“New Life and New Civilizations”

Well, they solved the issue of Marie Batel by turning her into a statue. Great job, writers. (sarcasm)

I am struggling to see how she got chosen to be a Beholder. When did this happen? Perhaps someone can explain it to me.

This season reminded me a lot of Picard season 2, where there was a lot of filler and only two episodes that really mattered. I don't think these writers have learned how to work efficiently in the constraints of a 10-story episode season. They could have done so much more to flesh out the Vezda subplot.

I am worried about Season 4 and, even more so, Season 5. Season 5 could turn out to be as abysmal a season as the last season of the Umbrella Academy.

@Colin I haven't finished the episode but how cpuld they have flesbed out the Vezda more??..and did hey nkt add enoigh new strange worlds and anonalies in the rest of the epuisode I hope?

@ colin apparently being the combination of a number of species gave her the genes necessary to become the beholder.

Batel being a Beholder makes sense from a predestination paradox or a causal loop--a plot device that's been extensively used in Star Trek. The entity that she is is able to interact with time in a way similar to how we interact in 3D space. Once she's in place as a statue, she guards into the future as well as the present and the past. Admittedly the lining up of the Gorn biology, Ilyrian blood, hybrid flower is a bit incredulous, but on balance, not any more egregious than the stuff pulled by writers in the other series.

Wrapping up Batel clears the deck for Pike, and giving him an "Inner Light" experience was a gift that allows him to face his future. I personally think it was a very beautifully written and executed sequence that had me bawling at the end. I had issues with other aspects of the episode, but I was staggered by how the segment affected me.

My goodness. I don't know even know what to think at this stage except:

Where are the Metrons or the Organians or the Talosians or the Q or the Whale Probe or the Pakleds when you could really use their help?

@Sarjenka - The Pakleds were too busy screwing up their planet and developing a political power structure based on successively bigger hats.

After watching the recap built into the beginning of the episode, I could barely watch the next seven minutes before I decided to turn it off. I really don't think we needed a sequel to "Through The Lens Of Time", and the Batel/Gorn thread has been beaten until it was pretty much dead.

@Chappity

Not sure I follow you here. Through the Lens of Time was obviously a setup for more. You don’t trap a demonic entity in the transporter buffer and have it glitch out without it obviously meant to come back later in the same season.

Currently watching. But I find the fact that La’an can do a certain thing when they reach the planet to be absolutely ridiculous.

Pike cooking again.

Pelia dragging the show down again. Even in scenes where she’s only being talked about by others.

I appreciate that they’re re-visiting the Vezda. The floating city looks familiar, but at least we get a strange new world.

The Gamble reveal was far too obvious, and the build-up was way off. As soon as I saw the ‘high cleric’s’ back was turned, and his hair, it could only be Gamble. The subsequent conversation between NuScotty, ‘Chapel’ and M’Benga was thus robbed off much of its potential.

The fact that the Vezda was able to override the transporter from inside it (!) merely underlines how insanely reckless it was to store the captured creature in the transporter buffer rather than beaming it into space. This was pointed out innumerable times by most posters, and Jammer, in the relevant episode thread. The fact that this level of stupidity was required for this episode to happen is utterly ridiculous.

Ten minutes into the episode and it’s again completely obvious that Batel will die battling Gamble. It’s that telegraphed.

The landing party look amazing in their local costumes. The catty dialogue between La’an and ‘Chapel’ about the Vulcan nerve pinch is horrible, though.

‘How did it get halfway across the quadrant’? ‘Galactic threat’? ‘The most commonly shared belief in all the galaxy’? ‘I’ve seen this all over the galaxy’? A starship’s phaser blast contains half the energy of Earth’s sun? Yet again, the writers have no sense of actual Trekkian scale.

Even with the mask from ‘Masks’ obscuring most of his face, the actor playing Gamble again does a great job of playing an unsettling role, and the scene of his acolytes blinding themselves – although it’s NuTrek eye torture porn yet again – is truly sinister. His scenes with M’Benga are also excellently acted.

‘I think I’ve seen this [Batel’s eyes] before – in a pictograph, on an altar’ (‘Chapel’). This is simply idiotic exposition.

Meaningless stakes strike again: M’Benga won’t die, because he is in TOS.

The scene in which Batel Gornsplains what she surmises has happened to her – and the others guess the plot forward about the nature of evil and the Vezda – is simply painfully, mind-numbingly silly. And then it degenerates into a soap opera about Batel and Pike’s relationship and Batel’s career choices, and by the end everyone is agreed that Batel is the prison sentry for all time. Absolutely woeful. Infuriatingly imbecilic.

The dialogue in this episode is excruciating. I’ve never heard relentless exposition like this.

The episode certainly improves immensely in its final third (a standard for bad episodes of SNW) when the focus shifts to Pike’s emotional preparation for his inevitable accident. And then the (not entirely surprising) revelation of a different future. Unfortunately this is undermined by terrible lines from Batel about ‘the fabric of space and time’. For such a crucial moment in this show, the writers don’t reach very deep for the dialogue. Otherwise huge riffing on ‘All Good Things’ and ‘The Visitor’ and even ‘The Inner Light’ here.

Ultimately a cloying saccharine ending – although I did like Una and Pike sitting silently together in Pike’s quarters – and it’s rather indicative of SNW as a whole that the episode actually concludes with yet another (!) airing of the tedious cliché about the captain’s catchphrase when going to warp. This is AI-level fare.

Not a good episode, sadly.

ok, sure, whatever....

I could write my episode's review but I would end up being more repetitive than Orterga's one liners.

So, I will keep watching for the occasional two - three decent or (even MAYBE) good episodes of the season to get my Star Trek dose.

I guess I will keep watching, cause I am starting to have second thoughts about trying so hard to like something just because Star Trek. At least it is (still) better, no wait, more tolerable than Disco.

P.S.
"Inner light"? really? I know it is difficult to write something original these days, but I am so sick and tired of these writers keep copying from everything in such a talentless way.

@Pike’s Hair

Ah, you have a point there. The fact that the demonic entity was stored in the transporter buffer practically begged for another revisit. I guess that personally, I just didn’t want to see it.

@Bok R'Mor

Meaningless stakes strike again: M’Benga won’t die, because he is in TOS.

I know, right? what were they thinking filling the show with so many characters who are protected by that level of plot armour?

At least in the kelvin films they were set in an alternate timeline which meant anyone and anything could go.

@Anonymius:
'I know, right? what were they thinking filling the show with so many characters who are protected by that level of plot armour?'

Indeed. It's puzzling that they don't circumvent their own constrictions by simply utilising La'an, Ortegas, Pelia or even Mitchell for anything that requires genuine stakes. It's not like there aren't characters available for this (they killed Hemmer off).

"Let's keep this very EVIL and dangerous entity that has already killed 3 of our own in our buffer"
"oh look, a Gorn, SHOOT IT!"

I agree with Daniel. This episode (and the season as a whole) has a lot of issues but that "dream sequence" was incredible. I think this is the first time that I shed a tear for a Star Trek production since I saw Tasha Yar die when I was a kid. That montage was just beautifully done.

Looking at the season as a whole:

My main gripe is that they've tweaked the formula that worked for season 1 and 2 in a direction that didn't really work.

The first two seasons worked so well because they had standalone episodes with *character* arcs connecting them, and 1-2 gimmick episodes per season where they went a bit wild. It captured TOS very nicely and added just a bit of continuity here and there so that the storytelling feels modern.

In season 3 however they amped up the gimmick episodes (enough has been written about that) and introduced *story* arcs. But there's only a limited amount of episodes with a limited runtime. It feels like there are important scenes or important episodes missing to make that arc really work. And at least I personally don't really see SNW as a show with story arcs anyway. It was sold as "episodic Star Trek" and I hope it'll return to that in season 4.

I guess I'll start with a positive comment, and note they made a great effort to tie most of the season together here at the end. Though largely a sequel to Through the Lens of Time, it also weaves in Batel's whole season arc, Korby, finds an excuse to drag in Kirk yet again, etc. All it needed was to drag back in Beto and it would've felt like a suitably full package.

And yet, the execution here was lacking, even though I thought all the pieces were in place for an excellent finale. The first third or so of the episode was decent setup, I felt. Then when they finish the scans of Batel and she just starts having all these sudden realizations about her destiny, the episode lost me. It was one of the worst failures of show vs tell I've ever seen in Star Trek. Nothing about the dialogue coming out of her mouth was in any way a reflection of what we knew regarding her character. The show was just making her state the plot because it was the easiest and most effective way to get from point A to point B.

Adding to this is the weirdly rushed pace of much of the episode. This was hugely overstuffed with twists, sideplots, and exposition, which meant that none of the individual crises lasted long enough to really have an impact. It really feels like they had the story here for a two-parter (whether as a season finale or cliffhanger) and the story would be given far more time to breathe (and the characters time to have genuine moments of intimacy) if they did so.

But then there were the lovely flash-forward scenes with the potential future if Batel survived and had a family with Pike. I didn't know what to make of these scenes at first, thinking they were some sort of illusion put up by the Vezda to defeat Batel. Yet they were too heartwarming for that, and indeed it turned out to be some imagined timeline that Batel created to give her and Pike more time together? I presume he remembered this timeline as well, given the ending. While I do think it's heartwarming, I cannot believe she was so incredibly cruel as to dream up a hypothetical daughter who will never exist. I understand the intent of this inclusion, but Pike will not reminisce about the full and happy life they had together, somewhere else, but of the child who never got to exist.

Regardless, I didn't hate this episode, but I found it an underwhelming season closing. They could have gone with a big high-octane ensemble finale or a close, personal look at Pike and Batel. But I think 50 minutes just wasn't enough to do both, and the entirety suffers as a result. It diminished both the Vezda and Pike and Batel's relationship.

Oh, and are they starting to queer bait Kirk/Spock?

Just got through looking at the finale and were there issues in this episode or perhaps the season overall? Sure. Plot contrivances, yet another StarFleet officer sacrificing themselves to be Godlike protectors to stop the spead of the malevolent evil that’s always lurking around everywhere showing itself in different forms at different locations in time & space, the ridiculousness of it all- I’ll leave to others to nitpick apart. For me, I’m much more simplistic. The main issue for me is whether or not I actually enjoyed the episode or not, whether or not I found it, you know, entertaining. After all, entertainment, for me, is the main point. A classic Star Trek episode in quality would be an added bonus that I’m not really expecting. This episode didn’t disappoint in that respect.

