Logline
When the USS Enterprise investigates an attack on a colony at the edge of Federation space, Captain Pike and his crew face the return of a formidable enemy.
Written by Henry Alonso Myers
Directed by Maja Vrvilo
I’ll say it, the adult gorn, in those space suits look awesome, I’m a sucker for more animalistic races in star trek
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.
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.
And now is the time to do it, where VFX and CGI are surely up to the task now.
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)
We should try throwing styrofoam rocks at them
Shaka, when the walls fell!
Kind of like that but with a modern format that can span multiple episodes.
We’re a long way from the silly rubber suit. They’re terrifying and the way they reproduce and use that tale screams xenomorph.
I’m a sucker for more animalistic races in star trek
Bring back the Xindi insectoids!!!
They showed up in Prodigy as I recall
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.
The more I think about the Chapel plot, the more I think it was a blunder.
If she survived the initial attack on the Cayuga, it’s likely that others did, too - at the very least, it should give Spock a reason to look before hot-dropping the saucer onto the planet.
Gotta agree, it seems like an unforced error. A good chunk of the audience knows she shows up in TOS, which robs the whole idea of any tension it might have, and on top of that it feels plot armor-y to have one person survive and then not check for anyone else.
They could’ve just contrived to have Spock and Chapel be the best persons for the saucer deorbiting-- Spock as the precise vulcan/science officer to place the thrusters, Chapel as medbay’s lead in case they could bring anyone back from the Cayuga.
I’m fine with Chapel being stuck there - I think the tension comes from the overall Spock/Chapel emotional arc, rather than wondering whether she will survive - but the sequence practically demands a second scan with the newfangled tricorders to verify that there are no other life signs on the ship.
Isn’t the point though that the Gorn interference field was preventing any scans, comms or transport? The tricorder wouldn’t have worked there. And sending rescue teams would have been dangerous given Gorn belligerence, demarcation line or not.
The anti-Gorn tricorders seemed to cut through the interference on the surface well enough.
True, but that’s on the ground and short range. There’s specific dialogue to show that it’s interfering with signals between space and ground.
SPOCK: I detect a counter-frequency emanating from the planet. It appears to be negating all scans, communications, and transporter signals between here and there.
Spock can’t even scan for life signs on Cayuga. The best they have is passive sensors like spectrometry.
UNA: Still trying to scan for life signs?
SPOCK: I theorized I might be able to find a frequency gap through the interference field, but I have not managed to discover one yet.
UNA: Spock, I don’t think anyone’s alive over there.
SPOCK: Spectrometric analysis suggests there are still pockets of oxygen on board. It is possible someone could have survived.
That’s why they had to do a visual confirmation and discovered Cayuga’s sickbay had been blown away.
All that being true, I think the discovery of a single survivor should have scuttled the entire mission.
I was just trying to answer the technological criticisms about why Spock didn’t search.
I see where the criticism is coming from, but I can also see there are all sorts of extenuating circumstances around it (not to mention lack of time) and to take the plot there for a search would kind of kill the story momentum.
It’s not invalid as a criticism, just saying that tech reasons are covered.
Agreed, the entire saucer section was on the Federation side of the line of demarcation, they could have openly had rescue teams checking for survivors
Which does raise the question of why there was a Gorn aboard the wreck of the Cayuga.
The Gorn drew up the demarcation line and broadcast it to the Federation, held their fire as promised, and did not consider the arrival of another Gorn ship as a hostile action.
So the Enterprise sending a shuttle to check the parts of the Cayuga’s wreckage for survivors is something that appears permitted and even expected, so long as it doesn’t cross the line.
But any such rescue party would then bump into this lone Gorn who was very clearly violating the demarcation line that they themselves proposed.
Sort of feels like the attack on the colony was unplanned, and that the later Gorn ship was playing damage control while trying to figure out what happened.
Sort of feels like the attack on the colony was unplanned, and that the later Gorn ship was playing damage control while trying to figure out what happened.
That’s consistent with what they theorized regarding the solar flares causing the first ship to attack the colony.
That’s the best explanation I’ve heard, and I’m going to stick with it until a better one comes along
@JohnnyDelirious @Zoboomafoo One moment Spok is frantically trying to find Chapel on the Kayuga, but then doesn’t even mention survivors when they plan to crash it. It’s too much of a stretch. There must be some key plot here they deliberately didn’t show us. We don’t see the initial attack on the Kayuga at all. Why was the lone Gorn (stuck?) on that side of the line trying to access command codes on a destroyed ship? I think we’ll get a revealing flashback in S03E01.
