Logline

A distress call from Lt. Noonien-Singh compels Spock to disobey orders and take the USS Enterprise and its crew into disputed space, risking renewed hostilities with the Klingons in a bid to aid their shipmate.

Written by Henry Alonso Myers & Akiva Goldsman

Directed by Chris Fisher


A note about episode discussions on startrek.website

Right now, the plan is to post the /c/startrek discussion when the episode drops on Thursdays. Once the global community has had some time to watch and digest what they’ve seen, the /c/daystrominstitute discussion will go live on Sundays for a more in-depth analysis. This is subject to change as we evaluate what works best for the community as a whole.

    1. I am 100% here for the chaotic energy that Carol Kane is going to bring to this show.
    2. The Klingon captain had exactly the right amount of swagger and sassiness that a TOS-era Klingon captain is supposed to have. I’m glad that they’re moving on from some of the Discovery Klingon characterization while also resisting the urge to jump right to them behaving like TNG Klingons.
  • I’m so happy to have SNW back. Whoever decided to put Carol Kane in the show needs to get a raise; she is absolutely spectacular. I’m very curious to see where her character goes.

    I enjoy the idea of Spock being more emotional it really puts it into perspective that Vulcans have emotions they just try to keep them under lock and key and Spock being half human is having a harder time with that compared to most Vulcans is… relatable.

    I did not like weird green super power drug that Chapel and M’Benga took to fight the the Klingons. It came from no where, the shot on the eyes right out of Dread made me think it was literally Slo-Mo from that movie. It really wasn’t necessary, they could have just grabbed phasers somewhere instead.

    I’m not realy sure how I feel about them using the term false flag in Star Trek. The plot makes sense but still it’s a very charged term today.

  • For the love of Pete can we stop with all of the lame catch phrases and dumb jokes? Spock should have just uttered something simple suiting the Vulcan personality/character, like “proceed”. But no, we have to get a lame line one step above a fart joke…

    • I really don’t get why people are so upset about the warp catchphrase thing. I think its great that there’s a tradition through Trek lore. It reinforces to me that these are all people. People working hard to advance themselves to the point they daydream of sitting in the Captain’s chair. Every single Trek nerd can empathize with that daydream.

      • @arod48 @startrek For me, it breaks the suspension of disbelief. The whole “catchphrase” conversation was, for sure, a writer’s room thing that leaked into the scripts. It might be an interesting thing to reflect on for the writers and the fans, but it rings untrue when the characters spend so much time on it.

        It reminds me of all those “Let’s put on a show!” situations in various movies and TV shows. The characters in those programs probably wouldn’t be inclined, but for the the entertainment community that produced the show, it’s second nature, and often allows them to entertain the audience by letting the actors show off their other talents (viz Picard lustily quoting Shakespearean sonnets to impress some Ferengi). Sure, it’s entertaining, but if you want to suspend disbelief and get into a story about highly trained people helming a starship, bristling with weapons and technology, it’s jarring.

        IMHO, of course 😉

        •  NuPNuA   ( @NuPNuA@lemm.ee ) 
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          It made sense in Lower Decks when Freeman was coming up with “warp me” in a quiet moment, but this kind of “stop the action dead for a funny bit” is one of the worst trends in modern writing.

  • Regarding Nurse Chapel almost dying - this is one of the TV/movie tropes that I think is such a cheap and terrible device and I am tired of it. Discovery was full of these scenes where they make you believe a main character really almost died, only to survive after all, and having their crew mates weep for them (I am looking at you Burnham). There are much better ways to create good drama.

    • I’d normally agree with you but I don’t think they were trying to fool the audience in this case. It was more about showing Spock’s emotional reaction.

      Still, there’s better ways of showing that than the almost dying trope.

      spoiler

      Nurse Chapel is in TOS - so there wasn’t really any risk that she was going to die here.

      • undefined> I’d normally agree with you but I don’t think they were trying to fool the audience in this case. It was more about showing Spock’s emotional reaction.

        Yep that was my take as well.

    • @triktrek Oh, boy - Can we talk about “Picard”?! Data dies in Nemesis, a great and noble sacrifice. Which is then diminished, because we brought him back for Picard! The staff didn’t think the Nemesis sacrifice was a worthy sendoff, or perhaps *they* wanted to do the sending off. So we’ll kill him again, this time with feeling! But, season three, the old gang is all getting together again. Maybe we can resurrect him one more time? (I’m aware of the supposed differences, but really. It was Data.)

