Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

[azrael]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's not exactly the same failure...

  Reveal hidden contents

... since the holodeck isn't malfunctioning.  It's doing exactly what La'an asked it to.  The problem is it's tied into the ship's main computer and her "Elementary, Dear Data"-ish request for a mystery equal to her talents caused it to bottleneck the rest of the ship's access to power and computer resources.

Side comment. I gotta give props to the writer of this episode for doing their homework. The whole holodeck needing its own power supply came from Voyager and later, Picard. Physical characteristics based of the transporter's pattern buffer came from DS9 when they had to store the patterns in a large enough storage space (namely the holosuite). The duotronic computer systems of the 23rd century likely made independent holodeck servers infeasible but the latter 24th century isolinear systems made it feasible. 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Well, now it is 3 horrible episodes in a row.  Can the writers not steal from other Trek. Get a new idea.  Can they make 4.  I liked season 1 and 2.  Season 3 i such a let down.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

Side comment. I gotta give props to the writer of this episode for doing their homework.

Yep, I made a similar remark in my original response to the episode.

They managed to work in a nod to TAS and do a holodeck episode in a way that not only doesn't contradict any prior series continuity but also provides an explanation for a remark made way back in season one of Voyager about holodecks having dedicated power systems incompatible with the rest of the ship.

If only Star Trek: Discovery had showed half as much attention to detail, it might've been a vastly different and far better show.

[Thom]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's not exactly the same failure...

  Hide contents

... since the holodeck isn't malfunctioning.  It's doing exactly what La'an asked it to.  The problem is it's tied into the ship's main computer and her "Elementary, Dear Data"-ish request for a mystery equal to her talents caused it to bottleneck the rest of the ship's access to power and computer resources.

 

Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking there.  Maybe they were trying for a more Janeway-esque aesthetic since she was in command?  Not a style that suits her, IMO.  

 

Teasers for what IINM is tomorrow's episode suggest they are absolutely not throwing Ortegas's subplot away, since they're bringing her brother back.

 

 

Malfunction in that they are trapped inside, have to complete the program and what they are doing is effecting the rest of the ship kind of way.

Which is weird in that I prefer Janeway's original look with her hair down as well. Must be just a quirk of mine about women's hair.

And I guess I could squeal about SPOILERS, but if they are teasing it even if I am choosing to remain not so.... oh well.

[Seto Kaiba]

15 minutes ago, Thom said:

Malfunction in that they are trapped inside, have to complete the program and what they are doing is effecting the rest of the ship kind of way.

Being trapped inside is fairly common, as are the safety protocols not working, but usually how it plays out is that some outside force somehow screws up the holodeck and the main characters have to stall for time while folks outside try to fix things or otherwise escape the holodeck through irregular means.  I don't recall any offhand that required the characters to explicitly finish the program.

 

15 minutes ago, Thom said:

Which is weird in that I prefer Janeway's original look with her hair down as well. Must be just a quirk of mine about women's hair.

I'm no style guru for sure... but that new hairstyle they tried out in "Shuttle to Kenfori" definitely has a lot of people saying it's not the right look for the actress.  A lot of folks seem to think it looks less like a wig and more like some kind of weird hat.

[Thom]

13 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Being trapped inside is fairly common, as are the safety protocols not working, but usually how it plays out is that some outside force somehow screws up the holodeck and the main characters have to stall for time while folks outside try to fix things or otherwise escape the holodeck through irregular means.  I don't recall any offhand that required the characters to explicitly finish the program.

 

I'm no style guru for sure... but that new hairstyle they tried out in "Shuttle to Kenfori" definitely has a lot of people saying it's not the right look for the actress.  A lot of folks seem to think it looks less like a wig and more like some kind of weird hat.

I did like it and the resolution. That was a nice twist.

As for the hair, maybe it was a turban..?

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Thom said:

I did like it and the resolution. That was a nice twist.

As for the hair, maybe it was a turban..?

Maybe they can lampshade this in a later episode with Una growling "Don't remind me about that one!!" 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, Thom said:

As for the hair, maybe it was a turban..?

13 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Maybe they can lampshade this in a later episode with Una growling "Don't remind me about that one!!" 

It's being said that it was to avoid having to worry about correctly showing long hair moving in that brief zero gravity shot as the Enterprise...

Spoiler

... warps into Kenfori's upper atmosphere and enters freefall.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Bit of a horror-heavy season, eh?