Yet despite it all, and against all odds. I enjoyed this episode and was actually moved by it. Knowing parts of it is SNW take on The Inner Light (wouldn’t have shocked me if Pike brought out the flute), didn’t really matter as Pike and Batel moved dreamlike through life. Can one say the word Illusion? In the end, yes I was entertained and moved.I’m

Don’t know how the I’m showed up there at the end but please ignore

I like fake science as much as the next guy, but not even the Okudas on their best day could have technobabbled their way out of this one. The idea that Batel is a living statue/symbol of good because of everything that happened to her this season is just... It's lazy writing.

Especially when they have Pike comment that the science is so far advanced, it might as well be magic. There's your get out of jail card right there.

Spock mindmelding with Kirk in order to achieve perfect synchronicity... On separate ships? That's not even remotely how mindmelds work. But sure, it's a clever way to cement the future bond these characters will share without spending too much screentime stating the obvious.

Pike and Batel doing their abridged version of The Inner Light was cute, I guess. Thing is, we spent so little time with Marie Batel that her loss doesn't really affect me. She was there and then she's gone, just like this very mediocre season of SNW has. At least there's no cliffhanger that leaves you waiting for over two years!

I found the first first half of this episode incredibly sloppy, and the gear shift to the Inner Light largely left all of the setup at the beginning entirely unaddressed and unfinished. The people on the planet rip their eyes out but then it’s never brought up again? Weak as hell. Then we get to the best 10 minutes in the entire shows run. It doesn’t matter to me that they were aping stuff we’ve already seen done in much tighter, focused stories, because I think applying that type of story to Pike’s doomed wheelchair fate works insanely well.

This episode should have just been the flashback but spread out over the entire episode, without the inclusion of the Vezda, Korby, or Kirk. They could have saved all that for later. Instead of rushing through the dream sequence, and taking its time telling that story in full, it could have been incredibly more powerful and easily the best episode of the show.

It’s a shame. Last week could have been so if they just nailed the ending. Here they needed to throw out the beginning. A tale of two episodes with great strengths but ultimately also two huge missed opportunities. Ending strong is more important to me than how you start so I’m inclined to give this 3 stars on the merit of the second half alone, which imo was easily 4 star material. It’s a shame that the first half is 1 and a half stars at best.

2 stars. Fairly boring. Batel and Pike had almost no che
Larry together and the Inner light fell flat to me. This caps a rough season for an otherwise great show. A couple phenomenal episodes and a whole lot of drivel. I like the gimmicks but they leaned in way too hard this season on them.

Happy that Batel is gone. The cast is getting far too bloated. We should get ready for a lot more thinning of the cast and emotional moments over the next 2 seasons. Hopefully they don’t botch it.

Also, they just left Hemmer in the dust?! I’m still sour on that.

Next to go should be Pelia. Occasionally she’s tolerable now but her character has devolved over time except for the TOS reboot episode.

Ortegas earned her keep with Terrarium and despite being still irritating has grown on me, ever so slightly. She still does need to go but I hope they do it in a fitting way. Ortegas is in many ways a victim of shitty writing and felt a poor hand but she handled her star episode with gravitas.

Chapel deserves more than she has gotten. I hope they explore more of her besides her various infatuations in the coming seasons.

Una now feels lacking in development. This season kind of ignored her at the expense of others in this large ensemble. She’s one of the breakout stars and I have a feeling they will use her better going forward, at least I sure hope so.

Pike has become kind of a sappy pushover and far too buddy buddy and lackadaisical with his crew. Maybe with Batel gone we can focus again on the interesting aspect of knowing your fate and how to process it.

Scotty is excellent and a perfect casting choice. He steals every scene he’s in and deserves his spot in the main cast. More stories about him I hope are coming.

MBenga definitely has a checkered past and has been one of the more controversial but also interesting characters on the show. He has flaws and he seems human. They’ve developed him as a man with many layers and a mysterious darkness that still deserves more development.

Uhura had a decent season. She’s developing into the woman we know and love. Don’t love her u professional bits this season but she has done well. The actress does a good job with what she’s given.

Laan is another breakout star. She has to be dispensed of in some way coming up and I hope they make it as impactful as I think it could be. Shes another star of the show and hopefully season 4 will continue her trajectory.

Spock, no qualms whatsoever with his performance. He makes the best of the goofy Vulcan hijinks episodes. He deserves accolades.

Overall the season was the worst so far, but the first 2 set the bar very high. I think they can right the ship in season 4. The serious episodes tend to be more interesting but the goofy ones bring in viewers.

My hope is that the new paramount leadership will see what jas worked and not worked. Hopefully they will soon ditch Kurtzman and Secret Hideout. And get some showrunners that can be less mushy and feelsy.

Watching Andor season 2 and the phenomenon they have made there makes me yearn for thst kind of treatment of Star Trek. They need to get thst director to come on for a new show. Perhaps for the new Archer series. Political thriller about the forming of the federation and the gritty nature of how that worked out.

Let’s hope season 4 is good and that Starfleet Academy doesn’t shit the bed.

Chemistry* not Larry 😒

Completely anti-climatic.
Like they "tied up loose ends" without actually tying up loose ends
It feels like a waste of an episode this one

Did everyone catch Pelia's offhand remark that she was acquainted with a certain time travelling Doctor? :-)

I refuse to believe they had this ending in mind when they began writing this season. It all felt so patched together.

@Sung, @Eric Jensen:
Agreed. It felt more like an improvised, haphazard, arbitrary endeavour in trying to resolve inconvenient and ill-thought-out loose ends than a coherent, carefully planned plot.

The 'tell don't show' exposition was off the scale even by SNW's standards.

@Gary Twinem I did! There have been a few references now. Can't help but suspect they are building up to an eventual Trek/Who crossover.

Now that season 3 has come to a close, it’s time for reflection. To comment on what was. For me, season 3 came with sky high expectations and hopes. Could they make the leap from being just a good solid series to perhaps being something more with improved writing being the key? The first two seasons saw a personal hit rate of 16 out 20 episodes (with some admittedly just being on the margins) with brief glimpses of greatness. The strength was always the winning cast that could turn average even weak material into entertainment. The misses? The Serene Squall & The Elysian Kingdom in Season 1 and Charades & Hegemony Part 1 in Season 2 didn’t do much for me.

So I was hoping for a leap forward. It was then with a certain degree of sadness that Season 3, for me, took a significant step in the opposite direction. It instead went backwards with lots and lots of misses. What went wrong? Why did Season 3 regress at least from my own individual perspective?

From my perspective, Season 3 regressed because it dialed up all of its major weaknesses. It dialed up The Gorn, it dialed up The Romance, and it dialed up Lightweight Buffoonery disguised as those “fun” episodes,

(1) The Gorn- Why are they on this show? From the moment they were first introduced, it was a major misfire. Would it have been so hard to just create another species causing a dire threat to the Federation? See how easily the Vezda were introduced in the episode “Through the Lens of Time” in Season 3? Something similar could have been done in Season One. The Gorn are tiresome. Frankly I don’t find them interesting outside of the female Gorn in Terrarium. The Gorn were dialed up too much in season three to the detriment of the show.

(2) The Romance- the writers seemed to be obsessed with finding mates for some of the regular cast members. With Pike, it’s Batel (representing a dialed up mixture of romance & the Gorn). With Uhuru, the introduction of the unwelcomed character Beto is there seemingly just so Uhuru can have a a love interest of her own. Chapel has her destined romance with Korby. Then there’s Spock. Who could have possibly guessed Spock had so many entanglements? With all the resulting love triangle’s with Spock, Korby, Chapel, La’an. It’s all way over the top. They dialed up way too much Romance in Season 3.

(3) Lightweight Buffoonery- In the late 80’s and 90’s, there were 26 episodes being made each year. The idea being there would be an episode on each week of the year when accounting for the rerun episodes. For Star Trek, it was a daunting task to come up with enough material to cover an entire season. So they came up with these lightweight “comedy” episodes as strictly filler. For reasons unknown and with only 10 episodes at its disposal (not 26 as in days of yore), SNW in Season 3 decided to make these lightweight buffoonery episodes the centerpiece of the entire season. I personally don’t come to Star Trek looking for comedy. When those filler comedy episodes aired in past Star Trek series, they were always the lowlights of the season. This is no different. They dialed up the lightweight buffoonery in Season 3. How disappointing. What in the world were they thinking? Who knows.

All, however, is not lost. One of the strengths of SNW is that it is episodic. If you don’t like one episode, there’s always hope for another one the next week. You’re not stuck in some kind of serialized season long story arc.

Yes, there were definitely some good episodes to be found in season 3. Just not enough of them as there were in Season 1 & 2. When they focus on serous episodes with teamwork to solve life threatening situations and subsequent moral dilemmas to ponder, they’re good. It’s a simple formula. Why can’t they stick with it?

For me, the highlight of the season was “The Sehlat Who Are Its Tail”. Classic Trek, loved it. Other episodes that were OK to good were “Through the Lens of Time”, “Terrarium”, and “New Life and New Civilizations”. That’s just four out of 10. So Season 3 was, as decribed above, definitely disappointing. At least from my point of view. Hoping for better, more consistent episodes in Season 4.

Finally, my hope is SNW can dial down on its weaknesses. Dial down significantly on The Gorn (perhaps not even have them mentioned again?), Dial Down on The Romance (a haunted Pike will have to move on now that his dreams with Batel have been shattered & are now over, her destiny was always elsewhere; Beto is gently airlocked out of the series; Chapel will continue her intensity with a preoccupied Korby, and Spock rediscovers his logical, emotionless Vulcan half), and Dial Down on those silly “fun” episodes (hoping that the puppet episode is the only one of those). Discounting the puppet episode, there’s only 15 episodes left. Isn’t it time SNW gets serious & try to leave some kind of nice legacy behind?

Aside from the consequences of trying to produce around multiple delays, I think the producers probably saw the feedback when they did the “big swing” episodes and decided to lean into it. A bit too heavily, IMHO.

I think the episode did suffer from pacing issues and upon reflection, I think it was more that it was subject to a hasty rewrite. I think the episode was written with the thought that they weren’t going to be renewed (think strikes, Paramount’s impending sale, the way Discovery was cancelled). The tag scene at the end very much gave finale feelings.

I still stand by my love of the “Inner Light” redux sequence. I still cried my eyes out on rewatch, and the thought that Batel needed to live a whole life that wouldn’t be lived and give that to Pike, knowing his future will be robbed was incredibly affecting, and I’m still grappling with why it affected me so much. I’m still tearing up writing this post and thinking about the implications. Star Trek has used, recycled, and adapted tropes throughout its canon, and this was hardly the most egregious use. My hope is that unlike Inner Light, the after effects do linger on in Pike.

@Mike A:
I'm stealing 'gently airlocked' – haha!

Overall I enjoyed this episode and it seemed like a good reset button. Everyone had something to do in varying degrees, and they wrapped up Corby, Batel, and the Gorn (?). When you have characters you know the final fate of it can be a detriment but if the writing is good it won't matter (see "Better Call Saul").

