“Once La'an a Time”

I'm not sure I can get past the horrendous title and actually watch this...

I hope some of you enjoyed it. I sampled the beginning and the ending and tasted some of what lay between. I did not like the taste, so I pushed it aside.

As a wise Jammer once said,

"So, this is what passes for Star Trek these days?"

I watched this at 2x speed, utterly bored and waiting for the end.

Also, why reference Benny Russel other than to remind me of how clever and bold Trek used to be.

What the hell is this? What are we even doing here?

Notes while watching:

As a big fan of La’an… I’m sad to say that the exposition at the start before the opening credits is some of the worst I’ve ever seen in a TV show.

Certain character “transformation” scenes are so badly executed.

Cowardly pike is more of a captain than actual pike in a way. No hesitation lmao

The ending is so bad. This episode is so bad. Not just as a sequel to The Elysian Kingdom, but as its own thing. I think this may take the cake as the new worst episode of this show for me. To think La’an previously got material like Memento Mori and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. This is so plainly juvenile in comparison. 1 star.

Well, after last week's change of pace by being an actual star trek episode, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

It's getting to the point that you can watch the pre credit stinger and the last 10 mins and get the gist of the episode.

I can't do the full cringe episodes anymore, I just can't

Laan needs to be gone. Like yesterday. They are going to have to pull a reason nobody remembers her in space seed out of their ass. It's 99% certain it'll be unsatisfying.

We also have counselor pike present once again. I'm having such a hard time reconciling this captain pike with the guy on Discovery, let alone the cage.

Have they already filmed season 5? Or is there still time for them to consider the criticism and change course?

You cannot imagine my delight at discovering this was a sequel to The Elysian Kingdom, anticipating the comments here. Oh boy oh boy OH BOY. It's going to be a good week.

. . .

I liked it well enough. I was entertained. Pike and Spock's doppelgangers passing themselves off as Pike and Spock on the Enterprise was the only comedy I laughed at this season. Well written gags, and well-acted.

However I did find some of the directing a bit awkward. Some odd pacing to the episode, and some shots that I thought weren't the most well-chosen. Completely competent, though--it's not like Olatunde Osunsanmi directed this. Nothing about it was jarring, but it did have me wondering if a novice director was making their debut with this episode, like maybe one of the cast, so that I looked it up. It was directed by Sydney Freeland, who has only directed one previous episode of SNW, The Serene Squall in season one, but who is otherwise a very experienced director. At any rate, it wasn't any kind of issue, just a thought I had several times while watching.

. . .

La'an's a favorite of mine, and the writers too, obviously, as they love to feature her. I think she elevates whatever the material is that she's given, so for an episode like this, having her as the focus really helps. But I do hope this is the end of her "Who Am I?" arc, though, because it's starting to get a bit tired.

A lot of people have been speculating that she is going to die some time next season because she isn't in TOS, and they resent spending time with her on her personal journey because they think it's going to end abruptly and tragically, making all this character development a "waste." I don't necessarily think so. I think her not being in TOS is easily explained by her feeling she cannot serve under Kirk after their romance fizzles and she takes another posting. Simple as. Will that be what happens? I don't know, but it CAN be just that simple and it would be entirely narratively satisfying.

But even if she does die, I disagree that any part of her journey was a "waste."

(Same with Una: I don't expect her to die. She won't be given command of the Enterprise because she's genetically engineered. So what then? I expect her to take a prestigious but non-shipboard posting of some kind, or leave Starfleet entirely. But I don't know if the latter rings true as she has consistently been portrayed as one of the most gung-ho Starfleet officers out there.)

(Ortegas is the one it is least easy to imagine the reasons for her leaving the ship, at least as of now.)

. . .

I think there are going to be questions of "why does Kirk have a doppelganger in the Elysian Kingdom when Pelia doesn't" and the episode gave us this answer: La'an. The Kingdom is reacting to, and designing a scenario around, her. Hence, when "casting" a prince: Kirk. If there'd been a role for some kind of "fixer" in the story, maybe then there would have been a doppelganger Pelia.

. . .

Speaking of Pelia, did she just leave the ship? Probably not, I think they would have given her character a more pronounced, obvious goodbye.

. . .

I really thought Daughter In The Scary Sentient Nebula was going to have something to do with this. But I guess not? I'm not really clear on how the Elysian Kingdom Planet was created if the nebula didn't do it, but sure. A really super-advanced computer was involved and beyond that the specifics don't really matter for the episode, especially when the characters themselves acknowledge they're missing the middle steps in the equation. Sometimes the universe is just strange and unlikely. It isn't hard to imagine some scenarios for what those middle steps might be, or that the crew will discover them off-screen.

Somehow the Elysian Kingdom returned is literally the plot and that is just beyond trash in execution. Using an M’Benga long season arc as a vehicle to explore a La’an character inner conflict we already covered and addressed two seasons ago makes no sense at all from the jump. I liked the Elysian Kingdom. I like Hemmer in it most of all. This episode was genuine trash in comparison.

I don’t think the problem is gimmicks either, I think I’ve identified what the real problem with this season is. The problem is that all the gimmicks involve the main cast acting completely out of character. It reached its breaking point for me here.

We had a horror episode where some of the cast were acting like evil versions of themselves. We had a drunk episode where most of the cast were acting like stupid versions of themselves. We had a puppet episode where everyone was acting like puppet versions of themselves. We had a soap opera episode where everyone was again acting like stupid versions of themselves. And now this where literally everyone gets to once again act like stupid versions of themselves. There’s not enough of the cast acting like the Star Trek characters we are invested in/watch this show for. 4 out of 9 episodes at best is a terrible idea. The gimmicks could have all been better if the actors and characters still treated like they were part of a STAR TREK show.

The 1 star I’m giving is only because I like La’an and at least they didn’t go full bioessentialist like last year was all the time. But outside of that this was the flimsiest excuse to have a cgi dragon attack the enterprise in an episode I’ve ever seen. It was in that moment where I realized I didn’t really understand what the point of the action even was at all. A genuine first for this show.

Speaking of Hemmer, this would have been a great way to bring the actor back but I guess they don’t even care about that anymore. If they did, this wouldn’t have been a La’an story jumping off point.

As I understand it, the fifth season of SNW has already filmed. They are in post-production mode. Thankfully, it is only six episodes. Now, they could be the worst six episodes of Star Trek; however, the silver lining again is that it is a short season.

The story itself was a little lackluster, but that was more than made up for by the character dives and the acting (and the effects!).

I hate the dress uniforms. I understand they're just trying to do a TOS thing to appease those people but man the fimo clay badges are just so unappealing.

Pelia's verbal and non-verbal cues were so funny in this. Carol Kane is a legend. I hope this wasn't an impromptu goodbye for her.

I really like that there's a followup to the Elysian Kingdom, but I felt like they tried to explain it too much. After the season they had I feel like we could've just rolled with it.

Kirk's breezy beauty shot was right out of the soap opera episode and absolutely delightful.

Christina Chong is amazing, and gorgeous, and entirely distracting in whatever corset they put her in. :-)

La'an trying to make herself cry and then fake crying was great stuff.

Uhura's getup at the ball was straight out of Diablo. The red-eye effect sealed that pretty well.

Dragon Uhura fighting the Enterprise was cool as hell. The effects during that were insane, I loved watching the fire roll over the shields.

Imposter Spock mashing the buttons without looking got a lol out of me.

So...is this where the La'an story was heading all season? Don't get me wrong, I love her and I'm glad she's staying and fine, but it seemed like they were working up to get her off the Enterprise.

Where the heck did La'an beam to when she had the dog stay?

I'm team Runa/Porthos supremacy. Why we've never had more cute shipboard pets I'll never know.

Small aside, everyone whined about the gimmick episodes SO much this season, I think the fun way to deal with it would be to deal with it like the musical episode. Maybe that tear opens up again, and while they're trying to close it there's quantum realities of puppets, noir films, soap operas, etc. it would have saved them a ton of time bending backwards to explain why things are happening and also LET them happen instead of having to back out of it or make it a dream.

I assumed La'an was talking to the counselor in her end monologue, maybe they shot it in the episode before to keep Chivers. I was shocked when I saw it was Kirk, AND that it's a date?! I ship them so hard, so I was grinning like an idiot.

By the way, this Star Trek could go absolutely nuts. Could break the timeline, let them be a slightly diverged universe; not full Kelvin but just tiny odds and ends. Let Kirk and La'an be together. Let Pike avoid his accident while saving the cadets. Keep M'Benga around, let Spock and Chapel be together, let Pelia just live on the Enterprise and occasionally help like a crazy aunt. I see no downsides to doing this besides being beholden to original canon, which has always been hand-waved away at the drop of a hat anyway.

I'm very curious about the finale. I never watched the season trailer since people complained about spoilers, but I watched it tonight because I figured they wouldn't put much finale in it and boy did they. There was a lot we haven't seen and it looks bonkers. Fingers crossed for temporal anomalies!

“Have they already filmed season 5? Or is there still time for them to consider the criticism and change course”

While it’s true that season 5 is already filmed & is in post production , they did have the feedback from the equally disappointing Season 3 to go by for what that’s worth. It’s a short season so I’m optimistic it’s going to to be solid Star Trek episodes and not a lot of the trash they’ve been putting out this season. Season 4 to me is in many ways just a continuation of Season 3 wth them going even more gun ho on the gimmicks.

Magic. They've officially given up on technobabble to explain this season's bizarre lapses in storytelling and now simply wave their hand or snap their fingers like they all joined the Q continuum when nobody was looking.

It's very lazy writing. And that's a shame because my word, much as I don't care for the fantasy genre the production values are undeniably fantastic. And yeah, the cast is clearly having fun, so there's that... but it just feels like gimmicky fluff (yet again!)

Still, it looks like we just had the end of Pelia. She'll be off the ship piloting the Elysian Kingdom home (is it a ship? Is it a sentient nebula? Is it still around? Who knows... and ultimately, who cares?)

I can see why they cancelled this series.

So "Pike" walks into a bar, starts chugging drinks, and the crew cheers him on? Then when "Spock" joins him they cheer some more? I guess Pike has just given up on any semblance of a military hierarchy.

I was thinking a few weeks back that SNW was starting to be late-period Xena. It looks like the writers felt the same way, and decided to just lean into it.

The beginning of the teaser had some promise. I liked the inside joke that they found a discworld - wish there was a bit more Terry Pratchett in here. I was fine with Pike's therapist talk with La'an, fine with the initial setup. Then, M'Benga gave the laziest exposition to La'an explaining her inner emotional turmoil - suddenly becoming a mind reader because whoever wrote this didn't trust the audience to understand subtlety. But the point is made - nothing that follows will make a lick of sense, and is just constructed to allow La'an to have some sort of arc, I guess.

What follows is (mostly) a bunch of bullshit. Much like the soap opera episode, the puppet episode, and the drunk episode, there's just not enough plot to fill out a normal episode runtime. So we get a bunch of aimless scenes which serve essentially no story function, and are just there to allow the cast to act to mug at the camera by acting out of character. Except now they act OOC so, so much that can we even talk about "character" any longer? The throne room scenes with Uhura's alter, Pike and Spock's alters capers on the ship - all of it is worthless. Really, more run time should've been given to La'an, who was supposed to go on a "quest" here.

What was La'an's quest, again? She meets Prince Dashing, he mentions a key. They find Ortegas's alter, who tells them where to find the key. Una's alter gives them the key. Then they walk directly into the clutches of the evil witch and promptly get caught. Speaking as someone who's written an entire fantasy novel, the plotting here is atrociously lazy. La'an is supposed to be the protagonist, but she does nothing, essentially pulled along by Prince Dashing's "plan." It's all reactive, not proactive, until the final decision she makes.