Spoiler

So we've had our off-brand Xenomorphs in "Hegemony II", our standard zombies in "Shuttle to Kenfori", and now we're doing the Sealed Evil in a Can horror via "Through the Lens of Time".

Korby et. al. are visiting a non-Federation world chasing an archaeological mystery that points to one of the Federation's non-aligned neighbors (the M'Kroon) having once had an ancient intergalactic civilization.  The locals don't really care for the Federation, but are willing to allow a small landing party to study what they believe are the ancient ruins hidden on their planet.  Korby's crack team for this expedition includes Chapel, Uhura, Spock, La'an, Ortegas's kid brother Beto (a journalist/documentarist), the newbie Ensign Nurse Gamble, and a local who doesn't talk much.  Three guesses who doesn't make it out.  If you need more than one, please be disappointed in your lack of genre savvy for me.

Spoiler

Not only is this the kind of obvious setup we're long used to as far back as TOS where a bunch of main characters beam down along with "Ensign Ricky" or whoever that we've never seen before, and you just know Ensign Ricky ain't gonna make it out.

The writers don't even try to hide it.  Ensign Gamble has been in a few previous episodes but had only a line or to here or there.  Not only is he a background character in the story who is suddenly getting focus and character development, he's a black guy in a horror story.  The poor guy is so incredibly doomed and you know from how the episode lays it on with a trowel that it is NOT going to be clean or quick either.

Nurse Chapel and Dr. Korby show the usual horror movie character lack of self-preservation and insist that The Mission Must Continue when Spock wants to call Enterprise and advise them of increased risk after they find a discover the corpses of a group who got trapped in the ruins centuries ago and starved to death.  Chapel, of course, decides she doesn't have to be careful with ancient artifacts either and starts fondling whatever geegaws she finds on the previous batch of would-be ruin explorers.  This leads to Gamble getting his eyes vaporized by a mysterious alien doodad.

What follows is a fairly standard and uninspired two-lines no-waiting horror story:

• On the one hand, the Away Team are trapped in the alien ruins thanks to the still-functional security system their guide triggered and got killed by, and need to find a way out of the standard horror walking simulator game Impossible Spaces(TM) they find themselves stuck in as they slowly realize it was meant to Keep Something In not Keep People Out.
• On the other, the crew of the Enterprise now have to contend with the Ancient Horror from the Beyond that has escaped containment by possessing and reanimating the corpse of Ensign Dana Gamble.

The only way the episode maintains any tension at all with its fairly cliched horror plot is by having Dr. M'Benga act completely oblivious.  Even after he discovers that Ensign Gamble is, in every measurable sense, physically and mentally dead and starting to rot but still inexplicably moving around he never summons security or informs the captain that something is terribly amiss with the ensign.  Mere months after dealing with a planet of literal zombies, mind you!  He doesn't seem to realize something is truly WRONG with Gamble until Gamble starts in with the standard demonic possession-style mind games and knowing things he shouldn't or couldn't know.  The B-plot doesn't finally get moving under its own power until the last 8 minutes or so when "Gamble" breaks out of the brig and starts killing his way across the ship, only to be gunned down by Pellia and the alien possessing his corpse beamed into the transporter buffer by Scotty.

The episode ends with Pellia laying it on with a trowel about how these creatures are Evil Incarnate, and Dr. M'Benga studying the evil alien trapped in the transporter buffer (which messes with the computer screen) before calling Gamble's family to inform them of his death.

 

All in all, I'm pretty disappointed by this episode.  It's not awful or even particularly bad... but it is painfully mediocre and terribly cliched.  

Its only real purpose seems to be setting up Dr. Korby's TOS-era fascination with finding a practical way to achieve physical immortality (c. "What Are Little Girls Made of?"), which I have to say doesn't feel particularly necessary or value-added.

[Thom]

Episode 4 was above and away, way better than the first three. My fav of the season so far.

Spoiler

I was actually thinking Gamble was going to be staying around, and was pleasantly surprised that they burned his eyes out! And then Doctor reported that his brain was basically dead... 

For me, nice level of mystery and suspense and I hope they keep this up.

My one problem...

Spoiler

...is Carol Kane. I'm really not liking her role in this. I know they're using her as comic relief, but it ain't working for me...

Thom

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Thom said:

My one problem...

