“Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass”

I saw snippets of this episode. It didn't interest me as a long-time fan of the franchise. I hope that some of you got some enjoyment out of it.

I’m sure some people are going to complain about this one incessantly, but like last week I thought the ultimate point of the episode worked beyond the gimmick of it all. Whether or not that is the same for others depends entirely on how effective that 10 minutes of “New Life and New Civilizations” was for the respective individual. Further proof that if they had wanted to do an inner light episode last year they should have just done it.

Relatively to this season, this episode was a lot better than episodes 3-5 for me, but not up to par with Valles Marineris or Off-Hour.

3 stars carried entirely by Anson Mount.

Hmm. Though I didn't necessarily like the conceit at play here, I liked what it brought for the characters. This feels like what Captain Picard needed after 'The Inner Light", but didn't get, or refused.

Also, I've never had anything but the highest respect for Anson Mount's acting as Pike, but the last 30 seconds of the episode... His acting did NOT work for me. Jarringly so.

Genuinely.

What the hell are we doing?

Can we hire some actual Sci-Fi writers who don't do incessant gimmick episodes.

Seriously, have them mediate a border dispute on glub shito 4 and set 90% of the episode on standing sets.

This just isn't star trek.

“This just isn’t star trek.”

In this episodes case in particular… this statement doesn’t hold up to even a modicum of scrutiny. Godlike being messing with the Enterprise and forcing the Captain to confront deep personal regret/beliefs is the basis of numerous Star Trek episodes, even some outstanding ones.

Also nearly 100% of this episode took place on standing sets, it was SNW’s most bottle-episode bottle-episode yet.

My first reaction was, "I HATE THIS." However, having Pike be aware of what was going on and having at least a little bit of agency softened my attitude. It was further softened by the fact that it addressed issues certain crew members were having which had already been hinted at (and the big hint for La'an).

Nevertheless, it gave us nothing new, and although these are all good actors there was nothing standout to point to except, as voxymandias said, Mount's terrible last scene. IMO Ethan Peck was unconvincing as Sybok (but the whole character of Sybok never convinced me anyway). And godlike beings were one of the worst parts of the early Trek shows, even the ones with better plots than this. Because this didn't even have a plot.

Not rewatchable. Waste of time.

They definitely do too many gimmick parody/homage episodes on this show. It should be sprinkled in occasionally rather than nearly every episode. But I did start chuckling at the soap opera tropes right away, which was a promising beginning compared to other episodes where they were attempting parody but it fell flat.

Unfortunately, in this episode the gag still wore out its welcome. And then even after this soap opera part was over, it descended into bathos.

Two stars, plus an extra half star for the silly credits at the end.

The concept is broadly star trek - the execution of the episode isn't. This show tries so hard to be every other genre show apart from star trek. It's like the writers and producers are embarrassed to be making trek.

Everything is done with a wink and a nod to the audience, is doesn't feel authentic.

If people enjoy it, that's fine. I'm happy for them. But overall I'm not optimistic for the future of this franchise.

I didn’t even realize there was a post credits until it was pointed out here. Begs the question on whether or not on why it’s even there. Shouldn’t it have been the opening credits this week? It’s like they’re pulling their punches on the gimmicks despite committing to doing a bunch of gimmicks this year.

The final episode of SNW should have every gimmick they have ever done all rolled into one. A black & white musical soap opera with lots of gore and muppets. And a ticking clock that starts at 66 million BC to really ramp up the tension.

“The concept is broadly Star Trek - the execution of the episode isn’t”

This is moving the goal posts into heavily unquantifiable territory. The premise of the episode is objectively Star Trek. The execution of most of TNG’s first season is horrendous television, but that doesn’t mean it’s not Star Trek either. The heart of the episode, to explore the human condition through Pike’s grieving of a lifetime he lived with Batel, is in the right place.

It IS a shame once again that this idea is trapped within a gimmick when we are in a season that has been non stop gimmicks for most of it, even during its better episodes. Out of the box episodes don’t hit as hard when you’re spending all of our time outside of the box.

Pretty good for what it is. Yeah, I would rather have had something else. But at least this one, regardless of the framing device, wasn't about hijinks.

Best use of Pike in a long time.

If this episode were in the middle of a long season of more substantial episodes it might even be looked back on fondly by fans, once the entire series has been handed over to posterity. I guess that could still happen because memory is a funny thing. But yeah, I'm really jonesing for some more substantial episodes right about now.

. . .

So there's a counselor aboard the ship during the 23rd century? I'm not sure how I feel about that. I don't know how much it fits with the pioneer ethos. On the other hand, once humans start making long space voyages in real life, there absolutely will be some kind of mental health officer on board. There will need to be.

But it does feel like this was one of the things that delineated the 23rd century from the more advanced, more seasoned 24th.

. . .

The show probably isn't going to get back around to Sybok in any other form due to its truncated run. That's kind of a bummer. There could have been potential there.

Another thing that is killing this show, imo, is the number of comedy episodes they're doing. It's got to be something like 10 or 12 episodes by the end of the season, right? A quarter or more of the entire series. I doubt TNG did 10 straight comedy stories in 170 episodes. I think TOS did about 4. Enterprise, maybe a half dozen.

With some notable exceptions, I don't think Trek does comedy very well. Humorous moments, sure, but not entire episodes. SNW is carrying on that tradition. Imagine if TNG had done 40 or 50 episodes like A Fistful of Datas. That's basically what SNW is doing.

There are SO many gimmick episodes and this is because they want their audience to keep watching. They don't want to bore them. And they're also trying to get a younger audience watching. But it doesn't entirely work.

Someone online mentioned they went to a recent Star Trek con and everyone there was over 50! ST is dying because younger people aren't interested, yet the show runners are aiming the stories at them.

"So there's a counselor aboard the ship during the 23rd century? "

I'm sure a lot of people will say "of course they have counselors on board. It's only logical" and I think that's true...but I still don't like it. I liked the fact that early TOS had a bit of a "frontier" feel.

I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. I'm a big fan of The Cage and I've always liked this scene with Pike and Dr. Boyce where Boyce comes in and "prescribes" some booze. Is it medical malpractice? Yeah. Is it a great scene that sets up their relationship and establishes Pike's state of mind? Also yes.

Dr. Boyce: A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he... turns his back on it and starts to wither away.

Pike: Now you're beginning to talk like a doctor, bartender.

Dr. Boyce: Take your choice. We both get the same two kinds of customers - the living... and the dying.



Now imagine how that scene would have played if it had been Troi instead of Boyce. That's what you're losing when you give a TOS prequel modern day sensibilities. Yeah, it might be more realistic, but it also isn't as good.

I wish we had a nuTrek show in which serious, intelligent, far-future scientists, explorers and diplomats work on a realistic, well-run space vessel, and face thought-provoking, unique and intelligently written problems or situations.

POike's Hair said: "Godlike being messing with the Enterprise and forcing the Captain to confront deep personal regret/beliefs is the basis of numerous Star Trek episodes..."

Yeah, but Crusher's world in "Remember Me" didn't shrink down to the set of "Sesame Street" or "The Young and the Restless".

Either way, the "aliens/anomaly/event induces a dream state/breakdown in a character so that the audience can literally explore the psychology of the character" is a giant cliche, and one which SNW has repeatedly resorted to. It is best, and more original nowadays, to explore Pike's psychology on the level of pure realist drama, with the scifi-plot-of-the-week running alongside or outside this.

IMO a good SNW example of this is "Children of the Comet". The "comet story" is about Pike's psychology, but it's not literal, and the audience is made to tease out the metaphorical parallels.

Also, Trelane should have been used in the puppet episode. Have him actually turn them into puppets, which would have also helped dodge that episode's "it's all a dream" climax (unless the season is working toward a thematic point or revelation with all these "dream episodes", which seems possible).

They have really f’d up this series the past 2 seasons. These gimmick episodes are stupid and a waste of what little time is left. The first 2 seasons were great. Why did they think we wanted this?

"ST is dying because younger people aren't interested, yet the show runners are aiming the stories at them"


Do young people want soap opera parodies? Do teenagers want to watch muppets? Do kids want to see Casablanca pastiches? I don't know who the show runners are aiming at. And that's the problem.

Talk about damning with faint praise, but this could have been so much worse. In a roundabout way, this wasn't unlike one of the many TNG Q episodes where his antics result in Picard learning an important lesson.

Hell, it wasn't even that different from the Prophets showing Sisko he hadn't moved on from Jennifer's death. It even helped further some of the ongoing plotlines, elevating this from yet another inconsequential gimmick episode.

Kudos on casting Deirdre Hall, who brought the necessary genre gravitas with her 50+ years experience acting on Days of our lives. Hard to believe she's already 78 years old, the magic of clean living, good lighting and a full team of hair and make-up professionals.

@ TOSdidittoo - SHHHHHHHHHH.

Test said: "Do young people want soap opera parodies? Do teenagers want to watch muppets? Do kids want to see Casablanca pastiches? I don't know who the show runners are aiming at. And that's the problem."

I think it's being aimed at dumb young people, and older Trek fans who will watch anything Trek. There's some kind of market triangulation going on.

So you get weird grotesqueries like Scotty and Kirk, who'd appeal to older generations familiar with these legacy characters, now acting like kids.

Scotty, for example, behaves like a teen in this show, but is supposed to be 40 years old or slightly younger. Kirk too doesn't behave like a seasoned guy who has already lived through the events of "Obsession" and the Kodos massacre. And Spock's already been in Starfleet for six years before "SNW", yet he still acts like a horny frat Vulcan.

I haven't seen the episode yet, but I am curious as to how well the soap parody was done. Are there any soap fans here that can give it a review?

I really don't know how to rate this, because the level of quality difference between the bulk of the episode and the final few scenes was just vast.

The beginning section went on too long. I was willing to tolerate the soap opera conceit at the length of an SNL short, but it dragged across 30-ish minutes. Pike being unaffected made the scenes with him initially more interesting, but his dogged insistence in not even trying to play along (even after Trelane made it clear what the ramifications might be if he failed) was so cringe-inducing that I briefly stopped watching before getting up the nerve to do it again. Do you have rocks in your head, Pike?

The scenes with the other characters (they don't amount to B plots here) are weightless. Yeah, there's underlying feelings in some of them - M'Benga keeps considering wanting to leave the ship, Uhura has daddy issues, La'an's complicated feelings regarding her breakup with Spock, etc. - but we knew within the narrative by this point that all the drama was contrived by Trelane, thus it was the equivalent to AI slop - just scenes for the sake of scenes, with no real stakes to them.

And then Pike sees Juliet's name, goes back to his quarters, and I start flat-out bawling. The episode fixes the biggest flaw in the "Inner Light" scene from New Life and New Civilizations. I remarked at that time that Batel seemed like a monster to me because she not only let Pike live a fake life with her, but created a fake daughter, and if I were in Pike's shoes, I'd be broken for the rest of my life - unable to even grieve a child who technically didn't exist. Turns out the writers figured this out, and yes, Pike is broken by it as well, and has just been hiding it. Unfortunately, Mount's acting isn't quite up to chops in that last scene with the therapist, but I'm willing to overlook this. Though the final drama - not just in Pike's scene, but between Spock and La'an - having been juxtaposed within a "soap opera" makes it feel a little faker than it otherwise would've, because immersion has already been broken.

The back portion of the episode saves the interminable beginning. But I can't help but think why couldn't they have found a better episode conceit to stick this into? There are so many ways they could've made Juliet "real" again other than tacking it onto the end of this shit.

Then again, there just wasn't enough material here to fill out an episode. It was a 15 minute skit, blown out to twice the length, with a couple of great scenes tacked on at the end.

@Norvo - The Q episodes had John de Lancie and Patrick Stewart, not to mention better writing. The DS9 episodes had Avery Brooks. Anson Mount is good, and he was good in this, but he's not on their level. Maybe in "Through the Valley of Shadows." But the SNW writers have taken away any gravitas Pike may have had, and it undercuts anything they might have tried to achieve here. Yes, this is the best Pike we've seen in a long time, but it's such a low bar. Keep this Pike and give us a real story, and I'd be a lot happier.

I really dunno what I would do if I met the SNW writers, I would definitely scream at them all of the Greek swearing phrases I know. And I only scream when a huge r0ach is flying towards me.
I do not care what the message of the episode is, when it is delivered in such an idiotic and unoriginal way.
I do not care if the actors are having fun (do they?).
I do not even think I care about the characters anymore. Should I be moved at Pike's last scene? well I wasn't..
And, I am really sorry to say this, but at this point I find myself starting not to care about Star Trek when I have to go through the torture of watching 7-8 episodes of bad uninspired TV just to enjoy 2 or so (and most of the good ones are not even a 4*) just because this is the only Star Trek we have (and probably the last).

And if those IDIOTS want to gain new audience, maybe they should hire better writers. If they really aim to teens or young adults (lol) then they should start a series of Tik Tok webisodes.
But I think their only purpose is our acceptance. You know the 5 stages of grief?
"It is dead Jim...".

As to the question of why they're doing these gimmick/homage episodes - it's not to attract new viewers.

We're balls deep in Season 4, guys. No shows attract new viewers at this point, they only alienate existing viewers.

The reason they're doing these episode is because the EPs/writers want to, and the studio let them. Nothing less, and nothing more.

"I think it's being aimed at dumb young people, and older Trek fans who will watch anything Trek. There's some kind of market triangulation going on."


I had a bigger thing written up but the site ate it. That's the deal with the "test" post.

One of the questions I asked was "What does modern Trek do well?" It's not smart enough for the nerds, it's too dorky for the cool kids, when it tries to be hip it's with dated references, it seems to be unsexy on purpose, the action scenes are adequate but nothing more, and it's mysteries almost never end satisfactorily. There is no area where these shows excel so why would anyone new tune in? As you said, the only audience is the people who have made Trek a part of their identity.



Imo, the Trek formula should be: smart enough for the smart kids, enough action to catch the eye of the average person, and a bit of sex to appeal to, well, everyone, whether they admit it or not. And, as with all good shows, you also need good scripts, a likeable cast, and a show runner who knows wtf he's doing.

Trek might never be a cultural phenomenon again because there's so much competition, but if you have the elements I listed above, I think you will have an audience. And on a planet of 8 billion people it will not be a small one.

I want the next era of Trek shows to be like the DS9 era with better fx, but the writing comes first.

One more point about SC's opinion that modern Trek is aimed at disinterested young people.

The ironic thing, to me, is that the best written modern Trek show, Prodigy, was the one specifically aimed at the youngest audience. I think it was too complex for the Nickelodeon audience while simultaneously being dismissed by traditional fans as "only" a kid's show. I think it being neither fish nor fowl doomed the show. I think if it had been retooled (and marketed) as an adult show about teenagers it could have been a hit.

"but the writing comes first."

That is the most important thing, I agree. You would also need great casting if you were going to replicate the quality of DS9.

I don't think the hypothetical next series has to be like DS9 to be good though. When the writing was good all of the old Trek shows worked.

In a perfect world we would have a show that handles characterization as well as DS9, had the big ideas of TNG, the chemistry of the cast of TOS, a premise as intriguing Voyager's, and the special effects and stunt work of Enterprise. Since that's impossible, I'd happily settle for great writing and mid quality everything else.

The writing is a global issue not just for Star Trek.
Maybe that is the main problem, too many series not enough decent writers and/or showrunners.
In 2025 there were more than 1100 scripted series produced only in US.
And 490 of them were new.
There are simply not enough decent (not good) writers for all this demand.
To compare, In 1993, DS9's first year, there were about 150 to 200 scripted series in total (although Google AI is not 100% sure).

I think that's an excellent point, Bgt. I think that (ridiculously large) number of shows might be misleading to an extent though. One, because many shows only have half or even a third as many episodes per season as they did back then. And, two, just as with how streaming has made tv more profitable by making shows globally accessable, I would think that the Internet has made the pool of available writers much larger. Probably no where near enough to offset the demand for quality writers though.

I would also think that the cultural impact that Star Trek has had would lead some bigger name writers to want to contribute to the show, but that really doesn't seem to be the case. Oddly enough, you see more "name" writers going from TV and movies to comic books than you do Trek.

Time Travellers in Space
Ghost Stories in Space
Casabalanca in Space
24 in space
now Days of our Lives...in space

remember when we had star trek in space? i dont either. Time for the 10th rewatch of TNG. Im done with this series. good luck to you all.

My understanding of how modern writer's rooms work is that instead of being linear, they work simultaneously. That is to say, the room convenes (in person or virtually) to break the entire season. They come up with ideas for each episode, and then pass out these ideas to a single writer to work on a rough draft, later polished by one or more additional writers.

I have no idea how to rate these things anymore. I used to watch Days of Our Lives for a while (when Marlena was possessed, lol) so I got the in-jokes, but is this really what Star Trek has become?

Like others, I agree that this ended really well, but was THIS the best path to get there? The writers do seem to be in love with the gimmicks this season. And apparently, filming for Season 5 is already complete, so no chance to consider reviews and feedback before proceeding. Sigh.

I guess they are trying to appeal to some subset of Trek fans who like this stuff? I admit, I didn't despise it, but it felt so pointless. I really like all the characters of Strange New Worlds, but what they are doing with them feels so wasteful. There's nothing here that comes close to such as Inner Light or Tuvix. I don't think we'll be discussing the nuances of the puppet episode in 20 years. Sigh again.

Shout outs--Deirdre Hall was terrific, I enjoyed seeing her, and I was glad she wasn't possessed. She did a great job and I completely believed her as a Star Fleet counselor.

Melissa Navia did a FANTASTIC Drake Hogestyn eyebrow, and got a belly laugh out of me.

FWIW, guys, we only have one more gimmick this season (Episode 9, which will be another fantasy outing).

