From the moment Anson Mount first appeared on the screen in “Brother,” Discovery’s second-season premiere, the notion of a Captain Pike-focused Star Trek show started to take root in the nerdosphere, and those roots grew stronger and stronger with Rebecca Romijn showing up as Number One in “An Obol for Charon,” and then Ethan Peck for the back half of the season as Spock.
Three years after that debut, two years after it was announced, Strange New Worlds has finally debuted, to absurdly high expectations.
I’m pleased to say that those expectations are met. This show is wonderful.
The episode opens with one of my least favorite Trek tropes: first contact with people who are just like us, only aliens. We saw this in TNG’s “First Contact” and Voyager‘s “Blink of an Eye,” among others, and we get it here with the natives of Kiley 279, who make contact with the U.S.S. Archer, currently under the temporary command of Number One. (That ship name is one of several Enterprise callbacks, including a comment Spock makes about how Vulcans invented first contact.) But the Archer goes quiet, and Admiral Robert April forces the Enterprise to leave spacedock early from her scheduled maintenance to find out what the heck happened.
This gives us another of my least favorite Trek tropes, the guy who is thinking about leaving Starfleet, a trope we ironically first saw in “The Cage,” the original pilot that introduced Pike, and also used twice on DS9 (“Emissary,” “The Way of the Warrior“). The episode opens with Pike living in a remote house in Montana, hair and beard having grown quite long, with occasional company from a fellow captain (with whom he sleeps and for whom he cooks breakfast), and his horse. He keeps refusing to answer his communicator, so April shows up in a shuttle while he’s out horseback riding. (“You spooked my horse!” Pike accuses. April, who was established as Pike’s predecessor as Enterprise’s CO in the animated episode “The Counter-Clock Incident,” is played by the African-American Adrian Holmes, a casting choice that has already caused comment, and has served as a nice way of revealing the racists among Trek fans.)
Pike is still suffering some major PTSD from the glimpse into his future that he got in Discovery’s “Through the Valley of Shadows,” and that we all knew about from the original series’ “The Menagerie“: that he will rescue a bunch of cadets, but will be in constant pain, confined to a chair and only able to communicate “yes” or “no” to people.
(There’s another trope here that’s problematic, and is worth examining separately at some point, which is both Discovery and this show perpetuating the yucky 1960s stereotype that made up the spine of both “The Cage” and “The Menagerie,” to wit, that being physically impaired is the end of your life.)
Pike has been putting off making a decision, and as usual, Anson Mount plays every emotion on his face beautifully. It’s clear he does not want to go back out there, though he refuses to actually make that decision until he has to, but then April then drops the bomb that it’s Una who’s in trouble.
At that point, there’s nothing else he can do. He still doesn’t want to go, but he can’t abandon his first officer.
So Enterprise heads back out. We get to meet the rest of the crew, including the helm officer Lieutenant Erica Ortegas, the new chief of security La’an Noonien Singh (filling in as first officer until they get Number One back), new chief medical officer Dr. M’Benga, Nurse Christine Chapel, and Cadet Nyota Uhura, doing her fourth year field assignment on the Enterprise.
Now’s as good a time as any to bring up another issue I had with the cast announcement. I was fine with M’Benga and Chapel being on board the ship at this stage, but I had a significant continuity issue with Uhura having served under Pike. It’s the same problem I had with the D.C. Fontana novel Vulcan’s Glory which had Scotty serving as a junior engineer on the ship during the events of “The Cage.” The problem is that this is something that should’ve come up in “The Menagerie” when the injured Pike came on board the Enterprise. If Uhura and Scotty—who were both in the episode (hell, Scotty was part of the court-martial, initially)—served with Pike, why didn’t they show any reaction to his state?
As it happens, I’ve seen the second episode—I was fortunate enough to go to the red-carpet premiere in New York that included this episode as well as next week’s “Children of the Comet”—and between those two, I’ve been completely sold on Celia Rose Gooding’s cadet iteration of Uhura. She has less to do in this first episode, but I love her “Cool!” at the end when Pike gives their mission statement.
That declaration by Pike, by the way, is the second time he gets to do the “space, the final frontier…” speech in the episode, the first being over the opening credits. Mount absolutely nails it both times, and it’s glorious. And the credits use the font that the original series used also!
It may sound like I was disappointed by this episode, and I need to emphasize very loudly that I’m not (which is why I made sure to lead with saying it was wonderful). I was utterly captivated by this premiere episode, and my anticipation for this series is greater than it’s been for any show since TNG debuted in 1987. While I found some of the choices irritating, they worked out okay.
In particular the they’re-just-like-us nature of the Kiley natives was there to make the plot work better. The idea is that Kiley is pretty much where Earth was before first contact, on the verge of a horribly destructive war.
The twist here is that normally the Federation wouldn’t make contact at this stage of a planet’s development. But the Archer detected a warp signature. However, it takes the just-upgraded Enterprise sensors to make out that what they have on Kiley is a warp bomb. Worse, they only have it because they had the capability to observe astronomical phenomena many light-years distant—including the fleet of Starfleet, Klingon, and Kelpien ships that battled Control before Discovery buggered off into the future in “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2.” They were then able to reverse-engineer the warp signatures they observed and make a weapon of mass destruction.
Pike, Spock, and La’an beam down in disguise. The disguises are accomplished by genetic therapy developed by Chapel, and I just adore this touch. It was established in the original series’ “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” that she put her career in bio-research on hold to sign onto a starship in the hopes of finding her fiancé Dr. Roger Korby. So having her actually be responsible for bio-research is a lovely touch, and one that shows Chapel building on the work pioneered on Enterprise by Dr. Phlox to help Federation folks disguise themselves as natives for observation and covert missions and such.
