This week’s Strange New Worlds is a brilliant example of what a prequel can do well.
One of the more tiresome complaints about both Discovery’s first two seasons and SNW is that the tech doesn’t look like the tech on the original series, which these are supposed to take place prior to. The problem of course is that, if you remove the warp drive and the transporter, the U.S.S. Enterprise that we saw on TV between 1966 and 1969 is less technologically sophisticated than my house.
But this is a problem that has dogged the franchise ever since it was revived as a movie series in 1979. Back then, in fanzines and at conventions, a subset of Trek fandom was making the exact same complaints about the technology in The Motion Picture that a similar subset made in 2017 about Discovery, that it looked way too advanced for being only a couple of years after the five-year mission. For that matter, loud and vociferous were the complaints about the tech in Enterprise in 2001, this time with the Internet as a bullhorn.
And it keeps happening, because the march of technology over the past several decades has outstripped a lot of predictions. (At least part of it is because of the influence Trek itself has had. I mean, c’mon, why do you think most cell phones produced in the first decade of the twenty-first century looked just like communicators from the original series?) In 1987, it looked really futuristic for the cast of The Next Generation to be using padds, but now it looks quaint for them handing iPads to each other.
Also in 1987, the holodeck seemed like far-future technology, but even then it seemed unlikely that it would take four hundred years to perfect that particular tech. And indeed, we seem pretty likely to have the tech for the holodeck a lot sooner than three hundred years from now…
And so SNW addresses this issue, while simultaneously addressing two of the biggest holodeck-related complaints that developed over the course of the three twenty-fourth-century spinoffs from 1987-2001.
The first of those complaints is how incredibly dangerous the holodeck has proven to be. It started with TNG’s first-season episode “The Big Goodbye,” where an intense scan by the Jarada made the holodeck go all binky-bonkers and endanger the people inside. This continued throughout TNG (e.g., “A Fistful of Datas”), DS9 (e.g., “Our Man Bashir”), and Voyager (e.g., “Heroes and Demons”), and it got real tiresome.
“A Space Adventure Hour” addresses this by having the holodeck be new, experimental technology. Scotty has installed it on the Enterprise (Pelia is apparently on shore leave, this week’s excuse for not paying for a Carol Kane guest shot) and La’an is tasked with testing it, encouraged to be aggressive and rigorous as possible to make sure that it’s a piece of technology that should be integrated onto starships. The logic is that in the not-too-distant future, starships will be on missions that last even longer than five years, and they will need more elaborate recreation options on board when being far from home for long periods. Which actually makes sense, and is why the holodeck was such a good idea when it was first introduced in the animated episode “The Practical Joker.” (You thought I was going to say TNG’s “Encounter at Farpoint,” didn’t you? But the animated series got there first…)
And so La’an creates a holodeck adventure based on Emilia Moon, a series of Nancy Drew-esque mysteries originally published in the 1960s that she read as a child. (Though when she goes onto the holodeck in character, her outfit looks more like it was inspired by Carmen Sandiego.) She asks for a mystery that will challenge her, a slip of the tongue that astute viewers will recall also tripped up La Forge in another of TNG’s holodeck misadventures, “Elementary, Dear Data.” In that second-season episode, La Forge asked the computer for a foe that would challenge Data, rather than one that would challenge the character of Sherlock Holmes. The holodeck responded by creating a sentient holographic being in the form of Daniel Davis’ Professor Moriarty.
Similarly, the murder mystery that the computer provides is one that challenges La’an Noonien Singh, security chief of the Enterprise, not Emilia Moon, fictional girl detective.
Said murder mystery is the meat of the episode, of course, because the victim is the executive producer of a 1960s science fiction television show, The Last Frontier.
Yes, I’ve buried the lede. What is glorious and wonderful about this episode is this hilarious riff on the original Star Trek. The teaser is, in fact, a bit from an episode of The Last Frontier, with Paul Wesley as actor Maxwell Saint, who plays the captain of the U.S.S. Adventure as an overly exaggerated William Shatner.
One of the dings against Wesley has been that his Kirk doesn’t feel much like Shatner’s, a complaint I have never agreed with, as he’s matching the more subdued, calm version of Kirk that Shatner played in season one, not the overenuciating, overly mannered, endlessly pausing Shatner that he’d devolved into by season three, and which is what everyone remembers of Shatner’s acting. In the teaser, Wesley shows us that he very much could have Shatner’d the shit out of the role, as he absolutely nails Shatner’s excesses, as well as his head tilts and facial expressions. (This is aided by director Jonathan Frakes doing tricks with the lighting very similar to ones they pulled on the original series to emphasize particular gazes. Frakes was absolutely the perfect choice to direct this one, as he absolutely nails it.)
After the delightfully low-budget 1960s-era confrontation between the Adventure and an Agonyan (Kira Guloien, who played the bartender Kelzing in “Wedding Bell Blues”), a goofy-looking alien who wants to steal their brain cells, we cut to the opening credits of The Last Frontier. It starts with Wesley reading a voiceover that feels like someone translated the original series voiceover into French, then into Russian, and then back into English—or just went through and made copious use of thesaurus.com to rewrite it. Points to the show’s magnificent composer Nami Melumad for her delightful riff on the old theme music (complete with soprano voices humming).
