Logline
A distress call from Lt. Noonien-Singh compels Spock to disobey orders and take the USS Enterprise and its crew into disputed space, risking renewed hostilities with the Klingons in a bid to aid their shipmate.
Written by Henry Alonso Myers & Akiva Goldsman
Directed by Chris Fisher
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Right now, the plan is to post the /c/startrek discussion when the episode drops on Thursdays. Once the global community has had some time to watch and digest what they’ve seen, the /c/daystrominstitute discussion will go live on Sundays for a more in-depth analysis. This is subject to change as we evaluate what works best for the community as a whole.
Since this is our first episode discussion on Lemmy, we have a couple of reminders about our expectations.
Constructive Criticism - criticism is welcome, but please put some effort into explaining why you did or didn’t like something. Just saying something was “good” or “bad” isn’t exactly laying a foundation for discussion.
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- I am 100% here for the chaotic energy that Carol Kane is going to bring to this show.
- The Klingon captain had exactly the right amount of swagger and sassiness that a TOS-era Klingon captain is supposed to have. I’m glad that they’re moving on from some of the Discovery Klingon characterization while also resisting the urge to jump right to them behaving like TNG Klingons.
Ortegas inverted her controller settings as everyone should 🎮
Honestly Inverted Stick for Flight controls makes so much more sense on controller because that’s what you would do with an actual flight stick
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For the love of Pete can we stop with all of the lame catch phrases and dumb jokes? Spock should have just uttered something simple suiting the Vulcan personality/character, like “proceed”. But no, we have to get a lame line one step above a fart joke…
Pelia is like “I have been alive for hundreds of years and I’m going to make that everyone else’s problem.”
Regarding Nurse Chapel almost dying - this is one of the TV/movie tropes that I think is such a cheap and terrible device and I am tired of it. Discovery was full of these scenes where they make you believe a main character really almost died, only to survive after all, and having their crew mates weep for them (I am looking at you Burnham). There are much better ways to create good drama.
As President of the Spock/Chapel fanclub and a sucker for Klingons, I feel that this episode was plucked out of my brain.
I loved it.
I’m also glad they began to explore a bit of post war PTSD through M’Benga. It’ll be interesting to see how far they go with the Gorn.
Meta: Would it be possible not to use NSFW for spoilers? I don’t really like having all the porn subs showing up in my “All” feed, but I feel like I have to keep NSFW ticked if people are using it for spoilers and not just porn.
I’ve untagged it - let me know how it looks.
Unfortunately, there’s no “spoiler” tag for posts.
Thank you so much. :)
The M’Benga-and-Chapel-are-Max-Payne sequence went on far too long: only one group aboard the ship had weapons (and Stormtrooper accuracy) of any kind? I’d have preferred a stealthier sequence: after reprogramming the transponder, they use a series of Jeffries tubes to get to the airlock with the intent of opening it to escape but the ship takes off to ruin that plan.
Other than that, it was a decent episode to get the season going. Spock’s emotional journey will be a focal point of the season, which I’m okay with.
SPECTREThe Broken Circle Gang is probably going to show up again and I wonder if we’ll eventually see some TOS villains retconned to be members. Carol Kane will be fun and with what was said of her species, I’m betting on her making at least two ENT references during the season.Interesting that the false-flag ship is Crossfield-class: the saucer is a clear match but the drive section is completely different. Were the Discovery and Glenn modified from that spec to fit the spore drive research project or was the ship we saw a wartime refit of the class?
So Die Hard on a spaceship? We did that with Starship Mine already but I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Is Starfleet’s version of the Hippocratic oath “First, do no harm, unless you have to, in which case go hard.”?
As for the Crossfield-Class, I thought it might either be that the classification of Discovery made them change the format of it for obfuscation purposes. Either that or they built that ship from salvaged parts from the war, and the saucer/transponder was from a Crossfield, and Uhura was simply reading from the transponder code the ship class.
That was my take as well on the ship. My reading was that they picked up a bunch of salvage from the war, and kit-bashed it all together to make a ship.
On a meta level, they almost certainly did just that to create the ship model. Took the Disco saucer and fiddled with the rest a bit.
Is Starfleet’s version of the Hippocratic oath “First, do no harm, unless you have to, in which case go hard.”?
