Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x04 "Among the Lotus Eaters"

Written by Kirsten Beyer & Davy Perez

Directed by Eduardo Sanchez

LoglineReturning to a planet that dredges up tragic memories, Captain Pike and his landing party find themselves forgetting everything, including their own identities as he confronts a ghost from his past.

cyberic ,
@cyberic@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I wrote this as I was watching:

  • Since when have Batel and Pike have a history? Was she in season 1?
  • I wish they had a tone warning at the beginning of the episode, also I thought the tones went for a little too long each time.
  • Lol this is the anti-Spock world. “Your emotions are your truth.” Maybe Spock should have been on the planet surface as well.
  • Did Spock forget how to read?
  • Did the Enterprise not feel the effects in the previous mission? Did they forget to record it or make personal logs?
cyberic ,
@cyberic@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I rewatched the beginning and around 10:17 Spock mentioned that the collision was hundreds of years ago, so they should have felt the effects on the previous mission. Then in the shuttle they mention that the meteor was already there for thousands of years… So I’m just more confused why the memory effects weren’t there before.

ValueSubtracted OP Mod ,
@ValueSubtracted@startrek.website avatar

They said in the episode that the original mission had been so short (4 hours if I recall correctly), Pike’s crew had not felt the effects.

CeruleanRuin ,
@CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one avatar

Yup, they basically touched down, immediately encountered some nasty violent opposition, and cut their losses and left bleeding. It was bad enough to make Pike question his fitness as a leader.

Jon-H558 , (edited )

They were in and out in four hours was mentioned deliberately I feel , and then the trekking for 6hours before laan started it all

18+ sammydee ,
@sammydee@universeodon.com avatar

@cyberic @ValueSubtracted She was in S1E1, scene 1. She was trying to get him to leave his cabin and get back to work.

ValueSubtracted OP Mod ,
@ValueSubtracted@startrek.website avatar

She was in “A Quality of Mercy” as well.

FormerGameDev ,

If I remember correctly, the very first scene of S1E1 was Batel waking up in Pike’s bed, so… yeah :D

Randy_Bobandy ,
@Randy_Bobandy@lemmy.ml avatar

For the last one: Spock stated that the previous mission they hadn’t stayed as long as they were when the effects started happening.

GordonShumway ,

Your 2nd point is valid for Tinnitus sufferers like myself I think. I found the early moments of the episode quite uncomfortable as a result of hearing that tone amongst the already present tones in my real world!

regeya ,

Good Lord they established that Pike and Batel have a relationship in the first episode.

williams_482 ,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

The first scene of the first episode, even.

khan_shot_1st ,

I think he forgot how to read English. I suspect had he remembered how to switch his padd to a Vulcan script, he would have been able to read that. Maybe.

deepthaw ,

Did Spock forget how to read?

Maybe it’s a nod to Discovery establishing he had a learning disability similar to dyslexia.

autojourno ,

If I remember right, she’s in the very first scene of SNW. A bearded Pike in Alaska riding a horse to a cabin where they’re staying together. She’s gently needling him about whether he should go back to a command. I think she’s about to leave to go back to her ship after a vacation together. Something like that.

sabremows ,
@sabremows@meow.social avatar

I'm primarily curious about Batel's job responsibilities. Her main job seems to be as a JAG officer but she also has a field command on the Cayuga?

ValueSubtracted OP Mod ,
@ValueSubtracted@startrek.website avatar

She was in command of the Cayuga in “A Quality of Mercy” as well - it seems that’s her regular gig, and she was assigned Una’s prosecution because…well, that’s how Starfleet rolls, I guess.

InverseParallax ,

I think she was asked by starfleet since she was close, then asked to do jag duty (?!) As a test of her fitness for higher command, which she should have passed.

