Biggest complaint me have with Strange New Worlds is that it safest possible Trek show to make, so fomulaic plot elements not out of place there. But it just so well done it very hard for me to care. Me appreciated that Paramount took big swings out of gate with Disco and Picard, (even if results were wildly uneven), but me also just excited that we finally get show that fires on all cylinders every single week.
And me thought it was great (and not at all safe) choice to sideline Pike and Number One for this epsiode. It let us spend more time with other characters, and ensemble is so winning we not really miss them. Me agree that Peck is terrific as less-fully-formed Spock, and Jess Bush so darned appealing as Chapel it going to be tough to find reason for them to believably settle on "won't they" when it come time to meet up with TOS continuity.
Most of all, me glad to have Zach back writing about Star Trek again! Q'apla!
I could be wrong (and I'm not fully caught up on Disco yet) but other than the Lower Decks Peanut Hamper one off I can't remember an episode of the Paramount + series to sideline its main character to such a degree. There's barely been an episode of Disco where Burnham wasn't in the A plot (let alone where she only appeared in one scene) and it sure didn't happen in Picard. Giving an episode over to the ensemble wasn't out of place in the TNG era but the "X hour movie"/limited number of episodes approach to the streaming era limits those opportunities.
It's heartening to see SNW sticking to its mission statement of functioning as a throwback Trek series in spite of the way the industry has changed. While Pike is great and it's a bit distressing to think that there are only nine episodes left in the season and he's barely appeared, it shows how confident the SNW team is in their format, their cast, and their characters that they can do something so defiantly old fashioned and pull it off so well.
1. So we are going to be like that, are we? (just kidding. nit pick away)
2. I do like the subtle introduction of Spock as musician and the line "next time it will be your commission" which prefigures things we see in TOS but doesn't revel in its own cleverness.
To pile on one more nitpick, though, did the camera flipping upside down at the drop of a hat bother anyone else? No idea why opening a hatch into a subfloor calls for a full vertical 360 camera move. Or did I miss something there?
At first, I thought they were demonstrating that the gravity plating, or whatever, pulled in the opposite direction under the deck. Then the camera flipped again. Weird.
Yes. All the camera tricks, and especially whatever the hell that was when M’benga and Chapel beam aboard, were weird and distracting. In the age of CGI everywhere the last thing we need is disorienting camera setups for no real reason. Just let us see the action and emotion!
It's a thing with modern Trek shows. I'm just grateful SNW doesn't do Discovery's "We have two characters talking so LET'S CONSTANTLY WHIP THE CAMERA AROUND THEM" trick.
Actually, after thinking about it further and considering the plot context, I'm wondering if the transporter thing was an homage to Sunshine, which features a similar scene.
“They’re leaning hard into the “will they/won’t they” of Chapel and Spock. I remain into it, although I always have to remind myself to not think about the original series.”
After the last season finale, I've become convinced that this show is at its worst when it tries to tie in with the original series. If this was a random Star Trek ship with random Star Trek people on it (which, with characters like M'Benga and Chapel being so radically reimagined, it basically is), same cast, characters, and writers, I'm sure it'd be for the best. The writers and the audience would both be spared from worrying about how SNW turns into TOS and how that restricts them to pretty destructive outcomes for all the legacy characters they backfilled into having the same jobs as in TOS ten years earlier (I'm already nervous about Chapel mentioning this week about planning to go on an archeological expedition, presumably so she can meet her future-fiancée and the show can begin bouncing back and forth between tedious box-checking and annoying re-contextualization).
For a more mild example, look at Uhura. They put themselves in a situation where they could either fire an actor, or establish that she basically got an internship before graduation, and then stayed in the same position in the same place for the next thirty-five years.
Say what you will about the Kelvin Trilogy, but the alternate timeline hook was brilliant; it gave you a reason not to worry about these things. You could tell new stories, with the big name legacy characters, and not stress about how it fits together with TOS. Why these new shows didn't lift that is beyond me.
It's baffling to me how frequently the Trek decision-makers choose to set new things in the past. In a universe this expansive, it just seems like all-downside. Except you can have Spock, I guess.
Jun 16, 2023·edited Jun 16, 2023Liked by Zack Handlen
I don't know what to make of Pelia. The delivery was disconcertingly off kilter, but this is in space and in the future, so there isn't anything "wrong", a species can be however you want them to be. We'll see if Ii get used to it.
