“Off-Hour”

Yes. Better. Not perfect. But my favorite after the season opener. This held my interest.

Messy like the first episode but still excellent in spite of its missteps. Would have been a 4 star episode without the stupid timer that is totally unnecessary and immersion breaking whenever it shows up, and without the awful Pelia pep talk scene.

Other than those two major ones a lot to like here. Excellent visuals, everyone gets something important to do, and the solutions feel relatively earned for this show despite some of the preposterousness going on to get it there. 3 to 3 and a half.

This is much better. Much better.
Technobabble. Problems. Tension. Dilemma. Working together
Pseudo-Science with some correct information on neutrinos. Even character development for Chapel and MBenga.
Yes, I like this episode.
Why dont we have more of this?

All smiles over here.

. . .

Raise your hand if you thought Dr. Boyce was a character we would ever see on screen again in Star Trek? Haha.

Since they went to the trouble of hiring Brian Markinson I'm wondering if he will be a one-off appearance or if he will be part of the storyline that brings McCoy to the Enterprise.

I wonder if they'll also bring in Dr. Piper or if they'll just go with the explanation that McCoy was off-ship during Where No Man Has Gone Before and Piper was just filling in.

Everyone had a role to play here. Pelia had more to do here and she was better here in giving advice to Scotty. Scotty was very good here, obviously.
Una was good here in this episode under gravity here. Spock was good here in collecting the data - "Vulcans have a higher probability of survival". La'an was good here in relaying Spock's message/data. Chapel was good here in putting forwards MBenga's research on "strong force neutrinos" - (we only know neutrinos actively experience the weak force.) Even the female Vulcan Cadet A'Sha had something to do.
I liked the ending when Scotty and Pelia felt the ship.

So, I guess the gimmick of the week turned out to be "do a normal Trek episode?" ;)

Seriously though, that was good bordering on great. The rare Trek episode where tension is kept in place entirely by a "natural disaster" without resorting to a villain of the week. Everyone was given something to do mechanically, but there were also two excellent character threads woven within the story. And although the disaster could sort of be summarized as "a bunch of random shit happens" the story managed to interweave stuff so the artificiality of the A/B plot structure is never really on display. And this is one of the rare cases where I think modern VFX probably help the story, which wouldn't have been as effective if done during the TOS or Berman era.

The episode begins and ends on sickbay, so I guess I'll begin here, as this is a very effective use of M'Benga and Chapel, who we saw very, very little of this season until now. While their first dialogue scene was a bit too expository and direct for my liking, it got across well that although the two are good friends, there is underlying tension between them as well. It was nice to see interpersonal conflict in the show which comes across as something deeper than a lover's quarrel or frayed nerves, with M'Benga considering leaving the ship (probably needed for continuity's sake) but very much wanting Chapel to make it a permanent assignment. The intervening scenes between the two as M'Benga is nearly sawed in half, and Chapel refuses to give up on him, are the highlight of this episode. Chapel goes on a full arc, though I admit I'm a bit confused as why being alone with M'Benga convinced her - one would think developing deeper connections elsewhere would be what was needed. But the journey was compelling enough I'm fine with the destination.

The other major arc here is Scotty, who essentially has a break down/crisis of faith, and needs a pep talk from Pelia. As good as the portrayal of Scotty has been on the show since his introduction, I've not been a fan of this wet behind the ears portrayal, since he's canonically 40 here, and should be beyond this shit. But it's another stone on the path towards the much more confident Scotty we'll know from TOS, and arguably the start of his love affair with the ship. Also kudos to the show for actually making Pelia something other than irritating for the first time since Season 2.

There's a lot less to say regarding the other crew, as their role in the episode is somewhat mechanical. Pike is mostly out of action for much of it, continuing Anson Mount's receding from being the lead, though he does get some good command scenes near the end. Ortegas gets the conn for a bit. Una, Spock, and La'an all get a scene to showcase their heroics. Uhura...gets to be present. This is all Trek by numbers, which is fine, given the strength of the other arcs.

There's also a number of guest characters this week, considering it's a bottle episode. Most notable is Boyce, who has lost all his hair since The Cage. His role is quite minor, but he is a strong presence, feeling more like a command-level officer than most of the regular cast. I'll be interested to see what they do with him in the last 10 episodes. Cadet A'Sha is back again, though she's more or less the same as ever - hot and bitchy. Looking forward to when they make her more than dime-store T'Pol. We also get a number of ensigns and lieutenants who get speaking roles early in the episode, which seems mostly to give the deaths of the random mooks we see across this episode be a bit more compelling.

While a good episode, it's not perfect. I don't have an issue with either the technobabble problem or the magic solution which somehow both saves the ship and M'Benga. As I've said elsewhere in the past, I do have a real issue with how the life support systems have been increasingly portrayed in modern Trek as an on/off system which turns areas into instant death traps. Here, that means the corridors somehow cool down to absolute zero in seconds? That's not even possible according to the laws of thermodynamics - there would be residual heat for hours and hours radiating from the walls. They could've come up with some more convincing way to make the corridors impassible.

​The biggest issue, however, was just the counter, which not only added nothing to the episode, but actively hurt immersion in the episode. Sort of similar to Episode 4, it felt like the EPs seemed to decide a perfectly good story needed some sort of high-concept gimmick to make it compelling, and thus shoved it in.

Regardless, more like this, please!

I enjoyed this one! I love the disaster episodes and the technobabble that nobody understands but a the end helps our heroes survive!

Ok we did know that nobody would die, although I wasn't sure for the ones we don't have in TOS, but they didn't dare. That would be interesting and truly devastating, to have someone like La'an not making it.

I even liked Pelia, and I do not like Pelia, but in this one she was good.
Scotty rules, even the Vulcan noob was useful.

I cannot stand of M'Benga, I really cannot stand of him, so I was really tempted to fast forward everything sickbay plot, but I did not and at least we got some character development for Chapel.

In conclusion, nothing really great (I still prefer the season opener), but at least it was a decent episode with good moments, good pace, even if it had that stupid countdown clock that offered nothing to the plot.

This was basically a more graphic, explicit version of TNG's Disaster episode. Competently executed, but as always the threat of the week never truly convinces. We know most of these characters will live to appear in TOS, after all.

Also, this was yet another episode where Anson Mount feels more like a guest star on his own show. Is it that hard to write Pike?

@the Bgt
I actually thought they might kill off M'Benga due to the presence on board of the other Dr who would be his replacement. So for me this episode had some genuine jeopardy as I wasn't 100% sure he was going to make it.

The countdown clock - they can't just have an episode can they without some sort of gimmick!! It was completely unnecessary.

A bit like me loving the puppet episode I am also no doubt totally alone in thinking that Erica made for an unexpectedly solid presence in the Captain's chair.

"The countdown clock - they can't just have an episode can they without some sort of gimmick!! It was completely unnecessary."

I on!y had a chance to watch the first 10 minutes of this episode before work and I was wondering if this was going to be the case.

"I actually thought they might kill off M'Benga due to the presence on board of the other Dr who would be his replacement"

M'Benga is on TOS so he's safe. Assuming that SNW doesn't turn out to be a dream/hallucination/alternate reality.

Oh okay I hadn't realised M'Benga was on TOS. At least my ignorance gave me some dramatic suspense regarding his survival. ;D

There is a M'Benga on TOS, but we never find out his first name, so we really don't know for sure yet if it's the same guy or a relative.

For this reason, I really wish that SNW introduced a brother of Joseph early on who visited the ship and was like "I really like your assignment, hopefully I can serve as a junior officer on a Connie as well." This would allow for more ambiguity regarding Joseph's fate, with the possibility that instead of being demoted, he leaves or dies, and it's his younger brother who's a junior medical officer.

As good as it gets. For me, this is at least 3.5 stars, the half point off only because it suffers from the series being a prequel, which is no fault of the episode, its writers, or actors. M'Benga, Spock, and Scotty can obviously not die so the scenes depicting them in life-threatening dangers lacked that small, yet significant, emotional aspect for any viewer familiar with Trek.

Otherwise. every character was used in a meaningful manner. I saw Pelia's best version (a character who had lately gotten on my nerves), M'Benga and Chapel scenes were stellar. Spock, La'an, Una, Uhura, and Scotty, and even the Vulcan ensign with Scotty, had excellent interactive dynamics.
Shout-out to Dan Liu, the director, for sound camera work and angles. Not surprised, he has directed several episodes of "For All Mankind" and couple of the best episodes in ST: Picard season 3.

And finally, great to see the characters D. Boyce back in Star Trek. Must hold the record for the longest gap between appearances of a character, at this time at least.

Contrived, emotionally overwrought, melodramatic nonsense. Low stakes if you think about anything for more than a second.

Sadly, I am certain this will be considered a triumphant masterpiece by many.

"Sadly, I am certain this will be considered a triumphant masterpiece by many."

I said "much better" so it is relative.
It's low stakes if you have seen TOS. Still, many people might not have seen TOS.
It is triumphant because the problem was solved.
"Masterpiece" is subjective and relative.

