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.

passinglurker ,

They did it again TOS purists

spoileryou wanted a rubber suit, so they gave you a rubber suit.

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

felixxx999 ,

I like that Pike avoids conflict whenever he can. And him not immediately knowing what to do at the end is so him. I’m confident that none of the cast will be killed off. Just unnamed red shirts.

Basilisk ,

They seem to be bookending the season with flashbacks to Pike’s expedition to Rigel VII. His decision to withdraw there cost people their lives and led to Zak corrupting the local culture. Now he’s back under fire, under seemingly unwinnable odds, and forced to make the call to leave people behind again.

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.

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.

Mandolingual ,

The landing party moving through the attacked town positioning themselves around crates and fighting the youngling was like a glimpse of an XCOM adaptation to a tee (with fewer OP melee weapons and grenades).

Navi ,

That’s a great observation, thinking back on it that’s absolutely what it was like!

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.

Faceman2K23 ,
@Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Scotty!

Playing it kinda like Simon pegg, Which is honestly great. Looking forward to seeing more tos characters introduced next season.

maegul , (edited )

Looking forward to seeing more tos characters introduced next season.

I am the opposite. I was hoping SNW would be its own TOS era but modernised show without being beholden to TOS apart from whatever canon we have for pike and Spock.

TBH, this transition into TOS prequel has tainted the show for me. I’ll prob never love it. We got more Scotty in this episode than we did Ortegas, La’an or Number One (or their abouts). I know about Scotty. He’s been rebooted already in the past decade or so. How about more SNW characters?! How about new characters?!

I’m pretty comfortable on this hill now.

passinglurker ,

One can hope the surviving snw crew get their own ship and show after pike gets the chair. Last thing I want is for them to follow the 1701 for so long that they start refilming TOS

angstrom ,

I’ve long accepted that SNW is basically an ensemble anthology show and TOS crew and others will rotate in and out as needed. The only fixed character is the Enterprise.

Faceman2K23 ,
@Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

To me it was a TOS prequel from the start, I was expecting characters from the original to be introduced at some point, even if they end up being one or two episode cameos until closer to the end of the series where it has to at some point hand over to kirks enterprise with his crew. They are of course giving Kirk some more time than that as his character needs to be built into the kirk that will take command in a few in universe years, Spock is still young and learning to be fully Vulcan, Uhura is young and still building confidence etc etc etc.

I suspect we will get similar 2 or 3 episode arcs for the other as-yet unseen TOS crew in the next couple of seasons, I don’t know how many seasons they are planning on, but I suspect 5 or 6 considering it is the flagship show in the franchise and as a whole is doing increasingly well.

maegul , (edited )

I’m not too dissimilar from you, but expected cameos. Even Kirk in the S1 finale worked for me, because it was mostly about Pike but also a bit meta about the differences between him and Kirk. Continuity is great after all.

My point is that there’s a line beyond which the show leans prequel, and S2 has crossed that line IMO.

Which is fine, if that’s what people want, which I suspect is the case. I also suspect a TOS reboot would go down well and the execs are fully aware of this. But, is this really good for Trek or even good Trek? When was the last time we had new trek that wasn’t a prequel or driven by nostalgia? Lower Decks? I’m not a Discovery fan, but it surely tried, as did Picard S1 I’d say. Otherwise you might have to go all the way back to DS9. Thing is we’re as far from DS9 now as it was from TOS. SNW was something fresh, a true example of Trek being back on track by retaining the core but doing something new. The more it leans prequel, for me, the more I begin to feel all of nu-Trek is a missed opportunity and not worthy of celebration, which honestly saddens me (apart from lower decks, now my definitely fav new Trek!)

angstrom ,

I would have it run until Kirk takes over as captain. Then jump forward to just after The Motion Picture.

This not only gives them about a decade of time before TWOK that’s barely been touched by the screen canon, they can do a design revamp to freshen the series up using TMP as a starting point, and they handle the fact that with a series per year the actors are going to quickly age ahead of their characters.

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

I very much wanted SNW to be its own show for at least a few seasons.

It’s not the Pike’s Enterprise I fan-campaigned for based on The Cage or Discovery season two.

I’m enjoying it for what it is even so, and accepting that the powers that be at Paramount wanted ‘familiar faces’ in their new Star Trek offerings, which means legacy characters. It’s the best of the new live action Trek whatever. All to say that I appreciate your frustration, I’ve decided to make peace with it myself.

maegul ,

Cheers! I had hoped we’d get a main cast focused finale and was triggered to have Scotty turn up so prominently. So that’s 4(?) out of 10 episodes in S2 with a major TOS appearance? (5 out of the last 11 counting the finale of S1) It was a “maybe they won’t cross the line for me … oh ok they’ve crossed the line” moment.