TheGayTramp ,
@TheGayTramp@lemmy.ca avatar

Everyone knows that ship captains are the best lawyers. That’s why starfleet keeps using them as attorneys in all their trials

milkisklim ,

Maybe the Cayuga performs a support mission? It can do standard starship stuff but also specializes in social work, like diplomacy, legal services, law enforcement, politics, etc

TheGayTramp ,
@TheGayTramp@lemmy.ca avatar

Even if that were the case and the Cayuga is a flying legal-aid clinic it doesn’t make much sense to put the lawyer in charge. You’d have a regular command officer trained to fly spaceships running the ship, and Batel would be like the chief counsel or whatever aboard. But they also did it weird with Crusher too when they made her the captain of a hospital ship. Again, you’d have a ship-captain-type-person flying the thing, and a doctor in charge of the doctoring

andrybak ,
@andrybak@startrek.website avatar

Reed Birney’s acting is great. His soft voice is very touching.

– Be in the moment with me.

– We look out for each other. Every night we have our forgetting.

– You are guided by your emotions. They are your truth. I find them convincing. The totem teaches that we live in each moment, embrace them.

Azfaa ,

I have loved SNW from the get go but I think its great that to me at least every episode has been great. I don’t think I have felt meh or bummed out by any singular one so far. Comparing to TNG and DS9 who had quite a few meh episodes. That is great imo

thomasb2k ,

I agree, this show has knocked it out the park. It’s in the top 3 for me; TNG, DS9, and SNW. The order changes regularly ;)

reddig33 ,

To me, this felt like the first real, original, stand alone episode of this season. I didn’t care for the courtroom drama episode, or the time travel one. Those plot lines have been done on Star Trek so many times before.

Still wishing this wasn’t a series that insisted on the “previously on” intro. You never saw that on TOS or TNG unless it was a two parter.

triktrek ,

And this “Previously on” was also not actually that useful/needed.

Beefcyclone ,

Did anyone else just despise the noise though, loved the episode but for me that noise will make the episode un-rewatchable…

Calanon ,

It’s bugged me a little in previous episodes, but in this episode it really bugged me that the entire medical staff seems to be M’Benga and Chapel - I know it’s normal for Trek for the staffs to appear small but normally either it’s been a plot point (Voy), others mentioned if not seen (DS9) or that we occasionally see them (TNG, DIS, TOS). It’d be nice just to see a few others about.

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

We saw several more staff in sickbay in season one, especially in the episode with the contagion from the former Illyrian colony.

I found it very odd that Chapel was on her own with no other medical technicians or paramedics in this episode.

sammydee ,
@sammydee@universeodon.com avatar

@StillPaisleyCat @Calanon She's a modern O'Brien, then. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time without backup. :)

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

Annotations up at https://startrek.website/post/282663.

This was a very TOS episode yet in terms of feel.

The dialogue could easily have come from the mouths of the TOS cast, and the situation on the planet reminiscent of officers violating the Prime Directive like in TOS: “The Omega Glory” or “Bread and Circuses”. Even Mount's delivery when on the planet was Shatner-esque.

I can readily imagine Kirk, McCoy and a random redshirt or Chekov on the planet in Pike, M’Benga and La’An’s place, and Sulu pulling it together like Ortegas.

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

I agree that it has a genuine TOS feel.

Especially as it gets back to the mid 20th century thought experiments around how the mind functions, but informed my more current understanding of memory, cognitive function and emotion.

I wasn’t quite sure the balance of the scenes was what it could have been, but it was good to see all of the main cast having their moments. I was nonetheless frustrated that Number One was quickly sidelined once again.

Also I was uncomfortable with how far Pike was willing to go in his aggression in order to get information from Zack. I believe we’re supposed to feel that, but it did feel that it was pushed just that moment longer to drive home the point that Pike’s deep ethics are what keeps him in check, not his emotions. It also tracks with his anger and how he even used it to break the thrall of the Talosians in The Cage.