IMHO the whole issue of "stakes" is silly.

Like, we knew that Worf wasn't going to die due to having a barrel fall on him in the middle of TNG, no matter how much tension the episode wanted us to feel. What happened to Yar was an exception to a rule which only happened because Crosby wanted an out. We fully understand on a show like Star Trek the main cast will survive the season, and almost certainly the entire run.

It's all fake, manufactured drama, because the show isn't real. But it's real for the characters experiencing it, which should be good enough, if the writing is up to skiff.

“It's all fake, manufactured drama, because the show isn't real. But it's real for the characters experiencing it, which should be good enough, if the writing is up to skiff.”

Couldn’t agree more. It’s still entirely possible they throw a curveball at the end of this show and double down that this show exists as its own thing also. But more importantly the performances and story sell the stakes, not whether or not I believe Pike or anyone else will be fine or not. A lot of this shows best moments involve how these experiences affect the crew as people, which is more interesting than if the show could or would kill them off.

After a rewatch I’m raising my rating of this one to a 3.5. I think the things that bothered me initially were less intrusive than on first viewing. Maybe it was the the puppet taste still in my mouth from last week.

@Karl Zimmerman:
'IMHO the whole issue of "stakes" is silly.'

One of the most fundamental, intrinsic and unavoidable blunders in SNW is the issue of stakes. Put simply, we know that Pike, Una, Spock, Chapel, Uhura, Scotty, M'Benga et al all make it to TOS.

So unless a cliffhanger situation involves La'an, Ortegas, Pelia or the myriad of cast extensions like the Vulcan cadet, everyone is inevitably safe. There's nothing to take seriously.

TNG killed off Tasha Yar and very nearly killed off Picard (!). DS9 killed off Jadzia and VOY very nearly killed off Harry Kim.

There are virtually no stakes in SNW because it's pitched as a prequel. Admittedly, it doesn't care about continuity (even its own), so there is the possibility that SNW might nevertheless kill off characters who appear in TOS, but it's highly unlikely.

@Bok R'Mor,

I'm sorry, I'm still not getting this. Sure, there have been individual cases where characters have been killed off (vanishingly few - Trek isn't Game of Thrones). However, are you telling me when you were of an age to watch Berman Trek in first run you seriously thought for a second "maybe they'll blow up the ship this go around?"

I think this also betrays a very modern idea with storytelling - the idea that what makes a good story is not knowing the outcome. Throughout most of human history, we had comparably few mythologies, which were reinterpreted, but the general shape of them were well known to people. Like, if you went to a play in ancient Greece, you knew exactly how it was going to end based upon if it was a comedy or a tragedy. The point wasn't the ending, it was how it got here.

In the end, the stakes here aren't life or death, the stakes are personal. We're not supposed to really care about M'Benga's potential death, we're supposed to identify with Chapels dogged refusal to accept that death as a given. Scotty's arc here isn't about saving the everyone, it's about believing in his confidence and the Enterprise. OTOH, I'll fully admit the stuff with Spock/La'an was just cheap suspense and pretty empty (they should've flipped the two), but it was a C/D plot here - totally ancillary to the wider story.

This was a return to form for SNW. 3.5 stars for me. Disaster episodes are always fun. Everyone gets to do something, they handle it professionally, and I bought the stakes presented. We knew Spock was going to survive, but I believed Pike's dilemma when he hit that button.

My only critiques are making the technobabble solution solve two radically different problems at once and Chapel wearing a half-face mask in a vacuum. Neither is really worth quibbling over.

Better for sure. A proper Star Trek episode, with great VFX to boot, and it was genuinely nice to see lots of shots hold without cuts for extended periods to just take in the action (e.g. Space walk).

However, I was put off by the unnecessary gore. I'm not saying go back to Rick Berman's rulebook of how to shoot Star Trek, but it put me off from enjoying the episode.

The were pacing issues, but that can be forgiven, but the technobabble again falls short, with it being just too much of a leap from some random fringe theory etc. Where are Geordi and Data when you need them (not born/made yet).

Additionally, Scotty's sub plot (how Scotty became Scotty) came across as forced and could have done with Scotty just working through his issues himself, or at least with just the Enterprise, perhaps even leaning into a stronger and more initiative relationship with him and the old girl (not Pelia), but no... Scotty is who he is, a miracle worker, and a now PTSD free soul, all thanks to one monologue and some (not so) clever "miracle" word play.

Genuinely great parts, Pikes button press etc. But the show feels like the ground is moving beneath it, and it's in desperate need of.. you guessed it... a rulebook to ensure consistency of tone. 3/5 at best. Glad the season has finally started though.

Although next week I'm sure it will be the episode where Pike joins a boyband because his hair got mistaken for a long dead musical folk heroes on an alien planet that based it entire culture around NKOTB. CBS alum Donnie Wahlberg co-stars to show Pike the moves. Spock plays a dancing Shark.

@Karl Zimmerman:
'I'm sorry, I'm still not getting this. [...] However, are you telling me when you were of an age to watch Berman Trek in first run you seriously thought for a second "maybe they'll blow up the ship this go around?"'

I do see your wider point, but yes, after Yar's death early on and the BOBW cliffhanger, the first four seasons of TNG held the genuine possibility (not probability) that a main cast member might be written out at any time. Don't forget Crusher and Pulaski either, or Wesley. That possibility gradually diminished as the series went on, of course.

You (and others) are entirely correct that we as viewers subconsciously know that in 99.9 % of cases the main cast of any Trek series will make it to the next episode. But this episode of SNW isn't the first where I've realised while watching it that the characters cannot possibly be in any danger whatsoever, because we've seen their supposed future.

Now, I wouldn't put it past the writers and producers to smash what they purport to be continuity here, as I've said. They may well kill off the entire main cast just for the gimmick of it. Who knows?

I just didn't think 'Off Hour' was a particularly impressive episode. Others are relieved it wasn't a dog's dinner, and still others loved it.

I did appreciate the special effects, though, which were utilised very effectively here.

..and sorry, what was the point of the timer? I mean, why? I can look at my video player and see how long is left. So weird.

@Paul

Next week appears to be possible-Trelane/Baby Q from last season subjecting the entire cast to a fake soap opera reality. Supposed to have a big M'Benga focus, and maybe a Pike B-plot.

So yeah, back to gimmick.

Better than anything SNW has put out the past few weeks.

Whether or not a character we know shows up on TOS survives or not isn't the issue for me. It's whether or not we get compelling character stories and insights. "Better Call Saul" was a great series and we know what happens to Saul, Gus, and Mike, etc.

This is the first time in a long time that I liked Pelia's scenes. Top notch visuals.

Also, the clock gimmick was pointless because they didn't utilize it fully. For M"Benga, if his daughter had to be sacrificed to save the ship.. now that would have been something.

"One of the most fundamental, intrinsic and unavoidable blunders in SNW is the issue of stakes. Put simply, we know that Pike, Una, Spock, Chapel, Uhura, Scotty, M'Benga et al all make it to TOS."

It is not the destination.
It is the journey.
Another reason why I liked being spoiled. I dont mind spoilers.
I watch the episode for the moment, for the lesson, for the ethics.
I personally still see stakes.

"Whether or not a character we know shows up on TOS survives or not isn't the issue for me. It's whether or not we get compelling character stories and insights. "Better Call Saul" was a great series and we know what happens to Saul, Gus, and Mike, etc."

Exactly. I havent seen Better Call Saul.
It is the choices that people make before TOS.
"Yeah, I know Spock will survive, so there is nothing to worry about"
But that is not the issue. It is the narrative. It is the how. It is the people around Spock. It is the "filling in the details" around the outline.
"Yeah, I know the outline already..."
But what about the depth? The different shades of grey? "Why did they do this, why did they choose that?"
There are stakes. People make choices and it could affect other people. Spock's choices could affect Una, La'an or Ortegas.

This one caught me by complete surprise. Pleasantly surprised may I add. Was under the impression this was going to be another of a long line of gimmick episodes. Gimmick of the week as it’s now being called. From my perspective, this was a gimmick free episode. A impending disaster type episode which Star Trek does well. This one is no exception. I like it with nice teamwork leading to a nice resolution. Entertaining throughout. Chapel good to see you. Why has your screen time been so limited this season? When they stick to what Star Trek does well with this great cast (comedy and genre homages not being one of them) they do a good job. Why not more episodes like this? In my view, SNW has been underperforming since Season 2. There seems to no clear direction, vision for the show. SNW should be better than it has shown lately. Perhaps this very nice first episode in the back half is a sign good things lie ahead.

There’s some comments that the characters fates in the show are preordained & there’s no suspense as they’ll live another day. Live so they can be around next week. Duh- this is a prequel. For some of these characters (Pike, Chapel, Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura), we know they’re obviously going to be around. This was known I thought to all from the very first episode. However, as has been pointed out by many, there are also many characters who have only been around SNW. They ain’t going to be around when TOS rolls around. We have NO idea what may happen to them. They could be offed at any time. For instance, this may have been as good as time as any for Pelia to meet her predestined end. Could have added more depth to the episode. She could have gone out on a high note.