Reportedly, next season is one horror episode, one comedy, and four normal Trek episodes. So they are going to pull back.

"My understanding of how modern writer's rooms work is that instead of being linear, they work simultaneously"


If this is how they do it then why the heck can't they get the season long "mystery box" plots right on the other modern Trek shows? The wheel spinning, the back tracking, the plot holes -does no one in the room notice these things?

"I guess they are trying to appeal to some subset of Trek fans who like this stuff"

Oh, yeah. My favorite genre is musical sci-fi horror comedy fairy tale dino fightin' Muppet film noir soap opera pastiches. Glad to see someone finally making a show for ME.

@ Trent,

If you're talking about serialized shows, the way it typically works is they figure out the first/last episode, and then try and write the middle of the season later. Which is part of why showrunners usually have story/writing credits for the first/last episodes.

This obviously has big drawbacks. No one writes books like this, which by and large are written/revised in a linear fashion. But the biggest issue is there's then the entire middle of the season needs to be filled in with slow-walked reveals and random sideplots. Which is why it's so typical for serialized modern TV to have a good opening, a badly-paced middle, and a frantic finale.

The exception, of course, is where TV is just adapted from books. Then long-form storytelling can actually pay off. But outside of this - particularly in genre fiction? Can you think of many good examples?

"Which is why it's so typical for serialized modern TV to have a good opening, a badly-paced middle, and a frantic finale."


Interesting. That explains a lot. What a stupid way of doing things. But, human curiosity being what it is, it's probably a successful business model as long as you only want to make money instead of art.

I generally wait for a show to end before to see if it's fans are outraged or not before I even begin a series. Been burned too many times in the past. It's been a real time saver, honestly.


P.E. I'm betting that SNW season 5 will be very Kirk, Spock, and McCoy heavy in the hopes of getting Year One green lighted. Will they do that to the detriment of the SNW crew? Probably, would be my guess. Maybe they can thread the needle.

Supposedly, we're only seeing McCoy (and Sulu) in the series finale, which suggests the main cast is going to still feature almost until the end.

@Karl Zimmerman

The two oft cited examples from recent years of prequel excellence are Better Call Saul and Andor, both of which I think are outstanding and give a pretty clear blueprint on how to tell a story within a larger story without sacrificing one for the other. Of course, one’s mileage may vary, but watching modern Trek shows lurch about in dreadful shallowness while other series manage to enhance their larger mythos is both frustrating and fascinating at the same time.

@ Idh2023,

Yeah, Andor is good, but considering that Disney+ Star Wars has had six animated and seven live-action series, I'd argue that's not a great win ratio.

I suppose you could argue that one is better than none, but Prodigy was a legitimately well-plotted serialized show. It's just that it was also a children's program. Still, light years ahead of what DIS, PIC, and SFA accomplished with season arcs.

"Prodigy was a legitimately well-plotted serialized show. "

I agree for the most part, but with the one exception being the second half of season one. I also think they did an excellent job with their character arcs considering it's a fairly large cast and a 20 minute runtime.


You really have to have a good show runner, don't you? Someone with a God's eye view who doesn't micromanage each episode but is there to both make sure all the pieces fit while also making sure the characters grow in a proper arc.

If this had been the first gimmick episode of the season, I think I would have loved it. The execution is MUCH better than much of what we've seen lately. Unfortunately, watching it today in the context of this season's cluster****, it's hard to enjoy.

Another gimmick episode? Another lightweight Trelane episode with comedic effects? Please tell me it ain’t so. The soap opera concept was bad, real bad. Absolutely did not work for me. Found it terrible and it was just about the whole episode. Cringe worthy bad.

As one who was moved by the 10 minutes or so of the Inner Light part in New Life and New Civilizations, it just wasn’t enough to save the preposterousness of the overall episode. Same here. The five minutes or so of Juliet emotionally reuniting with Pike or the crew now having to deal with repressed emotions just can’t save this wacky soap opera concept. Another misguided gimmick episode in a long list this season. Ideas like this should never have seen the light of day. Does SNW have a showrunner who the ability to say no?

I’m moving on to gimmick freedom. Is that next week?

@Karl Zimmerman

I totally agree that the losses far outstrip the wins for both modern Trek and Star Wars, which is difficult to understand. It seems to me these franchises would be easier to write for considering the wealth of already established universe building.

However, I’m focusing more on comparisons of the prequel concept rather than the full picture, and while Star Wars has had its own prequel catastrophes, the success of Andor(not saying one has to be a fan per se, but looking at it more as a successfully delivered piece of a larger story) makes the continued bumbling of SNW somewhat inexcusable, albeit mesmerizing in a train wreck like way.

At this point I think wishing for an episode like "Tuvix" or "Inner Light" is way too idealistic. I'd happily settle for something like "Disengage" from Picard or "What Are Little Girls Made of?" from TOS or "Prototype" from Voyager. A non-five star but well made episode that had a few flaws but told a good story and was well connected to the overall arc of the show (even TOS had sort of an arc). I mean, thinking back to the premiere of this very series, S1E1, is enough of a comparison.

"It seems to me these franchises would be easier to write for considering the wealth of already established universe building."

You would think so, right? It's like standing on the shoulders of giants...and shitting like a parrot with dysentery.

In addition to the countless hours of TV shows there are more than 700 Trek novels and probably a few hundred more short stories published over the last 40 years. Plus god only knows how many comics. You would think anyone with even a glimmer or talent could find inspiration with all that material with which to work. Maybe they look at all those stories and see them as restrictions instead of inspirations.

Speaking of the Trek novels and short stories:

A lot of the authors were amateurs or hacks and it's just funny to me that some housewife from Bucksnort TN who's never had a story published in her life or some some poor schmuck churning out a half dozen random pulp novels a year can write better Trek stories than a whole team of highly paid Hollywood writers.

@Test

"A lot of the authors were amateurs or hacks and it's just funny to me that some housewife from Bucksnort TN who's never had a story published in her life or some some poor schmuck churning out a half dozen random pulp novels a year can write better Trek stories than a whole team of highly paid Hollywood writers."

You're talking about the difference between genuinely loving the source material, the world-building, its characters... and someone showing up for a paycheck.

If you don't love the world, it'll show.

@Pike's Hair: "Out of the box episodes don’t hit as hard when you’re spending all of our time outside of the box."

Very well put.  I'd say we were in the box for the season premiere.  Were there any others?  I'm drawing a blank.  We need "regular" episodes to ground the show's reality.

@Trauma King: "The first 2 seasons were great."

They featured more solid to great episodes than this season, but they were still uneven. I still consider season one's "Elysian Kingdom" the nadir of the series and in fact all of Star Trek (AFAIK: I've seen all of TOS, DS9, ENT, and VOY, but only some of TNG, PIC, SFA, and DSC; and none of TAS).

@Test: "Do young people want soap opera parodies? Do teenagers want to watch muppets? Do kids want to see Casablanca pastiches? I don't know who the show runners are aiming at. And that's the problem."

It's a good point.  Those are all riffs on/homages to stuff that mostly "olds" would know about.  (BTW, I was amused that your first comment was literally just a test, but then you kept the same moniker for a substantive contribution.)

@Norvo: "Kudos on casting Deirdre Hall, who brought the necessary genre gravitas with her 50+ years experience acting on Days of our lives. Hard to believe she's already 78 years old, the magic of clean living, good lighting and a full team of hair and make-up professionals."

The counselor?  Wow.  Yeah, I thought probably around 60.

@Karl Zimmerman: "I really don't know how to rate this, because the level of quality difference between the bulk of the episode and the final few scenes was just vast."

I was so confused by your comment, lol. I had to read it three times before it sank in that you thought the beginning was bad and the ending good, just the exact opposite of my take.  Wow!

"The reason they're doing these episode is because the EPs/writers want to, and the studio let them. Nothing less, and nothing more."

Great, great point.

@Test: "In a perfect world we would have a show that handles characterization as well as DS9"

At the risk of arousing Jammer's ire, I know DS9 is revered but I find it a bit overrated.  I watched it all the way through and generally enjoyed it, but one of the things, ironically, that I bumped on was that it did seem kind of "soapy" at times.  Maybe not with soft focus lenses and quick zooms, but sort of like a nighttime soap, with characters sitting down and talking about their feewings in a heavyhanded manner.

@grumpy_otter: "Like others, I agree that this ended really well"

Huh!  Well, blow me down.  Anyone with me, that it started well and declined from there (with a resurgence in the fun soap-style credits)?

@grumpy-otter “And apparently, filming for Season 5 is already complete, so no chance to consider reviews and feedback before proceeding. Sigh.”

I’m actually excited about the possibilities about Season 5 even as it became increasingly clear that Season 4 was turning into nothing more than a gimmick of the week fest. Couple of reasons. First the blowback from Season 3 was actually known when Season 5 was filmed (unlike Season 4 which did not have the benefit of that kind of feedback). Second is Season 5 has only six episodes. As Season 4 is stuck in gimmick of the week hell the plot lines of how SNW bleeds into TOS have become static, stationary. Season 5 increasingly has a lots of ground to cover as Season 4 has, so far, done very little in character development. With only six episodes they simply don’t have the time to waste on another gimmick episode. I’m optimistic about Season 5. Then again I was optimistic about Season 4 & here we are.

@Voxymandius

More than just the indifference of showing up for a paycheck, I occasionally get a sense of actual disdain for classic Trek. The episode A Space Adventure Hour comes to mind, which felt openly contemptuous towards TOS.

It’s difficult for me to believe such a thing to be so, but the tenor of many episodes give that vibe.

@TheRealTrent “I wish we had a nuTrek show in which serious, intelligent, far-future scientists, explorers and diplomats work on a realistic, well-run space vessel, and face thought-provoking, unique and intelligently written problems or situations.”

Sir, one does not ask or dare to dream of such things near a series where Akiva Goldsman is in the upper echelons of production.

When that man pens a movie script, the Golden Raspberries move to yellow alert.

---

On the plus side - only 8 episodes left for you guys to endure (18 counting SFA S2, for the truly masochistic among you).

I guess the main problem is the lack of vision which is the responsibility of the showrunner, right?
We can have 100 and 1 guesses on why these writers write like this, but the result remains the same: mostly awful.
I find SNW's Spock incredibly boring. I did not like any of his arks/episodes, I could not care less about his love affairs and since I watched TOS for the first time last year, I am not even sure what SNW Spock has to do with the TOS one.
As for Pike, his character has been maltreated. He has a tragic story of knowing his awful future and he has basically reduced to an average captain that considers his crew as family and friends, loves to cook for them every week and forgives all of their crimes and insubordinations like if they are spoilt brats. And I am supposed to feel sad for him missing his lost love.. well I did not. But I felt incredibly sad when Picard cried in "TNG Family", it was earned. Here it was like another "gimmick", let's have our captain cry while in therapy.

Insufferable, damn near unwatchable rubbish.

That said, the scene with Pike and his imaginary daughter and his recollection of her later on were curiously touching – mourning the life he never had.

But what’s the message here? Stories are more real than real life? Soap operas are the lie that allow us to see the truth?

First time, long time. I've watched everything except Discovery and whatever that Section 31 thing was.

I don't hate this season as much as some people seem to hate it. I can still make some things work in my head, like I could see how the Hangover episode would lead to Scotty never want to go on shore leave ever again.

I thought this episode was hilarious, then so bad it's hilarious, then woah we're getting serious, then "we're ending it there?". Some things made me and mywife pop, like the old sound "booong" effect being used from TOS. I enjoyed the self-mocking/referencing lines like "There's no singing Klingons" or whatever it was.

Is this the best ST show ever? Nah. But there are episodes I'd rewatch not sure if this is one, but I didn't hate it.

Yeah, I've lurked for 8+ years and that's my first comment. Sheesh.

@theBgt:
'Here it was like another "gimmick", let's have our captain cry while in therapy.'

Completely agree. That scene was so jarringly bizarre because it was simultaneously played for laughs, played for some kind of melodrama and played as a genuine emotional breakdown. We were being asked to take it dead seriously and not take it at all seriously - at the same time. Very dissonant.

I experienced emotional whiplash when Pike started crying. Was it all still part of the joke or not? Not, as it turned out. And it got 'real' very quickly.

The Pike crying in therapy scene at the end was odd, but mostly because for whatever reason, Anson couldn't sell it. Dunno why - he was great in the scene with Juliet, and has done pathos before. He's a dad now as well IRL, and (although his daughter is small) should've been able to pull on his personal feelings as a father. But it just...wasn't acted well. Seemed like fake crying. Which I just don't get, because his earlier scene got me real crying.

Also, as I noted upthread, it's strange to try and put these very serious scenes at the end of an episode which clearly wasn't taking itself seriously. But in the right position, Juliet emotional beats like this could've been SNW's take on The Visitor, but like a ton of modern Trek, for some reason they like to bury these amazing emotional scenes in mediocre episodes.

@Karl Zimmerman:
'The Pike crying in therapy scene at the end was odd, but mostly because for whatever reason, Anson couldn't sell it. Dunno why - he was great in the scene with Juliet, and has done pathos before.'

Hard agree. It was a strange watch, because Mount is such a good actor that he doesn't usually have anything like this kind of problem. He seemed to be self-conscious about doing a 'big ugly cry' and it just didn't work. Undermined the scene. As you imply, it's a pity when compared to his earlier scene in the same episode.

I have not seen this episode, but could the unexpected crying be a riff on the ending of The Kid Detective (2020)?

Kurtzman should have been sacked after the first season of Discovery

This season seems to exist just so the actors on and writers on SNW can have some fun. Oh how they love to play and write so many different versions of the characters. Let's have them as puppets! In a soap opera! in a film noir! In a dinosaur movie! On a planet where everyone's high! The problem is that the characters have very little time to play... themselves! These experiments in genre always end up with a final coda where our characters (or character) sort of go back to normal and then learn the Lesson of the Episode. It's not enough.

This episode felt even flatter than all of the above. It could easily been a Pike dream just as the puppet episode was a Spock dream. Hey, they make the same sense. I was amused at first. How can you not be? The episode pulls some nifty visual tricks - it's shot differently, lit differently, and acted differently. It's a fun meta game... for the first 15 minutes or so. Then it becomes serious and we realize Trelane is behind it (basically Q) and he's sitting in some control room with different cameras (???) studying the humans with some Guinan lookalike overlooking his shoulder... there's some messege about the crew harboring emotions they are not facing because they're too busy in space adventures....

...but the rules of this new reality are not clear and seem completely arbitrary. Once again the writers had a cool idea but it wasn't developed enough. So some things happened but some only took place in people's minds. And why are only certain people affected by it? What about the entire crew of the ship? Where are Scottie and Pelia? Sorry, Pelia is already in her own soap opera series anyway.

Q episodes weer hit or miss (and I don't remember the previous Trelane SNW episode, sorry), but the characters were always the characters and not replaced by brainwashed doppelgangers

La'An is pining for Spock but she wants to break up with him but she wants him but she's... I don't know what she wants, honestly. Pike now finds he has feelings for his daughter which we've seen for 10 minutes on one episode from two years ago (I didn't remember her).

And then it all just ends and Trelaine gets a B- by the "ants" grade system. If we're ants that "may" require more observation by the Q's, why is the Q teacher using OUR grade system (which apparently has survived all the way to the 23rd century!) Aren't we insignificant ants? Oh, never mind. Nothing here makes any sense anyway. The whole Trelane thing was just an excuse for the gimmick. I feel like this entire season has caught "space madness". At least the puppet episode was creative and funny to a degree, this went flat and boring in no time.

I don't think bad writing is limited to just Trek. Most television and movies are bad nowadays. I was watching Reacher this week, Reacher shreds a baddies hand in an actual shredder, the baddie is holding a gun in his other hand and he doesn't shoot Reacher. Instead he gets two other baddies to drive him into the woods. Even when Reacher is knocked out he doesn't shoot him. So stupid! Then we have Stuart vs. the Universe, and this week they landed in a world (think Sliders) where everyone eats plants. Just awful. Tulsa King levels of stupidity.

Maybe Mount is losing interest? He's barely been in this season. Maybe he read the scripts and went, yeah, no thanks. And don't give me that he's busy! He would make the time for Trek if he loved it.

Jammer said "To make sure the imbeciles watching this while scrolling on their phones get the joke." I think there's a lot of truth in that, for all TV. Sigh.

Jammer said " He might as well be the writers saying, "Don't think too much about any of this, okay?" Exactly. That's what it was, don't take this nonsense seriously. I mean, how did Pike even see his daughter from his alt. life? Hey, don't worry about it!

When did La'An and Spock break up? i must have missed it.

RE: the discussion above. The psychiatrist might be 78 and in good lighting but she's also clearly had plastic surgery. And, they tried to aim Trek at younger people with Academy and look how that turned out! So it's not unreasonable that that's what they've tried to do with SNW.

I really like the characters and the actors but boy have they been let down.

I don’t even know what to say.

I usually prefer standalone episodes, but if they were going to insist on doing a bunch of weird gimmick episodes it might have been better to link them all together as an ongoing storyline. Each week Trelaine throws them into a new bizarre scenario. It wouldn't necessarily make each episode better, but it would at least make the genre hopping a little more palatable.

I should add I did like that the episode resolved around Pike and finally gave his character something to do, but again, not enough. Some people may find his grieving of the alternate life with Batel emotional, I could barely remember these events. With very few exceptions, I have watched each episode of SNW exactly once, when it aired.

"Most television and movies are bad nowadays. "

Just my opinion of course, but tv has pretty much always sucked. I do think that movies are much worse now than they used to be. I've watched around 15,000 movies including short films and I keep a list of what I've watched. There is a precipitous decline in my "good" list over the last 15 years. I've watched about 500 new release movies over the last 9 years and there are only 9 that I like. Plus 4 short films.

