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
A note about episode discussions on startrek.website
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.
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 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.
Hemmer was my favorite character from season one, and is very difficult to replace in my heart. But Carol Kane is one of those actors you just can’t help but love to see on screen (in any capacity). It’s going to be very hard to be upset knowing she’ll be around.
I do wish we were able to keep Hemmer around longer.
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.
@triktrek Oh, boy - Can we talk about “Picard”?! Data dies in Nemesis, a great and noble sacrifice. Which is then diminished, because we brought him back for Picard! The staff didn’t think the Nemesis sacrifice was a worthy sendoff, or perhaps *they* wanted to do the sending off. So we’ll kill him again, this time with feeling! But, season three, the old gang is all getting together again. Maybe we can resurrect him one more time? (I’m aware of the supposed differences, but really. It was Data.)
And they killed off Picard! Another great and noble sacrifice! But no, not really, let’s bring him back as an android, you’ll never notice the difference! 🙄
It’s really at the point where a character’s death is robbed of all drama, because there’s always a way to resurrect them. It was a dream, they were in the Mirror universe, the mycelium network made a copy, etc.
As someone who actually enjoyed Discovery, that’s one of the things I couldn’t stand about it. And it really disappoints me that they used it here. You can’t have the stakes of every damn episode be that high, so it really bothers me that we get it in the first episode of the season. I really hope it’s not a sign of things to come.
I’d normally agree with you but I don’t think they were trying to fool the audience in this case. It was more about showing Spock’s emotional reaction.
Still, there’s better ways of showing that than the almost dying trope.
spoiler
Nurse Chapel is in TOS - so there wasn’t really any risk that she was going to die here.
I loved that they gave Dr. M’Benga some screentime front and center and showed that he can throw down if necessary, even if it was with the help of some super serum stuff. And while I even loved his (and Nurse Chapel’s ) elaborate fight scene and enjoyed the way they filmed it, I’m also not sure if it quite fits with Star Trek. Just not sure yet with the excessive slow motion. The camera angles however were some great artistic choice. But overall one great start to season 2.
@aufsichtsrat @ValueSubtracted I think it was a needless cinematographic choice to use slow mo there. With the excessive cuts, it shows a lack of fight choreography (contrast with Jackie Chan movies, Kingsman, etc.)
I’m still waiting for M’Benga to slap Spock silly.
Yeah, I think I might agree, was perhaps just a tad bit too much on the slow mo. It will be interesting to see how the Dr will handle Spock once he inevitable breaks Chaple’s heart.
I’d say it fits more with the space cowboy ethos of the TOS era (although we saw no two handed punches). If they did it in the TNG era it’d feel more out of place.
I was waiting for the double handed punch! Gutted they didn’t do it.
It’s too powerful.
Especially when they’re on whatever that green shit is!
It would have been awesome to see nurse chapel do a double handed punch to a Klingon face and their head just explodes.
I thought the fight scene was kinda out-of-character for a doctor and a nurse. If anyone would have an inherent respect for life and health of other beings, you’d expect it to be medical workers: beating them up is just highly unethical. Why couldn’t they have used subterfuge to achieve the same goals?
He might be doctor, but he also served in the war and from what it looks like the front lines. Same goes for the nurse.
That confused me a bit, were M’benga and Chapel not serving in the Enterprise during its last five year mission, which we were told they were not called back from to fight?
In the season one premiere, it was clear that both M’Benga and Chapel had just rotated onto the Enterprise while she was under repair.
Pike knew M’Benga and was please to see him, but didn’t expect to find him in sickbay. Chapel was introduced to Pike as a civilian on assignment.
Fair dos, that must have slipped my memory.
M’Benga turned out to be my favorite character from last season, and I’m glad they’ve been able to stretch his character out beyond having it centered around his daughter this season. He should have an interesting character arc from what they showed in this episode.
My gut feeling is that with a couple changes this episode would have hung together better-
- Have them take a shuttle instead of the Enterprise. This lowers the stakes for our command crew and simply makes more sense than half the crew (that wasn’t on leave) agreeing to steal a ship. It also means they need to figure out a different way to deal with the fake Federation ship at the end of the episode is some way other than ‘shoot it with bigger guns’
- Have Chapel and M’Benga do something within their character strengths to escape instead of magic drug that lets them hand-to-hand fight their way through a dozen or more Klingons.
That said, there were a lot of things I DID like about the episode, including the Klingon Captain at the end and the new Chief Engineer.
@StreetcornPips @startrek I like the shuttle idea. I almost stopped watching when Spock said, “steal the ship,” and then again when everyone said “Hunh. Okay!” It always kills me when a story revolves around an organization as large and powerful as the Federation allowing stuff like this (or the myriad of examples of rule breaking, insubordination, etc.) to happen.
If there’s one thing that is consistent about the Federation show-to-show and season-to-season is that they pretty much always allow officers to break literally any of the rules as long as the outcome is good. How many times has a ship been stolen for a rescue mission, orders been ignored, senior officers been bamboozled and sidelined, and it’s almost always totally forgiven because it turned out OK in the end. Hell, Janeway straight-up murdered Tuvix as he begged for his life and everyone was like “oh, um, fine?”
I used to think it was lazy writing, but now I think it’s actually just the way the Federation is characterized. The Federation being theoretically utopian and egalitarian but functionally utilitarian makes things like Section 31 make sense, the same way that TNG Klingons claim to be about honor but really they’re treacherous schemers no better than any other species.
Blowing up a Crossfield class in an episode with real Klingons weeks after we learned of Discovery’s cancellation feels quite loaded with subtext. Reminds me of DS9 blowing up a Galaxy class on screen within a week of TNG ending.
