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Re: SNW S1: A Quality of Mercy

Different star ratings for different series. It's a relative system, not an absolute one. A three star SNW episode =/= a three star TOS episode. I'm quite sure that if Jammer were to watch one episode of each series each and give ratings, they would look quite different in contrast.

Re: SNW S1: A Quality of Mercy

Sorry for the double post, I would make an edit if I could.

I rewatched Balance of Terror for comparison, and the one reason I can give for why one episode resonates with me and the other feels mostly inconsequential is that it's plainly obvious that one episode was written by people who experienced war, sacrifice and fulfilling one's duty, while the other wasn't. I can't even pinpoint exactly what tipped me off; maybe it's the way in which everybody in Balance of Terror, Romulans and Enterprise crew, are focused, just as the plot is condensed and focused, while in the other, everything feels floaty. The same beats are struck, broadly speaking, but Quality of Mercy can only substitute guesstimation and immitation for actual experience.

Quality of Mercy speaks out loud all the time - Balance of Terror lets itself speak for itself. Show, don't tell. Ensign Martine's exchange with Kirk at the end encapsulates the difference most profoundly, I think. It is obvious what both are thinking, beyond the few words exchanged. It is plainly obvious how horrible the situation is. But Ensign Martine's words also perfectly encapsulate the mindset necessary to deal with these situations. "I'll manage." And she will. Or maybe not - maybe it will be too hard. It doesn't need to be said. Just like the relationship between Kirk and the Romulan Commander developed all by itself, logically, without a single word needing to be said. It's more powerful because it doesn't need to be explained, or infused with unfitting levity, or the need to raise the stakes beyond the microcosm the two ships find themselves in.

Balance of Terror kept me in suspense the whole time, despite me having seen it twice or more already. It has verisimilitude. And, it is imo simply better written.

Anyway, enough of me ranting. Thanks to Jammer for keeping his site up for all these years, and offering a space for us to lay out our thoughts.

Re: SNW S1: A Quality of Mercy

I skipped ahead and only watched this after watching Eps 1 and 2. And, yes, this was enjoyable in isolation. However ...

Making Pike aware of his future was a really, really bad choice. At first I thought it was clever to have him wrestle with his fate, but they didn't keep things mysterious enough. If Pike *only* new that he would suffer a horrible injury, but not why or how or when exactly, it would have worked, because he would have been unable to avoid the situation due to lack of foreknowledge. It would have added a lot of tragedy, because the audience would have figured out when it was his time to go, while he was walking into his fate blindly.

But the way it's included now, it just raises an endless list of "But what if ..."s:
Why can't Pike survive the accident and then work to put Kirk in charge of the Enterprise in time to solve the Romulan crisis?
Why can't Pike, now that he knows what Kirk would have done, act like Kirk would have?
Why is there only one possible timeline where the war is avoided, and why does it hinge on Pike being crippled?
Why do people assume that war with the Romulans is actually the worst possible timeline? What if a few years later, a peace deal leads to a stronger alliance between the Romulans and Federation, which leads to a shorter and less bloody Dominion war, etc?

The list goes on, as there are infinite possibilities one could come up with. I get what the writers are going for, but they more or less wrote themselves into a corner needlessly. Everything comes back to Pike's central dilemma, so every side-quest he goes on feels like a distraction from what should actually matter. That's the problem when introducing timetravel/precognition. Your story has to basically revolve around it, otherwise, everything you do feels like fluff since we know the outcome, the characters know the outcome, and their character arcs are already told right from the start.

As I said, in isolation, the Episode is fine. I enjoyed it for what it was and on its own terms. It feels a little funny that Anson Mount has about a hundred times more Shatner feel to him than the actor portraying Kirk, but okay, it was a pretty silly choice to include Kirk anyway since he's so iconic. No way to replace him with a new actor, really. But, even though I can overlook that and enjoyed the Episode overall, I don't think I'll watch the rest of the season now. I like the cast and the characters, but the lines they are given feel amateurish a lot of the time, and nothing gripped me enough to spend more time with them. Oh well. Maybe next time.

