Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

[azrael]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's not exactly the same failure...

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... 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.