“Human Best Friend”

It was god awful.

SNW does The Naked Time / Naked Now, essentially. Except unlike in those episodes, there aren't really any stakes.

It's a boring, rote plot and, for me at least, all the humor fell short. "It's green." Yeah, we remember.

I like this cast an awful lot and I have a baseline level of enjoyment watching them do anything, plus there was good character work with Scotty and Ortegas that felt both earned and substantial. So it's not a total waste of an episode. But this script really ought to never have made it out of the scrap pile.

Not every episode of a Star Trek show can be The Best of Both Worlds, nor should they try to be. But what a shame to only have ten episodes a season and use one to make this.

At least try to make something new, unusual, interesting, and preferably involving a science fiction concept in some way. Ten episodes. This was your tenth best idea?

. . .

Just did a quick review of all that has come before and yep, this is now officially my pick for the worst episode of SNW to date. What a shame after two pretty strong episodes to open the season.

(Who is it again who has the massive hate boner for The Elysian Kingdom? Go on, explain to me why that episode is worse than this one. Make sure to use not less than six paragraphs, okay?)

. . .

Other thoughts:

Are you fucking kidding me that Kirk was on the planet. Come on. (Also, why wasn't he fucked up like everyone else?)

Rebecca Romjin really committed to learning and singing those songs in Klingon. That was a lot of dialogue in a made-up language to memorize. Not easy, and the effort deserves to be acknowledged.

I liked the design of the two warring alien species. They were similar enough to believe they had a shared evolution on the same planet but distinguishable to tell them apart. Good job, makeup and art departments.

That's really all I have to say. There's so little to this episode, it will be little remembered. So at least it isn't so aggressively stupid as to be memorable (a la Threshold, for example). It doesn't break anything or ruin any characters, so its existence also at least does no longterm harm.

But man, it was bad.

Rebecca Romjin sang one song - "Total Eclipse of the Heart". Name came from the closed captioning.

The only time I really laughed was when Spock told Erica "You still look like plants" and then she wobbled off as an actual cactus...

Oh dear. NuTrek does stoner and hangover comedy on not-Risa.

This was a truly painful watch. It’s simultaneously superficial, meaningless and consistently cringe-inducingly unfunny throughout, while yet again very self-consciously telling itself and the audience that it’s ‘quirky’ and ‘hilarious’.

The grating, unprofessional and childish bickering between Ortegas and NuScotty that anchors what passes for the morality play of this episode (‘People can get along if they just try’) is simply tedious and unconvincing; its resolution is cheesy, forced and artificial. It doesn’t help that Ortegas is such a deeply unlikeable character that the viewer has no sympathy with her at all, at any point.

Una doing Klingon karaoke was the only mildly entertaining part of this entire episode, and then only barely.

It always seem that these kinds of ‘comedy’ SNW episodes exist primarily to give the cast and crew a bit of fun at work. They’re bad ideas that get out of hand and no one puts the brakes on.

I can’t believe anyone genuinely wants this for Star Trek.

One of those annoyingly self-indulgent episodes the cast and crew, I am sure, had lots of fun making…

The bickering between Scotty and Ortegas is so unprofessional. Can you imagine another Starfleet Captain other than Pike tolerating it??

Obvious spoilers for this episode and a Voyager episode.

The premise was clear - for Scotty and Ortegas to get along. To clear the air. To reconcile their differences. To move the explosive device away.
The idea was good. The execution - not so much.
It did have potential. I think it failed, sadly.

It reminded me of the Voyager episode of the piloting/shuttlecraft race and muti-species "alliance" and Tom/B'Elanna had to work through their relationship. The Drive is the name of the episode in the last season of Voyager. The bomb threatened peace talks and Tom/B'Elanna had to move the shuttle away. Kim and the female alien were stuck. Very similar. That episode was good, compared with this one.

Dial down the comedy. I understand what they were trying to do. Get two people to work together on some problem, hopefully they will work things out. Set the tone as a comedy and see how things go.

They didnt need two scenes with Uhura. They could have worked out Uhura had the other tricorder. Pike get tattooed with the whole speech? Unnecessary. The hallucinations from Spock was other the top. I just think it could have been executed better.

*over the top (not other the top)

Live action Star Trek has always had a spotty record when it comes to comedy and, in my opinion, it has typically gone poorly. The only really good one I can remember off the top of my head is the one where the Doctor's daydreaming went off the rails.

Sadly, I think this episode was subpar. Of course, in this day and age, I'm sure plenty of "true Trek fans" will rant about how NuTrek continues to be a blight on the franchise and that anyone who enjoys it doesn't know what real Trek is.

My god, what a fucking stupid episode. What a waste in a season with only ten episodes. First I actively disliked since Four Vulcans. Some of this might come down to personal taste, though. I hate stoner humor and I hate cringe comedy, and this episode had both in spades. At least it improves a bit in the back half.

The idea of a planet where everyone is high all the time is just nutso. How do the staff work if they're all high? Even presuming they're somehow immune, how do they deal with a clientele where every single guest is a danger to themselves/others all the time? It also stretched credulity to me that every member of the main cast wanted to do that. Not everyone wants to get intoxicated. Then there's the whole question of how a hyper-commercialized resort like this works in the post-scarcity Federation. All in all, the premise just seemed like an excuse to let all the actors be out of character, like (most of) the DS9 mirror episodes. Also to cut the budget I guess, since large portions of it seemed to be on-location filming in a barely redressed hotel.

Structurally speaking, the episode also makes the strange choice to not make the stakes of the episode clear until we're almost halfway in. Yeah, we get a "plot" involving Ortegas and Scotty trying to find Pike, then the shuttle. But potentially wrecked peace talks is pretty small beer until the bomb is introduced, and we don't even get the bomb until they're back on the ship. It created weird pacing, where the episode seemed like a bunch of random vignettes that resolved too quickly, and then once we were in what would seem to be the falling action, all of a sudden there's a life/death situation? Lame. It also stretched credulity to me that Ortegas couldn't just wake up non-high people from the other shifts for help when they got back onto the ship. Yeah, I know they're off camera/we never see them, but perfectly normal non-stoners were keeping the ship safe up until they got back - they could do it for a few more hours.

The Kirk-Spock scenes made little sense to me in particular, because they kept referencing the mind meld from last season, but not the trauma from The Griffin Incident. Made me wonder if they shuffled around the episode order once they realized that was a great episode, and this was a turkey.

I will give the episode some plaudits for the Scotty/Ortegas stuff. Ortegas was great in the episode, given a chance to shine because everyone else (other than real Kirk, who we only see at the very end) is a total fucking moron. Scotty was mostly comic relief, but at least he sobered up enough by the end to give some nice emotional scenes that didn't make me want to claw my eyes out.

I did find a few of the especially random bits, like seeing Ortegas as a cactus, to be amusing, but not funny enough to actually laugh. Oh, well, better luck next time.

I've only seen the first 14 minutes, but so far it's one of the worst things I've ever watched. Probably it's going to be one of those episodes I'll have to watch in tiny dribbles of 5-10 minutes per day, because I can't stomach watching more.

This episode reminded me of another subpar Star Trek experience: Star Strek: Khan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Khan).

I would love to read Jammer's review of that travesty.

very bad episode

Yeah, those were definitely 47 minutes of NuTrek. It's been said the opposite of love is indifference and it left me totally cold.

All I see is a patchwork of elements from other, better Trek shows. All of this has been done before.

You can see Season 4 doing the same thing Season 3 did which is (in their minds) showing their diversity and storytelling chops by all the different types of genre they can stuff into a season. It’s like they’ve got a checklist. As they tell it, take the big swings. I thought it was a huge mistake in Season 3. Same thing here. Last week horror. This week the dreaded lightweight Star Trek fluff known as Star Trek comedy.

