Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
- Thread starter SHIELD Agent 47
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I really liked the scene where La'an and Kirk appear in Toronto and Kirk believes it is NYC and La'an is incredulous because it obviously isn't. I went right along with him. I knew the big screen wasn't right for Times Square, but I didn't know what year they went to and I'm accustomed to TV shows filming somewhere else and just letting us know where we are. I enjoyed being shown the error, not personally having any idea what Toronto looks like, and taking a light ribbing for it. But after a couple days I feel like the whole gag had been better if Kirk wasn't from an Earth where Toronto was destroyed centuries ago.
Incidentally, William Shatner is from Canada.
Incidentally, William Shatner is from Canada.
There was literally a big sign visible onscreen saying "Toronto Eaton Centre."
(And the news screen above it was talking about Lake Ontario.)
(And the news screen above it was talking about Lake Ontario.)
I love that!
I loved that Kirk could hussle in chess. That part alone set up the rest of the episode as different from what I thought it would be.
Half of Lake Ontario's shores are in the state of New York. I didn't know that Toronto was right next to the lake, but NYC isn't REALLY far from there and the opening of a new important bridge touching New York would be national news. Watching on an iPad while doing work on my computer. I do apologize if I wasn't paying close enough attention for you.
But I still think the gag was intended to point out that American audiences are unfamiliar with Toronto.
I have seen almost as much SNW as any of you now.
I went into the musical episode expecting to agree with Copper Bezel, but it didn't happen. I expected to have it prove out that the musical probably had to be thrown together in a couple of weeks and it would be a train wreck, but actually in the new streaming world, we really don't know how much time they had to work on it. It's no Les Mis or Hamilton, but I really felt like for what it was supposed to be, it was impressive. I really liked La'an's first song and Spock's response to Chapel's song. They knew Anson Mount was a weak link and pulled back his reigns. They really knew La'an and Shura were coins in their pocket and they spent them. Probably Pelia was really the weakest link because they didn't even put a microphone on her as far as I could tell. Doing part of one of the songs with he gravity off was neat, but it was disappointing that they did so little with it if they were doing it. Also neat to have part of Uhura's song in engineering echoing in the cavernous room.
Someone said as the season went that Pelia was underused. I always take lines like that with a grain of salt because any character can be someone's favorite and that someone will always think there should have been more. But Egad. They barely used her at all. The best use was a different version of her in the past and the use wasn't really because of the actress' talent but the very neat possibility that her character lended to the story. I don't like her accent which I am assuming is put on. And they sort of just did the same skit several times with different characters. Bleh.
You can go back to early pages of this thread and see my anxiety that they wouldn't be able to resist Kirking out and there you go. They totally Kirked out. It has to be giving Pike the creeps. I appreciated how they dealt with Carol, given that we kind of know Kirk didn't do his best there. He doesn't bother saying something like "My heart belongs to another" or anything. Kirk really isn't husband material, for all his strengths and that comes through here. He just calls it complicated. A rare moment of not using the show about Pike to glorify the Kirk.
Kirk being the youngest ever First Officer is a nod to Riker saying he was the youngest ever Captain and it makes sense that you'd need to hit other ranks ahead of schedule. But how the heck old was Batel when she made First Officer. I went to look her up to see if she was even older than Paul Wesley and she is, by a year. But he can't have beat her to First Officer by a mile.
I haven't seen the finale. I've seen people speculating about who might die. If she hasn't already, I'm pretty sure they have made it perfectly clear already that they'd get a great emotional punch out of Batel not making it out. Kirk is still aboard, right? I'm sure he'll save them all.
I have always been confused by how much they made Chapel their own, but it is interesting that they are sending her off to study with Roger Korby. I don't know the guy well, but my goodness is he ever going to do a number on that girl.