By the way, I’m still upset they offed one of there best new characters in Hemmer. RIP - I for one miss you. PS - You’re needed on the show. Pelia who more or less replaced him is my least favorite character by a huge distance. Any episode that features her gets an automatic 1/2 star deduction in my book. You can call it Hemmer’s revenge.

Finally. A good trek episode !

WOW

i was literally at the edge of my seat.

As Uhura says, Everything's Electric!

As it turns out, they do know how to make good Trek. They just choose not to...

Also, nice to see that Mr. Giger continues to evade those souless minions of orthodoxy :-)

Last but not least, that vulcan cadet really is smoking.

16:45 The Doctor was very chill considering he just had his crotch crushed. The two of them just standing there talking and talking for the next half-hour becomes increasingly bizarre.

19:35 Why would Una be the one to to overcome the increased gravity instead of Spock?

19:43 Sickeningly gruesome leg break is totally unnecessary.

19:50: Countdown clock gimmick is pointless and distracting. No idea why they had to tack this on.

29:30 A throw-pillow in the captain's chair would have more gravitas than Pike. He's the show's lead and he's been Travis Mayweather-ed.

21:50 Another instance of a crew member, Chapel, ignoring a direct order without consequence. Not unheard of in Trek obviously, but this show really over does it, imo. Kind of a pointless reintroduction of Dr.Boyce wasn't it? He contributed almost nothing to the plot. Did Chapel really need to have a scene where she disobeys an order to create some fake drama?

33:40 Strong Force Neutrinos: They're fuel for your starship AND a magic cure for your crushed abdomen! It's a floor wax and a dessert topping! This is the point when I gave up on the episode.

34:14. Spock crawling across the hull was pretty dumb."The energy currents are intense." = "This molten lava is kinda warm."

37:5 Pelia shold only be allowed on this show in Muppet form

46:07 I know Star Trek isn't hard sci-fi but flash freezing a human and then curing his crushed body with magic space particles is somehow even less plausible than the medical science in Spock's Brain.


About "stakes": I agree with Pike's Hair for the most part, but I think you can have your cake and eat it too by having quality guest stars. Anything can happen when a character only appears once.

The injured/comfort trope is one of the oldest and most used tropes in the book. It works, but you need to have the right characters, the right established relationship between the characters, and hopefully a plan for exploring the change in the relationship going forward. Additionally, you might not actually change the relationship between the characters as much as you change the audience's perception of their relationship. I haven't followed this closely enough to say how effective this was for Chapel/M'Benga so I'll leave the show's fans to decide.

"Look, this is all obviously nonsense"


Excellent review, Jammer.


"his internal organs will fall out and he'll die instantly — just like Vincent D'Onofrio in the "Subway" episode."

I've never seen this episode, but I have felt like this a few times after eating at Subway.

Jammer said: "M'Benga gets pinned between a pillar and a bio-bed in a way that crushes him at his midsection; if the table is removed, his internal organs will fall out and he'll die instantly — just like Vincent D'Onofrio in the "Subway" episode."

This reminded me of "Phage", where Neelix can't move a single micron in any direction without dying. Also "Heart of Stone", where Kira is stuck in the rock.

@gort

1. I thought the actor did a great job conveying the amount of pain he was in, but yes it is kind of preposterous when you think about it.

2. As I understand it, Una is stronger than Spock, she is able to lift Hemmer over her shoulder and walk normally like he was a pillow in Ghosts of Illyria.

3. I don’t agree with your stance on the leg break, but I watch a lot of horror. I can see how people who aren’t into it would be bothered by this shows more frequent use of shocking gore. That being said, It conveys the danger of the situation effectively, and adds to the overall stakes of the episode imo.

4. After my first viewing I definitely agreed with the clock overlay being unnecessary. Less so now, but still agree the episode just doesn’t need it because the stakes and story are convincing enough about the ticking clock without it.

5. In what way did Mount do a bad job here? There are numerous TNG episodes/movie clips of Brent Sooner being annoying as hell with his emotion chip to me personally, but that doesn’t ruin the character of Data for me even in episodes he’s doing that nonsense.

6. Good point about the overall show having this issue with disobeying orders; however, his order was stupid as hell. What if she didn’t make it to the Port Galley in that literal one minute? Seems like an unnecessary risk. Also his being here as a member of Beta Shift contributed more to this ship feeling like a lived in breathed in place than I’ve felt about any live action Star Trek in a looooong time. Of course the ship would have other people doing the job when our main characters go to bed. I’d like to see more of it honestly. It was also a great way of explaining why we haven’t seen him on this show from the jump without outright calling attention to it.

7. I felt the technobabble about Neutrinos was actually pretty good for this show, and it only happened the way it did/provided both solutions in the story due to the amount they were being bombarded with in this specific situation. It’s not like I’m Into Darkness when they stumble upon the cure for death like the writers didn’t think about the implications of that, or why it’s never brought up again.

8. Pelia shouldn’t be allowed on this show at all, even in puppet form. :)

9. I avoid subway all together for this exact reason.

*Spiner. Bad, autocorrect, bad.

Some half-formed ideas on how to make this episode better:

1) Give Pike something to do. Hell, have him swamped with trying to solve various disasters all over the ship via the intercom or something. Solving problems with nothing but his wits and his authority.

2) Have an incapacitated Una have to use her brain to solve the gravity problem.

3) Have Scotty figure out how to free the Enterprise without a pep talk.

4) Have M'Benga be injured in a less over the top way. A nurse having to do old fashioned surgery without futuristic tech is a lot more dramatically interesting than techno-magic.

5) Don't do the stupid space walk twice. Do it once and spend more time on a more fleshed out version of the mind-meld scene.

"As I understand it, Una is stronger than Spock"

I did not know that.


" I watch a lot of horror. "

Seen anything good lately?

I think Mount was super busy this season? That must be the reason why he's hardly in it.

What was the thing with Pelia patching the wall? What was going on with the wall? I feel like I missed some crucial reference...

I would give this two stars. So much better than last week, and while not as good as Valles Marineris, I would put this about equal with The Griffin Incident. I agree, the clock was dumb and unnecessary but at least the gimmick didn't do much harm to the generally solid disaster episode premise.

One wonderful piece was the return of actually competent officers. I also really enjoyed the opening scenes, it created a sense of realness and richness to see that sometimes things are boring, and proof of the existence of beta shift. Additional highlights were Pike ejecting the pod, A'Sha's suggestion to cut life support, Una's "stronger than a piano," and Scotty touching the ship at the end.

Actually for all of the comments about Pike doing nothing, this is the first episode in a long time that I liked Pike. His "Ortegas, you have the conn" before electrocuting himself wasn't the brightest move but at least it showed him being decisive and brave. Ordering Spock into radiation poisoning and the jettisoning the pod were both poignant without knowing anything about the character, but knowing that Pike has experienced through the time crystal that fate, it is a great character beat.

@gort's suggestion of M'Benga suffering a less ridiculously severe injury but one that requires Chapel to do old-fashioned surgery (archeological medicine anyone) with M'Benga talking her through stuff would be a much better set-up. And it would avoid requiring what for me was the most impossible technobabble BS piece of the episode as a solution. Adding Boyce just so she can disobey a direct order is pointless. I guess SNW has a quota of direct order violations that must be met.

There's been a lot of discussion about the stakes given the plot armor that so many characters have. But for me I think the problem is overuse of the supposed stakes. You can give characters interesting challenges and problems to solve without constantly trying to convince us that they are all going to suffer some gruesome injury or die at every turn. The ship blowing up (or disintegrating? or turning into lizards?) is enough stakes. Give them limits, force them into creative problem-solving mode, make them decide to on trade-offs, but not everything needs to be "I'm going to be electrocuted/crushed/irradiated/frozen/suffocated..."

"This is all obviously nonsense" is a great summary of the episode. Overall, if you don't think about it too hard it is watchable and even has some fine moments.

I would give it three stars if they managed to free themselves from the slipstream with 2:17 still left on the clock.

@gort

This year so far I’ve seen Backrooms, Obsession, Hokum, and Send Help to name a few off the top of my head.

A decent but certainly not great outing, which is a major improvement for SNW S4. I guess I sort of got my wish. But this one felt like, “let’s put our own SNW nu-Trek twist on the most heroic classic Trek moments we can in 1 episode”. So at times this one felt like “Disaster”, “The Wrath of Khan”, “The Immunity Syndrome”, “Threshold” and even the first Star Trek movie.

But there’s some reasonably good problem solving although the neutrino thing is a bit too far-fetched, especially how it miraculously works in the nick of time, cures M'Benga and provides deuterium fuel. But classic Trek has sort of done this kind of thing too — like restarting the engines in “The Naked Time”, etc. Of course, it is all very arbitrary — how about Una’s efforts to turn on the gravity or whatever it was.