Of course, there's the emotional arc too. I guess the story of the episode was that La'an was telling herself a story about being "bad" to such an extent that she shut out the good parts of herself, and now by embracing them, she's made herself whole? It's a good core for an episode, but I can think of much better wrappers - and the episode did her no favors by including so much random bullshit where the story pulled away from her as the POV character.

Even with how negative I'm sounding, I didn't hate the episode (save for the alter Pike/Spock scenes on the Enterprise). It just makes me sad that this sort of mediocrity was the best that the writers could do when constructing a fantasy story. I also thought the emotional payoff here wasn't as good as in the soap episode (which I disliked more overall) because La'an's resolution was telegraphed a mile away, meaning nothing surprised in the final act.

​Extra points for writing Pelia off the show, and the little dog, I guess.

Hopefully, there's nothing like this in Season 5, though.

@Mike A,

Someone from production has apparently been leaking on Reddit and said Season 5 is all serious other than one comedy episode. Though the five serious episodes probably include at least one horror episode, given the writing/directing team from The Griffin Incident is returning for Episode 3 of that season.

4th season: 9 episodes so far.
The only one that was original was the first (and no, I do not count the dinos for Jurassic Park).

The rest:

1 puppet
1 soap opera
1 dude where did I left my shuttle
1 horror
1 film noir
1 with "24" gimmick
1 Crimson Tide in space
1 fantasy

6 gimmick ones, 1 homage.
6 times the cast was basically pretending to be someone else and actors were playing different genres.
In a 10 episodes season.
And we don't know what the 10th has in store.

I was bored. I was bored cause this is repetitive and tiring. I do not care to keep watching Peck and Mount play a different version of themselves.
Not when they are doing it for 60% of the season.
Have they confused SNW for SNL?

@theBgt,

Episode 1 was a homage, just not of Jurassic Park. They were trying to do pulphouse Barsoom homage with an inhabited/dying Mars. Indeed, they ignored any sense of realism to the history of the solar system to try and shoehorn it into a Trek setting.

@Karl Zimmerman

Oh, I wasn't aware of "Barsoom", thank you.

This is shit..... utter, utter shit.

Why can't my Star Trek, something I have loved for about 40 years, be Star Trek any more? :-(

"Just no subtext here at all, is there?"
-- La'an, clearly reviewing the episode.

This isn't a TV show any longer. It's a theater company.

I was so happy with this show in the first and second seasons. Now? I'm glad it's ending.

They wanted such borrowed, lightweight fare that you can put on in the background and not actually pay attention to. And that's what they're giving almost all of the time.

Congratulations, I no longer care about these characters or this show. Mission accomplished?

I’ve not been nearly as down on this season as most here (I would rate Griffin Incident, Off Hour, and Chronitons much higher than Jammer did, and didn’t completely hate the puppet episode), but this was pure junk. 1* and in the basement with the Hangover and Black and White episodes.

If I never hear the phrase “I see you” or some derivative again, that would be great. Turns out exploring trauma makes for some boring Star Trek. I thought Chronitons Through the Hour Glass was enough of that to last a season. At least that episode had the decency to show it being a work in progress for Pike. Here, La’an is instantly cured of all that ails her. That isn’t real life, and Star Trek should try to reflect that.

Christina Chong is great, and I chuckled at her trying to cry, but there’s nothing she could have done to carry this rubbish. I also laughed at fake Spock and Pike on the Enterprise, even if it’s just dumb fun. Making the floating rock a ship that Pelia hops on to study is a curious way to write her out of the show. Now all that’s left is Ortegas and La’an.

@voxymandias,

You're getting at something I've been thinking about lately. This season is reminding me in a weird way of the SFA episode from last year The Life of the Stars.

That episode of Starfleet Academy was deadly serious and self-important, but the core of the A-plot was nearly incomprehensible if you didn't have a background in theatre (and specifically the play Our Town). It was writers writing for writers about the healing power of theatre.

While nowhere near as highbrow (this season has been depressingly lowbrow) one gets the idea the writer's are writing now only for themselves and the actors, not the audience. They're interested in a playful romp through their favorite TV and film, and interested in giving the cast the ability to prove their chops by acting against type.

What they're not interested in is writing compelling plots that can last for an entire episode, or doing anything deep with characterization.

There's a story I heard as a child, a parable, and I never forgot it. A viewer was about to watch Strange New Worlds, wondering whether the next episode would be any good. He knew most of the latest season had been terrible - as was the case in the previous season - and going by the synopsis, he knew this one would probably suck too.

He told himself he should probably stop watching. But he assured himself. "Perhaps this one would be better."

So, he pressed play and began to watch.

But halfway through the episode, the viewer said aloud, "Why am I doing this? I knew it was going to suck."

"I couldn't help it," he said quietly.

"It's my nature."

a ridiculous episede

@ StarMan,

Chakotay had the same problem, no one listens.

I don't understand this fixation with novelty episodes. At this point it's like the writers are trying to see how far they can push it before someone finally says "No, we can't do that". I’m half expecting the whole run to be explained away as fever dreams Pike is having while recovering from his accident.

Folks hoping that season 5 will be better because the producers were aware of the negative reaction to season 3 should probably take note that they just made a sequel to the least popular episode from season 1.

@Spock’s Barber

I already suggested this several episodes back. It wouldn’t surprise me at all.

@Karl Zimmerman

“the writer's are writing now only for themselves and the actors, not the audience. They're interested in a playful romp through their favorite TV and film, and interested in giving the cast the ability to prove their chops by acting against type.”

Absolutely, and this sort of self-indulgence is very off putting as a viewer. To me it is a sign the franchise has completely run out of steam.

Good grief, the glazing over on the main subreddit... Please tell me that's just bot astroturfing.

OK, I know this whole episode is magical nonsense anyway, and I didn't think it was particularly engaging at all but...

So a dragon can fly in space (never mind breathe), and the Enterprise's shields can't stand up to some fire being breathed on it? Hmm.

@Artymiss,

Whatever the failings of this season, I don't think I'd extend them over the late-period franchise as a whole. I expect that for Starfleet Academy's final season, we'll get something similar to Season 1, which (aside from three-episodes dominated by YA plots) was mostly a mix of high-octane Trek action adventure and character-focused episodes with far sharper writing than anything SNW has managed in at least the past two years.

It says something when the show about "college kids" features more mature emotional writing than the one covering a 30something/40something cast.

As seemingly the only person on the planet who thoroughly enjoyed "Elysian Kingdom" (against my better judgement), I was delighted to go back to it. Delight has been in short supply on this show for me the last two seasons, so it was a nice feeling.

Just like EK, "Once La'an A Time" has a paper-thin plot that was more than made up for by the cast and some great jokes. I got some genuine, proper laughs out of this, as opposed to the half-hearted chuckles of the puppet episode, or the world-weary sighs and groans elicited by that terrible Hangover episode. In particular Anson Mount was killing it.

M'Benga just point-blank delivering the story's premise directly to camera in the pre-credits was lame as hell, but otherwise this really worked for me in a way that the show hasn't for quite awhile.

I've got a friend who loves La'an, and she was texting me earlier this year saying "they better not turn her into an evil warlord!" I hit up Christina Chong at her autograph table at STLV last month and passed on her concerns, to which Chong said "I can't say anything until you see episode 9".

Now I get it! (Christina Chong is an absolute class act, btw.)

Just God awful. It’s tragic seeing how pathetic this show has become.

I'm sure the cast were very happy that they got to play fancy dress again, though. And sure isn't that what's most important?

If you're going to do "The Princess Bride," try not to do it so badly. We really didn't need a sequel to "The Elysian Kingdom," but here it is. And it is as awkward and forced as you might expect. Plus, this is where the whole season arc with La'an was leading? In fairness, I can see what they were thinking. La'an needed to resolve her inner conflict, and doing so through a story might work. But very little of this is interesting. We have a generic fairy-tale kingdom populated by copies of our regular characters. Those characters are aware of their counterparts, albeit through a fantasy lens. Pike and Spock's counterparts even come about the Enterprise and impersonate our characters. We even have Kirk appearing as a dashing prince. But it all comes across as flat. I found myself agreeing with La'an how silly it all is. (A while back, I saw the recent "Dungeons and Dragons" movie with Chris Pine. And he exudes charm where Paul Wesley is sort of just there.) The Pike and Spock doppelgangers on the Enterprise should be fun, but its just cringe-worthy. It's all leading to a situation where La'an needs to confront both her inner darkness and her inner light, and restore the balance. Not a bad idea in theory. But it doesn't work here. Having Carol Kane break the fourth wall with Princess Bride references makes it worse, because that was a great movie. I'll hand it to the cast - they're giving it their all with weak material. So this is the penultimate episode of the season? What are we even trying to accomplish this season? I guess I'll stick around for the final season, but I'm not optimistic.

I thought this was weak, with a groan-inducing title, too much magic, and too many references to a previous episode I thought I'd wiped from my memory.

I still found it less offensive than the last episode's brazen ripping off of the Hackman/Washington slap fight in "Crimson Tide".

At this point, I'm basically waiting on The Orville to return (fingers crossed) and the Kurtzman era to die off. None of these nuTrek shows are capable of writing scientists and explorers doing realistic and original science and exploration.

I found 2 things very distracting , okay, 4 things :)

I quite enjoyed it but it was yet another silly episode in a season full of them. The money was certainly on the screen, the CGI, the costumes, the production values and everyone threw themselves into it. I'm just mot sure it's really Star Trek - the writers don't seem to like Trek. They prefer fantasy or musicals or the Muppets or The Hangover.

But I did kinda like it. Even if it was nonsensical.

If we hadn't had to sit through a Hangover episode, a puppet episode, and a soap opera episode already this season, I think I would have enjoyed this one freely without reservation. It was by far the best one of the four, and one (or at most two) episodes like this a season would be welcome.

Didn't the bridge crew realise Pike sounded differently and was acting oddly? "oh, he always does this."

@Atoz: "Folks hoping that season 5 will be better because the producers were aware of the negative reaction to season 3 should probably take note that they just made a sequel to the least popular episode from season 1."

The least popular episode, by far, of the first THREE seasons! It's astonishing that they would think it would be a good idea to make a sequel to that episode instead of trying to pretend it never existed. I got eight minutes in before I realized how pointless it would be for me to put myself through the ordeal of watching such a misbegotten episode--so like several other people here, I tapped out.

The actors are great, the VFX people do stunning work, the costume department continuously surpasses itself for four seasons now. But somewhere along the way the writers lost their mojo.

When SNW started, it's mission statement was "What if we just did Star Trek?" (In response to DISCO's attempt at shaking things up) What happened to that?

I don't mind a goofy episode here and there. The soap opera episode two weeks ago was genuinely funny. But who thought that season 1's worst episode needed a sequel?

It's so frustrating because I absolutely loved the first two seasons. I've been a Trekkie for over 30 years now, and after the first two seasons I had a feeling that SNW might even dethrone DS9 as my favorite Trek show if it kept going like this.

But now ... I can kinda understand why SNW was cancelled. :( In retrospect, SNW jumped the shark with the musical. I loved the musical but the producers learned the wrong lessons from it. Such a wacky episode only works if it's the exception from the rule, not if it's the rule.

Oh God.

Possible spoiler for the finale ?In the wildest episode of Strange New Worlds yet, after encountering a bizarre subspace anomaly, the entire crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise are forced to act like the trained, capable officers of an interplanetary exploration team in the 23rd century.

