Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x09 - "Terrarium"

[cooleddie74]

La'an has more trauma from the Gorn than Erica does. I'm surprised she didn't jump her and break her neck with her bare hands.

 

[Tosk]

La'An does have Gorn trauma. I don't see why that should count as a reason to shrug the situation away.

If a cop had race-based trauma and they killed an innocent stranger because of it we wouldn't just say "I get it."

Edit: I don't want to be mistaken for complaining about the scene having happened. I'm all for characters making big mistakes. I'm just disappointed that we seemingly don't get to deal with that mistake. Fingers crossed they come back to it.

 

[Mudd]

Stun. Setting.

No.

 

[Trekker4747]

No.

Yes.

 

[fireproof78]

 

[Uhura's Song]

Good ep. An Ortegas centric episode for those who have been craving. Pretty darn good except for the ending with Ortegas not foreseeing the potential issue with La'An shooting a Gorn on sight. Though maybe the Gorn wanted to go out.

 

[cooleddie74]

Erica's grief over the Gorn's death reminds me of Kira's anguished reaction when Aamin Marritza was knifed and murdered at the end of "Duet(DS9)."

 

[El Maestro]

Erica's grief over the Gorn's death reminds me of Kira's anguished reaction when Aamin Marritza was knifed and murdered at the end of "Duet(DS9)."

Good call. It was a very well-earned emotional moment.

 

[Michael]

Erica's grief over the Gorn's death reminds me of Kira's anguished reaction when Aamin Marritza was knifed and murdered at the end of "Duet(DS9)."

True. Would have hit differently, though, if instead of a random Bajoran it would have been, say, Odo doing the knifing.

 

[Uhura's Song]

S3 has been inferior yo S1 & S2. Which were both fantastic.

Even so, for my money, the eps have all been emjoyable for me except 4.5 Vulcans.

I thought "Sehlat" and "Through the lens of Time" were excellent. And I loved "Space Adventure Hour."

Hegemony II was pretty darn good. As was the back half of "What is Starfleet?" I put this is the same bucket. I did not love the ending, and the translator thingy was a bit forced, but neither ruined it for me. 8.

The Trelane and zombie episodes were fine.

Not as much excellence as the first two seasons , but 4.5 Vulcans is the only real miss for me. And comedy Trek has always been hit or miss with me.

 

[bookworm8571]

La'An does have Gorn trauma. I don't see why that should count as a reason to shrug the situation away.

If a cop had race-based trauma and they killed an innocent stranger because of it we wouldn't just say "I get it."

Edit: I don't want to be mistaken for complaining about the scene having happened. I'm all for characters making big mistakes. I'm just disappointed that we seemingly don't get to deal with that mistake. Fingers crossed they come back to it.

Based on the information she had at the time, what she did was not a mistake. Unfortunate result, sure, but she had a split second to make a decision. It’s also what happens a lot of the time in police shootings.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Im Actually surprised the Borg weren’t in this one. I thought the wormhole would have taken her to Borg space.

The folks in charge don't seem overly interested in most of Berman Trek.

 

[Noname Given]

The folks in charge don't seem overly interested in most of Berman Trek.

]*PICARD S3 has entered the Chat*[

 

[JonnyQuest037]

You can always ignore everything that came after the TOS episodes.

Sometimes I'm tempted to. As it is, I regard TOS as the first among equals. Because hey, if TOS wasn't as great as it was, none of the other shows would even exist.

But that is a very strange attitude to take on, about an IP that's got almost 1000 episodes + movies.

I don't see why. Star Trek isn't one continuous show that's been running since 1966. It's a collection of a dozen different vaguely-connected shows made over the course of six decades that sometimes pay lip service to each other. It's not written anywhere that I have to watch and enjoy every single iteration of Trek. Why shouldn't I like one and dislike another? Or even, as in the case of SNW, start out liking it and growing to dislike it over time?

Like many an interesting tale, sometimes the finer details, are left up to the listeners imagination.

