Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

[Seto Kaiba]

Rewatched "A Quality of Mercy" as part of introducing my Trekkie parents to Strange New Worlds.

When it comes to the subject of Pike being a soft touch, no episode really encapsulates it better than "A Quality of Mercy" and its alternate take on the events of TOS's iconic "Balance of Terror".  Not only does Pike's softer, more informal style lead to him failing to crack down on the racism on his bridge but even with a second ship for support he ends up fumbling the encounter with the Romulan Bird of Prey so badly that it causes more than a decade of warfare that goes so badly for the entire quadrant that the Klingon monks on Boreth make another once-in-a-generation exception for the same guy to take a time crystal and fix the timeline.

 

Spoiler

In hindsight, one thing that struck me as weird is that Lt. Ortegas is randomly just racist for this one episode.  It comes out of nowhere and there's no reason or justification ever offered for it.

"Balance of Terror" did have a racist officer on the bridge, who Kirk tells off for his bigotry, but that was a completely different character (Lt. Stiles) whose prejudice against the Romulans was also explicitly discussed and justified in-story with him being from a military family who fought in the Earth-Romulan War more than a century prior.

 

 

And a random thought... since Strange New Worlds definitely wants to skew lighter and softer than other modern Star Trek shows (to its considerable benefit), y'know who'd be a good antagonist to bring back?  The Kzinti.  They're mentioned in Picard and we actually see a Kzinti Starfleet officer on the Cerritos in Lower Decks.  They're a stubborn nuisance-level threat who are apparently still hassling the Federation on some level even in 2401.  They were originally going to show the Kzinti starting sh*t with humanity back in Enterprise's fifth season (before the series was cancelled), and it'd be fun to bring them back as a lighter-and-softer nemesis for Pike now that the Gorn have been put back on the shelf until Kirk's era and the Federation's cold war with the Klingons is ongoing.

[pengbuzz]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 and it'd be fun to bring them back as a lighter-and-softer nemesis for Pike now that the Gorn have been put back on the shelf until Kirk's era and the Federation's cold war with the Klingons is ongoing.

Talk about Gorn with the Wind....

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Talk about Gorn with the Wind....

That's awful. 🤔

 

[TehPW]

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's awful. 🤔

 

Frankly My dear, the Gorn don't give a damn... 😅