  Hide contents

...is Carol Kane. I'm really not liking her role in this. I know they're using her as comic relief, but it ain't working for me...

Yeah, her character's flippant and often silly behavior is a poor fit for the series.

It's pretty obvious she was originally conceived as a Guinan-like "wise advisor" character who could dispense the wisdom from her millennia of life to help crewmembers with whatever problem they faced, but she's basically been demoted to comic relief in a series that doesn't really need it.  Less a Guinan and more a Neelix.  Hopefully come season four she'll end up replaced by Scotty, which is clearly the trajectory they're heading.

 

The writers using her as their vehicle for their latest attempt to brand a new alien threat as "pure evil" is pretty silly too.  Star Trek has always favored the idea that hostile aliens are not evil, just operating on different morality or different priorities, but Strange New Worlds tried to make the Gorn into "pure evil" in its first two seasons before walking it back and now we have this race of not-demons doing Exorcist things who are "pure evil" according to Pelia.

[Seto Kaiba]

"The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail"

Spoiler

For some reason, the Paramount Pictures logo on this one decided to strobe... that kind of hurt my eyes.

It's a Kirk episode?  We're introduced to James T. Kirk giving a log aboard the USS Farragut on its way to a planetary survey.  He's bored to tears on survey duty with his by-the-book Vulcan captain V'Rel... who seems to be trying to be the Vulcan with the messiest hair.  

Jeez, the lens flares in this are bad.  There's one shot where you can barely see the captain because a (pulsing) spotlight behind her is shining directly at the camera.

Spoiler

They're clearly under attack by J.J. Abrams, because no sooner are we blinded by the light than the planet the Farragut is orbiting blows up for no reason, thoroughly trashing the Farragut and leaving Captain V'Rel incapacitated with a serious head injury and Kirk scrambling to pick up the pieces as they discover they're being jammed.

The Enterprise warps in to the rescue and starts blasting debris away from the Farragut's path.  Scotty takes the time to namedrop John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor who demonstrated the first working mechanical television in 1926.  They find a crewman in the corridor who reports that they were attacked by something "huge" and Chapel goes over to the infirmary.  Uhura gets comms to the Enterprise online and Pike reports that the planet was destroyed by a massive tractor beam.  La'an mentions something about "The Destroyer of Worlds".  Apparently V'Rel ordered the crew to abandon ship, but Pike has kept a skeleton crew aboard so the Farragut can't be claimed as salvage.  

Somehow, this massive, MASSIVE ship has snuck up to well within visual range twice without anyone noticing.  Enterprise shoots at it without effect several times and is then pulled into a giant mouth-like bay on the ship's bow.  The enemy ship warps out, and Kirk discovers he is In Command since V'Rel was beamed to the Enterprise for medical treatment before the ship was taken.

The Enterprise is all wrapped up in cyber-tentacles inside the enemy ship.  Apparently this thing is the stuff of spacer legend, an ancient and powerful scavenger ship prowling the frontier and preying on any ships and planets it comes across from all the nearby galactic powers.  So it's up to the Farragut under its acting captain James T. Kirk to rescue the Enterprise and save the day.  

The stakes are raised when Kirk's borrowed crew discover that the scavengers are after a rare mineral called aldentium... which is apparently a material used in the propulsion systems of some alien species ships and not, as the name might suggest, to properly prepare pasta.  Helicon Gamma was destroyed to mine it, and the next nearest planet to them with a significant supply is a pre-warp civilization with a population of over 100 million.  Scotty tries to warn him the ship can't handle maximum warp, and Kirk blows it off and tells him to be ready for maximum warp.

Pelia, meanwhile, is glad for the first time to have lived through the 1980s as it offers a means to fix the ship's communication problem somehow?  Pike and co. take a team of just three to attack the umbilical draining Enterprise's power and predictably fumble it.  The Farragut easily overtakes the scavenger ship only for the plasma manifolds to blow out and strand her in the enemy ship's path.

Once again, the crew exhibit the bizarre drama-preserving handicap of forgetting their weapons have settings higher than "Stun".

Pelia's room is basically the same antique/curio shop that she ran on Earth in the alternate timeline.  She pulls all kinds of weird 80's memorabilia out of trunks including a Kit-Cat Clock, what looks to be an Atari 2600... and eventually a number of old landline telephone handsets.  Her master plan is to strip the Enterprise for copper cables and make twisted pair to run a landline telephone circuit.  (Pelia implies she was a roadie for the Grateful Dead.)

