Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

[ChrisIII]

Peck's spock seems to have more of Nimoy's deeper voice and presence than Quinto's IMO although neither really have Nimoy's fairly unique likeness. Also definetly seeing a bit of Nichols in there-a lot of warmness that we generally see later on. As interesting as Zoe's version is, she wasn't exactly Nichol's version, largely because they kind of elevated Uhura to the third main character in place of McCoy. Also nice to see her meet Chapel, the two sort of have a friendship there as seen in a few episode of TOS.

[BeastieRunner]

Is your dislike of Singh down to the character herself or the fact that you really don't want to sit through Khan related storylines? If the character didn't come with the Khan baggage would you dislike the character as much?

The Khan thing isn't my issue nor is her performance. It's just a character type we see a lot. She comes off as Ensign Ro and we already had that

But it is only episode one.

[nx01a]

I loved it!!!!

The Good
-Anson Mount is a treasure and must be protected at all costs.
-Pike's pretty manly. Friends with benefits, horseback riding, epic beard, living in the bush, hiding from his feelings...
-The shuttle pilot's comment about the ship being repaired and cleaned up when Pike's shaved and cleaned up well but isn't repaired? Him responding to her by talking about himself? Perfect.
-What is Ethan Peck doing in the gym?! He was doing a very good 'Henry Cavill after saving oil platform workers' impression wearing only those black pants.
-T'Pring! You trifling heifer! Well, now we see that she and Spock might have been happy except Starfleet came between them... and then she decided to be trifling.
-Uhura and Chapel and M'Benga were fun. I actually gave a little squeal when Uhura touched her earpiece for the first time.
-La'an was our Tasha Yar. I like her.
-The Kirk fake out was nicely done. We knew it couldn't be Jim but damn, bringing in his brother? Funny how in an episode where Pike says no one will die, we see a future red shirt in the form of a blue shirt-wearing Sam Kirk. RIP in advance. I guess we'll get to love him while knowing what eventually happens.
-Watching The Day The Earth Stood Still was such foreshadowing but Pike took its inspiration in stride, channeling Klaatu nicely.
-American Civil War 2. Yup.
-Spock's excruciating pain moment.
-Forehead aliens! :P

The Bad
-Not enough aliens on the cast or in the hallways! Trek can afford them now!
-Was there a different warp effect out the windows of the ship's bar? Does warp look different now when you're looking ahead or behind the ship?
-A whole starship with only 3 crew, all of whom beam down for a first contact scenario? And it's named the Archer? Well, many of his first contacts went left, too.
-Pike was reading about La'an and Una while on the shuttle ride to the shipyards. Maybe he was just distracted by his own issues and didn't actually read it.
-La'an taking Tasha Yar's rape gangs to a global scale. That was chilling, left me feeling icky,and the Gorn are even more evil.
-How fast were those primitive 21st C-type plasma torpedoes traveling exactly? You'd assume the Enterprise's sensors would pick up launches and be able to raise shields in plenty of time.

The Ugly
-STILL no episode titles in the actual episodes! 2 dozen executive producers and zero titles!

The Verdict
What I said at the beginning: I loved it! There's an optimism and warmth here that wasn't present in DIS s1 or PIC s1, and I'm told PIC s2 is nonstop trauma. DIS has moved beyond the horror and trauma for the most part starting with s2, and I'm glad that's continuing with SNW.
I'm in favour of the 'emotional serialization' with 2 or 3 parters, not season-long plots. Doctor Who used to do that well, doing solo stories while also progressing the overarching plot, but modern Trek really hasn't done it well. Either it's stretching what should be a 3 part arc into an entire 13 episode season (DIS s4) or staying in a particular setting some viewers might simply have zero interest in or find distasteful for over half of the 10 episode season (PIC s2 on present day Earth).
I'm looking forward to meeting Hemmer and more exploration of this crew and space: the final frontier!

[inisideguy]

Wow I just watched it and I have to say I am inspired best Trek for me in years.

