Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 4x03 - "Human Best Friend"

[cooleddie74]

Loved it, gave it a 10.

Had more than a bit of the original show crammed into it with a bunch of silly background references and the actual premise.

Shore Leave on a whole new scale.

I wish the Berman Era Risa episodes had been more like this, because with just one exception none of those were as good as this.

 

[Captain Jollydark]

Am I the only one who thought that was wonderful?

I liked it!

 

[Captain Jollydark]

I was generous to this episode and it gave me some genuine laughs, so I don't want to be too pedantic, but yeah, that annoys me now that you brought it up.

Also. Erica and Scotty didn't see him the first time. So... and I don't care because it was silly and fun and I'm sitting under smoke filled skies.

 

[cooleddie74]

However this episode rating shakes out in the end I still like it more than I do the DS9 and ENT Risa episodes. At least this one deliberately tried to be funny and wasn't groaningly awful or bland.

 

[Starflight]

You know what, that was my favourite of the season so far. The comedy was extremely hit or miss, some of it landed while other bits were genuinely embarrassing, but overall it was a pretty enjoyable watch.

Could have done without the usual parade of endless callbacks. Actually groaned when the TAS stuff showed up in the resort ad, and the tribble.

Still, I'll go 5/10. Some of the actors put in genuinely heroic performances against tough material here. Gooding absolutely excelled, and Peck did well with lines that could easily have been cringeworthy.

Ending confused me a bit and the plot didn't seem to tie together - I was sure that the fireworks bomb was going to turn out to have been planted by their drunk past selves (under the guidance of the resort guy who insisted he was a puppetmaster) for this exact reason, but instead it was some unseen saboteur? Who planted this specific culturally-relevant bomb? Well, okay, I guess.

 

[Captain Jollydark]

Why would you read before hand? It will influence your feelings.

What they said.

 

[Cap'n Calhoun]

Rewatching, and I know this is an extremely petty complaint (though surely someone will top it within a few pages), but it's bugging me and this feels like the place to mention it: It feels like they have no idea how big a "centimeter" is. I get that the script wasn't necessarily going to match the final blocking, but couldn't they have tweaked the distances when dubbing the computer voice? I'm not expecting precision here, but...

• 20 cm (8 in) away when Ortegas is standing away from the console
• 11 cm (4.3 in) when she's standing with her full body between the console and her arm
• 0.3 cm (0.1 in) when she's got her arm/cast hovering over the console

These are all pretty obviously way off while watching the scene. Not expecting them to break out a tape measure, but it wouldn't have been hard to make an estimate that's at least plausible.

Again, it's minor and I'm not pretending it harms the episode in any significant way, but it's distracting. Just wanted to get that out of my system.

That said, overall it's playing a little better on rewatch. Kind of suspected it might.

 

[cooleddie74]

Dave Foley has now been in Trek twice. Scott Thompson did an episode of VOY (a very good one, I might remind people). So that's three appearances by a Kid in the Hall in this franchise.

30 Helens agree this is a good thing.

 

[Tuskin38]

Jörg Hillebrand (@gaghyogi49.bsky.social)

If you were wondering about this little creature on the couch in #StarTrekSNW's "Human Best Friend"⬆️, it's a reuse of a frog/human hybrid puppet, created for the TV show "What We Do in the Shadows" and seen in the episode "The Roast"➡️⬇️. Yep, that's Doug Jones as Baron Afanas with those...

bsky.app

Jörg Hillebrand (@gaghyogi49.bsky.social)

The top two lines (on the forehead) of Pike's tattoo in #StarTrekSNW's "Human Best Friend" are using the Klingon, font but are actually English words. Believe it or not but the text reads "Hair today, Gorn tomorrow"... 😂😂

bsky.app

 

[Jedi Marso]

I normally don't mind the sillier episodes, and have enjoyed most of them, but that one was not great. Hopefully next week is better. I did like the song Una was singing though!

Total Eclipse of the Heart in the original Klingon or some such.

 

[Dar70]

That said, overall it's playing a little better on rewatch. Kind of suspected it might.

I didn't like it. But I normally don't like these types of episodes. I probably won't rewatch it anytime soon if ever. But some of the stuff in there was so cringy. Out of the three, last weeks was the best so far. That one I may rewatch one day ..

 

[kirk55555]

Absolute dogshit. This show has literally the worst comedy in the franchise, yet they keep making half the show the Star Trek version of Airplane or Naked Gun. Its like half the writing staff are talented people who know and like Star Trek and the other half are worthless assholes who really wish they were writing for either modern Family Guy or some stoner comedy.

Fuck this episode. Going from a top tier Trek episode to bottom tier in the space of one episode is unfortunately way too common for Strange New Worlds. Hopefully Season 4 isn't 60+% shitty comedy like Season 3 was. At least when older Trek had bad episodes it was generally a small handful out of 22-26 a season, not a significant portion of a tiny 10 episode season dedicated to garbage. I hope Season 4 can do better then Season 3 with this, if they cut out the comedy SNW would be an amazing show instead of the biggest mixed bag of highs and lows in the franchise.