LOL
One must protect oneself, too, I suppose.
Were the Discovery and Glenn modified from that spec to fit the spore drive
Yes. IIRC that was stated in of the first handful of Discovery episodes. (possibly the one where they encountered the Glenn?)
also can we please stop it with the trope “oh no, how are we going to survive this jump through space without a suit? …Oh whaddya know we’re just fine.” Just give them fucking suits, it’s lazy writing to create more suspense for no reason.
Right!?! Nobody watching is going to think their are going to kill off two of the main cast members in the first episode…
only one group aboard the ship had weapons (and Stormtrooper accuracy) of any kind?
you do remember they were trying to buy phasers from La’an? Those were the only phasers they had, it would seem.
Not a terrible start but sadly not one of my favorite episodes for sure.
I don’t really know how to describe what I didn’t like, but I think it boils down to just how disjointed and rushed the pacing feels. For something so high stakes, it all felt really easy and predictable and just a bit boring.
It also felt like they were really really aggressive about making sure you understood the message about Spock. Seriously felt like a character was going to wink at the camera whenever they said something like “you’re not a normal Vulcan!”.
If I had to describe it, I’d probably go with Saturday morning cartoon surprisingly. A lot of story crammed into not enough time, with a heavy handed message about a character.
I didn’t hate it, don’t get me wrong. It just wasn’t unique or interesting like so many episodes are.
I feel like the ‘boring’ rush from sequence to sequence is happening a lot in media right now. I remember feeling the same during a couple of episodes of the last season on Mando.
Almost like paying and rewarding writers properly, so you get their best work is important.
Best I can put it down too is that they’re keen to make the characters seem strong and powerful, but they forget to set up proper flaws, tension and stakes/the ones that used to exist have been ruined by now over a decade of magic resurrection macguffins whenever somebody dies in popular media that fans like.
As sub par as TNG Season 1 was, and regardless of the toxic behind the scenes environment that led to it, we can’t deny that them killing off a principle character was a bold move than really set the stakes that anybody could die and that it wouldn’t always be in a blaze of glory.
Yeah, same goes for me. It was good, but it felt inexplicably “off” when compared to the first season.
Carol Kane is such a gem for this show, I can tell already.
She’s so good! Already I really like her character!
personally I find her gramma Addams act a little hamfisted, but maybe it’ll make sense as the season goes on.
You shut your whore mouth about a legend kid.
I must say I’m already a big fan of Pelia.
Agreed! Carol Kane is always fun to watch.
@End0fLine @LibraryLass In my head, she is always in an unintelligible shouting contest with Andy Kaufman.
I was first introduced to her in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and I’ve loved her since. She has a quality that just puts a smile on your face.
To me she will always be the witch from Princess Bride.
Edit: “I’m not a witch, I’m your wife! But after what you just said, I’m not even sure I want to be that any more.”
I get a lot of shit for this in my life, but I have never actually seen that movie. But that quote makes it sound up my alley.
It’s one of the funniest, most exciting, most romantic movies ever made. I’ve met in all my life only one person who didn’t enjoy it and she was kind of awful in general. I would bet you would like it too.
I love that you’re hinting that you may be able to tell something about someone who doesn’t enjoy this move. I hope I like it!
I think that came off way more sarcastic than I intended…
Not going to give you shit but I am going to suggest you should watch it at your earliest opportunity. I suspect you will enjoy it a lot and wish you’d seen it sooner.
I wouldn’t give you shit for it, but I would hand you a well-used DVD of the movie and tell you go watch it immediately. It’s a good time.
I’m not entirely sure if I have to spoiler tag this since this is in the discussion thread but I will anyways since the rule doesn’t say the threads are an exception to the rule.Edit: Thanks ValueSubtracted for the clarification on this.Really disliked this one. And I loved just about all of season 1.
One of the main things for me is that the pacing felt far too quick.
For instance, when getting the injection of the super serum, they only briefly mentioned M’Benga’s issue with it and quickly moved on without any sort of issues beyond that brief line.
I also have some issues with the characterization and general way the crew acted. They seemed a lot less professional in this and unlike an actual Starfleet crew.