And like many a sloppily written tale, sometimes the writers just plain don't think of shit and forget to resolve their plotlines in a satisfying manner.

 

[XCV330]

I didn't think I was going to like this one much after some of the reviews I shouldn't have read before watching, but it was good. solid 8. Season 3 hasn't had a single bad episode for me. I wasn't super crazy about 4 1/2 vulcans as it seemed to drag, but it wasn't bad.

Was this a boilerplate kind of Star Trek episode? Yes but they did it well and I watch Star Trek to watch Star Trek, and that's what it delivered.

 

[XCV330]

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.

And it sets up La'An character development. It was a mistake but it's a mistake she'll have to live with and it's going to be a wedge between her and Ortegas if the writers are realistic about it. It might not be one that's not resolvable, but it shouldn't be swept under the rug either. The only thing I wish they'd done was something like, time moving more quickly in the wormhole so what happened between the Gorn Pilot and Ortegas took much longer.

 

[Tosk]

Based on the information she had at the time, what she did was not a mistake. Unfortunate result, sure, but she had a split second to make a decision.

The information she had was that Erica and a Gorn survived the inflagration in a shelter together.

I would argue she fired despite the information she had at that moment. She simply fired because she saw someone scary.

It’s also what happens a lot of the time in police shootings.

Yes. And those incidents should not be waved away either. When a cop shoots someone for the wrong reasons, it should be considered as more than just "an unfortunate result".

It was a mistake but it's a mistake she'll have to live with and it's going to be a wedge between her and Ortegas if the writers are realistic about it.

I hope so.

 

[firehawk12]

I feel the same way. From the looks of it, there's great consensus on this. But despite this fumble, this is still my favorite episode this season because it's FINALLY a Star Trek episode. No gimmicks, no comedy, just a straightforward, focused Trek story that managed to make its philosophical point (which is of course not a new one) while developing a character that had previously been rather one-note. So that is the new and exciting aspect of this for me. Uhura too had many good scenes.

If SNW were always like this, it would be among my favorite of all the series. Alas...

It's still the second best episode to me, but that's because most of the other ones this year have been various levels of middling to bad.

That ending though... yikes.

Because LDS is a sequel and SNW is a prequel

It's still bound by canon though. The only difference is that the characters themselves are aware of the references, like when they talk about how much they love Captain Archer.

 

[MarcKyle1964]

I think we are long past TOS making sense with this show.

At this point, I'm just enjoying the show. Beats whining and complaining doesn't it? Besides, what about when no Trek is being made? What will folks complain about then?

I'm curious was anyone actually surprised by the ending, at least in concept?

With the episode named Terrarium?

The title could have been a misdirection. Or La'an has a Ceti Eel tank.

So, so close to being an all-time classic Trek episode, only to fall to dumb fanwank at the end of the third act.

I was strapped in for an Ortegas episode - finally. We've certainly gotten a bit more from Ortegas this season, but she still comes across as a rather lightweight, flat character compared to the rest of the cast, who generally have established backstories and/or traumas to draw upon. Knowing this episode was a shuttlecraft crash going in, I was thinking we were in for a Castaway riff, and we'd finally learn what was going on with her.

But the episode makes a wild veer when we learn a Gorn is also crash-landed, becoming instead the Star Trek homage to the 1985 movie Enemy Mine. Thankfully, Erica doesn't have to midwife a clutch of Gorn babies here. But the setup is pretty much identical - two castaways from races at war must learn to live together - and trust one another - despite their differences. Kudos to the writers for setting up Erica's PTSD in the first episode, and paying it off here. One could argue that perhaps this arc would've worked better if it were La'an, but as we can see, La'an would've just killed the Gorn on sight anyway.

Navia has to carry this episode, as even though she's riffing off the Gorn female, there's not much of a performance there. Thankfully, she pulls it off in spades, though since so much of the focus is on either survival or breaching the communications barrier, we still don't really learn much about Ortegas here.

