You can always ignore everything that came after the TOS episodes.
But that is a very strange attitude to take on, about an IP that's got almost 1000 episodes + movies.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x09 - "Terrarium"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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But that is a very strange attitude to take on, about an IP that's got almost 1000 episodes + movies.
Just finished watching this episode.
The thing that kept going through my mind while watching was how it framed the complexity of compassion. Shakespeare's tragedies usually took a human trait/flaw and magnified it to the point of showing what it could do if magnified too much in the wrong way (Romeo & Juliet with love, Othello with jealousy, etc.)
While watching, I kept thinking about how compassion was framed as something that could be both healing and dangerous...
Side note, if the "red line" was hit and the Enterprise needed to hit the road to make the rendezvous, I'm sure they found a way to push the engines to Warp 9-point-whatever to make it. It's one of those things we just assume gets worked out in the end.
I have conflicted feelings about the Metron. The moment the damn thing appeared, I knew what it was. I think they needed to write it in so they could start connecting the threads between this series and TOS, because that's what this series seems to be doing, IMO. I will say that the way it was depicted was neat... gender neutral with a voice that fluctuated between male and female. That's what I'd expect from a non-corporeal entity.
Maybe it would've been better if Erica had conjectured, during her conversation with Uhura at the end, that she felt like whatever was down there might've brought her and the Gorn together on purpose to see if the two species could ever find common ground. She could've leaned a bit more into how the experience gave her a new take on the Gorn and, maybe, she'd reframe her thinking about the Klingons too. That way, the obvious insertion of the Metron would've been avoided and shown Erica's development as a character in a different way.
Just my two cents!
The thing that kept going through my mind while watching was how it framed the complexity of compassion. Shakespeare's tragedies usually took a human trait/flaw and magnified it to the point of showing what it could do if magnified too much in the wrong way (Romeo & Juliet with love, Othello with jealousy, etc.)
While watching, I kept thinking about how compassion was framed as something that could be both healing and dangerous...
- Uhura's feelings of friendship for Erica were so strong that she was literally blinded to the bigger picture (how risky a rescue attempt would be, the sick colonists) and even fudged the numbers Pike asked for to force his hand.
- Erica's earned compassion for the Gorn through their shared experience helped her heal from what she went through in the Season 3 opener. She also realized at the end that La'an is still her friend, despite her rash decision/reaction to kill the Gorn on sight.
- La'an's lack of compassion when killing the Gorn. Didn't even think twice before pulling the trigger. I, too, thought phasers on stun was the "standard" when beaming into a potentially dangerous situation. Killing the Gorn did solve the problem of bringing it onto the Enterprise and what they'd eventually do with it, so its death felt fait accompli. With the appearance of the Metron at the end, I felt like that was the writers' way of making this episode a "prequel" to "Arena"... but more thoughts on that below.
- The Gorn's compassion for Erica showed that finding common ground with an enemy/someone you don't like can still lead to a productive, if not friendly relationship.
- Una came off as lacking compassion, but she was the voice of reason... reminding the viewer that there was a bigger picture that needed just as must attention as the life of one crew member.
Side note, if the "red line" was hit and the Enterprise needed to hit the road to make the rendezvous, I'm sure they found a way to push the engines to Warp 9-point-whatever to make it. It's one of those things we just assume gets worked out in the end.
I have conflicted feelings about the Metron. The moment the damn thing appeared, I knew what it was. I think they needed to write it in so they could start connecting the threads between this series and TOS, because that's what this series seems to be doing, IMO. I will say that the way it was depicted was neat... gender neutral with a voice that fluctuated between male and female. That's what I'd expect from a non-corporeal entity.
Maybe it would've been better if Erica had conjectured, during her conversation with Uhura at the end, that she felt like whatever was down there might've brought her and the Gorn together on purpose to see if the two species could ever find common ground. She could've leaned a bit more into how the experience gave her a new take on the Gorn and, maybe, she'd reframe her thinking about the Klingons too. That way, the obvious insertion of the Metron would've been avoided and shown Erica's development as a character in a different way.
Just my two cents!
Personally I think the ending would play better and more interestingly if La’an’s phaser was set to stun and the Gorn Lady would just die because she was weakened due to her injuries. Would make Starfleet and La’an look way more sensible to not just shoot to kill and still retain the drama that La’an was responsible for killing Erica’s new friend. It feels very un-Star Trek to run around with your weapon set to kill by default. And the fact that there’s no scene in the end where we learn how La’an feels about what just happened feels off as well. It’s like the episode just ran out of time all of a sudden. I’ll be glad to eat my words, but somehow I doubt it will be addressed in a later episode.
I’d think that in any set of phasers manufactured at about the same time, the larger the unit, the greater the energy and processing power. I.e. the bigger model can generate and project more energy, but it also is better able to fine-tune it down as necessary. And likewise, later eras’ phaser models will be both more energetic and better tunable than earlier ones.
So I could certainly buy that the higher/bigger phasers in a given year’s range could have more and finer gradations of what they can actually do. Sure, all of them (from at least the 2260s onward) can stun, kill and vaporize — but chances are that the higher the phaser model, the more finely-tuned the stun, the surer the kill, and the greater/faster the mass vaporization.
