SNW S04E06, "Off Hour" Hell yes, now we're cooking! For me this is the best episode of the season so far. Even knowing that M'Benga will live, that Spock will live, that Scotty will live, I was on the edge of my seat and couldn't tear my eyes away from the screen. The stakes were high but not galaxy ending, the danger was imminent but there was space for scenes to breathe, and my love of Christine Chapel, which was already significant, has exploded ten times over. We get to see our competent powerful Christine again, and I am here for it! Everyone shines in this episode, and while there was a little gore, it was in service to the plot and in the danger of the moment and didn't feel gratuitous to me whatsoever. I mean, I still when "holy shit, ouch!" but it worked here. Goddamn, what an episode! It's an easy 8/10 for me.
SPOILERS... A couple of interesting canon points: 1. We see now how the sensor pod works and why it sometimes needs to be ejected, as per "Court Martial." Why it could suddenly go critical and explode and tear off half the ship was not explained, but we get some more insight into the TOS episode. 2. We meet an incoming Dr. Boyce. He should have been onboard earlier during Pike's time on Talos IV, but... okay. With him there, and we know McCoy is coming with Kirk in season 5, we're missing Dr. Piper who was in the second pilot. Weird.
Will have more complete thoughts later but a few surface observations: The real-time gimmick worked well I like how they played Boyce and that he's there at all, with some respect to his previous appearance. I kinda like the Vulcan cadet. I mean, she's not written to be likeable but there's something about the...abrasiveness?...that kinda works with this cast.
I kinda don't. I don't think she's particularly well acted. I don't think they are giving her stuff to do other than largely unnecessarily being a dick. Yes, Vulcans can be and often are abrasive, but it is usually with a logical purpose. She just seems unnecessarily so. Like even in this episode, the interplay with her and Scotty when the ship was on the line had her being IMO a dick for no reason. Has she had a single scene with Spock, which would be a place for her character to be paired with? Even putting aside the issues with the character, the other problem I have is that she takes away screen time from character development for the rest of the cast. We barely have Pike getting enough time to shine IMO. Using time to display this cadet being snippy for no good reason rather than spending time with the characters we already have in the main cast, or even develop tertiary characters like Sam Kirk or whoever isn't a choice I would have made.
This was pretty good episode, we got to see the dawning of the "Miracle Worker", also great was to explain why Kirk had to eject the Ion Pod in Court Martial. It was supposed to be a tense episode, but we already know that Pike, Scotty, Uhura, Spock, Boyce, Chapel, M'benga all live. Would have been a lot more tense if they had put Una, Ortegas, L'aan, and a few of the other characters in the positions the main ones were. Knowing that they live took away a lot of the apprehension that was there, or supposed to be there. And also, Chapel would have frozen first. She was right by the door when the super cold air came in. Similar to how an air nozzle from an air compressor feels really cold on the skin, you might get some frost on the skin, and feels really cold. Do the same, but with the nozzle a foot away the air feels cool but not freezing cold.
I don't know about a lot less screen time. I would say that they have not had a Pike-centric episode, really, and they haven't really done as much as they could with an actor with Anson Mount's talents. For all I know, they want to lean into hijinks episodes and away from the serious episodes, and that has led to a de-emphasis on Pike. Or maybe it's one of any number of other causes.
I'm sure the finale of season 5 will give us some Pike emotional gut punching that'll make us bawl until we puke.
True, but it seems to me that there has been less focus around Pike in the last couple of seasons than there has been on any given captain of a series across any given 10-20 episodes. I don't want there to be any fuel to the fire that certain people might light about how TPTB are keeping the Man down to raise women and minorities up. Not that, for example, there has been a tremendous amount of additional backstory given to Uhura, say, or Ortegas. Beyond getting a first name and being told her family died in a shuttle crash and a brief date with Ortegas' annoying documentarian brother, that's pretty much all new that we've gotten for Uhura. Ortegas has actually been built up quite a bit from S1 where she had little to nothing. She had the pretty good episode where she survived with the Gorn that La'an capped, and her rivalry to friendship with Scotty has been kind of fun.
I like the first episode this season best so far, but this one was really good for all the reasons that have been stated. It actually makes me more irritated by the party planet, film noir planet, and puppet crew episodes.