But overall, I liked it. It’s a deeper and more challenging episode than it may seem on the surface, first watch. I suspect it will be one that stands up over a longer horizon.

psychothumbs ,

I felt like they were trying to show Captain Pike as going a little far when beating up Zac, but I thought he was being totally reasonable given the situation of “this guy knows how to keep your memories and you really really need to force him to hand that information over.” There was no way for him to know all he had to do was wait around in the palace for a little while.

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

It’s an interesting insight into Pike’s character - the fact that he had to remember not to beat the crap out of Zac implies that innately he’s not a pacifist or a nice guy; that dark side is something he’s learned to keep in check.

tdriley ,
@tdriley@mas.to avatar

@psychothumbs @khaosworks That was interesting. His instincts work overpowering Zac in the phaser battle but then we don’t actually know if he’ll “remember” he can’t just beat him senseless afterwards. Maybe we’ll see some Pike backstory at some point that shows him learning ethical lessons when he’s younger.

FormerGameDev ,

hmm. This makes me wonder. Is there a way to link to a specific message thread, that is universal across instances?

If not, it seems like it’s a feature that is sorely needed.

lemillionsocks ,
@lemillionsocks@beehaw.org avatar

Yeah theres a sort of goofy way memory loss works and how it was still taken very seriously gave me a good old school trek vibe which I dug throughout the episode.

tdriley ,
@tdriley@mas.to avatar

@ValueSubtracted second best episode of S2 so far, after Ad Astra Per Aspera. The type of setup has already been done many times but there are enough new ideas to keep it interesting. The old man is a great single-episode character.

deepthaw ,

This episode should have started in media res, with the away team already on planet and having lost their memories. Once we got the explainer as to what was happening, then we could return to the Enterprise to show the growing crisis there, and finally wrap everything up as the episode already did.

IonAddis ,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, the more I think about it, I think you’re right. It’s possible they didn’t because they wanted to bookend it with stuff about the pilot.

The episode as well was a decent one-episode-and-done thing, with a few threads they left open to explore later. But I agree that if they’d begun with the memory loss and cages, and worked backwards from there, it would have been “cooler” and more emotionally effective.

The episode wasn’t a bad one. It wasn’t a great one. It was solid. Given how many fans have said they want Trek like this, it’s probably serviceable and “good enough” for the season.

I’m looking forward to some cooler episodes, though. The first 3 spoiled me, I liked them a lot.

bobfett ,

No.... I juste have a hate for most of the Trek episodes starting with a catastrophic situation and a blackout with a "XX hours ago..." captions...

Top easy writing.... At least, they build the tension here

Voyager763 ,

I couldn’t agree more. It feels like lazy storytelling, and I actually appreciated this episode for not resorting to that kind of fakery. It’s setup was strong enough to be its own thing. I respect that a lot.

BorgDrone ,

Was the high pitched ringing sound really necessary, especially for that long each time? That almost physically hurt and it scared the fsck out of my cat.

sammydee ,
@sammydee@universeodon.com avatar

@BorgDrone @ValueSubtracted As a person with tinnitus, it seemed important to me. Let me know exactly what was going on. It's also very common in video games, for example when someone is dazed by a nearby explosion. Again it conveyed a lot of meaning to me and helped explain what they were going through.

BorgDrone ,

Sure, but there is a difference between having that sound at low volume for 2 seconds and blasting it through all 10 speakers for 20.

CeruleanRuin ,
@CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one avatar

Ooh, look at this guy with ten speakers! Fancy pants over here! : P

williams_482 ,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

It seemed a perfectly harmless and appropriate volume to me listening on headphones. Perhaps your bass needs adjustment.

BorgDrone ,

It’s not the bass that was the problem, it was the high pitched sounds.

CeeBee ,

It seemed a perfectly harmless

As someone with tinnitus, it not only hurt, but triggered my tinnitus to be worse for the rest of the day.