Spock’s modifications don’t take, and once Pike realizes that it’s Starfleet’s fault that these people have a warp bomb, he abandons any notion of being covert (which was out the door when Number One and the other two members of her crew were captured in any case), and confronts the local government. He even says, “Take me to your leader”!
Realizing that Kiley 279 is on the brink of the same cataclysm that befell Earth, Pike shows them footage of Earth’s twenty-first century. And, like the just-finished second season of Picard, we have a twenty-first century that is a mix of the reality outside our doors with some of what Trek previously thought the twenty-first century would be like mixed in. As a result, we get mentions of the Eugenics Wars and World War III alongside footage of things like the 6 January 2021 insurrection.
We get some flash-forwards to show how the Enterprise‘s influence is a general positive, in much the same way the Vulcan ship that arrived at the end of First Contact was shown to be a general positive to the people of Earth in Enterprise‘s “Broken Bow.” It’s a nice bit of optimism, and helps Pike see that knowing your future doesn’t mean you need to be bound by it—another reason why Kiley 279 needed to be as much like Earth as possible, otherwise the analogy to human history doesn’t quite hold.
I love pretty much everything about this episode, and more to the point, I love the feel of the show. The production design is superb, a perfect mix of what we got in the 1960s with what a 2020s audience would expect from a science fiction show. It’s a tough needle to thread, as the Enterprise we saw fifty-plus years ago looked like what people thought the future would look like back then, but in truth the Enterprise that Jeffrey Hunter and William Shatner were in command of was—once you remove the transporter and warp drive—less technologically sophisticated than my house. It is to the great credit of the production designers and art directors and visual effects folk that they’ve found a way to make the Enterprise look like what we think the future will look like now, while still being true to the general ambience from 1964. (I’m sure this show will look just as dated when people watch the reruns in 2086…)
The acting is superb, but that’s almost a given. One consistent feature of all the Secret Hideout-produced shows so far has been phenomenal acting, and we already knew that Mount, Peck, and Romijn were amazing from Discovery and Short Treks. Mount in particular nails every single line he’s given, every single magnificently eloquent facial expression he provides. Peck continues his excellent work that simultaneously channels Leonard Nimoy (and Zachary Quinto to a lesser degree) and still makes it his own. This is definitely Spock, but a noticeably younger Spock, which is as it should be. And while Romijn is horribly underused in this one, she still nails the role of Number One. The easy camaraderie between Babs Olusanmokun and Jess Bush as M’Benga and Chapel is a delight, and Christina Chong does excellent work as the hyper-competent but way-too-close-lipped La’an. (I just hope they explain her last name soon, because yet another connection to Khan and the Eugenics Wars is, um, tiresome.) Melissa Navia doesn’t get much to do as Ortegas, though I love that when a Kiley native gets loose on Enterprise, leaving Chapel to chase him through the corridors, Ortegas mutters, “Every time I’m in command,” which I hope becomes a running theme.
But what I love best about this episode is that it does something prequels are uniquely capable of doing, and something Discovery did well on several occasions: provide texture for previous episodes that take place in this show’s future. Specifically, they do a wonderful job of doing that with both “Amok Time” and “The Menagerie.”
When we first see Spock in this premiere, he’s on Vulcan with T’Pring, as they solemnize their engagement. As originally established in “Amok Time,” Spock and T’Pring were bonded when they were children, but it makes sense that there would be a second step taken when both are adults. Spock states that he’s committed to marrying T’Pring, but she’s a bit more skeptical, referring to him “gallivanting” off to Starfleet. This nicely sows the seeds of T’Pring’s actions in “Amok Time,” as we know damn well that Spock isn’t going to stop gallivanting, and we know that T’Pring’s seeking out Stonn has its roots in her dissatisfaction with being affianced to a prominent Starfleet officer. Tremendous credit to Gia Sandhu who puts her own spin on Arlene Martel’s aristocratic Vulcan woman from the original series, and her chemistry with Peck as Spock is letter-perfect.
And when Pike takes Spock into his confidence with regard to what he saw on Boreth, it also fixes one of “The Menagerie’s” biggest flaws. It never made any kind of sense that the logical, emotionally controlled Spock who pooh-poohs so much human behavior and who is a firm believer in law and order would commit several crimes (kidnapping, assault, disobeying orders, theft of Starfleet property, impersonation of a captain, etc.) to get Pike to Talos IV just because Pike was his captain. But now, with Spock knowing that Pike believed this to be the end of his life, and knowing that he can make it so that it isn’t the end of his life, it so totally makes Spock’s actions in the original series episode much easier to take.
There’s a bit of tweaking going on here, too, as Pike and Spock discuss a “Lieutenant Kirk” whom Pike requested for a posting. Combined with the revelation of Paul Wesley playing Jim Kirk in the forthcoming second season, I suspect a lot of heads will explode at the Kirk mention, since Kirk said in “The Menagerie” that he didn’t meet Pike until he took command of the Enterprise. Except in the end, we discover that it’s Sam Kirk, Jim’s brother. He’s serving as a science officer on the ship, which doesn’t violate any continuity. (As for Jim Kirk showing up in season two, we now have two ways in which he can appear without meeting Pike, via either Sam or Spock, or both. Indeed, I expect there to be a season-two storyline that shows the heretofore-untold tale of how Kirk and Spock actually met, but there’s no requirement that Pike be part of that storyline…) Dan Jeannotte plays him with a very unfortunate mustache…
I’ve watched this episode twice now, once on a big screen in a theatre full of people, the other time in the privacy of my living room, and both times I was suffused with joy and optimism—which is what Star Trek is supposed to be. This is Trek at its most basic: a hopeful future about a group of people working to make the galaxy a better place.
I must make one more minor complaint, though: the episode title. Seriously, we already have an Enterprise episode called “Strange New World,” we’ve got a comic book, an anthology series, a role-playing game, and a collectible card game all called Strange New Worlds, we’ve got a show that’s called Strange New Worlds and the best title you can come up with for your premier episode is to just rehash your show title? Really?