Meanwhile, Spock talks Kirk out of his first-command jitters and Kirk hits on a plan to fake an aldentium signature on the Farragut to get the scavengers to try to capture it, and make the ship itself into a trap.  He then has the crew fly it at the enemy ship and dumps the warp nacelles, tricking the scavenger ship into disabling itself when it tries catching the warp nacelles and accidentally zaps itself.  The Enterprise escapes, and Kirk's Farragut conveniently cherry-taps the enemy ship into blowing up by scoring one seriously lucky hit with a torpedo on some critical internal part.  They find 7,000 fading life signs in the debris, and both Pike and Kirk learn that the enemy ship was crewed by Humans.  

 

Remember the Pakled clumpships from the Star Trek: Lower Decks season one finale?  Writers David Reed and Bill Wolkoff sure hope you don't.

 

Spoiler

Because the Destroyer of Worlds that wiped out the planet Helicon Gamma and nearly destroyed both the Farragut and the Enterprise is an AMERICAN clumpship. 

Explicitly an American one... not "Earth" or "Human", but specifically an American ship with a crew so heinously evil, cruel, and greedy that even the Gorn consider them to be complete monsters.  

Turns out the clumpship was an American slower-than-light colony ship that was launched between the end of the Third World War and First Contact when it was believed the Earth was beyond saving.  The ship ultimately disappeared and somewhere along the way in the intervening centuries became a pirate ship preying on any and every ship and planet it came across, stealing technology and supplies to keep itself going.

 

[pengbuzz]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

"The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail"

  Hide contents

For some reason, the Paramount Pictures logo on this one decided to strobe... that kind of hurt my eyes.

It's a Kirk episode?  We're introduced to James T. Kirk giving a log aboard the USS Farragut on its way to a planetary survey.  He's bored to tears on survey duty with his by-the-book Vulcan captain V'Rel... who seems to be trying to be the Vulcan with the messiest hair.  

Jeez, the lens flares in this are bad.  There's one shot where you can barely see the captain because a (pulsing) spotlight behind her is shining directly at the camera.

  Hide contents

They're clearly under attack by J.J. Abrams, because no sooner are we blinded by the light than the planet the Farragut is orbiting blows up for no reason, thoroughly trashing the Farragut and leaving Captain V'Rel incapacitated with a serious head injury and Kirk scrambling to pick up the pieces as they discover they're being jammed.

The Enterprise warps in to the rescue and starts blasting debris away from the Farragut's path.  Scotty takes the time to namedrop John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor who demonstrated the first working mechanical television in 1926.  They find a crewman in the corridor who reports that they were attacked by something "huge" and Chapel goes over to the infirmary.  Uhura gets comms to the Enterprise online and Pike reports that the planet was destroyed by a massive tractor beam.  La'an mentions something about "The Destroyer of Worlds".  Apparently V'Rel ordered the crew to abandon ship, but Pike has kept a skeleton crew aboard so the Farragut can't be claimed as salvage.  

Somehow, this massive, MASSIVE ship has snuck up to well within visual range twice without anyone noticing.  Enterprise shoots at it without effect several times and is then pulled into a giant mouth-like bay on the ship's bow.  The enemy ship warps out, and Kirk discovers he is In Command since V'Rel was beamed to the Enterprise for medical treatment before the ship was taken.

The Enterprise is all wrapped up in cyber-tentacles inside the enemy ship.  Apparently this thing is the stuff of spacer legend, an ancient and powerful scavenger ship prowling the frontier and preying on any ships and planets it comes across from all the nearby galactic powers.  So it's up to the Farragut under its acting captain James T. Kirk to rescue the Enterprise and save the day.  

The stakes are raised when Kirk's borrowed crew discover that the scavengers are after a rare mineral called aldentium... which is apparently a material used in the propulsion systems of some alien species ships and not, as the name might suggest, to properly prepare pasta.  Helicon Gamma was destroyed to mine it, and the next nearest planet to them with a significant supply is a pre-warp civilization with a population of over 100 million.  Scotty tries to warn him the ship can't handle maximum warp, and Kirk blows it off and tells him to be ready for maximum warp.