Another problem is that there is fire hose of new media blasting us every day which makes it very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. The percentage of good to bad tv shows may not have changed, but there's ten times as much of it to sort through.

@lynos The New Life and New Civilizations episode aired less than a year ago. It was the finale of the disappointing Season 3. The Inner life type scene between Pike & Batel made a huge impression on me but, retrospectively, couldn’t save the utter implausibility, ridiculousness of the rest of the episode which I thought was poorly written. The Inner Life scenes I found were done differently than the rest of the episode. They were done well & were moving at least to me. Their daughter appears in this episode.

@Mike A
"The New Life and New Civilizations episode aired less than a year ago. "

You're right. Looks like it aired last September. I swear to you in my mind if felt like more. In any case I did not remember the daughter. This is some tall order: to ask us to be emotionally invested in a character seen very briefly a while ago (yes, even a year ago is a while).

I agree with Karl that if the writers wanted to do a continuation to this experience Pike had, have him process it, they could've done it outside an
freakin' soap opera gimmick episode, and if they decided to use this framework, don't save it to the last 10 minutes, have the episode be ABOUT it.

@SC
"When did La'An and Spock break up? i must have missed it."

It happened early on in "Level-5 Transporter Accident", two episodes ago. One of the only scenes in that episode that actually happened.

The showrunners (and the "OMG don't criticize the show or we'll never get more Trek crowd") have one feeble defense: this kind of business HAS occasionally appeared on Trek before. They were very present on TOS, which this show is a direct prequel to, and they showed up in later series as well.

However, they are not the most well-remembered episodes, and the showrunners' insistence on reproducing THAT aspect of Trek in a very limited number of episodes per season is...just unfathomable. I'm convinced that these writers are just not-so-secretly desperate to be writing a Joss Whedon show and don't really have any other considerations.

"this kind of business HAS occasionally appeared on Trek before. They were very present on TOS"

Can you expound on this a little more? I'm not sure exactly what you're saying.

I just don't get how we got here. Everything (except for Prodigy apparently) Trek-related since "What You Leave Behind" aired has been a mistake and a waste of time. Gimmicks alone aren't impressive. You've got to have a masterful command of theme, structure, and character to make it work (like Buffy and the early seasons of Community).

"Everything Trek-related since "What You Leave Behind" aired has been a mistake and a waste of time."


C'mon, man. You have to like at least a few episodes of Voyager or Enterprise. They may be bad shows overall, but there are some great individual episodes at least.

“Kurtzman should have been sacked after the first season of Discovery“

With all due respect, even though I like this show in spite of last season and this seasons unevenness… Kurtzman should never have had a career in Hollywood to begin with.

My theory after the last Dave Cullen episode:

I honestly believe this season's direction really is Alex Kurtzman choosing to troll the fans in an unprofessional manner.

It's been thought for a while that Kurtzman hasn't handled criticism well over the years. There was a lot pulled out of the fact that Terry Matalas was not retained, nor Legacy pursued, as an option for Trek's future despite Picard Season 3 proving the best fan-received Trek installment in years. He's been rumored to be a somewhat immature person.

And over and over again, the question keeps being raised (and improperly answered) in the midst of this mess: What is Star Trek?

Honestly, I'm seriously wondering if Alex Kurtzman thought it would be hilarious to react passive-aggressively to the endless criticism by choosing to direct the show into parodying everything BUT Star Trek in order to make the following statement to the fans: "There's no pleasing you people, so we're just going to do everything else."

Wouldn't surprise me one bit. But of course we'll never know.

I'm 42 years old. I don't think I have ever seen a single minute of an actual soap opera. I'm familiar (a little) with the conventions and tropes of the format from having seen other parodies of it in the past.

From reading the comments here I have learned the counselor was a famous soap actress and Ortega's eyebrow raise moment was A Soap Opera Thing. Never would have cottoned onto either on my own.

Now I gather I'm on the younger side of this comments section, and I am very much middle aged. Let's picture someone ten years younger than me, which also isn't a "young person," by the way. Well I have a hard time imagining anyone other than a very, very small subset of people from that demographic have watched soap operas. And all who have must have had uncommon experiences to result in them being among these outliers.

I mean they didn't even grow up with "channel surfing" (where they might conceivably randomly stumble across one) as a concept.

We might say the same about Casablanca but Casablanca is a film that anybody with an interest in movies would seek out to watch at some point. I know I did. It remains a relevant cultural touchstone all these years later. I don't think we can say that for Days of Our Lives. It's because Casablanca is famously good, and soap operas are famously bad.

Anyway, this idea that these episodes are what they are due to a mandate "to appeal to young people" just doesn't wash. These episodes are what they are because they're what the writers want to write. It's that simple.

@Iceman "I just don't get how we got here. Everything (except for Prodigy apparently) Trek-related since "What You Leave Behind" aired has been a mistake and a waste of time."

I think for all its faults, Voyager has earned a spot alongside the Big Three (or at least a spot at the kid's table) and is now regarded more fondly than when it debuted. Unfortunately, after peaking in S4, it lost steam much sooner than its predecessors.

It's a pity they squandered the premise.

- - - - - - - - -

Additional, random musings from a non-viewer:

- Had the legendary Eric Braeden been cast in this episode (The indomitable VICTOR NEWMAN from Young and the Restless), I'd have made an exception and tuned in. :D

Canon Police Observation: So, Trelane has appeared twice now? I haven’t seen either episode, but how does that line up with his confusion over Earth’s technological development in "The Squire of Gothos," where he miscalculated the time and distance difference and expected to meet humans from the 18th or 19th century?

The best time to give up on SNW was season 2. The second best time is now. I gave up season 3, with zero regrets. What a bunch of selfish narc writers to create crap like this to make themselves feel important and artistic when really they just come across as juvenile.

@StarMan: So, Trelane has appeared twice now? I haven’t seen either episode, but how does that line up with his confusion over Earth’s technological development in "The Squire of Gothos," where he miscalculated the time and distance difference and expected to meet humans from the 18th or 19th century?

I can't answer your question (because it has no sensible answer). But it reminded me of something I realized shortly after finishing watching this eppy. This takes place BEFORE "Squire of Gothos" but Trelane is demonstrably older than in that episode, where he whines with the attitude of a 6-year-old boy and seems far too young for school. I suppose we're to think of Q's remark somewhere that time isn't linear for them, but that's an easy way to just be sloppy about things, isn't it? These people just don't care.

"this idea that these episodes are what they are due to a mandate "to appeal to young people" just doesn't wash. "


Maybe not so much in the stuff the gimmicks are referencing, but maybe so in the "anything can happen" "omg that's so random!" style content that's popular with younger people. They just seem to be endlessly scrolling through a bunch of random garbage on TikTok. The random plots on SNW are a bit like that.


I actually have no idea what's popular with kids. Just spitballing.

I'm not even sure I want to bother with this one. It's Star Trek, so I'll probably watch it, eventually, but I feel like I already know what I'm going to get.

Lower Decks, Prodigy, Academy, all trying to draw younger people in. The fanbase is aging. Why would SNW's be any different? But it's not working. @Argus I think you're right about TV. Look at the popular shows of the 80's! So dated now! Think of a show you like, what happened last season? The season before that? Exactly! We can't remember! As for films, I just rent now, the films are worth watching once, if that. You're right, there is so much more slop to wade through.

The negative reviews are right. Supposedly important character revelations revealed in the most tedious and cheesy way imaginable. No idea why they chose to take this route. It may have been fun for the actors, but it sure isn't fun to watch.

I didn't think Mount gave a bad performance in the last scene. I don't think that scene belongs in an episode like this though. To answer my own question from up thread, no, this is not a riff on Kid Detective.

Trelane should never have appeared again outside of Squire of Gothos.

The guy playing Trelane is a poor substitute for William Campbell.

I hate the idea of Trelane being a Q. I learned a lot about bad writing from reading comics as a kid. One thing about those comics is that bad writers would always assume that two things that are superficially similar must be related. A show about ships zooming around the galaxy at FTL speeds should never suffer from small universe syndrome.


What was up with the female Q's costume? Some Sid and Marty shit going on there

The closing credits should have been the opening credits.


This is a bad show, guys.

The writers don’t seem to really care about this show - so why should we?

I like soaps. I like Trek. I did not like this. Except the last few minutes, but it wasn't enough to redeem it. Why couldn't we have had a regular A/B episode with Pike dealing with the life that wasn't and a B story?

Genre Trek is Bad Trek. And think the writers truly hold us in disdain and are doing this out of spite and deliberate f*ckery.

So much debate now about what Star Trek should be. My favorite will always be TOS. I think it captured the concept best, the ship on the frontier. My favorite season of all is Season 1.

But even TOS gave in to tropes and budgets. While most people consider Season 2 the high point, it featured Spock being hijacked by hormones (with a phony Kirk death), the ship being grabbed by a giant green hand, Nazis, Romans, Chicago gangsters,, witches, tribbles, Jack the Ripper, a giant amoeba, Mudd’s androids. You get it.

The reason we watched is because we liked the crew. I think that’s what SNW is channeling. I think fans who grew up on Berman Trek don’t think like that. Berman Trek removed the melodrama, the humor and the intensity of TOS (even down to the score) in favor of a lot of bland sci-fi plots or morality plays.

I’ve actually been watching a lot of Enterprise lately. It was a strong attempt to make Trek relevant in the 21st century, complete with a 9/11 plotline. Trek fans hated it too, although now Bakula, Blalock and Tinneer were three of the best actors the franchise has had. And the production values are tremendous. I think a lot of fans who hate SNW probably hated Enterprise too. And I know everyone hated Discovery, despite its attempt to be something truly different.

SNW is retro comfort food because the fan base largely rejected Discovery, Enterprise and even Voyager. (Not to mention the Kelvin films) I’m not sure what these showrunners are supposed to do. This is a franchise most of its fans seem to actively hate so it probably should be put out of its misery. We’ll all have our favorite incarnation and episodes.

I like SNW because I like the crew. And I think it comes closest to inhabiting the spirit of the original even if it doesn’t always get there. I think we are lucky to have it.

This isn't a review of this episode, so scroll if that's what you wanted. I'd just like to say what's on my mind regarding Star Trek, having been a fan since the sixties, when I first watched when I was ten.

I was a pretty rabid fan, but never a Trekker ( the preferred term, although Trekkie has appeared to win by attrition) and as the years went by I was jazzed to see the animated series and elated when the 1st movie arrived, even though I wasn't particularly overjoyed with the story and the pace.

Subsequent followups were better and for the most part I felt the series was continuuing in the manner that engaged me on many levels.

The Next Generation was telecast during my thirties and of course it had it's ups and downs but once it found its groove, I was hooked. Along with much of the world.

Voyager, DS9 ( which of late I am coming to appreciate in terms of repeat watchability) and even Enterprise gave me a sense that this show and its spinoff were in good hands.

I began to notice a shift of tone when Discovery appeared. It was subtle at first but then it hit me:

I had gotten older and wanted the shows to mirror my feelings. Ha! TV doesn't work that way. Younger audiences want shows that mirror THEIR feelings. What nerve!

Star Trek Academy. Brave New Worlds had occasional moments where I felt included in the universe, but only in a retro or vintage way. You know, like grandpa being tolerated at Thanksgiving even though he's started to shout at clouds.

Anyway, what finally dawned on me was this: my Star Trek experience was never going to come again, just like 49 cent a gallon gas is never going to. And that's fine.

It does no good to feel annoyed at the supposed loss of your childhood enjoyment or to bitch about time passing. I don't watch Star Trek's newer incarnations much anymore, but don't feel particularly sad for it.

The point is:

I watch the Star Trek I grew up with, but not the Star Trek that I grew out of. Oh, sure, curiosity and a certain nascent loyalty has me peeking in now and again. Because I don't want to miss it should miraculous rebirth occur.

And this website is amazing. I've commented from time to time, but never like some, whose views are amazingly deep and well thought out.

If you've read this far, thanks. May the force be with you.

(Yeah, right. Come on, it was a joke.)

@Fenton Hardy:
'What was up with the female Q's costume?'

It's clearly an attempted reference to Q's 21st century judge robes in 'Encounter at Farpoint'. What's odd is that Q wore those because he was presiding over a courtroom recreation and wouldn't have worn them otherwise.

The costume designers of the episode, however, seem to have the impression that the robes are a uniform of the Q more generally. It reeks of a quick misunderstood check of the Q page at Memory Alpha.

Tried watching it, couldn't even finish it. A shame; the show used to be pretty good.

@voxymandias: "This feels like what Captain Picard needed after 'The Inner Light", but didn't get, or refused."

Picard got "Lessons," which itself was a superb episode.

@Test:
"A lot of the authors were amateurs or hacks and it's just funny to me that some housewife from Bucksnort TN who's never had a story published in her life or some some poor schmuck churning out a half dozen random pulp novels a year can write better Trek stories than a whole team of highly paid Hollywood writers."

This is actually a strong argument for re-opening Trek to spec scripts.

Almost half the season, so far, under two stars. Proportionately speaking, this has to be a record in the making.

"Younger audiences want shows that mirror THEIR feelings. What nerve!...Anyway, what finally dawned on me was this: my Star Trek experience was never going to come again, just like 49 cent a gallon gas is never going to. And that's fine."

I cannot disagree more strongly with this take. The fault is *NOT* that Star Trek is being written for a new generation of fans -- it isn't. (At best, it's being written for what Kurtzman erroneously *thinks* young viewers want.)

The fault is that, far from being modernized in an era of fully serialized television, it's full of gimmicks and homages. Simply put, it's a quality control issue. The new series are objectively atrocious compared to the old.

Young audiences will tune in for compelling sci-fi. FOR ALL MANKIND/STAR CITY, THE EXPANSE, ARRIVAL and much of Christopher Nolan's work (INTERSTELLAR, INCEPTION, etc.) all stand as testament to this thesis.

The new golden age of TV didn't come in the 1980s or (most of) the 1990s. It's a phenomenon from this century.

Looks like someone decided to Joss Whedonify Trek, badly. Buffy used to periodically have these high concept gimmick episodes and almost without exception they were fantastic. But emphasis on the "periodically" as in maybe 4-5 total in 7 seasons. And you know, the fantastic part.

Anyway where was I going with this comment? Ahhh yes. Have you had enough Jammer? Only you can put an end to this. All you have to do is review Andor.

I love TNG and DS9. Modern Trek doesn't have to be clones of those shows for me to enjoy them. What they do have to be is well written. Trek for the last 20 years, for the most part, has been poorly written. Now some may say that's just my opinion or that young people don't care about old fashioned things like plots to which I say "Yes, and my opinion is correct" and "Fuck 'em."

Stop catering to idiots.


But I don't really think it's young people who are to blame for this. Purely anecdotal but most of modern Star Trek's hardcore fans seem to be the guys who say "I've been watching since 19-whatever" who insist that everything is good because there were bad things about TOS and TNG too. I'll never understand the "Trek sucks and that's the way we like it" crowd.

And again, if "My Trek has passed" then why would I like Prodigy? It has its faults and I am decades older than the target audience, but I found it entertaining and at its heart it felt like a Trek show. Interesting plots, moral dilemmas, optimism, sci-fi concepts, believable character growth, links to Trek canon that mostly didn't feel shoe horned in, and when their were emotional moments they felt earned. Do any of the other modern Trek shows have those qualities on a remotely consistent basis?

I make it sound like Prodigy is the greatest Trek show in history, it isn't, but it's much better than it's contemporaries at doing the basic things that good shows do.

One last bit of bitching and I'll stop. I can't really express why, and maybe it's for multiple reasons, but I just can't buy in to the world's of SNW, SFA, and Discovery on some fundamental level.

It's like the reality that these shows exist in would fail a Voight-Kampff test. What would you do if a wasp landed on your arm? I'd talk about my feelings. What would you do if you found a turtle on its back in the desert? I'd wander around in a circle for days and then heroically flip the turtle over at the last minute. Your junior officer shows you his Klingon collection plus the killing jar. I'd look the other way and then cook him dinner. It’s your birthday and someone gives you a Gorn-skin wallet. I'd say "It's GREEN!" and then wink. A banquet is in progress. The entree consists of boiled dog. I'd make an anachronistic joke about Snoop Dogg, fo shizzle my nizzle.

Do you get what I'm trying to say?

On the old Trek shows, no matter how outlandish the setting might have been, the human reactions usually felt genuine. And the universe had order; things moved from A to B to C with discernable cause and effect. You didn't tune in each week saying either "Anything can happen" or "nothing is going to happen because there's 5 episodes left before the season finale."

@River said "Young audiences will tune in for compelling sci-fi. FOR ALL MANKIND/STAR CITY, THE EXPANSE, ARRIVAL and much of Christopher Nolan's work (INTERSTELLAR, INCEPTION, etc.) all stand as testament to this thesis."

TV Execs believe everyone is scrolling on their phone so they have to grab your attention and keep it.

For All Mankind is probably aimed at older audiences. It's telling that I don't like any of the examples you mentioned. I'm not a huge sci-fi guy but I have enjoyed parts / some eps of SNW's.

I'm not a huge Trekkie, I've seen Picard once, didn't bother with Academy, checked out of Discovery in S3 and I've seen SNW's once.

It doesn't matter how good your actors are if the writing is mediocre. With that said, the cast on SNW's have amazing chemistry and the characters are iconic, it also helps that the females are easy on the eye (sigh, sorry), so, I keep watching despite the writing.

Everything starts with the writing. And if you were unfortunate to see Reacher this week you'll know how contrived and bad TV can get.

I find myself watching less and less new TV. At some point, you get burned by all the straight to streaming slop, and if you keep watching, expecting better then, well, good luck...

@Karl Zimmerman “Reportedly, next season is one horror episode, one comedy, and four normal Trek episodes. So they are going to pull back”

Just now caught this. So with very little character development this season, tons of ground to cover, and only six episodes left, they couldn’t resist themselves and are doing yet another lightweight comedy?


