True, after the fact. I don't think they knew that they were going to be the cause of the giant asteroid slamming into the planet and killing most of the dinosaurs and slightly harming Keith Richards.
I thought the same thing, but then realized that the Chixculub meteor killed almost all the non-avian dinosaurs. The T-rex could have, before the impact, killed a non-avian dinosaur that could have had a mutation that let it become the ancestor of a species that was never supposed to exist. It could have flown off instead of dying and settled away far enough away to survive the blast. Currently Mars is 140 million miles away, at its closest approach it is about 35 million miles away. If the destruction of the Dol'drum planet affected its by 10 million miles, at 45,000 miles per hour the meteor would take about six days to travel 25 million miles to reach Earth. That could be enough time for that dinosaur to fly far enough away. Also, if you look at Earth when the meteor impacts, the land masses match what they should have looked like 65 million years ago.
The Griffin Incident: Meh. Spooky fun, for sure. A lot of name drops and the Tomy robot from 1976 was a nice touch, but otherwise just a filler episode.
So this one was boring. I know going in that it was supposed to be a horror type episode. When L'ann first saw Harper I was already thinking "figment of her imagination" and that everything that followed going to be that. Along with everything that happened, they did themselves was easy to figure out. The scene that made that obvious was the cut the red wire with Spock and T'pring. And where Pike and Una didn't really react at Spocks's bobbed s. The trope of "their worst fear" was obvious, Spock losing his logic and his human side taking control, L'ann's Augment DNA emerging, and Kirk losing David. About the only scene that was a "holy shit" moment was where L'ann told Kirk that "Your little boy is going to die just like you at the end of a blade". And of course Harper at the end doing the shhh... at the end had to be there to give the extra "Ooh creepy" moment.
I didn't find it spooky, it definitely was a filler episode. Probably one of the weakest episodes of the series, just above Four and a Half Vulcans.
Filler episode, maybe... but this is the kind of stuff in ST that makes the franchise special to me. I enjoyed the hell out of it. I saw a lot of range here out of some of the actors, such as Mount. That look on his face, right before... A thought that kept occurring to me while watching this... it reminded me a lot of the Stanislaw Lem novel Solaris. You all probably saw the shitty Clooney movie made of that novel; no, go read the book itself. This episode reminded me a lot of it... almost as if the ship or something in it was trying to communicate with the trio just like the ocean of Solaris was trying to communicate with the researchers. Probably no real world connection, but the thought came up several times with me. Two asides: 1. It's interesting that Starfleet has a "Division 12" to get a handle on out of control shit like the Griffin. I don't recall any mention of them before... so this is probably the first mention maybe? If so, this might be an Anton Chekhov "gun is produced" moment. 2. It just occurred to me at the beginning of the episode: no wonder Spock and Kirk get along so well... they're tunnel buddies. I liked this episode. Usually I multi-task when watching something, but this kept my attention all the way through. Season 4 is shaping up to be way the hell better than season 3. It sort of gives me hope for the muppet episode...
Division 12 is new but Lower Decks had Division 14, which handles crewmembers altered by exposure to weird sci-fi shit that can't be easily resolved.
I think Division 12 is going to be something that will come up again. It may be where La'an winds up since her augment genetics are starting to manifest.
I....agree....with you. Yes, 100%, "filler" episodes are what give us some of the best, most memorable Trek moments. "Fully functional"? Filler episode. Hell, they used to call all the character- building stuff in TNG and early DS9 "Piller Filler" after Michael Piller added stuff to pad out the episode. I haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
In case anyone is counting: season 4 has 13 producers (including Mount), while season 3 had 10. Two from season 3 quit and were replaced, so really season 4 has 5 new producers. Watching Pike this season, he seems a lot weaker or something.
SNW S04E02, "The Griffin Incident" This one was okay. It started off promising, to me, like maybe a ghost ship themed toward a Mary Celeste kind of scenario, but it ended up not being like that at all. Really not a fan of the gore. Modern live action Star Trek seems to really like leaning into that a bit, and I'm just not into it. It was pretty trope-ish in terms of what to expect, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, tropes can be fun, but by 10 minutes in, I already knew how much of it was going to work out. Still, not bad for a bottle episode, and I don't mind the self-reflection we got as part of the character development, but I don't really like where they're going with La'an, though this may be how they write her out of the coming TOS era.
Word on the drum is that the muppet episode is explained by a transporter accident. A transporter accident just might explain Pike's hair too, IMO.
Yep. Honestly, everything else was really solid except the gore. I really could have done without seeing Sam's entrails being pulled into the vacuum of space, or Pike slicing off his fingers and the camera being sure you see it up close. It just seems a little more gratuitous than I like. SNW has done this a few times. Picard did it in the first season, and I genuinely disliked that moment so much it almost made me want to stop watching the series. I'd really prefer if they backed off on all of this, because while Star Trek doesn't have to dumb itself down to make it kid friendly, Star Trek has always been more of a general audiences show. I don't mind saying that being autistic, I do associate things I see with characters and those things are often long term perceptions. So when Pike handed La'an a glass of alcohol back in his quarters at the end, I was still seeing his sliced up fingers. I'll be seeing Spock's cut ears for a while, too. It's just how my brain works. It's what happens when someone takes regular characters on a regular show and puts them in a graphic horror movie for an episode. That's difficult to shake for some. At the very least, give us a warning before the show starts, something like "Warning: The following episode contains graphic scenes of blood and gore that some audiences may find objectionable." That way we can know whether it's a watch or skip episode.