      And they killed off Picard! Another great and noble sacrifice! But no, not really, let’s bring him back as an android, you’ll never notice the difference! 🙄

      It’s really at the point where a character’s death is robbed of all drama, because there’s always a way to resurrect them. It was a dream, they were in the Mirror universe, the mycelium network made a copy, etc.

      • I agree. That’s why it would have actually been shocking if there were to really kill Chapel. I only watched Games of Thrones lately (yeah I know), and boy was I shocked at the various kills of main characters.

  • As President of the Spock/Chapel fanclub and a sucker for Klingons, I feel that this episode was plucked out of my brain.

    I loved it.

    I’m also glad they began to explore a bit of post war PTSD through M’Benga. It’ll be interesting to see how far they go with the Gorn.

  • Thoughts and observations written as I watch- I’ll be putting this on both Reddit and Lemmy, since infinity diversity/infinity combinations:

    • Wheeee, NCC-1701 in the Star Trek tag!

    • Previously: Last season happened.

    • Little ships flying!

    • Wonder who the lawyer that Una and Pike have tried to reach is.

    • Oh, hey, the Vulcan musical instrument whose name I can’t remember!

    • “Fascinating.” “Isn’t that usually his line?”

    • The fellowship on archeological medicine? Is that a reference to Dr. Korby?

    • “We must steal the Enterprise.” Buddy, if I had a nickel every time someone had to steal the Enterprise, I’d have several nickels.

    • Lt. Mitchell gunning for series regular next year with how much screen time she’s had early on this episode.

    • Okay, having Carol Kane is already paying dividends.

    • And, yeah, Carol Kane doesn’t need alien makeup to be an alien. She’s already an alien.

    • I’m still not sure if the emphasis one the warp catch phrase is amazing or annoying, but this scene was funny.

    • KLINGON UPDATE: RIDGES!

    • So clearly La’An’s augmented ancestors were genetically engineered to drink a lot. Which, y’know what? Fair.

    • Ah, the borderlands, where utopian rules go away and everyone becomes a Ferengi.

    • Congratulations to Uhura on graduating from the Academy.

    • Ah, the old “I have technology that I’m totally not making up that will blow you up” bluff!

    • New transporter chief?

    • Okay, so the angry borderlands people are trying to do some sort of false flag thing.

    • Redundant Klingon organs, the old standby.

    • Roided-up doctors can tell you what bones they broke as they break them.

    • These are obviously Discovery sets.

    • This action scene, while well-done, is way too long.

    • A D7!

    • “We’ve gotten out of worse.” “No, not really!”

    • “This I’ve got to see!”

    • I wonder if “Lanthanite” is a synonym for “El-Aurian”

    • Pelia knowing that being on the Enterprise means adventure is further proof that those ships are goddamn weirdness magnets.

    • Gorn. Yes, it stretches canon but fuck it the Gorn are awesome we’ll come up with an explanation later.

    • “For Nichelle”

    • Overall, while not one of the better episodes, it still was a good start to the season. It wrapped up one of the hanging threads of last year (La’An), we continued to see some of Young Spock’s struggles with his emotions before he became the more-Vulcan Spock that Nimoy was in the main TOS series, and we got our first look at Carol Kane as the nutty new engineer. Overall, I’ll call that a win!

  • I’m not entirely sure if I have to spoiler tag this since this is in the discussion thread but I will anyways since the rule doesn’t say the threads are an exception to the rule. Edit: Thanks ValueSubtracted for the clarification on this.

    Really disliked this one. And I loved just about all of season 1.

    One of the main things for me is that the pacing felt far too quick.

    For instance, when getting the injection of the super serum, they only briefly mentioned M’Benga’s issue with it and quickly moved on without any sort of issues beyond that brief line.

    I also have some issues with the characterization and general way the crew acted. They seemed a lot less professional in this and unlike an actual Starfleet crew.

    Spock’s emotional side, while I suppose justified in-universe, made him feel a lot less “Spock” to me. I was fine with his behavior in season 1 but this just feels a bit far, to the point of him being nearly unrecognizable. His “I would like the ship to go. Now” make me physically recoil in cringe with how unfunny I found it to be.