Spock’s emotional side, while I suppose justified in-universe, made him feel a lot less “Spock” to me. I was fine with his behavior in season 1 but this just feels a bit far, to the point of him being nearly unrecognizable. His “I would like the ship to go. Now” make me physically recoil in cringe with how unfunny I found it to be.
M’Benga and Chapel just beating up a bunch of bad guys three separate times felt incredibly unnecessary and I fail to see any sort of reason there couldn’t have been some sort of clever escape rather than bland, mindless fighting. I think I skipped a whole minute total of them just punching the bad guys with how long the scenes drew on for. And the way M’Benga’s issue with the super serum was just brushed over with a fleeting line came across as poorly executed.
La’an outdrinking a klingon seemed rather ridiculous and all I could think of was that it seemed like a bad D&D introduction to a stereotypical “cool” character. And then her burping? Did they really need a burp joke in this? It came across as uncharacteristically juvenile for the show.
That said, I did like a bit of it. Visual effects were great as always and I appreciated the slightly different intro. I’m glad the cliffhanger from last season both wasn’t immediately resolved or dwelled upon too much. The false flag operation was a neat idea and it was cool to see yet another type of ship. The Klingons looked and sounded perfect and much more similar to how they were in 90s Trek, I’m glad the design was changed to this from their design in Discovery.
Overall, I very much disliked it, despite a few positive elements to it. No hate, I just disliked those parts of it I talked about.
Finally, this isn’t any sort of issue I take with the show but they said that the false flag ship was Crossfield class. However, it didn’t look anything like a Crossfield class beyond the ring in the saucer. Did Starfleet change the Crossfield class to a different design?
No spoiler syntax necessary in these threads!
That’s great because I don’t know if I can do so from a kbin instance, the syntax doesn’t do anything on this end. Going to do a bit of science here.
spoiler Test 1 2 3
Foo Bar Bah :::
Yeah I’m not seeing any spoilers from your comment on Jerboa
Good to know, thank you!
I recall reading somewhere that Akiva is trying to arc spock from “smiling spock” in The Cage through koh’linar and into TOS spock over the lifespan of SNW. Spock ditching his emotional blocks and starting to ‘lose it’ already this season would play directly into that plan. He continues unraveling for, say, this season and part of next, and then he embraces koh’linar to regain composure and control of his emotions. Perhaps McCoy is around for this particular event, witnessing Spock’s ‘transition’ into a computer, setting up all the remarks from TOS.
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Except Spock didn’t do Koh’linar till TMP, or are you suggesting that there were different stages of the ritual?
I agree with a lot of your concerns. Two medical staff taking drugs and beating a mob of Klingons senseless with little hesitation and no apparent ramifications is horribly, horribly out of tone with what I’ve come to expect from Trek.
Spock is another issue. I’m fine with him undergoing growth and having a full character arc - but I really don’t see this Spock becoming the one in TOS — a Spock who disobeyed direct orders from Starfleet and was reluctantly able to potentially kill two crew members goes on to have the disastrous experience as leader in the Galileo Seven? Best I can see is he actively goes as hard as he can on suppressing his human side in the near future but that wouldn’t make him suddenly forget what emotions, illogic, and all that human baggage feels like when he’s interacting with humans later in his career.
(And for the record - I really enjoy Ethan Peck as Spock and watching his struggles with his emotional control. I just don’t feel like it’s the same character as in TOS and don’t see how he’d get there.)
Yes, this is my main complaint with this episode and SNW wrt Spock in general. I sort of get the idea that he’s going on an arc from “Smiling Spock” in the cage to TOS, but it’ll be a real weird kind of change over to TOS Spock IMHO from this. And like you said, how does he become the Spock in the Galileo Seven? At this point it sort of seems like he’d need a mind wipe or something…
I certainly would have thought something like him saying “It is illogical to require “a thing” to carry out lawful orders lieutenant.” and if pressed again something like “We do not have time to waste - carry out your orders”.
This “everyone has a thing” is stupid, and to do it in multiple series?
And Spock’s whole thing to continue to wait / worry about M’Benga and Chapel after saying their choice was logical didn’t fit for me, nor did his reaction to Chapel. How does he go from that to TOS “ignoring/not noticing” Chapel’s thing for him, and lack of interest in her?
