Azfaa ,

I really enjoyed this episode, while I do agree that it’s strange only Chapel survived (she should have remained on planet).

That to be continued hurt with the way the strike is, so I guess we’ll have to see if we will actually get a follow up.

And I love the Gorn, this episode finally hinted at their intelligence. And the solar flare thing while a bit weird could be an interesting way of using biology to influence how a civilization develops. I know Arena exists but I really don’t mind retconning this. Having recently looked at the Enterprise depiction of Gorn, I feel like this remains in the same vein but looks more lizardy.

SNW is still my favourite Trek, maybe its because I never actually watched TOS but I feel like even if I did I wouldn’t dislike it.

Pelia knowing Scott doesn’t surprise me considering she seems to be the Boothsby of the Engineers.

Scotty being introduced made me really happy ^^

As a prequel I think this still works, some people say its not the Pike show they expected but I don’t get why, yes we have seen some TOS characters like Kirk and Scotty, hopefully Kirk will get less time next season, probably considering the ships has less to do together.

I get its corpo decisions but I will trust the creative team to not drop the ball with overusing fanservice characters, having scotty as a member of the Enterprise crew is also imo not a problem. If anything I hope we get to keep Pelia and have him as a underling for next season and maybe build up to him being promoted head of engineering later on.

Hopefully Paramount will dare to make a new series about an entirely new crew set post VOY or maybe even some time in the early 2300s around the time the Enterprise D was around as we haven’t seen a lot of that time. But I would prefer a firmly 2400s series.

ThrowawayInTheYear23 ,
@ThrowawayInTheYear23@lemmy.world avatar

Imagine being trapped like Chapel in the Wolf 351 wreckage. 😱

tewha , (edited )

Some of the special effects for the gorn babies (especially the jump scare in the barbershop) were one plate of curry away from being right at home in 1980s Red Dwarf. Oh how I cringed!

But a great episode.

chahk ,

It’s cold outside…

e_t_ Admin ,

Apropos of this episode:

I'm all alone, more or less

e_t_ Admin ,

I thought they looked like high-budget Scarrans

JWBananas ,
@JWBananas@startrek.website avatar

In season 1 they used a lot of practical effects (i.e. puppets) for the Gorn babies and then layered CG atop. They may have done the same here.

Disgustoid , (edited )

HOLY CRAP, I AM SO GLAD I WENT INTO THIS SPOILER FREE!!!1!

Someone posted earlier this week that it looked like Captain Batel was having a really bad day, and yup, she definitely was. My heart sank when she revealed the Gorn egg infestation. My money’s on her being the sole “main” character casualty from the events of this episode.

I didn’t know Scotty was going to show up so that was a total surprise. Finding out he was Pelia’s perfect student who somehow flunked made all the sense in the world, ignoring the obvious small universe complaints.

I LOVED all the effects shots of the Cuyuga’s debris field. I initially thought crashing the remains of the saucer section into the Gorn jammer was complete overkill, like throwing a dinner plate at a toothpick, but then realized the jammer must have been absolutely massive and far away from the settlement. It looked like it was relatively nearby upon initial viewing which didn’t appear to be the case considering the explosion from when the saucer section hit it.

That cliffhanger, wow. I pray that they have the second half already written and aren’t going to do like TNG and wait to write the conclusion. It was mentioned in the TNG Companion that the writers only wrote the first part of their season ending cliffhangers and waited until closer to filming to write and finalize the second part which doesn’t seem like the best way to develop a strong resolution.

I love SNW so much. It’s going to be an agonizing wait until the new season, probably 2025 at this point? Argh.

EDIT: I swear I didn’t read any posts in this thread before posting my thoughts. I’m glad and amused to see we Trek fans had many of the same reactions!

lemillionsocks ,
@lemillionsocks@beehaw.org avatar

Ah butts. Until I read your post I forgot that a writers strike is going to make the outcome of this episode up in the air.

Pay your writers big corpos and stop trying to figure out how to reanimate actors corpses with Ai so you can use them forever !

milkisklim ,

I think we can excuse the fact that apparently everyone and their transporter clone had Pelia as their engineering professor. She’s been at the academy for so long, I wouldn’t be surprised if she dated Boothby on and off again or at least got him into gardening.

There’s a long tradition in star trek where characters talk about one particular professor or class at the Academy and the other character always knows who the professor is.

VindictiveJudge ,

The TNG writers held off on writing BOBW2 at least partially because Patrick Stewart was renegotiating his contract and they needed to know if he was staying on. I doubt that’s a concern with SNW. The writers strike could be a problem, though.

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

Season 3 was originally scheduled to start production May 2nd, just before the start of the strike. It’s only the impending strike date that caused them to stand down on that.