I'm not sure I agree this Spock is coded autistic (a subject I'm very familiar with), but Leonard Nimoy's Spock as an older autistic person who feels secure in himself and have learned to read the necessary social codes and act on them actally makes perfect sense to me.
I should stress, I don't mean "coded autistic" in the sense that he's an accurate portrayal of autism--it's more a term for a kind of TV (and movie) character that's been around for a while, whose been kind of pushed into that slot. Someone well-meaning but extremely literal who doesn't always understand metaphors or humor; he's like a more confident Data, or a less dickish Sheldon.
Hey Zack! Hey everyone! Good to be talking Trek again!
The smiles that slowly crept across the crew's faces when Spock said "we have to steal the Enterprise" sums up what works about SNW so well. It strikes the perfect balance between "space is fucking terrifying" and "space is fucking awesome", neither getting too bogged down in the former but not leaning too into lightheartedness with the latter. There's serious stuff at hand, but it's treated with a level of levity and excitement that feels quintessentially of the Trek ethos. The comparison that keeps coming to my mind is Legends of Tomorrow, and while SNW isn't as overtly self-aware or goofy as Legends was, that's still an excellent vibe to shoot for.
The implication of an impending Gorn war and M'Benga new role as Guy Who Saw Some Shit in the War (which I like for him - the story with his daughter was sweet, albeit rushed, but it relied on the universality of a parent/child relationship more than it relied on something story-specific, and tying him in more directly with the Klingon War helps to automatically backfill his characterization with information the viewer is likely to be familiar with) shows that there's plenty of heavy stuff to come, but SNW will undoubtedly know how to approach it with a deft touch. The overall vibe of a Trek show tends to flow down from its captain, and even though this was a Pike-light episode you could still feel that it was imbued with his personality and the overall charm of Anson Mount's performance.
On a related note, I spent the post-Picard interim finally getting caught up on Discovery despite people warning me off it for years. Maybe it was due to my low expectations, but I'm two seasons in now and I'm enjoying it far more than I expected. Season 1 peaked in the middle and kinda sputtered out by the end, but the introduction of Pike at the start of S2 made for a huge immediate improvement (it's crazy how quickly Mount and the writers nailed his character) and then it took another big step up midway through when Michelle Paradise joined the staff. It also helps that I'm a sucker for the "we have to travel back in time to set the events we have already witnessed in motion" and "the friends we made along the way return to save the day in the climax" storytelling tropes. I'm surprised at how much I'm looking forward to the rest of this catchup.
I felt exactly like you did about Discovery seasons 1 and 2; at that point I think trying new things was just entertaining enough to outweigh what would later be its recurring flaws. I thought season 3 had a very promising setup, but without spoiling anything, ended up kinda disappointing. Season 4 was much better in my opinion, but by then all the usual criticisms people have made about Discovery became pretty obvious. Whatever its flaws though, I'll be forever grateful we got SNW out of it!
My nitpick: I feel like the characterization of Klingons was weirdly scattershot. Two incidents stuck out: in the weapons deal when La'an pulled out her "antimatter detonator" and dude was like "You sure you're not a Klingon?" No, no she's not, because a Klingon would not do that. Then, when Chapel and M'Benga have clobbered a bunch of Klingons and they ask "Where is the transponder?" and the Klingon refuses to say, but immediately caves upon being threatened a further beatdown. These are quips and conveniences, ultimately, rather than being particularly considered. Does it matter really? Maybe it portends greater carelessness and maybe it doesn't - but I am thrilled the show is back. Between this and Picard S3, it's like emerging out of years in a dank cave.
Is the false premise that things rapidly freeze in space indelible Trek canon at this point? That was the biggest nitpick I had with the episode. It also seemed a bit too convenient that Spock's vital signs improved all of 0.5 seconds after he started trying to channel his emotions through music for the first time ever.
I find that the cast is again carrying this season and that it's being held back by unadventurous writing and an absence of desire to be something greater than another Trek series. TOS was remarkable because it pooled the resources of a generation of SF writing talent to bring grand new ideas to the screen, and TNG and DS9 upheld that tradition to a greater or lesser degree. SNW seems to be trying to just be a vehicle for its charismatic cast and not to become the sort of anthology SF show that draws comparisons to Black Mirror for its exploration of the possible and theoretical.
On the other hand, it's a really good vehicle for its charismatic cast, and is thoroughly enjoyable despite its limitations.
