That stuff about the civil war was ominous, I gotta say. I loved Mount on Discovery, so he's just a little dour in the premiere episode here for me. Hoping they're done with the "I've seen my future and it haunts me" stuff, at last for the meantime. Big heart-eyes for the eager young crew, and Uhura promising to play a major role. And the disregard for General Order One, or whatever they called the prime directive back then, is a goshdarn delight. Let's go!
May 8, 2022·edited May 8, 2022Liked by Zack Handlen
Nice to have you back reviewing Star Trek, Zack! After being turned off by Discovery and Picard, I was wary about another Star Trek show focusing on the timeline before the original series. This was a welcome surprise! It wasn't perfect, but as first episodes go it did a amiable job of introducing the characters and the general vibe we'll be getting.
Put me down as someone who never expected to have strong thoughts about Captain Pike, but I really liked him and while I don't need it to be his main deal the "knowing his own future" thing is a nice wrinkle.
If SNW lives up to its stated purpose, I'm hoping it will change the minds of anyone who considers it "unnecesssary." Ham-fisted morality tales are what Star Trek was born to be!
I went into this very excited and came out feeling the same, so that's a win in my book. The first episodes of Discovery and Picard left me more puzzled and disoriented than anything. Discovery has grown some since then; Picard, I'm not so sure. (WHEN will I get my Captain Seven show?) I'm also not sure SNW is so inward-gazing as it might first seem. Yes, there are a lot of characters we've seen before, but most of them--save Spock--had little characterization in TOS. That includes Uhura, who far too often got the narrative shaft. Also I'd read an interview where the actress complained they put the red alert button on her panel too far away, and she was indeed correct.
My pre-airing decision to stan Lt. Ortegas is clearly paying off. I was delighted to find her in command, and sassy about Chapel's shenanigans, while everyone was on the planet. She also seems to have a cheeky bros vibe with Pike that I'm here for. In addition, I will also be stanning Transporter Chief Kyle, and not just because he is hot.
I've binged all of season 1 & half of season 2 in the last 2 days and I'm just so happy to come here and read these reviews like I would do when I caught up with a show during the AV Club heyday. So thank you Myles and Zack!
Glad to see I wasn't alone in feeling that the first episode was 'fun but fine.' My favourite thing about classic Trek wasn't so much the episodic adventures as it was the sci-fi short story morality tales. Based on the end of this episode... I'm feeling a little less optimistic that the writers can tell stories with more sophistication and sensitivity beyond 'let's be nice and friends.' I'm looking forward to being wrong, and there are plenty of different classic Trek series episodes that are just swashbuckling space adventures or very bad at morality tales, so it's not like SNW is in poor company. I look forward to seeing what they do!
Didn't hate it, didn't love it. I think there is fun to be had with a back to basics version of Star Trek, and you can see suggestions of that template here, but honestly The Orville has already quite ably staked out that niche. I'll do my best to watch SNW on its own terms, but I really wish they'd stop doing prequels and commit to building the franchise at the frontier of the timeline.
I enjoyed the first episode even if some of it lost me. I think that was the heavy exposition. I have heard really good things about this series and am looking forward to catching up and reading your recaps!
This show makes me grumpy because of how shamelessly it panders to fans who just want their old-school, classic formula Star Trek, and also because I'm one of those fans, and I hate being pandered to. (Or more precisely, I hate enjoying being pandered to.) Anyway, this show pretty much has my number, serving up the golden oldies (thuddingly obvious social commentary, forehead-of-the-week aliens dressed in inexplicably Earthlike fashions, and good old-fashioned American—sorry, Federation—triumphalism) but updated with modern sensibilities. I'm like one of those obnoxious music fans at shows who sits down with a sour expression whenever their favorite band plays one of their hits.
I have to admit, though, that I enjoyed this first episode more than I expected. I felt that in many ways—most blatantly when Pike reflects on his onrushing mortality—this show is aimed at viewers my age (old) who grew up watching TOS as kids, when TOS was just "Star Trek." What I hope for from this kind of nostalgia-rich Star Trek is the feeling of watching Trek with young eyes, and for the most part I got that. I started out pretty resistant to the show, but was won over by the end. It was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. I had won the victory over myself. I loved Big Enterprise.
Watching this for the first time a year a later in hopes of catching up to Zack's recaps of Season Two: I liked this but didn't love it. Thought the tone was all over the place. I loved Anson Mount's Pike but I also love the way Chris Pine does Kirk and doesn't make those movies great. Pike being haunted by memories of his down death is kind of interesting and different for Star Trek but also a strange note to begin a new show/5 year mission. General order 1 being brazenly defied and then rebranded as the Prime Directive was a hilarious nerd joke.