This tells us that the script for the season premiere has been locked for some time.

macabrett ,
@macabrett@hexbear.net avatar

I thought they did a great job with the casting this week. Had no idea he was going to show up.

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

As to how they’ll resolve the cliffhanger, it’s probably going to be Scotty’s Gorn transponder that will confuse the Gorn ships long enough for Enterprise to get in close and somehow beam the abductees back.

UESPA_Sputnik ,
@UESPA_Sputnik@feddit.de avatar

Or maybe Batel becomes their version of Locutus, to somehow communicate with them.

To be honest I’m still undecided whether I want the Gorn to stay this unstoppable force of horror, or to find a Trek-style form of coming to some sort of peace agreement. In that aspect I liked how Admiral April tried to keep Pike in check at the beginning of the episode.

jaelisp ,
@jaelisp@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I was concerned that any Trek-like resolution that the series’s tone demands would utterly undermine Arena. But I think we’re past that already so I’ll just accept it out the window and enjoy the ride. But I do wish they’d done this as a new species instead.

maegul ,

How would Arena be undermined?

jaelisp ,
@jaelisp@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Well at that point it’s meant to be they can’t be reasoned with, war / fight to the death inevitable. Then at the end it’s revealed they were just defending their territory.

If we have a situation where understanding is reached, communication and mutual empathy then exactly what is Kirk fighting about and learning in Arena?

It already doesn’t totally work now the Gorn and their space are personally known about by most of the crew present in Arena, by Starfleet etc. but I can wave that off as being worth it for the story. But this would mean that the message of Arena is also damaged, not just continuity. Not sure how I feel about that but I’ll see how they handle it first.

18+ devnull ,
@devnull@crag.social avatar

Chapel: [restores life support on the saucer]

Spock: [straps rockets to the saucer and yeets it into a planet]

Chapel: surprisedpikachu.gif

UESPA_Sputnik ,
@UESPA_Sputnik@feddit.de avatar

I loved the colony design. It kinda makes sense. There’s an endless number of planets out there, so why not found a colony for your weird LARP phantasies? “Hey, you wanna join my colony reminiscent of Victorian England? There’d be bustle skirts, butlers and bat’leths.”

I had a feeling right from the urgency of the first minutes that they were setting this episode up as SNW’s version of “The Best of Both Worlds”. And the elements are certainly there. A superior enemy. A plan to fool them with technobabble. A crewmember held hostage – just this time it’s split up between Captain Batel being infected, and La’an, M’Benga and Kirk (and colonists) captured. And a cliffhanger. I had hoped that they wouldn’t do cliffhangers in this show – especially season-ending cliffhangers when we don’t even know when the next season will air. (2025 maybe?) Or if they did it then at least do it DS9 style where it’s more like a teaser of things to come instead of an actual cliffhanger.

Oh well, at least they didn’t kill off Batel immediately, and I hope they won’t do it in season 3. I’d like to see more of her and of her relationship with Pike because I think it’s a really interesting relationship dynamic for a Starfleet captain to have a truly equal partner.

I’m not quite keen on the physics in this episode. Would the Gorn really be fooled by the Cayuga’s saucer suddenly “naturally” accelerating towards the planet from the orbit of its moon? That already bugged me in Star Trek Into Darkness when the ship suddenly “fell” towards Earth. Yes, this is a Science Fiction show but they could really use a science advisor for this basic stuff.

Finally, I wonder if every season will bring in another TOS cast member, and who will be next. Sulu? (he’d be an astroscientist though, unless they ignore the 2nd TOS pilot episode) Cadet Chekov? Bones? Janice Rand?

This all sounds a bit negative but I actually enjoyed the episode. It wasn’t the best episode of the season but still above average. I just hope that season 3 will come rather sooner than later.

erbazzone , (edited )

I’m not the most accurate and precise regarding the lore but for what I remember of TOS (that was my favorite series) we should expect Sulu being the next one, then Bones should be in the cast together with Kirk later. Seeing that every one that will not be in TOS is now in Gorn hand’s I think we already know why. I don’t think it’s a coincidence

UESPA_Sputnik ,
@UESPA_Sputnik@feddit.de avatar

Seeing that every one that will not be in TOS is now in Gorn hand’s I think we already know why.

M’Benga and Sam Kirk show up in TOS though. The only one in danger is La’an. (and I’d be pissed if something happened to her because I think that Christina Chong is a super strong actor, and possibly the breakout star of this show)

erbazzone ,

Oh that was the same doctor? Never connected the two. I was thinking also about Ortega. Sam disappeared in TOS until he died so maybe he got traumatized from the incident.