 

[Kirks_Flying_Wig]

So this was a perfectly serviceable episode, I've rated it a 6. I don't mind a Beach Episode, feels a bit too early in the season for it though, but it is what it is.

The God tier: Uhura's outfit, Una's singing, Melissa and Martin's chemistry
The Good: Anson in the tattoo scene, Spock mind-melding with a plant, Spock being inebriated (as you can see), Ortegas and Scotty's making-up scene in the shuttle
The WTH: La'An's "journey", Scotty's severed thumb

I'm glad we've finally got an Ortegas episode (I know it was a Scotty episode too but he still feels like a supporting character to me) that's more than just "I'm Erika Ortegas, I fly the ship". Melissa and Martin had great chemistry and I'm glad they both did subtle hangover acting instead of overdoing it. On chemistry, the bit where Uhura was touching Ortegas all over her face clearly shows how close the cast are and how comfortable they are doing scenes like that. I expect that scene took many many takes to complete because everyone was probably cracking up.

The pacing was all over the place though. They're only at the resort for, what, two-thirds of the episode? And most of that is Ortegas and Scotty going from person to person in single locations. Felt like I was just watching an RPG. There was absolutely no urgency with the bomb. It's a bomb, it's attached to a crew member, if the bomb explodes it'll take a crewmember with it and half the ship! If I was Ortegas I'd be calling red alert rather than just casually ambling off to find the captain.

Despite the actors' performances, Ortegas and Scotty's mutual dislike doesn't feel like it's developed for long enough to warrant this almost-coming-to-blows plot. Another casualty of such short seasons, much like Spock and Chapel's big breakup in Subspace Rhapsody after they'd only been dating like two or three episodes. Compare to Reed and Hayes' rivalry in ENT S3 that had been brewing for most of the season before they had it out with each other.

Didn't care for Scotty's severed thumb, it felt like I was watching a live-action Family Guy bit. I don't know if La'An's plot is supposed to play into her larger arc that's being set up for this season, but in isolation in this episode it felt cartoonish and Christina overplayed it.

Nitpicking: Kirk was vacationing on the same planet and decided to stay in uniform the whole time? OK then. Alpha Shift consists solely of characters in the opening credits? I saw "It's green" coming and it wasn't cute.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Well im getting prepared to watch it in a minute or two. Wish me luck.

 

[Quinton]

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an episode of Star Trek that would have felt more strangely at home on Farscape, but now I can cross that off a list I didn’t know I had.

 

[Greg Cox]

And Duck Soup is great. Just recommended it to a younger colleague.

Horse Feathers is my favorite Marx Bros. movie, in part because it's the first one I ever saw as a kid, but I figured Duck Soup is better known.

 

[Starflight]

This style of comedy does feel very, very old hat now, and feels like it's become the default for so much American fiction that tries for comedy. I don't even know what you'd call it, but as other people have pointed out, it's very Family Guy - slew of pop culture references (or self-references in SNW's case), sudden violence/injury, characters yelling embarrassing shit. Chapel in the bingo hall was painful (all credit to Jess Bush for doing the best anyone could do with it though), same for La'an's stuff (and similar credit to Chong).

The parts that really landed here for me were the much more small-scale jokes based around characters - Spock apologising for "the mess" because a single chess piece was out of place was quite funny. Gooding's scenes worked too but that was mostly on the strength of the performance rather than the concept or writing.

I happened to watch the new King of the Hill right after I watched tonight's episode, I saw the episode where Hank helps Peggy tackle the menopause, and it had more laughs in the first five minutes than SNW managed in 45. People rag on the Berman comedy episodes, and some are truly shit, but I think I got more laughs out of "Worst Case Scenario" or even "Rascals" than I did with this one. That said, SNW can be very funny when it wants, I thought "Spock Amok" worked really well except for Spock suddenly decking the guy near the end.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Well, they've fallen back into the silliness with this one.

There were a few moments here and there that I liked, including every moment of screen time Una gets. Glad Ortegas finally got some development here.

More Kirk. Jayzus Mary and Joseph. It never ends.

This one gets a major eyeroll and shrug, and the acknowledgement that once again we've wasted an entire ten percent of the season with a nonsense episode.

 

[daedalus5]

3 episodes in a row that were good. It was nice seeing Scotty and Ortegas working together. It was a good plot idea to go to such a party atmosphere planet. The Klingon ballad was great, as was the “it’s green” drink which was already a tip of the hat to data tipping the hat to TOS. Bravo writers, you’re doing much better this season. Fun Star Trek.

 

[firehawk12]

Kind of surprised this episode is divisive. I actually enjoyed it more than the first 2. lol