I liked how all the crew members had parts to play and were all in-character. This, of course, doesn’t work for Pelia. Pike was definitely minimized here so that others could get the spotlight - namely Chapel and Scotty. So what did Scotty do in the end — put his hand against the ship and become able to sense it or something?

The episode still just feels somewhat empty even with all the attempts at emotional heroic moments. The Chapel / M’Benga conflict, dedication to each other was good though, but it's hard to make out what M'Benga says. Each had their valid arguments — but we know this SNW Chapel has no regard for the chain of command. So of course, she is praised at the end of the episode for disobeying Boyce's and M'Benga's orders.

I liked how this episode did the split screen (sometimes 3 ways) for comms interactions — wish more episodes would do that.

Have to appreciate the attempt at sci-fi here — something nu-Trek usually doesn’t attempt. But Spock should have been blown to bits given what happened to the ion pod. And we know M’Benga can’t die, for what would happen with “A Private Little War”?

2.5 stars for “Off-Hour” — just felt like an AI-generated attempt at classic Trek’s greatest hits. But this is mostly TNG-style problem-solving Trek. To some extent we get an appreciation of the basic things a starship should do and has to deal with -- gravity, the cold of space, life support, inertial dampers etc. And they throw in some personnel issues like Chapel / M’Benga staying / going, their dedication to each other. But again, it’s merely decent but not great.

Dumb as it is, the ticking clock got to me. Sue me.

I enjoyed the episode. Something about the score and the direction just comes together and made several scenes work really well.

@gort:
'33:40 Strong Force Neutrinos: They're fuel for your starship AND a magic cure for your crushed abdomen! It's a floor wax and a dessert topping! This is the point when I gave up on the episode.'

Me too. Now, I am acutely aware someone will come along and say, 'Ummmm, ackshually, strong force neutrinos exist, so you can't criticise this show', but the way they're used here just reeked of the usual NuTrek 'science is really just magic' approach, and I found it really off-putting.

In classic Trek by contrast we used to get 'magic is really just advanced science'. I find it hard to maintain suspension of disbelief when I don't trust the writers and producers to even pretend to know what they're talking about, or, moreover, what they're asking us to believe. 'Trust me bro' plus quirk chungus dialogue and performances.

@ Karl Zimmerman: “Next week appears to be possible-Trelane/Baby Q from last season subjecting the entire cast to a fake soap opera reality. Supposed to have a big M'Benga focus, and maybe a Pike B-plot.”

Where do you get this information from?

@ Eric Jensen - If you haven’t seen Better Call Saul, I highly recommend it. I never watched Breaking Bad, but was somehow persuaded to watch BCS and it stands on its own. I did watch BB later but actually think BCS is better.

@ Sung - Pelia heard the hiss of escaping oxygen while she was talking to Scotty. Discovered a hole under the calendar (?) and put duct tape over it.

I found a lot more to like here than Jammer did. First of all, it was an actual science-based script. No ghosts, no zombies, no hallucinations, no drunken parties, no time travel. Second, I did think it had “breathless momentum,” I was riveted. The acting was excellent and the writing, especially between Mbenga and Chapel, was good too (and I thought Chapel was right to stay with Mbenga rather than letting him die alone!). Ortegas was limited to one quip, and handled the captain’s chair well. Pike, though again mostly missing, acted like a captain when he was there. In fact, in this case I thought it was quite appropriate that he did so little. He was trapped on the bridge, for a long time without communication, and used his crew members to do what they could do best. When the coms came back on, he directed things, that’s his actual job.

Sure, there are a number of quibbles, especially the temperature one and the magic neutrinos and why Mbenga didn’t die of blood loss. Yes, the literal ticking clock was unnecessary, but it didn’t bother me. One thing that did annoy me, but was admittedly tiny, was Pelia once again bragging about her incredible age and knowing every famous person ever. But other than that, she helped Scotty through his PTSD, which is more than she’s done in a long time.

Now for my questions. What is an ion pod? And what is a slipstream wormhole? In fact, I still don’t know what exactly a slipstream is.

I feel Jammer has gotten a bit too negative lately. A shame.

Always with the "no life support makes the ship turn into a popsicle" trope. Not just in this series, but in the vast majority of Trek episodes involving the loss of life support. That, plus the air becoming instantly unbreathable, even though a large volume with relatively few people in it should have a breathable atmosphere for quite a while.

It would be refreshing to see a plausible inversion of this. The Enterprise still had limited power in this episode, which means it was generating heat. A fully operational ship might, in fact, be generating a heck of a lot of heat, and in that case, life support would involve the removal of excess heat.

So imagine if turning off life support in parts of the ship actually caused them to heat up to a uncomfortable 700 degrees C, or so. At that temperature you might want to manually evacuate the air and oxygen, to prevent things from auto-combusting.

The ion pod - and having to jettison it - is from the TOS episode "Court Martial" (I guess this should also be in Jammer's list of "things repurposed").

It was a bit strange in that old episode that Kirk had a button to jettison the pod on his chair - Now Pike has it too.



Why don't they have a scientific advisor on the show like in previous Trek? Something like the corridors being that cold shouldn't happen (and I guess this would save almost no energy in a real starship).

@Visitor1982

"I feel Jammer has gotten a bit too negative lately. A shame."

Tell me, what is the appropriate tone and sentiment Jammer should express when sharing his personal experience of watching and reviewing Strange New Worlds?

@ The Queen,

The summary of next week's episode (and the entire rest of the season) is available online. To directly quote:

"A temporal anomaly traps the crew inside a soap-opera reality while Pike confronts a life he lost."

The "Like Chronitons through the Hourglass" title is also a reference to Days of Our Lives. Plus it's been announced that Diedre Hall (from that show) guest stars.

As for the maybe Trelane thing, Rhys Darby has appeared in the trailers. I'm not sure it's been confirmed this is the episode, or it's just conjecture because this is another goofy one.

Episode 8 is supposed to be a normal/serious Trek episode. Episode 9 is a La'an focused fantasy story. And Episode 10 seems to be the one where the crew will get to meet Kirk's Enterprise via some sort of temporal anomaly.

On scientific accuracy, unfortunately, the horse has left the barn when it comes to Trek. I don't really expect Expanse-level rigorousness, but it would be nice if the drama came from something resembling genuine science, and not whatever the hell the writers think might be maximum drama in the short term. At least there weren't exploding rocks in the consoles, I suppose.

The funny thing is I saw someone complaining online that Pelia stopped the pinhole leak in her cabin with tape. But this would work, at least on the time scale of the crisis! Not totally stop atmospheric escape, but slow it so much it wouldn't matter. But people have internalized this idea that any hole into a vacuum is like a black hole which sucks in everything because of stupid sci-fi tropes, rather than just a very low pressure sucking you could put your hand over without any real injury (other than maybe breaking a few capillaries, causing some short-term redness).

There is something refreshing about just seeing a standard Star Trek episode where sets of characters “work the problem”. With all the gimmicks we’ve had to endure the past two seasons - this is refreshing.

It’s not ground breaking by any means, but there are a lot of small moments inside this disaster setting that work (Pike pressing the button, Scotty and the young Vulcan cadet, Spock’s mindmeld). Yes, they’re recycled tropes - but at least they’re done so with good intentions.

The technobabble got a bit too much, even for me, and solving two problems with one technobabble solution was confusing (it would have benefited from an old fashioned, well timed metaphor). I actually enjoyed this much more than Jammer did, perhaps just happy to have a vacation from the gimmick episodes.

It would have been hilarious if the ticking digital clock had popped up as soon as the disaster struck and they solved the problem in 5 minutes. "Well, that sucked. Anyone for a puppet show?"

I think the only time a visible clock helps a story is when you have a story that depends on precisely timed events prior to the end of the story. For example, in a heist movie that depends on clockwork precision the characters may think that the clock is God but the story can play out if a spanner is thrown into the works. It doesn't work in the middle of a continuing tv season where the spanner would immediately result in the death of every character and the end of the show.

One other use for a visible clock is to orient the audience in a story with a complex and possibly nonlinear plot. Fantastic Four number 352 by Walter Simonson would be a good example of this type of story. Too bad Star Trek can't write stories as creative as a 35 year old comic book.




Another possible way to have ramped up tension in the episode, and really emphasized teamwork, is to create a chain of problem solving with Pike as the central link. Scotty needs info that can only be provided by M'Benga, M'Benga has vital info but is incapacitated, Chapel needs X to revive M'Benga, Una can provide X but must first solve the gravity problem and so on down the chain. Pike is isolated on the bridge and helps coordinate all the problem solving. Really emphasize the A to B to C solution so that everyone's contribution becomes of critical importance.

Instead of a silly clock (sorry Brandon) you get the drama and (admittedly fake) drama of each character in succession independently triumphing over adversity and as a group saving the ship in the nick of time.


