Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 4x08 - "Orders of Magnitude"

[Holomedicus]

Really enjoyed the episode, one of my favourites of the season so far. I have other thoughts about it but a theory came to mind regarding

Spoiler

M'Benga considering what we know about his war service on J'Gal already: did Reegar deliberately get him sent to the front lines after the Battle of Beta Reticuli, considering he would be the most aware of what actually happened to Reegar medically during the battle? If so, that's ruthless but I suppose not beyond his capabilities given how petty he was to George Kirk.

 

[Seven of Five]

An easy 10 this week.

My favourite episode since Season 2!

Even with the Eeeevil Admiral trope in play, I was still caught up.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

On continuity, the Enterprise was in the Madena system. This system is otherwise known as Omega Sagitta, the system that a later Enterprise would visit in "The Outrageous Okona".

And, on another point of continuity, the Argus system was visited again by the Enterprise in "Obsession", where James Kirk started a pursuit of a creature that attacked the Farragut early in his career and where his decisions on the pursuit were challenged. Like the admiral here, he had to consider the costs if he didn't act to destroy the threat.

 

[Aragorn]

Anyone else get a Crimson Tide vibe while watching this? I'm thinking John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein might need to come up with a new idea for their Star Trek movie. Strange New Worlds just stole their lunch money.

They're doing homages to Simpson/Bruckheimer movies. Next episode, after M'Benga gets the boot by the bad admiral, he hitches a ride on a prisoner transport that gets hijacked and has to save the day. Then in the following episode, in order to save George's life, Jim has to steal 50 starships in 72 hours.

 

[Moopsy]

I gave it a solid 9; I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. Oddly, though, parts of the episode reminded me of the infamous TOS episode "Turnabout Intruder".

 

[Aragorn]

Took me a few minutes to guess the Andorian leader based on voice. Currie Graham might be best known for being the LT on the final season of NYPD Blue, Agent Carter, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, or more recently, Nolan's rich friend on The Rookie.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I have a feeling this might come up, so to get ahead of it. The Andorians we see in this episode are not violating the canon. Long ago, in "The Survivors" (TNG), we have this piece of dialog:

WORF: Captain, a search of the Ranian system has determined that the hostile force that attacked this planet is no longer present.
PICARD: I remember a Starfleet admiral once saying the same thing about some renegade Andorians in the Triangulum system. It turns out that they had dismantled their ship and hidden it.
WORF: Those Andorians did not have to contend with someone of my thoroughness. I will stake my reputation.

However, I do have to do a serious nitpick on this episode. They show a wormhole near Cardassia Prime. This would be the Bajoran wormhole, which wasn't officially discovered for another century.

 

[Tosk]

A good episode, I enjoyed it.

 

[Yoda]

That was actually pretty decent.

"It's just an SOS signal, you totally don't need a security detail for an SOS."

I was pleasantly surprised that Pike showed up for a B-plot. I just thought Anson kinda shuffled off into the cave to play with his kids or whatever. But turns out his kids weren't in the cave and there was actually more episode in there. Crazy!

Why does La'an say Admirality instead of Admiralty? Nobody on set bothered to correct her?

The reasoning for Kirk showing up, as usual, is rather weak, but at least it was all covered by the script. They started teasing more gross Kirk/Spock/La'an stuff, but that was largely sidestepped by having a plot and characters actually attending to duties and whatnot.

It definitely seemed a lot like the Crimson Tide Trek movie they're talking about. The badmiral even threw in A Few Good Men for good measure. He really had no aura, though. I guess since ultimately he's a bit of a kook and not actually that much of a war hero it's not unreasonable, but he spends a lot of the episode walking around like his Metamucil is just kicking in. I think they could have cast someone a bit more intimidating.

Good episode for the Kirks, including the backstory with pops. The sensor calibration shenanigans were reasonably clever. Heck, Jim even got cooked a bit by good old-fashioned fake uhhh... nadion particles instead of fucking neutrinos! Jim Kirk kinda forgot about Kodos the Executioner when pondering the moral dilemma of offing ~5,000 people to (maybe) save millions.

