Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x10 "Hegemony"

angstrom , 10 months ago

Anyone else notice that the 2 people on the shuttle down who didn’t have plot armor (Ortegas and La’an) were wearing red shirts?

Disgustoid , 10 months ago

There was at least one unnamed, previously unseen red shirt on the bridge as well. That was a hint there was going to be a body count. Of course, it could also mean that no one dies and the production staff are just playing into our expectations.

Basilisk , 10 months ago

Ortegas was in the alternate future with Pike at the time of “A Quality of Mercy”, which is not necessarily “plot armour” but if we assume the timeline still hasn’t diverged — Pike not having had his accident yet — then it would seem reasonable she should get through to survive long enough to see the point of divergence and therefore survive long enough to be on the bridge with Pike when he meets the Romulans. However, that’s all very timey-wimey and subject to a lot of “maybes” and “what-ifs”.

transwarp , 10 months ago

A Quality of Mercy also showed Una in prison, and Those Old Scientists implied she’s revered. Did sending that letter prevent Pike from recruiting her lawyer? Things are already not heading down the exact timeline we saw Ortegas alive in.

StillPaisleyCat , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Martin Quinn (Montgomery Scott) was reportedly born in Paisley, Scotland.

Dropping in to note that I’m feeling very smuggly self-satisfied that I decided not to completely abandon my alias when we migrated from the other place.

I guess that I must now become an unrepentant SNW Scotty stan. I look forward to seeing the character grow.

NuPNuA , 10 months ago

That’s the first actually Scottish Scotty isn’t it?

StillPaisleyCat , 10 months ago

Yes. Born in Paisley (like David Tennant), and out of Scotland’s National Theatre Company, no less.

tewha , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

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 , 10 months ago

It’s cold outside…

e_t_ Admin , 10 months ago

Apropos of this episode:

I'm all alone, more or less

e_t_ Admin , 10 months ago

I thought they looked like high-budget Scarrans

JWBananas , 10 months ago

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.

IonAddis , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

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

Edit: Now they’re working. Weird.

Tove , 10 months ago

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

GaiusGornicusCaesar , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

A cliffhanger… I was hoping they wouldn’t introduce those. I expect Sam and M’Benga will be the only one who makes it out alive… expecting to see Sulu and Chekov introduced soon.

Edit: Also the “They’ve been beamed up… by the gorn” and Pike standing there has the potential to be one of the most horrifying cliffhangers in Star Trek.

2nd Edit: Not Chekov…

LibraryLass , 10 months ago

Wouldn’t prime!Chekov be like 12 around this time frame?

GaiusGornicusCaesar , 10 months ago

Nevermind, forgot that Chekov wasn’t introduced until Season 2… but Sulu is a possibility.

angstrom , 10 months ago

Chekov was on the Enterprise during s1. Continuity with TWOK requires it. Plus some of the star dates for s2 episodes that starred Chekov where set before the star date for Space Seed.

But yes at this point we are ~6 years before TOS so Chekov would be in his late teens.

GaiusGornicusCaesar , 10 months ago

That’s true, TWOK requires him being on Enterprise for Season 1, or at least Space Seed. I wouldn’t hold stardates too closely since they basically pulled them out of a hat and used whatever was pulled. But he would be in his late teens.

UESPA_Sputnik , 10 months ago

Plus some of the star dates for s2 episodes that starred Chekov where set before the star date for Space Seed.

Stardates in TOS (and SNW) are just random numbers. You can’t extrapolate anything from them.

VindictiveJudge , 10 months ago

And now I wonder if they were poking at the random numbers when Boimler couldn’t figure out what the stardate would be and just said ‘the past’.

FrostyCaveman , 10 months ago

Definitely

StillPaisleyCat , 10 months ago

Also not Sulu if Sam Kirk is hanging around. Sulu was some kind of xenobiologist (xenobotanist?) in the opening episodes of TOS. The move to alpha shift helmsman came later.