I went into the musical episode expecting to agree with Copper Bezel, but it didn't happen. I expected to have it prove out that the musical probably had to be thrown together in a couple of weeks and it would be a train wreck, but actually in the new streaming world, we really don't know how much time they had to work on it. It's no Les Mis or Hamilton, but I really felt like for what it was supposed to be, it was impressive. I really liked La'an's first song and Spock's response to Chapel's song. They knew Anson Mount was a weak link and pulled back his reigns. They really knew La'an and Shura were coins in their pocket and they spent them. Probably Pelia was really the weakest link because they didn't even put a microphone on her as far as I could tell. Doing part of one of the songs with he gravity off was neat, but it was disappointing that they did so little with it if they were doing it. Also neat to have part of Uhura's song in engineering echoing in the cavernous room.
Someone said as the season went that Pelia was underused. I always take lines like that with a grain of salt because any character can be someone's favorite and that someone will always think there should have been more. But Egad. They barely used her at all. The best use was a different version of her in the past and the use wasn't really because of the actress' talent but the very neat possibility that her character lended to the story. I don't like her accent which I am assuming is put on. And they sort of just did the same skit several times with different characters. Bleh.
You can go back to early pages of this thread and see my anxiety that they wouldn't be able to resist Kirking out and there you go. They totally Kirked out. It has to be giving Pike the creeps. I appreciated how they dealt with Carol, given that we kind of know Kirk didn't do his best there. He doesn't bother saying something like "My heart belongs to another" or anything. Kirk really isn't husband material, for all his strengths and that comes through here. He just calls it complicated. A rare moment of not using the show about Pike to glorify the Kirk.
Kirk being the youngest ever First Officer is a nod to Riker saying he was the youngest ever Captain and it makes sense that you'd need to hit other ranks ahead of schedule. But how the heck old was Batel when she made First Officer. I went to look her up to see if she was even older than Paul Wesley and she is, by a year. But he can't have beat her to First Officer by a mile.
I haven't seen the finale. I've seen people speculating about who might die. If she hasn't already, I'm pretty sure they have made it perfectly clear already that they'd get a great emotional punch out of Batel not making it out. Kirk is still aboard, right? I'm sure he'll save them all.
I have always been confused by how much they made Chapel their own, but it is interesting that they are sending her off to study with Roger Korby. I don't know the guy well, but my goodness is he ever going to do a number on that girl.
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I had to go back and watch "I'm Ready" a few times in the days after I saw it, because I think that's a pretty okay number. Mostly I just randomly watch the 30s Klingon boyband number from the finale, which I find funnier and more listenable out of context.
And yeah, I probably gave the wrong impression earlier, but I didn't and don't think the episode was rushed. It was clearly a labor of love. I do still also think "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy" pulled off a better number in a cave with a box of scraps.
I think it's okay that "there are no small parts" is a lie. I don't feel that I want more from Pelia, it really feels like about as much attention as she can sustain for me. But I think she's fine at it. She's not supposed to be a Scotty or a Geordie or an O'Brien and maybe she's not going to be much of a Guinan either, but I don't feel like I need her to be.
And yeah, I probably gave the wrong impression earlier, but I didn't and don't think the episode was rushed. It was clearly a labor of love. I do still also think "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy" pulled off a better number in a cave with a box of scraps.
I remember seeing something about her creating the Lillithuanian or whatever accent for the character. Which, fine, it's fun in theory.
I think it's okay that "there are no small parts" is a lie. I don't feel that I want more from Pelia, it really feels like about as much attention as she can sustain for me. But I think she's fine at it. She's not supposed to be a Scotty or a Geordie or an O'Brien and maybe she's not going to be much of a Guinan either, but I don't feel like I need her to be.
The Spock fully human episode opened on a conceit that I couldn't follow. It was too distracting to me to think that on a 5 year exploration mission, the Enterprise would go survey a planet IN THE ERIDANI SYSTEM. Vulcans have been in space for like 1000 years longer and science is what they do. We aren't finding something new in their backyard.
Also, the line between doctor and nurse in the Starfleet world is very difficult for me to parse.
Also, the line between doctor and nurse in the Starfleet world is very difficult for me to parse.