The nerve pinch scene could have worked if the portal was hidden away from literally all the planet inhabitants except the two lousy guards but whatever.

@Pikes Hair what does Laan do sorry?

The first 2/3 of the episodes was paint by numbers sequel and standard Trek tropes. The plot was non sensical but expected to tie up the Batel and Vezda arc. It was mostly technobabble with a nice touch with the Kirk/Spock mind meld. Also, please show Pelia to the nearest airlock. The idiocy of her dialogue and the accent are too much.

Anyhow, the last part had my attention. It showed what might have been and for a brief moment, I thought Pike mighr get a pass on his fate. Obviously not, but it was a well executed alternate reality. We all knew how it had to end. That said, except for 10 minutes, this is a finale that I can not recommend. 2/4*'s

And you still keep watching this dreck. You have no one to blame but yourselves.

I don’t agree with commenters saying the Gorn need to be removed from the show or that their presence is a detriment to the show, and I’ve not agreed with this take since their very first appearance on SNW. Memento Mori and Hegemony part one are two of the best episodes of the show. They’re insanely well produced, character focused stories. All Those That Wander leaned too heavily into Alien ripoff territory, but besides that they’ve been one of the best Trek antagonists we’ve seen probably since the Dominion.

The problem is that they majorly shat the bed in the endings to their two season 3 Gorn focused episodes. Hegemony Part II could have been saved with someone with common sense in the writers room:

• don’t copy the exact same sleep solution from BoBW.
• don’t let Ortegas fly the ship while her arm has been melted off and she has a gaping wound.
• don’t magically save all the colonists with transporters in one shot while the enterprise is about to be blown up by two stars.

The ultra-convenience at the end of this episode soured what was actually a pretty strong episode JP until its last 10 minutes.

With Terrarium they had already been setting up the idea that the Gorn maybe were not really all that evil, and completely misunderstood by our heroes in Hegemony part I. Terrarium could have easily paid all the Gorn stuff off with some really really easy fixes:

• don’t kill the Gorn at the end. And if you do kill the Gorn at the end, have the implications of this debated and discussed by the characters as to why that is wrong.
• abandon the nonsensical metron ending.
• to make the message of the episode hit the hardest, I’m sorry but it very obviously should have been a La’an centric episode. Her entire character and backstory revolves around the Gorn. The payoff of her realization that, no the Gorn are not all monsters, could have been immensely powerful if season 3 had anyone with half a brain cell in the writers room this season.

And even with these missteps this season with the Gorn, the problem hasn’t been the Gorn themselves or how they’ve been presented in the show. They’re something dangerous, not fully understood, with the potential to make our crew realize their own biases and faults. That makes for a great main antagonist in Trek. The problem was that the creators of this show were too focused on checking unnecessary memberberries and “we need an Ortegas episode” fan demands this season in all the worst ways.

To add to my Gorn points, I find the Vezda (one of their original ideas) to be entirely unremarkable. They’re painfully one note. THEYRE EVIILLLLL EVILLLLLL EXISTS ISNT THAT SCARYY??? No. It’s not. It’s not interesting in most stories, but especially not Star Trek ones. And they’re so unremarkable they get disposed of entirely in their second ever appearance on the show.

Our crews perception of the Gorn intentionally was setup so as to establish our heroes as unreliable narrators facing a threat that’s alien and that they don’t fully understand.

With the Vezda there was no interesting goal with them in mind. Our crew states that they’re evil incarnate, and that information is plainly reliable and incredibly dull.

I agree that this season was more uneven, and the finale could have been better - less filler episodes and more connections to this plot.

This show is at its best I think when it leans into Pike’s mortality and examines what it means to live your life despite the crushing knowledge of what is to come. I think the 15 mins of the alternate future was stunning and beautifully done - I really felt sadness for them, but also happiness - did they really get to life that life? Did they both get to retain those memories? I think that is where this show shines and is one of the most interesting things they did with Pike’s character - to give him that foreknowledge and have to face it.

The Vezda were too cookie cutter evil - fine, but when this show leans into the reasons it got made, namely the strength of the characters of Number One, Spock, and Pike, it can really sing. If the writing could match the talent of the cast this could be all time great stuff. I think Anson Mount did a wonderful job of conveying the joy and confusion and sadness of the life that could have been.

I wish more of the season could have been that. I hope Season 4 leans back into it. This season whiffed a few too many times, but that 15 minutes of al-future moved me to tears. This show can do it when it wants to.

So...this episode had some real tearjerker moments, for me, and I felt like it was a good capper to the season...such as it is.

It felt like something was seriously off with the writing this season. Like one team of writers wanted to go in one direction and the other team of writers wanted to go in another direction, and the ship just kept getting pulled hard to starboard and hard to port constantly. It didn't feel like I was always watching the same show, sometimes. It wasn't bad...it was good, such as it is.

Allow me to elaborate. Season 3 has been.........well, sorta iffy. It's got flashes of "Oh Wow," and then it goes back to the "Yeah, Yeah," with "Oh Wow" being moments that excite me as a long-running fan of the series, or interest me on a storytelling level, or grab me emotionally in ways that I wasn't expecting, or talk about some kind of serious issue in a way that I find poignant, or are just plain good action scenes. The good stuff.

Conversely, by "Yeah, Yeah," I am referring to the lines of dialogue that don't work (which includes basically all of the Pelia jokes), the characterizations that seem pat and rushed, the NuTrek trappings still lingering from Star Trek (2009)'s success and the sleazy late 90's/early 2000's TV ecosystem, the odd writing choices/labored attempts at humor that seem like they needed a lot more shakedown time in the writers' room, the times when command protocols are just sort of tossed out the nearest airlock, and the action scenes that just plain don't work...the stuff I have to sit through, in other words, to get to the "Oh wow" moments.

I'd estimate, this season was maybe ... 35% "Oh Wow," and 55% "Yeah, Yeah." It seems odd, and almost Vulcan-like, to quantify it that way, though. I enjoyed some of this season, and to be fair, I have seen a lot of Star Trek, so perhaps someone not so used to all of this by now might have a different opinion. But me? I didn't hate this season. Discovery, when it was bad, was far worse, and the first two seasons of Picard made me want to cringe my eyebrows off. I liked this season...such as it is.

I feel like more consistency and less puppets would help this show a lot. They have a dynamite cast. Why are they dragging them through this ridiculous whirlwind plotline? Get something consistent going on. It doesn't have to be a mystery box. Just something that's happening in the Federaton for the whole season.

Sometimes it's like Star Trek has just never come home from the Delta Quadrant. I don't know if they need to hire a Navy Consultant or something, but it feels like Starfleet and the Federation are sort of only there when the plot needs them to be. I thought Starfleet and the Federation were the plot?

When I think of Star Trek values, I think back to these lines from the original series.

KIRK: Captain to crew. Those of you who have served for long on this vessel have encountered alien lifeforms. You know the greatest danger facing us is ourselves, an irrational fear of the unknown. But there's no such thing as the unknown, only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood. In most cases we have found that intelligence capable of a civilisation is capable of understanding peaceful gestures. Surely a lifeform advanced enough for space travel is advanced enough to eventually understand our motives. (The Corbomite Maneuver)

Oh, and I forgot to add, if they really want me to be singing their praises up and down the internet, the writers should craft a 10 episode season that is ALL "Oh Wow" moments. That is, unless, of course, they ... can't write.

Pike: “It doesn’t make sense.”

Statue girl: “Maybe it does. Maybe it makes all the sense in the world.”

Trek fan: Um, no.

1.5 stars for me — this is easily the worst finale of any Star Trek series I’ve ever seen.

I appreciate the episode’s effort to show the crew encountering and trying to make sense of alien things. That feels very Star Trek to me. I just wish any of made sense.

The problem here is evident from the opening flashback to past episodes — an overused story shortcut in bad streaming shows that haven’t formed enough of a bond with the audience that they trust us to follow along without cue cards.

Opening flashbacks generally haven’t been done well on TV since Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the red flag here is the grab bag of unlikeable moments from past shows that reach for a grand synthesis of SNW. The problem is that the elements don’t really mesh, so the writers bring magic to bear. Hence the heavy handed exchanges like the dialogue quoted above, which strain so obviously to bring us along for the ride but largely bore.

There is just too much being crammed into the story here to little purpose — people putting out their eyes, Captain James T. Carrey (the show’s weakest link) coming back for yet another show that doesn’t require him, little Star Trek V-style character moments that build to nothing, etc.

I don’t know the point at which Star Trek jettisoned storytelling efficiency in favor of painting by numbers, but here’s a wild suggestion: Stop making prequels that bog down in fan service! Just tell a story with great characters in a new setting, albeit set in the Trek universe.

Hard to believe this is the final episode of the series. This season of SNW has been the weakest run of Star Trek for me since the long stretch (or was it most of the series?) in Enterprise that delivered a series of forgettable clunkers. It surpasses the badness of even Discovery’s final season. And SNW sucks overall.

The long sequence of Pike growing old with the statue woman (pardon me if I can’t recall the names of all the characters breezing in and out of this series) and raising a family is an engaging and poignant moment. I just wish it felt connected more organically to the rest of the episode. As with most SNW shows, I found myself so beaten into boredom by the time it arrived that it lost some of its effectiveness. I also didn’t understand it because of the episode’s long, convoluted first half. Did The Inner Light on TNG take so long to set up a similar moment? No. This series was in desperate need of quicker episode-starting setups that never came.

The Talosians and Pike ending up in the wheelchair are really all this finale needed to explore. The weird cosmic battle ended felt overblown and undercooked. Fine if this show is just another place in the multiverse, as I understand it. Just a shame that the SNW version of everything is less interesting than TOS and The Cage. And than the 2009 Star Trek, for that matter.

The 2009 Trek movie where the villain travels back in time and instead of warning his people that they’ll all be destroyed in his time waits 20 years in the past to get “revenge” on a man who did nothing wrong and was trying to help his people? Oh yeah that’s one (of basically every) element of the JJ trek films that just doesn’t work in the slightest. There’s not a single SNW episode as top to bottom terrible as the NuTrek movie trilogy. Let’s not get all “the Star Wars prequels were actually masterpieces” on them all of a sudden. They’re the point in which this franchise went completely sour. They’re squarely to blame. Without audiences lapping them up we wouldn’t have Kurtzman in charge of everything. SNW, LD, Prodigy, and Picard s3 are all objectively more “Star Trek” and we are lucky to have them missteps included considering JJ openly has said he doesn’t even like Trek and Kurtzman has proved time and time again that he doesn’t understand it.