My only major concern prior to the last act is I didn't get a real sense of time passing here. The passage of time is key in castaway plots. Hunger and thirst need to build, the characters need time to build things, and Erica and the female Gorn needed time to build up a real friendship. However, everything seemed weirdly compacted here. Erica crashed, and immediately worried about dying of thirst, and then went out looking for food like she was a diabetic, when she could've gone over a week without rations. Her haircut didn't seem to grow out much at all. And the shipboard b-plot focusing on Uhura's attempts to rescue her seemed to take place over a period of a few days, if not mere hours.

I'd completely overlook this, because the emotional journey that Ortegas went on - from attacking the Gorn to becoming friends - was so goddamned compelling. Furthermore, it undid a lot of the damage that SNW did to the Gorn over the last three seasons, played into the core Trekkian message that there are no monsters, just people, and set up things nicely for Arena to be in continuity with SNW. The death of the female Gorn was heartbreaking, but 100% telegraphed - there was no other way it could've ended.

And then they put the stupid scene in with the Metron.

*sigh*

There are so many fucking things which are wrong with this scene. First is that it's narratively unnecessary. Just the presence of the light provided the hint that this all might have been setup, which was enough. Erica also had her memory wiped, meaning the scene means nothing at all to her. It's just there for stupid fanwank, because the writers thought we were too stupid to enjoy an episode with any ambiguity, and needed to be clubbed over the head with the message. What the Metron says is essentially just foreshadowing/memberberrying Arena as well, and has no meaning here, since they push the reset button. It also retrospectively removes the independent agency of Erica and the Gorn, as they're both just being dangled around like marionettes on string for the amusement of superior beings. The message we're left with isn't that aliens and humans can find ways to work together (like say Darmok) but instead that advanced energy beings are a bunch of dicks. Boo!

It's a shame, because if that one scene was excised, I'd say this could've been one of the best SNW episodes - and clearly one of the most Trekkian in its ethos.

I was gonna give it a 9 for some of the things you list...but then a Metron appears. Is this bad writing or an attempt to repair TOS continuity? I haven't decided yet.

Putting aside the "Ortegas is gay because she has short hair and wears vests" implication, I'm even more intrigued by the suggestion that the presence of a "giant lizard woman" is a factor that infuses the episode with homoeroticism.

Starfleet cadets are conditioned to be hypersexuallyattracted to green, remember?

In a future Star Trek series, the Gorn and humans will set aside their differences and join forces.... to invade and destroy the Metrons.

I would enjoy that one. Whose side would Q be on?

They actually had to get the most naturally Vulcan/Romulan/Mintakan looking guy as a Metron?
He has perfect Vulcan eyebrows and ears.
At least it wasn't another Spock's romance episode.

Ohh! My vote just went up a point

You'd think the phaser would have been on stun, not kill.

"We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill..."

It's hard to say she had a chance to see it was a Gorn and an active threat, she reacted like a 21st Century American police officer.

"She was headed right for us!!!!"

Im shocked with all the talk of Enemy Mine that more people are not mentioning the OG crashed pilot buddies.

I watched that one.BG is still a fave

Moving on! On to next week, where they'll probably be doing a Vaudeville show on the bridge...

"Putting on the Riiiittzzz"

Isn’t that a book by Robert Ludlum?

(snort)

Sometimes I'm tempted to. As it is, I regard TOS as the first among equals. Because hey, if TOS wasn't as great as it was, none of the other shows would exist.


I don't see why. Star Trek isn't one continuous show that's been running since 1966.

Like Dr Who?

As is my way, I stayed away until watching the episode. Above are reactions to comments. I vacilitated between an 8 or 7 in ranking it. The metron is an automatic deduction, but I liked the Return of Starbuck theme, would killing the Gorn in that way have been any worse a resolution? And why wasn't she in hibernation? I liked the idea of it, so I'm picking an 8.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Starfleet cadets are conditioned to be hypersexuallyattracted to green, remember?

Or the Orion Women might be secreting their Pheromones.

They have a unfair advantage against species who don't possess Super Strong Pheromones.