The SFX sequence with disabling that freighter with a torpedo was nice and simple viewscreen stuff. None of that outside-the-ship zoomy-camera 3D I'M ORTEGAS I FLY THE SHIP LOOK AT ME BARREL ROLL NOW THIS IS PODRACING bullshit this show has been littered with.

I'm not so sure about the 41.4% chance of blowing it up, though -- nah, La'an is a pretty good shot. I don't think the point of contention was so much that she wouldn't hit the target, but that the ship was rickety and prone to just blowing up from being hit exactly where intended.

I wasn't really bothered by the cordrazine scheme, though I'm not sure it added much beyond giving M'Benga a convenient way to take the fall for Kirk and get himself off the Enterprise for a while.

I had to laugh a bit at Chapel waiting in the wings to nag poor M'Benga some more. Really could do without their scenes the past couple of weeks.

Did they just write out my Vulcan girl? Well, at least they didn't kill her off. And, "you know what, Starfleet just isn't for me" is kind of refreshing.

Action Hero Uhura was a bit much. Battlefield promotion? I don't know, kinda seems like they could just go the regular promotion route? That and Admiral Coffee saying "dismissed" on the bridge to Kirk, even though that was kind of where his job was, came off as weird. Feels like the Trek faux-navy trappings aren't quite right.

I'm feeling generous and it's definitely better than any other episode this season, 7.

 

[indranee]

Just watched it. Will do a rewatch tonight but judging from what I saw... this one is easily one of the very best of this season and perhaps in the top ten of all SNW eps. I detected a strong similarity to The Ultimate Computer but was a lot more nuanced and complex. Absorbing and enjoyable, and very, very Trek. Bravo. Not grading it yet... will do so after I watch again. Two points: I'm actually glad that they have made Dr. M'Benga an older version of who he seemed to be in TOS. It makes him that much more riveting to have the history they seem to be in the process of revealing in this series, so I'm very happy about that. Also, I will grant that I rolled my eyes to see yet another attempt to shoehorn Jim Kirk into yet another SNW episode, but 1) for once we hear his personal log explaining his reasons to be there, 2) it gave Sam a chance to be front and center of the story, and 3) gave us a truly fantastic, very Kirkian story. I am still not sold ON THE LOOK but I am warming to how he's being played. That's it for now.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The mere fact that Joe Morton is the Badmiral will make me tune in.

Also the voice of Peter David's Captain Mackenzie Calhoun in the "Star Trek: New Frontier" audio productions of the novels! (Not that I enjoyed his particular interpretation of Calhoun that much, but he is always an intriguing actor.)


Admiral Simon Reeger by Ian McLean, on Flickr

So many Andorians! I was scratching my head over the main Andorian, and I now realise that it is the same guy, Currie Graham, who played star sportswriter Nate Knaborski in "Suddenly Susan"! Loved that show with so many quirky and hilarious characters.


Currie Graham as an Andorian by Ian McLean, on Flickr

This episode was very involving. My first 10 in ages, I think! Bravo!

 

[Campe]

I had some issues while the episode was going on, but god help me if I can remember those are now. This ending of the episode was pretty incredible overall. Joe Morton, man. 10/10.

 

[Origami Chicken]

I want to say Superman just because it looks like they found the Fortress of Solitude. And maybe Badmiral Morton is Lex Luthor. And maybe this is all a stretch.

In the finale of this season we are definitely going to Krypton. Pre explosion and they don’t know about the yellow sun power possibility. Star Fleet’s dilemma is whether we tell them - a variation on the Prime Directive where we considering holding them back.

Done in the style of either the Reeve Superman series or 1967 Batman.

 

[Finn]

I loved this one. I did feel they were underreacting to the news of five million dead. I was starting to expect a twist like there wasn't that many dead or something.

And now they got a big problem...who are they? It's not Romulans...at least I wouldn't make it them (given how they were presented in their appearances in TOS). It's not the Gorn as that was last season's baddie.

 

[thribs]

Missed opportunity not having Kiefer Sutherland playing the admiral here. Have him enact the “Jack Bauer” protocol.