So, say, point-blank stun with a 2280s/2290s phaser II will probably kill a humanoid, but maybe a phaser III of that range can successfully stun at point blank, and a 2360s phaser II or even phaser I (I forget if TNG has them) almost certainly can — whereas a 2370s phaser III can take out A LOT on vaporize, but also maybe be able to stun a mouse when fired directly against its forehead without significant lasting damage.
(Though maybe specific “we mean business” models like the “compression phaser” rifle in Voyager and the “assault phaser” in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier break the mold, focusing mostly on just mauling the other guy fast. But the regular three phaser types of mini, pistol and rifle get more finely-tunable with every era.)
All my speculation, of course. In practice, as ever, all phasers have the effects the plot demands.
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Fanfic
No, not even a little bit.
Fans dedicate hours and hours doing research and meticulous analysis. Writers don't have the luxury of time. Amateurs can operate on whatever timetable they want while professionals have deadlines, budgets and schedules.
One need only look at the Mandalorian when they needed a few more extras in stormtrooper armor but didn't have the budget for additional armor. So they reached out to to local 501st chapter for extras. Several showed up, sporting details and replicas better made than the production armor.
One guy I know who works in the costuming and VFX industry for his start at a local convention after faithfully recreating a costume from a science fiction film and one of the effects guys was a guest and hosting a panel and notes details and functionality he didn't think of.
Fans are not production teams.
The Borg Queen, after her bad defeat at the hands of Janeway, tries desperately to attempt a time travel thingamajic.
Something goes wrong and her Queen Cube is thrust in the past, and cuz space is moving, she ends up right in front of Pike's Enterprise.
There, I gave the SNW writers a fresh new idea. :P
You and @Kamen Rider Blade gonna owe me $20 each in 2027.
A lot of old links are disappearing but I remember there was a pitch for Control to be the precursor to the Borg, cuz Burnham and crew were gonna shoot Leland into the past or something.
The actor who played Leland hinted at that too, but apparently as you said, PIC was gonna use the Borg so that plan in DSC got abandoned last minute.
Thank God.
The Borg would be a horrible choice.
Here's his premise setup:
Any thoughts on it cooleddie74?
If they don't do the Borg Story Line in SNW, can we get $20 by the time SNW ends?
We can all get together at a burger joint and eat out.
There was nothing unsensible about what La'An did. Why do people insist that every time a Trek protagonist stumbles or responds out of a place of human or personal limitations the writers should provide them some kind of get-out-of-jail free card?
La'An meant to kill the monster hovering over her friend. It was a mistake, a completely understandable error.
Did anyone watching not know that she would do that, as soon as she and the others appeared with guns out?
A so-called future in which people don't act out of passion, or without endlessly ruminating over the moral consequence in every situation is neither hopeful nor Utopian. It's just not human. It's dead inside.
La'An meant to kill the monster hovering over her friend. It was a mistake, a completely understandable error.
Did anyone watching not know that she would do that, as soon as she and the others appeared with guns out?
A so-called future in which people don't act out of passion, or without endlessly ruminating over the moral consequence in every situation is neither hopeful nor Utopian. It's just not human. It's dead inside.
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But-but-but post-1979 Gene's Vision™!!!
Kirk's disintegrating the Ceti Eel coming out of Chekov's ear was a betrayal of Star Trek's ethos and proof Meyer and Bennett didn't understand Star Trek. Kirk and McCoy should've been examining the eel to learn more about it, according to Gene.
People aren't questioning that she fired, but rather why the writers chose to have the entire security team's phasers set to kill. Obviously La'an panic-firing wouldn't have mattered if the phasers were on stun, as is often shown to be standard procedure (and this mission is a textbook example of why).
The answer is that the writers really wanted the Gorn to die by La'an's hand because a) it's a dramatic ending and b) so the Metron could sneer at humans for being violent and thus get the "we hope somebody passes our test in the future, wink wink" reference to Arena in there.
The answer is that the writers really wanted the Gorn to die by La'an's hand because a) it's a dramatic ending and b) so the Metron could sneer at humans for being violent and thus get the "we hope somebody passes our test in the future, wink wink" reference to Arena in there.
I expected it as soon as Ortegas met the Gorn. Somehow my mind jumped to UFO's "Survival" (1970), which I'd seen as a boy.
Stun. Setting.
Again, have we seen evidence that stun setting even works on a Gorn?
If stun works on a Gorn, why did Starfleet have to develop specialized Gorn hunting rifles for Pike to issue in "Hegemony"?
Speak for yourself. The whole thing as filmed was stupid. No reason to shoot. Stun or kill.
Have we seen they can't? Then we go back to why they beamed down in tactical mode, it was a rescue operation they didn't know the Gorn (or any hostile life) was there.
The Gorn had to die, fine, and maybe we'll see something come from this between Ortegas and La'An in the final episode (or next season) but right now having them beam down to rescue Ortegas and the first thing they do is shoot and kill the first unrecognized thing they see (coming out of the shelter Ortegas is in) is a lot to just accept or shrug away, to many it doesn't make sense.
The Gorn had to die, fine, and maybe we'll see something come from this between Ortegas and La'An in the final episode (or next season) but right now having them beam down to rescue Ortegas and the first thing they do is shoot and kill the first unrecognized thing they see (coming out of the shelter Ortegas is in) is a lot to just accept or shrug away, to many it doesn't make sense.
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