Agreed about the survivors part, it seems like a major oversight that I hope they can explain in a satisfying way.
As for the Gorn on the ship, I presumed it was just a crewman trying to gather intelligence on the Federation by picking through the remains of the saucer section
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!
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.
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 !
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
Oops, you’re right. Ortegas is there too. I completely forgot about her since she got Travis-Mayweather’d so much this season.
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… :(
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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…
Wouldn’t prime!Chekov be like 12 around this time frame?
Nevermind, forgot that Chekov wasn’t introduced until Season 2… but Sulu is a possibility.
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.
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.
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’.
Definitely
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.
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.
Need to rewatch TOS then, memory’s got a bit rusty. Thanks!
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?
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.
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”.
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.
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.
That’s the first actually Scottish Scotty isn’t it?
Yes. Born in Paisley (like David Tennant), and out of Scotland’s National Theatre Company, no less.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with most people here. Great episode as long as you kinda ignore the fact that only Chapel survived in the saucer section and neither her nor Spock made any attempt to look for anyone else or even acknowledge it.
Rest of the episode I loved and I’m now just a bit sad we are going have to wait so long for the next series.
That being said, I absolutely support the strikes so I’m not complaining about the wait.
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I love how they tock one of the most laughable elements of TOS and made the Gorn into a terrifying and interesting enemy. I genuinely want to know about Gorn society.
This exactly. Using something closer to the xenomorphs of Alien, introduces a truly frightening species that is sufficiently different that their kind of intelligence and motivations are believably difficult for Federation humanoids to understand.
I know there are other older fans struggling with this, but I think it’s saving the Gorn and Arena from absurdity.
No matter how compelling the story, TOS Arena’s ridiculous rubber suit Gorn has become one of the most recognized images from the franchise in popular culture.
Even as a child watching the episode in its first run it seemed more like silly monster movie stuff. It didn’t have the quality of truly scary monsters of that era such as the Creature of the Black Lagoon. It wasn’t in any way reaching Roddenberry’s target high value sci-fi standard of Forbidden Planet or even The Cage.
More, with so many later stories of Kirk and other captains welcoming the strange and different, coming to terms with very alien species, we need to be shown why Kirk was so hostile to the Gorn by the time of TOS.
While they could have gone for some other kind of reptilian, I like SNW’s choice to go with a the biology of parasitic R-breeder. Roddenberry’s original concept for the Ferengi was closer to the parasitic bat people of Andromeda than what TNG and DS9 gave us. The updated Gorn can be viewed as incorporating that idea and making them as terrifying.
I like the Gorn being legitimately scary, but to me it kind of retroactively highlights how silly “Arena” was. You can’t really compare modern TV with the episodes from the 60s, but stick one of these Gorn on the planet with Kirk and he would have been proper fucked. I can accept it easily enough and take it with a grain of salt that, if we assume they were going to re-shoot the episode today with Paul Wesley and modern cinema techniques that the fight scenes wouldn’t be these silly ponderous things and the episode would probably largely not have Kirk confront the Gorn at all, mostly running away until the big climax with the “cannon”. However, it is kind of an unforced error, where they could have simply introduced the aliens as a totally new species without really losing anything while also not highlighting how silly the rubber suit Gorn was.
No highlighting is necessary. No need to be a fan to instantly associate the rubber suit Gorn of Arena with the franchise.
The meme of Kirk in a ripped tunic fighting the rubber-suited Gorn with the Vasquez Rocks behind is one of the most recognizable images in pop culture.
Goldsman and Myers have my respect for their attempt to salvage it.
Kirk’s Gorn was the captain. Maybe he was old and feeble? Not suited for a fight, still pretty strong but no longer fast and agile. The Metrons chose the captains, not the best fighters.
I love this actually. Kirk, probably top 5% percent against the Gorn captain who happened to be some ancient, arthritic, half blind, one foot in the grave, and still beat his ass all over the paramount back lot.
It’s also been suggested in the beta canon that the Gorn are made up of multiple reptile variants. The ones in SNW seem to be raptor based. It’s possible the less agile more tank like variants might show up later.
THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS AS I WATCH:
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NOOO, I DON’T WANT THIS TO END!
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Previously: The various stuff happened.
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Oh, hey, Cayuga captains log.