As re Pike, they spent a lot of time in S1 on his future and a lot (relatively) in S3 on Batel, and it feels kinda like they got the impression that they should be doing more with others and it came at his expense (a poor choice, IMO). But I blame this, also on the short seasons. With a cast this size one of the major challenges is to find a way to not neglect the supporting cast (as Disco often did) when you only have 10. I'd tend to agree that I *liked* the Mars episode more but technically, objectively, this was probably the better hour. Unlike many, I was fine with the noir episode but it was weighed down by being positioned between Hangover and the Muppet Show. What made it stand out was, in part, that almost everyone you see (except for A'shah and maybe Boyce) felt pretty integral to the action. Sometimes you pick up on it when it seems obvious that this scene is just there because they need an (Uhura) scene. It does seem kinda weird that it's Boyce and not Piper. I like it that they included some dialog about his previous position on the ship and what happened to it - but it doesn't follow from that he should be back in this window before the end of the series. Trivially, someone on you tube said they should have Jeff Combs play Piper next season and...I swear man, if these assholes get through 46 episodes and DON'T find a way to get Jeff an appearance I'm gonna be irked.
Wordforge: "Looks like we're finally getting a normal episode!" Star Trek: "No! Fuck you! You get 24 in Space! Suck it, Wrodforge!" Wordforge: "Don't care, it was a damn good episode." Star Trek: "No! You must hate it! Let the hate flow through you!" La'an: "It won't work. I punched their hatred and made it run away." Star Trek: "Foiled again! Curses!" Star Trek: *grabs La'an's hand and hits self with it.* Star Trek:
People who watched Smallville, a take on young Superman, may remember that for a couple seasons it featured a photographer Jimmy Olsen who palled around with the rest of the cast and even worked at the Daily Planet. At some point, that character was killed. And it was revealed that he was "H. James Olsen," and his camera was given to his younger cousin who was (presumably) the canon Jimmy Olsen, Now I would say that it's unlikely that SNW would go that route, but it could. I don't even think that TOS actually said Dr. M'Benga's first name. And I think I saw Nova put forth the theory that the TOS M'Benga was more likely to be a nephew than the same person as SNW's M'Benga.
At this point in time Spock is still looked down upon by mainstream Vulcan society as an inferior half-breed, isn't he? I doubt an insecure, fully Vulcan cadet would want to be associated with him.
I'm not sure if Spock is widely seen as an outcast, or if T'Pring's family are just particularly snobby, or what. And of course, the cadet doesn't really want to be associated, it seems, with anyone on this ship. But as long as she's here, it seems like logic would dictate trying to find out how a Vulcan (even one she might consider inferior) learned to tolerate all the hijinks and chaos that the ship seems to be a magnet for is a goal worth pursuing.
Well the latest episode was actually an episode of Star Trek rather than some gimmicky shite - was quite good too. Are they going to explain why M'Benga looks decades younger on TOS? Also why he apparently got demoted?
I think they began laying the groundwork for his "demotion" in this very episode with the conversation about Boyce. As for looking older or younger....eh. I'm not going to let that break the fantasy for me. Babs is the best actor on there, I think. I'll just say it's the beard.
It's a major plot point in the first season of Discovery that the Vulcans don't approve of Sarek adopting a human child or fathering a half-Vulcan child with his human wife. They refuse to let both Michael and Spock enroll in the Vulcan Science Academy, and force Sarek to choose which of his "experiments" will be admitted. (Sarek chooses Spock, which forces Michael to join Starfleet, but then Spock chooses Starfleet as well, which makes Sarek furious and resentful because he ultimately betrayed Michael for nothing. And that's before Michael's Starfleet career leads to her "death.") She probably thinks Spock betrayed his Vulcan heritage and went full human, which is honestly kind of true at this stage of his life. SNW Spock has a worse case of pink fever* than his father. *A human fetish would naturally be called pink fever, right? Those pink skin temptresses are stealing all the good Vulcan and Andorian men!
Can't say I remember Discovery particularly well. But I would say that there would still be an open question of how much the wider Vulcan society would either know of the Vulcan big-shot's prejudices and/or share in them. I can easily imagine that among a certain strata of Vulcan the notion that Sarek likes him some human women is scandalous but the majority are completely oblivious to it, or a random junior Vulcan is. La'an isn't pink-skinned. With about 10 episodes to go, how many more notches is Spock going to get on his belt? Uhura? Ortegas? Una? Vulcan Cadet? Someone else?
It's shocking to me to think of there only being ten eps left. That's just the final arc of DS9. Now I am sad...
Jim Kirk. Just to see people like UA have an aneurism. And suddenly that backrub incident makes a lot more sense.
Except that a small percentage of humans are pink. We had the same issue with the Andorians calling humans "Pink Skins." Most humans are different shades of dark... from dusky to coal black.
Not by human standards, but she absolutely is by Vulcan or Andorian standards. I assume the ENT writers didn't have Shran go with a blood-based slur because "red blooded" and "blue blooded" sound more like a compliments than insults. (McCoy was fine referring to Spock as green blooded.)
Wow! A real episode! I actually was ready to write this series off for a while but this I e gave me some hope that the producers actually know what we want but it’s likely they’ll be back on that bullshit next week. This was a good episode.
