scarecrw ,

Loved the Clint Howard cameo! Pretty amazing to still have actors all the way from TOS appearing!

stuck ,

I hope you relish it as I do!

MikeyMongol ,
@MikeyMongol@lemmynsfw.com avatar

I screamed when he appeared on screen. It scared my dog.

scy ,
@scy@chaos.social avatar

As this week’s episode was pretty grim again, I’ve added detailed content warnings to Does The Dog Die at https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/896237?index1=2&index2=8. Warning: Some of these can be a bit spoiler-y, but people who read DTDD usually value detailed CWs higher than not seeing any spoilers whatsoever.

ValueSubtracted OP Mod ,
@ValueSubtracted@startrek.website avatar

Elevating a notorious enemy general to the position of ambassador in a handful of years is a total Starfleet move.

famousringo ,

“We turned this war criminal into a crusader for peace. Just imagine what we’ll do to you, punk.”

milkisklim ,

Quark: I want you to try something for me. Take a sip of this.

Garak: What is it?

Quark: A human drink. It’s called root beer.

Garak: I don’t know.

Quark: Come on. Aren’t you just a little bit curious?

Quark: What do you think?

Garak: It’s vile.

Quark: I know. It’s so bubbly and cloying and happy.

Garak: Just like the Federation.

Quark: But you know what’s really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you begin to like it.

Garak: It’s insidious.

Quark: Just like the Federation.

poundsignbuttstuff ,

Such an amazing scene and seeing it written makes me respect those two actors so much more. There isn’t really a lot said on the page but their acting really sold that scene and made it spectacular.

I can’t imagine being the writer on the show who wrote that and then saw it acted by those two. I’d have thought I was the best writer ever but the writer had a great analogy and it was the actors that made it sing (and director, editor, producers, etc.)

themz ,
@themz@lemmy.world avatar

Wow. There’s no contest anymore: SNW is undoubtedly the best new Trek. This season has been fantastic. Somehow they’ve just outdone last week’s crossover. And they just did war ‘better’ than DS9.

Olap ,

Steady now, DS9 has so much more breadth to war than what we just saw. The pacing was too fast for a single episode with such gravitas for me. The final act in particular was rushed. A doctor as the real butcher (!), the ambassador without a real right of reply, and the implications of a cover up from 2 starfleet officers, one of which lied to the captain. The use of a banned serum also clouding the episode too, combined with special forces. A lack of chapel’s report.

I suspect at least 10 minutes on the cutting room floor here. Wish it was there

Don’t get me wrong. One of the best EVER in trek, I was glued from start to finish. But afterwards I wanted a two parter! Bring back some doubles please script writers and producers

themz , (edited )
@themz@lemmy.world avatar

OK. Yes. I don’t mean to say its take on war is better than the entirety of DS9, but as a single episode (with the benefit of modern effects tech) it sure dived straight into the horror of it all! Then landed at a dark place with a conclusion that really isn’t justice.

Olap ,

Can see where the budget went this season for sure

poundsignbuttstuff ,

I look forward to seeing someone write in retrospect a deep dive into a comparison of M’Benga and Bashir in wartime. The two felt the same emotions, dealt with the same decisions, and had to deal with tough choices and the inherent struggle of the Hippocratic oath in wartime yet both of them handled it so incredibly differently.

That is a Daystrom essay I look forward to reading.

triktrek ,

As someone else mentioned in another comment, it’s bonkers that SNW can do a cartoon episode, a war episode and a musical episode back-to-back. I love now experimental SNW is!

nyxlabs , (edited )

This was one of the best "connective tissue" episodes of Star Trek I've ever seen.
It provides context and ties together the Discovery Era "T'Kuvma War" with the eventual outcome in "The Undiscovered Country", while providing a layered, accurate and evocative image of Klingon Honor and "perceived honor" while staying true to the lore and expanding it in meaningful ways. It also has strong shades of "The Siege of AR-558". It now "makes sense" how the Klingons got from TOS to TNG. Wow!

Dr. M'Benga is fast becoming one of my favorite characters. Robert Wisdom's Dak'Rah was terrific too!

Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam

Edit: Spelling, Phrasing

williams_482 ,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

Well, the previously inexplicable “inject a bunch of drugs to fight Klingons” scene in the season opener has suddenly paid off.

I have little to say now except that this episode was a seriously heavy hitter. Just… wow. And ouch.

triktrek ,

Even with this “backstory” of this green juice, it really isn’t much of a backstory. It’s just explained as some chemical that makes you stronger – it still feels like a cheap plot device, and that action sequence in the season opener was still unexpectedly long.

reddig33 ,

Think of it as trek adrenaline/speed/meth. In war, governments often try to find drugs they can give soldiers to enhance performance.

inappropriatecontent ,

I spent over a decade addicted to meth, and in my experience, that green slime ain’t meth.

tdriley ,
@tdriley@mas.to avatar

@williams_482 @triktrek Many fans react badly to the P-12 serum as a lazy plot device, but consider: In key battles, it’d make tactical sense for Klingons to draw Fed soldiers into hand to hand combat, because they’re typically experienced blade warriors. It would then be attractive to the Fed to develop something like P-12 as a counter-tactic. Then consider there is a potential sub-plot exploring the ethics of humans revisiting their Eugenics Wars-era mistakes.

tdriley ,
@tdriley@mas.to avatar

@williams_482 @triktrek (It is mentioned elsewhere that human soldiers in the Eugenics Wars were given drugs to make them better fighters, and human history remembers this as a huge mistake/atrocity).

poundsignbuttstuff ,

Do we need the backstory? It’s space PCP for war. Jokes aside, look at how many times in war, we (and I mean a collective we because numerous countries have done this over the last century+) have given soldiers, pilots, etc amphetamines and more in order to improve their ability to fight, stay awake, and win the war.