[nx01a]

Re: the different warp effects...
w1.jpg
w2.jpg
I much prefer the second. It looks like an updating of the streaking stars instead of 'generic blue FTL tunnel #4'.

For some reason, this just made me think of the quite dark beginning of this new era of Trek...
epv.jpg

[thwhtGuardian]

This was a fantastic first episode! I loved all the characters here and I'm really looking forward to seeing more of them.

[ChrisIII]

Wondering if Spock meeting Leila (From "This Side of Paradise") around this time might explain his estrangement from T'Pring.

Also, with James Kirk showing up later, could Gary Mitchell and Carol Marcus possibly show up too?

[nx01a]

Memory Alpha puts Spock meeting Leila in 2261. SNW is set in 2259, so we've got 2 seasons before that might happen.

I think the estrangement's been firmly set up already: Spock left T'Pring's bed to do Starfleet business. I guess she realizes she'll always come second to the Enterprise... if at all. Kirk and Marcus being romantically involved next season makes sense. David's gotta get conceived sometime soon.

[Sutekh]

Wondering if Spock meeting Leila (From "This Side of Paradise") around this time might explain his estrangement from T'Pring.

Also, with James Kirk showing up later, could Gary Mitchell and Carol Marcus possibly show up too?

I don't really expect that much continuity, but gosh, I'd love to see Gary Mitchell, in particular. (Or even Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, from the same episode.)

But not immediately. I am more interested in the stories of Pike and Number One and various new characters I've never met, than getting into the weeds of what young Spock, young Uhura, young Kirk, etc. are doing. It's Pike's show, IMO, let Pike flex a bit, before drowning us in stunt-casting and pandering-to-nostalgia and what young McCoy and young Chekov and young Scotty and young Sulu are doing.

[Gray Lensman]

I don't really expect that much continuity, but gosh, I'd love to see Gary Mitchell, in particular. (Or even Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, from the same episode.)

But not immediately. I am more interested in the stories of Pike and Number One and various new characters I've never met, than getting into the weeds of what young Spock, young Uhura, young Kirk, etc. are doing. It's Pike's show, IMO, let Pike flex a bit, before drowning us in stunt-casting and pandering-to-nostalgia and what young McCoy and young Chekov and young Scotty and young Sulu are doing.

Mitchell might be harder to bring in depending on how tightly the show wants to follow Beta Canon. Mitchell comes with Kirk as opposed to being on the Enterprise beforehand, and in at least one novelization was Kirk's preference for XO. Starfleet overruled him, wanting an XO on the ship to complement him, not one to be an echo of him (which is what they considered Mitchell). Of course, since we will eventually be seeing a Captain James T. Kirk in the series (my guess is as the Captain of another ship who helps out with the plot), we might see a Gary Mitchell as well. Notwithstanding that the writers might decide that stuff like that doesn't qualify as anything they should care about, or even just overruling existing stuff anyways - He was originally James R. Kirk, before that got changed.

[Jared]

Finally, I watched the pilot.

So, as it turns out, getting the tone, themes, and pacing right for a modern Star Trek pilot is NOT rocket science. This was a fun and interesting story. Not the best episode ever, but quite honestly, but in a franchise known for rough starts, this might be the best pilot episode any series has had. And directed by Akiva Goldsman, I never would have expected that from him.

In a way, it's like a do-over of *The Cage* in that once again, Pike's character arc is deciding not to walk away from Starfleet after he starts off in a funk after a rough mission.

I guess all the Enterprise Short Treks happened before the events of DISCO season 2? I knew the one were Spock and Una meet was a prequel, but I didn't think they all were.

I'm sure there are details that fleet junkies can nitpick all day, but I think the Enterprise looks great here. And I say that as someone who has never been a especially big fan of that design, generally. Yeah, it's iconic, but it's usually kind of awkward or even goofy looking, not something I would ever actually think of as "a beautiful ship" on its own. But I genuinely liked it here.

