I don’t have much to say on this one. It was alright. Nice to see La’an make some forward progress in her own issues. When I saw the flat planet going through space I thought for a brief moment we were going to get a Discworld parody/crossover. I didn’t mind this diversion so much, given that it was grounded in some kind of reality, and continued the story we had already started much earlier in the series. I do think everyone should have caught imposter pike much earlier on.
Maybe she was an undercover romulan, sent to report if enterprise go too close to finding the cloaked ship, and now that Reeger is likely no longer a threat, and enterprise probably isn’t going to want to follow up, her job’s done so she’s off.
M’Benga covering for Kirk is really good, I like that the setup for this was laid a couple of episodes ago. Kirk fighting on behalf of the crew to keep them from doing war crimes - it shows the level of camaraderie this crew has, which admiral reeger likely never experienced, and helps continue to cement Kirk as a member of the enterprise.
I really enjoyed this one. The core moral dilemma of orders versus morals, captured in a strong A story and a decent B story. Genuine character growth, and an out for M’Benga that made sense, was in character, and felt justified. The direction was really nice, it captured the tense nature of the episode. The treknobabble for the A plot was pretty decent, and in the B plot I enjoyed the cave set - it felt used and full, not bare like they sometimes do. I really enjoyed the acting here - the Andorian leader gave me a hint of cardassian in his analytical takedown of humans, and the badmiral was really enjoyable from his upbeat arrival to steady decline into madness. The two Kirks getting along really well was enjoyable, and the synchronised walk and talk at the end was a nice way to wrap up the episode.
From this season’s approach, I’m guessing this episode drawing from old war films, in particular I am getting flavours of submarine hunts, chasing after wakes, and handling big questions of WMDs, the sanity of the chain of command. This is exactly the way I like those references embedded, allowing the trek to shine through, rather than the gimmick taking over.
My only immediate quibble in this episode was when Uhura went Rambo in the caves, it did feel like the Andorians went down a little easy, but I wasn’t that bothered by it. A’Sha leaving is fine, I guess, she didn’t feel very present throughout the season anyway.
Please, more of this type of episode.
I agree that Pike’s retrospective of his alternate life was a good idea to explore - its the kind of thing that older trek series would quickly shuffle on after that week’s episode (like O’briens stint in virtual jail). Pike has done a lot of thinking about coming to terms with his vision of his own future, so thinking about his alternate future was a necessary next step.
I just wish it had been given a better story in which to bubble about. If it’s a serious character point, let it be told in a serious story. Let us see his job as a captain of a discovery-science-diplomacy ship lead him down that path of self reflection. Adding a comedic glamour filter on top of everything, in my opinion, cheapens the end result. It bugs me that so far we had erica/scotty needing to be drunk to learn to get along, spock needing to be dreaming / nightmaring, and now pike and co. stuck in a Q game in order to grow as people.
I actually had no idea who Deidre Hall was, though from the visual language I got the impression she was meant to be “someone important”. I assumed they had picked a random actress and were making a meta-joke about guest actors on TV shows. I was half expecting her to vanish at the very end.
One of the things I love about Star Trek is when it allows us to see the best of humanity when faced with hard sci fi, working together despite adverse circumstances. TNG exemplified the utopian vision of humanity struggling against the odds but working together to get by. Voyager took aliens-of-the-week to an extreme yet still kept space for good character interactions alongside the sci-fi. Even DS9, which in its conception is closest to a soap opera, managed to mix family dynamics with spacefaring adventure. I will accept these older series had their fair share of stinkers, but all of these series were able to blend pastiches of classic film and stories into their episodes without it being hammy and grating.
Now, this episode. The key line is “Space adventures leave little time for humans to deal with their inner struggles”. This line is important because it is wrong.
I enjoy Rhys Darby but not in this one. I’m glad they didn’t make this one be all a dream in the end and I like that the final scenes show some real character moments, but Uhura and M’Benga (and possibly also Pike) could have had their conversations in amongst non-gimmicked episodes. Also, the ship has a counsellor? Either they’re new, or haven’t been doing their job very well. How many times has Spock broken up with someone now? Didn’t care for the gimmick this episode. I fast forwarded through parts of it.