@Jminor81

Standing ovation for you!

The writers are either huffing paint (which they probably are to be fair) or they are using AI to write this crap.

SC said: "I'm just mot sure it's really Star Trek - the writers don't seem to like Trek."

These writers and actors think TOS was a zany clown show. They do not take it seriously. They do not connect to it like a large segment of fans do.

And because they don't connect to it, they approach it not with sincerity and seriousness, but with irony. Everything is a quote, held at an ironic and comical distance.

And that's the worst thing about nuTrek; it's not only utterly unserious about everything, but it and its fans use this unseriousness to preemptively ward off ridicule (afterall, how can you mock something that is mocking itself?).

Half way through. I just started shouting. Oh COME ON! what is this crap? WHY??????

It’s so painful to watch. It’s like taking the cast of Frasier and putting them on the bridge of the enterprise and then calling it a dream episode or something.

@TheRealTrent,

I don't think it's fair to blame this on "nuTrek." Whatever its other flaws, Discovery took itself deadly seriously, both during the goofy edgelord Season 1 and the Hallmark Trek overearnest later seasons. Hell, Starfleet Academy's first season played it very straight and earnest.

Across modern Trek, the only previously postmodern show was Lower Decks. However, it compensated for the near fourth-wall breaking ridiculousness by being extremely earnest to the point of reverence for Star Trek itself.

I guess one can argue that Section 31 was postmodern as well, but it's hard to tell if they had tongues in cheek when making that slop or genuinely thought it was going to be good.

There were a couple of great things about this episode. First, Pelia is gone! May she and her namedropping never turn up again.

Second, the most hilarious line of dialogue in recent history on this show. During the early gossip session about La'an, Spock tritely says, "We cannot tell her what to do" and Erica responds, "Well, the captain can check in with her. She can't ignore him." HAHAHAHAHA! I just burst out laughing. Who hasn't ignored the captain on this series?

Oh, here's another good thing. The acting was very good, especially by Mount and Peck in all their permutations. You could actually tell them all apart, and that's saying something. Then, Christina Chong did a great job too, and didn't she look fantastic at the end when she literally let her hair down.

Prince Rauth the Cowardly has a mini-character arc and exits on an act of courage.

Now for the bad things. I'll try to be brief.
- I did not like the directing at all. This director seems to think all fantasy is for children. JRR Tolkien and Peter Beagle would like to have a little chat with her.
- Why did we see the castle lying on its side?
- The script was sloppy. For one thing, the first Elysian Kingdom incident wasn't about Mbenga's emotions, it was a lonely nebula befriending a lonely little girl. Also: “If I keep her away from my friends, she can protect them whether they realize it or not.” La’an here apparently means her dark side, but this sentence makes no sense; someone who is kept away can hardly be a protector.

Unanswered questions:
- Why is Una not at the mission briefing? Why did Pike go instead of her?
- Where did La'an beam to in the scene with the dog?
- What happened to Rauth, Pollux, and Neve after their capture on the E?
- How and when did Pike find out that the "planet" was actually a ship, and how is it possible that Spock couldn't tell?
- Is La'an's acceptance of her dark side really the best solution for her?

I don't even know how to rate this. It's not terrible, and it thinks it has a point, but there would have been so many other more interesting ways to make it.

Can't believe this show. I still tune in hoping to get my Star Trek fix and
most of the time I get rubbish, or whatever the stupidness of the week is. Can't believe they managed to create an episode that was worse than the puppet show...

Sure, the character progress of La'an is nice, but to get to that point is just... bad, hokey. If you want a character talking to him/herself there are much better ways to do that. Thinking Voyager's Faces here. Even Voyager was better than this.

I think the central problem is that they don't know what kind of story they want the actual "Elysian Kingdom" book to be. There are times in this episode where they act like this is a terribly-written book come to life (similar to "The Royale" from TNG). Then at other points we're asked to accept this fantasy story on its face.

I seem to recall M'Benga and his daughter legitimately enjoying the book in the prior episode. It's also weird to call out Benny Russell as a mediocre writer of fantasy when he was a good writer of science fiction in DS9, assuming this is supposed to be the same person. (Even that could have been played with: this was his one attempt at fantasy and he discovered he was bad at it, or something)

Back to the gimmicks for SNW and this one’s about as bad as it gets for me. The attempt here is to do a typical fantasy story but for what age group would it be appropriate? Certainly not for kids and not for adults either due to its inherent tongue-in-cheek ethos and broad stupidity. There’s nothing intelligent here in terms of a resolution for La’an’s inner monster — it’s so amateur what is concocted.

Of course, various classic Trek episodes come to mind like “Q-Pid” and maybe “The Royale” for playing out a story’s conclusion. There’s even a bit of “Mirror, Mirror” with the doppelgängers for Pike and Spock on board the Enterprise purely for some hijinks. Maybe some “The Enemy Within” for the 2 La’ans fighting…

But the episode didn’t even do its homework properly, totally lacked integrity. Like how fantasy Pike orders “evasive maneuvers”. They throw in a gratuitous kiss between Una and Ortegas (the fantasy versions of course). This was just so bad. It’s just hijinks for the sake of doing them.

And of course we got plenty of Pelia who was again super-annoying. But the good thing is it seems they’ve found a way to ditch her — make her stay on this stupid planet / space ship. And how the whole idiotic thing even existing is not even worth pondering. It's fantasy!

La’an resolving her arbitrary inner-monster as an ongoing issue this season was never going to be prove interesting or instructive — but it had to be done sometime. So here we go.

But now they’re re-starting the Kirk / La’an romance, which can’t exist at the time of TOS. This is not Trek — it’s some kind of romantasy.

0.5 stars for “Once La’an a Time” — and barely. This one has to be worse than S1’s “The Elysian Kingdom”, which was terrible in its own right. This one I bet was the result of a lack of ideas so they decided to provide a sequel to the S1 episode. I really can’t criticize the writers of this show sufficiently. That’s three 0.5 star episodes out of 9 so far this season for me. SNW’s getting to be like “Lower Decks” — just unwatchable.

@Atoz "Folks hoping that season 5 will be better because the producers were aware of the negative reaction to season 3 should probably take note that they just made a sequel to the least popular episode from season 1."

At this point, I'm not convinced they particularly care what the fans, critics, or the broader audience think. With the end in sight, it increasingly feels like they're making the episodes they themselves find fun to write and perform, rather than the episodes the audience actually wants to watch.

Unfortunately, what's enjoyable for the people making an episode doesn't automatically translate into something enjoyable for everyone else...or, for that matter, something that makes for a good episode.

This is a hell of a way to save money on costuming

I flatly refuse to watch this. I thought maybe it was a time travel gimmick or something, but the minute I saw those costumes in the episode "Now Loading" thumbnail, I was like

NOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPEgoing to Jammer's Reviews to read the comments, it'll be more fun than this

Yuck!!

Karl Zimmerman said:

...[they act OOC so, so much that can we even talk about "character" any longer?]

I think this is a valid concern. You see...I have always liked re-watching TOS, TNG and DS9 and even, if I'm feeling peckish, VOY.

I never finished watching Enterprise, Discovery, Picard S2 or even SNW, for [i]exactly this reason[/i]. These people do not know how to write characters, or develop them. They bring on old guest stars just to kill them off. They write warped, twisted plotlines that sound like the ravings of someone who needs rehab.

Get these Showrunners THE HELL OFF MY BRIDGE!!

By now there's been far more shitty episodes of Star Trek then passable ones. Such a disgrace!

Small correction - I remembered Benny had been credited as a 'real' writer of the original story used for the first episode.

I still hate that decision. Thanks.

@The God-Emperor of Earth "By now there's been far more shitty episodes of Star Trek then passable ones. Such a disgrace!"

Well, they were always there, just not appearing with the alarming frequency they do now. Before the streaming era, I thought of it as one big pile of average, a not-insignificant heap of rubbish, and a small but respectable stack of great.

One silver lining at the close of this era is that the total number of live-action episodes in the entire Kurtzman era will be fewer than in a single seven-season run from the old Berman era.

Bolian Bill said: "I think the central problem is that they don't know what kind of story they want the actual "Elysian Kingdom" book to be."

It's Rob Reiner's "The Princess Bride" (which also featured actress Carol Kane).

So the Swamp of Infinite Death here is the Fire Swamp from Reiner's film, Prince Dashing is the dashing Westley, Princess Thalia is Princess Buttercup, Prince Humperdinck is Sir Amand Rauth (Pike) etc etc.

The whole season is some kind of AI reverse engineered rip-off factory.

Episode 1: John Carter/Burroughs/Barsoom

Episode 2: Event Horizon/horror cliches

Episode 3: Hangover/Dude Where's My Car

Episode 4: Casablanca/noir

Episode 5: Angel/Community/Stargate/Whedon's classic puppet episodes

Episode 6: The Pitt/24/ Homicide's Subway episode

Episode 7: Days of Our Lives/ Young and the Restless/soap operas

Episode 8: Crimson Tide/Bedford Incident

Episode 9: The Princess Bride

I actually kind of liked this episode. My biggest complaint, aside from Pelia being on screen, was that it takes place in a season of diversions that range wildly in quality.

Taking the episode on its own it was enjoyable, which puts it in high regard compared to much of season 4. Chong delivers a good range here, and her character arc is among the best in the show. The writers actually managed to weave said character progression into the whimsy, which shows if they really try they can deliver something better than muppet mayhem or dude where's my shuttle. Alas, it may only be once in a blue moon, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Had this episode been the sole or maybe the second "silly" outing this season it would have been great.

@The Queen: "Pelia is gone!"

Wait, what now? I didn't hate her nearly like a lot of people did, but I'm just curious as to what happened. Back to her old boyfriend with the van? (I did watch enough of the ep to get to that part.)

@Midshipman Norris: "NOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPE"

I'm with you, although it took me a couple looks to realize this wasn't a repetition of "OPEN", lol.

Wanna read what TPTB say about their season 4 achievements?
https://www.tvline.com/2260824/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-4-genre-episodes-fan-criticism-interview/

They do not regret a thing!
And yes, I bet they keep patting each other's backs feeling absolutely satisfied with the bs they wrote.

In a season full of stinkers, this one sits at the bottom for me for one simple reason: there doesn't appear to be any reason within the context of the universe that this should be happening for the crew. I don't remember hearing any explanation, and I suppose they are trying to justify it with some things that were said back in the first season episode. The absolute absurdity of them flying along and encountering the planet/ship/whatever and meeting their dopplegangers is just too ridiculous.

At least with the puppet episode, it was a dream so that sort of made up for it. At least with the Hangover/Dude Where's My car one, they were going to a planet that made them act like idiots. With the Soap Opera one, they had Trelane causing trouble. This one could have saved some face if it could have happened on a holodeck or something, but hey they already mined that trope back in Season 3 with the Space Adventure Hour one. And it's pretty sad that I'm referring to these like they are on the show Friends.

I don't even know if it deserves any points for La'an working through her issues. I'm glad she's in a better place at the end of the episode, but it doesn't feel earned to me. I just feel they could have done something else that would have been relevant to their mission and been more like a Star Trek episode. Gee, that's a funny thought. At this point, if they do an actual Star Trek episode, that it's the special one, instead of all the dreck they have thrown at us this season.

I'm thinking zero to 1/2 star for this. It's pretty sad when I think the Hangover one might be slightly better.

I didn't want to read the description before watching, so that I could go in cold, but then I saw the thumbnail. UGH.

