Yeah too bad they couldn't just have had a whole episode to finish off the Batel storyline and not worrying about putting other stuff as a potential series finale.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x10 - "New Life and New Civilizations"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
It does seem mostly wrapped up story-wise. I thought that La'an/Spock and Beto/Uhura were left hanging but realized that even that doesn't NEED closure. After all, Uhura/Scotty was left hanging after ST5, Picard/Anij was left hanging, Seven/Chakotay went nowhere and so on. Tons of Trek relationships have ended offscreen
Which had more to do with budgetary convenience than any kind of conscious or intentional attempt at world building. It was cheaper and easier to reuse the same sets, props, models or whatever and follow the established design aesthetic. Same thing is going on with the current shows, where they all have a shared look amongst them despite taking place in different time periods spanning nine hundred years.
They met when pike was promoted to fleet Captain. But nothing suggested they had an intimate working relationship. People can try and try to say the scene works that way but it doesn't.
For my part, I kind of liked the idea of Batel evolving into the Chosen One as a way of tying up some of her plot threads, and I think it would have been interesting to give Gamble more to do even if it's as a villain.
But in terms of executing that idea, I'm in agreement that it's way too haphazardly done. It would have worked better IMO if it had been a plot arc throughout the season that could have been built up and fleshed out more. In some ways it reminded me of how B5 did the plot threads about Sinclair going into the past and becoming Valen, accepting his destiny within the grand scheme of things. But that was written better.
I did get a chuckle last night while looking at Jammer's review of the episode, and someone in the comments used the term Gornsplaining to describe Batel's monologue about her experiences. It's my new favorite word.
Kirk's one of the youngest if not the youngest captain in Starfleet. People in real life are joking about how he's always on Pike's Enterprise and honestly there's probably in-universe gossip about it as well. If I were Kirk the last thing I'd want to do is advertise and remind people (like Commodore Mendez) that I was buttering up the Enterprise's captain for years before I took command.
IMHO, part of the problem with this season is it was sort of placed awkwardly between being episodic and semi-serialized.
The first two seasons of SNW were semi-episodic. There was character continuity across the series, and some elements were returned to in "sequels" over its (short) run, but there was no real attempt to have each of the seasons be about something.
That changed with Season 3. While there wasn't really a big season arc, ala Discovery or Picard, so much time was spent setting up things for later payoffs. We also had this rotating cast of semi-regulars (Batel, Kirk, Beto, Korby, etc.) who just kept popping up because...because? I guess in some cases to set up what they wanted to do later, and in others just because they thought for some reason it gave the season more coherence (even if they lacked any real story purpose).
The thing is, the season's "arc" was still pretty loose, wild and wooly. Which is why this doesn't hang together well as a season finale.
The first two seasons of SNW were semi-episodic. There was character continuity across the series, and some elements were returned to in "sequels" over its (short) run, but there was no real attempt to have each of the seasons be about something.
That changed with Season 3. While there wasn't really a big season arc, ala Discovery or Picard, so much time was spent setting up things for later payoffs. We also had this rotating cast of semi-regulars (Batel, Kirk, Beto, Korby, etc.) who just kept popping up because...because? I guess in some cases to set up what they wanted to do later, and in others just because they thought for some reason it gave the season more coherence (even if they lacked any real story purpose).
The thing is, the season's "arc" was still pretty loose, wild and wooly. Which is why this doesn't hang together well as a season finale.
I'm glad it worked for you. I guess the lack of chemistry and development of their relationship before that didn't help. I liked Batel as a character and the actress was great but it just didn't work. And, yes, she had a hallucination before being stuck for eternity as a statue. Congratulations . . . I guess.
I know I rarely post here, but I had to... Man, what an awful, confused and muddled mess this finale episode was. How the heck does anyone explain the inexplicable shifts in Batel's character - suddenly she feels like she never fit in anywhere? When was that ever mentioned?
And retroactively making her some sort of superhero like Leeloo in "The Fifth Element"? And a subplot ripped off from "The Inner Light"? And a confrontation that makes no sense, other than as a pedantic "light defeats darkness"?
This season of SNW was such an aggravating mess. Unfunny plots centered on one-joke premises and gimmicks that felt more akin to a sketch comedy show or a 1970's TV variety show.
And retroactively making her some sort of superhero like Leeloo in "The Fifth Element"? And a subplot ripped off from "The Inner Light"? And a confrontation that makes no sense, other than as a pedantic "light defeats darkness"?
This season of SNW was such an aggravating mess. Unfunny plots centered on one-joke premises and gimmicks that felt more akin to a sketch comedy show or a 1970's TV variety show.
Well thanks for clearing it up, at least.
I picked up a reference to an upcoming episode without a "next season" context in one of these review threads. I don't think it was a question of attention. If me not being voracious for "Trek news" makes you angry, I think a Let me Google that for you type snark would've landed better as obviously five seconds of Google would have explained it.
I don't find mind melds generally disgusting. This particular one though, absolutely. And making this particular weird we-know-all-each-others-sex-stuff mind meld the foundation of the Kirk/Spock friendship cheapens everything that comes after. That would be the case even if they found a good reason story-wise for them to mind meld, which they didn't.
Exactly! They didn't think it through.
At this point we have to assume she's spouting gibberish and hasn't processed the loss of all life on the Cayuga, not even getting into her altered biology and all that. I mean look at what the loss of the Constellation's crew did to Matt Decker.
They focused on that aspect but there are also TONS of extremely traumatic stuff in Kirk that should stand out WAY more to Spock than who Kirk's bedded, like the massacre of Tarsus IV and the cloud creature massacre of the Farragut, 2 events that Spock seems to be initially ignorant of in TOS.
Watched 'em all and gave them 4's, 5's, and 6's.
-1 all the way through should be posthumously added.
This season sucked - the finale - everything about everything sucked.
-1 all the way through should be posthumously added.
This season sucked - the finale - everything about everything sucked.
Sopranos is also considered a great show; it's probably a bit incongruous with Star Trek.
It's a self-sabotaging, I guess; if Kirk is nervously dwelling on something he hopes Spock doesn't sense, but doesn't have the telepathic chops to conceal it, that's what will be at the forefront of his mind.
This was my main issue. They didn't invest in Batel enough for me to care, they didn't invest enough in the big bad for it to feel a big pay off. They didn't invest in Ortegas's PTSD. It just felt a bit 'there', until it wasn't.
Are... Are you serious?
Nah - in the 24th ceentury it was:Clearly they abandoned that by the late 24th century, considering the Texas-class incident, the Living Construct incident and the Fleet Formation incident all occurred within 20 years of each other.
1) Malware
2) The A.I. involved probably had all the needed Prefix Codes. (It's one of the 'Link System Safeguards'.
But (and actually I'm with you in that I too think Starfleet is at its core a Military organization) you have a LARGE segment of Star Trek fandom who argue "Starfleet isn't a Military organization; and use things like the use of first names casually as 'proof'.
You DO realize TNG's Unification and STVI:TUC were shot by a LOT of the same production crew and within moths of each other, right?
Nimoy appearing on TNG was part of Paramount's marketing strategy for the film (the episode aired the same week the film opened.) And Nimoy was all in for any such cross promotion because he had a huge part in determining the story of the film.
It's easy to coordinate production designs when the productions are done by the same crews and it's somewhat planned for.
The 1967 Writer's Guide says that Starfleet is military, but that certain 20th century military practices like saluting . . . and, one might assume, rigid adherence to hierarchical protocol . . . have fallen by the wayside.
And, I don't have a problem with that. Structures evolve, and cultural practices within organizations change. Some traditions remain; other traditions fall out of use.
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