JFC. This might be the worst Nu-Trek season finale yet, and that's saying something, given how consistently disappointing they've been. But this one? This one makes Section 31 look good in comparison.

Where to even begin? The episode hurls absurd, fantastical notions at us at breakneck speed: ley lines that enable instantaneous travel across the galaxy, interdimensional space where cause and effect run backward, epigenetic memory that grants godlike powers the more genomes you splice in, and -- why not -- an elemental "mother of all evil." All of it tied together with a neat little bow called Destiny.

The writers clearly know it's nonsense, since the characters keep saying as much:

SPOCK: I am not sure I understand.
CHAPEL: No way. This is impossible.
PIKE: It doesn't make any sense!

And yet, we're supposed to swallow it just because someone says so. Trek has always had technobabble, but usually as connective tissue between ideas the audience can trust. Here, it isn't technobabble, it's magic. It's hand-waving. The writers don't care how anything works, only about rushing us to what they think is a payoff.

Except there is no payoff. Betel gets a "respectable" sendoff, even though most of us had either stopped caring about her or forgotten she existed entirely. Along the way, we get a jarringly placed flash-forward that asks us to care about characters we've only just met; characters who will never matter, because we know the scene will never materialize. Instead of adding tension, it kills what little momentum the episode had.

Meanwhile, the so-called epic battle of Good vs. Evil plays out like a foregone conclusion. Betal dispatches Gamble and the Vezda with magic beam hands... destined, we're told, to be stronger than Gamble's magic beam hands. If everything is predetermined, why bother with a battle at all? The whole thing might as well have been delivered in a Captain's Log recap. At least give us something less laughable than:

PIKE: With the Vezda gone, the people are recovering as if waking from a terrible dream…

Really? These are the same people who gouged out their own eyes on command. But apparently their reaction is: "Wow, what a nightmare. Guess I'll just get back to sleep, can't see anything anyway."

And then there's the insult of the title. "New Life and New Civilizations": a name invoking Trek's highest ideals, slapped onto this hollow mess. To add injury, the episode contrives an early mind-meld between Kirk and Spock, reducing their rich bond to a cheap shortcut.

This isn't Trek. It's a parody of Trek, dressed up in the language of destiny and magic beams. And it deserves neither its title nor its place in the canon.

I agree that Star Trek has always been more down-to-earth, and scientific, than Star Wars.

Why does Star Trek keep trying to playact like it's Star Wars?

Does everything have to be Star Wars now? Can we have a little bit of Star Peace for one damn minute, Admiral?

I don’t know why Nu-Trek feels the need to go for some kind of big bloated existential commentary in season finales. They just come across for me as phoney sermonizing, telling more so than showing, and not feeling earned. This episode was an attempt to tie together the bits and pieces from this season into something meaningful but so much of it is arbitrary that it is hard to care about. This show is so arrogant in how it likes to pat itself on the back.

I don’t know what to make of the bit with Pike and Batel growing old together. Was this due to a power Batel gained from her purpose as the beholder (to re-imprison the Vezda)? Felt this was a cheap attempt at trying to use the magic of “The Inner Light” to give Pike memories of a full life before his future accident.

I did like the concept of Batel somehow being some kind of hybrid that has faced all kinds of evil — and this does give a touch more meaning to her scene with Gamble in “Through the Lens of Time” and the justification for the Gorn DNA. It's not great story telling, but an attempt at providing some justification as opposed to leaving some total loose end.

The Batel versus Gamble scene also reminded me of “The Reckoning” — one of DS9’s weaker outings — with Kira and Jake opposing each other.

We also got to see a strange new world! Imagine that.

The episode comes up with an excuse to have Spock mind meld with Kirk so these 2 can artificially get a boost in their working relationship and friendship. But here’s what I think is unprofessional — how does Pike just talk to Kirk instead of going through Kirk’s captain on the Farragut? Shouldn’t we have at least a line or something from the Farragut captain? SNW doesn’t know what it’s doing re. protocols etc. SNW again showing it doesn't understand the chain of command.

There was one brief scene were Pike was actually like a proper captain! He astutely came up with an action plan for sending a team down to the planet Korby was on etc. These types of moments were so fleeting for Pike who will be better known for his culinary skills. Heck, he even got a chef’s apron as a gift.

2 stars for “New Life and New Civilizations” — When I saw the title, thought for sure we’d be in for a total gimmick episode. But I think we kind of got a gimmick with the whole Pike/Batel life together. But this title is just an example of more SNW grandstanding. The whole Vezda adventure was silly and just needed to put a bow-tie on some SNW S3 plot points before the existential crap could begin in earnest. Gotta have scenes with the main characters hamming it up of course over drinks.

SNW S3, for me, is one of the worst seasons of Trek — not quite as bad as PIC S2, but I’d take TNG S1 over this garbage any day. Will be a struggle to make it through 2 more seasons of this.

None of this made a lick of sense to me. And, while the actors (and the score) tried their darnest to sell it, I didn’t feel much.

I know a lot of Trek has sometimes bordered on fantasy, but this had less science and more gobbledygook than a Harry Potter knockoff.

That technobabble was much more Doctor Who than Star Trek. No sense at all.

Sure, the Batel stuff got to me, but this show is still just mind-numbingly insulting to its faithful fans.

And the worst thing is, I knew basically the plot of the episode just from the promotional shot that's been circulating, the one with Batel and Pike holding hands staring at something bright. Wasn't even that hard to deduce that Batel was going somewhere restorative or transformative, that it would be transcendent and awe-inspiring in some way, and it would be a one-way trip.

So Doctor Mbenga's destiny is to open a door....like a reverse Hodor.

It was incredibly bad. No subject, no ideas, no intellectual meat, no stakes, just a shaky construction from Marvel studios disguised behind artificial emotion. Except for the ninth episode, this season was a grand amateurish disaster.

@ Trek fan,

This isn't the series finale, just the season finale. Though Goldsman has said the show was on the bubble when the season was finished, so they wrote it with a definitive conclusion rather than a cliffhanger like the end of Season 2.

We have another 10 seasons coming in Season 4 (already filmed and in post production - likely coming out in mid/late 2026) and another 6 in a truncated season 5, at which time the show will conclude.

Goldsman has also said they're done with both the Gorn and the Vezda. Given all 16 scripts are presumably done, I believe him. He was also weirdly apologetic regarding Season 3 in public comments, remarking it was difficult due to the strike, and that they think Season 4 is much better.

"It does a lot of things to pay homage to Star Trek, but it doesn't spend enough time being Star Trek."

Thank you for distilling the #1 problem with the show, Jammer.

I stopped watching Discovery after the second season. This one has been bad enough that I almost want to stop here, but I won't. @Karl Zimmerman, thanks for that tidbit from Goldsman - the hope is that the showrunner knows this was a challenging season and not a very good one and can course correct. But I will not be holding my breath...

"Somehow, the Vezda returned."

A possible answer to the question “how do temples float?” could be that it is because they were built by the same engineers who built the “vaults” shown in Apple TV's Foundation series...

To Bok R'Mor, yep.

Ok, so more thoughts
1. from the last episode about the Vezda, I thought there would be "more action" or more explanation/mythology. But no. So my expectations were high and there was no explanation. I thought there would be "battles" or more "conflict" but I didnt see much of this. It is like, you tell me about this evil and then it was gone... Where is the story??
2. The "inner light"/parallel life montage was confusing. I know it had some emotional impact on a few people I spoke to. The thing is, it was either too long, because the ending was rushed, when Pike doesnt say "hit it" (of course, because he was affected by all this, but it seems rushed). The door knocking was confusing to me. At first, I had hoped it might be similar to the Prophet's visions or something.
3. The visuals were good
4. Pelia again is underutilized and is just out of place.
5. They are still trying to fit SNW into TOS and it seems forced. To me, it doesnt seem organic - Kirk and Spock mind meld and the synchronicity.
6. While the Batel character arc was good, it didnt deliver as well as I'd hoped. They could have expanded more on this story. But to me, they just washed it and diluted it.

Karl, you're such a loser

I love the cast's chemistry. I always call Sam "Galaxy Quest Guy" when we discuss it, but I'm here for the cooking ritual. They're a real thing!

Decent finale. I agree the Inner Light scenes were the highlight. I'm not really into complaining about plot retreads 700 episodes ago. That ship has sailed. Three stars is about right.

I feel like they could have done so much more with this concept. Like, what if the Gorn were originally a race deliberately engineered by the ancient M'Kroom to fight the Vezda, and that was why Batel recognised the Gamble!Vezda after getting her Gorn DNA transplant. Would be a lot more "Trek" IMO than the whole poorly explained "epic Good vs Evil" thing which is far more suited to fantasy than sci-fi.

@Mike A “All, however, is not lost. One of the strengths of SNW is that it is episodic. If you don’t like one episode, there’s always hope for another one the next week. You’re not stuck in some kind of serialized season long story arc.”

Yes indeed. Serialized storytelling can be good, but if you are not invested in the particular overarching story, it becomes tedious as hell to plow through for the bits that you like. This was my problem with “Picard.” I did not care for the overall storyline of seasons 1 or 2, and then when the Bog Queen came back I completely lost interest. With episodic TV, at least there may be some bright spots amidst the duller outings.

Which this on was, for me. I’d give it a single star. While the “inner Light” moment was nice, I was so checked out by then I really didn’t care. Jammer’s review pointed out all the absurdities of this episode, but for me they were insurmountable. Just really horrible handwaving and technobabble and fucking MAGIC. Batel ends up as a statue because that’s her destiny? Give me a fucking break.

The Vezda are just typical OVERWHELMING EVIL that is so far out of human experience that it has no fucking stakes. I find myself much more invested in some small human effort such as being stranded on a planet with no food or water. THOSE are stakes. OVERWHELMING EVIL with no motivation or reasoning is just dull as ditchwater to me.

My favorite bit was the very brief time on the Sky-whatever planet. The visuals were stunning and I was hoping we’d get to spend some time learning about the people and their cool architecture. But nope! La’an does the neck pinch and NOBODY NOTICES? Two guards have just dropped to the ground amidst a crowd of natives and they just keep going about their business? C’mon. Yet another absurdity that took me out of the story.

@Pike’s Hair – I read your comment after I wrote mine above. I like how we emphasized with the ALL CAPS, lol. So very very lame.

“To add to my Gorn points, I find the Vezda (one of their original ideas) to be entirely unremarkable. They’re painfully one note. THEYRE EVIILLLLL EVILLLLLL EXISTS ISNT THAT SCARYY??? No. It’s not. It’s not interesting in most stories, but especially not Star Trek ones. And they’re so unremarkable they get disposed of entirely in their second ever appearance on the show.”


@Trek fan

“Pike: “It doesn’t make sense.”

Statue girl: “Maybe it does. Maybe it makes all the sense in the world.”

