Back to live action, to was the taste of Section 31 out of our collective mouths. Spoilers.
A strong, but atypical, return for Strange New Worlds. This is a series that lives the most in the one-off stories rather than the serial, so this isn’t really what I think of as the homeland of this series. But this episode shows that they can do strong serial story telling here.
A surprising amount of the show is problem solving – technobabble, but in more of a ‘back and forwards’ way than usual. I like this for two reasons – first, it shows how deep the hole is. Nothing they are doing is working, they are facing a difficult problem and the longer conversations about it give a greater sense of threat. Secondly, no one has all the answers (perhaps except Spock) – it’s collaborative, with an emphasis on the crew and the unique skills everyone has. I think it’s possible that every single member of the story contributed to the solution, which is actually quite rare.
The other thing I liked about this episode is it managed to resolve the Gorn threat without defanging them. We have a solution in terms of X-Flares, but it’s not permanent (they will be back), and the solution this time is based on unique characteristics of that stellar system. It means the Gorn can be back later without the usual problems such as with the Borg getting less threatening over time.
With all of that there wasn’t much time left in the episode for interesting character work. There’s a brief, jarring, scene with Chapel and Spock. The most interesting part was Anson Mount’s performance as Pike, which I thought was very complex. Very different to what we normally see, driven and on the edge, but with a lot of continuity with the ‘normal’ Pike.
Quick hits:
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There’s been a lot of Trek and time since last time, I have rarely needed a ‘previously on’ more.
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Nice change of pace inn the opening action scene.
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Oh come on, no one passes up the opportunity to say ‘ramming speed’, do they?
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A few too many in the writing credits though…
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USS Pablo Picasso? Wonder what the series is – Cubist Series? Spanish born people? French artists? I need to know the sister ships!
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Have to admit I’m on the Admiral’s side – you need to be ready, you need to worry about the many.
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The internals of the Gorn ship don’t make any sense, but they are very cool. And clearly the Gorn have had enough contact with humanity to know about ‘The Matrix’.
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I would be very happy if Scotty and Pelia had their own spinoff, possibly a Perfect Strangers style sitcom. Live action sitcom is the final frontier.
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Not making Mitchell call for relief is very stupid. She’s tired, reaction time is compromised, judgment is compromised. Strong chance she kills everyone with her ‘I’m going to see this through’.
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I wonder what the underlying evolutionary biology of being so responsive to solar events is – signalling changes in abundance on their home planet perhaps?
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Not loving the staccato slow motion effect while right next to the stars.
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Christianity in Star Trek! That is incredibly rare – and I think this might be the closest we’ve come to a ‘Christian’ in the main crew (noting that back in the TOS days it was probably just a tacit assumption given the culture at the time).
960 down.