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Nice of them to have a colony modeled after an Earth town. Saves on budget.
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“SIGNAL LOST.” In space, a dropped call can mean only one thing: Invasion.
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Oh, we’re doing the Independence Day thing?
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Telling a Starfleet captain to just do reconnaissance is basically telling them to go weapons free.
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Nice little tinge of one of the TOS scores at the end of the cold open. Someone more geekier than I can probably place it.
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If you ever feel like you are useless in life, just remember that there is a “skip intro” button during a “Space, the Final Frontier” monologue.
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Is the “Gorn Protocol” a hand-cannon with with a diamond?
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She flies the ship!
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I’d like to imagine there is a deleted scene where they glue every piece of junk they have onto the shuttle.
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If they’re going to do a “is someone still alive in the wreckage” storyline, they probably should have flip-flopped Batel and Chapel’s spots, given that we obviously know she’s going to live.
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They keep giving Jenna Mitchell lines! FREE MITCHELL! Give that actreess a cast credit, cowards!
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Ah, a good old fashioned beam into the sky.
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Oh, look, a Gornzooky!
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And… vaporized.
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More Gornzookies!
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Oh my god, it’s young Scotty. Hopefully this means Keenser is there. I always loved Keenser and his ability to sit on things he isn’t supposed to.
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Doesn’t seem like Keenser is there :(
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Of course Scotty would engineer a way to save people. He truly is a miracle worker.
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Smashing a piece of space debris is a very… brilliant idea.
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Pelia continuing to harass Una for her poor academics in engineering.
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Why do I get the feeling that whatever plan Spock has to put the rockets on the hull will also allow him to check for survivors?
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Wow, imagine that, Chapel is alive! Imagine that! Whoever would have thought! (Seriously they should have flip-flopped her and Batel if they were going to do this)
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USE THE MORSE, CHRISTINE!
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Oh, now she grabs the spacesuit. Although I guess she didn’t need it yet.
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WARNING: GORNZOOKY
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COMMAND CODE INVALID’
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That looks like a bigger Gorn. An adult? Or at least like a teenager.
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So incredibly Alien.
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“GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM, YOU BITCH!”
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Oh shit, she’s been impregnated with gornzookies. A very zombie movie trope.
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“There’ll be time later.” Before or after you get engaged to Dr. Korby?
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“We need to abort some Gornzookies.”
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Yeah, Scotty would be a shitty student despite being brilliant.
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OH FUCK THE GORN KIDNAPPED THEM
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TO BE CONTINUED?!?!!?! Okay, who wants to drive to Hollywood and personally beat up some billionaires? I want this strike over NOW and I want a conclusion WITHIN A YEAR, A YEAR AND A HALF MAX!
@Continuumguy @startrek If Starfleet has weapons that work against the Gorn, *why keep them secret*?!
(Ignoring sloppy writing as the reason…)
Star Fleet seems to like to compartmentalize information. Examples:
At least post ‘First Contact’ they had hints of the Borg before ‘Q Who’ but kept it quiet. Similarly the Genesis device information was on a need to know basis (although probably for good reason). There was also that Voyager episode based around the Omega directive that only Janeway knew about.
I think they are still trying diplomacy with the gorn, admiral april says they want to try to bring them in and see if they can be allies. Star fleet doesn’t want to be outward threat
Also I think admirals are downplaying the gorn threat, maybe not to scare citizens
I want to know what ST fan actually skips the openings. Especially SNW, LD, DS9… yes the French Horns rock.
Strangely LD seems to me to be THE MOST CATCHY Star Trek theme. Every time I hear it it’s playing in my head for the next 24 hours. Not saying it’s the best, it’s great, but goddamn does it burrow its way into my brain
It’s been a long road, getting from there to here…
Now I am sitting here not knowing what to do with this.
@original_reader I’d like you to listen to and enjoy it, if you’d like to do both. Hang on, this might be easier than the DropBox remote link:
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It may be a while, depending on when they settle the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strike.
On the whole a solid episode and the Scott appearance was very surprising and well done.
However why the hell is Christine the only survivor on the cayuga, it makes no sense at all.
Also the fucking cliffhanger is ridiculous
They did it again TOS purists
spoiler
you wanted a rubber suit, so they gave you a rubber suit.
Chapel: [restores life support on the saucer]
Spock: [straps rockets to the saucer and yeets it into a planet]
Chapel: surprisedpikachu.gif