Trek fan: Um, no.

1.5 stars for me — this is easily the worst finale of any Star Trek series I’ve ever seen.”

HARD AGREE.

Overall, I agree this was the weakest season so far but I’ll keep watching because I am very fond of these characters.

@Colin YOU WERE SO RIGHT..WHY WHY DID WE LEARN ABSOLUTELY.NOTHING NEW ABOUT THE VEZDA SERIOUSLY..what a rip kff why nkt give them motivation and depth at least in Voyaher we learned about Species 8472 and even the Hirgoen sobthey werent one dimensional WHYBQHY and have a few monutes less of the door knocking Nexus knock off..I guess others agree somewhat..very dusappointing for me..

The problem with contemporary science fiction writers is that , in contrast to an earlier generation say that of Ronald Moore who have read a book or some science fiction stories, they haven't read anything, all they know is from movies and tv shows, which means that they repeat themes already written dozens of times already.

I liked the door-knocking, it was one of the things that made the "flash sideways" emotionally resonant for me. It was one part of the episode that was shown and not told. Also it added structure to that scenario and (for me) clarified that this wasn't reality. I did think the transition to the sequence was a little abrupt, but it was so well done that I ended up not minding.

As for the rest of the plot, yes, it was Pah-Wraith level ridiculous. I don't want fantasy in my science fiction. Of course Trek has done this before (giant hand and Lincoln in space, I'm looking at you), but they used to make a sincere effort to, er, scientify even the worst of it. I didn't get that feeling here. I'm not sure these writers know the difference between science fiction and fantasy. I'm not sure they think science is important or even interesting.

I'm glad this wasn't a cliffhanger; I think that technique is grossly overused and an episodic show shouldn't need it. I would also love to see them drop the "Previously On" introductions and use the extra time for improving the actual episodes.

SNW has built up a lot of goodwill to me. Seasons 1 and 2 were outstanding, even the silly episodes. This season, especially the second half, has fallen off a cliff. But because the show has proved that it CAN be consistently good to excellent, I'm still looking forward to next year. If Goldsman (was it?) is actually apologizing for this season, then I'm going to trust that better eppies are coming . . . eventually. But please, no more "style" episodes. Just do Star Trek.

"Pelia and her excessive (and borderline unintelligible) voice affects have become a self-parody at this point. Carol Kane needs to dial it back about 10 notches."

When Carol Kane was on "Taxi" in the 1980s as the over-acted girlfriend, then wife, of Andy Kaufman's character, my brother and I agreed that she was The Most Annoying Woman on Television. She still is.

@ Karl Zimmerman thanks for clarifying, although I was really hoping the series ended here. I don’t have much faith it can continue. Incidentally, how does a “5-year mission” become 6 seasons? Argh.

@Jammer sometimes I wonder if Paramount is paying you to puff this series, but I can agree to disagree with you. In principle, I can totally get on board with a fun romp where the plot doesn’t matter, like Star Trek 2009 or a Bond film. This episode just doesn’t reach that level for me. The distinction for me is that a fun romp shows rather than tells with memorable visuals and moments, etc. It also glances over the absurdities rather than over explains them. The problem is this episode tells rather than shows — and does its best to talk the viewer into boredom by the time it gets to anything good. It’s got lousy pacing, villains with the most obvious beats, and too many poorly acted characters (see “Kirk” dude) in key roles.

I still hope Paramount cancels this series before any more episodes are filmed. But I’ll watch to the end as a Trek completist.

I agree with you on one thing, Jammer: this is a mess. I wouldn't use "ambitious and entertaining", though. I'd say more "nonsensical and manipulative".

Ten weeks ago, one of my criticisms of "Hegemony" was that Pike's romance with Batel just wasn't a strong enough emotional hook to hang a story on. Two reasons for this: (1) Batel was not developed enough as an individual character, so the audience (well, me) didn't really have any investment in her. And (2), there was nothing in how their relationship had been depicted thus far that sold me on how deeply in love they were.

Oh, sure, there were a lot of cutesy scenes together in Pike's quarters, some cliched arguments etc, but none of this really delved any deeper into why they were good for each other. A simple solution for both of these issues might have been giving over an entire episode to just those two characters hanging out, but that's a big ask when you only have ten episodes a year. So what we were left with was just the show telling us "they're madly in love, accept it".

Now here we are at the season finale`, and once again we're being told to feel something about these two, and Batel in particular. And I just *don't*. I haven't given a shit even once throughout the whole year, because the show hasn't given me any reason to. Granted, the final scenes are nicely done, but they just did not have the required impact on me because I'm not invested.

The writers aren't helped in this by SNW being a prequel, and Pike's horrible fate being a known quantity to both the audience and the character. The audience also knows that come "The Menagerie", Pike is walking away with Vina, not Batel. So if you want the audience to care, then they also needed to show us *why* Pike was so willing to enter into a relationship with someone when he knew he was going to wind up a cripple. We never even got to see a conversation between the two of them where they talked honestly about what that would mean! It could have been very powerful material if depicted correctly. Instead, they just didn't depict it *at all* and the show suffered for it.

SNW is an episodic-style prequel. It can't succeed on a long-term basis unless the writers develop and deliver on the character arcs, because the big-picture plotting is boxed in.

This brings me to looking at season 3 as a whole, and just like this episode, it's a mess. I've previously noted that I thought season 2 was a weaker effort than season 1, because although the week-to-week episodic plotting remained a good quality, the big picture was not delivering. Character arcs were good - I was particularly impressed with La'an, Chapel, and Spock, and loved Una in "Ad Astra Per Aspera" - but there was nothing tying it all together.

In season 1, the connective tissue was provided by Pike's character arc as he puzzled out what his knowledge of his impending doom meant, and whether or not he could get out of it. But in season 2 they dropped that almost completely, and Pike was no longer the driving force behind the narrative themes. Episodic show + no character arc for leading man = aimlessness. Sure, I was having a good time in season 2, but the show as a whole felt more disposable.

Season 3... yikes. Almost every character was sold short this year, with the notable exception of Ortegas, who got a pretty solid through-line from the premiere through to "Terrarium". I see now that there were some plot breadcrumbs being dropped along the way for this finale`, but there's more to a plot arc than that. Look at DS9's war arc, or ENT's Xindi story. Those plots left the characters permanently changed and in a new place by the end. SNW's Vezda story, on the other hand, meant pretty much nothing to any of the characters at all. They're all the same people they were when they started - except Batel, of course, who was never a regular.

This might have been somewhat forgivable, if the quality of the individual episodes had been up to the same standard as the first two seasons. But they just weren't. The only episode that I didn't have some kind of major reservation with this year was "The Sehlat That Ate Its Tail" - and even that wasn't as good as it could have been, thanks to the milquetoast Paul Wesley at its centre. And we got the show's worst episode to date in "Four And A Half Vulcans", an outing I'd put up there with "Profit and Lace" as Trek comedy gone wrong. I truly hope that's the nadir for SNW and we'll never see the likes of it again.

Do I have a prescription for season 4? Sure. It's the same one I had for season 2.

(1) More cohesion among the themes of the individual episodes. If being a prequel means you can't shake up the Trek universe as much as you'd like, then it makes it all the more important to take the characters on a journey instead, and have that journey mean something.

(2) For the love of fucking God, give Captain Pike some harder calls to make and put him back in a moral leadership position. This year he let M'Benga get away with murder and Uhura falsify information upon which he was risking the whole ship. This is a horrible direction to take the character and they need to stop.

(3) For the love of fucking God, Part 2: enough with the Vulcan comedies. Every single Vulcan-centric episode the show has done thus far has been a comedy. I liked "Spock Amok" and "Charades". I loathed "Four And A Half Vulcans", and if you ever needed an example of why you shouldn't keep going back to the same well... There. It. Sits!

(4) Please give La'an a proper arc next year. She's my favourite character on SNW and all she got was a lousy holodeck episode and a Spock romance that has happened almost entirely behind closed doors. Bad bad bad bad bad.

Long post, but what can you do. They gave me a lot to complain about this year. I reallllllly hope they pull it back together in season 4.

So it's only now, after 3 seasons totaling 30 episodes, that they are finally going to go out and explore strange new worlds? I'm not even sure what to say at this point, except that Season 3 was such a waste of precious screen time... As for this episode, it had it's moments. I give it 2.5 stars.

The thing I don't get is that I have seen other streaming shows where they had to work within the 10 episode framework. They pulled it off well. How is it after 8 years that the writers of Star Trek can't seem to be able to do as well? The one show that really succeeded at this, in my opinion, Prodigy, was cancelled, and we are getting dreck like SNW. I have low hopes for Starfleet Academy - I can see the problems already in the trailer.

"How is it after 8 years that the writers of Star Trek can't seem to be able to do as well? "


One reason, imo, is because they don't have to. Trek fans will tune in for every episode no matter whether they hate the show or not.

I think they bit off more than they could chew this season. The season lacked a "big plot" similar to Discovery, but they were still trying to juggle a number of character arcs. Pike's relationship with Batel. Spock getting over Chapel (who is now with Korby) and developing a situationship with La'an. The strange, drawn-out flirting between Beto and Uhura. Ortegas's new PTSD Gorn-related thing. All of this could have been done with adroitness on say a single season of DS9, but with only ten episodes - most of which given over to sci-fi plots and/or gimmicks, rather than character growth - everything suffered.

There were so many times I was just like "why is character X in this episode?" The finale was another great example, with Korby showing up for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Batel just kinda hung around the ship all season, but didn't do much outside of maybe three episodes. Kirk was seemingly able to pop in for five minutes whenever. It really led to a suspension of disbelief being short-circuited for me, because we weren't seeing new people every week - we were seeing the exact same recurring cast members, again and again. Aside from not-Trelane and the Klingon woman who died via zombie horde, how many one-offs did we get this season who weren't glorified extras?

And yet because the show didn't actually have a big serialized plot, the parts didn't really add up to any cohesive whole by design, even though they kept smashing the same lego bits together again and again and again. So many things went nowhere, or were just put in deep freeze for weeks on end because the writers had something else they wanted to focus on.

I dunno. I hope next season (which should come quickly) backs off of the idea that nearly everything should revolve around 4-5 guest characters, and gets back to telling largely standalone stories about new characters, along with our core cast.

Thank you producers for not making a cliffhanger !
A good episode but not fantastic. I (still) like Peelia, in many ways she is the antithes of starfleet. I can though understand that not everyone likes her. Kirk is definetly a younger Kirk.

Story, cabin scene , inner light yes but also a sense of ds9 the muse and ent twilight. Wery well made. Except for that , what did Jammer say, "mess". Let go for that.