The flat ship in space would have been a great 'strange new world' to explore. Alas we get gobbildy gook.

This season is why people don't renew their subscriptions. I hope all the actors go on to great things after this because they deserve it.

For me, looking at the four comedies, it's like this:

Soap Opera: Ran out of ideas in like the first ten minutes, then there was a lot of interminable cringe/boredom. But Pike got a few great scenes at the very end. Wish they were somewhere better.

Puppets: This episode didn't make me want to turn off my phone. It wasn't funny, but nothing in it was cringe comedy. That said, Spock's emotional arc pretty much mirrored that of the horror episode, and since it was all a dream, it didn't really accomplish anything.

This one: First it's nonsensical, then it's boring. Where La'an ends up is fine, but it's entirely unsurprising, given where the arc was going.

Dude, Where's my Shuttlecraft?: Wince-inducingly stupid. No plot, but eventually we get a few decent scenes of Scotty and Ortegas bonding. Not sure I'd call it an "arc" though, since they only started fighting two episodes prior.

This one is a "turn it on and start to skip as soon as it starts sucking too bad" episode. I made it as far as Carol Kane talking about her ex-boyfriend's van and started clicking.

That's pretty much the level of quality of all SNW, imo. The only difference between episodes is the length of time it takes me to realize that I'd rather be doing something else.

The episode commits the worst crime of any gimmick episode: being entirely unremarkable and utterly redundant.

I’m not even appalled or annoyed by this episode, it’s simply pointless. A futile exercise in doing a sequel for an unremarkable episode from several seasons ago. The question has to be - why? At least the other gimmick episodes has a novelty factor, but this one? A retread of a story that wasn’t particularly good to begin with. I’m surprised this even got out the writers room.

Good science fiction thrives on ideas. When you run out of them, what’s left is simply an empty husk. A lifeless shell of costumes, set dressing and props. That’s what this episode is. Hollow, empty and devoid of meaning.

@John witte, I completely agree that what really sinks this episode for me is the lack of any attempt to ground it in the characters' reality.

The cast is talented and there are some funny moments. Anson Mount's physical comedy is really good. Christina Chong's range is impressive.

I enjoy fantasy as a genre. The thing is, Star Trek isn't fantasy and these characters don't live in a fantasy universe. For the characters, magic does not exist, the laws of physics are inviolate, and they play important roles as scientists and diplomats and protectors of a vast federation.

Instead they show up to a magic planet which defies the laws of physics with identical dopplegangers, people can turn into dragons and fly through space (by flapping wings!), and werewolves exist. They do basically no investigation but they conclude this was all created by some powerful consciousness that for some reason is deeply invested in La'an's emotional journey. Once La'an gets some therapy, off they fly (to meet up with the Stargazer so she can have a date with Kirk?)

These characters have no interest in trying to communicate with whatever created the fantasy world, no interest in communication with their dopplegangers, make no attempt to understand how it is done. Spock doesn't even find the discworld ship "fascinating."

Star Trek has always had completely bonkers things happen - giant space hands, Abraham Lincoln, "de-evolution," Q, horny candle ghosts, game-obsessed jumanji-ists. But the characters approached them with a scientific and reality-based mindset. That's not actually a hand, it is energy, the being is not a god, there must a power source somewhere, let's make contact with these beings, we need to understand what they want, let's scan Abraham Lincoln and see if he reads as human, can we try negotiating, I'm going to search their ship... These SNW characters don't even take a single tricorder scan!

That TVLine article says it all - they are making this for them, and if we don't like it, that's on us.

I will say that at this point, I consider most of NuTrek, outside of Lower Decks and Picard S3 to be general failures. I was so excited for SNW, but the last two seasons have squandered that goodwill, for me at least. I want my Trek to generally be smart competent people solving problems, and this just isn't it. If I am in the minority, then so be it, but I hope the general feedback and ratings convince TPTB to change tack for the future. I don't think the current showrunners have been good stewards of the franchise, and I think it's time to give new people a chance.

This is why I’m relieved Star Trek Legacy isn’t being made. I like Jeri Ryan and like the idea of Seven being the captain of the Enterprise. But if Strange New Worlds is an indication of what happens when you give in to fan demands, Legacy would have one good season and then go downhill. I have tried to be hopeful with this show. Now I’m relieved it only has one season left. The writers strike was about humans being replaced by AI. But if this is what humans are putting out, bring on the AI. I genuinely feel sorry for the actors. Nobody’s phoning it in and they all seem to be enjoying their roles. But they deserve better than this.

There were quite a few contenders this season but I think we found it: the worst episode of season 4. Some fantasy mumbo jumbo with connection to a season 2 episode I remember almost nothing about except that it was one of the weaker ones of that season.

The series once again goes the gimmick/reference route, with a lame take on The Princess Bride vibe, including the participation of Carol Kane and her mentioning of "Max the miracle worker". The series completely ditches all manner of science fiction and goes full fantasy and magic, with spellcasters and a dragon (!) in space. Crew people acting like idiots, and idiotic NPC's we should care about for some reason. And all of this so that La'An can find herself or something and continue her romance with Kirk, who pops in for another visit towards the end. Doesn't he have his own ship?

It needs to be said that captain Pike is such a weak captain that when he behaves like an idiot nobody even bats an eye. Ortegas looks at Doppelganger Spock's long hair and it doesn't seem odd to her. Everybody going about their business. The writing is shoddy, with strange and out-of-place narration by La'An and the rest just bad sitcom writing. Compared to this the puppet episode was a masterwork. I found almost no redeeming values in this episode and was mostly bored to tears.

Jammer, that was a very fair review.

SlackerInc, Pelia is staying with the planet/ship because of the chef, Max. Right.

It's a shame when you have a single season with 4 candidates for Worst Show of the Series or Maybe All Time, and the only argument is which one it should be.

I rewatched the season 1 episode (which I put in my "borderline" category), and it was far better than this. In that one, the fantasy arose directly from one of the characters and addressed what was essentially a life-or-death situation for her. The script and directing were also better, with less exposition, and the crew spent most of their time trying to understand what was happening rather than just larking around. They did the classic Trek behavior of communicating with the entity and negotiating with it for a reasonable outcome.

NONE of that happened in this episode. La'an said right at the beginning that she never wanted to be a princess. It didn't even have an actual plot, and the entire crew's acceptance of "I guess it's just magic" really blew my mind. I wouldn't say the acting elevated this as much as it was the only thing keeping it from sinking into the netherworld.

Are there any details about the season 5 episodes yet?

@The Queen "Are there any details about the season 5 episodes yet?"

I read somewhere - blowed if I can remember where or find a link - that there are two regular episodes (the "big swing" / gimmick-type) and four to wrap it up.

According to Wikipedia, the finale is written and directed by ... Akiva Goldsman.

Have fun with that.

All of Goldsman's scripts so far have been quite good, although I wasn't as fond of Valles Marineris as most people. But he wrote and directed the stellar premiere (of the whole series), so I think he can do a good job if he wants to. We shall see, eh?

All the crap SNW is putting out now will be a blip. Thankfully. For anyone interested in the numbers...

1966-1969 Era --> 80 episodes --> 9.2%
1987-2005 Era --> 624 episodes --> 72.1%
2017-2027 Era --> 161 episodes --> 18.6%

This is for live-action ONLY and taking into account once SNW and SFA air the rest of their episodes.

Seven of nine.

Seven of nine episodes so far have been gimmicky genre episodes.

Apparently all those episodes of “Star Trek” that dealt with science fiction, morality, and storytelling weren’t something that the producers and writers wanted to do.

So we get soap operas, Muppets, disaster movies, fairy tales, horror, and more. “Big swings.”

Seven of nine. Sad.

@Jammer: "Raise of hands: Who was clamoring for a follow-up to "Elysian"? Yeah, me neither."

(Tim C raises hand; looks guiltily around the room at the sea of crossed arms and angry faces; slowly slides down in chair trying to hide in shame)

@The Queen
"I rewatched the season 1 episode (which I put in my "borderline" category), and it was far better than this."

Thanks for rewatching that episode. I toyed with this idea, but since I disliked this episode and because their memories were erased from the earlier episode (meaning it was all kind-of meaningless for everyone except M'benga) ,I had little incentive. I remember it as one of the weaker episodes of season 1 (not season 2 as I erroneously wrote in my previous post) but certainly not as boring as this. Actually I was never bored by SNW, that's why I keep watching. But this season. already three episodes made me want to hit the fast forward button (this, the Casablanca episode and the soap opera episode). That is not good.

I find it funny how fast they all except that they were all in this story before but don't remember anything. "Well, another day in the office". And I don't mean intentionally funny.

Anyway, I thought Jammer was kind to this episode. Certainly kinder than me. I agree with the assessment that the core idea is good and worthwhile - exploring La'An inner conflict and inner duality in an alien fantasy setting - but the execution, oh, the execution... watch the mirror scene in The NeverEnding Story. In 5 minutes it does a better job of addressing duality than this entire episode.

Other thoughts:
- Pelia was especially annoying in this episode. I really hope we got rid of her for good. Nothing against Carol Kane, she's great in other roles (watch her in the Netflix show "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt", she's hilarious). It's how this particular character is written and how the actress is directed.

- Can someone explain to me why Pike decided they now all have to dress up and pretend to be their counterparts? I didn't get it. (the soldiers recognize La'an as the princess without any dress on). When kirk and co. landed on an alien planet they didn't dress-up unless the mission necessitated blending in with the local population. Here it does not. There is no population, just a few NPC's (to adopt D&D parlance). Oh, I know, it's that the actors can play dress-up and have fun. Basically cosplay.

Jammer mentioned the Dungeons & Dragons movie with chris Pine. Highly recommended. It's infinitely better than this and about 10 times funnier.

@The Queen

Admittedly, I wouldn't know re: Goldsman's more recent output; I tapped out some time ago. I do know his reputation and hand in the direction of the series.

I couldn't find the link corroborating the final season structure either, sorry. So, take with a pinch of salt.

@ Lynos - Do you have to know anything about Dungeons and Dragons to appreciate the D&D movie? I've never played it, never looked into it at all.

Not really, no. It has references for people who know the game but it's not essential. It basically plays like a fantasy comedy, it has the tropes of D&D and it's set in the world of Forgotten Realms (so names of places etc.) but that's about it. I think it was designed for the general population and just for people who play the game. It's not based on any pre-written adventure, it's an original screenplay.

The notion that Benny Russell had anything to do with this dreck offends me beyond measure.

Just from the title, I was saying, "No no no no," and didn't really stop.

So in a meta-heavy episode about writing, we misuse "Begging the question" twice?

Wait, writing and stories are going to be the key here? That would make for the least-deserved self-congratulation since the finale of Game of Thrones.

“There’s just no subtext here at all, is there?” Noooo kidding.

Ok Miracle Max/Carol Kane reference was appreciated, though not sure if it needed to happen twice.

I have to say that I'm just SO DISAPPOINTED in this Season that I have no words. Considering the excellent cast, upgraded tech sets enhanced by the VR Wall, and the movie-quality SFX; all of the ingredients are there for a FANTASTIC Star Trek series. And then they blow it all with these writers deciding not to take any of it seriously.

During this 60th Anniversary year I've been doing a TOS rewatch of some of my favorite eps. The noticeable huge difference was the large number of actual, published, science fiction authors of the day that contributed to many of the scripts. You would think that one of the hundred or so Producers of SNW would have noticed that.