The reason why the various spinoffs kept going back to doing holodeck shows is because it’s a chance for the actors to play dress-up and pretend to be other people. (Crusher in a glorious pink dress from the 1940s! Worf in a 19th-century suit and tails! O’Brien in an eyepatch! Kira and Dax in Arthurian finery! Janeway in a white tux! Paris and Kim in jumpsuits and carrying ray-beam guns!) And, since Scotty uses existing transporter patterns for the physical forms of the characters, we get many of our regulars (and one of our recurring guest stars, since Scotty uses Jim Kirk as one of the templates for reasons the script never bothers to explain) in holo-roles.
Part of the fun here is people either putting on or taking off accents. When portraying actor Adelaide Shaw, Jess Bush uses her natural Australian accent while Babs Olusanmokun, portraying Shaw’s boyfriend, puts on a British accent, and Christina Chong puts on an American accent when she’s acting as Moon.
And the murder mystery itself revolves around the cast and crew of The Last Frontier, including Anson Mount as the show’s creator T.K. Bellows; Melissa Navia as another actor, Lee Woods; Rebecca Romijn as a studio head who championed the show (an obvious riff on Lucille Ball’s huge role in putting Star Trek on the air back in the day); and Celia Rose Gooding as the agent who happens to represent all three actors.
For all that the episode makes fun of a lot of the original series’ goofier aspects, it’s an affectionate satire, emphasized in particular by a speech Gooding gives as the agent talking about how important this show could be for children who want to grow up and go to space and hope for a better future, which is exactly what Star Trek did.
In the end, the holodeck winds up drawing too much power away from the ship, plus a coronal mass ejection from the neutron star the Enterprise is studying messes with the holodeck systems, keeping them from communicating with the holodeck or shutting down the program. (The transporter is never mentioned as an option for some reason.) La’an has to finish the mystery and end the program in order for her and Spock to get out—
—except the Spock that’s been helping her in this scenario isn’t actually Spock. It’s another holographic character that looks and talks like Spock, and it is responsible for the subsequent murders that have happened since the scenario started.
In the end, La’an’s recommendation is that they don’t install holodecks on starships because holy crap are they dangerous. Pike agrees wholeheartedly, given that they almost got eaten by a neutron star because of this malfunction. Scotty points out that they could make the holodeck power systems separate from ship’s systems to avoid some of those problems, which Pike says to put in a footnote in small print in the recommendation.
This hits on the second complaint about the holodecks: the ridiculous notion posited in Voyager’s “Caretaker” that holodeck systems are independent of ship’s systems. That was a writer’s trick to enable Voyager to still do holodeck dress-up episodes despite the ship needing to ration power due to being 70,000 light-years from home. And here’s Scotty providing a rationale for it!
Best of all, they address these two long-time complaints head-on, establish why holodecks didn’t become ubiquitous until a century later in story time, and still enable them to do an actual holodeck dress-up episode!
I really admire the chutzpah and the cleverness of pulling this all off. Plus it’s funny as hell, which is what you want in your comedy episode…
There are two other plot points that shouldn’t get lost in the foofuraw of holodecks and Trek parodies and Wesley channeling Shatner, one good, one not so much.
The not-so-much one is the final shot. Spock and La’an are continuing their dance lessons, originally begun in “Wedding Bell Blues” to prepare for the upcoming festivities, but which they have been continuing. There has been a certain sparkage between Ethan Peck’s Spock and Chong’s La’an, and that sparkage explodes into a kiss to close the episode.
Just last week I talked about how much I appreciate that they’re showing us younger versions of the characters we know and love, in particular showing Spock’s evolution from someone who smiled at the musical flowers in “The Cage”/“The Menagerie” to the guy who fully suppressed all emotions by the time the original series rolled around a dozen years of story time later. The trauma of his breakup with Chapel seemed to be setting the stage for that—plus we’re getting very close to the point in the timeline where he would first meet Leila Kalomi from “This Side of Paradise.” So adding a thing with La’an just feels like piling on a bit too much. On the other hand, the complications of feelings for three different women (or four, if you toss in T’Pring) might also lead to explaining why Spock went full Vulcan by the time Kirk took over the Enterprise’s center seat. We shall see.
Much more interesting is Number One’s conversation at the end with Scotty. First of all, I love that finally this season we’re seeing Commander Chin-Riley actually being the first officer of the ship. Unlike Pike and Spock, we have no idea of what Number One’s future is, and that gives them room to play with the character. We keep being told she’s the best first officer in the fleet (most notably in the episode that highlighted her, “Ad Astra per Aspera,” also perhaps not coincidentally SNW’s best episode to date), so it’s nice to see her actually being that. In this case, she reminds Scotty—who has spent the entire episode trying to fix everything all by himself, aside from a clandestine plea for assistance from Uhura—that he’s part of a team. The reason why the Enterprise functions is because they all work together. Scotty’s own recent history as chronicled in “Hegemony” when he was the only survivor of a Gorn attack on a ship that was much smaller than Enterprise comes into play here. He was more autonomous there out of necessity, but that’s not the case here, and Number One has to remind him of that. It’s a fantastic scene, one that shows off Number One’s talents as first officer and Romijn’s talents as an actor, both of which have been criminally underused prior to this season.