To me the most surprising part was Pike's big speech and slideshow presentation, which I took not as the typical hamhanded Star Trek ending but instead an extremely on the nose and explicit meta-commentary about the continued relevance of Rodenberry style optimism about the future as we more and more seem to be living in a dystopia. I was amazed that it went so far as not only to directly show footage of January 6th but to explicitly say that human civilization basically ended in the 21st century before rebuilding. I'm pretty sure this was never part of the official Star Trek chronology before and I'm pretty sure no Star Trek thing has ever acknowledged the gulf between where we are now and Rodenberry's vision before. It's interesting that they felt the need to do this
Other than that it was a standard pilot: too long, too many characters introduced briefly
Don't want to be a continuity whiner, but I don't understand why they have to talk so much about the Gorn, surely they know the Federation haven't met them yet? I felt this episode didn't quite live up to the good vibes, I guess the getting the band together element left too little for an actual episode, and looking at the actual intrigue, it plays out as the story of the TNG Episode First Contact cut down to a third. But first episodes are always tricky. I did love the Uhura/Chapel-scene, that was just good writing without any reliance on our pre-knowledge of Star Trek or the characters.
Just popping in two years later to thank you (and Myles, and this community) for these reviews! I've been sloooooowly watching my way through all of Star Trek in release order, and so am only now getting to this one. I don't know if I'll be commenting on many of these older reviews, but I've got them all saved in my inbox and am looking forward to reading them as I watch through the show.
Like you and some of the other commenters, I was surprised by how much I liked this SNW pilot. Outside of the episode, I hate that it feels like the franchise made another series starring a Kirk-era white man to placate complaints that Discovery is too woke or whatever. But in actually watching the thing, it's giving me all the zippy fun that I want Trek to have and that Discovery and Picard so often fail to deliver. I'm hopeful they can keep that up as the series goes on.
Finally watched this, via the free airing on CBS for Star Trek Day, and it was fine.
Was impressed how even though this is a spin-off/continuation of Discovery, which I haven't seen, I was able to follow it just fine. They tell you what you need to know but don't get too bogged down on it. That's pretty impressive considering how with Deep Space 9, you were expected to be pretty familiar with Star Trek TNG as not only did it incorporate numerous characters from that series but it was a direct continuation of the Chain of Command.
Can't wait to watch the next episode, and possibly take advantage of the limited free month trial, as I've heard the series gets pretty good as it goes along.
That stuff about the civil war was ominous, I gotta say. I loved Mount on Discovery, so he's just a little dour in the premiere episode here for me. Hoping they're done with the "I've seen my future and it haunts me" stuff, at last for the meantime. Big heart-eyes for the eager young crew, and Uhura promising to play a major role. And the disregard for General Order One, or whatever they called the prime directive back then, is a goshdarn delight. Let's go!
Nice to have you back reviewing Star Trek, Zack! After being turned off by Discovery and Picard, I was wary about another Star Trek show focusing on the timeline before the original series. This was a welcome surprise! It wasn't perfect, but as first episodes go it did a amiable job of introducing the characters and the general vibe we'll be getting.
Put me down as someone who never expected to have strong thoughts about Captain Pike, but I really liked him and while I don't need it to be his main deal the "knowing his own future" thing is a nice wrinkle.
If SNW lives up to its stated purpose, I'm hoping it will change the minds of anyone who considers it "unnecesssary." Ham-fisted morality tales are what Star Trek was born to be!
I went into this very excited and came out feeling the same, so that's a win in my book. The first episodes of Discovery and Picard left me more puzzled and disoriented than anything. Discovery has grown some since then; Picard, I'm not so sure. (WHEN will I get my Captain Seven show?) I'm also not sure SNW is so inward-gazing as it might first seem. Yes, there are a lot of characters we've seen before, but most of them--save Spock--had little characterization in TOS. That includes Uhura, who far too often got the narrative shaft. Also I'd read an interview where the actress complained they put the red alert button on her panel too far away, and she was indeed correct.
My pre-airing decision to stan Lt. Ortegas is clearly paying off. I was delighted to find her in command, and sassy about Chapel's shenanigans, while everyone was on the planet. She also seems to have a cheeky bros vibe with Pike that I'm here for. In addition, I will also be stanning Transporter Chief Kyle, and not just because he is hot.
I've binged all of season 1 & half of season 2 in the last 2 days and I'm just so happy to come here and read these reviews like I would do when I caught up with a show during the AV Club heyday. So thank you Myles and Zack!