After a couple of great episodes, we get the inevitable Star Trek comedy that these writers simply can’t stay away from. With only ten episodes, it’s just throwing one away. Confession. Outside a few episodes, never really enjoyed the Star Trek tradition of comedy because , in my view. It was just used as lightweight filler to fill in a daunting schedule that in the 90’s required 26 episodes per season. Star Trek first season TOS had 29 episodes. They never were particularly good at it and it just created quickly forgettable episodes. Even at its best the Star Trek comedy episode were historically just put down as lightweight fluff. In today’s streaming world with only ten episode, what is the need for this lightweight filler? Why not devote it to serious tales of science fiction?

This episode I wouldn’t even put down as lightweight fluff, it’s just a bad episode. It stinks to high heaven. It’s a contender tor among the worst SNW has ever done. Didn’t like it. It stinks. What’s next a transmitter accident that turns people into puppets?

Uh ... I didn't like this one. What a waste ... < Sigh >

Trek's comedic episodes are seldom laugh-out-loud funny. That was one of my main issues with Lower Decks, which was a charming show with great character interactions, yet the humor almost never rose past "mildly amusing."

That said, DS9 had plenty of genuinely great comedies. Little Green Men, The Magnificent Ferengi, In The Cards, etc. It can be done correctly, but SNW (other than Those Old Scientists) doesn't seem able to make these episodes land.

The worst thing about episodes like these is how inevitable they seem. I don’t like watching a show from a franchise I love and hold my breath waiting for it to embarrass the franchise again. That’s why I stopped watching in season 3, and don’t know what anyone’s talking about.
Still, I’m glad Terry Matalas hasn’t taken control of Star Trek. He would still have to work under David Ellison, and the messaging of his output would still be thrown into doubt.
It’s funny how MAGA now controls Star Trek, and they haven’t seen the need to change a thing. It’s like Star Trek’s been complying in advance since 2017, and it just never realized.
They would never make an episode with a subjective opinion, then or now.

Correction on my previous post meant to say transporter not transmitter.

@Karl Zimmermsn. the host of Ferengi episodes that you mentioned from DS9 were never my cup of tea. While admittedly done much better than SNW has ever done with all out comedy episodes, they fell into that lightweight filler category I mentioned in my post. As far as Those Old Scientists (one of my favorite episodes from the second season) yes there was a very good comedy element but there was also serious elements that I thought were done very well. Going in I thought These Old Scientists would be a gimmick episode that wouldn’t work (same with Subspace Rhapsody) & was wrong on both counts. Unfortunately, there’s a sense that the success of those two episodes has led to the gimmick episodes in subsequent seasons that haven’t panned out.

Thoroughly enjoyed that, even through the whole Ortegas and Scotty rehash of the Kallo/Gil feud from Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Based on the promo photos, I was expecting something similar to Farscapes' "Scratch 'n Sniff", which remains the king of 'shit goes sideways on shore-leave' episodes.

The first plant based sight gag made me genuinely belly laugh, as did the Klingon power ballad.

I nearly inhaled a jaffa cake whole at the shot of Scotty's thumb.

I am the only dissenting voice, I guess, because I really liked this one. Laughed over and over. Comedy is definitely a matter of taste, and I suppose my sense of humor just connected with this one. And unlike others, I don't really mind if the ideas are recycled as long as I like the characters and I do like these ones very very much. So I enjoyed it.

One funny thing is that literally about ten minutes before I sat down to watch I was thinking about Dave Foley as I really like him and thought, "I wonder what he's up to now?" And voila! That was delightful.


Now, logic-wise, I HATE the idea of a planet with an atmosphere that makes you drunk/stoned as an appealing place for recreation. I'd never go near the place, yuk. And from what we saw, the people experiencing it had similar reactions to getting blackout drunk, and that is NOT appealing.

But I did really enjoy what they did with it. At first I thought it was going to be a Hangover ripoff (ie, wake up with no memory and gradually piece together what happened), and while there were certainly similarities, I felt they put their own twist on it enough that it was much more fun than a straight rehash.

I enjoyed Erica and Monty (lol) growing their friendship, and Una singing, and La'an being La'an Exponential, and Pike getting tattoos, and Spock and his plants (but what WAS Kirk doing there?). Didn't much vibe with Uhura and Chappell, but their scenes were brief so it was okay.

I guess we all have different tastes--this one worked for me. I'd give it a solid three stars.

@ Mike A,

The reason Those Old Scientists worked is because the writers understood that as guest characters on SNW, Mariner and Boimler had to be more grounded. Boimler in particular has a pathos to his character as the episode goes on and he realizes he may be stuck in the past forever.

In contrast, this episode plays like a Lower Decks episode almost entirely. Except if it were Lower Decks, the pacing would've been way better, since it would be done in 30 minutes.

Seeing the preview helped me calibrate, so I got the right balance of genuine amusement to eye-roll and predictability that was expected. Scotty's thumb was unexpectedly hilarious, and Ethan Peck does a great job as a slightly disheveled drunk Spock seeing people as plants. (Pro tip for Vulcan adept training: you can mind-meld with plants. Check.)

My gripe with this episode, as others have said, is the Kirk thing. Is he or isn't he there? Oh, he was! Why wasn't he space-drunk too? He really wanted to spend days locked up with a chatty Vulcan unlocking his deepest darkest secrets? Cool! This show has made a bad habit of popping in Kirk with absolutely no reason for him to be there and it's sooooooo annoying. Paul Wesley's portrayal of Kirk bothers me more and more as time goes on. Everything feels forced. Low warmth, low humor, low engagement. When that's paired with meh writing and meh directing, this is just not a good reboot of the Kirk character. No one will top the actor who originated the character, of course, and Pine, in my opinion, does a pretty good job with Shatner's legacy in the Kelvins, with some gripes. But SNW missed the mark on this actor, and they're missing the mark on how and where to fit him in more organically.

Hmm. I appreciate what this one was going for, and I'm sure the cast had an absolute blast filming it, but I think less would definitely have been more here. This specific comedic tone doesn't work across a whole episode for me.

Also, this season has been weird at distractingly wrong internal-to-Star-Trek tech stuff: subspace particles in the season opener, and then isolinear technology a full century before it was new in TNG. Seriously, just put a fan under an NDA so they can lint these details.

I did laugh at the cactus though.

So we've had a Dinosaur movie episode, a horror movie episode and a stoner movie episode.

Would be nice if we could eventually get round to a Star Trek episode

I’m not quite as doom and gloom about it as most of the comments… but why is this episode here so early in the season?

Some positives: The bit where Spock mind melded with a leaf and it gave them the location of the shuttle is the hardest I’ve laughed in a while. Laughed again when the plant gag returned later in the episode, and with Scotty’s injury. Definitely fluff, but I think it had better character development than 4 and a half Vulcans which is an episode I absolutely loathed.

Yet, I can’t help but feel like I want more from this show than this at this stage though, and I really didn’t like the credits. After the messiness that was all of last season, this episode should not have been placed here. We are still too close to the stench of the 3rd season for something like this, and despite laughing a few times and finding some character exchanges nice, this still has to rank among my least favorite of the series. 2 stars if I don’t think too hard about Kirk’s inclusion in this story. 1-1 and a half if I think about it for even a second. Felt last week worked Kirk in brilliantly. This was the most extreme case of “why are you here” so far.

i think the writers are running out of ideas

As a comedy-in-space episode, this was not bad. I especially liked Spock's visions, except for Kirk. I thought the plotline of Ortegas and Scott resolving their differences was done quite well. I even enjoyed the slapstick.

But this is not the kind of episode I was hoping for. It never got deeper than the Ortegas/Scott conflict resolution. The "captain negotiates with an alien delegation" was completely derivative, as was the bomb/shuttle/transporter rescue. I'm beginning to think the producers aren't even going to try to make actual thoughtful Star Trek episodes any more. They just fling themselves into one narrow genre after another.

I do like Paul Wesley as Kirk, but this should be PIKE's show and they're just sidelining him. They've made him into a lackadaisical, borderline corrupt captain who'd rather cook than command. I'm having a hard time seeing in this Pike a man that Spock would hazard his career for.