Keith R.A. DeCandido also reviewed the second-season finale of Picard, which is also live here on Tor.com today.
Agreed, this is a fantastic pilot. In terms of Trek pilots, it’s at minimum tied with Emissary for the best, and might even surpass that. It does everything that a pilot should do – introduce the setting, main characters, and themes, along with setting up an initial character arc around the series lead. I did find where we meet up with Pike a little surprising at first (he seemed like he was already putting himself together a bit by the end of Discovery’s second season) but I understand why we need him at a low point in order to build him up again.
Given Goldsman is not known for excellent writing (he’s been involved in a few good movies, like A Beautiful Mind, but his genre work has been less impressive) the level of polish on the script here is incredible. But I’m even more surprised at how effective his direction is, as my only prior experience with his directorial work was the two-part finale for Picard season 1, which was, to be frank, bush-league. This is however a mostly slow/talky episode, with only a few flashes of action, so I think his largely static use of camera really helps, both in terms of not letting the viewer be too distracted and giving it more of a “classic Trek” vibe.
I honestly have no major criticisms here. Maybe La’an’s monologue about the Gorn was a little too overdone, and certainly failed show not tell, but it was completely in line with past Trek, and I’m grateful we got a pained explanation rather than some flashback. Plus La’an looks like she will be an awesome character. She didn’t get the full character arc that Pike did, but she was much more important to the episode this week than either Spock or Una.
So yeah, looking forward to next week. I’m a real fan of The Magicians, and want to see what Henry Alonso Myers does in Trek.
Wow, for the first time in a long time I don’t have much to bitch and moan about when it comes to a Star Trek series. I really enjoyed this!
Well, okay, there were a few awkward moments. I could’ve done without the Discovery references and the Janurary 6th stuff, while I agree with the premise, had me rolling my eyes a little. But the message was ultimately uplifting, so I can’t dislike its bluntness too much.
By the way, when they showed the televised footage of the conflicts on the planet, was that a Ukrainian flag in the crowd? It looked like real world footage anyway.
“April… is played by the African-American Adrian Holmes, a casting choice that has already caused comment, and has served as a nice way of revealing the racists among Trek fans.”
Boy, have you got that right. The comments I’ve read elsewhere are absolutely disgusting.
The show is off to a terrific start so far. A neat one-and-done story that establishes the characters and the values of the show, that uses continuity from Discovery and resolves it nicely to allow moving forward, and that really brings Trek’s commitment to social commentary on the present to the forefront. It’s full of TOS-era continuity and tropes, but updated for modern times, in ways that are clever enough that I’m willing to take them at face value despite the occasional inconsistency. After all, TOS itself is full of inconsistencies, since they were making up their universe as they went, and series rewriting their own continuity was par for the course in TV back then. Roddenberry himself saw TOS as just an imperfect dramatization of Kirk’s logs, subject to update and correction, as with the Klingon redesign in TMP.
The characters are really likeable and work well. Pike’s arc is very reminiscent of “The Cage,” making him feel more like that version of Pike than the happier one we saw in DSC, and the episode lets Mount reconcile the two aspects of Pike’s character nicely. His bond with Spock helps set up what Spock will do in “The Menagerie” (and I didn’t even think of what Keith recognized about Spock knowing of Pike’s future — by the time “The Menagerie” happens, Spock has known about this for eight years already, so it’s no wonder he’s so driven and has a plan already in place).
I have issues with the portrayal of Spock and T’Pring, though. In “Amok Time,” I never got the impression that Spock particularly liked T’Pring. It seemed more like he was saddled with an arranged marriage from childhood and had no interest in following through on it until biology forced him to. Another continuity issue is having Vulcans kiss rather than doing the finger-touch thing that TOS established as their equivalent. It makes them too human (and kissing as a display of affection isn’t even universal among human cultures).
Cadet Uhura is great. Celia Rose Gooding captures Nichelle Nichols’s voice well, and I loved how readily she calmed the panicking alien in the turbolift — that was marvelous.
Chapel is explained as a civilian consultant, which resolves my continuity concern about this being two years before she canonically joins Starfleet. Still, while Jess Bush’s hyper-cheerful and snarky Chapel is fun, she’s unrecognizable as the character from TOS.
La’an is an interesting character, though I do have an issue with her backstory involving the Gorn. One, Starfleet isn’t supposed to know about the Gorn for another 7-8 years. (The file on La’an that Pike was reading at the start said “First Contact: Gorn (Disputed),” suggesting some ambiguity, but the later dialogue didn’t fit that idea.) Also, it perpetuates the frustrating trend of modern storytellers to completely miss the entire point of “Arena,” which was that the Gorn were not the monsters they appeared to be.
I love the plot point of the aliens seeing the space battle with their telescopes and reverse-engineering warp physics from that. Trek so rarely realizes that telescopes are a thing, that there are plenty of ways for a civilization to detect alien life before they invent warp drive, which is why the whole warp-breakthrough standard for first contact is such a dumb idea. So this was a lovely touch. Although I wish they’d been clearer on just what the hell a “warp bomb” is. Do they just mean an antimatter bomb, or something that actually generates a warp field in a destructive way? (Realistically, just generating a warp field on a planet surface would be quite devastating due to the spatial distortion.)
I love the idea of landing party equipment and native clothing being programmed into the transporter buffer, though it’s definitely not a capability they were shown to have in TOS (or McCoy wouldn’t have had so much trouble with his boots in “Patterns of Force”). Although it would help explain why the crew’s uniforms changed when they beamed to the Mirror Universe in “Mirror, Mirror.” And using a transporter to do remote genetic editing on the fly? That’s just pushing it.