Looking over the writers for next season , I was absolutely concerned that Dana Horgan was listed for an episode (she has these writing credits for the show “Chronitons Through the Hourglass”, “Level-Five Transporter Accident”, “A Space Adventure Hour", and "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans”). To her credit she also did “Ad Astra per Aspera" and “Subspace Rhapsody” but that was back in the second season. Yes she seems to be one of the leaders when it comes to the gimmick episodes

@Archer66

"SNW is retro comfort food because the fan base largely rejected Discovery, Enterprise and even Voyager. (Not to mention the Kelvin films) I’m not sure what these showrunners are supposed to do. "


Write.Good.Stories.

There's a lot of middle ground between weepy tosh about the universe exploding every season and Muppet musicals. The show runners have tried running off the road to the left, running off the road to the right, and driving straight off of a cliff (Section 31). The solution is NOT "take your hands off the wheel, shut your eyes, and hope for the best" it's "Get a new driver behind the wheel."


"But even TOS gave in to tropes and budgets."


Yeah, a lot of TOS sucked. I have no idea why that excuses SNW for sucking.





"I’ve actually been watching a lot of Enterprise lately. It was a strong attempt to make Trek relevant in the 21st century. Trek fans hated it too"


They hated it because Berman and Braga were washed up, and like SNW, were cribbing ideas from everything from Enemy Mine to the A-Team. They also hated the fact that Archer was written like a petulant idiot and T'Pol was written like a G rated porn star. Fwiw I think ENT greatly improved in its second half, but you can't blame the audience for bailing after two bad seasons that had been preceded by seven underwhelming seasons of Voyager.


"I like SNW because I like the crew."

Imagine how much you would like it if the stories were good too. It's possible to have both, you know


"I think it comes closest to inhabiting the spirit of the original even if it doesn’t always get there."

I can't even tell you what SNW is about. Is it about fresh new sci-fi ideas? Is it a parallel of global politics? Does it tackle weighty moral dilemmas? Does it open the audience's eyes to new points of view on social issues? Does it espouse a humanist philosophy? Does it even have a philosophy? Does it celebrate the spirit of exploration? Does it create fascinating new alien species? Does it have memorable dialogue? Does it stand on its own two feet without piggy backing on another series? With TOS, I can answer "yes" to all of those questions.

With SNW all I can say is "Some people who vaguely resemble characters from TOS get in a bunch of reshashed stories from various genres while occasionally having perfunctory conversations about their various traumas. Also - hijinks."


"I think we are lucky to have it."


And I think Paramount is lucky that Star Trek has such a forgiving fan base.

"Almost half the season, so far, under two stars. Proportionately speaking, this has to be a record in the making."

This has to be approaching Andromeda S2 levels of "I give up"

It's astonishing how much goodwill has just been torched this season (and arguably the previous one as well). No, we are not lucky to have it. This is a mutual exchange. I don't think the showrunners and writers should be attacked on a personal level, but the audience has every right to disengage with a work if it doesn't interest them.

At some point, there started a mass hallucination in online spaces where one is "toxic" or "impossible to please" if they demand anything less than slop. I don't think fans are always right, far from it, but damnit, the execs are showing themselves to be more clueless.

@JohnW. "if they demand anything less than slop."


You call this slop? Real slop has got chunks of things in it! This is more like gruel!

"it also helps that the females are easy on the eye (sigh, sorry), so, I keep watching despite the writing."

No shame in that son. Even Cyclopes need love.

It felt like the writers wanted to pull off Wandavision, playing with the familiar beats of a TV genre played for laughs en route to a dramatic ending that riffs on loss and longing for a fictional family.

But Wandavision had a season to build towards and earn its dramatic pay-off, and there was a menacing sensibility throughout as the writing carefully laid down all the pieces of the puzzle, whereas this felt too thin on the ground.

I thought it was canon that in the TNG era counsellors were only recently installed on starships, along with bringing families along, as the "frontier" of the TOS era was being settled and tamed and the universe wasn't such a wild place 100 years later. Makes sense. But then nu Trek doesn't seem concerned with canon or having a logical narrative timeline.

And what happened to Dr. Boyce from last week?

@Brandon "I honestly believe this season's direction really is Alex Kurtzman choosing to troll the fans in an unprofessional manner"


Here's the thing: This is what SNW has always been. Go back and look at season one. They lampshaded The Day the Earth Stood Still in the pilot. Memento Mori is full of submarine movie tropes from 50 years ago. Spock Amok is a goofy comedy. Serene Squall is like Spock's Brain in the sense that it feels like a script written as a farce, but played as a drama. The Elysian Kingdom feels like a bad Holodeck episode. All Those Who Wander turns the Gorn into an Alien homage. In Ghosts of Illyria the writers weren't able to effectively balance the A, B, and C plots and major problems were just swept away at the end of the story which reminds me of both the whiplash tonal shift in Like Chronotons Through The Hourglass and the magic neutrinos of Off Hour. A Quality of Mercy had potential but it's undercut by Pike being written and performed as a total lightweight.

I'd also note that the characters don't seem to have changed that much between seasons one and four. They're like B'Elanna Torres - they keep dealing with the same problems and learning the same lesson over and over again but never really changing.


Are the issues more blatant now? Absolutely. But this show had major problems from day one. Instead of fixing those problems they've leaned into them.

"I thought it was canon that in the TNG era counsellors were only recently installed on starships, "

Good point. Didn't Troi tell Scotty that in Relics?


"what happened to Dr. Boyce from last week?"

He accidentally got sent to the General Hospital set. Maybe we'll see him again if Trelane decides to reenact the Luke & Laura wedding with Spock and T'Pring.

@Freakier Friday

I agree, seasons one and two of SNW, while seeming to move in a positive direction in relation to Discovery, still had a large number of major red flags. The inclusion of the Gorn as a big bad is a pretty notable example, just from a story standpoint, but then to borrow(to be polite) elements from both Alien and Predator as aspects of some uncalled for reimagining of the Gorn as a threat struck me as problematic, like subtle emotional cruelty that precedes outright abusive behavior.

I enjoyed some of SNW first two seasons, even seeing genuine potential for something that might have staying power, but I always had a feeling that some of the praise it received was a sort of Stockholm syndrome-esque reaction in light of the disappointments of Discovery and Picard.

one bad episode after another

@FreakierFriday

"this show had major problems from day one. Instead of fixing those problems they've leaned into them."

This has been my perception since season 2. I thought the first season was reminiscent of TNG season 1, which had a lot of problems but also a lot of potential. Season 2 made it clear that what I thought were bugs, the showrunners thought were features.

I just can't believe anyone is arguing in favor of this idiotic nonsense. Here, let me try to illustrate why I despise this writing room. This:

SPOCK: "I have noticed that your use of language has altered since our arrival. It is currently laced with, shall I say, more 'colorful metaphors.' 'Double dumb-ass on you,' and so forth."
KIRK: "Ah, you mean the profanity. Well, that's simply the way they talk here. Nobody listens to you, unless you SWEAR, every other word. You'll find it in all the classic literature of the period."
SPOCK: "For example?"
KIRK: "The collected works of Harold Robbins, Jacquelyn Suzanne."
SPOCK: "Ah. 'The Giants.'"
KIRK: (Nods)

THIS, is humor.

THIS:

SCOTTY: "Don't worry, sir!! I know this ship like the back of my hand!)
(Turns around and immediately bonks his head on a bulkhead, passes out, scene).

IS F***ING STUPID AND WRONG FOR THE CHARACTERS.

Do you get it now? A joke isn't funny just cuz it's all "hehehehehe, man fall down, lololol." Good, solid comedy is constructed, it is layered, it engages you to think, then subverts your expectations in a way that makes you laugh, and it comes forth NATURALLY from the characters and the situations they're in.

Why is this difficult to understand?

@MidshipmanNorris,

Humor doesn't have to be highbrow, it just has to be unexpected. Indeed, this is pretty much the core of humor, at least for me. It's why stand up comics often veer suddenly into the sexual and scatological - until it was overdone, and no longer as funny, and then there was a pulling back.

Trek has always had an issue with having its "humor" land, which is why I think Trek comedies are better understood as lighthearted, and seldom make me laugh out loud. Ironically, one of the funniest things I ever saw in Trek was from SNW, in the Season 2 episode Subspace Rhapsody, when the Klingon K-Pop/Boy Band appeared onscreen.

But in the current season? The problem is the "comedy" seems to rest not in characters acting in an unexpected fashion, but doing exactly what we expect. The drunk/high characters in Episode 3 act drunk/high. The puppets in episode 5 act like puppets. And the characters in this episode act like they're in a soap opera. Since nothing is unexpected once the premise is understood - since they're going for the easiest possible setup and punchline - it's like a standup comic doing knock-knock jokes.

"KIRK: "The collected works of Harold Robbins, Jacquelyn Suzanne."
SPOCK: "Ah. 'The Giants.'"
KIRK: (Nods)

THIS, is humor."

It's a joke designed to appeal to people 40+ only, which you'd never see today. The joke rides on you knowing those were bestselling authors who no one reads anymore in the 80's. So it kind of puts Kirk and Spock out of touch by 20-30 years even in their literary understanding of the year they've appeared in. It's a bit of an esoteric joke, to say the least. I like it, but I'm not sure if it should be the gold standard for how to write comedy.

Here's my favorite line from ST IV:

ANTIQUE STORE OWNER: Yes, they're eighteenth century American, quite valuable. Are you sure you want to part with them?
KIRK: How much will you give me for them?
SPOCK: Excuse me, weren't those a birthday present from Doctor McCoy?
KIRK: And they will be again, that's the beauty of it.

This is the most tongue-in-cheek time-paradox joke imagineable (the idea that these glasses were never made but eternally exist in a time loop), tinged with sadness of having to give up a gift (even though it made him feel old), and giving Kirk a chance to use wry humor to try to pry Spock out of his semi-coma.

The entire film is an exercise in how humor and humanity get put back into Spock, and these scene is a magnificent microcosm of that. Now THIS takes being a real writer to accomplish, because you have to be both clever and senstitive to pen a line which is funny, sad, witty, and also ends the plot point crisply. Few could ever do it; Oscar Wilde was the exemplar.

Here's my other favorite example of comedy from TVH, this time not a line but an implication:

CHEKOV: Yes, under 'U.S. Government.' Now we need directions. ...Excuse me, sir. Can you direct me to the Navy base in Alameda? It's where they keep the nuclear wessels. ...Nuc-le-ar wes-sels.
UHURA: Excuse us!
CHEKOV: Excuse me. We are looking for nuclear wessels.
UHURA: Can you tell me where the naval base is in Alameda?
CHEKOV: Hello! We are looking for the nuclear wessels in Alameda. Could you tell me where...

The scene is funny enough just because of the horrible Russian accent, and the people apparently not knowing or caring anything about their own city. But the piece the resistance isn't the lines, or the delivery, or the passers-by, but the silent cop wearing aviators watching all this, completely still. The comedy of two Trek crew members asking people how to get onto nuclear wessels in the first place is very good Neil Simon comedy, but having that silent figure in the background highlight the absurdity of a Russian military man asking for the location of nuclear materials during the Cold War, is simply priceless. I don't even know how you plan for humor like that; on some level it just happens if you're in the right spirit and have the right team.

Being a writer who's just a bit clever, enough to kind of show off in your writing class, is not even close to enough to pull off high stakes high reaction comedy like these two above scenes. One is quiet and intimate, one is loud and multi-layered. Both know where they are, who's involved, can play within the sandbox of the scenario while being true to the characters, and both exhibit a fascination with exploring how humor can be found in all kinds of situations, not just "funny" ones. A very serious dramatic scene can have humor, and in fact laughs during touching scenes will prove far more long-lived than chuckles from a contextless-gag. That's why stand-up comedy is so hard: you have to put in quite a lot of work to create a context in the first place for your jokes to inhabit. Everyone knows that a funny line said out of the blue can kind of make you laugh, but not that much.

Oof, not sure how that type appeared in the penultimate paragraph. 2nd line should read: "But the piece DE resistance".

This is atrocious. How do you screw up an entire season like this? How did not even one of these people stand up and demand that the writers not set fire to the entire season? Somebody needs an @$$whooping for messing up this badly.

"Humor doesn't have to be highbrow, it just has to be unexpected."


The older I get the more it seems like a joke has to sneak up on me before it can get a laugh out of me.

Along those lines DS9 probably has the most humorous moments for me. You don't expect one of the most serious Trek shows to have some of the funniest dialogue. But then they'll do a light holosuite episode or a madcap Ferengi episode and it leaves me completely cold.

@Peter G

It’s an esoteric joke for sure, but it’s also very smart in how it’s layered, highlighting how people’s understanding of cultural nuances generally become smoothed over as history marches on. For example, the differences between how people dressed or spoke in the 1980s vs today are well understood, but most people would be hard pressed to provide similar notions of the differences between people of, say, the 1750s and the 1790s.

It reminds me of a Futurama bit where they travel back to the 1940s and, due to Fry being their primary guide to the 20th century, greet people with a stolid “sup, homes”.

I also wonder if Spock is being sarcastic or if the works of Suzanne and Robbins actually managed to emerge from the post atomic horror, surviving to become “giants” of their literary age?

"How did not even one of these people stand up and demand that the writers not set fire to the entire season?"

They may not care, or they may even approve.

I have to say I respect Jolene Blalock and Robert Beltran for speaking out about their problems with what was happening on their respective shows. It took guts to do that.

@ Idh2023,

I don't think Spock is capable of sarcasm at that point in the film. Anyhow, it's a writer joke about Kirk and Spock being out of touch, just like people penning a current script may have been raised on stuff from the 50's. I don't think any attention needs to be paid to knowledge of such writers in the 23rd century, nor IMO is that intended to be part of the joke. They're getting older, is the idea, and their references are already behind the times (even though they're time travelling). It's similar to Spock nerve-pinching the boombox guy: the "can we just have some peace and quiet" old-timey attitude gets respect from those on the bus, even though it isn't hip.

On the notion that Seasons 1&2 were rife with problems too:

I agree. But I also think that they pulled it off in kind of the same way that we tolerated the early flaws of many other series. Early SNW wasn't the best Star Trek I'd ever seen, and I don't know anyone that thought it was. But it passed in my book, despite Spock's strange behavior, everyone trauma dumping all the time, and the Gorn fiasco. It had some bad episodes that were REALLY bad, but its baseline wasn't too far off in spirit, style, or tone from where it needed to be. Even when it failed, it tried to tell stories that were more or less fitting.

And on the Gorn thing, I'll recall that the Ferengi were introduced as a "big bad" type of villain in TNG for a couple of seasons before they got reimagined as mostly (also usually bad) comic relief. The Gorn was that type of miss in my book. A supposedly devastating "villain" that was hard to take seriously (although for different reasons), but it didn't break the show.


Anyhow, in season three they decided to really experiment with genre and style, while also not addressing some of the bigger criticisms of seasons 1&2. It was an unexpected turn for the series, at least for me. Some of that sorta landed okay, like the 'documentary' one and the musical one which is generally liked. But I think even the fans that really enjoyed a lot of those episodes were absolutely ready for them to go back to a more traditional approach. It was uneven at best, and had serious tonal whiplash. People liked some of the individual efforts, not "genre of the week" as a season concept, which is evidently the message the showrunners took.

But for whatever reason, the gimmicks and genre 'homages' have been turned up to 11 and the show has become unwatchable to me. And it STILL never fixed the original flaws.

I think the thing about SNW that made a lot of people watch into this miserable 4th season and keep commenting here is that it started off not really any worse than any other early Star Trek season. But it's now just a potpourri whose only real identity is sharing the same characters week to week.

What are some things happening in the real world today that you’d like to see Star Trek touch on?

I should preface that I am not watching SNW or Academy. So I can’t comment on the actual episodes. I didn’t continue SNW after series 2. Mainly based on descriptions of the episodes; it sounded like they were leaning further into things I didn’t like about series 1-2 (especially 2): major focus on personal drama / romantic entanglements, and too much wacky lightweight comedy. Based on reactions I’m not regretting my decision.

There seem to be a multitude of issues with this show, but I think most of these can be consolidated into my own biggest gripe – its shallowness. SNW showed some promise early on, but right from the start it felt shallow. Like a self-conscious attempt at recycling and remixing Star Trek of old into a modern streaming show that superficially recalls the format and qualities of TOS and TNG. It always stank of pandering in this regard. Instead of imagining the future, the IP is stuck looking back at its past glories, remixing and repurposing the existing material in ways they hope the existing fanbase will like. Initially they seemed to have some success, it’s not looking so good now though. And I just can’t be arsed watching when Star Trek seems to be struggling to justify its existence in the 21st century.

I think I’d rather just accept that Star Trek is a cultural artefact of the 1960s and 1980s/90s. I’m sure it’s theoretically possible to update it as a product of the 2020s, but the people making it don’t seem up to the task. Pandering self-aware spoofs and homages to Star Trek seem to be all they’re doing now. I’m a bit on the younger side, so I didn’t even watch most of the older shows when they came out or even live through the periods that produced them. But when I watch TOS, I see a series that earnestly grappled with the pressing issues and anxieties facing the US at the time (I’m not even American either, but I can appreciate that a US series will have a US-centric worldview). From what I can tell, SNW has none of that.

Just think of the many issues and anxieties unique to this current period Star Trek could and should be touching upon. Political polarisation, digital and algorithm-based propaganda / radicalisation, growing economic divides, new wars and genocides, immoral tech bro manchildren having way too much power over our lives, AI fears, environmental concerns, the increasingly “vibes-based” nature of our cultural and political engagement. Did I miss anything? I’m curious as to what other fans think Star Trek ought to be telling stories about. It doesn’t even have to be explicit about it, I just wish they could tell stories that were at least influenced by the world of today. In any case, Star Trek in its current form doesn’t seem to want to engage with reality at all. They’d rather pretend we never left the 90s.