I think the episodic nature lends itself to the anthology idea but it'd need more episodes to do it on a bigger scale. Black Mirror works because it's a genuine anthology show and no need for consistency. For SNW, you need to build and care for these characters so it makes sense they lean into the charisma. Zack mentioned filler episodes in the review and I think that's what this is missing--and where the DS9 and TNG's big ideas really came through--is the filler episode where they take a big swing and it really lands. (Duet, The Visitor, etc.) You can't get that if you only get 8-10 episodes a season.
To be clear, if by freeze you mean turn solid, that would be inaccurate, but that would not mean they would not become very cold and that was what was meant.
Things do rapidly (depends upon what you mean by rapidly, but i believe by any objective standard it would be rapid) freeze in space. It is a vacuum and it is a few degrees above absolute zero.
Tell that to Harvard University: "One common misconception is that outer space is cold, but in truth, space itself has no temperature. In thermodynamic terms, temperature is a function of heat energy in a given amount of matter, and space by definition has no mass."
Another critic asked me if the drug had come up before, and I couldn't remember. Was curious if I'd forgotten something from Discovery, or even before that.
And speaking of the war, was it just me or did this episode have more references to the Klingon War than season 1 as a whole? I hadn't yet watched any of Discovery before S1 of SNW aired so maybe I just wasn't on the lookout for them, but this episode felt much more like a direct continuation of some of Discovery's story lines (at least from it's first season). I wonder if that was an intentional attempt to make SNW as approachable for a new viewer as possible and they're now working under the assumption that people who subscribed for it (like me) have since caught up on its parent show?
Biggest complaint me have with Strange New Worlds is that it safest possible Trek show to make, so fomulaic plot elements not out of place there. But it just so well done it very hard for me to care. Me appreciated that Paramount took big swings out of gate with Disco and Picard, (even if results were wildly uneven), but me also just excited that we finally get show that fires on all cylinders every single week.
And me thought it was great (and not at all safe) choice to sideline Pike and Number One for this epsiode. It let us spend more time with other characters, and ensemble is so winning we not really miss them. Me agree that Peck is terrific as less-fully-formed Spock, and Jess Bush so darned appealing as Chapel it going to be tough to find reason for them to believably settle on "won't they" when it come time to meet up with TOS continuity.
Most of all, me glad to have Zach back writing about Star Trek again! Q'apla!
I could be wrong (and I'm not fully caught up on Disco yet) but other than the Lower Decks Peanut Hamper one off I can't remember an episode of the Paramount + series to sideline its main character to such a degree. There's barely been an episode of Disco where Burnham wasn't in the A plot (let alone where she only appeared in one scene) and it sure didn't happen in Picard. Giving an episode over to the ensemble wasn't out of place in the TNG era but the "X hour movie"/limited number of episodes approach to the streaming era limits those opportunities.
It's heartening to see SNW sticking to its mission statement of functioning as a throwback Trek series in spite of the way the industry has changed. While Pike is great and it's a bit distressing to think that there are only nine episodes left in the season and he's barely appeared, it shows how confident the SNW team is in their format, their cast, and their characters that they can do something so defiantly old fashioned and pull it off so well.
Between this and Poker Face, favorite genre of TV is rapidly becoming "old-school TV show with familiar formula updated for modern era."
Zack doing Star Trek reviews really cements this place as Old AV Club reborn, for me.
Cookie Monster commenting does it for me.
That's the reason I signed up in the first place.
1. So we are going to be like that, are we? (just kidding. nit pick away)
2. I do like the subtle introduction of Spock as musician and the line "next time it will be your commission" which prefigures things we see in TOS but doesn't revel in its own cleverness.
Oh thank you for mentioning that, I thought the introduction of the lute was quite well done.
So glad this is back!
To pile on one more nitpick, though, did the camera flipping upside down at the drop of a hat bother anyone else? No idea why opening a hatch into a subfloor calls for a full vertical 360 camera move. Or did I miss something there?
At first, I thought they were demonstrating that the gravity plating, or whatever, pulled in the opposite direction under the deck. Then the camera flipped again. Weird.
Yes. All the camera tricks, and especially whatever the hell that was when M’benga and Chapel beam aboard, were weird and distracting. In the age of CGI everywhere the last thing we need is disorienting camera setups for no real reason. Just let us see the action and emotion!
Oh yeah, that too. Just seems like a director trying about 15% too hard.
It's a thing with modern Trek shows. I'm just grateful SNW doesn't do Discovery's "We have two characters talking so LET'S CONSTANTLY WHIP THE CAMERA AROUND THEM" trick.