UESPA_Sputnik ,
@UESPA_Sputnik@feddit.de avatar

Oops, you’re right. Ortegas is there too. I completely forgot about her since she got Travis-Mayweather’d so much this season.

erbazzone ,

The actor had a bad time last couple of years, there were rumors that she wanted quit acting so I guess they are setting up some rooster changes for the next season. That will be… in twothousendnever… :(

reddig33 ,

How about we slow down and let the current cast own the show rather than it all being about rebuilding the TOS cast one by one?

eva_sieve ,

Yeah, the colonists in this episode intentionally curating the a small-town experience is pretty subtle worldbuilding, but tees into the crazier variants like the Hysperians from Lower decks.

angstrom ,

A lot to unpack here. Definite ‘Best Of Both Worlds’ vibes. Great end of season episode. Hopefully this time they have the resolution to the cliffhanger written.

I figured Batel would suffer the fate she did, even before the episode started. It was lazy writing that she should end up in the situation she did and so it happened. The writing team can and should do better than this.

Scotty appearing was a nice touch, and was well played by the actor. Given that Chapel is probably going to be rotated out for a while I think pairing him with Pelia for season 3 might be fun.

The Gorn were also well done, although the Aliens homages are getting tiresome and unless they are going completely retcon ‘Arena’ then there isn’t a huge amount more than can be done with them. Thankfully so far they seem to using them sparingly. Hopefully they will move onto other TOS races in season 3. The Tholians, for example, have a unique feel and less alpha continuity to worry about.

khaosworks , (edited )
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

As I note in my annotations, I got very emotional whenever I heard them refer to Scotty as “Mr Scott”. Not sure why, it just sounded so right. When they said, “Thank you, Mr Scott,” I mentally added: “That’s something he’s going to get used to hearing over the years.”

The moment I heard Pike say he missed Batel and then praise Ortegas I immediately knew they were going to be placed in jeopardy and sure enough…

It was also immediately obvious when the Gorn youngling left Batel alone why it did so, so glad they didn’t string that out as some big mystery.

The colony design meant that filming exteriors was cheaper, I suppose. It’s the equivalent of building a gated community as a Ren Faire, though there’d definitely be a demand for it.

Wish they’d have given some hints to why that Gorn was on the Cayuga saucer, though. Why was it trying to access command level functions? Intel or something else? And how did it get there without Enterprise noticing or was it there before they arrived? Questions, questions…

At least Martin Quinn, who plays Scotty, is a Paisley boy like David Tennant and Steven Moffat, which means using his natural accent will be easier to make out, as the Paisley accent is less harsh than, say, a Glaswegian one. He’s a bit young for Scotty though, at 28. I’d always assumed Scotty was at least five to ten years older than Kirk.

Nice, fast moving action finale - but I echo the frustration at having this be a cliffhanger.

abba2566 ,

I would like to know why the Gorn was there too, but the Gorn didn’t notice Spock boarding and so there’s no reason to believe Enterprise would have notice a Gorn boarding. It’s also possible it was beamed over when the Cayuga was destroyed to find something or to access the ships systems.

teft ,
@teft@startrek.website avatar

I swear if anything bad happens to Ortegas I will riot. That lady has surpassed Tom Paris as my favorite pilot and with all the banter with Pike I worry for her well-being.

scy ,
@scy@chaos.social avatar

I imagine they left it open on purpose to allow Melissa Navia, who had a pretty rough year during production of season 2, an opportunity to be written out of the story.

I would love for her to continue though, because I like her way more than Tom Paris, too.

IonAddis ,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

The location they filmed the town at is the same one used in the Wednesday TV series, which was a bit distracting for me, although I suppose if anyone wants to do a crossover Wednesday/Star Trek fanfic, it’ll be super-easy, lol.

JWBananas , (edited )
@JWBananas@startrek.website avatar

My captions! I can’t hear without my captions!

Edit: Now they’re working. Weird.

Tove ,

Soooo good. Big Best of Both Worlds feels from that cliffhanger.

RootBeerGuy ,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Uggggh, not a cliffhanger!!! Damn them! Ok, how long till season 03?

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

It may be a while, depending on when they settle the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strike.

Zpiritual ,

With the strikes and every production on halt and needing to restart? Maybe early 2025 if we’re lucky. Earlier is possible I guess if the parts settle in the not too distant future and CBS put prio on SNW once things resume.

erbazzone ,

My biggest gripe with this episode is ::: spoiler spoiler that it could been easily a double episode THIS SEASON with more breath, I hate those cliffhangers but the plot armor was too strong here, we already know who will survive and who don’t even before the start of the episode xD

I expect we’ll see Sulu, McCoy and more Scotty next season:::

AuroraBorealis ,
@AuroraBorealis@pawb.social avatar

“Man sure hope no one else was alive on the saucer section before I viking funeral’d it” ~ Nurse Chapel

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