Star Trek: Strange New Worlds [SPOILERS]

There are episodes of every season that I don't like, but it doesn't mean I hate TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY/ ENT.

It's like when twits buy books to burn them. I mean, thanks for supporting the author, chump.

The solution isn't really meant to be seen as satisfactory beyond "at least Una's free." The whole problem at hand is the systemic discrimination against people who cannot help being born the way they are, and yet are being treated as criminals. You should find it unsatisfactory how it ended, that's what the episode is trying to say.

Apparently there's a fairly lucrative income to be had in recording You Tube vids that react to basically every genre show or movie with "Behold my controversial heterodox opinion: it sucked!"

I'm more mystified that such a business model works than that some try it.

In fairness, FOX news has made billions using this exact model.

Thoughts on "The Broken Circle"

The Good:
More backstory for M'Benga
Wrapped up loose threads from S1
Return of the normal Klingons!
Most everything to do with Spock, with a couple exceptions
Dedication at the end
Genre-savvy Carol Kane
Photon torpedo implications

The Bad:
Spock's "thing" scene. Picard S3 did it first, and if they had to do that bit again at all, having just left the starbase under false pretenses and not yet safely at warp was the way wrong time. After the whole thing was resolved and they needed to get back to Starbase 1 to meet up with Captain Pike would have been much better.
Spock running off the bridge to check on Chapel in the middle of a potential battle.
Why did the Klingon captain wait for Spock to get back to the bridge?
Why did the Klingons on the ship have no disruptors or phasers? We were specifically told they had disruptors and phasers.
Wrong effects of vacuum exposure. While I think it's fine they survived, Chapel and M'Benga's wounds were more in line with exposure to Klingons, than exposure to vacuum. Not even red eyes.

The Meh:
The overall plot. On the one hand, it's clearly derivative of Star Trek VI, but on the other hand, this is the kind of thing that SHOULD be happening all the time. And it's not for the same motivations.
Super-soldier serum in a hypospray, with apparently no side effects. Big implications for that.
Why was Carol Kane on Starbase 1 anyway, if she was an instructor at the academy? Did they originally plan to set it at Spacedock, over Earth?

The Ugly:
They actually called the group The Broken Circle by name just once, right as the ship was taking off. Very confusing.
Those were excessively long fight scenes.
There were no humans aboard the ship. This was supposed to be a conspiracy on both sides.
Lack of Carol Kane. She was utterly irrelevant to the plot. Even a call down to engineering while they were hiding in the planet's rings would have been welcome.
The cinematography. There were elements that were superfluous: there was absolutely no call for the camera rotation as Chapel and M'Benga went to another deck. And there were elements that seemed to be for the drama, like that weird whipping-around during the transporter effect, but just ended up being confusing.
The script direction. Chapel and M'Benga drop hyposprays with the empty vials still in them. We watch them fall. Their pupils dialate, and suddenly only the vials fall to the floor and break. What happened to the hyposprays? Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if this is why they forgot the humans, or the Klingons with no weapons.
What exactly was The Broken Circle's plan? They had 30 Klingon warriors in a barely functional Starfleet vessel, going up against a D-7 seems not just under-matched, but actually insane. Was this supposed to be a suicide mission for them? How were they going to get out alive to continue to make a profit?

Overall, I think this is the worst episode of SNW so far.

OK, I'll bite. How does La'an's heritage being connected with Khan "not line up with TOS"? All we know from TOS is that in the 1990s there were the Eugenics Wars, multiple supermen emerged who managed to conquer a fourth of the globe before they were defeated, and largely the chapter in history was hushed up.

What about THAT says that Khan Noonien Singh did not have relatives/descendants/test-tube kids who La'an is connected to?

Truth hurts, don't it?

I actually thought this was meant to be less an allegory for illegal aliens and more about LGBT/trans people. Specifically, the notion that prejudice would prevent someone from getting life-affirming medical care that is so simple.

But whatever marginalized group one wants to read into the allegory, maybe it will make some viewers question their assumptions about laws and prejudice and about when/whether there should be exceptions made.