Actually, after thinking about it further and considering the plot context, I'm wondering if the transporter thing was an homage to Sunshine, which features a similar scene.
And also, as far as cribbing, there's the whole "Star Trek VI" of it all going on with the framing.
“They’re leaning hard into the “will they/won’t they” of Chapel and Spock. I remain into it, although I always have to remind myself to not think about the original series.”
After the last season finale, I've become convinced that this show is at its worst when it tries to tie in with the original series. If this was a random Star Trek ship with random Star Trek people on it (which, with characters like M'Benga and Chapel being so radically reimagined, it basically is), same cast, characters, and writers, I'm sure it'd be for the best. The writers and the audience would both be spared from worrying about how SNW turns into TOS and how that restricts them to pretty destructive outcomes for all the legacy characters they backfilled into having the same jobs as in TOS ten years earlier (I'm already nervous about Chapel mentioning this week about planning to go on an archeological expedition, presumably so she can meet her future-fiancée and the show can begin bouncing back and forth between tedious box-checking and annoying re-contextualization).
For a more mild example, look at Uhura. They put themselves in a situation where they could either fire an actor, or establish that she basically got an internship before graduation, and then stayed in the same position in the same place for the next thirty-five years.
Say what you will about the Kelvin Trilogy, but the alternate timeline hook was brilliant; it gave you a reason not to worry about these things. You could tell new stories, with the big name legacy characters, and not stress about how it fits together with TOS. Why these new shows didn't lift that is beyond me.
It's baffling to me how frequently the Trek decision-makers choose to set new things in the past. In a universe this expansive, it just seems like all-downside. Except you can have Spock, I guess.
I don't know what to make of Pelia. The delivery was disconcertingly off kilter, but this is in space and in the future, so there isn't anything "wrong", a species can be however you want them to be. We'll see if Ii get used to it.
I'm not sure I agree this Spock is coded autistic (a subject I'm very familiar with), but Leonard Nimoy's Spock as an older autistic person who feels secure in himself and have learned to read the necessary social codes and act on them actally makes perfect sense to me.
I should stress, I don't mean "coded autistic" in the sense that he's an accurate portrayal of autism--it's more a term for a kind of TV (and movie) character that's been around for a while, whose been kind of pushed into that slot. Someone well-meaning but extremely literal who doesn't always understand metaphors or humor; he's like a more confident Data, or a less dickish Sheldon.
Hey Zack! Hey everyone! Good to be talking Trek again!
The smiles that slowly crept across the crew's faces when Spock said "we have to steal the Enterprise" sums up what works about SNW so well. It strikes the perfect balance between "space is fucking terrifying" and "space is fucking awesome", neither getting too bogged down in the former but not leaning too into lightheartedness with the latter. There's serious stuff at hand, but it's treated with a level of levity and excitement that feels quintessentially of the Trek ethos. The comparison that keeps coming to my mind is Legends of Tomorrow, and while SNW isn't as overtly self-aware or goofy as Legends was, that's still an excellent vibe to shoot for.
The implication of an impending Gorn war and M'Benga new role as Guy Who Saw Some Shit in the War (which I like for him - the story with his daughter was sweet, albeit rushed, but it relied on the universality of a parent/child relationship more than it relied on something story-specific, and tying him in more directly with the Klingon War helps to automatically backfill his characterization with information the viewer is likely to be familiar with) shows that there's plenty of heavy stuff to come, but SNW will undoubtedly know how to approach it with a deft touch. The overall vibe of a Trek show tends to flow down from its captain, and even though this was a Pike-light episode you could still feel that it was imbued with his personality and the overall charm of Anson Mount's performance.
On a related note, I spent the post-Picard interim finally getting caught up on Discovery despite people warning me off it for years. Maybe it was due to my low expectations, but I'm two seasons in now and I'm enjoying it far more than I expected. Season 1 peaked in the middle and kinda sputtered out by the end, but the introduction of Pike at the start of S2 made for a huge immediate improvement (it's crazy how quickly Mount and the writers nailed his character) and then it took another big step up midway through when Michelle Paradise joined the staff. It also helps that I'm a sucker for the "we have to travel back in time to set the events we have already witnessed in motion" and "the friends we made along the way return to save the day in the climax" storytelling tropes. I'm surprised at how much I'm looking forward to the rest of this catchup.