SNW does the obligatory resort planet episode, and chooses to do The Hangover. Oh well. This episode obviously has two main ideas in mind:

1) be a vehicle for Scotty and Ortegas characters and their relationship. Why is it important that they fix their "feud" that started at the latter half of previous season is not very clear to me. Ortegas is a character that's obviously never mentioned anywhere on Trek as being part of Scotty's life so their relationship is not very interesting to me because Ortegas will be gone and never heard from again after SNW ends. If anything, I would like to see how it informs Scotty's character and I don't know if it does, Other than "I crashed 7 shuttles so instead I went to engineering", I don't feel like we got much of anything here.

2) It's supposed to be funny and it partially works as a comedy episode. I was especially amused by Spock's plant hallucinations, although the whole thing with Kirk being revealed as actually being around Spock and not NOT an hallucination does not make a lick of sense. La'An's taking over a street gang (?) was also funny, even though the whole bit was ridiculous. But it works as comedy.

Note how last week it horrific events to pull out characters inner demons and desires, and this week it's comedic, ridiculous events.

SNW's Pike continues to be probably the worst starship captain in Trek history with his poor decision-making (let's take the whole key "alpha" crew into Drug Planet!) and his unprofessional demeanor, but Anson Mount is so charismatic in the role you can't be angry for long. This would be insufferable with another actor.

Oh, I almost forgot, there was also a plot about some peace negotiations and some saboteurs and bombs... just the barest of stakes, and I admit the aliens looked cool, but this "starfleet personnel inadvertently insults stiff alien culture" has been done many times before.

SNW is VERY concerned with genre. It always works within the confines of genre. Last week we had Horror. This week we have Comedy. But SNW DOES have a genre. It's Science Fiction! Maybe we can get back to it now?

P.S: this could easily have been an Orville episode.

FWIW guys, my understanding is next week's episode is noir. Then we're getting the puppet episode. Then, after that, SNW's take on The Pitt, where we follow the ship through a single hour in real time.

Any non-gimmick episodes will have to be somewhere in the final four of the season.

"i think the writers are running out of ideas"

I think the writers are running out of other people's ideas.

For a show called Strange NEW Worlds there is almost nothing original about its scripts.

I picture a giant AI ice cream maker churning out scripts. You load it with skim milk, Memory Alpha links, and Reddit comments. The resulting artificial vanilla goop is then defecated into an eye-catching, sprinkle coated, but totally flavorless, recycled cardboard based waffle cone.

Each week the show runners dip the new script into a different trough of genre tropes. Sometimes you get a nutty comedy, sometimes a fruity musical, sometimes a gross gummi worm horror movie etc.

SNW is uninspired copycatting from the exact kind of dimestore writers that the overloaded streaming model foists upon big-IP production houses. And with the Paramount situation in limbo, there's no end in sight.

The actual The Hangover Part IV, if it ever gets made, might be better than this...

How did Kirk get onto the Enterprise. You can neither beam down nor up to the planet. That means he must have been in the shuttle the entire time with everyone else. I guess he was just in the bathroom for the entire ride back from the planet to the ship.

Why did Kirk go to the Enterprise. He had no reason to. He was on his own shore leave and then he would have gone back to his own ship.

Why am I even bothering to think about this. It's too fucking stupid. The writers don't care so why am I attempting to make it make sense.

Okay, in my head canon it was actually Sam Kirk in the transporter room with Spock. Spock was merely seeing him as Jim Kirk because he was still fucked up. When Ortegas acknowledges him she only says "Hey Kirk," so this works.

And when Spock was seeing him on the planet, no one else was, including Ortegas. Because he wasn't there.

Jim Kirk was never actually in this episode. Sam Kirk (who never went down to the planet and that's why he was sober) was just in the transporter room with Spock at the end.

Fixed.

(I wish.)

Strange New Worlds is a very postmodern/metatextual type of show. Where earlier series (even within Kurtzman Trek) are content to tell stories that take place in the Star Trek universe, it's very self-consciously a TV show.

Indeed, the showrunners and writers appear to be - first and foremost - lovers of TV, movies, and the tropes thereof. They're not really interested in things like suspension of disbelief and immersive, deep worldbuilding, because their understanding is we're all in on the joke - that we all understand it's just a show, and they can sacrifice anything for the sake of the the episode at hand, or even for the sake of bit right in front of us.

I will say, straight out, I don't like this kind of storytelling, either inside or outside of Trek. I think comedies can get away with the whole "because it's fun!" thing to some extent, but I much prefer stories which can be enjoyed on their own merits and don't require metaknowledge of the other things being referenced to get it. But they're fully aware of what they're doing.

"But they're fully aware of what they're doing."

How do we know that they're not just hacks? It isn't like they have produced a bunch of innovative science fiction stories in the past and are going through an intentionally bad "ironic' phase.

These episodes aren't good attempts at doing justice to the genres that they are dabbling in, and they aren't parodies, so what are they? And why the heck are they writing so many of them on a Star Trek series?

"And why the heck are they writing so many of them on a Star Trek series?"

Because writing serious, intelligent, thought-provoking sci-fi (Star Trek, in particular) is incredibly difficult, it turns out. And, frankly, the people in charge don't much seem to care about serious, intelligent, thought-provoking sci-fi.

My experience is most people prefer "has the tropes I love" versus something that challenges them. Indeed, I see in the book space people asking for things that have "enemies to lovers" or "found family" or "magic school." They're looking for tropey, derivative storytelling which reminds them of other things. it's a feature, not a bug.

The SNW writers know this. This isn't hackery. They know there isn't any way there was an advanced civilization on Mars only 65 million years ago, because we'd have discovered remnants of it already. But it's okay, because it's like, referencing Barsoom and stuff - real nerd shit. They know that everything in Trek needs a rational explanation, so there cannot be a real ghost. But ghost stories are cool nerd shit. And they know that the setup of this episode doesn't make a lick of sense, but they think they'll get plaudits for referencing "beloved" stoner comedies.

None of these are lazy writing choices really. They're writing plots full of holes not because they aren't smart enough to figure this shit out, but because they think we're in on it, and as long as it's entertaining enough, we'll be like "It's fine, it's all just a show after all. Nothing to take seriously."

In the end is there really a difference?

Ken White put it best:

The Rule of Goats: even if you say you're only fucking goats ironically, you're still a goatfucker.

Yeah, I had to do other stuff while leaving this one on in the background, it was so unappetizing.

Why has nobody talked about how silly AF the ending was yet? Where the bomb had fireworks in them and the secret terrorist who placed it actually ENSURED the peace talks would go beautifully, somehow?

It was all too dang convenient and required zero effort or intelligence from our characters, it was like an accidental sitcom ending.

Wow, that was as savage a takedown as I've seen in a while. Well-played, Jammer.

First comment after Jammer's review was posted, and MAN I enjoyed THAT more than the episode itself!!!! :)

Absolutely *BRILLIANT* review by Jammer!!! Finally got some laughs out of this mess of an episode! (Now if I could just find something green to drink ... )

The Kirk angle in this episode (as many others have pointed out) is baffling and incoherent on so many levels. It makes absolutely zero sense. They had a perfectly acceptable, understandable explanation for Kirk’s presence which they simply toss away for what purpose? For a perceived inside joke on Spock?

It just amazes me of the apparent shallowness of the writers that apparently they don’t think
some folks may ask themselves the obvious questions like - wait a minute he was on the planet the whole time? How did he get there? He just happens to be there at the exact same time as the Enterprise crew? What are the odds of that happening? He went to the planet alone? Does he not have any friendships on the ship he’s assigned to? He just happens to wind up with Spock? He’s not affected by the planet while everyone else is? Isn’t he an officer on another ship? Does he do anything on that ship as he seems to be always away with all this free time following the Enterprise? Has he become an Enterprise roadie?