One big thing you need to think about is accessibility. This is something that came up in a conversation with a local representative in the UK - for children in public schools it is a requirements that any technology have good accessibility and not leave anyone behind. And accessibility tools on linux are, suffice to say, not great. Especially when compared with those on other closed systems. My local government ended up going with iPads for kids in schools, and the accessibility tooling on these was a factor in that choice.
I was wondering if this was meant to be the “origin story” of the dermal regenerator.
For a moment I did wonder if pelia was going to be the one who goes out to take the readings, and it would be her going out with a bang.
This one felt like we were halfway towards a proper episode. The plot had a big ethical decision, it had opportunity for growth, a decent if treknobabbly sci fi threat. But this episode really suffered from prequelitis - it never really felt that Chapel was going to do anything other than try to save Mbenga, we know mbenga survives in some capacity anyway, and Chapel’s decision is made within seconds with little room to explore “when should you let a patient go”. Ditto Spock’s grand sacrifice going out into the radiation, and a lack of tension around the pod being ejected. There was a lot going on here, possibly too much. The clear stand outs here are Scotty getting his drive and motivation to own engineering on enterprise, and nurse chapel getting the push to likewise take more agency of her life on enterprise.
I guess this is meant to be borrowing from the 24 style of show - the only 24 I’ve ever seen was when the Simpsons parodied it. Overall I didn’t really like that particular style of direction / editing, but it wasn’t terrible. It kind of bugged me that we only learnt what the threat we were counting down to was half way through the episode. This episode would probably have worked just as well without the counter, it didn’t add anything for me.
Random notes:
Indie games are good, but if privacy is a concern be careful of any game developed in a big engine like unity. My firewall pings a warning every time I launch a unity game because they all send analytics data back to unity. If it’s single player and you block all outgoing connections by default, you’re fine though.
Worth noting that the trendline in that plot would be pointing down anyway, before you include season 4. That tends to happen for every long running TV show.
It can be a bit difficult to get a read on what Vulcans are thinking as a viewer, It can’t be easy to act them out. I did think ethan peck was good in this one
“high jinks” might be intentional, and meant to be the vulcan’s way of being dismissive of the human’s nonsense by deliberately pronouncing it as two words.
I went into this episode blind, but the moment Scotty mentioned the puppet was going to be the transporter payload I knew we were in for a tuvix situation. I did not realise it would be quite on this scale. I don’t hate the premise of the episode. It reminded me a lot of the TNG episode where they all get turned into children, and this is a universe where Tom Paris got turned into a lizard after all. I do absolutely hate the cop-out at the end where it turns out it was all a dream. It means that spock was the only character that had opportunity for development and growth, and no-one else gets to share in that. Either go all in on the zany adventures, or dont, but never waste the audience’s time like this.
But hey, you want puppets, I’ll judge you on the puppets. I think they were generally well designed. While the “body language” was expressive, I don’t think the faces were as good as they could have been - There were only a handful of times where changes in eyes and eyebrows really stood out. I also feel that the writing and voice acting for the puppet character’s dialogue was not great, but that gets hand-waved away at the end where we realise as puppets they’re not quite the same people The endpoint of letting go and embracing the madness was a nice resolution to the absurd situation, however I did not feel like the cartoon physics played through.
The orion plot was OK, used as the necessary antagonists to drive the plot. But other than some moments from Joe Lo Truglio, who was a perfect choice for an empathetic male orion, the invaders could have been any invading alien species and nothing really specific to orions was needed. I’m also confused by the huge orion vessel, unless I’ve misread the scale, there should be hundreds at least but at no point did anyone think to help out the 3 or 4 orions actually invading the enterprise. But maybe none of this matters, because hey, it was all a dream.
With some of the other gimmicky episodes, I’ve instantly wanted to re-watch them once I finished. Here, once was enough, which is not a great indicator for the episode overall.
Kor was good. When a new Klingon character is introduced, they need something to differentiate themselves from the stereotype of the honor-bound aggressive wine-guzzler. Kor here stood out in his approach to running the occupation and his presence on the screen.
This is the first episode this season that I’ve really enjoyed.
