Star Trek Social Club

Since this is our first episode discussion on Lemmy, we have a couple of reminders about our expectations.

Constructive Criticism - criticism is welcome, but please put some effort into explaining why you did or didn't like something. Just saying something was "good" or "bad" isn't exactly laying a foundation for discussion.

Spoilers - when a new episode airs, we enforce spoiler tagging for approximately one week. When creating threads about episodes that are less than one week old, please keep spoilers out of the post title, and use spoiler tags in the body of your post. Obviously, spoilers for this episode are allowed in this thread.

1. I am 100% here for the chaotic energy that Carol Kane is going to bring to this show.
2. The Klingon captain had exactly the right amount of swagger and sassiness that a TOS-era Klingon captain is supposed to have. I'm glad that they're moving on from some of the Discovery Klingon characterization while also resisting the urge to jump right to them behaving like TNG Klingons.

Pelia is like "I have been alive for hundreds of years and I'm going to make that everyone else's problem."

I just love this show, the feeling I get when the intro rolls is the same as when I was I was 15 watching the TNG intro on TV. The characters all feel special and unique even if I've seen every episode of every series.

Regarding Nurse Chapel almost dying - this is one of the TV/movie tropes that I think is such a cheap and terrible device and I am tired of it. Discovery was full of these scenes where they make you believe a main character really almost died, only to survive after all, and having their crew mates weep for them (I am looking at you Burnham). There are much better ways to create good drama.

I loved that they gave Dr. M'Benga some screentime front and center and showed that he can throw down if necessary, even if it was with the help of some super serum stuff. And while I even loved his (and Nurse Chapel's ) elaborate fight scene and enjoyed the way they filmed it, I'm also not sure if it quite fits with Star Trek. Just not sure yet with the excessive slow motion. The camera angles however were some great artistic choice. But overall one great start to season 2.

My gut feeling is that with a couple changes this episode would have hung together better-

1. Have them take a shuttle instead of the Enterprise. This lowers the stakes for our command crew and simply makes more sense than half the crew (that wasn't on leave) agreeing to steal a ship. It also means they need to figure out a different way to deal with the fake Federation ship at the end of the episode is some way other than 'shoot it with bigger guns'
2. Have Chapel and M'Benga do something within their character strengths to escape instead of magic drug that lets them hand-to-hand fight their way through a dozen or more Klingons.

That said, there were a lot of things I DID like about the episode, including the Klingon Captain at the end and the new Chief Engineer.

I'm so happy to have SNW back. Whoever decided to put Carol Kane in the show needs to get a raise; she is absolutely spectacular. I'm very curious to see where her character goes.

I enjoy the idea of Spock being more emotional it really puts it into perspective that Vulcans have emotions they just try to keep them under lock and key and Spock being half human is having a harder time with that compared to most Vulcans is... relatable.

I did not like weird green super power drug that Chapel and M'Benga took to fight the the Klingons. It came from no where, the shot on the eyes right out of Dread made me think it was literally Slo-Mo from that movie. It really wasn't necessary, they could have just grabbed phasers somewhere instead.

I'm not realy sure how I feel about them using the term false flag in Star Trek. The plot makes sense but still it's a very charged term today.

Ortegas inverted her controller settings as everyone should 🎮

Really delighted with this episode.

No complaints. Can’t really buy into the nitpicks on this one. It seemed completely Trek, and gave many of the ensemble their moments to shine. Production design gorgeous, virtual staging more seamless, costumes excellent, vfx great.

I like how M’Benga has hoarded the green vial as part of his lingering trauma. Better, we finally see a physician giving himself the juice instead of Kirk or some other command officer. In fact, one has to wonder if McCoy carried a stash provided by M’Benga.

Spock’s unresolved feelings for Chapel are well crafted and mirror the lingering pain we see her left with in TOS. It makes those scenes with Chapel in TOS comprehensible instead of cringe-inducing.

I liked it, but it didn’t have enough Pike.

The M'Benga-and-Chapel-are-Max-Payne sequence went on far too long: only one group aboard the ship had weapons (and Stormtrooper accuracy) of any kind? I'd have preferred a stealthier sequence: after reprogramming the transponder, they use a series of Jeffries tubes to get to the airlock with the intent of opening it to escape but the ship takes off to ruin that plan.

Other than that, it was a decent episode to get the season going. Spock's emotional journey will be a focal point of the season, which I'm okay with. ~~SPECTRE~~ The Broken Circle Gang is probably going to show up again and I wonder if we'll eventually see some TOS villains retconned to be members. Carol Kane will be fun and with what was said of her species, I'm betting on her making at least two ENT references during the season.

Interesting that the false-flag ship is Crossfield-class: the saucer is a clear match but the drive section is completely different. Were the Discovery and Glenn modified from that spec to fit the spore drive research project or was the ship we saw a wartime refit of the class?

For the love of Pete can we stop with all of the lame catch phrases and dumb jokes? Spock should have just uttered something simple suiting the Vulcan personality/character, like "proceed". But no, we have to get a lame line one step above a fart joke...

