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

[JirinPanthosa]

I thought that was a bit too silly. I laughed out loud when I realized they were about to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Leading up to that point I was thinking Pike was being a bit too passive, whereas a captain like Kirk would have calculated a way to stop them directly if negotiating didn't work. (No wonder Pike would have blown Balance of Terror).

But that just felt like a hacky twist. Like "The first obvious thing most writers would come up with, chuckle a bit, dismiss because it's a bit on the nose".

The part of the episode I did like was the conversation about being willing to sacrifice other civilizations to save your own, made without anger or hatred, just with brutal honesty.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

Now, turning to the Trekverse, we know that Mars was first settled some time between 2069 and 2103. So by the time of SNW, it had over a century of habitation. It just boggles my mind trying to figure out how they couldn't have found records of a prehistoric Martian ecosystem - let alone an advanced civilization - with that degree of time, unless for some reason the ex-Martians or some later group literally scoured the planet to eliminate all evidence of their existence.

I'm wondering if Treks timecops would have done that job thinking they were being helpful

 

[Mudd]

All supposition.

Whereas Pike is enabling the destruction of a planet that wouldn't have occurred without the time travelers' presence.

Choosing not to fire a missile and intervene in a way is minimizing interference.

He chooses different, you don't exist.

 

[Maurice]

It was harmless fun, and dumb as a box of rocks...asteroids.

Too soon?

 

[NCC-73515]

When they introduced Tachyons and all those other Faster Then Light particles.

Then again when they introduced time travel.

Then again when they introduced subspace.

Did he address those? Or did he address regular matter and regular spacetime?

 

[Galaxy]

Normally, I am a fan of small universe syndrom. I like how they tie things together, however, the Enterprise being the origin of life on earth as we know it, and therefore also being the progenitor of the Federation, Voyager's influence on the Delta quadrant, basically the shaper of a large portion of milky galaxy history, is a step to far.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

Seems this episode has gotten a lot of opinions with fans.

 

[TRON JA307020]

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That speech is nowhere near what starflight is talking about. Kirk didn't say multiple times how great his job was. He didnt overly gush over every character when they did a good job. When kurtzman trek specifically STD got criticized for being too dark and depressing things started to change after season 2. Everyone started to gush over Michael. She really wasnt a great person to begin with because she started a war and got her captain killed. But after season 2 she got highly emotional, everyone emotionally praised her on what a genius she was. Even staments who didnt like her did a complete 180. She also emotionally praised everyone else. That kind of back slapping has gone on into SNW. Its been constant in SNW and its just too much. At least SNW hasn't done as much crying but its still there. My theory is the producers and writers figured that having people be overly emotional and congratulatory to each other would show how benevolent starfleet and the federation is. They have overdone it and its gotten annoying.

 

[Trekker4747]

Tell us how you really feel.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Seems this episode has gotten a lot of opinions with fans.

We are a fanbase of professional opinion havers.

 

[Trekker4747]

Opinion is our business!

 

[eschaton]

In general, I'd say that an issue with SNW in general is it's much more self-consciously a TV show than any earlier Trek series (barring Lower Decks).

This seems odd to say, as every Trek show has been a TV show by definition. However, there was generally a level of self-seriousness that the series took, even when they were doing the odd comedy episode. The characters could be in farcical situations, but even then they tended to react to the situations as if this was all a big deal.

In contrast, SNW is a very postmodern take on Star Trek which does everything up to having the characters wink/nod at the audience and outwardly break the fourth wall. The writers take the toys out of the toybox and smash them together. The coherence of the setting, and POV of the characters within it, are secondary to whatever the aims of a particular episode are.

To some extent this is akin to TOS, which was an anthology show dressed up as something with continuity, where occasionally writers just ported in off-the-shelf SF stories, with Kirk & Co ported into the thinly-realized original characters. The difference, however, was TOS was a show about playing in the SF toolbox more generally. SNW, in contrast, is a show about Star Trek. So the weird fluffing up of Starfleet and the Federation is a narrative wink and nod to Trek fans saying "see, we like the thing too!"

 

[Nerys Myk]

Seems this episode has gotten a lot of opinions with fans.

How… unusual???

 

[Mudd]

In general, I'd say that an issue with SNW in general is it's much more self-consciously a TV show than any earlier Trek series.

No.

The producers just know that the audience knows. And they don't condescend as previous producers have.

 

[Noname Given]

In general, I'd say that an issue with SNW in general is it's much more self-consciously a TV show than any earlier Trek series (barring Lower Decks)....

No.

It is very much like the original Star Trek series which was the best Star Trek series in the entire franchise.

 

[Jedman67]

OK just watched it last night with my kids, and...

I like to have some sort of consistency within each episode, yes, I can ignore stuff like relativity and warp and stuff, but this episode just broke the technobabble.

Predestination paradox, quantum entanglement, missing a critical resource...ugh

I tried. I love the acting, Pike trying to mediate with the martians. The dinosaurs were awesome.

We KNOW that the asteroid belt is leftover material that didn't coalesce into one of the planets, and we know the Dino Asteroid came from interstellar space.

And that whole "it will take the energy of a supernova to bring us home, wait, never mind, just explode a planet and we're good"

And the warp core is enough to blow up a planet?

Sorry. 7/10, and that is generous.

 

[Tomalak]

I enjoyed the episode, it was big and broad and silly and entertaining. Like the rest of this series, it is concerned with telling a fun story more than Star Trek continuity. I’m fine with this, but I appreciate many Star Trek fans are not.

But some of the nitpicks are just a lack of imagination. Do I think a species with phasing tech might have been able to use it to dump antimatter into a planet’s core with disastrous consequences? Sure, why not?

Mars’s fossil record? Presumably it went the same place as evidence of the Voth went on Earth.

We also know Pike well enough to understand that it won’t have been an easy decision for Pike and that he will certainly have dwelt on the consequences of his actions. I didn’t need to literally see that scene to know this. The ending with April was enough.

 

[Mudd]

What the show evoked, that Trek rarely has for many decades, was a sense of wonder.

If a show full of spaceships and aliens and ray-guns doesn't do that, and doesn't work on some level for young kids, all that "optimistic vision/morality play" stuff isn't worth a spit.

Oh, and fuck continuity trivia.

 

[Sim]

The episode was huge fun, imo. And felt very much like Star Trek has felt for me in its best moments. No need to ask for more, imo.

 

[Jedman67]

The Enterprise going back in time and wiping out the dinosaurs is such a Roddenberry story idea. All it needed was some sexy cave women in skimpy leopard skin bikinis and Gene's Vision™ would have been completely fulfilled.

I would give an extra star for this