Someone else in these comments summed it up with a good phrase: “Retro comfort food.” That’s all they’re doing with Star Trek now, and it seems like a lot of fans are perfectly happy with that. That’s fine if they enjoy it, but I just find it a bit sad. If the IP is going to continue, then it should be allowed to be a natural product of the times in which it’s made. I know the world is fucked up and no one can imagine a hopeful future anymore, but it’s fiction FFS! I don’t care if Star Trek’s idealistic future isn’t realistic, I want to see it rise to the task of tackling our current problems anyway. Try to do with today’s world what TOS did with the 60s.

"Early SNW wasn't the best Star Trek I'd ever seen, and I don't know anyone that thought it was"

I've actually been going through a lot of first season review threads today. There were quite a few commenters leaving glowing reviews. On some other sites they are still saying the same about season 4.



"I think I’d rather just accept that Star Trek is a cultural artefact of the 1960s and 1980s/90s"


There were still good Trek books and short stories being released up till the launch of Discovery. Granted, most of those were based on the old shows, but some of them were original ideas. I think that shows there is still life in the franchise if the right people are running it.

I read comic books as a kid and one thing I learned is that the write creator can revive the most moribund character. Daredevil sucked from 1964 till the late 70s and just before the series was cancelled Frank Miller took over and the series exploded. The X-Men didn't even have a book for years. Tons of examples. All it takes is a person with the right vision.

Every week for the last several weeks I've been watching Silo and SNW on the same day. The last few weeks I can't help but think how much I've been enjoying Silo and how I wish SNW had that earnestness and urgency in it's writing that I enjoy from Silo so much. Comparing the two, it's kind of embarrassing where Trek is at the moment.

I always see new Trek compared to the original series or TNG, and I really think that is the wrong approach. Trek today needs to be compared to other competing streaming shows of the modern day and right now there really is no comparison. While some of these streaming shows are giving us amazing characters and storylines and actually doing social commentary well without feeling like it's preaching or lecturing, Star Trek seems content to stay, safe? They do these gimmick stories like puppets or soap operas and it feels like Star Trek can be so much more than it is.

I want to say to Star Trek what I say to shows like Severance and Silo: I can't wait till the next episode to see where they go next. I feel with Strange New Worlds, I am kind of dreading what the episodes will be this week and what the "Gimmick of the week" is. Even in watching this last episode, I couldn't help but wonder has there even been character development this season? Ok, we got some hints with Christine in last week's episode and I actually did like the ending of this episode with Pike and missing Marie and Juliet, but for a show that gave so much promise after Season 2 of Discovery and dealing with the Enterprise before Kirk, they could do so much more with it and I feel like they choose not to.

Question: have any of the writers associated with modern Trek written anything really good outside of Star Trek? Just curious.

I'm really out of touch when it comes to modern tv. I can look at IMDB ratings, but that doesn't help much since I don't recognize 95% of the shows from the last 15 years.

For me, a Trek episode should either use sci fi to explore a moral dilemma or have good character development (or even both).

This one was a whole lot of fun (my husband and I both laughed out loud more than once) and definitely had character development. It even raised the interesting question of whether Pike’s daughter was real or not. If she wasn’t, did that mean Picard’s life in Inner Light was not real?

It surely rates higher than episodes that are gratuitously violent or gory with nothing to say.

A strong thumbs up from me.

Here’s yet another SNW gimmick episode and it’s a terrible one — who green-lights ideas like “how about a super-being (“Discount Trelane” or “Trelane-lite”) needs to pass some academic requirement and so his project is to make SNW re-enact a soap opera?” So the premise can’t get much worse.

I started shaking my head in the opening scene when it became clear Pike has woken up in some altered reality. The real issue here (or one of them) is that the whole episode is pointless — and I think the notion of confronting arbitrary emotions is pointless. SNW has not put in the groundwork to make us care about individual characters - instead it is gimmick after hi-jinks week after week. With the 60th anniversary of Trek coming up, it’s a shame what the state of the franchise has become.

If there was anything that scored some points here, it was Mount’s acting. This is an episode primarily about him - he suspects BS is going on and I liked his pragmatism. He was, for a change, purposeful and captain-like. But I should not have to laud this type of thing at this stage in the series.

Anyhow, the soap opera gimmick is a horrible idea for Trek. Not as bad as the muppets, but this is an overall worse episode than that one. This is just out-of-character behaviour for the sake of a soap opera — there’s literally nothing instructive here. The joke got old very quickly, and it never even worked in the first place.

And we get an epilogue where the cast confronts their emotions…

But I did find it interesting that Pike has some future memories of his daughter and that they really act like true memories. His loss is palpable.

As for La’an - Chong is just plain hot but her subplot is stupid as well, since it is straight-up soap opera. La’an sees what she wants to see in Spock’s bro. Big deal.

0.5 stars for “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” — or “Days of the Enterprise”. Just could not care less about what I was watching. How many gimmick episodes have we had through 7 in S4 so far? For me SNW S4 is shaping up to be the worst season of live action Trek ever made. Worse than SFA, PIC S2. TNG S1 looks like a masterpiece by comparison. These writers can only write about feelings and emotions — Trek is too intelligent for them. Introducing a ship’s counsellor was also a strike agains this episode. Terrible premise, worse execution, immature plotting. SNW is the worst sci-fi out there.

I can guarantee you right now, nobody outside of the USA knew who that actress was or what she'd been in without a visit to IMDB.

I just finished watching S3E10 of “Silo” on AppleTV, and I truly don’t know where Star Trek finds its writers. They are absolute clowns compared to some of the other good sci-fi out there.

@ jjabrams

"Just think of the many issues and anxieties unique to this current period Star Trek could and should be touching upon. Political polarisation, digital and algorithm-based propaganda / radicalisation, growing economic divides, new wars and genocides, immoral tech bro manchildren having way too much power over our lives, AI fears, environmental concerns, the increasingly “vibes-based” nature of our cultural and political engagement. Did I miss anything?"

Cost of living crisis, wild proliferation of gambling into every aspect of American life, rise of populism, inability for a population to distinguish truth from fiction (thanks to AI but not only thanks to AI), the decline of higher education due to a wildly unbalanced cost-benefit ratio, social media / OF / cryptocurrencies being the only meaningful path to the American dream for younger generations, the "sex recession" caused by dating apps inflicting deep harm on those younger generations (particularly men), the fast proliferation of a surveillance state with Flock cameras & etc, the ever-increasing cost of access to the legal system to seek justice placing it beyond the reach of many so that it is no longer an option leading people to instead pursue justice through extrajudicial viral outrage, the Epstein debacle starkly exposing how there are no laws for the uber-rich, societies grappling with vast migration that is driving demographic & cultural change coupled with declining birth rates among these same societies' "native" populations . . .

All fertile topics for stories. Do what Star Trek does, invent planets that are grappling with them, allegorically or not, and ask hard questions that make us confront the issues and think.

. . .

You have a great list and initially I didn't think I would have anything to add to it. But damn this is a more scary moment than I think I've lived through in my lifetime so far. Really feels like we're on the edge of a lot of crises that are all about to boil over at any minute.

As older people I think we're personally more insulated from some of these than the younger generations, and I'm frequently thankful for that. But it isn't hard to see our society struggling with all of the above if you're looking.

Low-cost drone warfare . . . the erosion of democracy inflicted by hopeless gridlock . . . engineered obsolescence / "you will own nothing and be happy" / enshittification / shrinkflation etc . . .

Instead of even attempting to tackle any of these we get "Gee I wonder who Spock is dating this week."

But maybe this, too, is just a symptom of what a fucked up moment we're living through. Can only make "safe, escapist" television with established IPs. Nothing that might alienate some faction of viewers because you need every last viewer for when you present to the shareholders so you can keep your job.

Or maybe the majority of audiences actually are just tired of thinking about all of this and want to turn their brains off, who knows.

There's an algorithm out there that knows you lost two more viewers than you were supposed to this quarter when you did the episode about postpartum psychosis and they couldn't handle having their beliefs challenged. Clean out your desk.

That same algorithm says you would have gained +5 viewers if you'd done forty minutes of pretty Spock and pretty La'an dancing the tango instead. People like to see pretty people dancing. They would have watched after they saw clips on TikTok.

Now those student loans that were going to take you 20 years to pay off are going to take you 30. Hope you didn't need health insurance. It'd be time to move back in with your parents if you didn't already live with them. Hey but if you get a pedicure, maybe you can sell pictures of your feet . . . sure you already tried that before taking the gig writing for Star Trek and no one liked your photos, but there are new filters now . . . you only need to land one "whale," after all . . . c'mon, algorithm gods, get these photos in front of Elon Musk . . .

Damn. Pike should just issue General Order 24 and put us out of our misery.

What's sad is that the Sybok in this episode is probably better than the Sybok in ST5.

@DDB

Remember that Silo is based on a series of novels, so that itself probably means the plot is going to have more depth.

People point out that TOS had gimmick episodes, and to be sure, there were some stinkers (I'm looking at you "The Way to Eden" and "Plato's Stepchildren"). But especially in the first two seasons, it also had good writers, like Gene L. Coon and D.C. Fontana who could make gimmicky episodes like "A Piece of the Action" compelling. And then it had great episodes, often written by serious science fiction writers like Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, and Norman Spinrad. Where are the equivalent caliber of writers on SNW? The actors can be amazing, but if the scripts are subpar, it is garbage in and garbage out.

@Jeffrey's Tube
"That same algorithm says you would have gained +5 viewers if you'd done forty minutes of pretty Spock and pretty La'an dancing the tango instead. "

Maybe the algorithm they use is outdated or faulty cause they do not achieve new audience or Tik Tok attention.

But yeah, it could be great if there were Star Trek writers that could write something really good in an era that the peak is mediocrity.
I am afraid current Trek it is just a sign of our times: decadence and decline.

p.s.
Even "Silo" has writing issues. The books are interesting, nothing great, but the TV adaptation lacks a lot. But I will leave that for when and if Jammer reviews it :)

I don't know what you all see in Silo. I'm basically hatewatching it at this point. A season-long amnesia plot? I'd rather watch Picard Season 2 again.

Then again I read the first book years ago, thought the writing was poor and the story average, and didn't feel the need to read the other two books in the trilogy. And that first book was better than the series.

. . .

For All Mankind and Star City are great though. But of course they are, because know whose shows they are? Ronald D. Moore.

"What's sad is that the Sybok in this episode is probably better than the Sybok in ST5."


I think Sybok is an interesting character very well played by Laurence Luckinbill. He's actually one of my favorite parts of the movie.

Star Trek 5 is underrated, imo. While I think there were too many attempts at comedy (probably seen as necessary after the success of The Voyage Home) I think this movie does the best job of all the films of showcasing the comradery of the characters and the chemistry of the actors.

I also appreciate the fact that the story had some "big ideas" instead of just being an action flick like the majority of the other Trek films.

I know it's technically too early to do a post-mortem on SNW, but the show is what it is and isn't likely to change in season 5 considering the exact same people wrote it too.


What did SNW get right?

I think the casting is pretty good. I think the production values are excellent.


What did SNW get wrong?

Unfortunately, almost everything else.


- The writing staff is obviously incompetent. No other way to say it. It's been nothing more than what prompting an A.I. with "Cross Star Trek with X" would give you, with X being everything from Aliens, to Ursula K. Le Guin, to the Muppets.

- Too large a cast. It's like a soup with too many ingredients. You only have 10 episodes per season to work with.

- It needlessly tied itself too closely to TOS. It should have done its own thing with Pike, Spock, and maybe one other TOS character. No Gorn. No T'Pring. No Trelane. Absolutely no Kirks.

- Pike. For whatever reason the captain of the ship has been written as a lightweight. The joking, the cooking, the total lack of authority. He's the series lead in what should have been a dramatic science fiction series and he's written and performed more like a sitcom parent. Mike Brady had more gravitas than this guy.

- The tone. It's all over the place. One week we're watching a goofy farce, the next it's gross out horror. There's no baseline, just wild swings of the pendulum, even within episodes. The Doc loses his daughter in a silly fantasy. Pike breaks down at the end of a wacky soap opera.

Speaking of Pike, his character exemplifies the problem. It doesn't makes sense to set the character up with Talos 4 and The Menagerie and then write him like a cool soccer dad. And then you hammer him again with the Batel stuff. Miles O'Brien thinks the writers should cut this guy some slack.

- Spock. Ethan Peck is a good actor, but the SNW version of the character bears almost no resemblance to, and is much less interesting than, Leonard Nimoy's version.

- The hair, wardrobe, and ship interiors. The hair and costuming in some cases (which will go nameless) range from unflattering to ridiculous. The ship's interiors are poorly lit and laid out so that what should be modest rooms are the size of arenas.

- Pike's fate. The audience knows Pike's fate. Let his ignorance of it provide dramatic irony. If he knows his fate, I think it has to become the defining characteristic of the character.


I hate the idea that in the Trek universe inexorable Fate (with a capital F) exists. I hate the Discovery idea of magic Klingon rocks extracting a price for telling your fortune, too.

Instead of all that crap, I wish they had taken a cue from one of the Trek short stories and had Pike's hang-up be that he secretly harbors doubts about whether he ever escaped his cage on Talos.

..........


Could the show have been salvaged? It would have been almost impossible, I think. The way this show sprang from Discovery where Pike learns of his future tragedy, combined with all of the unnecessary ties to TOS introduced in season one, really limited what could be done with the show.

A Pike (and Spock) era Enterprise show could be great in the right hands. Just don't encumber them with the Fate stuff and all the TOS ties and the right showrunner and writers could do amazing things. Focus on a core cast of 5 or 6 people with Pike as a strong lead, too. And fix that hair, damn it.

@Jeffery's Tube

It was not a season long Amnisia arc, and it was actually very important to the story. I guess you were not "hatewatching" enough.

My theory on why the writing sucks so much more in nu-Trek now -- I think the writing team know their future is uncertain and they truly don't GAF. Of course, I don't know the status of their contracts. Whatever demographic etc. SNW is targeting or what it's ethos was meant to be -- that's irrelevant. The series has been doomed since S3 as a joke of a show.

So the writers are displaying their narcissism in writing whatever they want, using AI to have to do the least amount of work themselves re. details, plots etc. It's extreme arrogance and selfishness on the part of the writers who are basically mailing it in, displaying their lack of maturity and professionalism week in, week out.

I do feel somewhat bad for the cast, who are capable actors for the most part. But they are likely getting paid handsomely, though what becomes of their reputation / perception to others is an open question.

Interesting that the IMDb rating for this episode is the worst of S4 -- 4.5/10 (worse than the muppets episode of 4.8/10). These are truly atrocious scores, and probably reflect growing anger / frustration among the fanbase for this show.

"I think the writing team know their future is uncertain and they truly don't GAF."


The fans deserve their share of the blame, too. The first two seasons were full of the same problems as the last two and many people were giving the show absolutely glowing reviews. Maybe if the fan base had pointed out the obvious flaws in season one we wouldn't be watching an abysmal season four now.

@Quincy, TNG

I pretty much agree across the board with your, uh, pre-mortem?

I will say however, pertaining to the casting, that it’s tough to fully gage if this was done well due to the poor decision to make the basic premise of the show “hey, remember TOS?”

For example, M’Benga bears so little resemblance to his TOS version that he’s essentially a totally different character, even having an accent and a mumbling problem that he apparently loses in the ensuing years. Where Booker Bradshaw’s TOS M’Benga was an energetic, vocal guy, SNW’s M’Benga is coma level lowkey to the point of needing subtitles. Is this a casting issue? A writing/directing issue? An everything issue?? It’s hard to say. But giving us a character that we have a firm reference for and radically altering that characters baseline personality creates more problems than it’s worth to the show. Particularly given that the Enterprise already had a doctor character in The Cage.

And then there’s Scotty. Are we to believe that this emotionally skinny, supposedly mid-thirties, man teen is a younger version of the steely eyed, usually drunk, punch throwing, hungry for a fight, stand his ground miracle worker from TOS? That’s not how human development generally works outside of serious brain injuries. People don’t fundamentally transform into new versions of themselves after a few harrowing experiences. People may develop and grow, but there should still be a core that ties who they were to who they become. Once again, the SNW Scotty seems to me like a wholly different character to his TOS counterpart. In this case I think it’s more a writing issue than a casting issue, but it’s hard to parse that out.

""I’ve actually been watching a lot of Enterprise lately. It was a strong attempt to make Trek relevant in the 21st century. Trek fans hated it too"


They hated it because Berman and Braga were washed up, and like SNW, were cribbing ideas from everything from Enemy Mine to the A-Team. They also hated the fact that Archer was written like a petulant idiot and T'Pol was written like a G rated porn star. Fwiw I think ENT greatly improved in its second half, but you can't blame the audience for bailing after two bad seasons that had been preceded by seven underwhelming seasons of Voyager."

Yes, it certainly was an "attempt". That is what you can say about Star Trek: Enterprise. Dead on arrival due to possibly one of the most bland casts of characters in all of 2000s genre tv, but an attempt nonetheless.

In terms of the writers of this show, it's worth noting that Henry Alonso Myers is co-showrunner on this show. When I had found that out prior to Season 1, I was stoked, because he was also co-showrunner on The Magicians, which was by far the best SyFy series in the last decade (The Expanse was an outside production, so it doesn't really count).

The Magicians has really, really fantastic character writing on it - just top notch. It got me to really feel for the characters by the end of the series. However, in retrospect, they got a major assist since it was based upon a finished trilogy of novels, which allowed them to structure the story around an already developed framework, solving the "plot issues" for them. I've not read the books, TBH, but I've heard people who've read the books and seen the series say the series improves upon the books in many ways.