For me, this episode was already on the I’ll never look at this shit again list the instant it ended. Will Season 4 ultimately just be a rehash of the disappointing Season 3 as it displays its genre type of the week formula? I remember a concern someone posted before the airing of the first episode saying they were concerned for the season in that it was filmed right after Season 3 & it may be quite similar. Personally, I’m starting to feel uneasy about Season 4. We shall see

All right I take it all back, this episode was worth making solely for Jammer's review.

Just saw Jammer’s review. As someone said, well played.

@Jammer,

Thank you for this incredibly funny review. It reminds me of the other review where you broke the fourth wall - the one for Voyager’s “Demon.” That one is also a classic.

And, as you’ve read a lot of Roger Ebert, maybe you remember a review of his done in a similar style as the one you have written here - the one for “Milk Money.”

“They have to retrace their steps” - that reminded me of Roger’s review of Beyond the Poseidon Adventure” - also very funny: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/beyond-the-poseidon-adventure-1979

And M’Benga’s bottle flopping shenanigans-wanted to quote what Roger said a customer would have actually said to the Tom Cruise character in Cocktail: “Shut up and pour!”

Someone mentioned “the stench of Season 3.” Tee hee. Reminds me of when McCoy said “I just wish we could cloak the stench.” Not this time

Anyway could not help but notice that you have not given a nuTrek episode (live action) a rating of one lowly star until now…. Seeing that one shining star made me smile wide and long.

Cue Etta James

Jammer's bit would be funny if he called attention to this shit years ago. I just don't buy it.

All-time classic review, Jammer. 10/10. Cheered on every word as I read it – one of the very worst episodes of NuTrek ever produced one of your best reviews ever. (No, that isn't a paradox, it's cause and effect.)

'All 37 of the executive producers...'

Thank you for a great start to Friday here.

1/2 star out of 4.

Everything has already been said that can realistically been said.

I think Jammer was being generous with the 1 star.

Kirk being real was pretty cool, but they didn't sell it at all. They could've gone more in that direction and it would've been great, but of course they didn't. Really that could have been the whole epsiode if they leaned into it, but alas.

I will say, I absolutely love the Pike face tattoo. That should stay.

Can anyone confirm whether the bingo caller in the 'Chapel' scene was Kathryn Lyn herself? She has a penchant for cosplaying as a Vulcan and for self-inserts (T'Lyn in LDS), and as she was writer I did wonder if it was her.

This episode has the unique distinction of being the first SNW episode I have turned off before finishing.

I feel like the writers have given up making any sort of moral message or scientific exploration. I don’t mind them ripping off “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas” (or let’s say “homaging” the story) because a lot of the audience may not be familiar with the original story.

But The Hangover?

Really?

I also feel like the protagonists have sort of hit a wall in their stories. Nurse Chapel should have lost Roger Korby now and I feel like her relationship with Spock still has a lot of things to say about.

I would like to say I do appreciate Jammar's review style this week. Yes I do.
This is credited to one writer, but I can see this conversation - with a few tweaks here and there - actually taking place in some shape or form.

They must think we're all idiots.

Speaking of which, to anyone trying to make sense of Kirk's eventual real appearance in the episode - don't even try thinking about it. It's a waste of energy. It doesn't make any sense no matter how you turn it.
The sad thing is they had an interesting thread going on here - Spock hallucinating Kirk of all people, and us knowing how close the two will become, was actually a nice, interesting foreshadowing - but they went and completely botched it for a stupid twist without doing the necessary set-up to make it all make sense. Lazy and stupid.

@Karl Zimmerman:
"FWIW guys, my understanding is next week's episode is noir. Then we're getting the puppet episode. Then, after that, SNW's take on The Pitt, where we follow the ship through a single hour in real time."

Oh, great... I hope in episode 9 or so we'll get a science fiction story!

Uh oh. This one pissed Jammer off so much that he did a narrative review. Haven't seen that since Voyager.

This was.... not good.

I wanted to like this one. I think one of things that hurt shows like Discovery and Picard in the long run was not slowing down and letting us get to know the characters when they're not in "saving the universe" mode. The idea of centering an episode around a visit to a pleasure planet is not bad. I thought the overall character arcs for Ortegas and Scotty were actually reasonably executed if you ignore the ridiculous plot that they were involved with. However, we don't learn anything new about the other characters: we already knew Number One liked to sing (from that one Short Treks), Spock has trouble opening up about his human half, and La'an is way too aggressive. Pike's tattoo obsession, Chapel's intensity over bingo, and M'Benga's weird bartender routine don't really say anything about them.

I feel like there would have been some easy fixes to make this work:

1. Just have Kirk still be on the ship from the previous episode. I also would have just taken Spock and La'an out of planet action entirely since their themes pretty much repeat what we learned in "The Griffin Incident." Say that they're uncomfortable with the planet's mind altering effects given their experience in the previous episode. Let Spock and Kirk bond as normal people on the ship as a B-plot if that's something they still wanted to include.

2. Dave Foley's character could have been much more involved as a benevolent manipulator of the entire scheme... which is *almost* true until the bomb is revealed. At which point, there was apparently some rando who was apprehended off screen? Take out the bomb, and just make it his way of trying to get people to let go of their aggression. He gets a nice moment implying his own regrets regarding his angry past, and there's a kernel of a good idea there.

3. Let the effects of the planet allow for some sort of cathartic release for Pike, Una, and M'Benga. These are three characters who try to keep their emotions bottled up because of their respective traumas (dead girlfriend and impending death, genetic outcast, and lost daughter). There was a far away expression that Babs Olusanmokun gave while he was tending bar that made me *almost* think they were going to do something like that, but then it went nowhere. People react to drugs in different ways, and showing some of spectrum of reactions could have been interesting.

4. Fit Chapel into the Uhura sequence, and let that be a bit of a comedic set piece. They keep having to come back to this room, and every time they show up, the party in the background is increasingly more bizarre because of what these two are doing. These two actresses have good comedic sensibilities and could pull that off together.

The whole thing just feels like a complete missed opportunity, not a bad idea from the start. It's the definition of "godawful execution" for me.

@Karl Zimmerman RE "everyone is high all the time is just nutso. How do the staff work if they're all high? Even presuming they're somehow immune, how do they deal with a clientele where every single guest is a danger to themselves/others all the time?"

That's literally everyone, everywhere, all the time in:
Banff
Aspen
Whistler
Jasper
and any other mountain tourist mecca in the U.S. or Canada

I just want to say, this sort of referential, simulated, copycat, "meta" nonsense was absolutely inevitable from the start of this series' conception - it's built into its DNA. The very concept of the show is a referential, simulated copycat meta bit of nonsense. In the first season or two, they were cosplaying TOS. Since then, they've been cosplaying everything else they can find. But the cosplaying is not new.

After a strong pair of opening episodes, a flop. A major flop. * is probably generous. I did chuckle at Spock seeing Ortegas as a plant throughout the episode.

The heart we saw in the comedic episodes of Seasons 1 and 2 is absent from those in Season 3 and 4. Subspace Rhapsody, Those Old Scientists, Spock Amok, and Elysian Kingdom are long in the rearview mirror.

It's wishful thinking that terrible writing might just be the result of innocent stupidity and well-intentioned incompetence. I suppose my inclination is to assume a large part is venal laziness and a certain contempt for the art form itself. Rather than being TV lovers, these would be TV burnouts, people who think it doesn't matter anyhow and that churning out one kind of garbage or another makes no difference, since it's all going to get lost in the morass of streaming series and M&A anyhow.

Caloceptri - "Anyway could not help but notice that you have not given a nuTrek episode (live action) a rating of one lowly star until now."

. . . . . Stardust City Rag (Picard).