One last thing, regarding last week’s episode: I totally missed that the name of the planet (and the title of the episode) was a pun. One of the lead actors in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (one of the great zombie movies) was named Ken Foree, which is where they got the name Kenfori. Bravo, folks.
The fan reaction to this episode is the most split I’ve seen for any since Lower Decks gave one to Peanut Hamper. I’m with you, though – this is a standout for Season 1 so far, with the notable exception of the dumb Spock/La’an romance. I’d much rather La’an kiss holo-Spock, realize she was the first Starfleet officer to rub one out on the holodeck, and then be embarrassed about it for the rest of the season.
Regardless, lots of people don’t seem to understand that a tropey pastiche shouldn’t be trying to do something “original.”
As with many SNW episodes, I found this entertaining but was frustrated that it was dependent entirely on playing with past continuity instead of giving us what the title promised us. We’ve barely seen an episode about exploring a new world since the first season, since the show just keeps diving deeper into the continuity porn and gimmick plots and soapy storytelling. Those things can be fun when used judiciously, but it’s like serving dessert as almost every meal.
I did appreciate the ways this reconciled the confused history of the holodeck, complete with a “Practical Joker” nod when Pike referred to the holodeck as a “re-creation room” (though it’s odd that he stumbled over the word when “recreation room” is a perfectly common term). And yes, a holodeck malfunction plot makes far more sense when it’s a prototype explicitly being tested to its limits than when it’s supposed to be a proven and routine technology. It did bother me, though, that everything about the holodeck was exactly like it is in TNG, with the same grid, the same commands, everything. I would’ve rather seen it depicted as more of a prototype with a clumsier-looking projection technology (like how Discovery handled the Shenzhou‘s transporter) and with different command phrases.
Also, given real-world concerns about AI and intellectual property these days, it’s hard to look on a story where characters ask a computer to train on a body of works and spit out a new story based on them, let alone to base its character likenesses on real people without getting their consent first, and not find it dystopian. It seemed harmless enough back in the ’80s and ’90s, but now it hits way too close to home.
While watching Christina Chong dance is certainly a delight (especially in that dress at the end), I don’t care for the idea of continuing Spock’s exploration of romance. I thought he was going to close back off after things went sour with Chapel. And we know that by the time he meets Leila Kalomi, he’s closed to any possibility of romance with her. And that should be happening this year, since it’s already 2261. So this turn with La’an seems problematical.
By the way, Keith, the hazard from the neutron star was a gamma ray burst, not a coronal mass ejection, since neutron stars don’t have coronas. Although as usual with the Secret Hideout shows, the VFX depiction of a scientifically legitimate phenomenon was utterly fanciful and ridiculous. (Gamma rays are not visible streamers of light that a ship can dodge as they slowly expand, since they’re invisible to the human eye and propagate at the speed of light.)
I agree with the sentiment, but I’m sure Emilia Moon’s works would’ve gone into the public domain by the mid-23rd century, unless copyright law gets even more ridiculous in the future. Personally, I think that’s the kind of work AI should be training on, rather than scraping the collective data and intellectual property of everyone on the planet. I do agree about likenesses being used without consent, but I understand why it keeps happening. Apart from letting the actors have fun, it saves a lot of money.
Copyright is just part of the problem with AI. The deeper problem is that if people get too used to using AI to create entertainment, there will be less work for human writers and artists. What bugs me about episodes where human writers create what are supposedly computer-generated holodeck narratives, it implies that computers can replace human artists with equally good work, and in the current climate, that feels like actively promoting our own obsolescence.
And yes, the real-world reasons for using the regular actors are self-evident, but from an in-universe standpoint it raises ethical questions that the stories usually ignore for the sake of convenience (although it has been addressed occasionally, e.g. in “Hollow Pursuits,” though that raised different ethical questions about privacy in that the crew was able to intrude on Barclay’s private fantasies without difficulty).
Unfortunately, there will be less work for everyone as AI continues to grow in ability and influence, but there’s no putting that toothpaste back in the tube. However, I like to think we’re still creative enough as a species to contribute where it counts.
“given real-world concerns about AI and intellectual property these days, it’s hard to look on a story where characters ask a computer to train on a body of works and spit out a new story based on them”
Yes and ouch.
Yes, I think the Agatha Moon style story is pretty much dead on how AI works in the real world.
They created an “original” work by taking all of her work, presumably a popular 1960s program, and then making barely hidden characters based on her works.
Sort of like how I asked ChatGPT to make a CT Phipps style story (they stole my books for training it just like they probably did your) and it was about a supervillain kidnapping demonic kittens.
I think La’an said Amelia Moon was a book series, which is why I wonder where the computer got the raw material for simulating a 1960s TV show. I’m not sure whether they were published in the 1960s or were a period piece of later vintage.