One more thing: Leave as much of the technobabble out of the story as possible. The Enterprise is thrown into a dangerous environment, has been damaged critically, and is without power. There is constant danger to the ship and individual challenges for various members of the crew. An asteroid field, an unconscious doctor, fluctuating gravity, a need for a space walk - none of these things would require techno-magic and therefore wouldn't require the audience to suspend disbelief to a ridiculous level.

"happy to have a vacation from the gimmick episodes"


You aren't the only one who has said this. I find it very puzzling. Has the show "24" already been forgotten? I have never watched it, but it was so culturally relevant in its day, at least in America, that it's blatantly obvious that SNW was aping it.

Like strong nutrinos this episode is two things in one: a rehash of prior Trek episodes and a gimmick episode that needlessly copied elements of an extremely popular 2000s era tv show. Just because the gimmick was pointless doesn't mean that it isn't there.

jammer it wouldn't be renewed anyway

At least in the puppet episode, puppet physics was developed in advance, and that same physics that seemed to be a limitation throughout the episode was turned into an advantage at the end. This is, at the very least, a sensible narrative, with an internal logic. A techno-babble solution that pops in at the last moment and solves multiple problems is soooo unsatisfactory in this sense.

Slipstreams are from the TV show Andromeda. I think whatever GPT wrote this episode hallucinated a bit.

I rather enjoyed that. Actually felt like STAR TREK again. Best episode of the season BY FAR!!!

Not perfect, but a vast improvement. As Jammer notes, the plot points are derivative of several other Trek episodes and non-Trek sources. That's not necessarily a bad thing if it's handled well. The most important factor is that the dire situation brings out the essential core of the characters. For the most part, it does. The ticking clock and split screens are directorial choices. The episode would have worked fine without it, but I don't think it takes away either. (I recently re-watched the 1977 movie, "Twilight's Last Gleaming," in which Director Robert Aldrich used the split screen to show the developing crisis from multiple perspectives. The use of it here was very similar.) The situation here is straight out of the Treknobabble handbook. Neutrinos are real; strong force interactions are real. Let's combine them into something new. Nice use of the malfunctioning inertial dampers, and the need to shift power to keep critical systems operating. The warp threshold is probably something best forgotten, but if you have to reference it, then make it essentially a wall you will smash into. I like the deep dive into mentioning Dr. Phillip Boyce (I was wondering if he would show up). But as I mentioned, the most important factor is character. M'Benga and Chapel get very good treatment here. (Although I couldn't help thinking that Dr. M'Benga got "cut in half real bad," like in "Walk Hard"). Good work with Scotty, getting through his own crisis of confidence while learning to think under pressure. Spock and La'an both get good turns, as does Una. The bridge crew handle themselves well, actually behaving like Starfleet. And the episode ends on the scene, without unnecessary extensions or setting up future plot points. This felt much more like Star Trek, albeit with different story-telling techniques. There's much room for improvement, but maybe we can leave most of the gimmicks behind.

Great episode. Whoever reported that the second and sixth episodes were the standouts of the season had it half right. The ghost ship was hot garbage, but this one lived up to the billing.

Jammer's review is spot on, passable Trek but mostly nonsense technobabble that makes it happen. 2 Stars from me.

Well, as a simple action/suspense/ticking clock (literally) show with some nice character development, this kind of works. The scenario isn't very original, another space anomaly with lots of technobubble, even though I did like the focus on neutrinos. We see Dr. Boyce, who we will meet again in The Cage, and the show is setting up the departure of M'benga. I actually thought at some point he will die in this episode, until I realized the story is about Chapel saving him. His predicament reminded me of the great episode The Subway from Homicide: Life on the Street where a hapless man gets stuck between a train and the platform.

(btw, did the writers do that on purpose? Last week we had Pelia cut in half and sewn back together and this week we had M'benga cut in half and sewn back together. It would be interesting to see the characters comment on that, except, of course, the events of last week didn't really happen).

Pike again is sidelined, gets electrocuted and vanishes for the majority of the episode, and appears clueless for most of the time he's on-screen.

I don't know what Pelia is trying to do with her strange monologues but that character has crossed over into The Twilight Zone a while ago as far as I'm concerned.

The "did he survive" beat with Spock mostly fell flat because we know he survives. Like, we know.

Una visibly breaking her leg while trying to reach the manual gravity controls in heavy G's was brutal. I guess she got treated off camera. We don't even see her limping afterwards.

For the protocol, I didn't watch The Pitt, so if this is some take on it as everyone says, it went over my head. I did like the split screens, though. So i thought it was a competent episode with some good moments. Not a lot that we haven't seen before but mostly serves to solidify Chapel as a mainstay for Kirk's 5-year mission.

Ah, Jammer's referenced The Subway as well! I should've know he will.

I agree overall with the 2.5 stars but this would have been a lot higher for me if Joseph had died instead of being saved by technobabble nonsense.

Jammer said, “M'Benga gets pinned between a pillar and a table in a way that crushes him at his midsection; if the table is removed, his internal organs will fall out and he'll die instantly — just like Vincent D'Onofrio in the "Subway" episode.”

For me, it was from the movie "Signs." Mel Gibson's wife gets crushed that way and it is "his last chance to talk to her." And then their conversation is a major plot point.

There is absolutely no fucking way to fix that kind of crush injury, even with "force neutrinos." Are you kidding me? I was all ready to be heartbroken at losing Joseph and then they pulled that crap.

Like @artymiss, who said "Oh okay I hadn't realised M'Benga was on TOS. At least my ignorance gave me some dramatic suspense regarding his survival," I had no idea Joseph was on TOS, but a google tells me he was only called by his last name, so maybe a different M'Benga, lol

Jammer: “The plot is one of those unlikely technobabble constructions. The wormhole is filled with theoretical "strong-force neutrinos" which, amazingly, can not only regenerate M'Benga's otherwise fatal injuries but also refuel the ship's core, permitting its escape.”

I really feel insulted by the writes pulling such a cop-out.

On to other things:

I disagree with Jammer saying, "This would've worked better if not for most of Carol Kane's weird line readings, where she comes off as a complete cartoon character, as Pelia usually does these days."

I like her all the time, but I loved her in this one. And that's just her voice for me.

I loved Ortegas in command and wish they'd kept Pike unconscious the whole time, just to give her some room to flex her command muscles.

I have said this in other reviews, but the reason "Disaster" episodes work is when they throw unusual combinations together--like Troi in command with Ro and Myles, Picard with the children, etc. But this didn't really do that, so I found that disappointing. But it still would have been okay without the technobabbly fix.

Finally, I was with Dr. Boyce when he ordered Christine to leave Joseph. He was absolutely right--the force neutrino solution had maybe a .0001% chance of working and it was just not worth it when there were people elsewhere who needed medical attention.

But then that stupid technobabble thing fixed the ship also. ARGH!

Can you tell this really bothered me? lol

Everything else was good. Yay Scotty!

The Dr. Boyce in "The Cage" is quite likable and understanding - the new one not so much. Again someone who only has the name in common with a legacy character.

Count me in among those who completely forgot M'Benga was in TOS for like 20 seconds. Well, at least the whole storyline was suspenseful for me as a result! I really thought he was going to buy the farm.

The ticking clock didn't bother me that much. It was there and I accepted it as a visual choice for this episode. Strangely, it didn't remind me of 24, and I watched 24.
So this is now the "24" episode and not "The Pitt" episode? So "The Pitt" episode is a different episode? I'm so confused. There are so many references to keep track off!

My issue with Spock being "in danger" isn't that he was in danger but that the episode is really playing it up, with a dramatic close-up on Pike's hand as he contemplates jettisoning the pod, and the calls to Spock on comm which go unanswered and everyone looking worried. All this extra drama while we know he's perfectly fine. Don't waste my time.

@Kuebel brought up TOS's Court Martial as another episode where the captain jettisons an ion pod via his chair. Good call! Then as now, the occupant survived. And I agree, it's a strange function to have on your chair, but what do I know about starship captains chair controls in the 23rd century.

@Karl Zimmerman
"Most notable is Boyce, who has lost all his hair since The Cage."
Lol! You killed me with this one.

Call me crazy, but I really like this one. I could have done without seeing Una's leg bone come out, but it was an intense, yet exciting episode.

@Bok R’Mor
“One of the most fundamental, intrinsic and unavoidable blunders in SNW is the issue of stakes. Put simply, we know that Pike, Una, Spock, Chapel, Uhura, Scotty, M'Benga et al all make it to TOS.”

While reading that comment, I was struck by the idea that it might have been amusing, perhaps even subtly hilarious, if the same actress had played both Una and Chapel. Sort of an inside joke that was so “inside” that it was never commented on or acknowledged by the characters. I don’t mean just for this episode.

@Lynos: "Pike again is sidelined, gets electrocuted"

He survived, so he was not electrocuted. Just shocked. ("Electrocute" literally means to execute someone with electricity, so it's debatable whether it even applies to someone who does accidentally from an electric shock.)