As someone who was once banned from the “subreddit” because I disagreed with the style choices of the STD Klingons, I finally feel vindicated.
Not sure if’s actually a Crossfield, though. It looks different even if the transponder identified it as one. It was basically a kitbash.
The Galaxy class in that DS9 episode had an entirely different bridge. Just because it had a different module installed, the frame was still Crossfield.
I must have really zoned out toward the end of Discovery because I thought it was over long ago.
Discovery has been cancelled!? I must have missed that somehow 😢, was still hoping for a season 6.
Good, I did not like Disco. Cinematography, characters, plotlines, all of it.
Well, not good because some of us did like it ;-). Oh well, on to the next one - I wonder how long SNW will last. I kind of like it so I hope it gets at least up to season 5.
Season 5 was in advanced post production when the announcement was made that it would be the final season. The announcement included information that there would be additional content added to wrap the show.
Three additional shooting days happened in Toronto just before the strike. So it doesn’t sound like an additional episode was added but rather some scenes.
Fortunately, it looks like the new show Starfleet Academy will be in the 32nd century which offers opportunities for Discovery characters to appear as guests.
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@Dalakaar @ValueSubtracted I’m definitely wondering what the angle is with the Klingons and their look. We even got Discovery footage in the recap
It’ll be particularly interesting to see what they do if we meet any Klingons who were also in TOS.
Will they show them as Augment Klingons, as they did in TOS? Or will they ignore it completely?
We are years away from “The Incident” that caused most of the Klingon population to lose their forehead ridges. Of course Klingons don’t discuss the issue with outsiders.
But Strange New Worlds takes place 100 years after it. It’s less than a decade before TOS.
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
Quite enjoyable, although I agree with some other commenters that it wasn’t the strongest premiere. I thought the green juice and whole Chapel/M’Benga plotline was particularly rough, though dealing with the PTSD could be interesting in the future. It just felt rather un-Star Trekky in an otherwise solid show.
I’m also slightly unsure about how far they are going in regards to Spocks journey. I did like that they had an in-universe fairly believable reason for it from last seasons episode with the Gorn. I like that the show has a consequence for Spock, and I certainly don’t hate it but just a bit cautious and curious where it’s heading.
Otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed the episode, even with so little of Pike. The other characters are very solid and I liked that they toned down some of the quips and such. Looking forward to the rest of the season.
There’s for sure some prequel-itis going on here, where this show’s depiction of Spock is at adds with the journey we later see him go on. I find it useful to try and think of each installment independently from the others and ignore the “canon”.
Yeah I keep a fairly open mind about these new shows and whatever retconning they end up doing. I also really do enjoy Peck in the role, I think he’s doing a great job.
Peck is no Nimoy, but he’s found a great version of the character for himself, and I’m enjoying it too.
I liked it, but it didn’t have enough Pike.
Always need more Pike!
Was Pike’s hair a little, err, smaller?
Doesn’t that make it better? TOS had Kirk but it wasn’t about Kirk. SNW has Pike but it isn’t about Pike. They’re both about the Enterprise, its crew, and its missions(s).
maybe not for episode 1
Nice episode, I was expecting a cliffhanger at the end showing what Pike was up to.
I am curious about the Lanthanites, I’ve had visitor before, like Guinan in 1890s, but a whole species living among side humans, maybe they don’t have a big population, I bet they could be the origin of many human myths. I wonder what was their reason.
Maybe It will help with Una’s trial, since both pretended to be humans.
Also, in TOS there was about an Immortal Human, maybe he was a Lanthanite and just didn’t know.
Her accent is Dracula. She’s a vampire. 😊
I am unsure how Lanthanites can have a distinct accent if they spent centuries successfully blending in, but I agree that it’s interesting.
Structural differences in their larynx, tongue, or lips seem likely.
I mean, it was telegraphed in S1 but there are definitely going to be some Gorn retcons this season.
I’m fine with this! But it was already tough to reconcile what we saw in S1 with later crews, “attending Gorn weddings” (much harder, imo, than the more reasonable 'they have been encountered, just in a limited capacity and with few survivors) and a full on invasion plotline - featuring Spock and Uhura no less - makes Arena tough to reconcile.
Again, that’s fine!
I like the current Klingon design, though I wish they had kept the double nostril from DIS. The redesign went too far but their attempt to physically show the Klingon’s redundant biology was appreciated.
The actual episode’s plot was…fine. A bit rushed. Felt like a Mass Effect sidequest which is fine for an ep but hopefully not the feeling of the season as a whole. Establishing the character’s war experiences and generally situating the series as post-war is probably necessary for the rest of the season. I have to wonder if they went out of their way to only show Spock and Pelia with the Klingons given other crew…probably aren’t ready to split a barrel of bloodwine.
Speaking of Pelia: a race of immortals living in secret alongside humanity and now just regular, serving members of Starfleet? Identifiable by accent even? It’s a BIG swing and probably the most interesting (though for now unexplored) idea in the episode.
On the Crossfield refit…presumably from the ‘shell’ style associated with the pre-TOS ships (as seen in DIS Binary Stars sequence) with the Enterprise’s modernized plating? Probably would have been simpler to just have a new class.
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.”
If my memory is correct, this episode contained more than half of the scenes from the trailers, most of which were theorized to be from different episodes.
That leaves two possibilities:
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this episode is the most interesting episode, which would be unfortunate but not unheardof for Paramount
-
the best is yet to come, and we have no idea what’s coming.
I choose to believe the second, for now, and I’m excited.
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