But, thinking back to the tone of the series, I can see the seeds of SNW's downfall. It's a very different show, since it's a magic-school fantasy - sort of a more grown-up version of Harry Potter. The young people characters on the show are extremely pop-culture literate, and the show is absolutely replete with constant references to other media. After the quite dark first season, the show gets a bit lighter and less serious, and the setting becomes less and less believable, approaching breaking the fourth wall. Every single season after the first, for example, has a musical episode. So I think the desire for very self-aware, media-knowledgeable stories comes from him, ultimately.

I'm guessing that that doesn't sell it to people, but it does work well within its setting. I feel like a lot of the problem is that Myers wants that sort of hyper-self-aware storytelling within Star Trek as well. I can't explain why the character writing is so much more shallow, though - that's probably on Goldsman, TBH.

"But, thinking back to the tone of the series, I can see the seeds of SNW's downfall. It's a very different show, since it's a magic-school fantasy - sort of a more grown-up version of Harry Potter. The young people characters on the show are extremely pop-culture literate, and the show is absolutely replete with constant references to other media. After the quite dark first season, the show gets a bit lighter and less serious, and the setting becomes less and less believable, approaching breaking the fourth wall. Every single season after the first, for example, has a musical episode. So I think the desire for very self-aware, media-knowledgeable stories comes from him, ultimately."

I think the downfall of this show is trying to be like Buffy. Much like how Voyager's downfall was trying to be like TNG. You can't recreate that lightning-in-a-bottle of a beloved piece of pop culture. Trying to recreate it only results in a sad, faded imitation. Staking out your own territory, as a writer, is risky and carries the risk of painful failure. But the alternative is stagnation.

"Much like how Voyager's downfall was trying to be like TNG."


Voyager is like a violinist who can't read music who steals a Stradivarius and some of Paganini's sheet music. The creators had the budget (the violin) and the premise (the sheet music) to make a great show, but no idea what to do with them. So they end up playing variations of the "tunes" they know.

Voyager had a brilliant premise and a set of characters that look very interesting on paper. Unfortunately, the writers/producers seemed to have no clue what to do past those initial concepts. The great premise is dropped right off the bat, and no one seemed to know what the heck to do with half the cast.

What was the plan for Kes? Neelix? Tom? Harry? Chakotay? Tuvok? That isn't to say that these characters were never in any good episodes, but most of the time, it was because the plots of those episodes were already very strong. When you are doing an ensemble show and your writers can only find their muse when writing for 3 of your 9 characters you are in trouble.


There are some excellent episodes of Voyager to be sure, but, to continue my extremely labored musical metaphor, it feels like a small number of beautiful solos in an uninspired and frequently discordant symphony.




Boy, I really managed to say something that sounds both pretentious and dumb here. Oh, well. Hopefully it makes sense.

I think Voyager is 100 times better than SNW.
Maybe I am biased cause Seven of Nine. She has the best arc in all ST, at least for me. I discovered Voyager when I ordered some 2nd hand tapes of season 4. I was lucky cause this was the best era of the show. Well, I ended up ordering all of the seasons (with DS9 and TNG there were way too many 2nd hand video tapes in my flat, since there was no other way to watch the shows in Greece).
Could Voyager be better? Oh yes. But I really enjoyed it, even if for 4 seasons or so.
I can't really say which of these 3 shows that made me love ST is better, I loved them all the same.
I realize I had a big advantage: I basically binge watched them.
Enterprise I found it really boring with lack of any kind of charisma. Was it the cast? the direction? the writing? Me? Dunno, I did not hate it but did not like it either.

Voyager has episodes that have become part of the science fiction cultural lexicon with recognition beyond fans of Star Trek. Tuvix (this has even become a verb for the concept), Living Witness, Blink of an Eye, Death Wish.

Enterprise doesn't have any.

@bgt @JT

I have big problems with both Voyager and Enterprise.

Voyager had some truly great "high concept" (as Jammer likes to say) episodes. Seven, at least on Voyager, is one of of my favorite characters. That's two of the biggest positives.

The biggest negatives:

- I dislike about 140 out 170 episodes.

-I don't really enjoy spending time with most of the characters, in fact, most of them grate on my nerves.

- I so frequently hate the way Janeway is written (and sometimes performed) that I find myself rooting against her.

Along with those major complaints I've got a lot of little gripes too, abandonment of the cool premise, too much Alpha quadrant, keeping Harry over Kes, not giving Roxann Dawson enough to do and on and on and on in only a way a Trek fan can do.



Enterprise's biggest faults are the lack of fresh story ideas in the first two seasons, the juvenile attempts at titillation, and a failure to commit fully to the Xindi arc. These problems can all be laid at the feet of Berman and Braga.

On the positive side of the ledger, I really like the cast and characters. B & B deserve credit for that too. I initially wrote a bunch of stuff detailing their strengths and weaknesses, but, ultimately, I just enjoy spending time with these people.

Enterprise is a tale of two halves. There are some very strong episodes in the first half, but a lot of mediocre and outright terrible ones too. In fact, when it first aired I quite watching in season two. Well, that was a mistake. After the earliest part of season three Enterprise becomes consistently watchable with a hit to miss ratio that rivals the best Trek series.

I'd rank the Coto lead fourth season as one of the strongest in all of Trek. Coto, Sussman, and Judy and Gar clearly all loved, and more importantly, understood Star Trek. What they accomplished after having the show's budget cut in half, and with cancelation looming, was truly remarkable.

Other positives include some of the best makeup and ship designs in Trek. The stunt work and special effects were also top notch.

@Atoz

How can you list Enterprise’s negatives without mentioning that horrible HORRIBLE theme song? I’d argue that having a total atmosphere killing, very 2000s dated crappy tune* like that happening before every episode set the show up for failure right off the bat, a deep hole being dug every week that Enterprise didn’t have the umph to climb out of. I found Enterprise to be generally dull, but I think if the show had established a better tenor for itself early on it could have worked.

*I know music taste is subjective, and what appeals to some might not appeal to others and blah blah, but in this case the craposity of that theme song is a scientific FACT!

Yes, the theme song is an abomination. To me it epitomizes Berman's stubborn refusal to admit mistakes and make corrections.

When I fall asleep watching an Enterprise dvd I still manage to wake up enough each time that song comes on to reach over and hit the skip button.


One addition to my previous comment: I can absolutely see why someone wouldn't like Enterprise. It's a show with a lot of bad episodes early on, but with a lot of average to very good episodes later on. On the flip side, I can't see why anyone would love Voyager. It's a show with a handful of great episodes, some good ones, and 140 that I'd rank from mediocre to terrible.

Both shows could have, and should have, been better, but they are what they are. I'm still happy to revisit the episodes from both series that I enjoy from time to time.

I misspoke (twice) previously when I said I disliked 140 episodes of Voyager. Looking at my notes, I actually like around forty episodes. Not a huge difference, but I wanted to set the record straight.

For what it's worth, my favorite Voyager episodes are:

Muse
Living Witness
Remember
Blink of an Eye
Nemesis
Drone
Counterpoint
Someone to Watch Over Me
One Small Step
Body and Soul
Survival Instinct
Timeless
Barge of the Dead
Infinite Regress
Unity
Prey
Deadlock
Year of Hell

Yes, Voyager produced a few of the best episodes in all of Star Trek, without a doubt: "Blink of an Eye", "Living Witness", "Counterpoint", "Someone to Watch over Me", "Distant Origin", etc. That's to be expected given the talent they had on board. It's just a shame that most of it is profoundly underwhelming, given they had Brannon Braga (who was capable of greatness at his best), Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Bryan Fuller, Joe Menosky, and Michael Taylor all working on it at various different points. It could and should have been so much more.

I’d been meaning to write something about the visual language of melodrama that #SNW keeps abusing without any real content behind it. Basically, it keeps rolling out a simulacrum of melodrama. Turns out the writers got ahead of me in these reflections.

I have nothing against the premise, and even the Q-like little asshole, fine. It actually started excellently for about ten minutes and was considerably better than the previous three episodes.

But they somehow managed to flush even their own decent setup down the toilet. What did they spend it on? Yet another literal verbalization:

Spock misses La’an, La’an misses Spock, Uhura misses her parents and looks for a father in Pike, Pike misses his alternate life with Batel, while M’Benga mourns all the sorrow in the world.

All fine, except they’ve already spent an entire season mourning the same things in the same words. It’s just that six episodes of daytime soap is very much not the same thing as six weekly episodes out of a ten-episode season.

If this is parody, then it is self-parody:

“What if we were trapped inside a suffocating narrative where everyone constantly talks about their feelings and nothing happens, except new and new Spock relatives suddenly keep appearing?”

Dear God, we’ve been trapped in it roughly since Discovery.

And that was exactly what made the first third of the episode so wonderful for me. For a moment it even seemed that maybe the showrunners weren’t completely hopeless after all. Because all the now-familiar melodrama of long looks and profound lines with dramatic pauses was turned up “just a little,” approximately from 8 to 11.

Tears flow, everyone hugs, This Is Very Important.

At the same time Pike suddenly becomes TOS-normal and looks at all this in bewilderment together with us.

“Oh yes, Chris, I absolutely understand you. What the hell happened to my Enterprise?”

Then the Q-like showrunner appears and explains:

“You see, all these space adventures leave no time for emotional processing.”

And we’re like, aha, this is probably Kurtzman in disguise, I recognize you.

And the captain is basically: are you high or what?

And we’re like: come on, Chris, hit him!

I generally value the meta-technique of synchronization enormously: let the reader/viewer, on their own level, experience something similar to what the character is experiencing.

For example, in that Gorn episode on the ship, the effect was achieved brilliantly: you suddenly find yourself in the middle of Alien, exactly the way this always happens — suddenly — and you don’t know what to do with it and aren’t ready for it, because not even Ripley herself was ready.

Except here the immersion works against the script itself. Pike figures out rather quickly that all he has to do is wait until the unnecessary cringe is over. And so do we along with him.

Yes, yes, exactly. We’ll just sit through the unnecessary credits and then go about our business.

Even this could have become decent meta-irony by the writers about their own creative difficulties. But nope. We quietly fall out of the painted soap opera into the “real” world, where now everyone once again has to Finally Express Their Real Feelings.

Meaning that Trelane’s voice turns out to be Kurtzman’s real voice, unironically.

The problem is this:

these two worlds can neither be distinguished nor combined.

The parodic register of the first half devalues all possible emotional weight in the second. We’ve just learned to read all these tropes as a gag, in quotation marks. The episode does not even try to mark or explain the transition from melodrama to, well, the same melodrama. So they destroy each other.

Take “The Inner Light” as an illustration of their final thesis . It works precisely because the part with Picard was not demonstrative parody. It was completely real both for him and for us, and only then gets put in quotation marks. Here is a real moment of loss for us and for him, and the grief is witnessed by the Flute.

But obviously we’re not going to get that anymore. So let’s just hug and finally express our grief for normal human Star Trek.

“I miss the Enterprise.”

“But the Enterprise is right in front of you.”

“No. I remember another one. And for me it was real.”

Just because Star Trek doesn’t happen anymore doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.

We can even cry. This. Is. Very. Important.

A very interesting post, Mykola. And accurate, I think.

I'm reminded of an old Futurama episode where the Robot Devil says "Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't just have your characters ANNOUNCE how they feel! That makes me feel ANGRY!"

Mykola, good post. I wonder if people's present lives are a simulacrum of a more substantial past and self, and so they barrenly accept the apparent fraud committed by Kurtzman and his ilk.

SMFH…. The show’s 37 execute producers have once again gone off the fucking deep end. They should have named the series “Strange New Parodies”, because they seem to have zero interest in exploring strange new worlds…. If the point was for the main characters to confront repressed emotions, there are far better ways to do it within a legitimate Star Trek science fiction story.

Makes Threshold look like Shakespeare

"Makes Threshold look like Shakespeare"


Seems like we've really had to readjust our "Worst.Trek.Episode. Ever." a lot over the last 25 years.

Speaking of Shakespeare, as long as they're doing nothing but gimmicks, a Shakespeare themed episode might be interesting. Well, more interesting than a soap opera anyway.

"The Tragedy of Spocklet, Science Officer of Enterprise"


Spock - Hamlet
Chapel - Ophelia
Pike - King Claudius
Una - Queen Gertrude
M'Benga - Polonius
Hemmer - The Ghost
Ortegas & Scotty - Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
Uhura - Horatio
T'Pring - Osric
Pelia & Trelane - The Graveside Clowns
La'an - Laertes
Jim Kirk - Fortinbras

When "Boardwalk Empire" and "SOA" became unwatchable (for me at least) I'd fast foward each episode and would have a 'death of the week' to look forward to. "SNW" at this point doesn't even offer that.

"I suggest that you not read too much into it. It was, by nature, contrived." I feel like Kurtzman is playing an elaborate, but not particularly funny prank on everyone. Most of this episode is a tiresome repetition of soap opera tropes. There's nothing particularly clever or insightful here. Amnesia, secret family relationships, a medical crisis, an evil twin brother, a made-up disease that interferes with Dr. M'Benga's ability to perform a risky procedure. It's all delivered in a way that, I guess, we're supposed to care about. But its just silly and not particularly interesting. Then Pike realizes the connection to that life with Batel. And suddenly the emotions and the melodrama are justified. Anson Mount hits it out of the park. Was it worth it? Not quite. Too much is contrived. And bringing back "Trelane" is not worth it. While the ending can't quite save the episode, it keeps it from being a total loss. But gimmicks aren't the reason I watch Star Trek, and this season of SNW has sorely tested my patience.

For the protocol, I like SNW, or I wouldn't be watching it. Even the worst episodes have something interesting in them for me. I think it's mostly because I like the cast and characters. I could not stand most of the characters in Discovery (the entire bridge crew were extras to Michael Burnham - at least SNW is a true ensemble show), and I didn't think Patrick Stewart managed to channel Picard successfully in Picard to the point where I felt like I was watching someone playing someone playing Picard. The actor was simply too old and too far removed from the character.

Everyone in SNW initially felt right, especially Pike and even Spock, early on. But it's very hard to expect a prequel series with legacy characters played by different actors to copy the originals. also, actors and writers are not interested in doing that, there is no challenge for them. There is not a single character in SNW that really feels like its TOS counterpart, and the technology and design obviously looks totally different, that's why I best enjoy the show when I consider it removed from the main canon of Star Trek, It's a version of what Pike's ship could have looked like in an alternate universe. Actually, I don't consider any of the Kurtzman era shows to be in the same universe as TOS and the Berman area. It is my own private imagination so I can do whatever I want with it. It's fun seeing how one show leads to another, but let's be honest, ultimately none of it fits. That's the downside of doing prequels in visual form. If too much time has passed, the worlds don't connect seamlessly anymore, while you can write a prequel or sequel book years after the original, and unless you're incompetent and completely screwed up the charatization, it's gonna feel like it belongs in the same universe.

Let's not forget SNW started as episodic show of the weekly adventures of Pike's Enterprise - the antithesis to Discovery's heavy serialization - before the defining events of The Cage. But then the writers started to be tempted by continuing storylines - most of them not that interesting - and eventually giving in to gimmicks and comedy. I don't know what caused this shift in perspective and tone, but it's there. At this point the show has lost its original identity, Pike doesn't feel like the captain of season 1 anymore. I still enjoy watching the series just to see what they come up with and I WANT each episode to be good, but I think the show lost its compass and will probably never fully regain is again. We'll see how they stick the landing.

And again, although it will be interesting to see how they navigate the connection point to TOS purely on a geeky level, I mostly enjoy this show when I imagine it untethered to TOS.

"the antithesis to Discovery's heavy serialization"

It's an unthinking over correction by the folks in charge of modern Trek. "Oh, people don't like this? Well then, logically, that MUST mean that they will LOVE something that is 180° opposite of the first thing!"



Paramount opens a restaurant:

"Hmm...people don't seem happy with our menu of 31 flavors of chilled monkey brains. Weird. Must be vegans. I know! Durian on a stick!"

In the end the corporate brain trust will inevitably come to the conclusion that "people just don't like food."




Has anybody ever pointed out that Michael Burnham and Pike are polar opposites too? Young black female non-captain who can do no wrong and is the center of the universe vs Old white male captain with the gravitas of a wet napkin and is about as useful as an appendix in half of his show's episodes.

...........

Going back to my earlier point about how this show has always been what it is now, here's a comment from someone from Jammer's review of episode seven of season one:


modulum
Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 9:35am (UTC -5)

I think one thing SNW is consciously doing is making each episode have a very different tone/genre, and really playing that up. So after an ultra-bleak iteration on the mystery episode, we have a full on campy adventure flick with everyone hamming it up. There's an almost pastiche or anthology-esque quality to this series that is really interesting

^
This guy got it almost from the very start.


Season one was full of old tropes, bad comedy, homages, and outright ripoffs, and people were falling all over themselves praising this show to the high heavens.




My point being this: the first half of my post is about how the producers stupidly over corrected to the mistakes of Discovery. That's on them. But fans now can't blame them for seasons 3 and 4 being garbage because that garbage is exactly what the fans were cheering for in season one.

"Best first season since TOS!"

"Trek is back!"

They just gave you more of what you said you loved.

One thing I have noticed while perusing Trek forums is that people will devote enormous effort into explaining why whatever happens in an episode "makes sense." Everything from basic rationalizations to insanely elaborate continuity fixes. The new pieces of the puzzle always fit, or those pieces are conveniently irrelevant.

Of course this isn't just about Star Trek. You see this everywhere throughout human history. Politics, religion, conspiracy theories. All new datum, no matter how contradictory, is always further proof that "we were right all along."