A 24-hour episode doesn't automatically have to be bad. In fact, no homage episode has to be bad. "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach" was a reimagination of Le Guin's "Omelas" story, but it was a fine effort. "Lost in Translation," which has the same theme as TNG's "Home Soil," was also very good. "Subspace Rhapsody" was a creative standout despite its relationship to a Buffy episode. To expand horizons a bit, West Side Story was a remake of Romeo and Juliet. Why should we care? Judge the episode on its own merits. This one had, as someone else pointed out, a few ideas that did work (cactus people, the Scott/Ortegas stuff) and some that could have worked (the Kirk business), but they couldn't make up for the overall lack of thoughtfulness. It was just a bunch of scenes thrown together, but not actually getting anywhere except with the S/O feud, which should never have happened in the first place.

The actors in this series are all excellent. The direction is usually good. The writing has occasionally been brilliant. It's the overall vision that has failed.

That is 10 minutes of my life I'm never getting back. I got up to Uhura's stoner rant to Ortegas, and I was just baffled. This is bewildering.

Why were these people hired to write Trek? Like, what the actual fuck?

I may bail on the whole rest of the season. As Lester Bangs so famously put it in his review of Bob Dylan's (Purposely Bad) 'Self-Bootleg,' "Self-Portrait,"

"What is this shit??"

This suuuuuuucccccckkkkkkkkked. Review on point, Jammer.

There were actually two scenes that made me laugh in "Hangover in Space":

1. Ortegas-Cactus
2. But what made me giggle was Kirk's "At one point I will have to go to my ship". Although it could be an angry giggle.

I think the writers of this show just go to Trek BBS, see how many people over there love their episodes, feel satisfied and keep writing this sh*t cause "the fanbase is happy with us".
This is what happens when you feel obliged to like anything Star Trek cause you are "loyal" to it. You end up stuck with excrement.

p.s.
Jammer, I salute you for this review. Although I do not see much difference on how the same writers have been writing SNW for 3 seasons now.

The worst episode of SNW — and it takes some doing to earn that “accolade”. I don’t know how SNW can keep pumping out this kind of total garbage where they unleash stupidity just to make characters resolve some emotional challenge. So the writers gave us an Ortegas episode - to focus on her conflict with Scotty, which is just so puerile. Like are these 2 professionals or what? Far too elaborate of a plan to get Ortegas and Scotty to be cool with each other. Nothing remotely funny here.

Even the aspect of the alien diplomats doing a 180 was just too amateurish. The saboteur’s bomb actually makes fireworks that impresses them. It takes a real clown to write an episode like this. Said it before that you can’t take this show seriously.

Is there a logical explanation for why Spock kept thinking Kirk was a hallucination of his? Just because Kirk was supposed to be somewhere else? Really hate how this series is destroying the 2 greatest characters in Trek.

Thought of “Two Days and Two Nights” here - but that, while being a very poor ENT outing, was much better than this crap. We still have a Muppets episode to come right?

0.5 stars for “Human Best Friend” — (barely). Even when this episode had a message for its viewers, the message was so infantile. Like the emotional Spock spilling everything to Kirk, his human best friend, and feeling sort of ashamed of it? Like Ortegas always looking to be angry? And she’s jealous… Trek has become just so immature. The writers really struggle to produce the solid, no-nonsense episode. Could argue that while “Valles Marineris” was a good episode, it was excessive in its ambition. And then we have a seemingly AI-generated horror Trek episode and now this absolute turd. Where’s the balance? What is the typical SNW episode? The series is a disaster.

You're way to generous Jammer. That was no stars. In fact, negative 100 stars. The worst episode of SNW and maybe Star Trek in general. After thirty some odd years, in my opinion this episode surpassed Profit and Lace for the worst episode of Trek and is an even bigger, stinkier piece of dog s*&t than Precious Cargo was.

I hate to dignify this garbage with something like a discussion, but why were the Enterprise crew the only ones on the planet who seemed drunk and not in control of their faculties? I thought we were going to have the Shore Leave Planet from TOS or Risa, but no. Those planets would have at least been somewhat entertaining. Why couldn't an enemy agent like the fish people in that TNG episode that Lwaxana exposed have spike the punch bowl or poisoned them? That would have at least been logical. I think the writers were drunk or high when they wrote this.

But I did enjoy Una singing Total Eclipse of the Heart in Klingon. The only bright spot. Words cannot express how much I hated the rest of this episode.

still star trek snw is by far the best and real trek done in this era. I wonder what will be any new sreies. i hope not something awful like starfleet academy

"still star trek snw is by far the best and real trek done in this era."

Congrats, SNW, you're the smallest turd in the septic tank.

The comments here vs. the ones on the subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/StrangeNewWorlds/comments/1vgmyfh/episode_discussion_403_human_best_friend/) or the one on the AVClub (https://www.avclub.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-recap-season-4-episode-3-human-best-friend) make it pretty clear that there's a segment of the audience who enjoys this drek just fine. Which leads me to think like Spock: Fascinating.

"Writer 7: Isn't this going to be really stupid?" LMAO!!

I think all the writers' rooms for all the Kurtzman Trek shows are like this every week.

@ Queen and Lanos: Pike is bad, too laid back and "not the kind of captain Spock would hazard his career for", but he's not the worst. Capt. Ake on SFA is the absoilute worst not-captain in Starfleet. I think it's becasue the Kurtzman team of writers are a) bad writers b) don't know Star Trek well and therefore cannot write a Starfleet captain that acts like a Starfleet Captain.

Well, one bright spot: no Pelia in this episode.

Reminds me of the pleasure planet on Farscapes scratch and sniff episode. That was around 2000 and damn brilliant... similar waking up intoxicated and retracing steps and the overall plot was fun with some disturbing menacing and funny villains to boot and a plot that ties together and even Pilot throws everyone out for reciting a story where everyone is an Unreliable Narrator.
This doesnt sound fun or pleasant.

@Sung
"The comments here vs. the ones on the subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/StrangeNewWorlds/comments/1vgmyfh/episode_discussion_403_human_best_friend/) or the one on the AVClub (https://www.avclub.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-recap-season-4-episode-3-human-best-friend) make it pretty clear that there's a segment of the audience who enjoys this drek just fine. Which leads me to think like Spock: Fascinating."

I think most people, certainly in the mainstream, don't think critically about Star Trek as people here do here in this forum. But we are only critical of it because we love it so much. I WANT good, brilliant episodes, but I will point it out when they're not. I go into each new SNW episode with intent of having a good time, I'm not looking for issues. Also most people in the mainstream are not aware of the history of Trek and vast majority of them did not watch TOS, for example, so their points of comparison are very limited.

@Kyle
"Queen and Lanos: : Pike is bad, too laid back and "not the kind of captain Spock would hazard his career for", but he's not the worst. Capt. Ake on SFA is the absolute worst not-captain in Starfleet."

I did not watch Starfleet Academy :-)))

"Well, one bright spot: no Pelia in this episode."

And she wasn't on the last one as well! I think they heard us. :-)

By the way, I noticed that the Vulcan cadet A'sha, introduced in much fanfare in the first episode of the season, is nowhere to be seen three episodes in. I guess she's part of the Beta crew? the Gamma crew? The "we forgot about them" crew?

Still just bewildered over here, thinking about that 10 minutes I spent watching this idiocy.

Like, what the fuck.
You spent money on this. You hired extras. You paid scriptwriters. You dressed people in costumes. You did effects. You rehearsed scenes. You did lighting. You did blocking. You did foley. You did editing. You spent money on all these things.

Why, why, why, at no point, did anyone say, “This story is useless, worthless, annoying and a waste of the viewer’s time?”

I stuck with Star Trek because I like stories that aren’t set in some magical realm and amount to more than just basically “Hero wins,” stories where there was some thinking to do, like the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling would also have shut this stupid episode off, I swear. He certainly wouldn’t have green lit it.

There is no intellectual substance to it.

(That is, it’s dumb.)

@Lynos:
'By the way, I noticed that the Vulcan cadet A'sha, introduced in much fanfare in the first episode of the season, is nowhere to be seen three episodes in.'