Glad to see I wasn't alone in feeling that the first episode was 'fun but fine.' My favourite thing about classic Trek wasn't so much the episodic adventures as it was the sci-fi short story morality tales. Based on the end of this episode... I'm feeling a little less optimistic that the writers can tell stories with more sophistication and sensitivity beyond 'let's be nice and friends.' I'm looking forward to being wrong, and there are plenty of different classic Trek series episodes that are just swashbuckling space adventures or very bad at morality tales, so it's not like SNW is in poor company. I look forward to seeing what they do!
Didn't hate it, didn't love it. I think there is fun to be had with a back to basics version of Star Trek, and you can see suggestions of that template here, but honestly The Orville has already quite ably staked out that niche. I'll do my best to watch SNW on its own terms, but I really wish they'd stop doing prequels and commit to building the franchise at the frontier of the timeline.
I enjoyed the first episode even if some of it lost me. I think that was the heavy exposition. I have heard really good things about this series and am looking forward to catching up and reading your recaps!
This show makes me grumpy because of how shamelessly it panders to fans who just want their old-school, classic formula Star Trek, and also because I'm one of those fans, and I hate being pandered to. (Or more precisely, I hate enjoying being pandered to.) Anyway, this show pretty much has my number, serving up the golden oldies (thuddingly obvious social commentary, forehead-of-the-week aliens dressed in inexplicably Earthlike fashions, and good old-fashioned American—sorry, Federation—triumphalism) but updated with modern sensibilities. I'm like one of those obnoxious music fans at shows who sits down with a sour expression whenever their favorite band plays one of their hits.
I have to admit, though, that I enjoyed this first episode more than I expected. I felt that in many ways—most blatantly when Pike reflects on his onrushing mortality—this show is aimed at viewers my age (old) who grew up watching TOS as kids, when TOS was just "Star Trek." What I hope for from this kind of nostalgia-rich Star Trek is the feeling of watching Trek with young eyes, and for the most part I got that. I started out pretty resistant to the show, but was won over by the end. It was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. I had won the victory over myself. I loved Big Enterprise.
Watching this for the first time a year a later in hopes of catching up to Zack's recaps of Season Two: I liked this but didn't love it. Thought the tone was all over the place. I loved Anson Mount's Pike but I also love the way Chris Pine does Kirk and doesn't make those movies great. Pike being haunted by memories of his down death is kind of interesting and different for Star Trek but also a strange note to begin a new show/5 year mission. General order 1 being brazenly defied and then rebranded as the Prime Directive was a hilarious nerd joke.
To me the most surprising part was Pike's big speech and slideshow presentation, which I took not as the typical hamhanded Star Trek ending but instead an extremely on the nose and explicit meta-commentary about the continued relevance of Rodenberry style optimism about the future as we more and more seem to be living in a dystopia. I was amazed that it went so far as not only to directly show footage of January 6th but to explicitly say that human civilization basically ended in the 21st century before rebuilding. I'm pretty sure this was never part of the official Star Trek chronology before and I'm pretty sure no Star Trek thing has ever acknowledged the gulf between where we are now and Rodenberry's vision before. It's interesting that they felt the need to do this
Other than that it was a standard pilot: too long, too many characters introduced briefly
Don't want to be a continuity whiner, but I don't understand why they have to talk so much about the Gorn, surely they know the Federation haven't met them yet? I felt this episode didn't quite live up to the good vibes, I guess the getting the band together element left too little for an actual episode, and looking at the actual intrigue, it plays out as the story of the TNG Episode First Contact cut down to a third. But first episodes are always tricky. I did love the Uhura/Chapel-scene, that was just good writing without any reliance on our pre-knowledge of Star Trek or the characters.
Just popping in two years later to thank you (and Myles, and this community) for these reviews! I've been sloooooowly watching my way through all of Star Trek in release order, and so am only now getting to this one. I don't know if I'll be commenting on many of these older reviews, but I've got them all saved in my inbox and am looking forward to reading them as I watch through the show.
Like you and some of the other commenters, I was surprised by how much I liked this SNW pilot. Outside of the episode, I hate that it feels like the franchise made another series starring a Kirk-era white man to placate complaints that Discovery is too woke or whatever. But in actually watching the thing, it's giving me all the zippy fun that I want Trek to have and that Discovery and Picard so often fail to deliver. I'm hopeful they can keep that up as the series goes on.
Finally watched this, via the free airing on CBS for Star Trek Day, and it was fine.
Was impressed how even though this is a spin-off/continuation of Discovery, which I haven't seen, I was able to follow it just fine. They tell you what you need to know but don't get too bogged down on it. That's pretty impressive considering how with Deep Space 9, you were expected to be pretty familiar with Star Trek TNG as not only did it incorporate numerous characters from that series but it was a direct continuation of the Chain of Command.
Can't wait to watch the next episode, and possibly take advantage of the limited free month trial, as I've heard the series gets pretty good as it goes along.