Also, if the transporter chief is Kyle, where’s his English accent? Well, maybe it’s a different Kyle. Although M’Benga has a different accent here than on TOS. And James Doohan gave Robert April an English or mid-Atlantic accent that Adrian Holmes doesn’t use. And Sarek’s accent was mid-Atlantic in TOS, English in Kelvin, and American in DSC.
It was an interesting idea to have Pike’s approach to stopping the aliens’ war be inspired by The Day the Earth Stood Still. Although I like his approach of “Here’s what happened to Earth and that you’ll do to yourselves if you don’t stop” much better than Klaatu’s “Clean up your act or our murder-robot overlords will exterminate you all.”
Oh, one more comment – in a lot of ways this episode was a reprise of Emissary wasn’t it? We start out with a broken man shattered by his experiences and considering leaving Starfleet entirely, and we end the episode with the series lead having a full embrace of the duty in front of him, despite knowing the cost it will have.
@5/Karl: Funny, I’ve long thought “Emissary” echoed “The Cage” in much that same way.
@5 & 6 I was actually getting Omega Glory vibes from this one. Abandoned ship in orbit, missing crew on the ground, general order 1 dilemma, etc.
I bounced hard off of Discovery’s third season and Picard’s first, but I loved this episode and I’m really excited to see where this show goes. It wasn’t perfect, but there is much promise here.
Oh, yeah, that’s one thing that bugged me — why does a whole starship have only three people aboard it? That feels like a hasty script edit to simplify the rescue scene or save money on extras. Also, just how did they get captured?
Although it’s nice to see a saucer-and-single-nacelle design like Franz Joseph’s Saladin/Hermes class finally being canonized. Especially since I used one as Kirk’s first command in The Captain’s Oath.
From a story standpoint I think it made more sense that Una lead a small team mission rather than assume a major command while waiting to rejoin the Enterprise. Otherwise her return would seem like a character regression. But, yeah, it doesn’t make much sense for such a small team to undertake such an important mission so close to home.
@9/Tribbles: Yeah, but then, why use a starship of that size for a 3-person mission? Why not use a smaller one?
@10 CLB, I don’t have a good answer for that. I’m trying to tell myself that is a camera perspective thing. Beaming down the full crew doesn’t make any sense though…they obviously needed a Michael Collins here.
At some point after the events of “The Cage,” Pike got rid of the giant TV in his quarters … Also, his quarters are huge and have a dozen windows!
The sets are well done for the most part — modern with nods to the ’60s series. I wish the bridge was less cluttered to evoke the original more. I also miss the tri-panel display that was often in the center of the conference room table. The giant monitor mounted into the conference room bulkhead doesn’t have the same charm, although it worked OK in blocking.
I liked this episode and the nods to other shows, like the Shuttlecraft Stamets. I’m definitely tuning in every week.
@12/QuesoGuapo: The Pike-era briefing room didn’t have the three-sided viewer. It had a big screen at one end of the table, against the wall.
As for nods, I liked it that the Enterprise was in the same kind of spacedock used in TMP. Although I don’t get why Pike took a shuttle to just behind the ship and then beamed across. Seems a waste of either a shuttle trip or transporter power, depending on how you look at it.
This is certainly a important thing and I have had many relatives I cherished my time after they were impaired with. However, I am going to point out that the absolute horrific nature of Pike’s condition is kind of the story. It’s also not like you can’t be injured in a way that doesn’t provide much quality of life. Indeed, the story actually subverts the matter too as while Pike is never “cured”, the Talosians are able to provide him the quality of life he deserves. Which isn’t what they were going for in the episode but certainly works well as a metaphor.
My biggest issue with this episode is actually the handling of the Gorn, who have a history of being turned into Dungeons and Dragons monsters. Here, they’ve gone from being “a reptilian race who is otherwise identical to the Federation and, indeed, that is the point.” to a bunch of cannibals who eat sapient beings and also lay their eggs in people like mosquitos. I mean, in any Star Wars RPG I would have run, that would be SERIOUS libel and hate speech but apparently it’s just true. Poor Gorn. You’re now xenomorphs and the Magog from Andromeda.
Also, props to Christina Chong as my favorite part of Halo: Nightfall getting a bigger role. Strange coincidence, but she was the model (in my head at least) for one of my books’ main characters.
Finally, The Orville energy in this is big. I kept expecting Pike to ask Singh to open a jar of pickles.
Spock’s love life feels like a very odd and unnecessary inclusion, and the first contact/civil war premise wasn’t anything new for Trek, but that won’t stop me from loving this episode. I desperately miss the episodic structure of classic Trek. I was apprehensive about watching this after that disappointing Picard finale, but I’m very happy I did.
Great write-up. Just an FYI: Sam Kirk has a mustache in this episode because Sam Kirk’s dead body (played by William Shatner in “Operation — Annihilate!”) had a mustache.
Christopher: What you see as a discontinuity in how Spock feels about T’Pring, I see as a place for this particular subplot to go, as I’m fairly certain this isn’t the only time we’ll be seeing T’Pring….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@17/krad: It’s not just about Spock’s feelings toward T’Pring. It’s more that I had the impression that he hadn’t really thought about her much one way or the other in decades. He even said “I’d hoped I would be spared this,” as if he hoped his half-human biology meant he’d never have to go through pon farr at all and thus wouldn’t need to consummate their bond. (Although I get the impression from the previews and the title of episode 5 that SNW will interpret things in a different way.)
Anyway, on the subject of the episode title, I’m just glad they’re sticking to the tradition of actually using an episode title for the premiere instead of just calling it “Pilot” like so many shows do. (Cue the joke about “The Cage” being the actual pilot for SNW. Though I guess DSC season 2 was its backdoor pilot.) And I have seen other shows whose pilot title was the same as the series title, though generally in cases where the pilot was a 2-hour TV movie (e.g. the TV series versions of Logan’s Run and Alien Nation, and the 1990 The Flash).
