Spoilers Strange New Worlds 1x01 - "Strange New Worlds"

[mr.peany]

Between this and Heartstopper I’ve had a week where I haven’t stopped smiling at my TV. Even the finale of Picard made my heart very full.

The first episode just exuded a lot of heart that I’ve missed in trek for quite some time.

 

[Zod]

Really enjoyed this first episode. Best pilot episode of this new Trek era. Best since broken bow in my humble opinion, which I thought was pretty good as well. This is slightly better than that one was.

Love the new intro. Well written, paced and the effects were good. Can't wait for the next episode.

 

[Jayson1]

What's interesting about the ending is part of me wonders if they might take away another message. These humans nearly destroyed their planet yet now they fly around in ships far more advanced than we do. Perhaps massive destruction won't be so bad in the long run because we can still have what these humans have.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So, did any one else think "Silent Running" when Pike was talking about the forests?

 

[Commander Troi]

I was insanely happy with the episode. It was FUN!

Pike’s dismisal of calling General Order 1 the Prime Directive with “that’ll never stick,” made me smile.

It made me laugh!

Pike’s in a relationship with Wynnona Earp

I think Spock might be to hot with his shirt off.

I immediately said, "I see Ethan's been working out!" Impressive.

I’ll watch it repeatedly and still not care about the stuff mentioned here.

Canon is futile.

Amen guys!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

So, did any one else think "Silent Running" when Pike was talking about the forests?

From upthread, earlier today:

I loved the nods to Silent Running. But in the Star Trek universe, they didn't abandon the forest pods. That was beautiful. That part also dovetailed nicely and obviously intentionally with "Space Seed."

 

[Nerys Myk]

From upthread, earlier today:

I might have skipped a page or twenty.

Some time the discussions start going nowhere.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Some time the discussions start going nowhere.

It's like the Bugs Bunny square dance sometimes.

As for what the nods (plural) were that I saw, it was the forest dome visual itself coupled with the fact that they were launched during an environmental crisis in order to preserve them.

To reiterate, I like that they tied it into "Space Seed." It fits together nicely. Also, I fully support pushing the Eugenics Wars ahead into the future (relative to now).

 

[NCC-73515]

I had the same reaction from when they first announced her name, but she's also won me over so far.
I'm curious to see what connection they establish between her and her most famous ancestor. I'm hoping it's something creative and unpredictable.

She is

Spoiler

his granddaughter

"Just like you said, whoever has the biggest stick wins. And in this case, that is me."

The only thing better than this line at that moment is the way that Mount delivers it.

It would've worked better for me if the ship hovering over the city hadn't been in the trailer

What I don't understand is how they had high-def videos of all the nukes going off everywhere in cities and from orbital cameras when, on several occasions in TOS (and TNG too, maybe?), they mentioned that old sci-fi cliche of how "records of that era are spotty at best".

There are a lot of videos that show how the Titanic sank - none were filmed as it happened

Picard said the Phoenix was on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in First Contact, which right now is in DC, but it's possible it could have been relocated/rebuilt somewhere else after WW3.

They could've moved the most important pieces to a secure bunker, then rebuilt the building after the attack

that music wasn’t background, it was central to the episode (and to lessons). If anything it should be compared to the mystery melody in discovery season 3…which was hardly a melody at all!

IIRC, it was a distress call modified by a star into a melody that different worlds incorporated into their cultures...

 

[Noname Given]

Japan was already working toward surrender (the US was fully aware of this) when we dropped the bombs. We did it not once, but twice, over several days. We murdered millions of innocents deliberately, not because we were desperate to end a war that was all but over, but as a show of military supremacy.

If Japan was so ready to surrender, why did the military attempt to Stage a coup once the Emperor had decided to surrender.

It's true that the Japanese would surrender if they got what they consider favorable terms; but the Allied Forces led by the US were not about to allow Japan to dictate any terms given the sneak attack they performed at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

And it's known that the military was training all Japanese citizens to fight, including children as young as 11 years old. This was being done in all Japanese schools. They wanted the US forces to invade, but thought if they made the invasion so costly in terms of US military casualties; they could get a situation that allowed them to surrender on their terms.

 

[Amaris]

If Japan was so ready to surrender, why did the military attempt to Stage a coup once the Emperor had decided to surrender.