In politics and tribalism you start with "WE are right" and work backwards.

In religion you start with "God(s) did this" and work backwards.

In conspiracy theories you start with "THEY did this" and work backwards.


I suppose, while it's supremely annoying to read about how some half-assed wardrobe decision on SNW is REALLY "because the Q exist out of time and it's ACTUALLY the Q who inspired the robes worn by 21st century World War 3 era magistrates and not the other way around" things could be a lot worse. These folks could be waging a holy war, electing a corrupt demagogue, or hiding, naked, in Taylor Swift's linen closet in order to get the final bit of evidence they need to prove she's the head of the Illuminati/Lizard People Alliance.

Not a Merry Man: It's not impossible I guess. Indeed, certain amount of people do actually build their own lives around TVTropes-like concepts of character growth, confronting emotions, going through a healing arc, seeking closure. Not merely recognizing the pattern afterwards but actively modelling themselves on it.

[Which is rather funny, because this is basically what the Novel was supposed to diagnose in the Romance centuries ago 🤗]

It's not impossible as well that nowadays a considerable part of the intended audience is metatextually literate (in this very specific way) enough to demand these things deployed verbatim, explicit, visible, unmistakably marked. At the same time perhaps not trained quite enough to enjoy the opposite, any ambiguity/subtlety in their execution. Nor to demand or even recognize any actual substance behind the ready-made labels.

So we end up with something very much like the labels from the writers' room whiteboard carbon-copied straight into the characters’ mouths. Postmodernism as we deserve it.

@Freakiest Friday

The show may have always been this way, but season 1 vs. 4 is like the difference between half a spoon of sugar in your tea and four spoons of sugar in your tea.
While the tone of the series was always on the lighter side, I don't remember season 1 being that gimmicky. I remember Pike was actually an interesting character in season 1. I think there was one purely comic episode (Spock Amok) and one high concept episode (The Elysian Kingdom) But I think this tendency towards high concept and gimmicks has creeped more and more into the show and now here we are.

"Has anybody ever pointed out that Michael Burnham and Pike are polar opposites too? Young black female non-captain who can do no wrong and is the center of the universe vs Old white male captain with the gravitas of a wet napkin and is about as useful as an appendix in half of his show's episodes."

Yes, very true. I've felt that way as well. And it's very much in keeping with nu-Trek's ethos.

But as for praising SNW's S1 and now suffering thru it's 3rd and 4th seasons, for me, SNW did start out very promisingly. I don't think you could legitimately complain about the first 6 episodes -- on average they were pretty good. My thinking then was that given the poor caliber of the writers and producers, episodic might just be something they could pull off instead of season-long arcs, which are much harder.

Then SNW S1 misfired very badly for 2 episodes and I was shocked at how the quality could drop so precipitously. So the warning signs were there -- the writers had run out of good ideas. But S1 finished very strongly, although it ripped off of one of the finest hours of TV -- how could you possibly go wrong doing that?

And then SNW got progressively worse with S2, S3 and S4. So overall, SNW deserved praise for much of S1 and S2 was not exactly a disaster. I'm not agreeing with this idea that some folks praised SNW for its S1 and thus they've made the bed of shit we're all lying in right now with S4.

"When "Boardwalk Empire" and "SOA" became unwatchable (for me at least) I'd fast foward each episode and would have a 'death of the week' to look forward to. "SNW" at this point doesn't even offer that."

Can't relate. "Boardwalk Empire" for me was a masterpiece start-to-finish. Substantially better than even TNG and DS9 as a whole.

@Atoz:

You basically summed it up. The episodes of Voyager I consider truly great are basically
--Prime Factors
--Meld
--Deadlock
--The Thaw
--Distant Origin
--Scorpion
--Nemesis
--Year of Hell
--Prey
--Living Witness
--Drone
--Timeless
--Counterpoint
--Latent Image
--Gravity
--Course Oblivion
--Someone to Watch Over Me
--Tinkor, Tailor, Doctor, Spy
--Blink of An Eye
--Memorial
--Child's Play
--Muse

Most of the show is completely forgettable for me, but I still remember those highlights even decades later.

@Freakiest Friday

I actually think Burnham and Pike are quite alike.
They both think their crew are pals on excursion, the ship is mainly to resolve their feelings and they do not mind/care/respect about rules and regulations.

I am one of the people who did not praise SNW's season 1. I welcomed with joy that it seemed better than Disco and finally it had an ensemble and not just a crew-decoration, but I was cautious.
And then came season 2. And after the musical episode (I do not mind musical episodes as long as they have good music and or dance parts) I wrote a series review in IMDB, "I am afraid this is becoming just a colorful version of Discovery". Cause the same writing problems were obvious.
My best friend, who managed to watch 4 seasons of Disco before she run away shouting "I cannot stand of Burham anymore", told me when I started complaining about SNW: "shhh, it is the only Star Trek we have, at least it is watchable, mostly".

As for fans fighting about its quality in forums, I think it is mostly in the general spirit of our current times: "we agree or we are enemies".
It is more about piss the other side than like or dislike the show.

@theBgt "They both think their crew are pals on excursion, the ship is mainly to resolve their feelings and they do not mind/care/respect about rules and regulations."

One can't be more precise. Exactly: open-ended group therapeutic retreat with little or no concept of workplace boundaries.

In TNG, once you start having an “identity crisis” on the bridge, Picard will relieve you of duty and send you to Counselor Troi to deal with it somewhere appropriate. He will not stop the bridge meeting so everybody can process it together.

We do not, for God’s sake, explicitly “develop our relationship” while on duty. Which, by the way, is exactly the kind of boundary-blurring behavior that any reasonably progressive workplace code of conduct would treat as inappropriate.

@Ruhal

Are the symptoms of the illness more extreme? Well, we've hit the Muppet stage of the disease, so that would be a yes. SNW season one is the equivalent of M'Benga being crushed by a table. Season four and it's in full-on Johnny Eck mode. Both are very bad.

I mentioned a bunch of problems with season one. I apologize for repeating myself, but I've got time to kill.


Strange New Worlds.
It borrows from, and even lampshades, one of the most famous sci-fi movies of all time, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Pike is already a lightweight from day one.


Children of the Comet I don't remember much about this episode, so I'll have to skip this one. I was going to look at the comments to refresh my memory but they got "Boomered" lol. I do seem to recall liking the idea of nomadic aliens following a comet, but not liking the ending for some reason.

Ghost of Illyria
No homages here, but it does show some of the writing staff's shortcomings. Not being able to balance multiple plots. Giving a character something to do just to have something to do vs writing what's best for the over all plot. Handwaving away in-story problems in a desultory fashion or with feeble attempts at technobabble.

Memento Mor
This is season one's Griffen Incident. It's just a ton of submarine movie cliches.

Spock Amok
Broad comedy.

Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach: An uncredited rip-off of an Ursula K. Le Guin story.

The Serene Squall
I compared this to Spock's Brain. It's written like a farce, but only some of the cast is in on the joke.

The Elysian Kingdom
This is season one's Hourglass. A holodeck type episode with an emotional ending that doesn't feel completely earned because it hasn't been built up enough.

All Those Who Wander
It's Aliens for God's sake. If you are going to cover a song you either need to knock it out of the park or do it in a way different enough that you make it your own. This is Pat Boone covering Little Richard.

A Quality of Mercy
I think the idea of an unalterable fate doesn't work scientifically, and more importantly, thematically with Star Trek. But that's not relevant to what we're talking about here. What is relevant is that Pike, our hero, is once again being outclassed even in his showcase episode. Kirk is Batman. Pike is Burt Ward.




How different is doing a fairy tale homage from a soap opera homage? How different is a script full of submarine movie tropes than a script full of horror movie tropes? Why bother lampshading Day the Earth Stood Stll OR 24 when neither episode that does so really needed to do so? Is a wacky Spock mindswap episode that different from a wacky Spock gets high episode? Is ripping off Alien much different than ripping off Casablanca?

@theBgt "I actually think Burnham and Pike are quite alike.
They both think their crew are pals on excursion, the ship is mainly to resolve their feelings and they do not mind/care/respect about rules and regulations."


I haven't watched all of Discovery, so I may be off base here; if so, I apologize. Burnham doesn't mind breaking regulations. Pike doesn't mind when his crew break regulations. Burnham isn't a captain until season 4 (I googled) and Pike is supposed to be an experienced, tested, captain and the supreme authority figure from the opening episode.


Pike is Captain Harriman. His primary role is to make other characters look good, usually by just getting out of the way; be it Kirk or whichever crewman gets to do something cool this week without having to worry about consequences. Note, I said "primary" role, not "sole" role.

@Iceman

Nice to see someone else likes Muse.

@Freakiest Friday
"How different is doing a fairy tale homage from a soap opera homage? How different is a script full of submarine movie tropes than a script full of horror movie tropes? Why bother lampshading Day the Earth Stood Stll OR 24 when neither episode that does so really needed to do so? Is a wacky Spock mindswap episode that different from a wacky Spock gets high episode? Is ripping off Alien much different than ripping off Casablanca?"

These are legitimate questions, but fact of the matter is there are ripoffs (or homages, take your pick), and then there are ripoffs. You can "rip something off" cleverly and you can do it where all the seams are showing. For me this season is where the seams started to show. The horror tropes in Griffin Incident and the Casablanca cliches in A Case of Chiaroscuro were just too obvious. I felt like the writers were winking at me.

And hey, if SNW wants to do an Ursula le Guin story, even if unofficially, it is welcome to do so. It's better than The Hangover.

@Atoz:

Some of Menosky's scripts really don't work (Distant Voices I remember is fairly wretched), but I appreciate that he had a unique, almost mythological approach to Star Trek stories. It is at least an approach that isn't just chucking gimmicks at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Pike has been Captain Cool-Dad ever since his initial appearances on Discovery. His purpose as captain is to defer to his young, effervescent crew members.

What's interesting to me in comparing Burnham and Pike is not their similarities or differences but how they each represent an idealized model for their respective demographic positions according to modern progressive culture, or at least how those ideals crystallize into TV/Film tropes.

Burnham's role as a model of Black female excellence is fairly self-evident but Pike's lesson needs more unpacking. Discovery gave us plenty of examples, particularly in minor and disposable characters, of the very worst traits associated with (straight) white men: arrogant, domineering, incompetent, reactionary, entitled, and ultimately little more than obstacles for other characters to overcome. Strange New Worlds, by contrast, is much more positive and aspirational in giving us Pike as someone to admire.

Where the white male characters in Discovery could function as a kind of kitchen-sink repository for negative traits, Pike embodies a much more specific set of positive ones. He's receptive, listens well, and is deferential to the point of willingly letting subordinates from other identity groups take the spotlight. He's pleasant and benevolent, but also subdued and self-effacing, seemingly happiest when he can blend into the background and step into the foreground only when necessary to uplift someone else or facilitate their personal journey.

The fact that he's the captain of the ship almost becomes incidental. Indeed, the fact that he possesses comparatively greater power and privilege is precisely what makes his behavior aspirational within this cultural framework: he has the status and authority to dominate the room, but the ideal is that he voluntarily makes room for others instead. Power and privilege are only seen as legitimate when deployed altruistcally, if they cannot be relinquished altogether.

While this new ideal is doubtlessly an improvement, particularly when compared to the exaggerated tropes of traditional masculinity and whiteness, it risks making the most socially acceptable version of a privileged man one who is unusually self-effacing, deferential, and reluctant to occupy the center of attention. Traits that, in someone like Burnham, might be understood as confidence, assertiveness, or ambition, can start to look suspect when attached to the socially dominant identity, while receptivity, humility, and self-abnegation become especially prized. Pike is not simply an individual who happens to possess these characteristics; he is an example of how contemporary progressive storytelling can distribute virtues and vices along demographic lines.

Burnham's and Pike's divergent development as leaders are understandable narrative responses to very different cultural histories, but they also produce a somewhat peculiar asymmetry. If race and gender are supposed to become less determinative of how we judge individuals, it's worth asking why they should determine such different ideals of admirable behavior in the first place. Confidence, humility, assertiveness, receptivity, ambition, generosity, and authority are human traits; ideally, their value shouldn't depend so heavily on who possesses them.

"Strange New Worlds, by contrast, is much more positive and aspirational in giving us Pike as someone to admire."

Excuse me?? Admire Pike?? He's easily the worst captain Trek has ever had. He'd make a great head chef though. Under his command, there's no need to follow the chain of command -- subordinates can undertake whatever action they want and Pike will look the other way. He's got a ticking time bomb on his hands in La'an, but he's cool with that. Whatever M'Benga wants to do re. Klingons -- hey, that's cool too.

Cannot think of a worse excuse for an authority figure than Pike. A quasi-military operation cannot function with leaders like Pike. But in a stupid fantasy show like SNW, Pike as captain fits right in.

Bryan "Power and privilege are only seen as legitimate when deployed altruistcally, if they cannot be relinquished altogether."

It's scary how utterly wrong this is. Stalin and Mao were both "legitimate" and ruled through an iron fist of fear and deprivation. Pike would probably shine their shoes in order to maintain his cooking rights in such regimes. Pike is neither good nor bad. He's insipid.

@Bryan

I think the phenomenon you’re describing also speaks to one of the primary reasons the writing on these shows has been so poor. Positive depictions and outcomes for some pre-selected characters drive the creative process, while vilification or diminishment is a preset focus for others, resulting in the stories being told, particularly where naturalistic character development is concerned, taking a backseat to other, non-story relevant goals. What is produced at the end of this is a jarring, clunky, unpleasant viewing experience in which you’re constantly being punted out of the actual plot (such as it may be) because your eyes keep rolling uncontrollably. It’s a very inorganic, targeted way to construct a story.

@Rahul @Not A Merry Man

I think you're both responding to an argument I'm not making. I'm not making an objective moral judgment about whether Pike is a good captain, nor am I proposing a political philosophy about how power is or should be legitimized in the real world. I'm talking about how the show frames certain behaviors: what its writers and showrunners present as admirable, virtuous, and aspirational, regardless of whether we as viewers agree with that framing.

@Bryan

Your post reads as a glowing one-sided highly biased view of Pike -- not one negative comment about this captain. It was not a take on how the showrunners want to present Pike, but rather your picking and choosing what characteristics of him you emphasize.

Quite frankly, I don't believe the showrunners want to present Pike as having the qualities most people would associate with the captain of a quasi-military outfit. They want him to be submissive, vapid, and morally bankrupt. And they've succeeded in making him the worst captain on any Trek show.

@Rahul

I'm a little surprised by that response. The second half of what I wrote is more critical and anticipates that distinction you're making. Even if the showrunners didn't intend to frame Pike as a good and virtuous captain, the more interesting question for me is, are the traits that they're emphasizing in him really ones that we would want emulate in the first place? So if your assessment is that he's submissive, vapid, and morally bankrupt... I'm not going to disagree because it's quite compatible with the larger point I'm making.

I don't think Bryan was saying what you think he was saying, guys.


"he is an example of how contemporary progressive storytelling can distribute virtues and vices along demographic lines."

"If race and gender are supposed to become less determinative of how we judge individuals, it's worth asking why they should determine such different ideals of admirable behavior in the first place"

Bryan, the real question you should ask is whether Trek today is self loathing or self persecuting of it's own past. Whether the white guy saviors of time's past (e.g. Kirk/Picard) are a constraint on what qualities a white guy captain or major character can exude today. Bad, corrupt, sure. But if it must be a good captain, it must conform to a show who's philosophy today indicts many of the qualities of its past incarnations. So, Pike is not much like either Kirk or Picard, because he can't be.

Burnham is more interesting. There, she is superwoman with an edge to make up for all the shit black females, in particular, experienced by society, industry and Trek itself. She could be "evil" but only if evil is powerful, majestic, uncompromising. But never meek or cowardly because Trek's past prevents this

You're right, these issues are important to Trek's formula under Kurtzman et al. But not because they care one iota for an honest discussion of such things. It's not even that they're ratings mercenaries willing to put out a solid Trek product but one that conveniently modulates character traits to avoid progressive camp criticism. No, these are people who have tried to rewrite the rules under which Trek itself can be evaluated or in which thoughtful, contrarian dialogue is itself permissible. It's not the story that's the true problem, it's the dynamic between the franchise and the audience, mediated by PR and social media types, who distort the reality of the Trek product we see. Who tell us we're wrong for holding certain opinions, incapable of seeing the nuances and signs that uplift, encumbered by our role as simple viewers.

Thing is, most fans have dialed out of nu-Trek. Some because they can't stand the show runners. Some for aesthetic reasons. Many because they simply loathe the stories and characters. And since the Trek powers-that-be will not tolerate proper dissent or criticism of their story/character decisions, the fanbase has an unusual amount of contempt for the whole thing. It's an unsightly shit burger.

But capitalism prevails. See, the real decision makers will tolerate show runners who dicker with tropes, try to rewrite Trek's DNA, hell rake some of their fanbase over the witty coals of responsible progressive storytelling. But only so long as they make the ratings. Make them money. Fail in this, as Kurtzman is now doing, and you're out.

Because in the end all of your high minded ruminating is inscribed in a for profit, highly competitive, unsympathetic modality. The business of Trek. And that fact will ultimately determine what "rules" the next batch of show runners must abide by. Assuming they get a chance anytime soon.

Way back during the fifth season of TNG (1991-1992), they struggled to find a story that they could use to make a Q episode for the season. They couldn't find a story of substance that was worthy for the character, so there was no Q episode in season 5. The TNG creative team had self-discipline, artistic integrity and respect for the source material to simply make a mindless, self-indulgent vehicle for one of Trek's most celebrated characters.