I read an interesting theory (saw a theory maybe? May be have been on YouTube) that Vulcans slowed down their space exploration after the Romulan split. Not canon, but MIGHT make sense? Sort of a civilization reset after a massive portion of their population left. And maybe the conflict was so violent records were lost of their space exploration?
I didn't recognize that as a real star. Logically it does make sense that the Vulcans would have got there first in a flat race, presupposing that time and space in Star Trek make sense. But it also seems plausible to me that there are things like the random portal on this planet that's been undiscovered within Federation space that's different from the other random ancient portal they found this season further afield. Have the Vulcans personally visited every planet of every star they can see by eye in the night sky? That seems like a lot even for a centuries-long FTL exploration program. There really might be stuff around in holes that no one's just ever had any real reason to dig.
I know in the real world a doctor has a longer course of study and a residency and a nurse has a somewhat different emphasis in their training that allows them to better interface with patients, but also the assumption that it's simply possible to have lots of nurses and a relatively smaller number of doctors. But in every other Trek show, doctors do all the jobs and nurses either show up to assist or do monitoring and administering things while we're not watching.
Chapel clearly has specialist training as well as a residency equivalent of field hospital experience that would make her equivalent to a doctor today (like, a specialist doctor as opposed to a GP or whatever, but still very much a doctor.) Meanwhile the only medical professional we've ever seen publishing research and getting accolades other than Chapel herself is Bashir, who himself worked with nurses who themselves did not seem to do any of those things.
I think TOS had a backup lady doctor they called a "nurse" for sexist reasons and SNW inherited it and made it be for kink reasons instead.
I wouldn't worry too much about it though, it occurs to me that if you see the finale and really want to know what happens next, you can just watch "Arena".
Maybe it's like how an admiral or commander is officially a "captain" while they're in command of a ship. They're all doctors, but only the ship's doctor is actively docting.
I know in the real world a doctor has a longer course of study and a residency and a nurse has a somewhat different emphasis in their training that allows them to better interface with patients, but also the assumption that it's simply possible to have lots of nurses and a relatively smaller number of doctors. But in every other Trek show, doctors do all the jobs and nurses either show up to assist or do monitoring and administering things while we're not watching.
Chapel clearly has specialist training as well as a residency equivalent of field hospital experience that would make her equivalent to a doctor today (like, a specialist doctor as opposed to a GP or whatever, but still very much a doctor.) Meanwhile the only medical professional we've ever seen publishing research and getting accolades other than Chapel herself is Bashir, who himself worked with nurses who themselves did not seem to do any of those things.
I think TOS had a backup lady doctor they called a "nurse" for sexist reasons and SNW inherited it and made it be for kink reasons instead.
This is where I would spoil why Batel isn't on the list of people people are talking about if I was an asshole. Er, more of one.
Batel's survival is indeed still in question, it's just a separate question.
I wouldn't worry too much about it though, it occurs to me that if you see the finale and really want to know what happens next, you can just watch "Arena".
For note, Chapel became a Doctor in between TOS and TMP. Mccoy mentions it off hand when he gets pressed back into service.
Eridani isn't one of the stars Vulcans see in the night sky. It is one of the stars they see in the day sky.
Oh, right, duh.
I was very bothered when I saw it by this exchange between Ortegas and Uhura when they and Chapel are considering their options before entering the portal again.
So on the one hand, while watching it, I was very aware of the fact that they were still in the same star system when the dialogue forgot, but a few weeks later and I've forgotten myself. Scrying the wiki viscera now, it actually seems plausible, though, because the planet Kerkhov that has the moon that has the portal people is supposed to orbit another star that is itself in a binary pair, which seem to be collectively in a further binary orbit with the Vulcan sun. That's a plausible thing that does happen and could give you a light year of distance.