Not a bad start, although the episode felt somewhat lackluster. The character writing felt a little wooden, too much stuff is explicitly said instead of letting it hang in the subtext. Also there had better be a good explanation in future episodes as to why the hell Dr. M'benga keeps a couple of vials of punching serum handy at all times.

The visuals were great. The Klingon makeup was toned back a bit more towards a TNG-era look, but you can still see the more distinct Discovery skull shape. Overall a good mix between the two I'd say. The visuals from Spacedock feel very Discovery as well-- nice to see those starfleet drones being used outside of Control trying to kill everyone.

Thoughts and observations written as I watch- I'll be putting this on both Reddit and Lemmy, since infinity diversity/infinity combinations:

• Wheeee, NCC-1701 in the Star Trek tag!

• Previously: Last season happened.

• Little ships flying!

• Wonder who the lawyer that Una and Pike have tried to reach is.

• Oh, hey, the Vulcan musical instrument whose name I can't remember!

• “Fascinating.” “Isn't that usually his line?”

• The fellowship on archeological medicine? Is that a reference to Dr. Korby?

• “We must steal the Enterprise.” Buddy, if I had a nickel every time someone had to steal the Enterprise, I'd have several nickels.

• Lt. Mitchell gunning for series regular next year with how much screen time she's had early on this episode.

• Okay, having Carol Kane is already paying dividends.

• And, yeah, Carol Kane doesn't need alien makeup to be an alien. She's already an alien.

• I'm still not sure if the emphasis one the warp catch phrase is amazing or annoying, but this scene was funny.

• KLINGON UPDATE: RIDGES!

• So clearly La'An's augmented ancestors were genetically engineered to drink a lot. Which, y'know what? Fair.

• Ah, the borderlands, where utopian rules go away and everyone becomes a Ferengi.

• Congratulations to Uhura on graduating from the Academy.

• Ah, the old "I have technology that I'm totally not making up that will blow you up" bluff!

• New transporter chief?

• Okay, so the angry borderlands people are trying to do some sort of false flag thing.

• Redundant Klingon organs, the old standby.

• Roided-up doctors can tell you what bones they broke as they break them.

• These are obviously Discovery sets.

• This action scene, while well-done, is way too long.

• A D7!

• “We've gotten out of worse.” “No, not really!”

• “This I've got to see!”

• I wonder if “Lanthanite” is a synonym for “El-Aurian”

• Pelia knowing that being on the Enterprise means adventure is further proof that those ships are goddamn weirdness magnets.

• Gorn. Yes, it stretches canon but fuck it the Gorn are awesome we'll come up with an explanation later.

• “For Nichelle”

• Overall, while not one of the better episodes, it still was a good start to the season. It wrapped up one of the hanging threads of last year (La'An), we continued to see some of Young Spock's struggles with his emotions before he became the more-Vulcan Spock that Nimoy was in the main TOS series, and we got our first look at Carol Kane as the nutty new engineer. Overall, I'll call that a win!

Enjoyed pretty much everything in this episode except the magic super steroids. The sequence went on for so long.. I assumed that I had forgotten something from last series because there’s no way they would have had this to hand the whole time and never thought to use it during any one of the many life and death emergencies?

That aside. Loved the rest of the episode and looking forward to where things go from here (plus really really happy to have weekly Trek again!)

Nice episode, I was expecting a cliffhanger at the end showing what Pike was up to.

I am curious about the Lanthanites, I’ve had visitor before, like Guinan in 1890s, but a whole species living among side humans, maybe they don’t have a big population, I bet they could be the origin of many human myths. I wonder what was their reason.

Maybe It will help with Una’s trial, since both pretended to be humans.

Also, in TOS there was about an Immortal Human, maybe he was a Lanthanite and just didn’t know.

I must say I'm already a big fan of Pelia.

Have we ever heard of Lanthanites? Apparently they

I wonder if they know about the El-Aurians or Q.

I think this got things off to a reasonable start, but it doesn't feel like the strongest episode out of the gate. Maybe it's because the show deliberately chooses not take on the cliffhanger of the last season in the first episode. Starting the season with only part of the cast undertaking the mission I think also makes the episode feel a bit slight.

It's also a bit of a darker episode than the last season, but I'm not sure if engaging with the Klingon civil war aftermath is actually necessary in this episode. In fact, leaving out the Klingon stuff here would make it a bit less stodgy to me. I guess there is some curiosity as to what SNW characters were doing during the war, but it really feels like here, the only reason they framed this entire episode around the war was so that M'Benga and Chapel could juice themselves up with a substance that they never quite introduce before using it and Die Hard Klingons for a chunk of the episode. There's maybe some M'Benga trauma, but giving the character another trauma moment where some (particularly Ortegas) remain comparatively lightly characterized feels...meh.

It's probably all the Discovery elements, both in plot and in set design on screen, that make me feel this way, but I was hoping that Discovery would learn the best lessons from Strange New Worlds. This episode has me slightly worried that instead of that, Strange New Worlds may be learning some bad lessons from Discovery. That said I'm hoping things get better across the season. I thought this was good but just not quite what I wanted from the season opener.

What was the magic hypo serum they used? Was it the lost Captain America serum? Or has that been referenced / used before somewhere else in universe that I don’t recall?