I noticed Kirk didn’t have a “thing” in TOS. It’d be funny if he at least thought having a warp catch phrase was stupid and didn’t do it in SNW.
The Crossfield mismatch jumped out to me as well. A response earlier in this thread suggested perhaps the Klingons put the saucer of a Crossfield with the drive section of a different class because that is what they had lying around. Not explicitly stated, but that makes sense to me.
I don’t know that I agree with the characterization issues you’re mentioning, but as far as the cold read as a Crossfield, she does mention that she just thinks it’s one. Other than the secondary hull being hilariously overlong, the saucer cutouts are easily the most distinctive part of a Crossfield, and they weren’t terribly common based on what we know from Discovery. Based on that, I could see how someone could read a Crossfield saucer bolted onto the back half of an upside down NX to be ‘oh I guess that’s what Crossfields look like?’.
There’s been a fan theory for a while that the reason for Discovery’s really long nacelles was that the ship (and Glenn) were specially modified for the spore drive experiments.
This episode would seem to reinforce that.
Also interestingly the saucer seems to be the one from the original (substandard) CG teaser Discovery saucer, rather than the final show version.
La’an outdrinking a klingon seemed rather ridiculous and all I could think of was that it seemed like a bad D&D introduction to a stereotypical “cool” character. And then her burping? Did they really need a burp joke in this? It came across as uncharacteristically juvenile for the show.
Would’ve been expected by the Klingon opponent. Who when he tried to do it, nearly puked himself.
Thoughts and observations written as I watch- I’ll be putting this on both Reddit and Lemmy, since infinity diversity/infinity combinations:
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Wheeee, NCC-1701 in the Star Trek tag!
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Previously: Last season happened.
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Little ships flying!
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Wonder who the lawyer that Una and Pike have tried to reach is.
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Oh, hey, the Vulcan musical instrument whose name I can’t remember!
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“Fascinating.” “Isn’t that usually his line?”
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The fellowship on archeological medicine? Is that a reference to Dr. Korby?
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“We must steal the Enterprise.” Buddy, if I had a nickel every time someone had to steal the Enterprise, I’d have several nickels.
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Lt. Mitchell gunning for series regular next year with how much screen time she’s had early on this episode.
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Okay, having Carol Kane is already paying dividends.
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And, yeah, Carol Kane doesn’t need alien makeup to be an alien. She’s already an alien.
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I’m still not sure if the emphasis one the warp catch phrase is amazing or annoying, but this scene was funny.
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KLINGON UPDATE: RIDGES!
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So clearly La’An’s augmented ancestors were genetically engineered to drink a lot. Which, y’know what? Fair.
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Ah, the borderlands, where utopian rules go away and everyone becomes a Ferengi.
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Congratulations to Uhura on graduating from the Academy.
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Ah, the old “I have technology that I’m totally not making up that will blow you up” bluff!
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New transporter chief?
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Okay, so the angry borderlands people are trying to do some sort of false flag thing.
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Redundant Klingon organs, the old standby.
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Roided-up doctors can tell you what bones they broke as they break them.
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These are obviously Discovery sets.
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This action scene, while well-done, is way too long.
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A D7!
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“We’ve gotten out of worse.” “No, not really!”
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“This I’ve got to see!”
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I wonder if “Lanthanite” is a synonym for “El-Aurian”
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Pelia knowing that being on the Enterprise means adventure is further proof that those ships are goddamn weirdness magnets.
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Gorn. Yes, it stretches canon but fuck it the Gorn are awesome we’ll come up with an explanation later.
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“For Nichelle”
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Overall, while not one of the better episodes, it still was a good start to the season. It wrapped up one of the hanging threads of last year (La’An), we continued to see some of Young Spock’s struggles with his emotions before he became the more-Vulcan Spock that Nimoy was in the main TOS series, and we got our first look at Carol Kane as the nutty new engineer. Overall, I’ll call that a win!
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I just love this show, the feeling I get when the intro rolls is the same as when I was I was 15 watching the TNG intro on TV. The characters all feel special and unique even if I’ve seen every episode of every series.
I’ve wanted a whole show about the years when Pike commanded the enterprise since I saw The Managerie as a kid. I’m so happy we’re finally getting it and it’s so good.