I thiiiiink it actually checks out though. I don't think the portal's been running the whole time since the portal people ascended to a higher bureaucracy. During the flight to the moon, Spock starts by explaining how they used to be an advanced civilization and then vanished. Well, how could the Vulcans even find that out, without studying one or more of the sites already, after the Vulcans had themselves developed interplanetary travel and possibly FTL to get over there? And then he says that he hopes the recently detected energy signature will answer the questions about the portal people, and Chapel asks whether that's the signature they have on sensors now.
The episode's opening logfile from Nurse Chapel mentioned that Enterprise detected the energy anomaly on the way to the Vulcan system, but also says that the reason they're going there in the first place is to investigate the moon. Isn't it the most plausible reason for Enterprise to be investigating in the first place, that scientists on Vulcan detected the giant flare that can be seen from well outside the system and tipped them off?
And if the Vulcans know of the portal people based on artifacts the left behind, I'm going to bet they've been to all the big sites, whatever those are. They've probably been to this same spot before and measured all those little pyramids, but if the portal just wasn't on at the time, maybe they also just couldn't do much to reverse engineer anything or find any handy encyclopedias?
I was very bothered when I saw it by this exchange between Ortegas and Uhura when they and Chapel are considering their options before entering the portal again.
So on the one hand, while watching it, I was very aware of the fact that they were still in the same star system when the dialogue forgot, but a few weeks later and I've forgotten myself. Scrying the wiki viscera now, it actually seems plausible, though, because the planet Kerkhov that has the moon that has the portal people is supposed to orbit another star that is itself in a binary pair, which seem to be collectively in a further binary orbit with the Vulcan sun. That's a plausible thing that does happen and could give you a light year of distance.
I thiiiiink it actually checks out though. I don't think the portal's been running the whole time since the portal people ascended to a higher bureaucracy. During the flight to the moon, Spock starts by explaining how they used to be an advanced civilization and then vanished. Well, how could the Vulcans even find that out, without studying one or more of the sites already, after the Vulcans had themselves developed interplanetary travel and possibly FTL to get over there? And then he says that he hopes the recently detected energy signature will answer the questions about the portal people, and Chapel asks whether that's the signature they have on sensors now.
The episode's opening logfile from Nurse Chapel mentioned that Enterprise detected the energy anomaly on the way to the Vulcan system, but also says that the reason they're going there in the first place is to investigate the moon. Isn't it the most plausible reason for Enterprise to be investigating in the first place, that scientists on Vulcan detected the giant flare that can be seen from well outside the system and tipped them off?
And if the Vulcans know of the portal people based on artifacts the left behind, I'm going to bet they've been to all the big sites, whatever those are. They've probably been to this same spot before and measured all those little pyramids, but if the portal just wasn't on at the time, maybe they also just couldn't do much to reverse engineer anything or find any handy encyclopedias?
Also note that Starfleet ships are equipped with state-of-the-art sensors and data processors (because those might be life-or-death factors in the field). It's possible Enterprise can detect things at a level of detail that most Vulcan ships can't, so the Vulcan Science Directorate submitted a request.
I think I agree with half of that: they have for instance the Intrepid, which is a science vessel that respectable Vulcans work on, and also Starfleet and a Connie besides. I think this is the one era where Vulcan's fleet-building resources are dealt all-in on Starfleet, and that's probably most of the ships they've got. I'm probably missing something obvious, but isn't there only one "Vulcan" ship class from this era, introduced exclusively in some Discovery flashbacks?
The reason the Enterprise was called in for this job and not the Intrepid or another ship in a similar arrangement is simply plot convenience, but I don't think it would be not Starfleet?
Edit: Scare quotes on describing the "T'Plana type" I'd never heard of as "Vulcan" for the same reason that we don't actually call non-Starfleet Federation ships "human" ships in the corresponding case of La Sirena, etc.
The reason the Enterprise was called in for this job and not the Intrepid or another ship in a similar arrangement is simply plot convenience, but I don't think it would be not Starfleet?
Edit: Scare quotes on describing the "T'Plana type" I'd never heard of as "Vulcan" for the same reason that we don't actually call non-Starfleet Federation ships "human" ships in the corresponding case of La Sirena, etc.