This is what I’ve wanted to see for the last 5 years since Trek returned to television, namely a show that is visually and stylistically modern, but which retains the basics of the earlier shows. I don’t care about continuity changes, and I certainly don’t care about the fact that Robert April is black now (and Chief Kyle is a Korean-Canadian). The only thing that actually bothered me was the bit about the Gorn being monsters, which, as you already pointed out, misses the whole point of their original episode. However, that small disappointment aside, I really enjoyed this. With Discovery actually getting really good in its last season, at least I can say I’m enjoying two of the three live-action Trek shows on TV right now. Here’s hoping Picard improves in its final season.
By the way, did April’s surname actually show up anywhere in the episode? I didn’t notice him being called anything but “Admiral” and “Bob.”
I’m not all that bothered by the Gorn being presented as “monsters” at this point. Just because one band of them can be monstrous doesn’t mean all of them are. Plus, many first contact situations have gone badly only to have the respective species come to eventually understand each other. The point of “Arena,” with the realization that the Gorn have brutal methods but are not monsters and have a point about their territory being invaded, remains.
Besides, this will allow La’an some room to grow to perhaps forgive the Gorn. I doubt we’ve heard the last from them in this series.
I really enjoyed the premiere even though I haven’t really watched discovery, Pike wrestling with his fate was fascinating. I know it can be a bit of an issue, but from how I understand it, Pike only really experiences what happens to him and not what his life even in a chair could be like. If you’re a young man relatively, find out you will be burned horribly and not being able to walk and communicate like you have, I could see feeling like that was a death.
I didn’t notice the Gorn treatment as terrible because I haven’t been a Trek fan all my life that retains every detail (something I envy in others) but maybe its just from a victim’s perspective that is distorted from truth? I mean, the Federation at this time still doesn’t know the Gorn that well
Anyway, great review as always Keith. Your Trek tor reviews have always been fun to follow as a new hardcore fan and you don’t disappoint. I loved reading your TOS, TNG and DS9 reviews while I binged a few years ago.
Nope, I don’t believe it did. I only knew it was him because I looked up the cast on Wikipedia.
Weirdly, when he was going through “the second civil war became the eugenic war became World War III” bit I wasn’t thinking about continuity, I was thinking about Rios and Ramirez living through most of that . . . and maybe the post-atomic horror, and maybe First Contact. . . yikes.
krad,
I know you probably said some wonderfully composed, thoughtful observations but I can’t process them because Anson Mount is hot. Hot. HOT.
Also, how do old-school Stardates work? I’m used to the Berman era conventions. Is an episode spanning to from 1739 to 2259, like, a long time?
@24/mastadge: It bugged me that Pike implied the Eugenics Wars were after the present instead of in the 1990s. But then, maybe they’re called the Eugenics Wars, plural, for a reason. If there was more than one, that could explain why Spock conflated them with WWIII in “Space Seed.”
“Also, how do old-school Stardates work? I’m used to the Berman era conventions. Is an episode spanning to from 1739 to 2259, like, a long time?”
Old-school stardates don’t have any real meaning or structure, beyond moving generally upward over the course of a season. They were specifically designed to convey no real chronological information.
But the discrepancy between the stardate in the caption and the Kelvin-style stardate in the log entry (just the Gregorian year with the number of days in the year after the decimal, which is dumb) is evidently a mistake.
Incidentally, seeing a ship with a single underslung nacelle in this episode has reminded me that Captain Robau should still be alive in the Prime timeline, or at least that he wouldn’t have been killed by Nero. So I wonder what Faran Tahir’s availability is like these days. Okay, he’s a decade or so too young for Robau’s age at this point in the timeline, but then, so is Adrian Holmes for Robert April’s age.
Let me jump on the Anson Mount is amazing bandwagon. I mean the guys portrayal of like basically willed this show into existence. He has somehow been able to do since day 1 what it took Patrick Stewart and Avery Brooks (who are my #1 and #1A captains IMO) a season or so to do, which is to create a fully fleshed out captain who you like and admire. He conveys so much through his acting.
@CLB I assume the pushback of the Eugenics wars was a retcon in association with Project Kahn in Picard, which would establish the Eugenics Wars as after our current point in time, whereas Space Seed would have them take place in the 90s. I’m good with it- Discovery’s New Eden already established World War 3 as being as late as 2053 and that lines up better with the global depression we saw in First Contact. It works for me.
I’m going to have to rewrap my brain around a non arc-ed season, since we haven’t really seen that since DS9/ Voyager (I’m looking past Lower Decks deliberately). I don’t mind the arcs, but I think this is just going to be fun to watch
I have a feeling that, what with the Khan reference in the Picard season finale and more detail on the Eugenics Wars here, plus the unnecessary connection to La’an, they’re building to some kind of Khan series or mini-series or movie or, sigh, a cinematic universe. Hey, I didn’t say it was a good feeling.
Can we be done with this character already? Montalban was magnificent, of course, but the character on paper was a bonehead. He couldn’t even figure out that spaceships can move in three dimensions! Go back to the freezer, Khan.
April’s surname was dropped at least once. It was a scene where Pike is walking into a room (possibly the conference room?) and one of the first things he says is, “April is sending us…..” or something to that effect.
The Gorn discrepancy everyone is on about – isn’t it likely she’s just lying? Number One found her adrift, sure, but it doesn’t mean her disputed story is true. She ingratiates herself to people through an appeal to their empathy – hell, she pulled the same trick in a minor fashion on the away mission when she duped those guards
This was a real tour de force of Star Trek Sideburns.
All I can say is: Wohooo!
Ok. I really screamed a bad word and then yeah.