I felt exactly like you did about Discovery seasons 1 and 2; at that point I think trying new things was just entertaining enough to outweigh what would later be its recurring flaws. I thought season 3 had a very promising setup, but without spoiling anything, ended up kinda disappointing. Season 4 was much better in my opinion, but by then all the usual criticisms people have made about Discovery became pretty obvious. Whatever its flaws though, I'll be forever grateful we got SNW out of it!
This has to be the best acted Star Trek that's been with apologies to Sir Patrick Stewart. It's also the best Star Trek since the TNG era.
HEMMER LIVES
...did i miss something?
It’s a statement of desire rather than fact. He’s Aenar, from a winter planet, yadda yadda.
And a reply to the statement that Pelia replaces him...:-)
My nitpick: I feel like the characterization of Klingons was weirdly scattershot. Two incidents stuck out: in the weapons deal when La'an pulled out her "antimatter detonator" and dude was like "You sure you're not a Klingon?" No, no she's not, because a Klingon would not do that. Then, when Chapel and M'Benga have clobbered a bunch of Klingons and they ask "Where is the transponder?" and the Klingon refuses to say, but immediately caves upon being threatened a further beatdown. These are quips and conveniences, ultimately, rather than being particularly considered. Does it matter really? Maybe it portends greater carelessness and maybe it doesn't - but I am thrilled the show is back. Between this and Picard S3, it's like emerging out of years in a dank cave.
Is the false premise that things rapidly freeze in space indelible Trek canon at this point? That was the biggest nitpick I had with the episode. It also seemed a bit too convenient that Spock's vital signs improved all of 0.5 seconds after he started trying to channel his emotions through music for the first time ever.
I find that the cast is again carrying this season and that it's being held back by unadventurous writing and an absence of desire to be something greater than another Trek series. TOS was remarkable because it pooled the resources of a generation of SF writing talent to bring grand new ideas to the screen, and TNG and DS9 upheld that tradition to a greater or lesser degree. SNW seems to be trying to just be a vehicle for its charismatic cast and not to become the sort of anthology SF show that draws comparisons to Black Mirror for its exploration of the possible and theoretical.
On the other hand, it's a really good vehicle for its charismatic cast, and is thoroughly enjoyable despite its limitations.
I think the episodic nature lends itself to the anthology idea but it'd need more episodes to do it on a bigger scale. Black Mirror works because it's a genuine anthology show and no need for consistency. For SNW, you need to build and care for these characters so it makes sense they lean into the charisma. Zack mentioned filler episodes in the review and I think that's what this is missing--and where the DS9 and TNG's big ideas really came through--is the filler episode where they take a big swing and it really lands. (Duet, The Visitor, etc.) You can't get that if you only get 8-10 episodes a season.
To be clear, if by freeze you mean turn solid, that would be inaccurate, but that would not mean they would not become very cold and that was what was meant.
Things do rapidly (depends upon what you mean by rapidly, but i believe by any objective standard it would be rapid) freeze in space. It is a vacuum and it is a few degrees above absolute zero.
Tell that to Harvard University: "One common misconception is that outer space is cold, but in truth, space itself has no temperature. In thermodynamic terms, temperature is a function of heat energy in a given amount of matter, and space by definition has no mass."
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2013/space-human-body/
awesome read, thanks!
I guess the only way heat is lost is through radiation, which would take time. Hmm.
All considered, at least it's better than how they consistently mistreat evolution in Star Trek.
I assumed the combat drug was something illicit that M'Benga had discovered during the war.
Another critic asked me if the drug had come up before, and I couldn't remember. Was curious if I'd forgotten something from Discovery, or even before that.
I’m in the middle of watching Discovery right now and nothing like that has appeared in the first two seasons.
In Discovery, everyone is just super-human kung fu fighter by training.
Gotta go back to the good old fashioned, Starfleet approved double axe handle punch. No respect for the classics these days.
I don't think so.
And speaking of the war, was it just me or did this episode have more references to the Klingon War than season 1 as a whole? I hadn't yet watched any of Discovery before S1 of SNW aired so maybe I just wasn't on the lookout for them, but this episode felt much more like a direct continuation of some of Discovery's story lines (at least from it's first season). I wonder if that was an intentional attempt to make SNW as approachable for a new viewer as possible and they're now working under the assumption that people who subscribed for it (like me) have since caught up on its parent show?
Love your thinking, though I now think I need to shoehorn "A Canticle For Leibowitz" into ST chronology somehow...
Did you not hear that Keanu Reeves will be in this season playing himself?