Just an absolute stink bomb of an episode for me. A sequel to the Elysian Kingdom as a way to work out La’an inner conflict, inner turmoil? You’ve got to be kidding me. Nice they wanted to work on some long overdue character development, which they’ve largely abandoned this year, but one would think they’ve got endless possibilities out that could make a deeper, more meaningful story & impression than this. The actors, as usual, are first class but this is just weak, weak material.

The two doppelgängers on board the Enterprise, Pike & Spock, were brought in for comedy relief one would assume. This obsession with the silly & frivolous. The lightweight that leaves no impact. I hear yet another comedy episode awaits us in Season 5. Please this can’t be happening. Also I noticed at the very end of the episode Kirk makes yet another appearance away from the Farragut. Does he spend any time there? Does he not want to spend any free time he may with his new born son, with Carol Marcus?

I’m with the @The Queen as I remember the original The Elysian Kingdom being much better written. First it wasn’t about M’Benga emotions. It was about his lonely, frightened young daughter who he was trying to preserve from some sort of incurable disease. From memory, it was my understanding his daughter would live on through this entity. Where is she? Why is nobody speaking about her? Why isn’t M’Benga asking about his daughter!? Perhaps I’m confused. Make no mistake I wasn’t a fan of the original episode. It was one of the lowlights of Season 1 for me. Just feel it had more depth (at the end) and had structure in its writing that’s missing here.

Good news? The highlight of the episode for me was that Pelia seems to be gone. Like gone for good. Kind of strange way to leave. They just announced she was staying behind to study the engineering & pilot the alien starship home. Running away with the cook. I suppose that was meant to be funny.

I don't know what I'm watching. Nothing made sense. Incomprehensible story.

I have found out, I think, online what was happening, why those season 1 characters returned, but even then it was a bizarre overly complicated concept, with no proper explanation in the episode.

and...

-Where did La'An beam to at the end?

-She's got a dog now?

-So she's resolved all her issues in one away mission? How? By having a sword fight and just.. magic and stuff?

-Random story beats about her dad and some necklace?

-No B plot into what the Enterprise was doing to check in on the away team who had gone missing. Just... casually fighting a dragon! Like what?

-No Scotty (like Geordi and Data) finding a control panel behind a rock or something to uncover a hidden control room to ground it in reality?

As a kid, I used to rush home from the the video store with the latest episodes of DS9 and Voyager excited to watch them. This week is the first week I just couldn't bring myself to watch Star Trek on the day of release. I knew I'd be disappointed and frustrated and couldn't bring myself.

And I was right to feel that way... It was a bad episode with bad writing in a bad season of what is now a bad show. Even if the next 7 episodes are a return to form, it's too late.

Trek must be some kind of fucked up group therapy. It's the only thing that explains the cognitive dissonance here and elsewhere. Except on TrekBBS, you get threatened/cancelled if you deign to disagree with the resident artistic fascists. Kinda fun to watch...

@Mike A - " it was my understanding his daughter would live on through this entity. Where is she? Why is nobody speaking about her? Why isn’t M’Benga asking about his daughter!?"

Remember, in that episode his daughter showed back up immediately as a grown woman to tell him how perfectly everything had worked out for her. She'd been everywhere and seen everything. Kind of a Traveler vibe. So in this one, I just assumed she was out saving the universe with Wesley Crusher.

@Paul - "Where did La'An beam to at the end?" Good question!

"-She's got a dog now?" The dog was the princess's dog in the original episode. Since it's now with La'an herself, I guess it's a fantastic dog.

"-So she's resolved all her issues in one away mission? How? By having a sword fight and just.. magic and stuff? -Random story beats about her dad and some necklace?" You just want everything, don't you? (But yeah, that stood out for me, too. When she first mentioned the necklace I was sure she was making it up and it would be a metaphor for something. But . . . . sigh. . . no metaphors for us.)

"-No Scotty (like Geordi and Data) finding a control panel behind a rock or something to uncover a hidden control room to ground it in reality?" Those were the good old days, weren't they?

The level of quality of the writing in NuTrek is simply inexcusable. I've been watching TOS recently, and while perusing Memory Alpha I found out that these 4 amateur writers sold scripts to the show.

Jean Lisette Aroeste only two published scripts were "All Our Yesterdays" and "Is There In Truth No Beauty?".

David Gerold, of course, wrote "The Trouble with Tribbles."

Joyce Muskat's only tv sale was "The Empath."

Judy Burns' first sell was "The Tholian Web."



Point being that four amateurs produced better scripts than anything the highly paid (I assume) modern Trek writers are delivering.

I won't even get into the great episodes of TNG that were based on spec scripts.

This is quite literally the worst season of Star Trek in the entire franchise. It's not even a close call. Even Enterprise wasn't this bad. And that was bottom of the barrel for most of its run. NOT ANY MORE! The new bottom of the barrel is giving Satan a lap dance. You know it's bad when bootleg, discount, Temu Trek, like "The Ark" is running rings around your season.

A bunch of people seem to be confused about this, so:

The end of this episode is a handful of moments picked out from the next few weeks/months after leaving the Elysian planet. It's just scenes from La'an's life as to what is her "normal" now. Where was she beaming? Off someplace to do her duties as the Enterprise's security chief. To some planet or space station that we don't see. Something routine, because that's what life is like for her as a Starfleet officer. The point of the scene is that she now has a dog to come home to. Something she needs to care for and that cares for her. A personal tie. It's showing us that for her, things now aren't as they were before.

None of the scenes at the end of the episode are things that happen "immediately" after the events at the Elysian kingdom, and that includes her date with Kirk.

I tried. I bailed. Again. This is unwatchable.

Honestly, I think any season of "Discovery" is better than SNW Season 4. I agree with someone above. This is the single worst season of any Star Trek.

It's a damn shame. Season 1 of SNW was really good. The season feels like a deliberate f**k you to the fans.

@ Quincy

Let's not resort to hyperbole. Picard season 2 is the bottom of the franchise and this season of SNW isn't even in credible competition with its level of awful. I would also rank Discovery season 5 so far below this that whatever the quality of episode 10 turns out to be, it will not be able to close that gap.

I would also rather watch this season of SNW than the first two (three?) seasons of Enterprise again, but I won't argue with anyone who feels differently.

Hell I'd rather watch it again than seasons 4 & 5 of Discovery too, but again, won't argue with anyone who feels differently.

So at worst it's the third worst.

Err the above should be "Hell I'd rather watch it again than seasons 3 & 4 of Discovery too, but again, won't argue with anyone who feels differently."

SNW S4 is definitely shaping up to be the worst season of live action Trek in the entire franchise -- no question in my mind about it. What we've been served up thus far is worse than PIC S2 and any season of DSC. It has truly been a shocker of a season, where I legitimately have to ask myself if the writers / produces are giving all us Trek fans a big middle finger. I can't say that about any other season of Trek. These writers suck at their jobs and they don't care if viewers feel that way.

@Jeffrey's Tube

When you need to have someone explain to you what was the
"beam off - beam on" scene with La'an, then there is something wrong with writing or directing or editing or all of them together.
I really think Picard's 2nd season was much better than this one. And I did not like Picard's 2nd season, although the first two episodes were really good.
At least, despite the very mediocre writing, Picard's 2nd season wasn't something like "lets have fun mocking ST through random genres that we copy in the most uninspired ways".
SNW people think it is funny for fake-Spock trying to say "fascinating".

In the TV line article, they say about their 4th season: "there is method in our madness". And then I realized they do believe we deserve the sh1t they serve us as Star Trek.

No modern live action Trek show has had a season as good as Enterprise's first two. I'm not saying that those seasons are good, they aren't, but at least half of their episodes were made with basic storytelling competence.

SNW has been poorly written from the start. Virtually every single episode has major flaws. Plotting issues, pacing issues, implausible characterisation, lack of originality, poor (and excessive) attempts at comedy, an over reliance on gimmicks and homages - these are long-term problems that have existed since day one.

I gave up on Discovery after two seasons, and while I watched all three seasons of Picard, I will always regret doing so.



Yes there are terrible episodes in the first two seasons of Enterprise, but at the very least they could produce "basic" Trek fare like "Civilization" and "Fallen Hero." And, at its best, they were doing things like "First Flight*" and "Breaking the Ice" which had good character work, and episodes like "Minefield" which had an original sci-fi concept. Not to mention the work the show did with the Andorians in episodes like "The Andorian Incident" and "Shadows of P'Jem." Again, I'm not saying they did mindblowing things with these episodes, but they did a hell of a lot better than what we've gotten from NuTrek. Has SNW, Picard, or Discovery done anything really new and interesting with an established Trek race? The Gorn? The Klingons? The Q? The Founders? The Borg? How do you manage to fuck up that many times?


*Yeah, I know that this episode takes inspiration from "The Right Stuff." Enterprise had a big problem with "homages" too. The difference being that Berman had been doing Trek for 20 seasons and had run out of ideas while the modern Trek writers never had any new ideas to begin with. That's still not an excuse for the crap Berman and Braga produced. The problem isn't with doing an homage - the problem is doing bad homages and doing them frequently.

Just an added note on Pelia leaving. It seemed to me it was done in a strange way. Perhaps the poor writing? They just announced it in such a matter of fact unemotional type manner that it almost led me to believe the crew of the Enterprise was almost as relieved, as most of us are, that she was leaving .

So the sequel no one wanted... I am in the inority in that I didn't hate The Elyssian Kingdom: it's not the first time on Trek that the computer (or something) projected alternate identities onto the main cast ot brought fictional characters to life; and I thought Mbenga storing his terminally ill daughter in the transporter buffer had some great sci fi potential and also some very Star Trek ideas and possibilities.

But this? How did the storybook characters get on the planet and where did the planet come from and how did the planet know how to make the characters look like the crew of the Enterprise? I wondered but then I didn't care enough to go back and rewatch the prevously on segment or the begining when I guess Mbenga enxplained it? I quickly lost interest in the pacing and asked myself what is the point of this? What are we doing here? How is this helping Laan? What are the issues she id dealing with again? I can't remember. I know she has been complainign abotu "darkness inside of me" or someting like that and she feels guilty for stabbing Kirk and wondfers why hwer hand doesn't hurt after the punched the velocraptor. Other than that, I don't knoiw what issues she is addressing or why we should care. None of it is clear from watchig this tedious episode. And I just stopped caring about this episode and was trying to get through it. I almost turned it off when the dragon attacked but I figured I came this far.

Speaking of Kirk he must be buring up all his leave time. Did he take yet another shuttle over from the Faragut to have a date with Laan? Is the Faragut always inthe same part of the galaxy as the Enterprise? Does he spend any time on the Faragut? More contrived BS to get Kirk on the Enterprise.

And when storybook Pike and Spock are acting weird and partying with the crew in 10 Forward or whatever they call the Enterprise's way too big and glamorous bar, the crew should have caught on that these were impostors right away.

I've just resolved myself to the fact that like all of nu Trek except Lower Decks, this just isn't canon, or maybe it's in another timeline; that way it doesn't foul up Star Trek's 60 year legacy.

The one redeeming part of this episode is that it looks like Pelia is finally off the ship. Hopefully.

So were the dopplegangers on the fantasy planet real beings? Or were they holograms or something like that? And is Laan's dog "real"? Or a facsimile fromt he planet? Was the dog a doppleganger for a real dog somewhere else? I don't know, I've been obsessing about the dog the last couple of days.

I was kind of wondering about the dog poop. Do they have an instant scoop so once it’s dropped it’s instantly picked up or evaporated? What about the smell? Do they have some sort of instant sanitizer & air freshener that eliminates the smell so La’an cabin doesn’t start smelling like dog?