Spock shouldn't have to do any research on Khan in "Space Seed", he should say to Kirk, "Captain, this is Khan Noonien Singh, I used to serve with one of his descendants on this ship when Fleet Admiral Pike was captain,her name is La'an. Here's what I can tell you about Khan, but I think we should contact her, maybe she can provide us with more information or perhaps she can help us stop him from taking over the ship." You know, something like that because they painted themselves into a corner with this.

It was kind of a mixture of LBTQ rights and refugee rights. I thought humanity/ the Federation/ Starfleet was supposed to have evolved past racism/bigotry by now?

The fact that Spock does not bring up that he once knew what is apparently a descendant of Khan's during Space Seed doesn't contradict canon. It just contradicts your expectation, and your expectation is kinda dumb, to be honest. Within the context of TOS, Spock doesn't bring up a lot of things that he might (that he has a half-brother, that he and his entire species has to mate or die every seven years, that he is engaged to be married, that his dad is a big-time ambassador on the mission the Enterprise is about to embark on, that he wants to take his old captain to a forbidden planet so he can get a happily-ever-after), or brings them up in a strange contexts. For instance, saying that he has an ancestor who is an Earth woman makes it sound like it was generations ago rather than his mother. So the fact that Spock doesn't bring up something that he maybe could/should have earlier is kinda par for the course.

Also, there's no particular reason to think that La'an has any particular insight into Khan that Spock and company might want to tap into, or that means that it should be brought up right at the moment of the discovery of Khan. Assuming that she's a natural descendant of his descendants, she was presumably born roughly 200 years after he was thought to have been dead.

Again, in TOS, it's quite clear from certain episodes that bigotry hasn't been eliminated from even Starfleet officers, let alone the galaxy at large. Remember how Kirk had to lecture Styles to not be racist against Spock on discovering Vulcans and Romulans look alike in Balance of Terror? Or how basically Spock basically had a mutiny on his hands because he's Vulcan in the Galileo Seven? Or basically every episode where Bones says something about Spock's heritage?

I think the attitude of this episode -- we're not perfect, but we're trying to get there and maybe one day we'll succeed --- is better than the notion that TOS had where they played at having 100 percent eliminated those prejudices when it was clear that they actually hadn't.

Dude...


You're reading a lot into this that I don't feel is there. Maybe I'm wrong. Can you elaborate a little more on how you see all of this subtext? Is there an ending you might've found more palatable?

For once, I would say FF's reading is actually plausible if overdone. For instance, the episode made it clear that the Federation was justified in setting up some level of anti-genetic modification laws.

Where the problem lies with his take is that 1) it doesn't even attempt to point out problems either with the surface plot or the real life situation he thinks it analogizes to and 2) the double-standard that there is apparently something wrong with streaming Trek doing something that TOS and all other Treks have done: using sci-fi to deliver subtle-as-an-anvil morality plays.

I won’t go into detail on my phone because it’s too much of a pain in the ass, but clearly the refugee thing is in reference to the border crisis. Granted, it’s less in your face as it was in Picard season two when ICE arrested Rios, but it’s pretty clear that’s what they’re referring to. Then the bit about how Una’s race are genetically engineered at birth and that some of them can blend in, but others could not was clearly meant to be an allegory for not only LGBTQ people, but in particular mixed race kids who look more white than black blending in with whites back in the day.
As for what I think should have happened, I don’t know how long she had been in jail, but maybe throw in some line about having time served and having a strike on her permanent record since she didn’t actually seek refuge. I mean last week Spock stole the Enterprise and a hangover was his punishment. Kirk stole the Enterprise and was demoted FFS. What’s the point of having rules if we can just carve out exceptions every time?

A bit bored so far this season. Not aggressively hating it, but it's just not tickling my nethers anymore.

Well, then I guess you'd better cancel Paramount plus, log out of WF, scramble you password, delete the bookmark, disconnect your internet, disconnect your electricity, lay down in bed with your arms crossed like a mummified pharaoh, and will your lungs to stop pumping.


This may seem like overkill, but so's whining with despair at episode 2.

IMHO, this is the sign of a pretty good fiction/allegory. When you can take a situation and apply the logistical elements to several different real life situations, that means the logic the writers used must be pretty sound. So even if you don't like the particular outcome of the story, you should at least acknowledge the writing for nail it to some extent.