Wait, so did we bomb the military that tried to coup Hirohito, or did we bomb two major cities with massive civilian populations? Because this sounds like a forced choice scenario, and it was not a forced choice on the part of the US. We did not have to drop bombs and kill hundreds of thousands immediately, and millions over the years from horrible radiation related illnesses. Why Japan and not Germany?

We are the only nation that has ever used a nuclear device on another nation in any kind of combat. We have no room to proclaim other nations a danger to the world when we hold that ghastly trophy in our hands.

It's true that the Japanese would surrender if they got what they consider favorable terms; but the Allied Forces led by the US were not about to allow Japan to dictate any terms given the sneak attack they performed at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

So we did it out of revenge? That sounds worse than doing it because we thought they wouldn't surrender, and of course the Japanese government would negotiate for things the US would consider off the table, that's why they're negotiations. The US, if it were so interested, could have worked things out if they wanted, but as you say, they weren't about to let Japan get away with catching them by surprise at Pearl Harbor.

And it's known that the military was training all Japanese citizens to fight, including children as young as 11 years old. This was being done in all Japanese schools. They wanted the US forces to invade, but thought if they made the invasion so costly in terms of US military casualties; they could get a situation that allowed them to surrender on their terms.

That's convenient. Where else have I heard that <insert enemy population> has been training their children to attack the US should they invade? To put it another way, the US military is very good at looking like it had no other choice when it bombs two major cities and kills thousands of innocents, so they claim the innocents weren't so innocent.

It's the police equivalent of "they weren't angels," when they shoot a minority. The narrative has to always be the person with total power had no other choice, and in the case of the US dropping two nuclear bombs on the civilians of Japan, they had to make it seem as if there were no other choice. Of course, as we get further away from the history that was painted by the US military, we find glaring holes in that logic.

After the battle of Midway, Japan began talking amongst itself about surrender.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-the-us-really-bombed-hiroshima/

The bomb was dropped, they say, to save the lives of thousands of Americans who would otherwise have been killed in an invasion of Japan’s home islands. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely destroyed, and the lives of 135,000 to 300,000 mostly Japanese women, children, and old people were sacrificed—most young men were away at war—as the result of a terrible but morally just calculus aimed at bringing an intractable war to a close.

This story may assuage the conscience of the air museum visitor, but it is largely myth, fashioned to buttress our memories of the “good” war. By and large, the top generals and admirals who managed World War II knew better. Consider the small and little-noticed plaque hanging in the National Museum of the US Navy that accompanies the replica of “Little Boy,” the weapon used against the people of Hiroshima: In its one paragraph, it makes clear that Truman’s political advisers overruled the military in determining how the end of the war with Japan would be approached. Furthermore, contrary to the popular myths around the atomic bomb’s nearly magical power to end the war, the Navy Museum’s explication of the history clearly indicates that “the vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military.”

Indeed, it would have been surprising if they had: Despite the terrible concentrated power of atomic weapons, the firebombing of Tokyo earlier in 1945 and the destruction of numerous Japanese cities by conventional bombing killed far more people. The Navy Museum acknowledges what many historians have long known: It was only with the entry of the Soviet Union’s Red Army into the war two days after the bombing of Hiroshima that the Japanese moved to finally surrender. Japan was used to losing cities to American bombing; what their military leaders feared more was the destruction of the country’s military by an all-out Red Army assault.

The top American military leaders who fought World War II, much to the surprise of many who are not aware of the record, were quite clear that the atomic bomb was unnecessary, that Japan was on the verge of surrender, and—for many—that the destruction of large numbers of civilians was immoral. Most were also conservatives, not liberals. Adm. William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, wrote in his 1950 memoir I Was There that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.… In being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

The commanding general of the US Army Air Forces, Henry “Hap” Arnold, gave a strong indication of his views in a public statement 11 days after Hiroshima was attacked. Asked on August 17 by a New York Times reporter whether the atomic bomb caused Japan to surrender, Arnold said that “the Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.”

Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that “the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.” Adm. William “Bull” Halsey Jr., the commander of the US Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946 that “the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment…. It was a mistake to ever drop it…. [The scientists] had this toy, and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it…”

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower stated in his memoirs that when notified by Secretary of War Henry Stimson of the decision to use atomic weapons, he “voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” He later publicly declared, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Even the famous hawk Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, the head of the Twenty-First Bomber Command, went public the month after the bombing, telling the press that “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

The record is quite clear: From the perspective of an overwhelming number of key contemporary leaders in the US military, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not a matter of military necessity. American intelligence had broken the Japanese codes, knew the Japanese government was trying to negotiate surrender through Moscow, and had long advised that the expected early August Russian declaration of war, along with assurances that Japan’s emperor would be allowed to stay as a figurehead, would bring surrender long before the first step in a November US invasion could begin.