    M’Benga and Chapel just beating up a bunch of bad guys three separate times felt incredibly unnecessary and I fail to see any sort of reason there couldn’t have been some sort of clever escape rather than bland, mindless fighting. I think I skipped a whole minute total of them just punching the bad guys with how long the scenes drew on for. And the way M’Benga’s issue with the super serum was just brushed over with a fleeting line came across as poorly executed.

    La’an outdrinking a klingon seemed rather ridiculous and all I could think of was that it seemed like a bad D&D introduction to a stereotypical “cool” character. And then her burping? Did they really need a burp joke in this? It came across as uncharacteristically juvenile for the show.

    That said, I did like a bit of it. Visual effects were great as always and I appreciated the slightly different intro. I’m glad the cliffhanger from last season both wasn’t immediately resolved or dwelled upon too much. The false flag operation was a neat idea and it was cool to see yet another type of ship. The Klingons looked and sounded perfect and much more similar to how they were in 90s Trek, I’m glad the design was changed to this from their design in Discovery.

    Overall, I very much disliked it, despite a few positive elements to it. No hate, I just disliked those parts of it I talked about.

    Finally, this isn’t any sort of issue I take with the show but they said that the false flag ship was Crossfield class. However, it didn’t look anything like a Crossfield class beyond the ring in the saucer. Did Starfleet change the Crossfield class to a different design?

    • I recall reading somewhere that Akiva is trying to arc spock from “smiling spock” in The Cage through koh’linar and into TOS spock over the lifespan of SNW. Spock ditching his emotional blocks and starting to ‘lose it’ already this season would play directly into that plan. He continues unraveling for, say, this season and part of next, and then he embraces koh’linar to regain composure and control of his emotions. Perhaps McCoy is around for this particular event, witnessing Spock’s ‘transition’ into a computer, setting up all the remarks from TOS.

    • I agree with a lot of your concerns. Two medical staff taking drugs and beating a mob of Klingons senseless with little hesitation and no apparent ramifications is horribly, horribly out of tone with what I’ve come to expect from Trek.

      Spock is another issue. I’m fine with him undergoing growth and having a full character arc - but I really don’t see this Spock becoming the one in TOS — a Spock who disobeyed direct orders from Starfleet and was reluctantly able to potentially kill two crew members goes on to have the disastrous experience as leader in the Galileo Seven? Best I can see is he actively goes as hard as he can on suppressing his human side in the near future but that wouldn’t make him suddenly forget what emotions, illogic, and all that human baggage feels like when he’s interacting with humans later in his career.

      (And for the record - I really enjoy Ethan Peck as Spock and watching his struggles with his emotional control. I just don’t feel like it’s the same character as in TOS and don’t see how he’d get there.)

      • Yes, this is my main complaint with this episode and SNW wrt Spock in general. I sort of get the idea that he’s going on an arc from “Smiling Spock” in the cage to TOS, but it’ll be a real weird kind of change over to TOS Spock IMHO from this. And like you said, how does he become the Spock in the Galileo Seven? At this point it sort of seems like he’d need a mind wipe or something…

        I certainly would have thought something like him saying “It is illogical to require “a thing” to carry out lawful orders lieutenant.” and if pressed again something like “We do not have time to waste - carry out your orders”.

        This “everyone has a thing” is stupid, and to do it in multiple series?

        And Spock’s whole thing to continue to wait / worry about M’Benga and Chapel after saying their choice was logical didn’t fit for me, nor did his reaction to Chapel. How does he go from that to TOS “ignoring/not noticing” Chapel’s thing for him, and lack of interest in her?

    • I don’t know that I agree with the characterization issues you’re mentioning, but as far as the cold read as a Crossfield, she does mention that she just thinks it’s one. Other than the secondary hull being hilariously overlong, the saucer cutouts are easily the most distinctive part of a Crossfield, and they weren’t terribly common based on what we know from Discovery. Based on that, I could see how someone could read a Crossfield saucer bolted onto the back half of an upside down NX to be ‘oh I guess that’s what Crossfields look like?’.

      • There’s been a fan theory for a while that the reason for Discovery’s really long nacelles was that the ship (and Glenn) were specially modified for the spore drive experiments.

        This episode would seem to reinforce that.