I liked that we finally got a story about a primitive planet noticing a giant space battle. That's something I had often wondered about on my own. Technically, it should probably happen all the time, maybe not to the extend that someone can figure out a warp bomb, but all those antimatter explosions are gonna light up the sky, so to speak.

All three members of the USS Archer's crew beaming down strikes me as a spectacularly dumb idea. Granted, Starfleet is known to do a lot of spectacularly dumb things when you really think about it, but this stood out. Also, Archer deserves a more important vessel named after him, not some dinky little one-nacelle thing with only a commander on temporary assignment and two others!

I like this Nurse Chapel as a character although I can't say she really struck me as being anything like the Chapel we know. If she had gone unnamed I never would have even suspected it. Whereas with Uhura I could get a real sense of, "yeah, this would be an Uhura fresh out of the Academy".

I think it would be better to give Pike a different speech for the opening credits. Especially if he was going to seemingly debut it at very end of the episode. It lost some impact since we had already heard it. Technically he should probably be saying "no man" instead of "no one" in this time, but I get that it's not worth the online freakout that would ensue.

Only thing that really bothered me was the Gorn being in La'an's backstory. Damn it, two seconds on a smart phone and the writers could check that there hasn't been contact with the Gorn yet! Hell, they could have even fixed the line in post if anybody bothered to catch it. It's such a weird thing to mess up: they did just enough research to mention the Gorn at all, but not enough to avoid completely screwing up a famous TOS episode.

I'll admit it, they totally got me with the Kirk thing. I forgot all about Sam.

[Sutekh]

Only thing that really bothered me was the Gorn being in La'an's backstory. Damn it, two seconds on a smart phone and the writers could check that there hasn't been contact with the Gorn yet! Hell, they could have even fixed the line in post if anybody bothered to catch it. It's such a weird thing to mess up: they did just enough research to mention the Gorn at all, but not enough to avoid completely screwing up a famous TOS episode.

I was less bugged by the notion of discontinuity, since that's always been a bit squiffy, as the idea that Gorn are some sort of Aliens-style xenomorphs that lay eggs in people that eat their way out, or whatever weirdness happened with the vaguely rape-y/cannibal-y sounding backstory from La'an. Other Trek shows have indicated that Gorn are kinda no biggy in the Trek future, with McCoy mentioning delivering some Gorn babies in one of the Kelvin-verse movies, and Gorn wandering around as tourists on some planet Mariner Becket is visiting in Lower Decks. (Neither of which are canon for *this* show, obviously!)

Then again, it could be a Mandalorian 'one of those...' situations where most Gorn are just lizard-peeps, but some small sect or sub-culture likes to grow their babies on the flesh of sapients, because they have some religious / philosophical belief about it making them smarter or more savage or whatever...

I'll admit it, they totally got me with the Kirk thing. I forgot all about Sam.

Yeah, when he was mentioned in the front half of the episode I was like, 'Gosh, so soon? I don't want to get swamped in nostalgia already, I want to get to know Pike and Una and some of these new characters!' And then it was not the Kirk I thought it was, and I was amused at how my expectations got played.

[C_Miller]

I like this Nurse Chapel as a character although I can't say she really struck me as being anything like the Chapel we know. If she had gone unnamed I never would have even suspected it. Whereas with Uhura I could get a real sense of, "yeah, this would be a Uhura fresh out of the Academy".

Chapel is definitely Chapel in name only, but she is such a blank slate. She's probably my least favorite regular character from TOS just because there's so little to her character. I do not care that she has more personality, because it would be impossible for a major character on a modern TV show to have less of one.

Celia Rose Gooding's may sneakily be one of the more enjoyable recastings I've ever seen, especially from Star Trek. I won't count Pike and Number One because they didn't leave much of a legacy. At this point, Anson Mount and Rebecca Romjin have more screen time than Jeffrey Hunter and Majel Barret in those roles. But, Gooding was so good in her limited role here. She really did a great job capturing the essence of Uhura with the knowledge that she is not at the same place as the Uhura we're familiar with. I'm really interested to see how she develops into the confident officer from TOS.