As far as I know, while a lot of my Trek books have been plagiarized for AI training, most of my original fiction is too obscure to have been hit.
Random aside but I just picked up your superhero novel and regret that I hadn’t read it until now. Its fantastic work.
Thanks! But which one? From context, I assume you mean Only Superhuman, but I’ve also written a Spider-Man and an X-Men novel, plus the Tangent Knights audiobook trilogy based on the Japanese transforming-superhero genre (for which Keith was my martial arts consultant).
Only Superhuman indeed! Though I’ll mark those down as well.
I forgot to mention the “outtakes” over the credits at the end, which included a hilarious attempt by “Matthew Saint” to do the “Riker maneuver” perfected by this episode’s director Jonathan Frakes on TNG, only to completely shatter the captain’s chair…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who is easily amused
I absolutely *cackled* at the outtakes. Perhaps my favorite part of the episode, which I really liked.
The credits were amazing. I’m so glad Frakes got to get some off-screen direction shouting during them. Also props to Kira Guloien, who maybe got the most screentime during the credits and absolutely nailed the brief in delivery and physicality.
I was already a fan of Guloien from her turn as the three-armed bartender in “Wedding Bell Blues,” and I really hope the promise of that episode that she’ll be a recurring regular is fulfilled….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I would love nothing more than a retro Trek that was meticulously designed to evoke the timeless coolness of Matt Jeffries’ “The Cage” era designs. Just go with it and have fun, butt-head aliens, Tiki planets and all. I think it would be especially worth doing as AI will inevitably make controls largely useless. Charaters will just tell the ship what to do and sit back which will, ultimately be kind of boring to dramatize. Interestingly, such a bridge matches the mostly control free, dentist’s office style bridge Gene Roddenberry actually had Jeffries create multiple designs for before everyone agreed the results just looked dull and they threw in jellybean buttons and Lite-Bright displays. You can take an immersive tour of some beautifully rendered creations of the original bridge designs over at the Roddenberry archives.
That fantasy aside, people carping about the lack of technology continuity in a TV show of the course of decades is brain dead childishness.
Oh, god, I LOVED this episode! It was an affectionate tribute to Star Trek, affectionate enough to show us how goofy TOS could sometimes be while still making a strong case that it MATTERED. This episode is a love letter to the original, and to love TOS, you have to see the warts and love it anyway, and this episode makes it quite clear that we know the warts are there BUT WE LOVE IT ANYWAY.
I cried during Joni Gloss’s speech about how and why The Last Frontier mattered to people and was important, because I agreed with every word.
Thank you, Dana Horgan and Kathryn Lyn (the writers of this episode), for showing us how much you get it. The cast looked as if they were having fun with this, and how could they not? :-)
I’m wondering about what I suppose you could call the Captain Proton question. Was The Last Frontier a real show in the Trek-universe version of 1969, or a fictional creation of the holodeck? Now, the idea was that the holodeck AI generated a plot based on the Amelia Moon mysteries, so presumably its characters were fictitious. But the computer needed to get the raw material for its depiction of the show from somewhere, so did it rip off imagery from a real show? If so, what was the show and how close to the reality was the simulation? And do the cold-open scene and the TLF title sequence actually exist anywhere in-universe, given that La’an never specifically watched them during her simulation? Are they something the AI generated as part of the simulation backstory but didn’t actually use? Or were the producers just throwing in-universe logic out the window and doing that whole sequence just to be silly?
And yes, I’m sure it won’t be long until someone writes a fanfic saying that not only did The Last Frontier really exist, but T.K. Bellows stole the idea from Benny Russell.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the holodeck used a “Real” Last Frontier show as the basis for the story just the way that Law and Order and other shows have “ripped from the headlines” plotlines.
Though oddly enough, I wonder if Benny Russell made a pitch for an original space station TV show and they made their own rip off (no Babylon Five conspiracy theory jokes).
But if the holodeck works like present-day AI, The Last Frontier is probably a mashup of elements from several real shows, and the cast and crew are amalgams of traits of real people. I mean, it could be a work of historical fiction using real characters and elements, like how Doctor Who did episodes built around Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Rosa Parks, etc. Presumably by the 23rd century it’s all public domain and there are no surviving relatives to bring lawsuits (unless someone involved was a Lanthanite). But we don’t know that for sure.
It’d probably make sense for THE LAST FRONTIER not to be the existing people but it’s also a non-sentient AI compiling a wholly original script using whatever holo programming that exists so I wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility that could be using the real people of the Trekverse.
Certainly, it’d be an interesting premise for a time travel adventure. La’an must protect the RL figures from Romulan time agents.
Please avoid suggesting story ideas where professional authors like Keith and myself can see them. For legal reasons, we have to avoid such things.
But it’s a good point — since the holo-simulation used the crewmembers’ transporter-log likenesses, then what we saw using their faces and voices cannot have been a real 1960s TV episode. So it was either a complete fabrication or an alteration of something real from 1969, or somewhere in between. So where did the holodeck AI get the idea for all this?