Unlike Picard's "no follow-ups" to "Inner Light", I would love to see a character adjustment to Pike. I hope that will be the case.

@maq

“I (still) like Peelia, in many ways she is the antithes of starfleet”


Really enjoyed the character who Pelia replaced, Hemmer, who was unnecessarily killed off in the first season and who, in my view, brought a much needed deeper serious quality. His character was light years better for the show. I get Pelia’s brought in for lightweight, wacky comedy relief. SNW’s Guinan. However, Guinan was more of a serous character. The writers apparently love the lines they’re giving Pelia. Personally, just not for me. It just shows how different people are as she’s some people’s favorite character.

The voice. Not funny at all. It seems like she’s almost in agony delivering it as it takes awhile to come out. When it does? To me, the sound of it has the same pleasure one gets from scratching a chalkboard.

Pelia? As you can guess, not one of my favorite characters. It goes back to what I believe is one of the weaknesses of SNW. This overwhelming need that the writers feel that they must bring this lightweight comedic relief to the show. Not in small quantities but in abundance.

@Criis W "lessons followed up the Inner Light

I will admit up front that I am not particularly concerned with fidelity to canon. I take each episode on its own merits. I appreciate being consistent across series and story lines, but I am mainly concerned with a compelling and intelligible story in order to escape briefly from... well...look around.

Each series has characters I wish they would have done more with. Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) was criminally underutilized in Discovery. Same for Morn in DS9. Carol Kane's Pelia is that character for SNW. Crucify me if you will, but I love camp. And Pelia is camp.

The batel-pike inner light sequence saves the ep and made it a fitting season finale, but the vezda plot (ah yes, the source of all evil! What writer saw ds9 and thought the pah wraiths are cool, let's do more of that) is terrible, as is the gamble actor, has no presence at all. Kirk actor has grown on me and now is a welcome surprise every time he shows up to save us from pelia or Scotty.

I kinda laughed at Pikes expression when Batel turned into the statue, it had all the gravitas of him not sure if he left the stove on. A strange take to use.

I guess we just have to resign ourselves to trek using modern slang and having no professionalism (seriously "I'm picking up what you're laying down" and another "cool" to the captain of all people). And of course using pop music instead of a poignant original score like at end which will immediately date it in future (imagine TNG using u2 or REM).

So yeah this season definitely weak with all the gimmicks/humor but at least it ends somewhat promisingly, though very confused we had to wait 3 seasons to actually get to the shows title premise. Hopefully they can turn the ship around the final 16 eps ( well, let's ignore the puppet ep - oy vey)

That was the 2-starriest 3-star review I've ever seen from Jammer.

The abiding impression of this episode and indeed this season is that they were both a colossal wasted opportunity.

@Damian:
‘I feel like they could have done so much more with this concept. Like, what if the Gorn were originally a race deliberately engineered by the ancient M'Kroom to fight the Vezda’

Excellent point. This series and season certainly hasn’t lacked decent concepts to build upon, but the execution has been frustratingly ham-fisted and painfully unimaginative in most cases. Your suggestion here reminds me of ‘Shuttle to Kenfori’, where they could have revealed that the xenomorph Gorn were a failed Klingon genetic experiment to cure the Augment infusion depicted in ENT, thereby also explaining the DIS Klingons at the same time. But no, we got zombies instead.

@grumpy_otter:
‘The Vezda are just typical OVERWHELMING EVIL that is so far out of human experience that it has no fucking stakes.’

Strong agree. NuTrek has a tendency to think and act in wildly absolute terms – remember how Control was described as a ‘threat to the entire universe’ or whatever it was? And so it is with ‘good and evil’. The Pagh wraiths were the most dubious aspect of DS9, and as others have pointed out, it’s curious that they went with a barely disguised riff on them here (again, in the same way ‘Control’ was the Borg by any other name).

@karatasiospa:
‘The problem with contemporary science fiction writers is that , in contrast to an earlier generation say that of Ronald Moore who have read a book or some science fiction stories, they haven't read anything, all they know is from movies and tv shows, which means that they repeat themes already written dozens of times already.’

This. It’s abundantly clear that the only input the writers and producers have (and want to have) is from other films and television, and their primary interest is a weird lukewarm reheating of all these references. The intention seems to be that the viewer should enjoy getting the references. I can identify no other reason why the swipes are consistently so blatant.

@The Queen:
‘ I don't want fantasy in my science fiction. […] I'm not sure these writers know the difference between science fiction and fantasy. I'm not sure they think science is important or even interesting.’

Agreed. As you point out, Trek has always had an undercurrent of fantasy elements, but they’ve been constrained by an unwritten rule that they should make sense as sci-fi – episodes like ‘Devil’s Due’ (an old Phase II script) were explicit about how ‘magic’ is science, whereas SNW seems to push harder along the lines of science actually being magic. The scientific illiteracy in NuTrek is egregious, but I struggle to find anything as absurd as the phasers containing half the energy of earth’s sun in this episode. It is a mockery of science fiction.

@Tim C:
‘I'd say more "nonsensical and manipulative".’

Agreed. I think the ‘Inner Light’ sequence had potential, and yes, it was moving (I found the Gorn in the last episode moving too, though, remember) because it was laid on so thick – feel this, think this, isn’t this impressive, etc. But it wasted being placed in such a silly plot. The basic concept of Batel gifting Pike a lifetime together was a sound one, but should have formed the basis of a much better episode. So, again, we’re back to fundamental complaint that SNW doesn’t know how to make the most out of what it has. Even good and relatively novel ideas are habitually squandered.

‘once again we're being told to feel something about these two, and Batel in particular.’

Again, hard agree. I would go so far as to say Batel has been a complete failure as an addition to this show. She is simply not interesting, and her relationship with Pike is utterly boring. It isn’t that it’s implausible – it’s that I do not care about it or her. Secondly, making Pike a sort of obsequious, cowering drip (and live-in cook) relative to Batel’s Captain Marvel doesn’t sit well when he’s the captain of the ship.

‘For the love of fucking God, give Captain Pike some harder calls to make and put him back in a moral leadership position. This year he let M'Benga get away with murder and Uhura falsify information upon which he was risking the whole ship. This is a horrible direction to take the character and they need to stop.’

Completely agree. I don’t mind that Pike is a modern take on command and masculinity, but he is completely undermined in practically every scene he’s put in by the writers and producers. The only scene I can think of this season where he wasn’t portrayed as a spineless yes-man to his subordinates were the action scenes in ‘Sehlat’ with La’an where he (effectively) repelled the intruders. It is no exaggeration to state that Pike has spent more time cooking for the crew and guests than he has in the captain’s chair this season. It has to stop.

@Karl Zimmerman:
‘There were so many times I was just like "why is character X in this episode?"’

The cast was very bloated this season. With only ten episodes and five hundred minutes to work with, it makes no sense to include so many guest characters who amount to nothing.

@Mike A:
‘Really enjoyed the character who Pelia replaced, Hemmer, who was unnecessarily killed off in the first season and who, in my view, brought a much needed deeper serious quality. His character was light years better for the show.’

Very much agree with this. I would go so far as to say that killing off Hemmer was the single worst decision on the show so far – and he was killed off simply to cosplay a scene from the Alien franchise! I cannot fathom what they were thinking and there were numerous moments this season where I found myself wishing Hemmer was in this or that episode. A terrible waste.

Worse than the technobabble and logic-defying leaps for me was the stll-never-explained idiocy that Batel was both a senior JAG officer and a starship captain. Impossible! Did the writers think the audience too dumb to accept that not all "captains" had a ship? Her character never worked for me.

What Carlson said above + 1

Moreover, I prefer what SNW did with the Gorn than that one terrible episode in TOS did with that God-awful green costumed clown lizzard. Have no qualms about not adhering hardcore to that episode.

Another solid episode of SNW for season 3. I agree with the general comments that the amount of plot contortion to make Batel the Beholder was ludicrous, as well as the continuous non-contact virtual mind meld between Spock and Kirk. I can definitely see how these particular plot points would drive fans crazy. Especially since the primary reason of the Spock/Kirk mind-meld (to coordinate their phaser fire to open up the portal) could've been managed but some other contrived plot device. As well, the episode didn't need to add the aspect of the Spock/Kirk relationship, and could've spent more time developing Pike/Batel main story.

And while it took numerous plot contortions to get to the Pike/Batel alternate possibility, the execution of these scenes is what elevates this 2 star episode to a three star episode. These scenes by themselves, could have formed the foundation of a 4 star episode if only everything around this plot device worked.

I think a lot of commenters missed the point of the Pike/Batel alternate timeline. Most of you have focused on the fact that this was Batel's gift to Pike. But Batel herself needed to experience this timeline to give her the strength to fight the Vezda. Hence her line about being filled with enough love to fight the darkness of the Vezda.

Anyways, I think after reading the numerous comments, especially some of the comparisons of Star Trek to Star Wars (as well as to Andor), I'm beginning to understand why some of you hate NuTrek....and maybe it's already been discussed on other episode comments, but I think the main point of contention is that NuTrek isn't really science fiction.

Sure, NuTrek is set in space, but the episodes of SNW aren't really the science fiction type episodes that TOS/TNG was known for. TOS/TNG was known for episodes exploring issues of morality; humanity, etc, through the lens of alien cultures, or contrived situations caused by technology.

Where as NuTrek, particularly SNW, is really just a character drama set in space. There are the occasional Science Fiction type episodes for SNW (like Elysian Kingodm - which was an interesting concept), and a few episodes that explore the human condition (for example, Ad Astra per Aspera that explores the prejudice of augmented humans), the vast majority of SNW episodes are episodes to develop the characters. Episodes that ask questions about our beliefs, our perspectives of humanity, etc... are quite rare. Whereas, for TOS/TNG, these form the basis of the some classic episodes. DS9 and VOY also had a few of these episodes as well (Tuvix - i'm looking at you).

In any case, I think the issue with Season 3, is a distinct lack of these episodes. The only episodes I can think of that fit that mold would be "What is Starfleet" and too a lesser extent "Terrarium".

Given the track history of DISCO and PIC with respect to these types of stories (i.e. a serious lack of these "serious" stories), I'm not sure I'd be hopeful for Seasons 4/5 of SNW.

Having said that, I found S3 of SNW to be enjoyable, escapist entertainment. But I do agree that the series doesn't feel as "deep" as classic Trek.

This episode seems was created around the 10 or so minutes of the alternate life of Pike and Batel which was, not coincidentally, the best part. All the rest was an attempt to connect all the storylines and try to give a reason for it. I don't think those "justifications" worked very well but in the end those 10 or so minutes (manipulative as they may have been) hit you "in the feels" quite effectively. In the end, I think it was an affectionate send off to Captain Batel (and the actor, Melanie Scrofano). I have seen worse. And make me somewhat looking forward to a new season

I haven't commented on season 3 because, well, I haven't watched it. Funnily enough it was after reading Jammer's 30th anniversary blog entry I decided "ou know what? No more"

.... Whoops. Be careful when typing on a cellphon we!