 

[thribs]

I loved this one. I did feel they were underreacting to the news of five million dead. I was starting to expect a twist like there wasn't that many dead or something.

And now they got a big problem...who are they? It's not Romulans...at least I wouldn't make it them (given how they were presented in their appearances in TOS). It's not the Gorn as that was last season's baddie.

I really thought they were teasing the Borg. I’m amazed this show hasn’t done them yet.
I don’t think it’s the Romulans. Seems too early for them.

 

[Jayson1]

Loved the episode. Best of the season and a all-time classics. Admiral went from Jellico to Maxwell to Garth in the span of a hour. Loved the bond between the Kirk brothers and just everything worked. Also cool seeing Uhura get promoted.

 

[Mr. Patient]

Maybe it's Maybelline.

Nope, it's cordrazine

 

[eschaton]

By the standards of this season, a great episode - honestly the best episode of the season yet, though not without some minor flaws.

The biggest structural issue I have with the episode is that to a certain extent it's not an episode of SNW. This is an episode which is Kirk vs. Admiral Reeger. The backstory of George Kirk is integral to the story, and Sam Kirk gets a larger role than most of the main cast. The regular characters here are largely either set dressing or mostly exist as sounding boards for Jim Kirk.

That said, what a fantastic A-plot. Joe Morton is great as Reeger, perhaps the best "evil admiral" in all of Star Trek. He begins the episode appearing affable, with cracks in the facade slowly developing as he is more and more overtaken by his anger. Wesley also puts in his best performance to date as Kirk. I can finally see why here the showrunners have such a hard on for the Year One concept, because they obviously are more interested into diving into Kirk's psyche than doing anything with Pike any longer. The episode also has a level of ambiguity which has been missing in a lot of modern Trek, examining conflicts between the chain of command and following a moral code. I especially loved the final scene with M'Benga and Kirk. Yes, M'Benga is taking the fall to align canon and allow for his demotion, but what Joseph said still rang true. It also means that Kirk eventually does him a solid by allowing him to come back into service. Great all around.

That said, I'm a little confused by the timeline this episode suggests. I wasn't following the details of the admiral's war experience closely, but I presumed the win he (falsely) took credit for over George Kirk was during the Klingon War, which canonically took place 5 to 6 years ago in universe. And yet, there's all this discussion of how the elder Kirk's career went nowhere due to his conflict with the admiral, with the last scene implying that Jim and Sam were still kids for much of this? Yet M'Benga served with the admiral, and he's clearly not an old man. The more I squint, the less this whole backstory makes sense.

I also don't understand how the episode ends with Reeger still an admiral. It seemed strongly implied, due to how he commandeered the Enterprise and refused to contact Starfleet, that he had "gone rogue" and was sending the ship on a private mission. Am I to believe it's just normal course of duty to let admirals to dictate actions independent of Starfleet command without consequence? Sure, he didn't get his way on the mission, but it's implied he still has enough pull left to destroy Joseph's career which is...odd, considering his actions over the course of the episode.

The B-plot in the cave with the Andorian criminals is pretty transparently there just to keep Pike/Una off the ship to allow for the A-plot to take place. Nothing here really matters other than Uhura's, arc, which leads to her promotion. It was a bit ambiguous whether she was taking initiative or faking betraying the crew on Pike's orders, but I suppose it worked out in the end. Didn't buy that she could defeat that Andorian dude in hand-to-hand combat, but TV show logic, I guess. Perhaps they should've made the lead Andorian who was ex-Starfleet someone who served under Reeger - would've reeked of small universe, but provided some thematic connection to two otherwise disconnected subplots.

While I'm glad they didn't kill As'ha, this was kind of a damp squib to her presence on the show. I hope that although she announced her intention to leave Starfleet here, we get a little bit more with her in the final two episodes before she leaves the ship, because the farewell in sickbay seemed truncated.

So yeah, some minor quibbles, but man, if the season was stuffed with these, instead of mediocre genre homages, I'd complain about little overall. Let's hope Episode 10 is of a similar caliber.

 

[NCC-73515]