Re: SNW S1: Children of the Comet

The music as language stuff is pretty neat. In general, the ideas aren't bad. It's just the execution which brings back memories of the worst Disco and Picard had to offer. Feels like they took the "too grimdark" complaints to heart but went too far in the other direction. It's okay for people to be serious, even in lighthearted shows. It's basically the 101 of writing: know how to strike the correct tone for the scene/story you want to tell. Nothing throws me out of the loop faster than unexplained tonal shifts. Even the Orville knew when to cut back on the (silly to atrocious) humor when appropriate, and that was a comedy show.

I'm probably harping on about this for too long. Apologies again. The first episode gave me hope for the first time in a long time, so it's sad to see some of my pet peeves return immediately after.

Re: SNW S1: Children of the Comet

Oh boy, this lasted all of five minutes ... I was really upbeat after the first episode, as I felt like this could be a good show, but it just fell flat right away again. The Captain's dinner was fine, I think. Sure, it's against protocol, but it was downtime, and everybody behaved like it was. But then we get to the actual plot, and everybody still behaves in silly ways. Cracking jokes at inappropriate moments. Expo-dumping stuff they just expo-dumped. (E.g.: Pike: "Let's hope they don't know our away team is on the comet." Aliens: "Your away team desecrates our holy comet." Helmsman: "Whoops, looks like they know our away team is on the comet." Come on. This is just beyond stupid. I get it that attention spans are shrinking, but this was a scene of ten seconds or something ...

Haaaah .... guess this will be another show I won't be watching. I'm sorry, I'm sure there are great stories in here somewhere, but I simply can't stomach another "let's try to be the MCU" humor laden show which treats me like and idiot and features characters who don't behave like characters in their positions and with their backgrounds should. I'm starting to wonder how the same people managed to write the first episode.

Re: SNW S1: Strange New Worlds

This was surprisingly enjoyable. I can't say that I have any issues so far. The episode kept me on board and entertained for its runtime. It wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it wasn't offensive, either, which is all I hope for out of Trek at this point. Curious to see where this will go!

Re: PIC S2: Farewell

I must admit that I could not stomach to watch all of this season. I'm still commenting here as a kind of end-series review.

I'll be brief, since everything has been said already. What struck me most was just how unrecognizable everybody was. I've been rewatching Voyager, and Seven, who I just had a vague fondness for, mostly remembering indistinct feelings and not actual developments due to the long time since my last watch muddling my memories, recaptured my heart with her great acting and development. I have made a few Aspy friends since my last watch, so Seven became even more relatable from a different angle this time around.

But in Picard, she's ... sigh ... Jeri is still giving it her all, I can tell, but that's just not Seven. And I don't buy that she somehow developed into this character they present to us during the timeskip. It's just wrong on every level. Same goes for Picard, of course. And the Federation. And the type of SciFi we're watching: JJ "Space is, like, literally a mile wide" Abrams SciFi instead of "It'll take 70 years to get home" SciFi. I really really wish they'd just leave the old characters rest. I know they're scared of that because Disco flopped with an all new cast, but come on ...

Anyway, sorry for only adding more negativity. I'm glad for everybody who can enjoy this. For me, it just hurt.

Re: VOY S5: Nothing Human

> The larger issue in "Nothing Human" relates to the horror that the rights of individuals over their own bodies will be argued away under the notion that the abrogation of the individual's liberties would lead to a greater public good.

Absolutely this! That's why B'Elanna gets so angry at the end. Is it silly or maybe even selfish of her to refuse treatment? Absolutely. It is also, thankfully, one of our most fundamental human rights. Nobody can treat us or operate on us against our will, no matter how stupid or wasteful or sad our death would be, or how much could be gained for the greater good down the line. It's one of our fundamental safeguards against barbarism and human experimentation.