[ChrisIII]

Finally, I watched the pilot.

So, as it turns out, getting the tone, themes, and pacing right for a modern Star Trek pilot is NOT rocket science. This was a fun and interesting story. Not the best episode ever, but quite honestly, but in a franchise known for rough starts, this might be the best pilot episode any series has had. And directed by Akiva Goldsman, I never would have expected that from him.

In a way, it's like a do-over of *The Cage* in that once again, Pike's character arc is deciding not to walk away from Starfleet after he starts off in a funk after a rough mission.

I guess all the Enterprise Short Treks happened before the events of DISCO season 2? I knew the one were Spock and Una meet was a prequel, but I didn't think they all were.

I'm sure there are details that fleet junkies can nitpick all day, but I think the Enterprise looks great here. And I say that as someone who has never been a especially big fan of that design, generally. Yeah, it's iconic, but it's usually kind of awkward or even goofy looking, not something I would ever actually think of as "a beautiful ship" on its own. But I genuinely liked it here.

I liked that we finally got a story about a primitive planet noticing a giant space battle. That's something I had often wondered about on my own. Technically, it should probably happen all the time, maybe not to the extend that someone can figure out a warp bomb, but all those antimatter explosions are gonna light up the sky, so to speak.

All three members of the USS Archer's crew beaming down strikes me as a spectacularly dumb idea. Granted, Starfleet is known to do a lot of spectacularly dumb things when you really think about it, but this stood out. Also, Archer deserves a more important vessel named after him, not some dinky little one-nacelle thing with only a commander on temporary assignment and two others!

I like this Nurse Chapel as a character although I can't say she really struck me as being anything like the Chapel we know. If she had gone unnamed I never would have even suspected it. Whereas with Uhura I could get a real sense of, "yeah, this would be a Uhura fresh out of the Academy".

I think it would be better to give Pike a different speech for the opening credits. Especially if he was going to seemingly debut it at very end of the episode. It lost some impact since we had already heard it. Technically he should probably be saying "no man" instead of "no one" in this time, but I get that it's not worth the online freakout that would ensue.

Only thing that really bothered me was the Gorn being in La'an's backstory. Damn it, two seconds on a smart phone and the writers could check that there hasn't been contact with the Gorn yet! Hell, they could have even fixed the line in post if anybody bothered to catch it. It's such a weird thing to mess up: they did just enough research to mention the Gorn at all, but not enough to avoid completely screwing up a famous TOS episode.

I'll admit it, they totally got me with the Kirk thing. I forgot all about Sam.

There's another Archer in Nemesis that I think was Excelsior class. Still kind of interesting that although the Consitution class seems to have been phased out entirely, the Excelsiors still operate over 100 years after III, as we also see in Picard.

Then again the Klingons seem to use variants of the D7 for centuries as well, although it appearing in Enterprise was kind of a mistake and kind of retconned by Discovery's second season.

[Gray Lensman]

There's another Archer in Nemesis that I think was Excelsior class. Still kind of interesting that although the Consitution class seems to have been phased out entirely, the Excelsiors still operate over 100 years after III, as we also see in Picard.

Then again the Klingons seem to use variants of the D7 for centuries as well, although it appearing in Enterprise was kind of a mistake and kind of retconned by Discovery's second season.

I'm not sure if it was to keep the Constitution class for the movies, or a deliberate choice to move away from the look for TNG, but the stories for some of the models are interesting. Supposedly, the reason you don't see another Ambassador class ship for years is because they dropped the model before it could be digitized, despite it being such a perfect design from a story perspective. Using more of them would make it seem like Starfleet hadn't gone through an 80 year period where they stopped designing things.

Thankfully now everything is on a drive somewhere so a single case of butterfingers can't make a cool model vanish like it never was.