I saw the LGBT elements very clearly, but the story it reminded me most of was the women's suffrage movement and how Susan B Anthony didn't want to tie the issue down by concurrently bringing up the civil rights issues black women faced and Sojourner Truth loved to talk about so much. When asked to speak at a women's rally and to keep it to women's rights, Sojourner issued her famous "Ain't I too a Woman" speech. Her more militant approach is represented by Nera in this ep while Susan B Anthony was more aptly represent by Una. Your immigration issue seems valid to me as well when you bring it up. Objectively speaking, I'd say this is a pretty good example of writing.

One of the things that I appreciate about this episode is that it attacks the notion of "let's follow the rules because they are the rules." Whether it's April's three violations of the Prime Directive (only three? Those are rookie numbers in this racket), Una's withholding her genetic-modification status, Pike (and others) knowingly harboring Una's status, would it be justice to strictly adhere to those rules when it would mean an entire planet would die, Starfleet would lose otherwise exemplary officers, etc.?

Presumably Trek doesn't "just carve out exceptions every time" or even most times. We don't see in "The Drumhead," but presumably Simon Tarses does get some appropriate punishment for lying about his Romulan heritage.

And of course, Kirk's "demotion" was strongly implied to be Starfleet giving a gift to him to keep him from being a musty bureaucrat, and that seemingly is how he took it based on his conversation with Picard in Generations.

I think it could have worked better as a three episode arc like in Enterprise. Have Pike be conflicted. Maybe he confides in the Doctor or Spock. He doesn’t take action for a short period of time and is mad at Una for putting him in an awkward position. Then, just as he’s about to take action, she turns herself in. You could even make two episodes about a rescue mission that involves those refugees and that’s what forces Una to turn herself in and stand up for her people. Then the third episode is the trial. I think that would give the story more depth and allow for some character development. This just feels shoehorned in.

Thoughts on episode 2:

Much better than last week, thank goodness.

Well, once again a story we've seen several times before. In this case, explicitly, as we've seen exactly this story with Bashir. Except this time there evidently are NO lawyers in the Federation that would be willing and capable of taking the case? That's... absurd. If you are going to contrive that for your script do a better job.

Then we go through our usual 'we don't give a fuck about any of the other series' bingo. Guess in this timeline - because this clearly isn't the same timeline as TOS - Spock wasn't the first Vulcan in Starfleet. We have Vulcans walking around as full Admirals - a couple of them in this court alone. Wonder why Sarek was so pissed with Spock in Journey to Babel then - clearly lots of Vulcans go into Starfleet. And now we have not only is a descendent of Khan Noonian Singh serving on board the Enterprise, she's also genetically augmented. Yet no one who actually served with her who is still on board the Enterprise nine years later has any recollection of it and has no knowledge of Khan at all when first meeting him. C'mon.

You absolutely could do that entire arc without making it Khan. Hell, make it Joachim - he was a memorable character from TWoK. Khan appears to be famous in SNW without anyone knowing about him other than through history databanks in TOS.

Then the courtroom scenes weren't very well done - April getting grilled, and the prosecution yelling objection multiple times just being outright ignored. The civil rights lawyer calling Una to the stand without bothering to tell Una she's changed her mind. Because you really want to surprise your defendant in these situations.

Honestly, I think the series are suffering from the shorter seasons. 23-25 episodes was often too many. But 10 is consistently too few. The storytelling gets abridged.

And there isn't strong story continuity even between two consecutive episodes. In Ep 1 we see Spock has been told he has strained the part where he dampens his emotions, and we see a relatively emotive Spock, even to the point of carousing and laughing with the Klingons. Which is great - we know he is openly emotional in the Cage/Menagerie, this is a great hook into that.

The next epsiode a scene which would have been great placed almost anywhere else in the series about Spock and one of the Vulcans hating each other and Spock apologizing for his 'outburst' when he did absolutely nothing noticeable other than stand stiffly seems incongruent. Didn't you guys JUST introduce that plot arc one episode ago? Guess we don't read each other's notes.

Anyway, pretty disappointed with SNW through 2 eps. We'll see if they kick it up a notch later. Season 1 was great.