Interestingly, in the ready room for this episode, there’s Kurtzman talking about bringing in Scotty, and he speaks about bringing in the TOS characters as something they were always going to do over time. I’d be curious to know how publicly that was stated because I missed it and if it were known from the top I certainly wouldn’t have been so excited for the show. Especially given, as I remember anyway, back at the end of Discovery S1 when Pike and the enterprise first showed up, there was some blow back that Discovery was going to devolve so quickly into TOS prequel nostalgia and not remain its own thing (that Discovery was a TOS prequel might not have sat well with many Trek fans at the time either though I don’t recall). The show assured us that it’ll still stay Discovery and that the enterprise was just a cameo of sorts, and then we got Pike, who everyone loved and Discovery, to its credit, remained its own thing even with Spock turning up (and had maybe its best or at least most interesting or bold season??).

Unless everyone but me knew SNW was going to be a TOS prequel, it feels like the needle has moved since then into a more ready acceptance of prequel/reboot material … which, if true, is not great TBH.

As for making peace with it … yea, I’ll still watch SNW and probably enjoy a lot of it. What’s been lost for me, if the prequel feeling continues, is that I’ll never “love” SNW, and it will ultimately be “ok” for me, and new-Trek’s legacy will, for me, have lost its shining light and fall back to mediocrity, unfortunately.

If someone came to me and said they don’t watch Trek anymore because it’s gotten stale since the 90s (which has happened), now, I would say fair enough, but at the beginning of S2 I would have said (and did say) “have you watched SNW?”

Looking forward to Lower Decks though!

Cheers for the sympathies!!! (sorry for the rant!)

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

Kurtzman’s making shows for a streamer that says its strategy since the merger has become is “franchises, familiar faces and fandoms.”

I do suspect the needle has moved towards more legacy characters. It seems only the shows targeted at a younger audience get mainly new crews. Starfleet Academy and the 32nd century seem our best hope of seeing new characters and settings.

maegul ,

a streamer that says its strategy since the merger has become is “franchises, familiar faces and fandoms.”

Huh … didn’t know that was more or less explicit and public. Thanks!

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

Right out of the mouth of their head of streaming scheduling early in 2022.

Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Sylvester Stallone in the Sheridan shows cover off familiar faces too.

steebo_jack , (edited )

Just watched this and my biggest gripe with Star Trek will always be that the federation ships are just way too weak. Yes they aren't supposed to be a battle force, but any moderately powerful enemy and they are toast...at least they had that special crate of better weapons, but why not just make that the norm? Finally, what good are the force fields if everything inside of the ship is getting wrecked with each hit? And send more friggin ships...

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

You do realize that without shields, they’d have been blown out of the sky in one shot rather than being able to survive in a firefight, right? It’s like saying what’s the point of a kevlar vest I’m going to get a broken rib from a body shot? If I can live, I’ll take that vest and broken rib, thanks.

Power is relative. There’ve been times we’ve seen weapons from less advanced species than the Federation bounce uselessly off shields or are seen as no threat. We’ve also seen Starfleet ships get carved up like a prize turkey. The Gorn are powerful, that’s just it. That doesn’t mean Starfleet aren’t heavy hitters - at this point it’s just that there’s stronger kid in the playground.

steebo_jack ,

Yes i realize that it gives them time to basically run away or end up like the other ship in lil pieces floating in space...basically have to rely on some type of trick to win...kevlar vest also doesnt let the bullet wreck your organs, did you not see the people getting tossed around inside the hsip?

Just brought me back to Picard S03 where the Titan, one of their more powerful ships btw, getting folded by some pirate ship with a portal weapon...sigh...

CCatMan ,

I though everyone and everything getting wrecked was a throwback to TOS.

The enterprise Dansd E are pretty strong

steebo_jack ,

I started with next generation and although there were some wrecking in that, i didnt remember it being that bad...its been a while htough...

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

Exhibit A: The Battle of Wolf 359.

krnl386 ,
@krnl386@lemmy.ca avatar

The Defiant was a “tough little ship.” 😉

Richard ,
@Richard@startrek.website avatar

“Little?!”

jmp242 ,

For the number of ships, by TOS there are only 12 Constitution class ships, so there might not be more ships to send. We’re a year or so out from the Klingon war, and it doesn’t seem like the Federation is in a position to quickly replace ships. They already lost the Cayuga. Also the admiralty obviously isn’t interested in a Gorn war at all, and certainly not over this planet or the potential survivors.

I will say it’s been shown that Pike is just not a fighting captain. He’s not the person you want in a combat situation. It does make me wonder why he’s a Captain but idk. They really should send the Enterprise back on a deep space mission of exploration and have someone (who is not an evil mirror universe person) more like Lorca or Kirk running these border conflicts or something.

Hypersapien ,

Also, why didn’t their friggin Chief of Security know about the new weapons?

ThrowawayInTheYear23 ,
@ThrowawayInTheYear23@lemmy.world avatar

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

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.

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.

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.

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