That was good. So good. I want more. I don’t want this to end. Please, more like this. Hope. Optimism. All that jazz. We’ve had a few years of darkness in real life. This is what we need.
@28/MikeKelm: “I assume the pushback of the Eugenics wars was a retcon in association with Project Kahn in Picard, which would establish the Eugenics Wars as after our current point in time, whereas Space Seed would have them take place in the 90s.”
No… The “Project Khan” file was an old paper document, so presumably it represented the antecedent of Soong’s work. We saw in his first episode that he was disgraced for violating an international convention against genetic engineering. Presumably that convention was established in the wake of the Eugenics Wars, to ensure it never happened again, which is why Soong’s desire to engineer humans was seen as so disgraceful.
As I took it, that last scene didn’t mean “Okay, now it’s time to start creating Khan.” It meant “Okay, all my work based on Project Khan has been deleted, but I still have the original template I started from, so I can start again and recreate my work, and maybe in about 130 years my lookalike descendant Arik will be able to carry on from there.”
It was a good episode. Not a great one, but what pilot has been?
My only problem is that, while I like Chapel’s characterisation in this episode, it really doesn’t match her character from TOS. There’s absolutely no reason why they couldn’t have just created an original character for this series. I also would have liked a line a dialogue about how Dr. Boyce had retired or the like.
@25
Yes. Anson Mount is EXTREMELY hot. In person even more so.
lacomina: When Pike was going over the crew roster, he saw they had a new chief medical officer, and then he said, “Oh, good, we need one.” That implies Boyce’s retirement or departure or some damn thing….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
In general I really liked the episode, but this comment —
— did make me want to stop and mention: The beginning of the episode on Paramount+, even before the “A CBS Studios Production” title card, was a little animated logo sequence for “Star Trek” that I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen before…and is very reminiscent of the animated logo sequence for “Star Wars” TV shows on Disney+.
So, uh, yeah. Not saying, but just saying. :)
<<…the best title you can come up with for your premier episode is to just rehash your show title?>>
To be fair, the first episode of many shows is called “Pilot,” so at least they put in some effort.
Minor points: I was pleased to see vents at the ends of the nacelles — the nodules always struck me as weird. But communicators don’t chirp to signal an incoming communication — that sound is for when one opens the device — and they’ve never vibrated.
And that’s why this show is a complete betrayal of Trek.
(Heh, toxic fandom joke.)
@16/Ross G: I was actually kind of disappointed that they didn’t cast Paul Wesley as Sam Kirk and slap a fake mustache on him. (But I guess that’s up there with the joke going around that they should have had Rebecca Romijn play both Number One and Chapel.)
@38/Watts: we got that logo sequence on CTV Sci-Fi in Canada too – it’s not just a Paramount+ thing. I wonder if it’s going to become a thing before future Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy episodes too.
@27/CLB: Spock has to be wrong about something: if the Eugenics Wars took place in the 1990s, they can’t be the last World War, and vice versa. Something’s gotta give, and no offense to Greg Cox, but it makes more sense to merge the Eugenics Wars with WWIII than to retcon them into actual history.
This is easily the most excited I’ve been about a new Star Trek series that I can remember. I dropped Discovery a few episodes in and never went back to it, so I can say that this pilot did a good job of catching up anyone like me (other than some minor confusion over what inspired the “warp bomb”). Nearly everything about this was great and what wasn’t great has the potential to be great. I wish I could inject this pilot directly into my veins.
My only nitpick: it bugged the hell out of me when the other captain at the beginning called his communicator a “phone.” It reminds me of my husband saying “teleporters” instead of transporters. Considering Pike had an actual rotary phone in the background of that scene though, I’ll accept it as an in-universe joke on his interest in the twentieth century. Still annoyed me though.
Small point of order about the future appearance of one James Kirk:
What Kirk said in “The Menagerie” was that he met Pike “when he was promoted to Fleet Captain.”
Without further elaboration, we actually do not know that said meeting was when Kirk assumed command of the Enterprise.
42. Fry08
There’s an episode where Riker said something like, “I take it the Shelliac hung up on us.”
But that happens in real life too. Sometimes terms and phrasing outlast a specific technology.
After the emotion of the Picard S2 finale (yes I loved the whole season), I wish this episode would have been saved for next week.
I have some minor issues, but enjoyed it as a whole. This episode felt fast, perhaps too fast. By the time we were getting to know the new alien culture, it was over. We could have used another 10 minutes on the new world to flesh everything out.
A good start. However, I’m already tired of the attitude that this is “Trek” and Discovery and Picard isn’t.
Fantastic episode! Worth the two year wait!
@41/Sean: “Spock has to be wrong about something: if the Eugenics Wars took place in the 1990s, they can’t be the last World War, and vice versa.”
They’re called the Eugenics Wars, plural. That allows for multiple ones. I figure now that the first spate of eugenics-driven conflicts was in the ’90s, then there was a second wave of them in the 21st century that snowballed into WWIII, and 23rd-century history conflates it all into one escalating conflict.
@44/Ovaltine!: “Sometimes terms and phrasing outlast a specific technology.”
I would submit that’s already happened in this case. I still refer to my pocket-sized computer/web browser/text messager/camera/game system/music player/calculator/flashlight gizmo as a “phone” even though I only infrequently use it for telephone calls.
So Pike and Spock and La’An go down in the lift and find Una’s cell and rescue her.
No one is guarding it? I’ve watched it twice and they just walk in and walk out. That made no sense to me.
Star Trek is back!! I loved the episode and haven’t enjoyed watching a new bit of Trek probably since the 2009 movie. I’m so glad they went back to the episodic format with an optimistic, fun tone. The cast already has great chemistry too, which is partially helped by the fact that Pike, Spock and Number One already appeared in Discovery and some Short Treks. One of my favorite aspects of Star Trek is that you get to hang out with a bunch of cool, interesting people for 1 hour per week and it was hard to say that about some of the other, new Trek series.