Far from harmless. I had a proper issue with the excessive ringing in this episode.

williams_482 ,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

Well that definitely sucks. Sorry you had to deal with that.

psychothumbs ,

Haha I kept worrying that my cats and baby would be disturbed by it but fortunately they didn’t seem to react much.

autojourno ,

Yeah. I watched with a loved one who needs hearing aids, and I can vouch that that exact pitch plays havoc with high-tech hearing aids and apparently results in actual physical pain. We finished the episode with the sound way down, reading the captions to understand it. It’s fine for 99% of people but I would have appreciated a warning for the 1% that experienced actual pain from that.

Continuumguy ,

Thoughts as I watch:

  • So, I’m wondering: is Cayuga a reference to Rod Serling? He named his production company that in reference to the lake in New York.
  • Relationships suck when you are a Starfleet captain who knows your destiny to one day be in a beepie chair.
  • Rigel 7, a deep cut!
  • We have gone (ZERO) days without some sort of Starfleet prime directive problem.
  • Finally, some Ortegas action!
  • “THE HAT IS SUPREME.” I’m going to have to use that in conversation.
  • Oh man, at least she keeps the hat.
  • “Subdermal universal translators” are the new translation microbes
  • Oh boy, they have starfleet tech.
  • Ah, we’ve got a good old-fashioned “Federation citizen takes over a world” episode!
  • “This is a cage.” Heh.
  • Forgetting is a scary side effect for a planet.
  • I get that they were only on there for like four hours, but shouldn’t they have noticed stuff like this their last visit? Or maybe… THEY LOST
  • “Welcome to Memento/50 First Dates Planet”
  • Can still remember how to fight!
  • So I’m guessing Spock is probably one of the more resistant to all of this due to his Vulcan-ness.
  • Man, La’An is having a REALLY bad pair of weeks.
  • Captain Pike even without his memories is still Captain Pike. Makes sense.
  • Okay, I guess Spock isn’t immune.
  • Glad to see the Connie class had GPS.
  • I gotta admit, I feel like Pelia would be good in this episode given just how many memories she has to lose and how many skills she has.
  • SHE FLIES THE SHIP
  • The ship’s computer is great this week.
  • Damn, that is some tough silverware, standing up to phaser blasts.
  • Is it just me or is that a fresco or whatever of Alexander the Great… Zac-ized?
  • Okay, that logic doesn’t quite seem sound, but whatever.
  • So, uhm, be careful about telling her about the Beepy-chair, Chris.
FormerGameDev ,

I thought it was Cuyahoga? correct me if i’m wrong pls

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

It’s Cayuga, as per the closed captioning, and it’s likely no coincidence. As I noted in my annotations, the Cayuga first appeared in “A Quality of Mercy”, which shares a title with a 1961 Twilight Zone episode starring Leonard Nimoy. And TZ was produced by Serling’s production company, Cayuga Productions.

FormerGameDev ,

Thank you!

williams_482 ,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

shares a title with a 1961 Twilight Zone episode starring Leonard Nimoy.

For better or worse, I’m not sure “starring” is quite the right description. Nimoy has like three lines and a couple minutes of screen time. I found it rather jarring to recognize Nimoy early in the episode and then see so little of him after.

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

Featuring, perhaps.

Continuumguy ,

Yes, I noticed that in your annotations over at… the other place. Interestingly enough, Roddenberry spoke at a memorial for Serling in 1975

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

I post them as a stand-alone in c/DaystromInstitute every week now.

UESPA_Sputnik ,
@UESPA_Sputnik@lemmy.world avatar

“This is a cage.” Heh.

I hope that one day Captain Pike visits a zoo and says “this is a menagerie”.

autojourno ,

The platter cracked me up.

Ensign — “captain…sir…this directive says all away teams will be issued a Pfaltzgraff serving set for protection?”

Pike — “trust me on that one.”

gibberish_driftwood ,

I’ve only managed to see this episode once, but something I didn’t understand was Spock’s decision to try and hide in the debris field. At this point they believed the planet was the source of the problem, but it seemed mostly a guess that the debris field might shield them.