Pelia, meanwhile, is glad for the first time to have lived through the 1980s as it offers a means to fix the ship's communication problem somehow?  Pike and co. take a team of just three to attack the umbilical draining Enterprise's power and predictably fumble it.  The Farragut easily overtakes the scavenger ship only for the plasma manifolds to blow out and strand her in the enemy ship's path.

Once again, the crew exhibit the bizarre drama-preserving handicap of forgetting their weapons have settings higher than "Stun".

Pelia's room is basically the same antique/curio shop that she ran on Earth in the alternate timeline.  She pulls all kinds of weird 80's memorabilia out of trunks including a Kit-Cat Clock, what looks to be an Atari 2600... and eventually a number of old landline telephone handsets.  Her master plan is to strip the Enterprise for copper cables and make twisted pair to run a landline telephone circuit.  (Pelia implies she was a roadie for the Grateful Dead.)

Meanwhile, Spock talks Kirk out of his first-command jitters and Kirk hits on a plan to fake an aldentium signature on the Farragut to get the scavengers to try to capture it, and make the ship itself into a trap.  He then has the crew fly it at the enemy ship and dumps the warp nacelles, tricking the scavenger ship into disabling itself when it tries catching the warp nacelles and accidentally zaps itself.  The Enterprise escapes, and Kirk's Farragut conveniently cherry-taps the enemy ship into blowing up by scoring one seriously lucky hit with a torpedo on some critical internal part.  They find 7,000 fading life signs in the debris, and both Pike and Kirk learn that the enemy ship was crewed by Humans.  

 

Remember the Pakled clumpships from the Star Trek: Lower Decks season one finale?  Writers David Reed and Bill Wolkoff sure hope you don't.

 

  Hide contents

Because the Destroyer of Worlds that wiped out the planet Helicon Gamma and nearly destroyed both the Farragut and the Enterprise is an AMERICAN clumpship. 

Explicitly an American one... not "Earth" or "Human", but specifically an American ship with a crew so heinously evil, cruel, and greedy that even the Gorn consider them to be complete monsters.  

Turns out the clumpship was an American slower-than-light colony ship that was launched between the end of the Third World War and First Contact when it was believed the Earth was beyond saving.  The ship ultimately disappeared and somewhere along the way in the intervening centuries became a pirate ship preying on any and every ship and planet it came across, stealing technology and supplies to keep itself going.

 

Spoiler

I fear the end results of this episode may result in some political points that cannot be discussed here.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

  Hide contents

I fear the end results of this episode may result in some political points that cannot be discussed here.

Possible, but unlikely IMO.  Aside from the blatant creator provincialism on display the reveal of the ship's origins has little-to-nothing to do with the actual story or its Aesop.

The focus of the episode's conclusion isn't the scavengers, it's what James T. Kirk learns about the weight of responsibility that comes with being in command in his first outing in the big chair.

The scavengers really could have been anybody and it wouldn't have mattered much in the end.  What's far more likely to provoke discussion is that this goofy ****ing thing looks right out of Warhammer 40,000.

Spoiler

Let's be honest, someone on the Destroyer of Worlds's crew is a massive MASSIVE edgelord.  Who else would make the prow of their ship into a massive skull with a hangar inside the mouth?

 

[JB0]

"Hey guys! What if Space Seed but also Doomsday Machine!"

[TehPW]

On 8/15/2025 at 7:37 AM, pengbuzz said:

  Reveal hidden contents

I fear the end results of this episode may result in some political points that cannot be discussed here.

 

i watched Trekyard's YT post about this episode and i asked if the USA flag could or would be changed edited based on the country or region the episode is aired in?

 

 

Edited Monday at 03:17 AM by TehPW

[Seto Kaiba]

58 minutes ago, TehPW said:

i watched Trekyard's YT post about this episode and i asked if the USA flag could or would be changed edited based on the country or region the episode is aired in?

Almost certainly not, IMO.

There are a few countries that have laws and/or media regulations that restrict or outright prohibit the depiction or use of certain national flags in media, but the US flag is not typically one of them.  Especially not in the countries where an American-made series like Star Trek is aired or streamed.

There wouldn't really be any other reason to go to the expense and trouble to change the flag in the scene except to avoid a Top Gun: Maverick-type situation.  Multiple prior episodes of Star Trek incl. TNG's "The Royale" and VOY's "One Small Step" had already pretty well established that the Americans led the rush to other planets and into extrasolar space too.