I mean..."Return of the Archons" had implied gang rape, and I've always imagined the disease that reduces you to powder in "The Omega Glory" must have been a horrifying transformation that looked like the gagging and struggling after the cremation ray in "Nemesis". So, while TOS left it to your imagination, they set up some grim fucking imaginings. The gore started to creep in with "Wrath of Khan". Voyager was doing body-horror on the regular. Trek has always had an edge.
Oh certainly, but for me that's the key: it was left to your imagination. You knew horrible things were happening, but it wasn't like a grindhouse film where they zoom in on the entrails falling out of someone, or make sure you can see the flesh and bone being sliced through as blood pours out of the wounds. Edgy? Yeah, but Star Trek usually knew how to tiptoe right up to the line. Sometimes, not so much, like with Genesis from TNG, but even that episode it was painfully clear the special effects were practical and kind of silly. Modern CGI has gotten quite good at making things very realistic. Also, yeah, I don't watch VOY very often because they liked to dip into body horror, and I'm just not up for that.
I came up in my tweens and teens wallowing in stuff like Toxic Avenger, and Evil Dead 2, and Cronenberg's The Fly, so...I guess I'm just more desensitized.
Oh, definitely. I never cared for gore. I have nothing against it as a storytelling tool, the movies you mention are masterpieces of the genre, but it just isn't my cup of tea. Honestly, if they would have implied without showing, or cut away before the action takes place, I'd have been fine with it. I fully realize a lot of sci-fi is mixed with horror, and I can accept that. I'd just like to know ahead of time so I can know if it's something I want to watch or pass. One of the reasons I've never seen Event Horizon is because while I *love* the concept of it, I truly do not care for the amount of body horror in that film. For me it's especially egregious in a TV show because these are longstanding characters, and now I've seen them be defenestrated and/or turned into sausages, and that stays with a person.
Oh, you wanna see happy characters in a jarring fucked up horror context? Track down the Punky Brewster Halloween special!
Wouldn't the Borg pretty much qualify as "body horror?" I suspect the Borg were, more or less, based on the original Mondasian Cybermen from Doctor Who. When that breed of them popped up in Capaldi's era, the whole scenario was pure body horror.
I think it's...fine. This isn't a genre of storytelling that appeals to me but it seems well executed. Given my disinterest in the genre I'm not sure whether leaving the nature of the threat completely unresolved is typical, or a storytelling fail. There are a lot of things you have to "just roll with" - for example, Spock's ears were ACTUALLY damaged and Kirk was in fact stabbed, but WAS the shuttle actually destroyed and, if so, how? Anyway, it strikes me more as a character-building exercise cloaked in the robes of horror. All the business about what's the better side of Spock, the business about Kirk as a father, and his father, and so forth. Speaking of, if David is now both born and old enough to appreciate such a toy (2-ish?) then there's a notable time jump between the episode in which he tells La'an that Carol is pregnant and this one. One curious thought I had, it seemed to me that Not-Sam was mostly reassuring and lifting up Jim while the visions Spock and La'an were having were designed to make them afraid. I'm wondering if that was intentional. Also, my compliments to the coda which gave all the regular a scene or two rather than just leaving them out of the episode except for the fakes that beamed over.
I just found a site that explains the episode and I'll just take the "nope" now. The Borg are body horror, but the effects of the 1980s and early 1990s made it much easier to deal with. I don't really care for some of the more intense scenes in First Contact where they're showing Picard being borgified, but it's fairly blink and you miss it. These shots were drawn out, purposefully lingered on for maximum effect. I don't care for that.
Episode 1 told us 6 months since at least the end of S3 which starts in 2260 and ends in 2261, with Memory Alpha saying this episode is set in 2262. David is presumed to have been born in 2260 which is the same year that Subspace Rhapsody was set (at the beginning of as the previous ep was 2259). Also going to nitpick that the Griffin having been lost for nine years predates the Battle of the Binaries, so Harper is definitely wearing an anachronistic uniform. Not trying to Feddy this as it wasn't a bad episode so much as I think they took their eyes off of the canon ball.
This started back in the 90s. I think it's similar to corporations giving 'stock options' to certain executives or retirees or ... someone who provides a huge savings/bonus for the corporation. it's an incentive to do a good job and help ensure the show continues.
I took the uniform anachronism (as well as the fact that 9 years ago Constitution class starships didn't look like that on the inside and we know this from Discovery season 2) as just the presence on the ship fooling Kirk, Spock, and La'an into seeing what they expected to see rather than what was really there. It was clear, in hindsight, from the moment they saw a pristine looking ship that the presence was already deceiving them.
fair, but I would've appreciated them flagging it in the dialogue as one more thing that was amiss. It didn't require explanation so much as acknowledgement.
Oh, I agree. I'm just doing the classic Trek fan thing to do: which is fill in the gaps with my own ideas of how it's supposed to work. Take it with a grain of salt. That said, speaking of flags, I'd have appreciated a heads up before the episode started that it was going to have gory scenes in it. When I watched it there was no indication whatsoever what was going to happen beyond "spooky episode."