GaiusGornicusCaesar , 10 months ago

Need to rewatch TOS then, memory’s got a bit rusty. Thanks!

khaosworks , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

How would Arena be undermined?

jaelisp , 10 months ago

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.

praxi , 10 months ago

Adored seeing Scotty show up. I am worried about Batel being infected, as I love seeing a strong woman Star Trek captain and love her relationship with Pike. Lots of hints that the Gorn are not just “monsters”. They are the Borg of pre-TOS era, as someone mentioned.

I hate cliffhangers though. I agree, how long before we see the next episode, especially with the strike.

jaelisp , 10 months ago

While a strong woman, they’ve done shockingly little to tell us anything about her until the last episode when we find out she likes tourism. But we know precious little of her personality and most of the relationship has been seen from Chris’ side. I think she’s been written to be disposable. But I’d love it if they save her and actually develop her more.

praxi , 10 months ago

We do know she is smart (ad astra episode where she is a lawyer), loyal (she tried to help Una) and doesn’t let Chris lie to her.

teft , 10 months ago

I hope she lives because I like her as a captain. She seems very laid back and I feel like Starfleet being huge and all there would be a few captains that are pretty chill.

reddig33 , 10 months ago

I keep hoping Sam Kirk or someone else (even a female character) gets some space lovin’ going on. Everyone on TOS was much more swinging space 60s, and Jim Kirk was quite the lothario, but everyone on this show is much more traditional romantic.

startrek , 10 months ago

@praxi maybe they keep Batel in the buffer of the medical transporter like M'Benga did with his daughter in season one.

praxi , 10 months ago

I hope they can find a cure besides the transporter buffer, because I am worried the hundreds of people beamed onto the Gorn ship may also have been infected.

RootBeerGuy , 10 months ago

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

khaosworks , 10 months ago

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

Zpiritual , 10 months ago

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.

AuroraBorealis , 10 months ago

I’ll say it, the adult gorn, in those space suits look awesome, I’m a sucker for more animalistic races in star trek

maegul , 10 months ago

The adult gorn was easily my favourite part of the episode!

There’s clearly a horror strain in the Gorn arc, with pretty strong echos/homages of Alien … and I am all here for it. With the scene of Batel warding off the young Gorn, I knew straight away she’d been impregnated because of the clear Alien reference.

freeman , 10 months ago

I really liked the subtle hints. They arent just savage creatures. They have advanced technology. Communicate in ways humans cant understand at all. Use tech in ways most humans cant handle as well. Etc etc.

Trek would do good to have more species that arent humanoid. It makes for a much more interesting show.

maegul , 10 months ago

And now is the time to do it, where VFX and CGI are surely up to the task now.

freeman , 10 months ago

Agree. One of my favorite species was the Xindi in enterprise. But even they fell victim to the trope of the universal translator. A species like the Gorn where normal linguistics just won’t work would be a nice touch (Ala the movie arrival or something)

PorthosAteMyCheese , 10 months ago

Shaka, when the walls fell!

freeman , 10 months ago

Kind of like that but with a modern format that can span multiple episodes.

r2vq , 10 months ago

We should try throwing styrofoam rocks at them

lemillionsocks , 10 months ago

We’re a long way from the silly rubber suit. They’re terrifying and the way they reproduce and use that tale screams xenomorph.

teft , 10 months ago

I’m a sucker for more animalistic races in star trek

Bring back the Xindi insectoids!!!

JWBananas , 10 months ago

They showed up in Prodigy as I recall

ieightpi , 10 months ago

me too. we need more of the Gorn in other trek adaptions

nxdefiant , 10 months ago

I’m impressed by Gorn engineering now. Making a space suit with what looked like dozens of vacuum- grade articulated tail joints can’t be easy.

Hypersapien , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

The one thing I want to see is an Edosian in a live action Star Trek series.

Faceman2K23 , 10 months ago

Scotty!

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

maegul , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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.

khaosworks , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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.

UESPA_Sputnik , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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

erbazzone , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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.

erbazzone , 10 months ago

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 , 10 months ago

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