A peculiarity of NuTrek is the continuous introduction of more and more unnecessary supplementary characters. The intention seems to be to have them act as disposable sparring partners for some hamfisted character aspect within the main cast (think Beto/Ortegas, Korby/'Chapel'*, Batel/Pike), but the writers soon lose interest.

(*Yes, I'm fully aware the Korby/Chapel dynamic is from TOS but it's re-purposed significantly here and bears only a nominal relatonship to the original.)

@Lynos
"By the way, I noticed that the Vulcan cadet A'sha, introduced in much fanfare in the first episode of the season, is nowhere to be seen three episodes in."

She might appear later in the season and gets sacrificed and we are supposed to care about her, like that possessed nurse last season.

The whole tough girl thing with La’an and Ortegas is getting old and tired. I am not sure what is going on or trying to be accomplished with that character trait. After four seasons, let’s put that to rest.

Woman Star Trek roles can be tough and it not be their whole personality as a character, see: Kira, Dax, Yar and Una.

I did think some parts of this episode were good or funny. Such as:
- Pikes tattoo
- Una’s singing
- The plant mind meld
- Uhura’s contribution

Wow, I don’t always agree with Jammer, but rarely do I disagree this much. This is the weakest episode of season 4 for sure, but still better than most of season 3 and miles better than dreck like Four and a Half Vulcans, Subspace Rhapsody, and The Elysian Kingdom.

Why can’t they simply tell a STORY?

This may be the worst episode of nuTrek’s era which serendipitously prompted Jammer’s best review ever. The review was 1000% better than the episode.

With this review I was half expecting someone to go “Actually, it’s going to be super easy, barely an inconvenience” at some point.

i read that SNW will be the last trek series at least for the immediate future. They are going for a movie which will not be in the abrams's verse and with noone from its cast. It will be in the future without any of the established characters. What it wii be i don't have a clue

I'm not watching any of these new series but I'm checking back here every week because I love reading all these pissed off comments. I should get the popcorn out next week. Highly entertaining stuff, the same can be said for Jammer's review of this ep. You can't beat a good bad review. Thanks for all the laughs at the expense of a show I'll never watch!

Enjoyed @Jammer's review! And enjoyed the episode - mostly because I enjoy spending time with these characters, and they were all fun drunks (except for Chapel).

That being said, an hour where everybody is high, and no one is fucking - I CALL BULLSHIT!

@Deep Space Mark, completely agree. It was an unfortunate direction they took with La'an. Tasha in The Naked Now would have been much better for her. Come to think of it, Deana, Beverly - all were super horny.

I suppose the sexiness is what allowed @Jammer to give Two Days and Two Nights (ENT) 3 whole stars! And Naked Now (TNG) two-and-a-half stars.

Oh what a difference decades & decades of shit trek does for one's disposition.

2 stars from me. Yes, I know, I've become something of a softie in my dotage.

@karatasiospa

It's going to be:
- the rest of SNW S4 (7 episodes remaining)

Then next year:
- Starfleet Academy's final season (10 episodes)
- SNW S5 (6 episodes)

I wouldn't get my hopes up for the new movie actually happening. A new Trek film has been mired in development hell for the last decade, cycling through several writers and scripts. Plus, it was commissioned before the Skydance acquisition, and the new leadership has given it little more than passing reference.

I quit NuTrek after SNW S2 (admittedly I watched the first 15 minutes of the Academy pilot before tapping out) and have no desire to watch the last dregs before they shut up shop.

I would be disappointed if the new management have Yet Another Go a cinematic venture that will more than likely underperform. The best option for Trek going forward is ... nothing. Indefinite hiatus that might led to permanent shelving of the IP is fine by me. We've been in a state of diminishing returns for two decades. Enough.

"Indefinite hiatus that might led to permanent shelving of the IP is fine by me."


There's nothing wrong with Star Trek except the people making the shows. The heart of Trek; exploration, adventure, morality, are timeless. You just need a show runner and a team of writers who understand that. I think if SNW hired the people who made Prodigy it would be a much better show.

I honestly think that an AI fed nothing but old Trek episodes and classic sci-fi novels would create a better product than what we're currently getting.

I didn't hate this episode like I worried I might, but it was too insubstantial to remember much about it a day after viewing. Like the other episodes this season, it felt like there was a good story buried in there somewhere, but you have to dig through a lot of fluff to find it. Maybe if this writing team had any clue how to self-edit they could find it.

1701 HAL: Well said.

@ Starman: There are bright spots and potential among Lower Decks, even SFA.

Over the years I have frequently rewatched TOS , the movies, TNG, DS9 and VOY and even ENT. I have even rewatched some of Lower Decks and enjoyed them, I don't see myself ever rewatching anything else from nu Trek. Except possibly the Sisko tribute episode from SFA. Even that had a lot of BS in it though. Trek can fire Kurtzman and get comptenet writers who know ST, but if they can't get it together at least there are the memories.

@Mal
"That being said, an hour where everybody is high, and no one is fucking - I CALL BULLSHIT!"

Lol. The new Trek shows are pretty sexless. With all their wokeness and inclusivity they rarely show anything more than a kiss. Not that the old Trek was a porn show, of course not, but Roddenberry was not only a brilliant futurist, he was also a horny guy, and TOS has plenty of skin and sexual innuendo. This became a little dated when TNG came around, but it still retained that DNA, especially in its early seasons. I remember in TNG's season 1 episode Justice there were people actually making out in the background. That was pretty exciting for little teenager me.
But many of the female characters in TNG and beyond remained sexy and very feminine. Deanna Troy, Seven of Nine. Heck, even Janeway was more feminine than most of the characters in the new shows. (Yes, Marina Sirtis will complain years later how they made her wear those outfits, but you can't deny she looked great in them and male viewers, which were probably the majority of viewership at the time, loved to tune in. Roddenberry knew what he was doing).

Star Trek is part Hard SF part space opera. Science Fiction in literature was traditionally loaded with sex with the understanding that sexuality is part of human condition. Strangely, though, the new Trek shows exist in a universe where sex is almost unheard of, and ironically, while the bridge crews are almost 100% made of women, you could replace almost all of them with men and it wouldn't matter. They are there to be equal to man, not to be women. Ortegas even looks like a man.

SNW in particular puts a lot of of emphasis on romance, but it's a very adolescent, immature type of romance, mostly concerning spock, the epitome of a frigid man if there ever was one. I still don't get the idea behind the Spock soap opera elements. Interestingly, there is an actual soap opera episode later in the season...

Anyway, I'm not surprised there was no hint of sex in the episode, it's not what these shows are concerned with. I hear Gen Z has a real issue with sexual relations. Maybe that's a a part of it?

So am I the only one that thought Spock mind melding with a plant and Ortegas as a cactus was completely and utterly stupid? A lot of you hated this episode but thought at least the plant parts were funny. I thought they were one more ingredient in the shit salad this episode was.

@ Lynos

There was a (very tame) sex scene in Starfleet Academy and the comments section here lost their shit over it as being "not Star Trek."

@Kyle:
'So am I the only one that thought Spock mind melding with a plant and Ortegas as a cactus was completely and utterly stupid? A lot of you hated this episode but thought at least the plant parts were funny. I thought they were one more ingredient in the shit salad this episode was.'

No, you're not the only one. I thought the former was idiotic (the 'mind meld' actually showed the 'thoughts' of the plant, so in NuTrek plants are sentient now, alongside all the mushroom drive teleporting nonsense), while the latter was just ridiculously childish.

Una singing 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' in Klingon was the only thing I 'liked' in the sense that I actually rolled my eyes and simply willed Rebecca Romijn to demolish the humiliation ritual they'd set up for her character. Which she did, as always.

@1701-HAL:
‘There's nothing wrong with Star Trek except the people making the shows.’