"TOS's Court Martial as another episode where the captain jettisons an ion pod via his chair. Good call!"

I just saw that one fairly recently, so I spotted that callback but had not remembered it at all before the rewatch. Definitely a weird button to have on the chair but as canonical as it gets.

@navamske:
'While reading that comment, I was struck by the idea that it might have been amusing, perhaps even subtly hilarious, if the same actress had played both Una and Chapel. Sort of an inside joke that was so “inside” that it was never commented on or acknowledged by the characters. I don’t mean just for this episode.'

This would have been wonderfully unsettling.

@StarMan:
'Tell me, what is the appropriate tone and sentiment Jammer should express when sharing his personal experience of watching and reviewing Strange New Worlds?'

This, 100%.

In all my years of visiting, the most bizarre comments on here are always the ones that try to passive-aggressively emotional blackmail the site owner into not giving honest reviews of what he's watched.

@Eric Jensen:
""Better Call Saul" was a great series and we know what happens to Saul, Gus, and Mike, etc."

I don't think that analogy really holds. Throughout the series, there was continuous speculation that Kim Wexler's character wouldn't survive, because she wasn't in Breaking Bad. (Turned out that was wrong!) We also were kept in suspense over the fates of Nacho, Lalo, Howard Hamlin, Chuck, the Kettlemans, etc.

I was a big fan of Breaking Bad, but I really didn't care for BCS. I think the only episode I liked was season one's "Five-0." I did like Michael McKean. It's amazing how far he came from playing Lenny on L&S.

Was that so hard?

Put together a season of episodes like this and you'd have a generic, unsurprising but overall well-regarded Trek series.

Sure, it adds nothing to the overall plot of Trek, but it also didn't involve puppets (The gimmick of this episode was thankfully forgotten and never distracting). The ratio of good to bad is a stalemate, and the stuff in-between is at least something I could show someone new to Trek and have them *get* what the show is generally about.

Trekno Babble and last-minute solutions are a standard feature on the bridge of any Enterprise, so I have already accepted it. I will not punish the creators for making by-the-numbers Trek. I will praise them for sticking within the lines.

The fact a passable episode is a stand-out in an entire season of prestige, high-budget sci-fi is criticism enough.

TOY

Not bad! As Jammer notes, the 24 homage would have benefited from a tighter runtime, but as it is the pace sagged a little too often for my tastes. Otherwise a pretty good use of the ensemble all round, with the exception of Captain Pike, who has become SNW's most non-essential regular at this point. The writers dropped the ball with this guy after season 1 and have shown no inclination to pick it up again, which I should be used to by now but still find very frustrating.

@SlackerInc
I didn't know "electrocute" strictly means to execute someone.... yeah, I meant "shocked" or "zapped". Just that he got hurt by the electrocuted panel and was out of commission for most of the episode. In retrospect I think it was a really weird story decision, btw. Yes, he kind of sacrificed himself, but come on, he's the captain. If the writers were trying to say something about his character there, this viewer at least did not get it.

People here mentioned Better Call Saul. For me, it is the ultimate example of how to do a prequel series. It is wonderfully crafted on all aspects.

"I didn't know "electrocute" strictly means to execute someone"

Yeah, we need a better word than "shocked" don't we?

Speaking of imprecise words, another one that bugs me is "casualty." When I, and I think many other people, hear the word they assume it means deaths, but it also includes wounded as well. So when you read an article about Russian casualties in Ukraine or whatever it's impossible to know if their troops are dead or just severely injured.

Finally a real honest to God, decent Star Trek episode. Technobabble, crisis, miracle working; sure there is dumb stuff but every Trek series has those lame episodes and dumb illogical stuff in them. Compared to what we've had lately this is a welcome breath of fresh air.

Really surprised they are introducing Boyce and not Piper

Karl Zimmerman:

"So, I guess the gimmick of the week turned out to be "do a normal Trek episode?" ;)"

This pretty much sums up how I feel about it. From the get-go it felt like a Star Trek Episode and yes, it in fact is a Star Trek Episode in the classic mold. It isn't a great or particularly original Star Trek Episode, but it's a real one.

Haven't seen one for some time hint hint 😏

I would give it 2 or 3 stars, too. That seems fair enough, just like this episode.

@Hiram J

English is not my first language. However, I'm a translator by profession, and I even translated many Star Trek episodes back in the day for TOS and TNG :)))) So in my language "electrocuted" simply means what it means. It has no connotation to capital punishment. Is this only a US thing, I wonder? For example, I'm curious if in the UK it's the same.

Yes, "casualty" is also a confusing word. Another confusing word is "gun", as in English it can be used to describe a pistol, a shot gun, a machine gun, and even a cannon. You can only know what it actually is via context.

In Star Trek specifically we had issues with translating the seemingly simple word "starship", believe it or not, because it's a science fiction word. There are no "starships" in real life, at least not yet. All we had was "space vessel".

@ Lynos: According to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, "electrocute" is a portmanteau word created in the late 19th century after the electric chair was invented, and combines "electric" with "execute." So the primary meaning in English is, in fact, "to kill or severely injure by electricity." (I didn't know this and I'm in the US.) If you receive an electrical shock without serious harm (as I once did when I was young and stupid), "electrocute" would be a little misleading as a description.

"Casualty," however, does include both injury and death, which is how I've always understood it. Kind of a synonym for "loss from trouble." People do often use it just to mean death.

"Gun" is a general word so would cover any type of shooting device. You're right that it does technically include things like cannons according to M-W, but that usage sounds strange to me. You'd usually think of something portable. And yeah, cannons are technically portable, but still....

End of pedantry for today.

I was trying to figure out the math of the "weekend". Are their shifts eight hours long? Do they work 40 hours a week? If there were no weekends, they could have four six-hour shifts and have everyone work seven days a week for a total of 42 hours. Which might make more sense than having the captain and main crew leave the bridge for 64 hours straight.

It's sort of funny that we only very rarely see a shift change and almost never see anything meaningful happen during the majority of the time when Alpha shift is not on duty. That's not surprising for dramatic purposes but in-universe, it's highly questionable.

@Lynos: Agree that Better Call Saul, along with Breaking Bad, are among the greatest shows ever produced.

@Hiram J: With you on "casualties". Also "robbery" used to mean any theft, and "murder" to mean any homicide. And don't get me started on "bemused" or "nonplussed"!

"they could have four six-hour shifts"


Over my bloated hirsute body, sir.

If this were the floor instead of the ceiling, we'd be having us a pretty good S4 of SNW. I enjoyed it fair enough. I never watched "24," so the gimmick there with the clock and multiple screens was less grating to me than to it might be to others. Still unnecessary though.

Can somebody please explain how seeing Una's femur sticking through her pants drove the story forward more effectively than hearing it break? Why is this graphic violence commonplace this season, all with a TV-PG rating?

One of Trek's biggest achievements is inspiring children in STEM. I watched TOS as a young child, pausing the VCR's recording during commercial breaks so I could endlessly rewatch later. I have a vivid memory of stretching that corded remote control as far as it would go so I could hide from the tension of the Enterprise's brush with destruction in Gamesters of Triskelion. That series was directly responsible for sparking my interest in engineering and my path toward becoming a mechanical engineer.

I'm one of those folks in the population that doesn't deal well with blood and gore, and that's on me. But what kid should be watching this show?

Trek has had its share of horror. TNG's Conspiracy's was rather cartoonish, but still startling for the time. Voyager's arc with the Vidiians was edgy as well. Those all served a narrative purpose. There is no purpose to this. There's no advancement of the plot, there's no rationale beyond "because we can." And they still give it a PG rating.

These folks have absolutely no clue anymore. It started as such a breath of fresh air over Discovery, and once those writers had nothing to do they came over here and ruined this as well.

"please explain how seeing Una's femur sticking through her pants drove the story forward more effectively than hearing it break"


Yeah, I agree that this was absolutely unnecessary. Just gross over the top gore for shock value.

On top of that it's so extreme that it seems unbelievable. I'm no biology expert, but I think if you were crawling in high gravity that there would be some other, much less extreme, symptoms before you get to the "tibia exploding out of your pants like an old oak tree struck by lightning" stage right? Like your hair would hang down straight, or your skin would sag, or your joints would buckle. Something. But no, we went from bunny nose race to Bone Tomahawk in about 15 seconds.


"Hey kids, you wanna watch that puppet show that we watched last week?"

"Yay!!!!"

SNAP!

"Aaaaaaaah!!!"

I am throwing my hat in the ring with "Please stop it with the torture porn."

I have hated it from the beginning. That's not why I watch Star Trek, guys. Whatever drugs you're on, stop it. Get some help.

@Socrmaniac: "And they still give it a PG rating."

I don't object so strongly as you do to the gore itself (although I also don't think it's necessary), but I definitely agree that they ought to rate it TV-14 if they are going to show stuff like that. Very strange that it still qualifies for TV-PG.

Let's work backwards from a the writer's pov. The goal is to give everyone something to do and to make them look good doing it. Well, everyone except Pike anyway.