The direction, lighting, filtering, was all great and on point. I really enjoyed the story, the A plot was a nice wartime rebel story and the B plot was pretty decent too. I was feeling shades of some of the “retro themed” ST episodes from the 90s. The set design was great on the planet.
The Klingons here are used well - seeing the way they act during wartime here they feel almost cardassian in how they treat the native population, but out also makes sense given what we’re told about how they acted during this time. I liked seeing Scotty and Ortega just hanging out. La’an getting help to deal with her problems is good, and seeing her doggedly chase down the truth was nice, though I’m a little unclear in exactly what the chain of events was with the signals and the transporter. Mbenga and una were really sharp on the planet and I enjoyed their acting.
Mixed bag of an episode.
I liked that we got some proper character development - Spock and Kirk coming closer together, an origin point for their friendship is good to see, and the hallucination was a useful way to explain why spock would be willing to open up to such a friendship in the first place. Ortegas and Scotty similarly got some satisfying growth, and the quite unprofessional arguing between them didn’t end drag on for too long.
I did not like the first couple of acts. I know this is meant to be a comedy episode, but none of the jokes really landed for me, it was just kind of a slog to get through. I’m not a big fan of “stoner / drunk” humour in other shows, and it’s not a whole lot better here. I am not sure if the alien host was meant to be funny or charming, but they just came across as mildly annoying. If I compare this to pleasure-planet episodes we’ve seen in other trek shows, I don’t feel the pleasure planet really added a whole lot. CG sequences aside, they were in a fancy hotel more than an actual planet.
Something that really bugged me is that despite repeated references to alternate shifts, at no point did any of the “alphas” think that maybe it might be worth handing off the negotiations or asking for help with the bomb. It speaks to a kind of arrogance that doesn’t really play well given the whole point of the episode is learning to rely on others.
The final act is again mixed. The idea of a pressure bomb, the sci fi equivalent of a landmine, is a great way of building tension, brings ortegas and scotty together fully. But that it then also provides the solution for the diplomatic problems make no sense. The aliens say that particular type of bomb is part of a peace ritual that hasn’t been seen in generations, but then why would a separatist use that for their sabotage?
Overall it was alright, but not amazing.
This was a very creepy episode, and as a standalone sci fi fantasy horror piece it works well. But it doesn’t feel trek. Here’s my conspiracy: With the dramatic different in tone, direction, the repeated references to section 12, this is a Poorly Disguised Pilot that the producers were using to test the waters for an x-files like section 12 spinoff.
Overall, I did not enjoy it. I don’t seek out this kind of film normally, and I might have enjoyed it if it had led to anything interesting happening, but ultimately it has not left them with any further progress. All the dramatic moments between the away team and the “others” they hallucinated were basically “then they woke up and it was all a dream”, so no relationship progress there. And within themselves, aside from more unresolved trauma, Spock seems no closer to aligning his human and vulcan selves, La’an hasn’t really learned anything new about her violent tendencies she didn’t already know from the last episode, and Kirk never even got to have the chat with his family because the network apparently cut out.
This was a really good finale. It was well paced, the stakes for the crew felt strong, and it was a great timey wimey time travel sci fi story.
Regarding the stakes, one of my criticisms of prequels was that, as fans, the future is fixed, but here it felt a lot more tense. Even though we know scotty doesn’t die, I was half expecting one of the Uhuras to have to sacrifice themselves to save the other, which felt a substantial risk, and it really helped sell the episode.
CRG did great acting here, and did justice to “the same character but at different points in their life” - the confidence in future!uhura stood out.
I was very confused about the black hole / white hole’s scale - I was suprised at the final act when they’re basically right up against it, and the holes turn out to be roughly the same size as the enterprise itself. I think it could have been established a little better at the beginning, but that’s a minor annoyance.
The midwife aliens are the same being as DS9 prophets, I guess, they spoke to Uhura in song because they would know she can interpret that, where they knew to speak to bajorans in poetry and scripture.
I liked the little preview of future!enterprise’s looks, especially seeing a few background characters from different species.
Overall, great finale to an okay season. I hope the final season has loads of episodes just like this one.