        Also interestingly the saucer seems to be the one from the original (substandard) CG teaser Discovery saucer, rather than the final show version.

    • The Crossfield mismatch jumped out to me as well. A response earlier in this thread suggested perhaps the Klingons put the saucer of a Crossfield with the drive section of a different class because that is what they had lying around. Not explicitly stated, but that makes sense to me.

    • La’an outdrinking a klingon seemed rather ridiculous and all I could think of was that it seemed like a bad D&D introduction to a stereotypical “cool” character. And then her burping? Did they really need a burp joke in this? It came across as uncharacteristically juvenile for the show.

      Would’ve been expected by the Klingon opponent. Who when he tried to do it, nearly puked himself.

  • This is a fine episode, but I felt it tried to take on too much when it absolutely did not need to. The stolen starship thing never felt purposeful. I presume its intent is to help set up why the enterprise is going so deep into klingon territory, but i’m just not sold on that. I think an espionage/stealth set up would’ve been a better balance (especially with later sneaking through the asteroids).

    Others have brought up Spock’s emotion and how it’s seemingly exceeding TOS Spock. Personally, Im not too concerned with this. I tend to be pretty fast and lose with canon (i’m here to have fun, not stress over every thing). With that said, my best theory is that between now and The Cage, Spock will have some traumatic event which forces him to lock away his emotions further.

    • The Cage (in which Spock smiles and laughs) was set prior to season 2 of Discovery (in which Spock is an emotional mess) which was in turn set prior to season 1 of Strange New Worlds.

      You probably mean The Menagerie in which he effortlessly and stoicly steals the Enterprise to return Pike to Talos IV (under penalty of death, no less).

      But those events are several years away, and it should not come as a surprise to anyone but the most devout of Voyager fans that characters should develop and change over time.

      Spock is a dyslexic half human who also just lost his adoptive sister only about a year ago, in a very traumatic and very classified fashion at that. And on top of that, he, like Burnham, is still learning what it means to be human after a youth of being forced to be exclusively Vulcan.

      It is logical to assume that one’s ability to conquer one’s emotions should improve with age and with experience (outside of Trellium-induced brain damage or plot-device geriatric diseases). He certainly seems a lot more in control now than when he was throwing a temper tantrum in Burnham’s quarters (despite his setback in SNW s01).

      The whole point is experiencing the journey that gets Spock to that point. It is no different than Cadet Uhura versus Lieutenant Uhura.

      Isn’t that what Trek is supposed to be about? The human[oid] condition?

      • Completely agreed about Spock’s emotional journey. It’s also important to note that Spock’s relationship with the crew of the Enterprise is far more familial and personal at this time than it is TOS. Look at how Ortegas and Uhura tease him mercilessly on the bridge, and he indulges them with an air of bemusement. I think that by the time he becomes Jim Kirk’s first officer, years from now, he will have seen this close-knit group of officers move on one by one… and as friends come and go, he’ll adopt a more distanced, some might say more professional attitude, one that he considers befitting of an executive officer.

        • I can see this, also as he is promoted - I imagine a Lieutenant might still be able to be “one of the guys” in a way that the XO just can’t be (for newer people) - but I also have trouble seeing how you wouldn’t remain friends with the people you did know before, i.e. Uhura. Maybe just “You have to act professionally when other people are around”, which also could be a discussion that happens just after she was flirting with him on the bridge (and would make that whole thing in TOS make more sense in line with the other romantic instances for Spock - they never were romantic actually, it just was the last time she was teasing him on the bridge, and she happened to do it that way that time).

  • Since this is our first episode discussion on Lemmy, we have a couple of reminders about our expectations.

    Constructive Criticism - criticism is welcome, but please put some effort into explaining why you did or didn’t like something. Just saying something was “good” or “bad” isn’t exactly laying a foundation for discussion.

    Spoilers - when a new episode airs, we enforce spoiler tagging for approximately one week. When creating threads about episodes that are less than one week old, please keep spoilers out of the post title, and use spoiler tags in the body of your post. Obviously, spoilers for this episode are allowed in this thread.

  • Overall, a pretty good episode! I am slightly conflicted - I really like the character development of this Spock, but it’s also less and less feeling like the Spock we’ll eventually see in TOS. As the Klingon captain said, ‘the least Vulcan like Vulcan ever’ - whereas Spock in TOS is trying to suppress his human side and it takes him till like Star Trek VI to actually act on a hunch. But I am also conflicted as I really like this character too.