Wouldn’t the most logical action have been to get as far away from the planet as reasonably possible until the effects appeared to subside? I know Una made a point that they had crew down there, but it’s not as if they can’t return more cautiously and with a clearer understanding of what’s happening. You’re also helpless to help your landing party if you’re completely incapacitated yourself.

Have I missed something important?

apprehensively_human ,

I kept yelling at my TV. Leave orbit! Get out and regroup!

TeaHands ,
@TeaHands@lemmy.world avatar

That’s what I expected them to do as well, but I’m no science officer.

theothersparrow ,
@theothersparrow@lemmy.one avatar

My headcanon is that the radiation had already begun affecting his decision-making.

It’s a stretch, I know.

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

I don’t think it’s a bad headcanon.

We do know that the first landing went wildly wrong quickly. It’s possible that the judgement and short term memories of Pike and Spock of that landing were affected by more than trauma and shock.

There was individual variation in how rapidly the effects presented. We saw that La’an experienced some early tinnitus shortly after the shuttle landed.

On the ship, Spock wasn’t necessarily correct in his inference given he was already experiencing some cognitive impairment by that point.

FelipeFelop ,
@FelipeFelop@feddit.uk avatar

They could have retreated, sent shuttles on short duration missions to locate the crew but that would not have made a very interesting story.

In universe, I think they were all already affected at that point and showed poor judgement.

crazycanadianloon ,

I think it’s not just because Una pointed out there was crew down there but specifically told Spock they had to (should) stay close. He took it literally as a command whereas he really should have evaluated it for himself.

autojourno ,

He recommended to the First Officer that they retreat from the planet and she gave him an order not to do that. She went to sick bay after but I don’t think command was formally transferred to him.

So he looked for an alternative that would keep them safe while still executing a superior officer’s instructions, and he got it wrong by misunderstanding compounds in the debris that he’d never encountered before. If he’d been right about the debris it would have been a genius move. As it was, he followed orders and looked for non-suicidal way to do that.

UhBell ,
@UhBell@lemmy.world avatar

Damn I love this show. I can’t help but wonder if Hemmer would have been affected differently by the radiation if he wasn’t a gorn egg popsicle.

UESPA_Sputnik ,
@UESPA_Sputnik@lemmy.world avatar

Isn’t Spock usually the one to be immune? But he was affected to, so was Una. It’s likely that Hemmer would have been affected as well (for plot reasons anyway).

G59 ,

I almost thought Una’s super healing ability would make her immune/resistant to the radiation damage.

rother_stuebs ,
@rother_stuebs@mastodon.online avatar

@UESPA_Sputnik
Sounds like Troi's telepathic abilities always being mysteriously blocked when the story demands it.

@UhBell

Tired8281 ,

I don’t understand that dude, needling the dude with no memory who was beating on him, then acting all surprised when that same dude puts a gun on him. Like, what was he trying to do? It seemed like he was trying to get Pike to kill him, but then he wasn’t. Wtf?

FelipeFelop ,
@FelipeFelop@feddit.uk avatar

It was implied that the trauma of being left behind, the things that happened to him when he lost his memory, the memory of those things when he entered the castle and the things he did to become ruler caused to him to become insane.

crazycanadianloon ,

The way I read the scene was that he was so high off his power that he thought with the tables turned and Pike having no power that he would have the upper hand. But Pike managed to subdue him and High Lord Zacarias was all of a sudden staring down the barrel of a phaser rifle and all of a sudden wasn’t so confident that the Pike he knew, who would lower the weapon once the combatant was subdued, was still there. I think the sudden switch was just an “OH shit, what have I done?” moment.

tdriley ,
@tdriley@mas.to avatar

@Tired8281 @crazycanadianloon yeh that’s my interpretation. For a moment it looks like Pike has not recovered enough to remember he shouldn’t kill someone when he has the upper hand. Zac suddenly changes demeanor when he realises Pike might not show any mercy.

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