So...yeah...*deep sigh and groan*

Pike's a white guy because the original Pike is a white guy. But Trek had captains and authority figures of all colors and genders. Pike as represented in SNW is a weak captain because he's written as extremely passive. He is not portrayed as authority figure, especially in the later seasons. Now this COULD have something to do with progressive tendencies, maybe the writers are afraid of writing a strong white male and prefer to give gravitas to other characters. Pike is the only straight (in its original sense) white human male on the show, if we're not counting Spock (alien) or Scotty (played more like an adolescent on the show). Everyone else are women, some of color.

The funny thing is that other than LA'an, this all comes from TOS. Kirk's crew was mostly comprised of women and people of color, but Kirk was written as the ultimate authority figure on that ship and he played a key role in most stories, you always had the feeling that if Kirk can't function properly, Enterprise will become chaos.

I have no idea by whose authority strands Pike's Enterprise is held.

@Bok R'Mor those Q robes were used on Voyager and Lower Decks too. It’s clearly a Q thing and not a 21st Century thing.

What “reeks” is someone criticizing someone over something they don’t understand. Maybe you should spend more time watching Star Trek before you insult the people making it.

Lynos said: "Pike as represented in SNW is a weak captain because he's written as extremely passive."

He's passive to a fault in a few episodes, possibly even criminally negligent, but i think this is simply due to incompetent writers.

I think the overall aim with Pike is to portray him as a competent, firm, but very kind, hand's off, and emotionally attuned captain. The latter seems to be why he has so many female fans; female geeks and nerds love this show, and love him, not only because Mount is hot, but because he's sensitive.

All of this is a good idea for a captain, but the writers are generally incompetent, and have no interest in nautical fiction, or the idea that this show takes place on a vessel populated by real and competent people, so Pike rarely has captainy things to do. Mostly he's just forced to preside over goofy kids, sort of like Holly Hunter in Academy.

@TheRealTrent

I am female, and although the actor is indeed hot, I believe Pike is the 2nd worst Star Trek captain (no one can beat Burnham).

Can anyone here imagine how 60's Star Trek would've looked if Pike was indeed the captain throughout before the role was recast and renamed? We will never know, but I wonder if Jefferey Hunter's captain Pike would've been more Shatner or more Mount or maybe something completely different.

I wanna see a SNW episode where Pike is decisive and tough and kicks us, I want to feel the presence of the Captain in that show, I don't want him to play councillor Troy. I understand they were going for something different, to differentiate the character from other captains, but I think they went the wrong way. The writers made the interesting decision to have Pike learn of his own fate early on, thus making him a tragic figure, but they are not doing anything interesting with it! This knowledge should inform every decision he makes, it should inform his relationships with people, but after being introduced in season 1 it's been mostly squandered and Pike was relegated to a side character.

"I wonder if Jefferey Hunter's captain Pike would've been more Shatner or more Mount or maybe something completely different."

Definitely more Shatner than Mount. I've seen a few things with Hunter in them and I actually think TOS would have been even more serious if had been the captain. He doesn't seem like an actor who could or would do sillier/camp stuff.

In 1966 anyone over thirty is going to have lived through WW2, Korea, at least part of the great depression, and the height of the cold war. That's the writers, producers, actors, and the audience. There's no way a lead like Mount's Pike would make it on tv back then.

It was a time of Mike Hammers and Peter Gunns. Lee Marvin, Broderick Crawford, John Russell, James Arness, Chuck Conners, Mike Conners, Jack Lord etc. were male leads. Even if you aren't old enough to remember these shows you can just do a Google image search of these guys faces and know that a NuTrek Pike would never have been a lead; even in a show like Sugarfoot.

There were some pretty boy leads, but they were never written anything like Pike. Robert Conrad was James Bond and Nick Adams was James Dean with a shotgun. Steve McQueen was Steve McQueen.

Who has more gravitas - Mount's Pike or Andy Griffith? The sheriff of Mayberry was a more believable authority figure than the captain of today's Enterprise.

@Atoz even Leslie Nielsen would be both Shattner and hot back then, as he was in Forbidden Planet (1956)

Lynos: "Kirk's crew was mostly comprised of women and people of color..."

This is a list of main and recurring characters. It assumes Russian/Ukrainian Jewish people are white since that's the prevalent attitude today in the U.S. It's not a perfect list but you get the point. We need to stop kidding ourselves about what TOS was. It was mostly comprised of white males. Full stop.

---------------------------

Kirk - white male

Spock - white male (half alien but really other than the ears and logic, basically a human character)

Bones - white male

Scotty - white male

Chekov - white male

Pike - white male

Tyler - white male

Boyce - white male

Kyle - white male

DeSalle - white male

Leslie - white male

Galloway - white male

Farrell - white male

Kelowitz - white male

Hadley - white male

Brent - white male

Sarek - white male (alien but again other than the ears and logic, he's a white human)

Mudd - white male

------------------------------

Sulu - Asian male

Uhura - black female

Colt - white female

Number One - white female

Rand - white female

Chapel - white female

Harrison - Filipino male

theBgt said: "I am female, and although the actor is indeed hot, I believe Pike is the 2nd worst Star Trek captain."

Yeah, but what if his bad captaincy is itself hot?

I feel there's a big subset of female fans who love the idea Pike sitting in his command chair, glaring sexily and powerfully at them, but too polite to tell them how to live their lives.

I really need to try glaring more. So far this leering thing has been a bust.

TheRealTrent
"I feel there's a big subset of female fans who love the idea Pike sitting in his command chair, glaring sexily and powerfully at them, but too polite to tell them how to live their lives."

Maybe this is how you feel on how women think, not how women could feel about a character like Pike.
I think there is confusion in understanding how women feel or what they want to watch. Just because Patriarchy, it doesn't mean we want idiotic scripts trying to "satisfy" whatever they (usually males) think we want.

I doubt SNW writers wrote Pike this way to please women. They did like they wrote Burnham, feelings and friends come first, ship, Starfleet, duty and rules come last.

I think the problem with these gimmick or genre episodes lies more in the execution than the premise. There is nothing wrong with experimenting with genre or a novel conceit, but there has to be an underlying depth or message to balance out the silliness. What this episode shows is how difficult this is - the ‘message’ is so show-horned in and doesn’t fit totally with the setting, it becomes very jarring. Exploring Pike’s grief is a worthwhile topic but in a soap opera? It could have worked, but it didn’t. Subspace Rhapsody is looking more and more like a one off success story.

The other issue is frequency: these gimmick episodes can work well in isolation, but when it’s most of the season they lose their novelty. The writers would be wise to reduce their abundance, as was the case with DS9, VOY or TNG. Used sparingly, as they were in SNW 1 & 2 they were a pleasant diversion. But now it seems to be the only road we’re travelling on….

Also, I’m reminded of the Voyager episode ‘Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy’ where the Doctor hallucinates his command fantasies. It played much like a soap opera, was far funnier, and did a better job of giving a clear message and insight to a single character than this.

"Exploring Pike’s grief is a worthwhile topic but in a soap opera? It could have worked"

Not to put you on the spot, but how? Sure, there are ways to do a SNW episode based on 20th century soaps, but I don't see how you can do one that is both good and examines Pike's grief. Or either of those things honestly. We've already seen Our Man Bashir and Elysian Kingdom which makes it even more difficult.

How about having the Enterprise visit an alien planet(what a novel concept, amirite?) on which the dominant cultural behavior is essentially the same as your average daytime soap? Perhaps then through the generally aggressive and emotionally overcharged way in which soap operas handle confrontation, Pike’s repressed grief/despair could be forced to the surface. Would it work? Meh, I don’t know. But at least we’d get to explore a new world that might even be strange.

@Atoz Wandavision did this decently, albeit dragged out too long. Living in the fantasy of a soap opera to avoid dealing with loss. I think something better could have been achieved here - but I also said how difficult this was to pull off so I’m not surprised it didn’t work.

Pike started out great. He is quite attractive but Pike season one was also a captain I could really respect, which is why this woman liked him. The role of a leader should be not just to make decisions but also to support others to shine, to help them grow and improve, and to address issues with the crew’s performance.

Pike’s interactions with La’an in the first episode were great examples of all of these qualities. He listened to her when she said to put the shields up. He praised her when that was the right thing. He expressed concern with her choice to decline sedation but respected her right to make that choice. He trusted he to act quickly on the planet, but overruled her when he made the decision to stay and try to reduce the harm done with the warp bomb. He addressed La’an’s failure to inform him of her relationship with Una by listening to her reasons, pointing out the flaws in her approach, telling her that she needs to improve in her ability to work with others, and expressing his confidence that she would do better in the future. again in Momento Mori Pike listens, he solicits ideas, he respects La’an’s expertise and experience, he makes a decision, projects confidence and rallies the crew to believe in the plan. That’s leadership.

Now Pike is mostly the person who finds out after the fact what the other characters have done and says “that’s fine, want a cookie?” That’s why I no longer like him, even though he’s still hot.

Taking ideas and inspiration from existing media is fine. Every writer does that to some extent. Ursula Le Guin based her story on a premise suggested by Dostoyevsky, among others. The difference between season 1 and season 4 is that the writers approached Those Who Walk Away From Omelas as a good story/vehicle for exploring the characters and ourselves. It did not matter if people knew of it recognized Le Guin’s story. Referencing the Le Guin story was not the point of the episode. In contrast, Casablanca is space is based on the idea that people like Casablanca and will like the episode if they recognize the references. I think the writers were thinking “people love the Marseille scene, if we remind them of that scene it will make them happy. There’s a big difference between using tropes to tell a story and using a story to play with tropes. @Lynis had a good analogy re amount of sugar in your tea, but I’d make it that season 1 is about making a richly-flavored and complex brew with quality tea leaves, and season 4 is about Arizona Ice Tea from 7-11.

There were things I liked about the episode. Pike being the audience stand-in was good. I liked his obvious frustration with the Uhura revelation. Imagine though if this episode had followed a string of episodes like Ghosts of Illyria, Momento Mori and A Quality of Mercy rather than Hangover in Space and puppet dream. So when Trelane says you have been too busy to process emotions, we could say yes, we do need a break.

Finally, @Mykola had an excellent comment. If we are supposed to honor Pike’s grief, maybe let’s do it without the popcorn.

I spent the 60th anniversary of Star Trek watching this SNW episode with my dad, a fan since the original series.

I noticed about 10 minutes in that he had fallen asleep. He only does this when he's bored, and I suppose it was because of how uninteresting the soap opera parody was.

Certainly, this show wasn't made for Trek fans, young or old.
Certainly, this is not where you want a series to be on an anniversary. Certainly, I wish I had slept through this, too.

TOY

Here's my feeble pitch for a SNW soap opera episode. It's quite terrible, but it's the best I can come up with. It's a damn holodeck episode. Sorry. I won't bother with the necessary B plot or bother breaking down all the scenes.

Scene 1: Flashback. Pike and Batel in Pike's cabin, sitting on the couch, and watching 20th century tv. He likes the sci-fi stuff like The Day the Earth Stood Sill. She likes the melodramatic soaps. She even gets a little weepy, but laughs about it. He doesn't see the appeal, but is happy just watching her face as she gets swept up in the silly story.

Scene 2: Present. Pike is talking to the ship's psychiatrist. She accuses him of hiding his true feelings with humor. Pike continues to jokingly tell her she is wrong. The scene climaxes with Pike saying that while he encourages his crew to lean on him for emotional support, it's his duty to be strong for everyone else.

Scene 3: Pike goes to Scotty and asks him about the prototype holodeck technology seen in A Space Time Adventure Hour.

Scene 4: Pike, feeling melancholy, creates a version of Batel in the holodeck. She doesn't program her to talk. That would be too painful, and wrong somehow. Then he recreates his cabin complete with couch. Then he begins to create something for them to watch. From one angle the holodeck would look like the cabin's interior; the opposite angle would be a soap set. Basically a small stage attached to half of the living room of the cabin instead of an auditorium.


/Flash forward a bit. A day or two.


Scene 5: Pike's soap is basically a super melodramatic rehash of all the drama that his crew is always involved in. Pike is still a little angry after his session with the psychiatrist and is lashing out, but still using humor. There's a bit of an edge to it though. He goes through a few of the less serious things like the Ortegas/Scotty feud and Spock's various dating troubles and then he hits M'Benga losing his daughter. This hits him like a hammer and he recoils when he realizes what he's been doing.

Pike illogically feels the need to apologize to the M'benga simulacrum. What begins as a pointless apology soon leads him to talking about his own daughter. This is when he finally lets the walls down and lets out everything he's been holding in since he lost his family. At some point he stops talking to M'Benga and starts talking to Batel.

When Pike has said everything he needs to say, he stops and looks directly into the camera. He's empty. The camera cuts away from the stage to the pov of the "television.". The closing shot is of Batel, enraptured, sitting on the couch in Pike's cabin with the same mixture of happiness and sadness on her face that we saw in the opening scene.

Hated it. Comparing this to Community's gas leak season is a very apt description.

These last two seasons of the show are a very strong argument for TV shows being produced while the current season is airing, so the writers have time to react to audience feedback and course correct. This season was in the can before season 3 had even finished airing. If it hadn't been, they might have picked up on the audience's and the critics' desire for a more serious show.

I don't know how much that could have genuinely helped though. Back in season 1, I praised "Quality Of Mercy" as the kind of episode that could only come from a self-assured, self-confident writer's room that knew what they wanted to make. And it seems like *this* (waves hand at season 4) is the show they actually want to make. Bizarre. And as Jammer notes in the review, a tremendous waste of the goodwill earned in the first season.

Rubbish

At least I got a laugh or two from the puppets …

If this is 1.5 stars , then Threshold is 3.

Low three stars for me. I started out hating this unfunny, contrived, and inexplicable episode. It also grew on me and kept me watching more than other recent tedious gimmick episodes.

CONS--

-Not sure if the "ship's counselor" thing is a dig at TNG, but it doesn't fit with the TOS era or this show.

-I so completely blanked on Trelane's first appearance on this series that I had to look it up to remember the fake wedding he orchestrated. Boy was that bad, and there's no particular reason for him to be here either. Why do Trek prequels invariably and confusingly "bring back" characters who don't appear until later in the timeline, rather than creating new ones?

-The soap opera scenes are unfunny and painful to watch because nobody ever figures it out. Why only Pike? This could have been better had the show opted to let Pike jog some of his shipmates out of the funk. Trelane worked much better in "Squire of Gothos" where his tricks had tells and the crew expressed appropriate annoyance about being manipulated by him.

-Along similar lines, most scenes not involving Pike here are filler. It's boring to watch because of the lack of tension.

-I agree that Anson Mount's "I miss her so much" breakdown at the end didn't work. Episode should have left it at encountering his fake daughter and maybe a wistful moment of introspection. The tears don't sell well for some reason.

-I really dislike everything involving Chapel on this series. And I've disliked M'Benga ever since they retconned him as some kind of super soldier.

PROS-

-I loved Spock as Sybok repeating Laurence Luckinbill's "share your pain" speech from Star Trek V. It's a nice reminder that Final Frontier belongs in the Trek universe a lot more than many of these recent shows. The Sybok rogue spoof here was chef's kiss, even if they had to explain at the end that the real half brother isn't a twin.

-I like the guy playing Trelane in this one. He doesn't have the menace of William Campbell, and his characterization is a bit off from the original's failure to create a perfect copy of human life. His plan seems pointless. But he plays the role comfortably and well, evoking the "godlike aliens playing with humanity" vibe of Roddenberry.

-I liked Pike in this before the last scene with the counselor, who would have better been written off after the fantasy ended as a created character or sickbay staffer forced to play counselor. He was especially good in the scene with his fake daughter.

-The episode was well paced and just barely short enough, helping offset the contrived stupidity of the ship stuck in a soap opera. It kept re-engaging me whenever I wanted to quit on it.

-The story was warm and amusing, making it a more pleasant watch than Chapel snapping off a finger in the last episode -- seriously, what's with all the gross body horror on this series? -- or Spock nearly losing an ear. The show could use more of this TOS optimism and less tonal inconsistency.

-The best thing about SNW in my book is the consistent way they've been building up Pike as someone constantly skipping between reality and fantasy. The reappearance of his daughter here helps reinforce a growing understanding of why he ultimately chooses fantasy over his broken reality in TOS' The Menagerie. Too bad there's so much lousy SNW wrapped around him. Still, I have to admit it's a decently faithful characterization that runs deeper than all the superficially dumb stuff this show gives him to do.

I am one of those people who enjoyed the musical episode, and while I thought the puppet episode made no sense I tolerated it. That one I would give 1.5, perhaps 2 stars, purely for that gimmicky as they are, the puppets look nice. I don't mind wacky episodes, even though it usually is not done that well even in Star trek series I hold in higher regards. But I have to say; what a contrast with the more serious episodes (like last episode warp threshold).

I like that unprocessed trauma is being given attention too, captain Pike losing Betel and the future they would have had which he lived through and some others of the crew.

I'm not sure, I think I'd rather have the processing of personal issues be addressed in a more serious episode or in a couple of episodes as sub-plot. I still was entertained, although I think this episode should have been a stand alone comedic episode (yes I know, most are not that good and "we" dislike them) and the part about dealing with emotions, loss, etc. could have been granted more presence.

The ending was not bad. I was entertained though, but apart from some chuckling over some of the soap opera parts at the start with my wife, I quickly felt that it was out of place.. the things the crew had to address are for me the most entertaining parts and where the meat of the episode is or should be.

Depending how I feel when rewatching this episode it might swing to 2 or 2.5 stars. But really, this season should have had at least 3 or 4 episode with how the crew keeps dealing with the trauma's, experiences and processing of these trauma's. Chapel and the Gorn for example? There is so much potential left on the table. I know that this was also not always dealt well in the past; like B'Ellana in Voyager "extreme risk". That episode was too contained (before this episode she was fine, and after this episode too), but atleast it was more serious in tone which does not make my brain error.