This is something that annoys me a bit about the whole holodeck-episode subgenre — this conceit that an AI given a few prompts can create a story as effective as what the human writers of the episode could come up with. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, that seemed like just a fantasy trope, but to write such a thing now feels like endorsing our own obsolescence as writers.
I promise not to animated Tribble episode you. Its a hypothetical not a suggestion from the legal standpoint. :) But yes, mums the word.
And I 100% agree regarding AI. Every time they rely on the computer to do it now, I feel upset.
Buy only licensed Zimmerman Holodeck programs!
Well KRAD, thank you for making me watch SNW again. Your bit about the teaser piqued my interest after I set down SNW S2 right before the finale.
The main thrust of the episode is great. The holodeck, Scotty, the inside jokes of previous Treks. Scotty’s suggestion of the Voyager holodeck solution and Pike’s small print line were on the order of the “We don’t talk about it with outsiders” discussion from DS9. I had a smile throughout the middle of the episode. Anson Mount’s performance is always great, and every time they throw something at him, he nails it with aplomb.
Then, of course, we have the dance scenes. La’an is a better character when she’s not being a Kirk / Spock love interest. She was a delight when geeking out about and living the Emilia Moon novels. Not thrilled with this thread, and I feel like it’s even more annoying since at least the Chapel / Spock bits gave us some pathos in episodes like Those Old Scientists along with being a throwback to their interactions in the Original Series. La’an deserves better.
Her and Spock instead of her and Kirk is a shame because it overdoes Spock.
Especially since we know that Kirk and Doctor Marcus will be an epic failure.
Oh, I hadn’t even realized that about La’an. On top of her being a super-competent, super-beautiful warrior woman with a special connection to a major TOS villain, involving her with both Kirk and Spock brings her a little too close for comfort to “Mary Sue” territory. (Although what people tend to forget about the Mary Sue trope is that it was meant to refer to a particular character type done badly by poor, self-indulgent authors, not to the character type in general.)
To be fair, we’ve since discovered a huge chunk of those complaints are less about Mary Suedom as a concept and more about the manosphere hating any female protagonists.
Oh, absolutely. But speaking from the writer’s perspective, if I were creating a Trek character (which is something I’ve done once or twice), I’d be given pause if I realized I were bringing her too close to a common cliche.
But then, the T’Ryssa Chen character that I created for the TNG novels has been accused of being a Mary Sue once or twice, since people invent their own reasons for applying that label that often come from strange places. Someone once said she must be a Mary Sue because a lot of Mary Sue characters have names ending in -yssa. Sure came as a surprise to me.
T’Ryssa is also a perfect example of why its a dumb label given you can say many things about her but she’s far from perfect. If Mary Sue’s can be neurotic goofy Vulcan screw ups I’m not sure what the label means.
Half-Vulcan. She identifies more as human.
I’m sorry. Are you saying there’s a spectrum for how human or Vulcan a *ptui* half-breed identifies themself? /s
Whomever thought T’ryssa Chen was a Mary sue doesn’t understand the trope. She’s a great rebellious child or maybe a try-hard cool girl but not a Mary Sue.
Still miss that clipped timeline. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy all the new shoes we’ve gotten the last five years but I miss having novels with stakes and consequences
My intent was to add a character filling a similar role to Ensign Ro, an outsider who’d disrupt the status quo and generate conflict while becoming a protegee to Picard–or really, more of a surrogate daughter, since I was charged with writing the book where Picard and Crusher decided to start a family (more thoughtfully than the way it happened in Picard).
(Ahh, okay. Lately the board won’t let me post a message containing a double hyphen representing an em dash, but I just tried it without spaces around the dash, and it worked. Weird.)
I felt she also invoked Barclay a little too being a 24th century human who also didn’t have their shit together. As such was a hugely more relatable character than many other paragons.
The satirical elements of this episode were brilliant! Paul Wesley knocked it out of the park. And I like how this season seems to be doing much better with giving everyone in the cast a bit more to do.
I couldn’t help but notice the chemistry between Spock and La’An (and honestly, who can blame either of them). I feel like it can only end in tragedy. I’m hoping that this doesn’t mean that La’An is going to come to a shocking end, given how many other characters have more plot armor. I feel like the character has a lot more to contribute.
Well, how well is Christina Chong’s pursuit of a singing career going? That might have a bearing on her character’s future.
Given the state of the music industry her honest best bet might be to stay where she is until S5 and perform at cons to build a reputation among an audience that will default to friendly.
Hmm, good question, actually. I don’t have much of a sense of popular music these days, but it seems like even well-known acts are struggling to make things work with the current music industry.
I’m just wary when it comes to the characters specific to SNW, especially after Hemmer.
Given most modern singing careers – it depends.
There are no “Charts” for her to get to the top of anymore, but if she is able to use her voice and make music, and have the acting to support her too? I say let her express herself how she wants.
Music as a career these days is so variable, but anybody who can record and release music and get it heard by even a few thousand people is doing well in terms of the art.
I havn’t actullay checked out any of her stuff.
