursion is great -- and Patton Oswalt as Doug the Sexy Vulcan really puts it over the top. That post-credits scene absolutely slew me.
It was explained it had something to do with Spock's perception of how full Vulcans behave.
It doesn't make a lick of sense, but it wasn't just the DNA.
the Lower Decks episode was the second best of Season 2.
Agreed. I've mentioned this in previous stories too. Scotty is supposed to be older and should be in his more formed years already.
Writers love character arcs (for good reasons). They're forcing Scotty to go in the Scared/Lack of confidence to building confidence arc.
Instead, they should be doing the arc of going from a creative problem solver forged in a less hierarchical, organized environment (freighters) to Starfleet's chain of command.
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