Anyway, I have only stayed up to date on the latest season via Jammer's reviews and the comments section, and given the prevailing sentiment, I made the correct decision to tap out of SNW (and Trek on the whole).

While @Lothar has been abrasive in the comments section, he touches on an undeniable point: a lot of fans that perceive themselves as critics, stakeholders and / or keepers of the True Trek Flame, are helping financing a product they don't enjoy. Then there are completionists who just can't help themselves, and finally, those that hold the truly woeful view that "any Trek is better than no Trek". Anyone falling into this category - I'm afraid to say - I don't see how you're part of the solution.

With that said, I don't see a solution. I don't hold the view that Trek needs a new creative team, to lie fallow for a few years, or that success is just one fan wank concept away. I think what Trek can comment on, has been commented on. It's had it's time.

@StarMan:
'While @Lothar has been abrasive in the comments section, he touches on an undeniable point: a lot of fans that perceive themselves as critics, stakeholders and / or keepers of the True Trek Flame, are helping financing a product they don't enjoy.'

I am quite sure that very, very many of those who are watching are not paying to do so. And I don't blame them at all in this particular instance. And they've every right to an opinion on it as well, as far as I'm concerned.

I have a paid subscription to the streaming service that shows SNW in my country (Sky Showtime), so since I do actually 'finance NuTrek', I think it's fair that I say whatever I like about it, both good and bad, too.

My impression is that the number of people choosing the latter ('useful fool of NuTrek') option have fallen appreciably over the past couple of years.

"I am quite sure that very, very many of those who are watching are not paying to do so."

Seconded. Lothar and Starman seem to be living in an alternate universe where free television isn't within easy reach. We can all politely pretend piracy doesn't exist, but realistically, who hasn't streamed something at some point?

So Pelia was a Doctor Who companion?

La'an looks so much better with her hair down instead of pulled back. And this isn't some general preference on my part, just the opposite: I often think women look better with their hair up instead of hanging down, but not in this case.

I know there has always been a lot of pseudoscientific technobabble in Star Trek, but this "pure evil" and "protector" stuff is getting awfully "pseudo" for my tastes.

"I stay. I guard. I never leave."

Oof, sounds boring. Can she at least watch TV or something? Read some books? Maybe a magazine, like at the doctors office waiting room?

Why did the writers even bother to give her that job as JAG director?

What does it mean to say phasers are not additive but they are complementary?

I did like the "knocking" series of flash-forwards.

Why can't Chris have champagne?

Are we in another alternate timeline where it's Pike who goes on the five-year mission?

Although I really disliked the mystical mumbo-jumbo at the center of this episode, there were a lot of individual scenes and emotional beats that worked well. 2 1/2 stars.

If anyone ever asks me about this time in history, between 2015-2025, I'm gonna make sure and remember to say that there were some weeeird Star Trek shows on, and that it was a strange time, and I didn't care for it much

I grew up in the 90s and the Berman era Trek is my Trek: TNG, DS9, Voyager - even Enterprise. That said, I enjoyed Discovery and eagerly anticipated every episode. I liked the updated style. I enjoyed Picard Season 3. I enjoyed Prodigy. I loved Lower Decks.

I could not get onboard with Strange New Worlds at all. I feel like it was the worst of both worlds. I feel like I'm a lone dissenting voice in this as most people who liked classic Trek preferred Strange New Worlds. It didn't have a consistent tone and even though I liked Pike and Spock in Discovery Season 2, I didn't feel invested in them in Strange New Worlds.

I was mostly bored throughout this season and didn't really care if I saw an episode or not. This is the only series of Star Trek I've ever felt like that and yet most people seem to herald it as the best of nu-Trek.

I can't believe no one commented on the show's incorrect use of the word "synchronicity". They should have used the word "synchronization" instead. They're two very different concepts. Carl Jung wrote a whole book on synchronicity. Maybe the writers should check it out.

@Bok R'Mor

RE: Captain Pike. I keep thinking back to his introduction in Disco ("Brother", that show's best season premiere). His first chat with the bridge crew is very laid-back ("Don't bother with your ranks, they don't matter") and shows off Mount's natural charisma. Later, when he's intending to send a dangerous rescue mission out, Saru and then Burnham are rattling off their objections and he cuts her off quite sharply, mid-sentence, and reminds her that he knows the risks and wants solutions.

It's a charged moment and a great demonstration of what Pike's all about. He's very informal, but still keeps a firm hand on the tiller. He doesn't tolerate naysayers, and he's willing to take big risks to save lives. Disco was very good at maintaining the balance between those two opposite ends of the character.

SNW kept the laid-back aspect but has let his edge slowly erode. It might be my #1 beef with the show. Until about halfway through season 2, Mount's Pike was one of my favourite Trek captains. I would really like them to sharpen him back up.

Pike being too laid back was one of my biggest complaints about the show from the beginning. The episode where the Doc kills a Klingon and Pike doesn't do anything in response was pretty much the last straw for me. It's just ludicrous to think that someone so deferential to subordinates could be in a position of authority in Starfleet.

I can't imagine how weak the character must be in season 3 if he's even more meek than in the first two seasons.

"Pelia and her excessive (and borderline unintelligible) voice affects have become a self-parody at this point. Carol Kane needs to dial it back about 10 notches."

In Kimmy Schmidt, she had a crazy accent, too. Dunno if she's just making that her thing, these days. I've always loved her in stuff, but not because of that.

This season was definitely a letdown. Way too many silly throwaway episodes that would have been fine if they were still doing 26 episodes a season. TNG certainly had its clunkers, but there were always 25 more times at bat that year, even if they'd whiff 5-6 more of them. But when you get 10 episodes every 2 years, every throwaway seems like so much more of a waste. opportunity.

A psychological drama with Star Trek trappings. I like the trappings, not so much the other part

I love Pelia. She's cute and perky

@quirky

@Black Oat

Nu-Trek Pike has always been Captain Cool Dad, his role is to sit back and let the hip young crew members talk like modern-day teenagers and push him around.

The show had more magic in the show than Harry Potter, the beginning was a hodgepodge of ideas. Very disappointing episode. They had more success with humor this season than with serious content.

Calling it:
The series finale (already written presumably, though we won't see it for years) will involve a time jump that is a reboot/revival of "The Cage" and "The Menagerie" as well as a sequel to "The Menagerie" that lays the foundation for Star Trek: Year One.

(I want a happy ending for Chris more than I want canon preserved, but maybe there's a way to have both.)

StarMan above encapsulated how I feel about nuTrek right now, and legacy IPs in general: at some point, with enough episodes and films and spinoffs, you end up exploring every angle on a core concept, and eventually run out of new things to say.

I gave up on Strange New Worlds halfway through this season, while at the same time continuing my rewatch of DS9 (it’s my comfort show in these hard times). The big thing I’m struck by, comparing the two, is how inferior the writing is for SNW. It’s the dialogue. The originality. The spark. The tone control. The surprise. The CRAFT.

SNW, for all its technical qualities and mostly-excellent acting, is merely a xerox copy of what we once loved, and that’s a conceptual flaw it’ll never truly get away from. I tolerated that for the first couple of seasons because the cast was clearly enjoying themselves, but somewhere around the multiple Vulcans episode, it hit me how achingly hollow the show is (especially compared to DS9). Based on the review recaps, I also feel pretty confident in my decision to tap out… Nothing of note is being missed.

We desperately need new IPs. We need new Treks and Wars, not endless iterations and meta-stabs at nostalgia. Those new concepts can carry the torch, but they MUST be their own thing, and we need proper visionaries, not glorified brand managers, to guide them.

Star Trek had an incredible, multi decade run. But even if they brought in someone with the writing prowess of Tony Gilroy, the sandbox is worn, the toys are tired, and the children have long since grown up and grown old. I’m probably asking too much of Hollywood in its current form and temperament, but it feels like we’re still going to a restaurant that hasn’t changed their menu in years — same entrees, better presented — with a precipitous decline in ingredient quality. Yet we’re expected to take a bite and smile, just like the good ole days.

No one’s winning with this dish. We need to Boldly Go in a new direction. When I finish my current DS9 run, much like how I felt about SW after Andor wrapped up, I think it might finally be time to let Trek rest.

Man, does that make me want to drain a whole bottle of Kanar…

The Trek sandbox is as big as the imagination of the person who is playing in it. I refuse to believe that Star Trek is burned out. I think the writers and producers are just shitty.

I used to read comics as a kid. There were always people saying that "all the good stories have been told" and "nobody can do anything with this character" but time and again a new writer would take over (eventually) and hit a home run.

There are Trek novels and short stories written by d-list authors and even by non professionals that are far more imaginative and entertaining than anything I've seen on modern Trek. How are they able to do this when highly paid Hollywood types are having to rip off Alien, Enemy Mine, and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas?

Hell, the modern writers can't even take the time to read a Memory Alpha article to get basic foundational facts right.

@Black Oat, I don't disagree with you at all re: the current crop of writers. If they aren't relying on gross-out body horror -- NO MORE EYEBALL TORTURE PLEASE -- they're falling back on pleas to emotion, trauma porn, love triangles, or CW-level schlock, complete with quippy millennial-friendly one-liners.

For crying out loud, they made Data say, "I got this"!

NuTrek writing lacks depth and intelligence. Clever? Sometimes. Funny? Occasionally. Deep? Nada. Lore continuity is the least of their problems (but, uh, is also a problem).

Comics are an interesting reference point. What can work for them -- "hey, check out THIS version of Iron Man, it's so different!" -- doesn't exactly translate over to Trek. I don't really want to see the second or third take on "When Kirk met Spock", and I DEFINITELY don't want a grim-dark spin of our beloved characters... Lookin' at you, "Picard"...

For me, the magic of comics is reinvention over time, coupled with the ability to continue the story of characters indefinitely (well past, say, an actor aging out of a role). I've enjoyed Star Trek for over thirty years, but neither of those approaches seem all that interesting. At some point, I long to be blown away by a NEW universe... When do we get new sandboxes to play in? Do we really want to keep playing in the old ones, year after year, decade after decade, even if a brilliant mind comes in and revitalizes the sand? Couldn't that brilliant mind be put to work cooking up an all-new sandbox?

I might be spinning a bit in negativity, I dunno. Ron Moore expressed interest awhile back in returning to Trek, and if anyone could figure out a way forward, it's him. But I also want Moore to be free to invent something new, vs. revisiting something he already spent 10 years on. There's also no guarantee he has more to say in this sandbox... It could be great! Or, it could be Russell T Davis crashing "Doctor Who" right into the ground.