You know, I think we all get it wrong.
SNW is a live action homage to Lower Decks but with abysmal writing.

I haven't watched this show, I had to tap out after Discovery and Picard. Just atrocious. But I saw an ad online for SNW, just a little sidebar-type ad on a website, and it was spotlights for the various characters, sort of baseball-card style. I can't recall what most of them said, stuff like "The type-A overachiever" and "Smart but sassy", that kind of thing. Twee, overly-exuberant, very lame, trying to paint the characters like they are in a Marvel movie. Par for the course for NuTrek. But I remember what they wrote for Spock. Spock is "THE SCIENCE NERD". Cool. Great. Apparently this is how we are advertising Star Trek and its characters to the broader public nowadays. This is how the people making Trek are thinking about Spock in 2026. He's the science nerd! Neeeeeeeerd!

This sort of ad is meant to entice stupid people. I'm sorry but there's no way around it. Hollowing out the series for the sake of pursuing a mass appeal that they will never, ever attain. It's just gross.

@ Sensors: I'm afraid you are right. In this age of social media lowest comon denominator mass marketing that's where we are now. But I think TV has always gone for the lowest common denominator. I don't think that is a new problem in 2026. So have attetnion spans gotten shorter? Or is it just that the writers don't understand the cahracters and franchise they are writing for?

TOS/TNG/DS9 may have just been anomalies.

TOS and Twilight Zone rode a certain early-1960s wave of intellectualism.

And TNG didn't fear mid-season ratings cancellations, as it secured multi-year syndication deals upfront, so faced low interference from studio suits during production.

DS9 was the same. We know that executives rarely sent notes or interfered with its production, and that the studio was more preoccupied with the TNG films and Voyager (Behr was largely left alone, so long as each season came in on budget).

Combine this with showrunners who understood the Trek legacy, and tried to respect it and carry it on, and you had shows that didn't quite fully succum to various commercial and mainstream forces.

I would say audiences are smarter than they were in the TNG/DS9 era, but that Trek content is now stupider. There are probably lots of reasons for this, but I feel most of the blame is due to mega-hack Alex Kurtzman.

@TheRealTrent

"I would say audiences are smarter than they were in the TNG/DS9 era"

Really? I do not look at the world today and think people (including audiences) are smarter now. More tech savvy but that in itself is meaningless as I'm sure if smartphones etc had existed in eg 1975 (and thankfully they didn't so I could live my childhood in peace) people would have learnt to use it all. If I've misunderstood you and you meant sophisticated I don't think that's the case either.

Agreed. Foolish cultures often inflate their sense of worth. That they don't know any better is a primary hazard to productive dialogue.

I read once that In the 1960s and 70s there were vastly more popular car colors. And this variety created a feed-back loop, in which people who might feel socially pressured to avoid certain colors, felt empowered to do the opposite.

Manufacturers, however, realized that certain colors outsold others. So to increase profits, they stocked only the most popular colors, which over time exerted social pressure on all other consumers. The end result was that cars became less colorful, and a kind of landscape of fewer colors (80 percent of cars are now greyscale) became the norm.

But that doesn't mean people wouldn't like more colors, or can't tolerate these colors, just that they've been pressured toward the lowest common denominator by economic pressures which in turn shaped social pressures.

I feel a similar thing happened to Trek. Whatever demographic consumed past Trek still exists, and I think this demographic would like, not only highbrow trek, but Trek that is much more intellectual/sophisticated than Classic Trek.

But they can't get this, because they've been lumped in with other demographics, which in turn necessitates Trek pandering to everybody's simplest instincts.

Also, even if most people are dumb, the amount of people in STEM jobs, or with higher degrees, is huge. That's over a hundred million in the US alone. Even if only a quarter of that is the personality type receptive to science fiction, that's a massive potential audience. And while I wouldn't call films like "Intestellar" or "Project Hail Mary" 'intellectual', they do show that nerdy science stuff can still capture massive market shares by doing old-fashioned nerdy science stuff (the last season of Black Mirror just raked in 188.4 million viewing hours on Netflix).

So I would say the average smart person today is smarter than the average smart person of yesteryear. I would say this demographic is huge thanks to population increases.

Whether culture itself is getting dumber is probably impossible to gauge, but part of me doubt it is (isn't mainstream culture always dumb?). The Trump era gets touted as a special age of stupidity, for example, but you can find strong analogues in almost every other era.

TheRealTrent said "audiences," not "people." A subtle distinction, but I think he's saying that SNW rankles TV watchers post-The Sopranos/The Wire/Mad Men/Breaking Bad etc. The bar for what TV shows can accomplish, for those who expect greatness is achievable, is high. Not every audience member will be thus.

I go back and forth on it. In some ways, at peak, The Twilight Zone is as demanding of audiences as Mad Men. (I love them both.)

@William B

That's what makes Kurtzman-Trek so frustrating for me - Star Trek could be as strong a television series as anything else made in the 21st century, with deep characters and smart, challenging plots. Instead, Paramount's been content to make CW-esque shows that have mostly refused to be anything more than that.

No William B, SNW rankles viewers because it's dreck. The Twilight Zone is one of the all-time greats. It's really that simple.

TheRealTrent,

"So I would say the average smart person today is smarter than the average smart person of yesteryear. I would say this demographic is huge thanks to population increases."

Ensign Flynn called. He'd like a word with you. Something about conflating intrinsic intelligence with learned, test-taking behavior. He also blames agrarianism for insipidity. Seems peregrinations foster smarts.

For my part, it feels to me like they have completely abandoned caring about what the viewers think of the shows they make, since they can just lie about viewership and pretend that "Everything's Fine."

Laboring under the illusion that the MoneyMen give a crap what anyone wants is kind of tiresome, to me. It does not appear to be the case.

@TheRealTrent

"I would say audiences are smarter than they were in the TNG/DS9 era"

You have a typo there, or you let AI write that for you. Obviously you meant to say that audiences in the TNG/DS9 era were smarter than those today. Artymiss tries to cover up your offense by saying "more tech savvy," but that's no better, because who was it who invented all the tech we have now? Audiences (people) of that time were completely on top of their own technology and busy thinking up new stuff. Just like people of any time, in fact. This kind of remark just shows ignorance.

@The Real Trent: "So I would say the average smart person today is smarter than the average smart person of yesteryear."

Amazing, you won't quit. You're just wrong, buddy. I even question where you came up with your 100 million STEM jobs, since the National Science Foundation gives a figure of 37-something million.

I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make any more. All of us here agree that recent Trek shows have been disappointing at best. So if people are smarter now, how does that even fit in? Just let it go.

In response to Jammer being confused on whether Chong's fake crying was good or bad: Just remember that La'an cried at the end of s02e03, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow", where she laments the lost friendship of an alternate James Kirk. If you were emotional like I was when watching that ending scene, then you'll agree that Chong's hilariously fake cry in this episode is a job well done 😁

https://sffgazette.com/sci_fi/star-trek/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-wont-abandon-its-genre-bending-episodes-despite-fan-criticism-a11502

From the above article,

"I get it, and we love those, too," Goldsman told TVLine, referring to more traditional sci-fi episodes. "But that's not our show."

As Goldsman sees it, the show's genre-hopping is baked into its identity.

"It's in the title," he said. "Our worlds are genres."

This is the explanation that they are giving for why the show is the way it is.

Now that's an honest fellow right there.

"It's in the title"? What is he talking about? It's Strange New Worlds, not Strange New Genres. Smug *and* stupid is an intolerable combination.

That article links to another one: "New Star Trek Movie Is Training Day Meets Crimson Tide".

https://sffgazette.com/sci_fi/star-trek/new-star-trek-movie-is-training-day-meets-crimson-tide-a11459

Some choice quotes:

“We’re less focused on, like, what continuity we’re in, which timeline,” Goldstein explained. “It’s more about how do we bring this franchise to audiences that don’t necessarily consider themselves Trekkies? What can we do that hasn’t been done before?”
...
“Our approach is to really look at it from a question of, what is this institution of Starfleet that’s at the heart of ‘Star Trek’?” he continued. “And what would happen if all is not well in that institution? The movie that we talk about as the comp is ‘Training Day.’”

End quotes. The article goes on to call this a "bold departure from traditional Trek." Indeed, what is this "Star Fleet" thing anyway, has anyone ever established that? Hey guys, what if Starfleet was bad actually? Wow! How bold! How brilliant these writers are to explore such a concept, territory that no Trek show has ever dared to tread!

The people making this crap are screaming it from the rooftops of every media outlet: they are not making Trek for people who like Trek. In fact, if you like the older shows for their writing and general ethos, you are seen as a problem. You are standing in the way of mass mainstream appeal. You are standing in the way of being the next Marvel or Star Wars or Game of Thrones. You are not wanted. Star Trek is not wanted. They don't want to write it. They don't like it. To Paramount and Kurtzman and Goldstein Star Trek is just a brand, something someone else made, a known IP with a cultural cache, something they can mold and leverage into whatever shape they want for the sake of mass appeal and profits, regardless of if the product is recognizable afterwards. The contempt they have for their own audience is truly stunning.

Merry Man said: "Ensign Flynn called. He'd like a word with you. Something about conflating intrinsic intelligence with learned, test-taking behavior."

This is all irrelevant to anything said by me. For example, even if IQs are dropping as per the Flynn Effect, the population size increases, so the aggregate population of smart people increases. And we know that both IQ tests and "educational tests" under-represent certain forms of intelligence and competence (and that the intelligence in certain domains is going up).

The Queen said: "Obviously you meant to say that audiences in the TNG/DS9 era were smarter than those today. "

I feel a modern TV watcher is less out of their depth when watching a TV show from 1987 ("Murder She Wrote", "Family Ties", "The Cosby Show"), than an average 1987 audience member is when watching a contemporary TV show. For example, your granny would not understand "30 Rock", "Community", "South Park" or "Black Mirror", whereas her grandson would have no trouble with "Twilight Zone", "Flintstones" or "Family Ties".

So I think the average audiences has become smarter and quicker in certain respects. I believe contemporary smart people can handle Trek smarter than 1987 Trek. And I believe this audience pool is bigger than people suppose (and bigger than the nerd/geek/SF audience pool in 1987).

The Queen said: "You're just wrong, buddy. I even question where you came up with your 100 million STEM jobs, since the National Science Foundation gives a figure of 37-something million."

You are misquoting what I said. I said "higher education or STEM jobs", which, as I said, is over 100 million.

The Queen said: "I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make any more. "

The point was that even if most people are morons, there is a big enough audience of non morons to justify non-moron-Trek.

You said,

"So I would say the average smart person today is smarter than the average smart person of yesteryear. I would say this demographic is huge thanks to population increases."

This makes no sense. You are claiming the AVERAGE smart person today is smarter than in the past. This has nothing to do with aggregate numbers. It has to do with a shift in the bell curve itself, which Flynn says is attributable to non-intrinsic factors. I.e. not pure smarts. Also, he argued for net increases in measurable IQ not decreases. Did you even read his work or crib off some hallucinating AI?

As for total number of smart people, who gives a fuck. The total number of dumb people has also increased. Why? Because the total population has increased.

You need to think before you type.

@TheRealTrent - Well, I am your granny, and the shows you mentioned don't seem out of my depth to me. Where are you getting these ideas? It seems to be more a matter of taste. I find Tina Fey obvious and strident, and self-referential humor lazy and childish. These are just personal opinions; you don't have to justify yours to me nor I mine to you. I haven't heard of Black Mirror. Its Wikipedia article sounds interesting ,and I'll look for it.