Spoiler

Not that the Russians were uninvolved, with TNG "Up the Long Ladder" establishing that the DY-500 that colonized Bringloid and Mariposa launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

 

Edited Monday at 04:18 AM by Seto Kaiba

[Thom]

Another good episode! The last two have really cranked it up from the first three, which were good-meh-good, and now very good and very good.

Really liked that a lot was from Kirk's angle in this one, and we got some space battles and some wrecked ships along the way. 

Two things I didn't like was the cartoony look of the scavenger ship and how the number of crew on Enterprise just disappeared. They had most of Farragut's crew aboard as well as their own and Pike, La'an and Dead Redshirt Gal are seen running though almost empty corridors. Leads me to assuming their security detail consisted of just La'an and the Sacrifice. 😁 I can only assume it's budget concerns whenever they leave the bridge (or quarters) for a populated set like the corridors. More actors (even background) equals more money.

Still, liking the upward trend from the start. Much rather climbing than declining towards the season finale.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Thom said:

Two things I didn't like was the cartoony look of the scavenger ship and how the number of crew on Enterprise just disappeared. They had most of Farragut's crew aboard as well as their own and Pike, La'an and Dead Redshirt Gal are seen running though almost empty corridors. Leads me to assuming their security detail consisted of just La'an and the Sacrifice. 😁

That happens a lot in Star Trek for some reason.  Presumably a symptom of The Main Characters Do Everything.

It's been particularly egregious in Kurtzman's Trek though, with just a handful of baddies somehow capturing a ship with a crew of hundreds effortlessly.  

 

EDIT: In hindsight, this is probably borderline excusable in Star Trek: Discovery since the ship is both very large and literally larger on the inside after the 32nd century refit and has a crew of less that 150 compared to the 200+ on Pike's Enterprise, the 400+ on Kirk's.

Edited Wednesday at 08:52 PM by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

On 8/20/2025 at 12:35 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

 compared to the 200+ on Pike's Enterprise, the 400+ on Kirk's.

Wait... they crammed two hundred more people onto Kirk's Enterprise? O.O

Did he date all the women aboard and run out or something?! 🤪

Spoiler

Sorry Seto...  you need some teasing!  

Edited 23 hours ago by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Wait... they crammed two hundred more people onto Kirk's Enterprise? O.O

One of the many details that changed between the first Star Trek pilot "The Cage" and the series proper was the size of the Enterprise's crew.

Captain Pike mentions the Enterprise's crew as being 203 people (excluding himself) in "The Cage".  When the subject of the size of the Enterprise's crew comes up in the first season episode "Charlie X", Captain Kirk's Enterprise is said to have a crew of 428.  They stuck with that number for the rest of the series and most of the movies.

Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ran with the numbers from that original series pilot episode as the normal crew of the Enterprise during Pike's era.

 

Spoiler

One could argue that the reason the Strange New Worlds version of the Enterprise is so roomy and so posh compared to its TOS incarnation is precisely because its crew is less than half the size.  With fewer total crew quarters modules needed, the Enterprise can accommodate larger quarters for the crew it DOES have and even luxuries like the ship's bar that largely disappear by Kirk's time.

(It'll be interesting to see if Strange New Worlds ever remembers the Enterprise has a theater and a bowling alley.)

 

[Thom]

Also good to keep in mind that the number of crew can change depending on mission needs. So I imagine that it could fluctuate easily between 200 and 400 due to requirements. 

In fact, if they do 'de-evolve' the Enterprise before Kirk gets it, then the larger crew could be required because of less automation, which then of course would require more, smaller, crew quarters to fit them all. I really hope they don't do that, as I do love her current look!

As to this weeks episode, I'd call that another good one in the can! I don't usually like 'thru the viewfinder' episodes but this was done really well. Questions raised on what Starfleet is about, the crews dedication to the ultimate mission and how far to go when assisting another race caught in a terrible war. The second half of this season has turned out really well so far!

Edited 18 hours ago by Thom

[sh9000]

I'm barely at episode 5.  I need to catch up.

[Seto Kaiba]

So... "What is Starfleet?"

Spoiler

Are we just doing Lower Decks stories again and worse?  The last episode was the Pakled clumpship all over again, and now we're doing the "a journalist comes aboard the ship and pisses people off"?

 

The episode starts with a FOIA notice from the Federation government and Starfleet Command.

Huh, so the specs of the Constitution-class appear to have been definitively revised.