With a prequel there are going to be tons of continuity errors, as many people have pointed out already. It’s best to just ignore them and enjoy the show on its own terms, rather than worry about how something that appears in the show contradicts a throwaway line from a TOS episode from 50 years ago.
One thing I noticed and I wasn’t sure if it was a coincidence or if it was intentional is how Pike’s lifestyle in Montana is similar to Kirk’s in the nexus in Star Trek Generations. Living in a log cabin? Check. Making eggs? Check. Riding a horse? Check. Having to be convinced to rejoin Starfleet for an important mission? Check
I can’t wait for next week’s episode!!
Is it helpful to have seen season 2 of Discovery before diving into Strange New Worlds? I have seen all of Discovery, but bringing some other folks into Strange New Worlds who have not seen any of the new shows, and I don’t want them to be lost. :)
@49/ “One of my favorite aspects of Star Trek is that you get to hang out with a bunch of cool, interesting people for 1 hour per week”
Yeah. I think that’s a reason a lot of people find VOY much more enjoyable now than they did when it ran. Without the weight of expectations regarding the premise and the comparison to DS9 . . . it’s just a fun hour with fun and colorful people. And it’s one of my big disappointments with DIS (which I have stuck with) — they DO have a bunch of cool, interesting people . . . who are too often subordinated to plot demands or standing in a circle technobabbling a solution. I’d LOVE to see a season of DIS without a big bad . . . just these crew having fun, y’know, on missions of discovery through the post-post-apocalyptic future.
Antipodeanaut: The external security just to get in the building was sufficiently strong that I have no trouble believing they don’t bother much with internal security once you get past that.
JamesB: I think it’s helpful to watch season two of Discovery, but it’s not overwhelmingly necessary.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@50/JamesB: “Is it helpful to have seen season 2 of Discovery before diving into Strange New Worlds?”
Helpful, but not essential. I mean, sure, sometimes the characters talk about things that happened before in DSC, but then, “The Cage,” the very first Trek story ever, started with the characters dealing with the aftermath of a previous mission, the fight on Rigel VII. And yet audiences were able to understand it without having seen those earlier events, since we picked up what we needed to know from the episode itself.
In this case, people who haven’t seen DSC might be confused by Spock’s reference to missing his sister, but otherwise, I think the episode tells the viewers what they need to know — that Pike, Una, and the Enterprise were involved with a big classified battle a year or so ago, and that Pike saw a vision of his fate on Boreth. Seeing DSC would help add context, but I think the story can be followed without it.
What an enjoyable episode! I don’t think I’ve been pulled along by the narrative quite like this in a live-action Star Trek episode for a very long time – I like Discovery (especially since S3) and Picard too, but often they don’t hold my attention all the way through and my focus wanders. But this series made me want to keep watching, to get to know the characters – especially the new ones, like La’an and Ortegas – and got me excited for the adventures they’ll be having. I’m not precious about continuity to a huge degree – and TOS least of all, as it’s the one that’s less codified and more flexible by its nature – so I’m not going to get hung up about timelines, previous (or subjective future) portrayals and certainly not race, either. If this episode is any indication, the series is going to do a good job of respecting what came before it while not letting itself be strangled by excessive continuity-based minutia.
First contact stories are fun, but I also tire of the “just like 21st century Earth except aliens” approach. There are some suspension-of-disbelief-breaking moments – the Kiley people locking up their first aliens in a completely unguarded cell; whereas their second aliens ask politely to be “taken to your leader” and are obligingly escorted straight to the President’s office. And then place their communicators on her desk! It’s no wonder they’ve been having trouble with rebel factions (or whatever they were) if they fail at basic security, and these people are supposed to be a quasi-police state in a time of civil war? But overall, I liked Pike’s cowboy diplomacy approach to first getting the leaders in a room together, and then convincing them to stop fighting. It gave us some real glimpses of the beginning of World War 3 as well, although I’ll bet there are a lot of folks who will resent them using imagery from the US Capitol insurrection as part of it.
The standout for me this episode was La’an. Her bluntness is refreshing, and I enjoyed both her pragmatic solution of “just beam the scientists up and deal with them later” (and seeing how badly that could have gone if not for Uhura’s communication and empathetic skills) and her later vulnerability when Pike gives her a gentle rebuke about trusting her crewmates. Though I did find her backstory, and the way she told it to Pike and Spock, somewhat overwrought – definitely something we should have seen rather than been told about her.
I loved the tropey af beginning. So perfect for the show to start out by wallowing in not just Star Trek’s history but SF in general. And I’m so happy to have a show on a “proper” Starfleet ship again. For some reason Discovery (the ship) has never quite felt Starfleet enough to me. It’s either been too dark or out of place or something.
Side note: “you spooked my horse” should mean “you could have gotten me and my horse killed.”
It’s interesting to have the arc of Pike knowing his future and then do some prognosticating about ours. Yes, the bit about WW3 was intended to update the lore so it can match our history but it’s still a pretty bleak statement of where we might be headed.
@51 This is why I liked the front part of Season 4 of Discovery better than the back half; a lot more episodic, supporting characters brought to foreground and a much more optimistic tone where both scientific and personal problems got deal with and sometimes even solved.
Could the apparent difference in personality between Chapel then and now be something that could be explained over the course of the series? Similar to how they apparently intend to re-contextualize Spock’s relationship to T’Pring?