    The stealing the Enterprise scene, I think Search for Spock is laughing… The CGI of the Enterprise manuvering away from space dock and escaping to warp was amazing though - one of the best uses of 3D space in Star Trek ever but pausing for like 5 minutes whilst stealing a ship to decide what his ‘line’ is going to be… I wish the new series would stop their pre-ocupation with this, it’s kind of famous because Picard uses Engage and Make It So enough to be memeable, but most of the time people from Kirk to Janeway to Sisko also use Engage. (Kirk also frequently uses warp speed Mr sulu, and ahead warp factor 1, take her out, first star to the left and straight on till morning.) And so every captain doesn’t have their thing. Pike’s ‘hit it’ is ok, but ‘Let’s Fly’ is kinda dumb and ‘I want to go, now’ is out of character and just a really unnecessary part of the story. It’s also not going to be memeable when it’s forced.

    I really didn’t like the scene where M’Benga and Chapel use some kind of drug to give them super strength to fight off a whole ship of Klingons and then the torture scene? Star Trek should be cleverer than that and made me lose respect for both of the characters. At least the Klingons look like Klingons again.

    I like the new chief engineer a lot more than I thought I was going too though!

    Star Trek has always been kind of lax when officers disobeying orders save the day, but I thought the admiral should have been angrier and I really hope there’s a scene in episode 2 where Pike and Spock talk about it.

    • I suspect we’ll see Spock go so far in the other direction over this series, to try to compensate, that it puts him back where TOS starts.

      Yeah the ‘line’ stuff… ugh. But hopefully he’ll get a second chance and do better :D this was only his first day of his 3 day command! lol

      My watch partners also thought that the super serum drug was a bit out there, but I think it was expressed well with M’Benga’s trauma from the Klingon war, my guess is that he “always” carries that around because he was always under threat of being attacked on whatever moon it was he was stationed on, and sometimes had to use it. Old habits die hard, especially if you’re going into action with the people you were at war with.

      It’s not like they had time to work out a diplomatic solution in this case. And likely they wouldn’t have been able to. Pass off the diplomatic resolution to later in the plot, for Spock, the future master diplomat.

      I imagine Pelia is going to be a gem of a character. I hope she gets more time, too.

      Admirals tend to relax when it turns out that the actions the officers took were the correct path.

      Also, the Klingons looked much more Discovery like than TOS like, but with the dark skin tone and hair from TNG.

      • I’m not necessarily suggesting that they’d need to use diplomacy, but they could have somehow captured phasers or it turns out that Chapel was with Pike on Discovery (as at least the saucer of this ship was Crossfield class) and she knew where the Jeffries tubes were to get them where they needed to be. They could have told one of the Klingons that they’d had a medical emergency reported in the transporter room and they needed to get there fast. If they were playing the trauma from the Klingon war angle, I think all of the references are really too abstract for us as an audience to get that and I don’t think the scene was quite good enough to give us a mystique.

    • Stopping to discuss his departure line in the middle of stealing the ship was so cringy and immersion breaking for me. “I want to go” also seems very illogical for a Vulcan to use as a command. Wants are irrelevant, what are your orders? Wants don’t always align with needs.

      Drugs turning a doctor and nurse into super fighters that can easily take out masses of Klingons seems a bit over the top and not like a great message to send. Sometimes fights are unavoidable, but the best self preservation is to find ways to sneak around and gain an advantage in numbers and location (pluck one person off away from the group or set up a bottleneck, incapacitate with environment controls or drugs), not hope you can overpower a dozen or more larger enemies in hand to hand combat when you’ve only got two people. More contact means more risk of injuries, surely there’s no such thing as an immunity serum that prevents all injury.

      I am curious to see if they touch more on the war trauma because that is an interesting story itself. It was shoehorned in awkwardly here, but I’d like to see it explored more.

      I’m not loving the new engineer, her personality is a bit grating for me and I don’t see why you’d be allowed to transfer from a teaching position to working on the ship you just helped steal. It’s one thing to not want to replace an entire ship’s crew after an incident, it’s another to reward non-crew for misbehavior with a choice assignment to the ship. She also has such a weird way of introducing herself to her friend’s son. I don’t get it.