They've decided to go official with the idea that the Enterprise was the Federation flagship even in Pike's time.  Previously the first Enterprise to be actually established as the flagship was the Enterprise-D.  They've also radically enlarged her.  She's 442.6m long now instead of 289m.  Pike's Enterprise is about the same size as an Excelsior-class ship now.

Spoiler

Also, it's weird that the voiceover is clearly Ortegas's little brother Beto and is put together like a hit piece misrepresenting the Federation as an expansionist Empire, Starfleet as its army, and its ships as warships.

This kind of schtick might have made sense in Archer's time when both the Federation and Starfleet were new, but they just celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Federation's founding (suggesting that "Wedding Bell Blues" occurred on 12 August 2261).  It's full of weird fisheye lens shots that are supposed to be from Ortegas's drone and what's very clearly meant to be deceptive editing on Ortegas's part.  

We get to see Lt. Ortegas's quarters.  Seems she's a bit of a gearhead.  There's what looks like a small model turbine engine on her desk, a partially disassembled motorbike behind her, and her room is dominated by what looks to be a totally unmodified Husky heavy duty brand 52" wheeled toolchest from Home Depot.

Spoiler

So... we're showing the Enterprise stumbling into a war between two planets in the same star system?  Seems pretty one-sided too.

For some reason, every other word in the briefing is "classified"... none of Pike's usual openness and candor with the rest of the crew.  They're hauling livestock at 1/2 impulse for some reason?  Said livestock is some kind of space whale butterfly thing.  A rogue scientist attacks the critter and gets blasted with enough space radiation to make one wonder "Original or Extra Crispy?".  Apparently their brilliant idea was to attack it so it couldn't be brought to their homeworld, and they die on the operating table trying to warn the crew after being rescued.

I am about 13 minutes into "What is Starfleet?" and this may be the first episode of Strange New Worlds to lose me.

This episode's framing device is just plain unpleasant.  You'd think a Federation news reporter would be above this kind of painful-to-look-at yellow journalism.  Especially about his own sister's ship and career!

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Ambushing M'Benga with questions about his service in the Klingon War is pretty nasty, and the idea that the Federation keeps statistics on the confirmed kills of its officers in wartime is just plain absurd.

Ambushing Uhura with the knowledge that one of her academy classmates died on the Cayuga back in "Hegemony" is just cruel.

They toss Beto off the bridge once the space whale critter attacks the ship, so we get to watch security footage from the bridge's internal sensors instead.  Uhura has a one-on-one with him and is apparently disgusted by his desire to find a scandal. 

Spock, Uhura, and Chapel do the proper Starfleet thing and decide to talk to this alien space whale they've been told to treat as a weapon instead.  The Lutani show up and decide to attack out of the blue.  The Galileo takes another one on the chin... that shuttle is downright cursed at this point.  Chapel gets up close and personal with a security camera and Spock is down for the count, leaving just Uhura.  Chapel's stable, Spock's in an induced coma because he got brain damage, and they've learned the space whale thingy was mutilated by the Lutani to make it a rabid murder machine.  So Uhura has a go at it with the telepathy gizmo and they learn that the critter wants to die because of what the Lutani did to it.  

Uhura has it out with Beto over his yellow journalism, and calls him out on his weak excuse... he blames Starfleet for taking his sister away, and for his sister's brush with death earlier in the season.

They then get to watch the critter dive into the sun... where it explodes like a massive bomb for some reason?  

Ending the episode's A-plot on a threat feels kind of off-message...

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Then we try to wrap it up with Beto trying to put a positive spin on his derailed hit piece like he didn't just spend the first 2/3 of the episode on character assassination.

The crew forgives him way too easily for trying to run an incredibly slanted hit piece on the entire crew intended to make them look like Complete Monsters.  That's not the kind of story you'd let run out of goodwill or because of a tone change at the ending.  That's the kind of journalistic malpractice that causes lawsuits for defamation!

There's a deep deep cut at 37:11.  We see Number One tucking into a tray of those memetically infamous cubes of what look like play-doh from the ambassadorial reception in TOS "Journey to Babel".

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It is a nice touch that they end the episode on a shot of the star that was central in resolving the episode's conflict.

 

Definitely the weakest episode of the season so far... and a strong contender to unseat "The Serene Squall" as the worst episode of the series to date IMO.

Edited 17 hours ago by Seto Kaiba