I mean, she’s in SNW, she got a part early in Doctor Who, and had a decent part in Line of Duty.
acting seems to be going well.
I hope she does well either way.
A quick google’s first hit reveals a perfectly fine song and video – “Twin Flames” , but it is from 2 years ago, and if i was going to be super harsh/realistic; its clearly not a career maker or we woud have heard more about it.
A paying career in music these days is ridiculously hard, fair play and more power to her for doing it for the love of it though, that shines through.
i guess its like writing and so many artistic endevours these days, it doesn’t pay money.
it probably makes money for the hosting and streaming platforms, but not the artist.
What a marvellous modern age we live in.
Loved this one, Only thing that took me out of it was the name of the first murder victim.
To a certain generation in the UK; Tony Hart is a beloved childrens TV producer who encoraged painting and drawing for many, many kids on BBC. Childrens TV.
He came to my primary school (elementary school) when I was like 7 or 8 and i remember it being very excitng.
Fun fact for some – That same school and the village it is in was used for most of the shots in the “Looking Back Over My Shoulder” video by Mike and the Mechanics for those old enough to remmber that.
I thought that this one was fun, and occasionally (in Celia Rose Gooding’s character’s monologue) rather heartfelt. However, I can’t get behind the Spock/La’an romance. I can’t say I understand why Spock is so horny on this series in general. And it furthers a trend that has been a problem for me throughout this season, namely, it feels like they’re just identifying Types of Star Trek Episodes to Make and slotting scripts into them, rather than telling a particular story because it’s actually an interesting story to tell.
I will be quite happy if it turns out that they’ve just front-end loaded the season with gimmick episodes and we can be down to brass tacks soon enough, but given that the only thing they’ve announced about season 4 so far is a muppet episode, I somehow guess that this is not the case.
It was appropriate to give that monologue to “Uhura,” because it reflects how Nichelle Nichols’s presence in the show was an inspiration to many viewers (including Whoopi Goldberg), to the point that Dr. Martin Luther King reputedly convinced Nichols not to leave the show because it was too important for her to be there.
I keep going back and forth on this one. On one hand it was fun, especially the opening where they did a pretty good job recreating the look/sound of TOS plus Paul Wesley is having a blast doing a caricature of Kirk. The costumes were well done, and I always appreciate when our actors get to do something else. Considering Anson Mount’s usual role as the strong tough guy (Cullen Bohannon for example) he plays neurotic very well. Plus I loved the retcons to explain why the holodeck works as it does with its own power source, why it wasn’t on TOS, an actual explanation why the holograms look like our casts, etc.
However, while I appreciate a certain amount of meta, this was almost too meta. The writers obviously chose to address all the criticisms of the original series, from women not being taken seriously, to the cancellation, to the audience being passionate. However, when Celia Rose Gooding does her speech about Star Trek and the stupidity of its cancellation she might as well have been breaking the fourth wall and looking right into the camera. Its just a bit too on the nose. I agree with all the points, I just don’t know if it had to be done that way. (it actually reminded me of the end of Alexander Nevsky, the classic of Sergei Eisenstein where the title character spends the last minute of the movie doing a soliloquy about why invading Russia would be a stupid idea)
I get the formula of SNW, which is serious episode followed by light episode, but I did wonder what was going on with Battel. I also don’t mind the formula except we only get 10 episodes instead of 22 like we did in the pre-streaming trek, so I wonder about spending 10% of the season poking fun at the Franchise instead of advancing any of the major plot points.
On reflection, I think maybe it was a problem to mash up two distinct ideas, the murder-mystery homage and the TOS homage. I feel the latter kind of distracted from the former, and as I discussed above, it raises a lot of questions about how the holodeck computer came up with such an elaborate fake (?) TV show. I do feel the script was too clever for its own good. It might have been better just to commit fully to the mystery angle without the aggressive self-reference.
Murder-mystery, TOS homage, and obligatory holodeck episode. Just like last week’s was zombie movie homage, follow-up to “Under the Cloak of War”, and follow-up to “Hegemony part 2”, and the one before it was obligatory Q episode and continuity keeping with Dr. Korby. It feels like every episode is being assigned double or triple duty to make up for how few there are in the season, and it’s to the detriment of each one.
Still better than the way it used to be where they had to fill a 22 or 24 episode season. Over on the B5 rewatch we’ve seen several episodes where one really good episode was stretched and filled to make 2 mediocre ones. This week especially with Gray 17 is Missing which is one half really good, and one half almost unwatchable.
I agree that I think I would have liked La’an and company behind the scenes of the actual set and production instead of in a locked room hotel.
Watching this episode did divide my opinion in several directions, it was a great proto-holodeck episode, but damn did it lean into that fourth wall, I had visions of Deadpool tell them to ease up!
Where it skewed things for me is that now, all the other holodeck issue episodes now look even dumber, are you saying that in the decades to century plus, nobody in Fleet R & D didn’t take a look at La’An and Scotty’s report, other than that ‘small print footnote’ and think “maybe we should do something to resolve this issue”
– Fixed difficulty levels, so “hey, challenge me” or “challenge x” doesn’t equal “can’t beat the game”
– No using ‘real’ people as character templates (Barclay, looking at you next to that potted plant!)