@Kyle:
‘Over the years I have frequently rewatched TOS , the movies, TNG, DS9 and VOY and even ENT. I have even rewatched some of Lower Decks and enjoyed them, I don't see myself ever rewatching anything else from nu Trek.’

It was baffling to me to see that ‘Human Best Friend’ was written by Kathryn ‘T’Lyn’ Lyn, who also wrote probably the best Trek episode of the last twenty years (‘wej Duj’). Now, it may be the case that this week’s episode was a messy group effort and it simply was her turn on the roster to get the credit (or, rather, take the blame).

There are only a tiny handful of NuTrek episodes that hold up to a re-watch: ‘wej Duj’ and ‘Those Old Scientists’ count as quintessential Trek full stop. Prodigy was quite good in places, too, but I struggled with not being in the target audience and never finished it, and it’s no longer available where I live.

Aside from these honourable exceptions, it’s no exaggeration to say that NuTrek has been an disastrous wasted opportunity that has done more harm than good to the franchise. The fault lies squarely with the writers and producers who couldn’t restrain their compulsions to write quirk chungus meta sub-Marvel dreck that simply regurgitated every film and show they watched growing up. Whole scenes are lifted again and again from other franchises, quite shamelessly. It’s shocking.

Ooohh, a high-concept Jammer review. Been a while since we got one of those.

https://www.jammersreviews.com/st-snw/s4/human-best-friend.php#comment-127985

The Phylosians, a sentient plant species, appeared in The Animated Series. They were also mentioned in Lower Decks.

@Gregory:
'The Phylosians, a sentient plant species, appeared in The Animated Series. They were also mentioned in Lower Decks.'

This is one of the more curious aspects of NuTrek: they don't care about broad brush stroke continuity, but then show they're (apparently) acutely aware of minor memberberries like this.

One requires watching hours of television and the other means only having to skim Memory Alpha.

I had to laugh immediately at Jammer pulling out the Voyager style review on this one.

I didn't hate it, but this is just one of those episodes that might sit as filler in a 26 episode season but really has no place in a series that gets 10 episodes a season max.

How does this compare to ‘Fascination’ from DS9? It seems like a similar.

I used to dislike ‘Fascination’ but after rewatching recently I actually find the comedy quite good. But that was also a 26 episode season with heavy hitters like The Search I&II, Second Skin, Defiant, Destiny, Visionary, Past Tense I&II, Improbable Cause/The Die Is Cast, and The Adversary.

Old school Trek had its silly episodes but also knew when to take things seriously.

@Jeffrey's Tube

"There was a (very tame) sex scene in Starfleet Academy and the comments section here lost their shit over it as being "not Star Trek.""

I didn't watch STA so I can't comment directly. I'll just say that traditionally Star Trek was always mostly a PG show, so the sexual elements were always not full blown but there in the background. I think having an actual sex scene in any of the old Trek would've been extremely odd. However plenty of sex went off-camera. I remember the TNG episode where Riker is forced to have (off screen) sex with an alien woman to get her help. Yeah, that was wild.

Having said that, the new era of Trek is (was) either going for a different democratic, or what was considered PG is not PG anymore. The new shows upped the ante on graphic gore and violence. They might as well follow that up with sex. Actually I wish they did. If you're deviating from the franchise's tone to that degree, just go for it.

@Lynos

"I remember the TNG episode where Riker is forced to have (off screen) sex with an alien woman to get her help. Yeah, that was wild."

No, say what it really was. He was assaulted. She used her power and the threat of further taking away his freedom to extract what she wanted from him.

I’m not sure what I just watched. Or why it got made.

You have the Star Trek universe and a great cast and you can make anything you want with it. But you only have a limited amount of episodes to make.

And this is what you do with it?

Baffled.

What you believe is the target group of SNW is supposed to be according to its creators?
I am trying to understand how they come up with their seasons, or the checklists that lead to their scripts.

The lowest common denominator. Like almost all media these days. Bland sparkly stuff that will appeal to the greatest number of people while making sure no one is offended or made to feel dumb. The Disney model in other words.

@Lynos, totally agree. Star Trek has always had a sensual side, long past TOS. Take this small piece of wisdom from The Sisko,

SISKO: What's the problem?
ODO: The manner in which she expresses her gratitude. To be honest, Commander, she seems interested in me.
SISKO: What's wrong with that?
ODO: She's extremely aggressive.
SISKO: I see. So, she's after you.
ODO: Like a Wanoni tracehound.
SISKO: Have you thought of letting her catch you?
ODO: Sir?
SISKO: A little romance, Odo.

As @Jeffrey's Tube reminds us, probably one of the most consequential sex scenes in Trek was this season in Star Fleet Academy, "Come, Let's Away" (which @Jammer gave 3 stars!). When Scotty showed up in the Academy mascot costume from STA, I actually hoped TPTB were taking SNW in a similar sexy direction. Alas...

@1701-HAL hit the nail on its head. Star Trek is a period piece. Stop trying to make it contemporary. Prodigy was actually a modern outing that allowed the soul of Trek to shine through. That means Trek's soul is still in there. Somewhere.

Let's get back to the basics. Spock and Kirk and La'an would have been the greatest Ménage à Troi ever ;)


https://youtu.be/7ZWaWrvJ7nA

So far, SNW's attempts at being "contemporary" include remakes of Freaky Friday (1976/2003) and Aliens (1986)/Predator(1987) in Season One, and then, this season, Event Horizon (1987) and Dude, Where's My Car (2002). I'm guessing that there are far more in between that I've blocked out.

Sure, one could argue that these are classic tropes, but…

I have accepted the fact that all SNW episodes are going to be genre/gimmick episodes. I don't love the idea, but it can be done well. This is not an example of "done well."

@The Queen "I'm having a hard time seeing in this Pike a man that Spock would hazard his career for." I agree, one of the things that most annoys me about SNW seasons 3-4 is how they treat Pike.

I have never seen The Hangover movies but I have to assume that they have more narrative cohesion than this mess. The premise of Ortegas and Scotty having no memory of recent events and having to work together to retrace their steps could have been okay. But SNW writers seem to lack faith in their own premise (which should cause them to reexamine their idea but somehow doesn't), leading to them just throwing everything plus a random bomb into the plot in ways that make absolutely no sense. Just make the episode about them losing the shuttle and having to track it down.

Spock apologizing for his drunken state, Ortegas as a cactus, and Una's rendition of Klingon power ballads were all fun. The Klingon karaoke was even great. So that's about 3 minutes of good content.

Ortegas and Scotty becoming friends by confessing their insecurity is fine. The rest of the character work is horrible. Kirk randomly being there is so nonsensical Spock didn't even believe it. Also, he's a terrible friend to not stop Spock from sharing things that he obviously did not intend to share. The less said about Pike's actions in this episode the better. And Chapel is so wound up she shattered a glass - something that does not happen outside of tv tropes - but no curiosity about what that is. An aggressive bingo game and she'll be fine I guess.

I like competence in my Star Trek, competent characters and competent writers. Here we have neither. 1/2 stars just for Rebecca Romijn's efforts.

We've reached the point where having 23rd Century Starfleet officers singing karaoke versions of 1980s pop songs is the highlight of the episode.

I thought this season was supposed to curb the excesses of last season, not double down. I wait for the plot summary here before I even watch. Thank you all for saving me the trouble watching.

@Bok R'Mor

@Gregory:
"'The Phylosians, a sentient plant species, appeared in The Animated Series. They were also mentioned in Lower Decks.'

This is one of the more curious aspects of NuTrek: they don't care about broad brush stroke continuity, but then show they're (apparently) acutely aware of minor memberberries like this."


To follow up on this. I could obviously be wrong and there enough wrong with this season and last such that you can't blame any one thing. But I think this reeks of lazy AI usage. If you ask AI if there are any references to intelligent plant life in Star Trek, it will likely dutifully point you to these examples, and you can excitedly add it to the script and say, "Hey, a two-fer! A funny plant mind-meld and a deep dive member-berry that is canon! Fans will love it!" All without any context or understanding.

