Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 4x01 - "Valles Marineris"

[E-DUB]

I thought it was one of the best episodes of the series. Hope it's typical and not the high point.

 

[tomalak301]

At the end of the episode when they were putting all the peices together I kind of just smirked at how preposterous it all felt. So the Enterprise is the reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs and the evolution of humanity? I wonder what the reaction was in the writers room and if anyone looked at the big board and asked themselves how did this happen.

Despite that though I actually gave the episode a 7. I liked the Martian Captain, and some of the visual effects shots were cool. It's just going from A to B to C in this episode was quite a journey, and I kinda wanted more dinosaurs.

 

[tomalak301]

For reference, in Prodigy the Vau N'Akat were almost destroyed, and the (time travelling!) survivors decided that genociding the Federation was justified to save their species from extinction. Yet they were the VILLAINS of the story. Here in SNW, the writers have decided that Asencia was right after all, and a little genocide is acceptable to save your own kind.

Considering I'm currently rewatching Prodigy (7 episodes to go), seeing you mention that gave me even more to think about. Kind of makes the ending seem a little worse.

 

[FredH]

I really feel like the final scene of wow, dinosaurs! should have been replaced with a scene of Pike recording a personal log reminiscent of Sisko’s in “In the Pale Moonlight”: yes, I made this choice for the civilization I know. I can live with it…and what’s coming for me in a few years? I’ve earned it. That and more. …end entry.

 

[NigellaDeanna20]

That was a great opener to the season. I couldn't help but have Jurassic Park from that episode. Story was really good too. A solid 8/10 for me.

 

[Tuskin38]

I was really confused when the hell it was happening. Like, when did Una, La'an, and Ortegas get those languorous few minutes to just stand on a cliff and admire the view? There didn't seem to be a ton of time between Enterprise getting free from the tractor beam thing and having to run after the Martian ship.

I think it was probably during their walk.

 

[MrDraper]

La'An Dino punch. What a fun season opener. Liked the time loop story as well as the various character moments planet and ship side. Expected a Dino-Western of some kind, instead got a very fun timeloopy story instead.

 

[Finn]

I really feel like the final scene of wow, dinosaurs! should have been replaced with a scene of Pike recording a personal log reminiscent of Sisko’s in “In the Pale Moonlight”: yes, I made this choice for the civilization I know. I can live with it…and what’s coming for me in a few years? I’ve earned it. That and more. …end entry.

And delete it. He can't have evidence he knew it would happen laying around. Just like Sisko...

 

[Trekker4747]

At the end of the episode when they were putting all the peices together I kind of just smirked at how preposterous it all felt. So the Enterprise is the reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs and the evolution of humanity? I wonder what the reaction was in the writers room and if anyone looked at the big board and asked themselves how did this happen.

Despite that though I actually gave the episode a 7. I liked the Martian Captain, and some of the visual effects shots were cool. It's just going from A to B to C in this episode was quite a journey, and I kinda wanted more dinosaurs.

It's also kind of preposterous that a simple NYC soup kitchen operator manages to spawn a nation-wide anti-war effort that delays the US's development of the atomic bomb and entry into World War II; causing Hitler and Germany to seize the world.

Trek has asked us to accept far sillier things.

 

[IMC Headquarters]

"A Fistful of Dinos"

 

[FredH]

It's also kind of preposterous that a simple NYC soup kitchen operator manages to spawn a nation-wide anti-war effort the delays the US's development of the atomic bomb and entry into World War II; causing Hitler and Germany to seize the world.

Trek has asked us to accept far sillier things.

I don’t know; butterfly wings, and all that.

 

[cooleddie74]

"Clever Girls" would also have been a very apt title for this episode.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Cassell's armor reminds me of scarab shells.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Despite what Captain Kirk might think, there is such a thing as a no-win scenario.

The people of Neural might want a word.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Getting a bit tired of Vulcans always being rude, dismissive, assholes. They're supposed to be humanity's closest/best friends in the relationship that leads to the Federation. Why are they always jackasses?

Everyone has that one friend...

 

[cooleddie74]

Hell, we got along better with the Andorians through much of ENT than we did the Vulcans. At least the Andorians begrudgingly trusted us after we helped them on P'Jem. The Vulcans didn't come around to behaving more amicably until after the Xindi crisis and the Kir'shara was discovered.

 

[Finn]

It's also kind of preposterous that a simple NYC soup kitchen operator manages to spawn a nation-wide anti-war effort the delays the US's development of the atomic bomb and entry into World War II; causing Hitler and Germany to seize the world.

Trek has asked us to accept far sillier things.

It has been a while but wasn't it because FDR (who was from NY) read about her grassroots work and decided to meet her and it influenced FDR's decisions in the longer run...

 

[ichab]

Jurassic World and Star Trek, a combination I never knew I needed until now.

Solid 9 for me.

I would have went full ten (which I rarely do) , but there was one part about the ending that I thought went a little too overboard.

Still a solid outing and I hope this is a sign of what we get going forward.

 

[cooleddie74]

I think I'm comfortable giving this one a solid 7.

 

[TRON JA307020]

The Technoabble in this episode was absolutely nonsense in an immersion breaking way for me. Like I know it's all made up, but at least make it consistent within its own universe.

"Torn into bits of subspace" - Subspace is a realm, not a thing. Matter doesn't become subspace.

"Ignite the warp engines" - they're not rockets. They're solid state devices that turn energy into spacetime distortions, i.e. warp fields.

"We lost all our iridium" - it's an an unreactive metal, surely if it's that important you'd have a reserve deep in the ship. What happened, did it get shaken loose by the storm?

When they detected the creature why didn't they get back in the shuttle and fly over it?

Literally makes no sense, sorry.

Unfortunately most of the writers aren't science fiction writers so they tend to use terminology wrong or not understand it. A good story editor or science consultant would catch some of the more obvious mistakes.

I was really excited by the concept here, a trip to prehistoric Earth to see dinosaurs and a meeting with ancient Martians should have been extremely fun, but the episode was just laborious to get through. As others have said, the morals were pretty garbled; i don't think we even spent enough time on any of it to dig into the Sol-V people vs the Martians, and Pike letting them commit planetary genocide on a "hunch" was so absurd that it actually got a laugh.

The crew still all feel amorphous in the way they have since S3 - people just occasionally launch into feelings-chats, nobody follows chain of command (La'an shooting the dinosaur without authorisation felt both out of character and completely fucking insane), and everyone just talks in a similar register.

Also, why are the visuals so washed out? They spend a ton of money on CGI then make sure everything's got a feces-filter over it so it appears as browny-orange. Prehistoric Earth could have been spectacular with yellow-green skies, lush vibrant plants, and colourful dinosaurs, but instead it looked exactly like the sepia-cowboy-world we started on.

The only thing in the episode I really liked was the new Vulcan cadet and Uhura's attempts to connect with her.

Im only 15 minutes in and yeah I feel about the same. More feely stuff with Spock and La' an and than she goes off and stuns a dinosaur without permission. Yeah the cgi is not great. Everything has a brown haze. Ugh.