You could handwave that Spock was the first Vulcan to attend Starfleet Academy, whilst other Vulcans etcetera are staff who were essentially accepted in on their rank in their existing military/command structure. Like how Kira was given an equivalent Starfleet rank to make her more palatable to the Cardassians when she went to help Damar.

As to the ending, for a moment I had quite a bit of hope that they pulled it out. In particular I liked the twist that the trial might have actually targeted at someone else, and the implications of that.

But the asylum thing? Just weak. You don't ask for asylum for the Coast Guard or the National Academy of Sciences. You ask it from the United States. Asylum isn't serving in the military and being given a command role - indeed, Una has captained the Enterprise. If the law has changed so much it's not recognizable, just spend 30 seconds explaining the how and why of it. TOS, TNG, DS9 and VOY would have all taken that step. 'As we all know, the Federation Council granted the right of asylum to Starfleet Vessels after the Vissian Cogenitor crisis of Stardate 3821.4'. That is 'hanging a lantern' on it. Instead it just appears that the writer doesn't understand what they are writing about.

Sure, and that goes back to T'pol, who started this nonsense because they made her Starfleet in season 3 when they didn't have to. Personally I like the Spock as the trailblazer of Vulcans in starfleet. They sold it in TOS. He faced misunderstanding and outright bigotry from a few of the crew, to the point Kirk had to intervene. Hell, McCoy didn't have a complete workup of Vulcan physiology and that came up several times. But the M'Benga character is from TOS, and now we are seeing him routinely treat Spock. So... what happened? If Vulcans are fairly frequent in Starfleet 10 years before TOS, none of this makes sense, or the clash between Sarek and Spock joining Starfleet in the first place.

It would have been easy to have Vulcans around as scientific advisors but still be somewhat distrustful of Starfleet in SNW timeline, and then we see Spock normalize relations as the first Vulcan to embrace Starfleet in TOS. Ah well.

We already knew that. Michael's mom and Control both fiddled with the timeline, but not enough to create a special divergent timeline like the Kelvin universe.

That was a whole episode of Discovery. The racist Vulcans looked down on both Sarek's adopted human daughter and his half-human biological son and told Sarek only one could attend the prestigious Vulcan Science Academy. Sarek threw Michael under the bus and chose Spock so Michael had to settle for Starfleet, then Spock didn't even go. Sarek resents Spock for not taking advantage of the opportunity that Spock betrayed Michael to get him, especially in light of how guilty Sarek felt about that choice. And then if Sarek spends a decade thinking that joining Starfleet was what led to Michael's death, I could see that resentment growing even deeper.

We went over this last year, how would knowing one of Khan's descendants be relevant to Spock and Uhura when they meet Khan years later? Maybe I could imagine a deleted scene between Spock and Khan where Spock says something like "hey, I know you Augments care about bloodlines, I know one of your modern day descendants, she's pretty awesome. You should be proud." but that's about it.

Injuries aren't always a straight line, and Spock is smart enough to know that the Klingons liked his displays of emotion, so he might have played it up in their presence. We didn't see his interactions with the Admiral up close, maybe he said something really fucked up in a cold disturbing tone, or interrupted him mid-sentence, or something else that a Vulcan would consider huge.

I've lost my temper at work before and said things that wouldn't even raise an eyebrow around here, but in that context people were very concerned about my outbursts. :quote:

Is it bad writing when PIC never had Worf mention Alexander, or Data mention Lal, or Troi or Riker mention Kestra, or Troi mention Ian, or Seven mention that fancy advanced drone made from her nanoprobes, despite the whole season being about the main cast having kids?

Or how Riker and Worf walk past Kirk's corpse and neither of them mention that Picard met Kirk once?

Or when Worf walks past a meat eating Tribble and doesn't mention it's partially his fault that tribbles are no longer extinct?

Or when the gang is at the fleet museum with the Enterprise-A and the NX and no one mentions meeting Scotty or Spock or McCoy, or Rikers beloved NX holoprogram? Worf doesn't even mention his time on the Defiant, FFS.

So Discovery creators lied when they said it was the original timeline? What are the odds! LOL.

Don't create these expectations then you won't have people pointing it out when you don't reach them, right?