And the one our esteemed rewatcher loves to repeat:
– Hard code/wire the damned safety protocols!
I think Scotty was actually responsible for them using the crew members as actors/actresses in this case.
Yes, because the only data they had with sufficient resolution for realistic characters was data from the transporter buffer. Although it raises troubling privacy questions if the transporter permanently stores the detailed physical data of everyone who passes through it. Particularly if the data’s compatible with a holographic simulation system that can alter what they’re wearing…
There were a few TNG and Lower Decks episodes that at least hinted that the holodeck was used inappropriately.
Deep Space Nine also made it clear how inappropriate the holodeck was used with Quark’s holosuites.
Also, how misuing someone’s image was treated (i.e. very badly).
Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the holodeck, because I was really talking about the more general privacy questions raised if the transporter stores detailed personal data about its users. Not to mention the data storage questions. You’d think they’d want to purge the buffers of old data rather than letting it build up.
They may purge it, which is why there were only a handful of (main cast) people to draw from rather than 203.
And of course it’s all fundamentally a handwave for the dramatic and economic necessity of using the main cast rather than casting one-shot guest stars. (Whether as holodeck originals or some of the other two hundred crew members.)
I’d say the ethical/privacy questions are even worse if it’s selective about which data is purged. At the very least, Scotty and La’an should’ve gotten their consent before using their likenesses.
And yes, it doesn’t need to be pointed out that it’s a story convenience. That’s a starting axiom, and we’re past that to examine its unexplored ramifications in-universe.
I now believe that everyone in the future who isn’t in StarFleet is living in a holodeck with detailed recreations of their late beloveds (and with the bonus of removing the annoying quirks of those people). Or maybe only the rich do this, but in ST’s abundant future, that’s most people. This requires large-beyond-imagining data collections of detailed transporter profiles, and maintaining them uses up the resources of several small galaxies.
I was hoping that I, coming back as a Star Trek fan after 40+ years away, would find something interesting in SNL. Not so much, I’m afraid (except a few very attractive actors to watch). I’m glad I’ve been able to watch it while spending only a few dollars on Paramount trial memberships. (To be fair, I have watched close to zero television of any sort during those years. Gimme a book every time.)
The idea of the future having Japanese-style Otaku who live in holodecks was an idea I played with awhile. Holodeck addiction is an actual medical condition according to VOY after all.
I liked this episode a lot. I felt like it did a good job getting Scotty integrated into the crew. Unlike one of the comments above, I actually liked Pike stumbling over the term “Recreation Room” because it seemed like he wasn’t sure of whether it was named so to stress recreation/relaxation or the holographic recreations of real objects. One of the things I’d hoped they would have brought up was Pike’s dislike of holograms, which was brought up on Discovery (if memory serves, it was holographic systems that went haywire and crippled the Enterprise at the end of DSC Season One).
The one thing that irritated me was the total lack of mention as to what was happening with Batel – and Pike seeming pretty unfazed about it all …
Good point about why Pike hesitated over “Recreation.”
As for Batel, we don’t know how much time has passed between episodes. Apparently there are some big time jumps, since we’re already in 2261 even though season 2 started out in late 2259, which means we’re averaging something like a month or more between episodes since then. Naturally some episodes clearly come on each other’s heels, so other episodes might well be months apart.
“we don’t know how much time has passed between episodes”
They mentioned having to reinstate Ortegas early because she flies the ship but I don’t recall how long her relief of duty was supposed to have lasted if specified. Edit: The Memory Alpha recap says two weeks.
Okay, that clarifies it.
I was so glad that the episode and/or just the holodeck adventure itself wasn’t only The Last Frontier, because as enjoyable as bits of it were it was more ridiculous parody than homage.
I’m right there with you, Keith, on the end scene with Scotty and Number One. The stuff with La’an and Spock has me far more conflicted. I really have a hard time with it in light of her relationship with the alternate Kirk, even though from a prequel perspective he’s nothing more than another fellow Starfleet officer, but the actors/characters have tremendous chemistry onscreen.
I still have a hard time believing that The Last Frontier could’ve been a product of the holodeck computer at all. It’s too detailed, too specific a parody, too overtly the work of human writers winking at their TV audience. I can’t believe that an AI within the Star Trek universe, having no idea that something like Star Trek could have existed in the 1960s because it didn’t in that reality, could’ve coincidentally generated a simulation that’s such a blatant spoof of 1960s Star Trek. It’s too great an intrusion of the metatextual into the text.
Aside from the odd choice to give Spock yet another love interest, I thought this was good fun, especially Paul Wesley’s impression of Shatner (or rather the stereotype everyone has of Shatner), though I didn’t enjoy it as much the first time I watched it, because I was too busy being annoyed by the fact that they were using one of the ten episodes they get in a season on that most cliche of Star Trek stories, the malfunctioning holodeck.