Historians still do not have a definitive answer to why the bombs were used. Given that US intelligence advised the war would likely end if Japan was given assurances regarding the emperor—and given that the US military knew it would have to keep the emperor to help control occupied Japan in any event—something else clearly seems to have been important. We know that some of Truman’s closest advisers viewed the bomb as a diplomatic and not simply a military weapon. Secretary of State James Byrnes, for instance, believed that the use of atomic weapons would help the United States more strongly dominate the postwar era. According to Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard, who met with Byrnes on May 28, 1945, “[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia’s postwar behavior…[and thought] that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia.”

History is rarely simple, and confronting it head-on, with critical honesty, is often quite painful. Myths, no matter how oversimplified or blatantly false, are too often far more likely to be embraced than inconvenient and unsettling truths. Even now, for instance, we see how difficult it is for the average US citizen to come to terms with the brutal record of slavery and white supremacy that underlies so much of our national story. Remaking our popular understanding of the “good” war’s climactic act is likely to be just as hard. But if the Confederate battle flag can come down in South Carolina, we can perhaps one day begin to ask ourselves more challenging questions about the nature of America’s global power and what is true and what is false about why we really dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.

Granted, this is all for another topic, but this notion that we had no choice to drop two bombs on Japanese men, women, and children is false. It is a blatant retelling of US history to make us look like the good guys, because good guys wouldn't purposely target civilians, would they?

So why the bomb? Why two bombs? Why on civilians? Why when Japan was talking conditional surrender?

Just something to consider.

I'll get back to the topic at hand now.

 

[Tuskin38]

Huh, I just saw it pointed out, but Pike and Spock were the only male bridge crew in episode 1.

Watched the episode twice, and never noticed.

 

[Amaris]

Huh, I just saw it pointed out, but Pike and Spock were the only male bridge crew in episode 1.

Watched the episode twice, and never noticed.

First thing I noticed when I watched, because I noticed the two women at helm and nav, and took a quick look around while they were panning. I just thought it was very cool, almost like an inverse of the original TOS pilot where it was all men and one woman on the bridge.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

I watched it and absolutely loved it! Only had two complaints: Captain Pike's hair (which, at first, looked ultra-douchey, but has since grown on me), and Spock's hair seemed very messy for a Vulcan (but it's growing on me also, so no worries!)

 

[Sci]

Yep. This is right in line with Pike’s extremely tolerant attitudes toward religions in “New Eden” as well.

Frankly, I’d much rather have Trek with a main character like Pike who doesn’t preach about one side being better or one opinion being “right” when it comes to social/political/philosophical issues. I have no desire to live in an ideological echo chamber. I’d rather have the thoughtful introspection that ultimately, no one philosophy was “to blame/evil” while the other was just “innocent/good.”

I'd be fine with that if we weren't talking about fascists who quite literally tried to violently overthrow the U.S. government and install an unelected dictator. That's not something Star Trek should be "both sides"-ing about.

 

[Mr Awe]

I normally would, but the original comment was about loss of population, so I addressed that. Then it was destruction, so I addressed that. About fallout, however, it depends on a number of factors which, honestly, and thankfully, we have no experience from which to extrapolate.

Radioactive fallout AND a nuclear winter. There is some data for extrapolating the nuclear winter due to volcanoes on Earth and the large dust storms on Mars.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I feel like I haven't seen Angry Joe's review linked yet. Doesn't it usually get linked by someone, or the score mentioned at least? I wonder if something could've changed to make them less interested in his opinion this time around...

 

[Nerys Myk]

I watched it and absolutely loved it! Only had two complaints: Captain Pike's hair (which, at first, looked ultra-douchey, but has since grown on me), and Spock's hair seemed very messy for a Vulcan (but it's growing on me also, so no worries!)

I assume it's based on Spock's The Cage hair

cut.

 

[JRoss]

Huh. Reminded me of the best parts of The Orville. Not bad at all.

 

[Rusty0918]

I was curious if "Ain't it Cool News" had anything to say about Strange New Worlds. Apparently not.