Well, at least an attempt was made. I watched Journey to Babel just two days ago. Amanda said Sarek didn't want Spock to join Starfleet because of it's use of force, but then Amanda went further and stated it was because Sarek followed in his father's footsteps and because he had to he expected Spock to do the same.

As to Michael and Sarek, they had a telepathic bond that crossed lightyears. Because humans have katras too, don't cha know. He would know she wasn't dead. And Spock certainly does.

As to the rest, there's still racism against Spock, there's no Vulcans in Starfleet in TOS until TMP, McCoy still doesn't have access to basic Vulcan medical data...

Does that mean you have to dislike Trek? Obviously not. But I still watch the original episodes every now and then. It's not something I watched 50 years ago and never again.

Whereas I can imagine Spock saying, 'Yes sir, this is Khan Noonian Singh. We are well acquainted with him, as was everyone on board the Enterprise when one of his direct descendants was our Chief of Security and one time acting First Officer. She was also a victim of the Gorn wars, but when we encounter the Gorn for the first time I won't tell you anything about them nor will you know that there were several battles against them prior to your meeting on Cestus III. I guess the Mirror Universe Captain Georgiou also wiped that out of our database as well as the existence of the Mirror Universe. Too bad, it would have been really useful for us to know what we were dealing with.'

You can get away with this stuff once or twice. They do it routinely. Fan service is great, but it still needs to work as a story.

But hey, that was back when they were lying about this being the same timeline. LOL.

Dude, stop bending yourself in a pretzel over this stuff. We shouldn't have to fill in all the details of bad storytelling. You know what fixes that? Good storytelling.

It wouldn't have been that noticeable if they did it at a later time, but the compressed nature of the seasons makes anything like this more apparent while making the lack of a continuity editor for the script less forgiveable. It should be easier to check continuity in a 10 episode season.

I have no idea what you are on about. But OK, 14th.

In general, it is probably bad writing if a character had a specific experience that is pertinent to what is going on that they don't react to at all. It doesn't have to be a monologue, or even verbal, but some reaction. So if Worf is asked to adopt a child, Alexander becomes important. It could be something as simple as he looks down in pain and says 'No.' You know that is about Alexander. It isn't important if Worf is watching Picard interact with his son unless you write a character moment when they both reflect upon the children in their life.

It isn't important that people met some of those characters at the fleet museum, but it would be a character moment for Worf if they were stealing the Defiant instead.

This shit isn't that hard.

Discovery is as much the Prime timeline as every episode or movie that comes after City On The Edge Of Forever, or Tomorrow is Yesterday, or Assignment Earth, or Yesteryear (Yesteryear actually shows that the "real" Prime timeline doesn't have a Spock on the Enterprise at all, since it's only the Guardian of Forever interfering that allows adult Spock to exist), or The Voyage Home, or any number of time travel adventures where Kirk or Spock squished a butterfly or two. The Prime timeline is always getting altered, be it in subtle or unsubtle ways.

One example: Nog has a padd with information about Earth that includes a photo of Ben Sisko as Gabriel Bell. But Ben Sisko knew all about Gabriel Bell before going back in time, and I'm damn sure historical photos of Bell didn't look like Sisko when Sisko first looked at them. So the timeline is changed because of something that happened in one story, but it's still the Prime timeline.

Clearly not all events change the timeline, but just as clearly some events do. There would be far more than just the Prime timeline now - hell, after timetraveling Janeway at the very least. Most of the time travel stories have the crew trying to make sure nothing substantial is changed. City, Tomorrow, and Assignment were all like that. Been 30 years since I've seen TAS so I won't comment on that.

And of course the last episode of Voyager was panned, largely because of Janeway breaking the Temporal Prime Directive so obviously.

That doesn't necessarily follow. We know Bell died, and Benjamin Sisko impersonated Bell. The photo could be of that impersonation from after that point in time without changing anything at all in the time line.

Unless you create a paradox you can easily say that the original prime timeline always had Bell dying and Sisko assuming his identity. Unless we have a direct picture of Bell before Sisko went back and we see the picture itself has changed.

As Nog looks at it in Little Green Men, we can't tell.

I'm chalking up all the Klingon head changes, and Enterprise tech changes, and casting changes up to the spaghetti theory of time in "The Flash".
Spaghetti-time fixes everything.