@Tom: “I feel like I'm a lone dissenting voice in this as most people who liked classic Trek preferred Strange New Worlds. It didn't have a consistent tone and even though I liked Pike and Spock in Discovery Season 2, I didn't feel invested in them in Strange New Worlds.”

Tom, you’re not alone. I grew with 90s Trek and loved TOS. In fact, TOS is my favorite series, with DS9 a close second. I also enjoyed the 1st and 3rd JJ Abrams films, the first seasons of Discovery — can anyone explain why Pike and Spock were written so much better on that series? — and all the other new series. That includes Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy. And I can honestly agree that SNW is the most underwhelming Trek series I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t evoke any TOS nostalgia for me, nor does it generate a sense of awesome freshness like Discovery did at moments.

It just blows goat chunks. And like you, I am not eating them up. I’m scooping them into the trash.

As this (disappointing) season ends, I’d like to thank everyone for the usual mix of engaging comments, perceptive observations and thought-provoking opinions. There have been some great exchanges on these threads, and in a number of cases discussing the episodes has been more interesting – and more fun – than the episodes themselves. Many thanks as well to Jammer, of course, for continuing to produce high-quality reviews and facilitating this forum under them.

@Tim C:
‘SNW kept the laid-back aspect but has let his edge slowly erode. It might be my #1 beef with the show. Until about halfway through season 2, Mount's Pike was one of my favourite Trek captains. I would really like them to sharpen him back up.’

It’s very curious that SNW was commissioned based on the popularity of Pike and Spock in DIS, and yet SNW has spent three seasons compulsively undermining the very character that got the show started in the first place. It’s doubly odd because I think virtually everyone agrees that Pike is a great character, played charismatically by Mount; so why do the writers and producers insist on turning him into such a parody? I can’t imagine that Mount is particularly enamoured of having to portray a Starfleet captain as such a weak-willed sap of a cook either.

@Black Oat:
‘I can't imagine how weak the character must be in season 3 if he's even more meek than in the first two seasons.’

I fear you’re right. While the writers and producers have demonstrated a minor willingness to adapt to fan concerns (the most obvious example would be the retconning of the Klingons away from their DIS version), I strongly doubt this will be extended to Pike: in most scenes, the undermining of Pike is necessary for the rest of the characters to happen. I imagine this bent will get worse rather than better.

@Sen-Sors:
‘Nu-Trek Pike has always been Captain Cool Dad, his role is to sit back and let the hip young crew members talk like modern-day teenagers and push him around.’

Strongly agree, but I’d add that Pike allows absolutely everyone to push him around.

@PM:
While watching the episode, I thought that it would involve exactly the time jump you predict here – but instead they did an ‘Inner Light’. I do share some of your fondness for Pike and part of me wishes that he could have a happy ever after, but of course such an ending for him would drastically undermine his entire (tragic) story. For that reason, the writers and producers may indeed do it.

@AthenaCompany:
‘SNW, for all its technical qualities and mostly-excellent acting, is merely a xerox copy of what we once loved…’

SNW is closer to a parody of what we still love, rather than a xerox of it. Episodes like ‘Space Adventure Hour’ are so tone deaf that it’s clear that the writers and producers don’t have the slightest clue why Trek fans are Trek fans. They have a bizarre superficial relationship with and approach to everything that is Trek.

@Black Oat:
‘The Trek sandbox is as big as the imagination of the person who is playing in it.’

This is the entire problem, perfectly summarised.

‘There are Trek novels and short stories written by d-list authors and even by non professionals that are far more imaginative and entertaining than anything I've seen on modern Trek. How are they able to do this when highly paid Hollywood types are having to rip off Alien, Enemy Mine, and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas? Hell, the modern writers can't even take the time to read a Memory Alpha article to get basic foundational facts right.’

It’s profoundly frustrating. The mindlessness of it all. Writers who want to reference and swipe rather than to write. I simply cannot understand it. And it makes no economic sense either. Paying people to cut and paste from other franchises? Utterly flabbergasting.

At times I feel that the only Trek that these writers and producers have ever seen are the JJ films (I know that’s not possibly the case, but it certainly feels like it).

A few final thoughts:

Una: I was rather disappointed by her portrayal in this season as a whole. I welcomed her being included more, and I thought the scene in which she reprimanded Ortegas was one of the best in the entire run (not so much for the way it was played, but for a very rare incidence of actions having consequences within the chain of command). Unfortunately the powers that be can’t decide whether Una is to be a true number one – when they do depict her as one, it works well – or comic relief. The scenes with Doug in ‘Four-and-a-Half Vulcans’ were the utter low point of this season for me, portraying Una as an immature, ditzy and lovesick bimbo. Romijn works best when she is given scenes where she can show off professionalism, competence, and authority. In many ways, the humiliation of Una mirrors that of Pike. Anyone in authority must be mocked and undermined, seems to be the message.

Ortegas: from around mid-season, Ortegas’ worst and most annoying excesses were toned down, and she was all the better for it. Unfortunately, Ortegas is still a bad fit for the show and Navia just isn’t good enough. Snarky quips have been replaced by eye-rolling and snarky body language. The persistent refrain that she is a crack pilot and the only one who can fly the ship isn’t anything to build on.

La’an: my impression is that there is a consensus that Chong is one of the major successes of the show, who can turn coal into diamond. Even the shoe-horning of La’an into a relationship with Spock (‘playa’ as @Leif mischievously commented) wasn’t as disastrous as it should have been, because Chong is that consummate a professional. There’s rarely a scene where La’an doesn’t work. A highpoint in this show.

‘Chapel’: I noticed that ‘Chapel’ seemed to drift to the sidelines this season, perhaps due to her relationship with Spock falling apart. Like Chong, Bush has saved many a stupid scene by sheer force of will (‘Through the Lens of Time’ would be the main culprit). Her relationship with Korby is boring, but Bush always gives it her all.

The guest characters: too many of them. Next season will probably be the same, as they’re a crutch for the writers’ exposition.

The gimmicks have been absolutely tedious, crowding out better opportunities (I was one of the few commenters who didn’t mind ‘Four-and-a-Half Vulcans’ because I took it as complete lightweight fluff).

‘Sehlat’ and ‘Terrarium’ were probably the only worthwhile episodes, so, overall, a mostly weak season, but with enough moments to keep a casual viewer (the target audience, I think) distracted. Star Trek as escapism and spectacle. Popcorn that is forgotten within seconds of the end credits rolling. I expect more of the same next season, unfortunately.

As long as Star Trek fans keep supporting and sugarcoating everything Star Trek cause "this is what we have and it's better than nothing", NuTrek's TPTB don't have a single reason to try and improve their shows/vision.
Their only spasmodic tries are the ones to attract new audiences, after all ST fans are getting older, and they are doing so by stealing elements from other successful shows/movies in the most uninspiring ways.

I think Jammer is way too much generous with this show, but hey, I am guilty as charged as well, since I watched 3 seasons of a show I found horrible (Disco) and I am keep watching a very mediocre show (SNW) for the occasional good episodes. Shows that I would had given up on them after a few episodes if the words "Star Trek" weren't in their title. Cause they are not even good TV.

So we can point the bad stuff as much as we want, but as long as there is a pool of Treekies willing to keep watching "meh" TV to keep the legacy alive, things won't change. The only hope is if someone talented with a vision, that actually loves Star Trek, takes the wheel of the franchise.

I agree that 3 stars is quite generous. I know the star ratings aren't consistent across shows, but the last episode of PIC S3 also got 3 stars, and these aren't even in the same league in my opinion. I thought this is one of the worst season finales I've seen in Star Trek. Wouldn't give more than 2 stars personally, and only because of the Pike/Batel alternate reality scenes. Hoping season 4 lifts the show back to its previous heights.

Not sure where else to post this but is anyone watching Star Trek: Khan?

Realise it's an audiobook but it's pretty damn good so far. Wasn't expecting much.

Anyone else listening?

I haven't listened yet, Dan, but I might at some point. I do like audio stories.

If you want more Khan, you might be interested in checking out "To Reign in Hell" by Greg Cox.

Many years ago, I came up with a concept for a Trek 'interquel' series: Star Trek Embassy, starting directly after the events of STVI The Undiscovered Country. It would have followed the adventures of a starship placed on detached duty within the Klingon Empire, assisting the Klingons during their transition to peace with the Federation. I recently revisited the concept and started outlining plots for a few episodes. I feel like it would be... far more promising than SNW has turned out to be. Politics, long term plots, character drama, moral quandaries... and a lot of far less comedic Vulcans too. I wonder if TPTB would let me be a show runner?

So did Star Trek transform into space fantasy, in front of our eyes.

Dan
Fri, Sep 26, 2025, 10:26am (UTC -5)
"Not sure where else to post this but is anyone watching Star Trek: Khan?
Realise it's an audiobook but it's pretty damn good so far. Wasn't expecting much. Anyone else listening?"


Hadn't even heard of it. I looked it up and five episodes are available on Star Trek's official YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@StarTrekOfficial

Thanks for mentioning it. I don't know what else could be done with the Khan story, assuming this is in the Prime universe. And I'm not sure where they're going with it, but I'll check it out.

Despite the story of this making no real sense, I enjoyed it, especially the mini version of "The Inner Light" that Batel and Pike went through. They have good chemistry, it's a shame she's likely gone from the show now.

Then there is always the teaser at the end where the ship flies to some non-descript location with the promise of adventure, so here's what I'm hoping for from season 4, which will be the last full season of the show (season 5 seems to be an extended finale).

- I want to see adventure! More strange new worlds, new lifeforms and new civilizations.
- Less intra-crew melodrama (almost everyone on the ship is dating one another), and more professionalism among the crew
- Less gimmicky episodes, meta episodes and prequel slop

The showrunners seem to at least be aware of the negative reception of season 3 so hopefully they can rebound next season, before capping off with the finale in season 5.

Like Jammer, I found the plotting of this episode absolutely insane, and not in a good way. I was tuning out during most of the exposition scenes. If the Vezda are so dangerous and beyond redemption, why not destroy/kill them instead of imprisoning them for eternity (with a non-zero chance that they’ll escape)?

I’ve never been invested in Batel as a character or in her relationship with Pike. I don’t know if it’s the writing or the actress, but I just never cared about her, which is why the human elements of this story, and the entire sequence of their imagined clichéed happy life together, fell flat for me as well. I’d rather rewatch Picard’s Nexus scenes in Generations than this.

On the positive side, the costumes and sets on Skygowan were spectacular (as always, but they were even better than usual this time around). I also enjoyed the mind meld and chess game between Kirk and Spock, even though it was just prequel fanservice.

2 stars