As for Doctor Krell: what many viewers seem to have missed is that his method was not needed. The Doctor knew a better way to achieve the same result, and takes over the procedure when Krell threatens to kill the alien person. But even more fundamentally, Krell's influence set the Doctor on a path which caused undue harm to the alien. Clearly it wasn't trying to kill B'Elanna. It most likely didn't even intend harm - if it did, it would have to be very stupid or suicidal, because knowing nothing about human(oids), it should expect retaliation if it hurt one of them. So why didn't the Doctor consider other options, like stabilizing B'Elanna's system and giving her extra nutrients, so that the alien could heal itself leaching off her body, at which point it would most likely have let go by itself? Because Krell set him on a path of thought which focused on removing the organism; even framing it as "organism" is wrong. It's a person. It just looks alien to us, but it was clearly sentient and sapient. If this had been another forehead alien, people would have been abhorred, and rightly so, when Krell opened up their back and laid open their spine, only to then send electric shocks through its system to paralyze it.

The thing is, most of the unethical research the Nazis and Japanese did (which this Episode is clearly inspired by) is absolutely useless. And Krell exemplifies this, sicne his research was very easily improved upon massively by the Doctor within seconds.

Re: VOY S4: Retrospect

This episode was pretty thought provoking and hit pretty close to home; it portrays well the dilemma often present with real abuse victims, that there's nothing but their word to go on.

However, the execution left much to be desired. All of this is kicked off by the Doctor discovering that Seven's memories have been artificially chemically suppressed. This is the crux of the whole issue, and the only reason the plot kicks off in the first place. But when the crew flips to deciding that Kovin is innocent, this is never brought up again. Who suppressed Seven's memories? Was it Kovin, or was it some Borg implant going haywire? Was it actually done artificially, or was it a normal biological reaction?

Similarly, it is stated that Seven spent 2 hours alone with Covin - yet nobody asks her to recount what they did. I'm sure that Seven has a very good memory, so if there's not enough there to fill two hours (and I doubt they needed two hours to make one adjustment to their laser rifle), then what happened during the rest of the time?

Why does nobody scan the planet for Borg signatures? The Voyager is able to find a tricorder or something on the surface of a planet (as shown a few episodes earlier), so why was this not even attempted?

In essence, there were many lines of inquiry not explored which should have been. And like Regan said above, Kovin is not a trustworthy source - if an accusation is enough to count as a crime, then there would have been no need to question the Doctor. On the contrary - if the administration was only concerned with appeasing trading partners, they'd have done everything they could to put the situation behind them as quickly as possible. Kovin is already dead. There's no need to subject the Doctor to any questioning.

Even if the investiagtion eventually ended inconclusively, it would still have been better than the "Kovin was innocent" conclusion we got, because that conclusion was not supported by anything. Yes, in a legal sense, he was innocent, because his guilt couldn't be proven beyond reasonable doubt. But I would have expected Tuvok and Janeway to still have their reservation about proclaiming his innocence, either. They simply don't know, and that's as much as they can say.

And regardless of whether or not the Doctor induced false memories in Seven, Seven reacted strangely to Covin and to invasions of her personal space long before he did so, so something *was* off. Janeway being disappointed in Seven - again - is just hilarious. Seven did nothing wrong. (Also kinda hilarious to see Janeway teaching Seven about controlling her impulses, given that Janeway has been ... let's say erratic the last few episodes.) The episode could have dealt with the Doctor's questionable methods without shifting the blame on the potential victim as hard as it did, which left a bad taste in my mouth. The whole situation only escalated in the first place because instead of quitely investigating Seven's accusations, gathering evidence to back her up (or not, in case there was none) Janeway decided to tell the potential perpetrator right away, not only giving him a chance to eliminate potential evidence, but also circumventing the legal authority of the planet they were visiting.

And finally, Kovin - he seems to be innocent, given his behaviour (getting angry, mostly - that's something wrongly accused people do). But he acts like an idiot. If he truly wants to not be accused, why didn't he offer Janeway to scan his laboratory, and prove his innocense that way, before she contacted local authorities? If he truly has nothing to hide, wouldn't that have been the best way to get out of this situation? Even if he *has* something to hide - wouldn't that still have been preferrable? But he never tries to establish his innocence. He doesn't want to cooperate with the investigation at all. And his extreme reaction is hard to reconcile with simple fear of being judged on an accusation alone. If he truly believes to be innocent, why would he throw his life away? I guess it's possible that he was panicking completely, but his reaction makes more sense if there *was* something to be afraid of.