The thing about TV series love interests is that the writers tend to write to the actors’ performances and personalities, which means that strong romantic chemistry between actors can lead to relationship arcs that no one expected — which is, for instance, why Arrow‘s Oliver Queen ended up with the initially supporting character Felicity Smoak (who had great chemistry with just about everybody) rather than his traditional comics love interest [Dinah] Laurel Lance. So it’s possible that the writers didn’t anticipate giving Spock another love interest, but there were such strong sparks between Ethan Peck and Christina Chong that they couldn’t resist writing to it.
It does make canonical sense in a weird way, though. There’s a behind-the-scenes memo revealing Roddenberry’s rather creepy intent that Vulcan males have an irresistible hypnotic power over women, which they must use to stimulate naturally frigid Vulcan women in order to reproduce (like I said, creepy). He said that while Spock strove not to take advantage of this power over human women, they couldn’t help but fall for him nonetheless. This casts Chapel’s and Leila Kalomi’s crushes on Spock in TOS in a disquieting light, as well as explaining the scene in “The Omega Glory” where Spock Svengalis a Yang woman from across the room and gets her to give him a communicator. Now, this intent was mercifully never stated outright, so we can assume it’s not canonical, but there is subtextual grounding for the idea that Spock is a babe magnet despite himself, and since he’s at a stage in his life where he’s open to his human side, it kind of stands to reason that he wouldn’t be without female companionship for long.
Well, you only have to look at Leonard Nimoy’s fan mail to know Spock was a babe magnet :)
But seriously, I suppose there is something interesting about turning the idea that Spock is incapable of love on its head. Instead, he’s too capable.
Can we retire the term “babe magnet”?
It was probably retired long ago, but I’m old.
(The transporter is never mentioned as an option for some reason.)
@krad: I thought it was pretty obvious. The holodeck’s power surges rendering the Enterprise’s systems useless, plus the fact that the transporter was probably the most directly affected one since the holodeck was drawing from the pattern buffers to render the characters. All in all, this was a smartly written tech solution explaining both the time it took for holodeck tech to become mainstream, plus the reasoning behind Voyager’s “independent holodeck power” plot device.
When the episode ended, I immediately went back to look over Spock’s appearances. During the two major bridge scenes, he’s conspiciously absent as to not give the twist away, but the bridge is shot from very specific angles where the real Spock could have easily been present off-camera, especially during the maneuvering sequence to dodge the neutron waves (which reminded me quite a bit of the last-minute sequence with the Ent-D escaping star fragment on TNG’s “The Naked Now”).
Holo-Spock is a late-episode twist that really caught me off-guard. From what I saw, the first appearance of the character is when La’an enters the still inactive holodeck but before activating the full program. He’s just standing there acting like a robot waiting for a prompt. The signs are there, but the writers really did their homework hiding it in plain sight. Kudos also to Peck and Frakes for making this Spock just slightly different to the point that a casual observer wouldn’t readily notice.
The only “Big Goodbye” inconsistency I can spot is that at one point La’an deliberately uses the term “holodeck safeties“. But a century later, we see Beverly Crusher horrified to the sight of Whalen being shot by Cyrus Redblock, realizing for the first time that holographic bullets could maim and kill real people. If she had no understandng of the fact that holodecks needed safety systems (they were presumably installed after that episode), there is no way La’an or any Starfleet officer in the 2260s would have figured out the term to begin with.
That aside, this was a terrific noir-esque Hollywood murder mystery. Another big surprise besides Holo-Spock for me was not only Paul Wesley’s over-the-top performance but especially Anson Mount’s take on what I assume is Gene Roddenberry himself. Some of the groans and screams he utters are beyond what I thought he was capable of.
Regarding the Spock/La’an kiss at the end, it feels and plays like Alonso Myers and the SNW writers deliberately attempting to have some fun trolling the audience. You have La’an, Spock, Chapel and Korby. That’s as complicated as it can get. I’m keeping an open mind to see how they’ll get themselves out of this one and towards lonely emotionally closed-off Spock in the long run.
This is my fav episode so far this season.
-Kefka
✧ I have mentioned before that Paul Wesley reminds me of Jim Carrey’s portrayal of Kirk in “The Wrath of Farrakhan,” mostly because he’s so lanky. But here his over-the-top portrayal of Maxwell Saint is more on the mark than Carrey’s over-the-top portrayal, so I am duly impressed.
Did anyone else notice the (intentional, I presume) continuity error in which his lock of hair moves from one side of his forehead to the other between takes?
Wesley won me over in last season’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” but it’s still hard for me to think of him as Kirk. That’s also the episode where I fell in love with La’an, so now I’ve got to defeat Kirk and Spock to win her heart?
Wesley did a good job playing the popular caricature of Shatner here, but he also does a pretty good job playing what Kirk was really like. He doesn’t come that close on the voice, but he has the general personality, although his Kirk is more laid-back than Shatner played it in season 1.
Just catching up on the 3rd season. I really enjoyed this one, partly for all of the asides and call-backs. One that I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned is the credit for The Last Frontier‘s The Doctor as played by “Lee Woods”, an obvious permutation of DeForest Kelly. I must admit to chortling over that one.