One thing you're forgetting is the decline of the networks. Before cable, TV shows had to be aimed at the largest possible audience in order to succeed, and a lot of interesting ones fell by the wayside. I still miss Earth 2 and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., to name a couple. Really the whole industry is nothing like it was before except for scraps here and there like Survivor and Jeopardy.

And since when is graduating from college proof of unusual intelligence? It's more of a class thing these days.

I am beginning to understand, for myself, why I am having such a difficult time with the episodes and why I have not been able to watch a number of them from beginning to end. The attitude espoused by Akiva Goldsman seeps into the writing process. It puts distance between the person watching the show and the person writing the show. I don't feel any connection to these characters. In fact, I don't feel that I know them, nor am I invested to get to know them more. They feel like props, puppets, not as characters. They are disposable. I watch an episode, and I don't imagine what happens to them after their adventures. I used to do this with the older shows, imagining the life of the characters beyond what I had seen; I know from what I have heard and read that many fans were like me, creating stories going beyond the episodes and films. It's disappointing that the franchise has taken the direction it has taken.

Goldsman's take is a flat out lie. The first season and most of the second are centered on actual journeys to alien worlds and landscapes. Not genre bending tripe. They chose midstream to pivot in the direction of gimmick television, abandoning the ORIGINAL premise. And it failed badly. But rather than own up to this, he digs the hole deeper. And why? Because he's a piece of shit.

TOS and DS9 were anomalies. They weren't just trying to appeal to the casual audiences of the time. They were actually pushing boundaries. They were challenging viewers. They were ahead of their time. And that is why they are still so good today.

I could write an essay on how each of these series, in their own ways, pushed boundaries.

TNG was also a great show of course. But in terms of how it challenged modern conventions I see it as more a bridge. It continued the ideas and philosophies of the original series but updated it for the 80s/90s while also opening the doors for DS9 to pursue heavier serialization and to look at the darker aspects of human nature.

We can see the evolution of storytelling from episodic to serialized over these 3 shows while they still kept the through line of tackling difficult moral and philosophical issues.

Voyager was a step back in the sense that it purposely went back to safer, TNG style storytelling. There were still plenty of great episodes and it still tackled some interesting sci-fi ideas and moral quandaries. But in terms of storytelling and characters it did often feel like TNG-lite. It was a very competent show and compared to the shit nowadays it seems like a masterpiece of storytelling.

Enterprise was a couple more steps back in my opinion. They were clearly out of new ideas by this point. Even worse characters than Voyager and lots of lazy writing. They tried to salvage things in season 4 and actually lean into the idea of being a prequel but by then it was a bit too late. And it has only gotten worse since then. The new movies were just 'shut your brain off and enjoy some popcorn'.

I don't know what is wrong with Kurtzman era Trek. They make attempts at tackling heavier issues. Sometimes they get it right. But the quality of writing is just not there. Every character just feels neurotic and incompetent. They don't feel like professionals anymore. Stuff like 2004 Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse blow nu-Trek out of the water.

The gimmicks are not interesting. The comedy is not funny. The CGI and actions scenes feel like soulless AI slop. The continuity is a mess. SNW and Discovery must be an alternate universe even though the studio insists it is all in the same canon. Well that may be the official line but it sure doesn't feel like it. They cherry pick names from TOS and later Treks but put in zero work to make it feel like it belongs together. Even low budget fanfic like Star Trek Continues does a better job at it.

Worst of all there is nothing compelling about it anymore. I just sit through these episodes bored out of my mind, waiting for it to end.

> I don't know what is wrong with Kurtzman era Trek.

My best guess is that somebody in charge is meddling in everything the writing team does to the point where every good idea gets crushed into pulp, and we wind up with a mishmash of "This is what the Captain said he wanted". And my guess is that that somebody in charge is high on several substances which their Star Trek money is paying for.

I can't really explain all this any other way than "Somebody's on drugs." It's baffling, to me. I feel like Sam Rockwell in Galaxy Quest; "Did you guys ever WATCH THE SHOW?!?"

"So, yeah, there be dungeons and dragons here."

Hahahaha. Brilliant! Bravo, Jammer.

@theBgt: Thanks for posting the TVLine article. It's infuriating. But they did just last week put out an all-time banger! I have trouble comprehending that these are all episodes released of the same show and even the same season. And @Not a Merry Man is spot on: "Goldsman's take is a flat out lie." However, NaMM gets a little too far out ove his skis when saying "The first season and most of the second are centered on actual journeys to alien worlds and landscapes." Let's not forget that "Elysian Kingdom" is from the first season. But that was more the exception at that time.

@The Queen: "SlackerInc, Pelia is staying with the planet/ship because of the chef, Max. Right."



Ok then. Thanks.

"It's a shame when you have a single season with 4 candidates for Worst Show of the Series or Maybe All Time, and the only argument is which one it should be."

Right? Although we might not agree precisely: I thought there were four good-to-great episodes this season (1, 4, 6, 8), a couple that were "meh" (5, 7), and only three that would fit your category (2, 3, 9). But a lot of people liked 2, so you are perhaps not including that one.

We certainly don't agree on "Elysian Kingdom". As someone humorously pointed out this season, I have an unrelenting hatred for that episode.

"You have a typo there, or you let AI write that for you. Obviously you meant to say that audiences in the TNG/DS9 era were smarter than those today."

There were not nearly as many "smart" TV shows then (by which I mean narrative fiction shows) as there have been in the 21st century. I don't think that's really disputable.

@Lynos: "Jammer mentioned the Dungeons & Dragons movie with chris Pine. Highly recommended. It's infinitely better than this and about 10 times funnier."



I am in the middle of watching this and so far I agree.

@Mike A: "From memory, it was my understanding his daughter would live on through this entity. Where is she? Why is nobody speaking about her? Why isn’t M’Benga asking about his daughter!?"

I didn't even finish this sequel episode but yes: if he didn't ask about her and no one else did, that's really bad (I almost wrote "astonishingly bad", but sadly it's not that shocking). Why would you do a sequel no one asked for to an episode virtually no one liked, but then not follow up on that?

@Sen-Sors: "This is how the people making Trek are thinking about Spock in 2026. He's the science nerd! Neeeeeeeerd!"

Isn't he, though? I'm failing to see how that's inaccurate.

@Sid: "Stuff like 2004 Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse blow nu-Trek out of the water."

BSG blew just about everything out of the water--for a couple seasons. 27 episodes to be precise, up to and including "Resurrection Ship, Part II". But they still made 50 more episodes after that, of varying quality and featuring an increasing amount of woo and retcons, culiminating in an atrocious series finale.

One thing I can't understand, and certainly won't endorse, is statements lumping all of "nu-Trek" or "Kurtzman-era Trek" together. Most of it has been bad, but some has been good, and just last week we got a great one. It would be easier to understand if it were all middling to bad.

I'm not defending the issues with this season, which has been pretty bad overall, but I think there tends to be a pile-on when people are unhappy, and that leads to personal attacks on the writers and assumptions of who's to blame and what their motives are.

For example, I constantly see "the writers actively hate Star Trek and know nothing about it." I find that overly cynical and I doubt that's the case, and as much as the genre hopping has not worked, it's not necessarily the problem in and of itself. Staking out a position of the show being a genre anthology is at least a point of view and not automacally a bad one. The problem has been the execution of the scripts more than anything else -- a quality control problem in making coherent narratives out of high-concept starting points. They are throwing things out there and hoping it works, which is slapdash and it shows.

But I still have never really subscribed to the "everyone's an idiot" school of thought -- even as the guy who wrote the "Human Best Friend" parody of a writers room. It strikes me more as a collective misread of what people want and who the audience should be, trying to adjust to the times and everything kind off falling apart in the process.

And I would blame bad comedy, tepid jokes, and the winking at the audience that implies none of this matters as the far bigger problems here, much more than the genre hopping.

I wouldn't even qualify some of these episodes like "A Case of Chiaroscuro" as "gimmicks" per se, because they had a concept and then tried to actually use it within its own story.

"I wouldn't even qualify some of these episodes like "A Case of Chiaroscuro" as "gimmicks" per se, because they had a concept and then tried to actually use it within its own story."

Wut?

@Jammer: "I wouldn't even qualify some of these episodes like 'A Case of Chiaroscuro' as 'gimmicks' per se, because they had a concept and then tried to actually use it within its own story."

For sure. And for me that was a solid three star episode on your scale. IMO it doesn't belong in the same discussion with puppets, soap opera parody, or the "Elysian" sequel.

Very balanced perspective overall in your comments here.

They put almost zero effort into explaining why things were in black and white, no reason why everyone and everything looked like 1940s America, no reason for the Casablanca nods, and no reason why Una has a twin.

They either started with "we want to do Casablanca" or "we want to do a noir" and did quite a bit less than the absolute minimum to set those ideas up. How is that not a gimmick?


Watch the black and white episode of Star Trek Continues and then watch Chiaroscuro agian. One is a Star Trek episode and one is an uninspired gimmick with a Star Trek opening title sequence.

Re: Spock always being seen as The Science Nerd, I disagree. He was the science *officer* on TOS. But I can't recall that ever being used as a punchline. Maybe Bones gave him crap about it here and there but those jabs were more about him being half-Vulcan. IMO the character has been Flanderized post-Discovery, someone who is there to be handsome and awkward (because he's nerdy) and say lines like "fascinating" and "I like science." Less of an ethos of a professional who is dedicated to the study of scientific fields and using logic to solve problems and more like someone who enjoys "I Fucking Love Science" memes on Facebook.

It's fair to disagree and point out that Spock's personality and dedication to logic did occasionally lead to tension and conflict between him and his crewmates. What I object to is the shift in tone in how characters like this are portrayed in modern Trek; this sort of jock/nerd lens of was never present before and IMO it contributes to how unprofessional most Trek characters come across nowadays.

For what it's worth (and forgive me for being quasi-off-topic here) but I was talking with my friend last night about the new Trek movie in the works and he pointed out that the film's writer/directors, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, are the same guys who did the 2023 Dungeons and Dragons movie, which people have been mentioning as a solid flick. And they're right; that movie really surprised me, I had very low expectations and I ended up loving it. Do I still recoil at most of what Daley and Goldstein said in that article? Yes. Do I trust modern Trek to do an Evil Admiral story well without simply trashing StarFleet as Government Bad, so sayeth the unctuous billionaire that runs Paramount? No. Especially after that Section 31 movie that they threatened to make for years. But... That D&D movie was really good, and at least it's not Kurtzman or Goldsman writing this one. As another commenter put it in a way that made me chuckle: the bar is in hell, giving a lap-dance to Satan. Maybe they can clear it.

@Sen-Sors: You sound like you're using the older definition of "nerd", which was pejorative. It has long since lost that connotation.

Have we reached the point where Star Trek HAS to be aimed at popcorn munching morons in order to be successful? Is there no market for intelligent sci-fi with crossover appeal? Is Trek just a complete joke now?

I mean, we've got people here hoping that the next Trek movie will be as good as a god damn D&D movie starring Chris Pine. It's like saying "I hope the next Woody Allen movie is as clever as one of Adam Sandler's."

Dune makes a zillion dollars and we've all got our fingers crossed hoping the next Star Trek movie is a MCU version of Starcrash.

Is that really what you took from my comment? And the comment I made before that? Chris Pine is really catching some strays today.

First episode of this entire series that I stopped watching halfway through. Watching The Princess Bride would be better time spent.

Jammer, people pile on the writers because the writing is terrible. Some of us called out Goldsman because he's lying through his teeth. You can write a pseudo-apologist essay for all I care. It won't change the reality that the creative team tanked ST and are being shit-canned for it.