To get to the scene of Spock and La'an melding you need Spock to do the space walk.

To make sure that Spock is available to do the space walk scene you need to ensure that he isn't disabled in the artificial gravity scene. That leaves Una.

Una is going to solve the gravity problem and be injured, but since she is such a total badass you can't just have her slightly injured. It has to be something horrific to sideline her.

So you end up with this gross shit.



Here's the thing though - you could have found a lot of other plausible yet less graphic ways to take her out. Having her heroically shoving her hand into the high voltage wiring system just before she passes out from the strain of defying the extreme gravity. Or just a good old fashioned bonk on the noggin followed by a last ditch effort to crawl to the control panel. Lots of cooler and more dramatic ways this could have been handled while still serving the plot and making her look like a badass.

Boring fanwank ahead. Feel free to skip this post.


I want to take another crack at remixing this episode. Goal is to take out the silly parts and give as many members of the cast something to do as possible.

The set-up: The Enterprise is floating in a massive astroid field, damaged with loss of power to sensors and several key systems. The crew are trapped in isolated pockets of the ship and are dealing with several individual disasters.


What each crew member has to do:

Ortegas: Must use a shuttle craft and act as the eyes of the "blinded" Enterprise as it makes its way out of the astroid field.

Pike: Flies the ship while simultaneously trying to coordinate efforts among the various crew members. Keep some of the disasters audio only. It's a big ship and it would be interesting if the audience only hears some of what's going on. Cheaper too.

Uhura: in a running battle to keep communications going while transferring orders between Pike, Ortegas, and the rest of the imperiled crew.

Scotty: Needs to reenergize the Enterprise. In a shocking twist, minute amounts of Dilithium can be found in the surrounding astroids. The only safe way to access the Dilithium is via the transporters, but they aren't working. Complicating matters is that the area where the transporter malfunction needs repair is being affected by incredibly high gravity due to a malfunction in the artificial gravity generator.

Una: Gets to fix the artificial gravity in a non-gross way that makes her look heroic.

M'Benga: not injured. He and Chapel are doing a M.A.S.H. thing. Emergency triage on a bunch of wounded crew with a lot of character/relationship conversation while they work.

Boyce: Injured.

La'an: Injured.

Spock: Not Injured!

Mind meld time. La'an needs medical attention but Spock doesn't have the necessary skill. Boyce does, but he is out of action. Spock must mindmeld with Boyce to learn how to operate on La'an. This allows us to learn a bit about Boyce and to further the Spock/La'an relationship. Boyce & La'an get to interact with Spock via mental personas so the actors aren't just laying there unconscious.


Who am I forgetting? Oh, yeah...

Pelia: That leg break thing, but with every bone in her body. One second standing there saying something stupid and the next Mortal Kombat Fatality.

Loved the shoutout to Anton Yelchin / computer having difficulty with heavily accented English (which also makes no sense, but doesn’t make it any less fun).

^ And that's why Scotty's accent sounds off on TOS - he's tempering his accent so that the computer can understand him.

At least they've managed to keep Kirk out for three straight episodes.

@The Queen

"According to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, 'electrocute' is a portmanteau word created in the late 19th century after the electric chair was invented."

I thought a portmanteau was a digit on the actress Natalie’s foot.

^ Boo this man

`So, do you have a new sci-fi particle for me?'
`We do, sir. A strongly interacting neutrino.'
`What's that?'
`I haven't seen the final cut, so I'm not really sure. I have some oddball handwaves from trying to teach nuclear physics.'
`OK. First, why do we need it?'
`To heal starships and patients instantly.'
`Healing starships and patients is tight.'
`So we need a particle without an electric charge, so it doesn't have long-range interactions, but still interacts strongly at short range so we can pull stuff together. Plus, we can apply it with a thin tube or a shovel in an emergency.'
`Dr. Who works wonders reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. We could buy the copyright.'
`Reversing the spin polarization of neutrons is easy, but wouldn't help much. The strong interaction we know and love is much too short-ranged to heal tissue. It could heal fermi-sized cracks, I guess.'
`Sounds useless.'
`Right. We need a carefully tuned NewStrong interaction with a range of, I don't know, a few microns.'
`Sounds hard.'
`Super easy, barely an inconvenience. It turns out the mass of the pion, which determines its range, is a cancellation of two larger terms. One is what you think of as the interaction between quarks and antiquarks...'
`You think about that interaction all the time, do you?'
`No. The other term has a different dependence on the q qbar interaction, from broken quark chiral symmetry that generates pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons. Like the pion.'
``Chiral' symmetry?'
`Zero mass quark spins have distinct handedness, massive ones don't. The usual toy model is a wine bottle potential with two curvatures, so sloshing along them acts like two effective mass contributions.'
`That's better. Sloshing wine bottles are tight.'
`The terms can have opposite sign. So by tweaking our NewStrong interaction, we can naturally make its neutral NewPion any mass/range we want.'
`Can't you just do that anyway? Q can do that.'
`{sigh} we're trying to build a naturally consistent model here, sir.'
`Wouldn't astronomy be totally different? I like astronomy.'
`Indeed neutron stars and isotopes and just about the whole shebang would be totally different. Thus the need for microtubes to apply our NewPion and keep it from reshaping the cosmos, though admittedly we don't think we could stop that.'
`You can deal with that next week. But won't this NewPion decay into lighter things and kill the patient with the radiation?'
`...'
`Oopsie?'
`... uhm, excellent, that's we can't use a heavy sterile nu with stronger-than-weak interactions, 'cause it decays to a normal nu and a gamma which would light up the sky with monoenergetic photons and kill patients and starships. No worries. NewPions will be stable. Nothing lighter to NewStrongly decay into.'
`Not even pairs of gammas? NewBaryons in two loops could do just about anything...'
`ok, where did you get that, sir?'
`Samantha Carter and Spock were chatting backstage.'
`...two loops, oopsie squared... still no worries, we'll tune the mass to be small enough for the lifetime to be quite long and limit the radiation. That might work, I guess. I don't really know any QFT to speak of.'
`Do you need me to get all the way off your back on this one?'
`Yes, thanks! Anyway, what do you think?'
`I think NewPions sound like treknobabble handwavium, and strongly interacting nu's sound tight.'
`oh, ok.'

@John Behr:

Exquisite Pitch Meeting references. Appreciated.

@gort the realtime clock is indeed a gimmick, as you say from 24, but a minor one. It’s not a high concept gimmick like puppets, musicals or film noir that affects the plot. It could have been removed from the episode entirely with very little impact - so for that reason I generally think the episode is gimmick free.

I would prefer there to be none, or very few of them, but the past two seasons seem to be leaning into them heavily, even though the genre based episodes I rather enjoy. I guess it’s the difference between a genre, which has a lot of depth and characteristics, and a gimmick - which is quite shallow.

The review of "Off-Hour" as a mere vessel for tropes and fan service is a lamentable failure of reading that mistakes the presence of a sign for the vitality of its trace; it treats the narrative as a "closed" system where characters like M'Benga or Scotty are merely functional components in a pre-determined architecture. Such an analysis fails to recognize that these figures exist within a text that is, by its very nature, a site of *différance*, where meaning is perpetually deferred and distributed across a series of substitutions (Derrida 1972: 118). To critique the episode as a collection of tropes is to fall into the trap of logocentrism—the belief that there is a stable, present truth behind the fiction. In reality, what the reviewer perceives as "tropes" are actually instances where the text reveals its own materiality; they are not mere artifacts of fandom but elements in a "machinery" of representation that produces meaning through repetition and erasure (Derrida 1967: 334).

The critic’s insistence on "tropes" as stable units of narrative construction is not merely a stylistic choice but a manifestation of what Derrida identifies as a desire for "presence"—a longing for a text that is fully present to itself, unmediated and self-identical. By labeling specific plot points or character behaviors as "tropes," the reviewer attempts to domesticate the radical alterity of the narrative, transforming it into a series of predictable signs that confirm a pre-existing meaning (Derrida 1986: 150). To label a scene as a trope is to attempt to freeze the "multiplicity of instances" into a singular, manageable experience, thereby ignoring the "violence" of the text—the way it demands a reading that acknowledges its own gaps and ruptures (Derrida 1987; Derrida 1986: 150). The reviewer seeks a "truth" in the plot while failing to see that the narrative is, at its core, a representation of something else, a "shadow" cast by the impossibility of pure presence (Derrida 2006: 20; Derrida 1972: 349).