And it strikes me that so much of the bad writing which I have been mostly attributing to the writers not understanding Star Trek could equally work with "The AI has access to 100% of the historical scripts, but no real understanding of any of it, and they asked it to flesh out this scene of the script and give it some callback or continuity tie-in to previous Trek iterations."

I might just be hating on AI without basis and the writers are just that clueless. But it would explain some of the "missing the forest for the trees" style of continuity that we've seen recently.

Is there anyone watching TV today who has the experience and intelligence to understand the nuance of a 1960's Star Trek character singing a 1980's pop ballad in an alien language made in the 1970's that would also be dumb and limited enough to enjoy bad 1990's stoner comedy meets 2020's zoomer party aesthetics?

Who was this for?

Also, the aliens at the end reminded me of creatures from The Orville, a comedy show that stayed in its lane and managed to hit the high drama Star Trek goal more times than Strange New Worlds, veering wildly from genre to genre, ever hit a comedic chuckle. I miss it.

That's all. I miss The Orville.

- TOY

"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard." And apparently something that Star Trek writers have difficulty mastering. While both Hangover movies were formulaic, they had something this episode sorely misses - a sense that the comedy is about the characters, not at the expense of the characters. We have a setup that allows the characters to get blackout drunk, removing their inhibitions. Great. But what do we get? Just hijinks. And not particularly interesting hijinks either. Ortegas and Scotty don't like each other, so they end up having to work together. (At least they don't end up in bed together). And they bond over their similar upbringings. Spock gets talkative and starts seeing everyone as plants. Which, "Huh?" Uhura gets all spacey and new-agey. Pike gets very laid back and buys multiple tattoos? M'Benga hangs out behind the bar. Why? I kind of like Una really getting into the karoke, because it at least seems like something she might do. And the plot doesn't so much drive the action as run it off the rails. This are hard-headed, sensitive aliens who seem straight out of the Enterprise playbook. And there's a bomb planted, because.... OK, I still have no idea why. I almost wish we had stayed with the drunk crew longer. At least then, we would have the lesson about a relaxed and rested crew being better on their mission. Instead of here, where they just drunkenly stumble through it. Finally, a word about Scotty. When he was cast in the role, Simon Pegg said that he loved watching Star Trek and was excited to play Scotty. But as a Scotsman, he always felt that James Doohan's accent sounded like "a Pakistani having a stroke." He wanted to bring a more authentic accent to the role. Pegg gave us that, but toned down a little. Martin Quinn goes full Scotsman and, well, it is a bit much here.

Boy, this was bad. There were a few jokes here and there that made me laugh, but most of the episode was just cringe and secondhand embarrassment-inducing. I enjoyed the Ortegas-Scotty arc, but it was too little to redeem this flop.

On the bright side, Jammer's review was hilarious. I can totally see this kind of dialogue taking place in the writers' room.

Quite pointless and over-the-top, although I did find it pretty entertaining in a ridiculous kind of way. When I watched this for a second time with friends I was definitely less impressed, but Una singing 80’s songs in Klingon is still rad and there were some fun laughs. It does feel like somewhat of a waste considering how few episodes of SNW we have left, although I don’t really get the intense objections. This episode just seems silly and inconsequential. Maybe I’m just getting used to all the gimmicky-ness of this show. Hoping for something with more substance next time.

Basically, you can't relax unless you're drunk or stoned. And you're with thousands of other people who are also drunk or stoned. Cute.

And whether La'An is drunk, hallucinating, or 'not under the influence' as we see in the following episode the point has hammered to death. Where is the increased intelligence, or cunning, that comes along with being an augment?

Super fun episode, really enjoyed.

Some people just have zero sense of humour.

Well, I can't say "Best Human Friend" is great. Or even good. But it was OK and had its moments.

Objectively and critically, "The Griffin" was probably better. But I couldn't handle the horror or the tedium of it and quit about halfway through.

At least I was entertained some with this one. But I am disappointed. S1 held such promise.

@Jeffery's Tube: "Who is it again who has the massive hate boner for The Elysian Kingdom? Go on, explain to me why that episode is worse than this one. Make sure to use not less than six paragraphs, okay?"

LOL, that was me. But the aggressive way you phrase this seems to imply that I'm like Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen and inhabit all time from the past to the future and the present simultaneously, like you're outraged that I would have said The Elysian Kingdom was the series' worst episode, when this episode didn't exist yet. 🧐

FWIW, yes: this is a bad episode. But at least the explanation for the goofy behavior was more coherent than in TEK (or for that matter in other annoyingly goofy episodes like "Subspace Rhapsody"). The production values were better: it didn't look like a substandard middle school production. And it didn't just blatantly and quickly jettison a plot and character the writers were clearly no longer interested in.

Although I am often a contrarian, my low opinion of TEK does not qualify as such. Less than two weeks ago, there had yet to be an episode rated lower than TEK on IMDb. Now there are two, a pretty bad sign for the current state of the series.

Not coming across as still bitter about the VOY script submissions being rejected 25 years ago at all there, Jammer.

My lovely wife and I have just finished a TNG rewatch--every minute of every episode. The one where Beverly screws a ghost. The one where Riker hallucinates a clip show.

We turned "Human Best Friend" off with twenty minutes to go.

SMH... A psychedelic vacation planet. Chapel playing bingo w/ elves. Una singing Total Eclipse of the Heart in some strange language. Spock mind-melds w/ a plant. Scotty and Erica are jealous of each other... yawn... Kirk was conveniently on board; Spock, thinking he's hallucinating, bears his soul. And the aliens loved the shuttle explosion... That was such a struggle to watch. I really don't understand what this show's 83 executive producers are trying to accomplish. Only 10 episodes, and they waste one with this ridiculous story... I want that 47 minutes back!!

This was the dumbest and biggest waste of an episode- EVER
Just another SNW gimmick like the dumb Rhapsody episode

Theres no way on earth that Starfleet would ever allow its entire senior staff to willingly go down to a planet and become extremely inebriated for many days at a time- even on shore leave. What if there was an emergency?
What if they were the closest ship during a major disaster or an attack?

Letting the shuttle get damaged? No communicators for them all??

Its ridiculous. SNW is really crappy now. Thank god Kurtzman Trek is finished now so we can get back to the non woke- non gimmick roots.

Long time reader, first time messenger

Just watched this one and man, it was rough. Honestly, the worst episode of Strange New Worlds that I have seen so far. What were the writers even thinking?!

I like stupid stuff - Airplane! and the Naked Gun Films are some of my all time faves, but this episode just wasn’t funny at all. It was trying so hard too, but it was just terrible.

You were generous giving it 1 star. I would give it a 0

You ever see National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993), Roy? Very much in the vein of those movies. And it has Shatner and Tim Curry (r.i.p.) in it!

Two and a half stars for me. This is a rather pointless fusion of Shore Leave with The Naked Time / The Naked Now, lacking any peril or plot tension that might make it memorable. It's also pretty watchable -- the Trek equivalent of cotton candy -- and delivers the usual fun opportunity to watch talented actors (except for James Carrey, the human cardboard we are supposed to accept as Kirk) let their hair down. Some of the actors really continue to have a nice chemistry together.

That said, the ongoing stylistic whiplash -- ie from last week's trashy horror outing to this -- and general lack of depth/texture to the stories continues to leave me fervently hoping for this show's cancellation. Really not a fan of it. And may God protect us from the horrific possibility of Paul Wesley continuing as Kirk in a spinoff reboot of TOS. My brain hurts just thinking of it.

Trash......

I will say though, Una singing Total Eclipse of the Heart in Klingon gibberish was one decent highlight.

And Kirk... so he realizes Spock thinks he is a hallucionation; plays along with it, and listens to all of his deepest and darkest thoughts. That is a legitimately awful violation of someone's privacy and trust; with complete deception. They played this like no big deal....