Look, man, your write-ups are infinitely better than anything the show runners are putting out. Most of us miss the days when the underlying material was befitting of your exceptional often nuanced take. That may or may not happen again with Trek. If it doesn't, forget about stand alone films. Plenty of much better sci fi streaming product out there for you to review.

As for Kurtzman et al, they should be paying you for applying at least a modicum of lip gloss to their cosmic turd maw.

For me, a lot of scenes with Pelia is an automatic subtraction of 2 stars from the rating. Which, it seems, results in a negative rating in this case.

I can't stand her. She's sounds like a... retarded baby? She's a pain to listen to - in both form (idiotic voice) and content (idiotic meaningless comments).

It took me a long time to even start watching season 4. I was reluctant because I knew I'd have to put up with Pelia and M'Benga. To me, they are such insufferable characters that the only series with worse characters is only Discovery. I don't like Chapel either, and I know most people love her (maybe simply because of her looks?). The rest of the SNW characters are kinda *meh*... I have warmed up to Kirk and La'an the most.

But even my most favorite SNW characters are still *meh* compared to how much I loved Tuvok, Sisko, Janeway, B'Elanna, Troi, Picard (in TNG, NOT in "Picard"), Kira, Worf, Paris, Data, T'Pol, Quark, Odo, Dukat, well... the list goes on. Such well-written, likeable and relatable characters!

A lot of people criticize all the crazy and gimmicky genre episodes. I don't mind them at all, in principle. We have hundreds of "regular" Trek episodes (in TNG, VOY, DS9, ENT). It's exciting, in theory, to explore Trek in various different frameworks - and I would be all for fantasy worlds, musicals, noir, soap operas, hell--even puppets. But SNW just totally fails to fulfill the potential of these prisms through which we could experience Trek in fresh new ways. BUT the stories told through these "colored lenses" are just lame, uninspired, messy, boring, plain bad. Part of the reason are the unlikeable characters, bigger part is incompetent writing.

The only good thing - and I mean a really good thing - about all of these episodes is seeing the actors have fun in all these quirky roles. They are great in all these quirky roles in all these genres -- except whoever plays Pelia and M'Benga (forgive me, I'm not American, so I don't memorize the names of actors), these two are just the same horrible in any kind of setting. And more than anyone else, Pike, Spock, and Una are just amazing when they are asked to play their various alter egos, kudos to these actors.

So... I'm not happy with SNW. But unlike many, I welcome the wokeness, I welcome the quirkiness and gimmicky genre episodes. I "just" don't like the way the stories, characters, and dialogues are written.

@Sen-Sors
"I was talking with my friend last night about the new Trek movie in the works and he pointed out that the film's writer/directors, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, are the same guys who did the 2023 Dungeons and Dragons movie, which people have been mentioning as a solid flick."

Yeah, I saw that as well, it's still in very (very) early development, and I'm kind-of torn on this. On the one hand, I think they are intelligent filmmakers who know their genre stuff. On the other hand, they are good at comedy. They are comedy directors. "D&D Honor among Thieves" is essentially a comedy. Are they planning a Star Trek comedy, then? The closest we got to a comedic theatrical Star Trek movie was The Voyage Home and that movie's pretty good, but I wouldn't really call it a comedy. So hopefully what they plan is maybe a more lighthearted Star Trek adventure in the vein of The Voyage Home and not a full-blown comedy.

@Jammer - I disagree that "a genre anthology is at least a point of view and not automatically a bad one." I think it is a bad idea for two reasons. The first is that the show is trying to be something for everyone instead of committing to an audience. I don't personally like soap operas, or horror films, or stoner movies even when they are done really well. Lots of people love Buffy and Breaking Bad, Mad Men and M*A*S*H*, All In The Family and American Horror Story, Glee and Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey and Dallas, The West Wing and The Wire. And they should. But not necessarily the same people love all of these shows.

In the TV Line article, Henry Alonso Myers is quoted saying "the goal is to make a 'Star Trek' at some point in our season that is for everyone, to reach out to people who don't know 'Star Trek' and who might find something that surprises them or interests them." But if you make 2 episodes that I will like, and 2 my sister will enjoy, and 3 that my partner will like, and 1 that my dad will love, you've actually made a season where all of us dislike the majority of the episodes.

The second reason that a genre anthology is not a good idea is the difficulty of character development. If you are doing each genre well, the characters have to change. The characters in a soap opera are not the same as the characters in The Muppets. The characters in a noir film are not the same as the characters in Dude Where's My Shuttlecraft. What this means is that the show has to come up with explanations for why the characters are always out-of-character. But if they are always out-of-character we lose the any sense of them in-character. Any development they have over the course of an episode is undercut because it happens to the drugged, spored, DNA-altered, mind-controlled, doppelgänger, dreaming versions on themselves.

One of the main ways that I (and I think many other people) enjoy fiction is by relating to the fictional characters. They remind us of ourselves or our loved ones, or our obnoxious co-worker we love to hate. They inspire us. We become invested in what happens to them. With so much genre-hopping, the center of the character just can't hold. I can't identify or connect to the gritty detective stoner boy-crazy comic relief pouty princess action hero because it is all shifting sands. Don't get me wrong, it is fun to watch Ethan Peck and Anson Mount ham it up, but I am watching Anson Mount and Ethan Peck, not Pike and Spock.

I'm not saying never do something different. If you have a solid base of 8 in-character sci-fi episodes where smart and competent professionals explore strange new worlds, a couple of episodes a season that are homages to a musical or a soap opera can be fun and even enriching to the worldbuilding. A genre anthology can be an interesting film school exercise, but I don't think it is the basis for a successful show.

@Atoz: "I mean, we've got people here hoping that the next Trek movie will be as good as a god damn D&D movie starring Chris Pine. It's like saying 'I hope the next Woody Allen movie is as clever as one of Adam Sandler's.'"

I would call that unfair. Mainly to the D&D movie, although Sandler has a few good films. But yes, most of his comedies are dreck. D&D is not.

@Not a Merry Man: "Jammer, people pile on the writers because the writing is terrible."

For most episodes, I agree. But if you are intending that as a blanket statement about every episode, I strenuously disagree. Last week's episode "Orders of Magnitude" was excellent, including the teleplay. I'm all for holding the showrunners' feet to the fire, but it's only fair to acknowledge the minority of the time that they do nail it. If you claim that never ever happens, it just sounds like you have an axe to grind with the show and undercuts the credibility of your statements about it.

@Ruthie B: "But if you e 2 episodes that I will like, and 2 my sister will enjoy, and 3 that my partner will like, and 1 that my dad will love, you've actually made a season where all of us dislike the majority of the episodes."

That's actually a really good point I hadn't thought of.

"But if they are always out-of-character we lose the any sense of them in-character."

This one I had definitely thought of, but it bears repeating. The novelty episodes need to be set against a "normal" baseline.

The cavapoo was the highlight of the episode.

Are you gonna feel sad if any of the non-TOS characters die?
I realized I probably won't. Of course, it will depend on how they gonna do it... but still I do not think I care about any of these characters much.

Right now there are talented people living. Talented enough, if given a chance to be the showrunner on a series like say SNW with its great cast & production values, could lead this series with great storytelling ideas & a vision on how these characters could possibly evolve.

Right now there are talented writers who, if given a chance, have the ability to right deeply profound & interesting science fiction stories.

The problem, of course, is first finding these people & then being able to be in a position to give these people an opportunity, a chance. It’s kind of like the old cliche of being in the right place at the right time. Maybe like finding lightning in a bottle.

Star Trek found such a person in Gene Roddenberry who at first directly led TOS in the 1960’s before its inevitable cancellation & then, as the show unexpectedly took off during its rerun syndication heyday in the 70’s, to movies. He was the creator but he was also able to find the right creatives to lead the franchise forward. If he didn’t personally find the people, he at least created an environment that welcomed talented people whoever they may be. Hence the dawning of classic Trek (TNG, DS9) in the 90’s & the inevitable decline as things became a little stale & routine.

NuTrek has no such person. They have Alex Kurtzman. The essential creatives (the storytelling & showrunners with ideas & vision) quite simply are not there. Put it down to corporate incompetence. There was to be no right person at the right time. They put the wrong person there at the wrong time. Someone incapable of finding those talented showrunners & storytellers. No Michael Piller with these kind of ideas “ Another key innovation was Piller's open-door policy for scripts, allowing anyone to submit story ideas. This policy yielded some of the series’ most popular episodes, including "Yesterday's Enterprise"

Kurtzman is now gone but I sense the corporate incompetence remains. Can lightning find the bottle? I’m not overly optimistic.

@slackerInc “For most episodes, I agree. But if you are intending that as a blanket statement about every episode, I strenuously disagree. Last week's episode "Orders of Magnitude" was excellent, including the teleplay.”

Unlike others that post here, I’m a huge fan of the first two seasons. While it’s true the show has never had much originality outside its obsession with gimmicks, to me the first two seasons were solid. I’ve rewatched a number of episodes from the first two seasons & they hold up on repeated viewing. However I believe it was the success of “Those Old Scientists” & “Subspace Rhapsody” in the second season that has kind of led to the decline in quality in the 3rd & 4th season. An over reliance on comedy & gimmicks that simply does not hold up. To put in bluntly they’re just too many poorly written episodes.

The 3rd season had only “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail”& “Terrarium” for me. The 4th season has among the worst Star Trek episodes I’ve ever seen. I did like “Orders of Magnitude” though I would have much preferred they would have left out the Kirk family history all together & focused more on the moral ambiguity from Reeger point of view. Genocide of a planet to prevent the possibility of saving others from a possible future attack. Blinded by his obsession to the point where he can’t see genocide is never a viable option. Instead of making Reeger cartoon bad make him a basically decent man blinded by obsession & family lost.

Such a dumb episode. Who does this appeal to?
This isnt like Deja Q- which was easy to follow

So glad this series is getting cancelled.

Bring back Prodigy! Highest rated Trek Series of all time and they fking cancelled it!

Again an episode that should complete a story arc and wastes the opportunity.

I saw the preview picture in the menu and hung my head and groaned out loud.

P.S. I did enjoy the puppet episode, so not a total killjoy.

Everyone associated with SNW seems to prefer fantasy over science fiction, so I wonder how they'd like my fantasy...my fantasy is, that the next time the writers come up with fantasy/non-science fiction tripe like this, the entire cast goes on strike until they replace it with a serious script. But of course, that is exactly why it's a fantasy of mine, because from everything the cast has said publicly about how much "fun" they have doing the crappy episodes like this one, they obviously don't take their roles any more seriously than the writers do. They should be ashamed of the juvenile cosplay, but instead they enjoy hamming it up, as if they're Mickey Rooney and the gang putting on a show for the neighborhood. It's pathetic how they embarrass themselves. If only Star Trek would come back...

One and a half stars. The problem here is that "fun gimmick" camp episodes only work on Star Trek when they occur occasionally at key moments of seasons, but SNW does them almost constantly, with diminishing returns. It doesn't help that SNW too often feels like AI threw up a script borrowing from other genres and materials. Rarely does it feel like like a genuine tribute or fresh take on older material.

It's very hard to take anything in this episode's remix of sword and fantasy elements. And the surface pleasures are minimal. The only positive thing is that I sort of enjoyed Anson Mount and the guy who plays Spock casually infiltrating the Enterprise as comic doppelgangers. The rest of this episode is just pure dreck, including La'an's duel with her doppelganger, is just silly pseudo-mythology without much redeeming entertainment value.