This critique of the "trope" further fails to account for the "spectrality" inherent in the show’s intertextual construction. The mention of specific references to *TNG*, *Voyager*, or *24* is not merely an act of fan service, but rather a movement within what Derrida identifies as the "spectrality" of the work. Like the "masterpiece" that remains haunted by its own history (Derrida 1993: 42-43), these intertextual nods function as "ghosts" (spectres) that inhabit the narrative without fully occupying it (Derrida 1993: 163; Derrida 2006: 20). They are not simple call-backs or additions to a core truth; they are "sub-tractions" from a shared cultural memory, ensuring that the text is never solely present to itself but is always haunted by its own lineage (Derrida 1986: 150). When the reviewer dismisses these as mere tropes, they fail to recognize them as sites of "suture"—the stitches where different narratives intersect and produce something new through their overlapping (Derrida 1967: 334; Derrida 1986: 150). These intertextual markers are the very means by which the text survives its own lack of a fixed center.

The critic's demand for a coherent, linear logic ignores the radical "otherness" inherent in any narrative encounter. To treat an interaction between characters as a simple plot device is to ignore the *différance* that exists between the speaker and the spoken, the self and the other (Derrida 1986: 74; Derrida 1986: 150). Every interaction within the episode—whether it be an exchange of information or a moment of tension—is a "suspense" of meaning. The reviewer seeks solid ground where there is only a "shifting sand" of signifiers (Derrida 1991: 195-196); they demand a "truth" in the plot while ignoring that the narrative is, at its core, a representation of something else, a "shadow" cast by the impossibility of pure presence. By dismissing the script as a collection of tropes, they attempt to flatten the complexity of the text into a singular experience, failing to recognize that every word in the screenplay is already "marked" by its own history and the "absence" of what it cannot say (Derrida 1986: 150).

(cont'd)


The critic’s failure to acknowledge this "machinery" is also a failure to acknowledge the "violence" of the narrative's construction. The reviewer treats the story as a solid object to be consumed, whereas a Derridean critique reveals it to be a "process," a "machinery" that functions through the very gaps and ruptures the critic dismisses (Derrida 2006: 20; Derrida 1986: 150). To find fault in the "tropes" is merely to miss the mechanism by which the text survives its own lack of a fixed center. The "trope" is not a failure of imagination but an admission of the text's reliance on a system of signifiers that are perpetually deferred, ensuring that meaning remains always in a state of *différance* (Derrida 1986: 150). This is not a choice made by the writers to be "unoriginal," but a structural necessity; the text must rely on these repetitions to maintain its integrity as a representation. Ultimately, the reviewer’s critique fails because it seeks to "fix" the meaning of characters like M'Benga or Scotty, treating them as functional components in a pre-determined architecture, rather than as figures existing within a text that is, by its very nature, a site of *différence* (Derrida 1986: 150).

I don't have a clue what you're talkin' about, Jacques. Not a fucking clue.

He (or at least his AI) wants to tell you that he likes the French Philosopher Jaques Derrida and the philosophy of deconstruction.
I guess the only way to understand and agree to this is if you would also love deconstructivism, which most people don't.

@Lt. Jacques Derrida
Did you ask AI to write something with the main purpose of causing epilepsy to everyone reading it? Or you study Derrida and "deconstruction" and you had a blast writing the above?
No philosopher (if Derrida was even one) will convince me about the quality (or rather the lack of it) of SNW.
But I give it to you, that was entertaining!

@Richard James: "the realtime clock is indeed a gimmick, as you say from 24, but a minor one. It’s not a high concept gimmick like puppets, musicals or film noir that affects the plot. It could have been removed from the episode entirely with very little impact - so for that reason I generally think the episode is gimmick free."
I agree.  I have been struggling to understand why people seem to be so incensed by the clock.  It didn't really add or subtract anything, so my attitude is "who cares"?

"who cares"?


Clearly not the people who like this dreck.

Is the ticking digital clock the worst thing thing about this episode? No, that would be the terrible writing. The clock is significant only in the sense that it demonstrates, once again, this show's total commitment to unoriginality. Why stop at just ripping of other Trek shows when you can, as you said, needlessly rip off a hit show from 20 years ago?

@Lt Jaques Derrida
If your post is meant as satire, you need a punchline. You’re all buildup and no payoff. If on the other hand you mean this as an actual defense of SNW and a takedown of less than enthusiastic reviews, I’ll offer the following in matching spirit:

What the analyst fails to see is the fundamental core of a reality bound into patterns by the needs of the preceptor. As a perspective of existence, the effort towards the concrete becomes a fools errand, made all the more absurd by the act of “separation” of the viewer from its foundational component structure. After all, what is a “Kirk” but a representation of ego, itself founded on the illusory conception of self, in turn made manifestly impossible by the very nature of the bicameral framework of consciousness fixed in the swell of a quantum filament? Or what is an “Uhura” but the reflection of a voice struggling to communicate its whims through a poorly understood medium? Thus, this very notion of “deconstructionism”, founded on the “I”, is in fact built upon the shifting sands of a false premise that things have been “constructed” in the first place, itself a mere ambition of the “we”, that after all is seeking the “us”, perchance to find the true nature of the “is”. To purport that one can find “worlds” that are “strange” or “new” is to manufacture a juxtaposition that, by its very claim, negates itself. Thus presenting the “therefore” that one cannot, “deconstruct” nothing.

I could ramble on like this for days…

Maybe by being arbitrary and derivative the satire lies in the lack of a punchline. If he's trying to imply that SNW is a recycled deconstruction of other media, lacking any "text" and merely engaging in "context" then indeed a punchline isn't possible, since there can be no "point" to merely drawing one's attention to other things as an exercise. Or perhaps "there's no point" is itself a point you could make, which requires repeated empty gestures to get across, like Beckett's Waiting for Godot. But is there a point to pointing out the lack of a point? Ah, Derrida. Let's just have some ice cream and call it a day.

I strongly suspect the Derrida posts were generated by someone with AI. That's a lot of work on dense prose for the sake of a bit, so I don't think engagement is really needed.

SNW is indeed a very postmodern Trek series, as I noted, though not postmodern in the academic sense, but the sense of modern self-aware TV.

It's become "What if we did Community, but as a Star Trek show?"

You’ll have to forgive me, needing a salving dose of quality writing, I recently rewatched Deadwood and am now trapped in an ambling, circumlocutory style of prose that bears upon me like a sweet smelling thicket of otherwise confounding brambles. I could t resist the urge to engage in some wanton sound and fury. But it’s my problem, I’ll deal with it..

Stay tuned as Sartre reclaims the puppetry episode

Hell is other puppets.

The mauvaise foi of a muppet is existence’s cruel joke indeed.

@Idh2023 "You’re all buildup and no payoff."

Just like modern television. And yet here we are.

Touché

Wow. The pair of massive glueballs on the end of those strong-force neutrinos pack quite the punch. Not only do they represent affordable healthcare, but all the fuel your thirsty little engines can drink. I'm surprised they can move at warp speeds with that level of cojones dragging behind space-time. Now how's that for a MacGuffin?!? Treknobabble at it's finest! It's amazing how you can screw up an entire season like this, but at least we got a normal episode this time... for what it's worth.

I liked it, best episode of the season so far, but then I'm in the 1% (see Jammers review.)

@Bok R'Mor thanks, I see from @Quincy that I must see the actual episode :) to honour the inspiring creativity at work here, yet here's my obvious followup

`but I thought we get forces from exchange of bosons, not fermions.'
`Sam and Spock have taught you well, sir. Yet the known limited-ranged forces from 2-nu exchange have been considered for everything from nuclear forces to gravity. Newsy, too.'
`Strongly interacting nu pairs sound goofily romantic, especially with the potential wine bottle. Literally tight.'
`Sadly, sir, that's much much too weak.'
`Stronger and stronger interacting NewNu pairs, then.'
`Their decay radiation would vaporize...'
`This thread suggests the macguffin was actually "glueballs at the end of strong-force neutrinos".'
`I should see the final cut. Any cut, actually. I'm glad that got stuck in.'
`Are glueballs real?; and, it's ok to stick them at the ends of nu's?'
`The experimental evidence got better last month; and, __I__ don't know."

Okay, so now we get SNW's version of TNG's "Disaster". Not bad, and certainly LIGHT YEARS ahead of last week's true disaster of an episode. Not sure I'm a fan of the "magic neutrinos cure all" solution, but whatever. The story kept me engaged and wanting to stay to the end, which is saying something after last week.

@John Behr
Thu, Sep 3, 2026, 10:51am (UTC -5)
"`but I thought we get forces from exchange of bosons, not fermions.'
`Sam and Spock have taught you well, sir. Yet the known limited-ranged forces from 2-nu exchange have been considered for everything from nuclear forces to gravity. Newsy, too.'
`Strongly interacting nu pairs sound goofily romantic, especially with the potential wine bottle. Literally tight.'
`Sadly, sir, that's much much too weak.'
`Stronger and stronger interacting NewNu pairs, then.'
`Their decay radiation would vaporize...'
`This thread suggests the macguffin was actually "glueballs at the end of strong-force neutrinos".'
`I should see the final cut. Any cut, actually. I'm glad that got stuck in.'
`Are glueballs real?; and, it's ok to stick them at the ends of nu's?'
`The experimental evidence got better last month; and, __I__ don't know.""



That gave me a chuckle. Thanks for that. ;)