M’Benga made a future drug that does all this which he prefers people don’t use but keeps it just in case he has to save people or survive battles.

That’s all the explanation I need. Old Trek didn’t give us even that much most of the time - just treknobabble.

michaelgemar ,
@michaelgemar@mstdn.ca avatar

@poundsignbuttstuff @startrek I thought he says explicitly that it contains adrenaline and pain inhibitors. I’m not sure such a real-world cocktail would have the portrayed effects, but it’s clear they’re trying to ground the concoction realistically.

snowyday ,

Erica, the doctor, and Christine, throughout the entire episode: “Don’t believe him. Don’t trust him. Let him die.”

InverseParallax ,

Damn, that one hit harder than expected.

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

Annotations are up at startrek.website/post/508416

UESPA_Sputnik ,
@UESPA_Sputnik@lemmy.world avatar

What a tonal shift from the last episode.

I think this was on par with DS9’s Dominion War episodes, showing how the Federation ideals clash with the real world. It will certainly be controversial for being so “un-Trek”. There’s no happy ending, there’s just the sinking feeling that a war never really ends in the heads of those that were affected by it.

The acting was stellar all around, particularly M’Benga and Chapel. [Edit: and Ortegas! Finally she got some material to work with that weren’t funny one-liners, and she made the most of it.] And that final scene with M’Benga and Pike just demands a continuation in the future.

It was certainly an impressive, thought-provoking episode but if you’d ask me to rate this episode on a scale of 1 to 10 I’d have no idea where to put it. I’m still sitting here trying to wrap my head around what I just saw. I guess that’s war for you. It doesn’t make sense.

InverseParallax , (edited )

Yeah, but the depth was great, I really felt m’benga was a badly developed character till now, and this fleshed him out in ways that made him now one of my fsvorites, before he made no sense.

Also loved bunny’s work as the klingon, that is ALWAYS a hard role, but he managed to nail him as

Spoiler1. A klingon, 2. A klingon defector 3. A klingon defector turned pacifist diplomat for the federation 4. A klingon defector, coward liar war criminal turned pacifist diplomat for the federation. He also had to seem like he could be betraying starfleet the whole time, AND that he genuinely believed and wanted redemption.

People will undersell how hard that is to pull off, m’benga’s actor had 1.5 seasons to lay the foundation for aspects of his character (though honestly it was mostly done here) while bunny had this episode, to cram in all of that.

Help! How do you do spoilers!!? K, figured it out.

UESPA_Sputnik ,
@UESPA_Sputnik@lemmy.world avatar

Agreed on the Klingon ambassador! The acting felt weird at first but his demeanor made sense at the end.

And I feel similarly as you about M’Benga. I didn’t care much about him until now, he was simply the doctor that speaks strangely. But now I really want to find out what’s next for him.

InverseParallax ,

M’benga was so intense for no reason, and the fighting thing was overplayed, his whole demeanor was off.

Now it kind of plays, the doctor who hates himself because he had to kill.

erbazzone ,

After one of the funniest episode in trek history we got one of the darkest.

famousringo ,

The variety is one of best things about SNW. The whole episode was a thriller. You know somebody’s going to get stabbed, just a question of who, when, and how badly.

maddy ,

So this is how M’Benga isn’t the CMO by the time of Kirk? This storyline still has many more seasons to go, it seems.

williams_482 ,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

M’Benga has compiled a hell of a list of justifications for getting demoted already, and (obviously) none of them have actually got him in trouble just yet. Secretly keeping his daughter in the transporter buffer, carrying super soldier serum about his person at all times, killing a Klingon ambassador… suffice to say he’s a bit of a wildcard.

tuxman20 ,
@tuxman20@mastodon.social avatar

@williams_482 @maddy Demoted?! More like Court Martialed and sent to a mining colony for life :P

angstrom ,

Yeah. There is definitely several stories that could play out here, for both M’Benga and Chapel.

Continuity wise McCoy didn’t join the Enterprise until after the first couple of episodes of TOS s1, Mark Piper was the CMO for those so there is definitely a thread they could pick on prior to Kirk taking command of the Enterprise.

For Chapel we know she gets engaged to Roger Korby at some point. Will be interesting to see how they move the character to line up with ‘What Are Little Girls Made Of?’

koreth , (edited )

Not just by the time of Kirk. He’s already gone by the time of “The Cage.”

EDIT: No, I got my timeline screwed up. “The Cage” predates SNW. Oops.

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