@49. I think the point of Pike living in Montana, like Kirk’s nexus home or Picards Vineyard is to show the characters depth- that they chose to live in pretty much the opposite of a starship ergo they are comfortable in any setting. In the case on Mount though, he’s a fairly skilled horseman (both growing up and due to his run on Hell on Wheeks), is an avid outdoorsman as anyone who listens to his podcast knows and is a Western Heritage Awards winner. He just really fits in that setting and is probably more believable there than he would be somewhere else
I imagine working for Doctor McCoy is the kind of thing that would rapidly dampen one’s exuberant sense of humor. But I’m also of the mind that Nurse Chapel wasn’t seen often enough outside of concerning situations (Spock being sick, her dead fiance, and a weird moment when she desires to brainwash him with love potion) to really say she ISN’T more personable.
But we can also just accept the characters’ conception changing too.
Characterization Marches On is a thing after all.
Re: The Eugenics Wars and WW3
I’ve mentally accepted that Star Trek takes place in essentially a sci-fi version of the Marvel Universe. It’s inexplicably similar to our world despite the massive changes that things like orbital nuke platforms in the Sixties should have created, super science, and other stuff. Star Wars is presumably still there and Beyonce but weird massive events take place that just sort of slide into history.
I fully believe as per Picard the Eugenics Wars were a thing that happened and reality continued on.
@54/CNash: “First contact stories are fun, but I also tire of the “just like 21st century Earth except aliens” approach.”
I think it was appropriate for the story being told. Hopefully we’ll get some more exotic species in upcoming episodes. That, as the advance interviews suggested, is the strength of returning to an episodic format — every episode can be its own distinct thing, with its own style and feel and focus.
“There are some suspension-of-disbelief-breaking moments – the Kiley people locking up their first aliens in a completely unguarded cell; whereas their second aliens ask politely to be “taken to your leader” and are obligingly escorted straight to the President’s office. And then place their communicators on her desk!”
As Keith said, the cell was deep enough inside a secure facility that it makes some sense that it lacked other guards. Also, there was a protest going on outside, so maybe the guards were out dealing with that.
And they weren’t “obligingly escorted” to the president, but taken to her under guard. There was probably an intervening part the story skipped over where they were imprisoned, the president was informed of their request to see her, and she agreed to have them brought to her so she could see them for herself. And no doubt it was the guards who confiscated their communicators and placed them on the president’s desk.
@55/noblehunter: “Yes, the bit about WW3 was intended to update the lore so it can match our history but it’s still a pretty bleak statement of where we might be headed.”
Not really an update — it’s been part of Trek canon since TOS that there was a third world war, and it was TNG: “Encounter at Farpoint” and First Contact that codified it as taking place in the mid-21st century, ending in 2053. It’s a decades-old prediction that unfortunately is looking more and more prophetic.
Roddenberry’s generation lived through WWII and saw the nations decide in its aftermath to found the United Nations and seek more peaceful ways to resolve disputes so that we’d never again face that kind of unprecedented devastation. So it was no wonder that Roddenberry assumed that it would take another cataclysmic event to shock humanity into really getting its act together once and for all.
@57/Critical Myth: “Could the apparent difference in personality between Chapel then and now be something that could be explained over the course of the series?”
I thought of that. Like, maybe we’ll see her relationship with Roger Korby develop, and she’ll be heartbroken by his disappearance. And maybe Spock will offer her some solace and that will be the beginning of her crush on him.
Into the midst of all the excitement about the sf part of this episode, I want to interrupt with a question about the horse! Does Anson Mount own one? Was this one provided by animal handlers (who are not credited apparently)? Mount was certainly comfortable with the horse while speaking with April (yes, I know about Hell on Wheels—I watched it). I’d like to hear from capriole about the horse’s performance through the snow and and during that scene (I’m only half joking).
I definitely sensed I missed … a lot, since I did not think the Gorn were yet known to the Federation at this time…?
This was a good episode, for sure, but I cannot muster the same enthusiasm I’m seeing here – much though I enjoyed the stellar acting.
As a matter of fact I don’t have a problem with race swapping April, I have more of a problem with the TAS version looking like an aged up Kirk to be honest. But I don’t think it’s entirely fair to label people who did have a problem with race swapping an established if obscure character ‘racists’. Maybe they’re just purists? I really wish M’Benga wasn’t chief surgeon because it makes one wonder why he took a demotion to medical staff a decade later. Why has his career regressed? Uhura and Chapel aren’t huge problems but I would have preferred original characters. And do we really need another hotshot pilot character or a Noonien Singh?
On the plus side the Andorian officer seems like a vivid personality and prickly as a porcupine. I like that. Why can’t we have more really original characters like him?
Wonderful! I really enjoyed it! I do wonder how much of that feeling is just because I’ve also lowered my expectations with the regular disappointment I’ve felt with Discovery and Picard. This episode at least felt very Star Trek which is refreshing.
The cinematic quality was glorious. I really felt like I was watching a movie! I guess a minor disappointment was that this wasn’t a two hour pilot like we used to get back in the Berman-era for Trek series premieres.
This new Spock is hot! Haha. If Ethan Peck is going to be this series’ resident man candy and go parading around with his shirt off, I’m all for it!
La’an got the most focus here after Pike. Feels like she’s being primed as a very important and mysterious character. Well-acted.
At least we got a glimpse of the new Aenar engineer at the end.
So is Chapel a doctor or a nurse? Pike refers to her as “doctor” before she injects him. Maybe it was a dialogue slip-up.
I enjoyed the call-backs/references to other series: TOS/ENT/DSC.
Nice fake out with Sam Kirk. Before that happened I was really wondering what was going on with Lt. Kirk about to come out of the turbolift.
Yay for the return to the episodic format! No more being bludgeoned to death with a “the whole galaxy is at risk of imminent destruction” 10-episode arc! Lol
@@.-@ CLB, I have issues with the portrayal of Spock and T’Pring, though. In “Amok Time,” I never got the impression that Spock particularly liked T’Pring. It seemed more like he was saddled with an arranged marriage from childhood and had no interest in following through on it until biology forced him to.
I agree entirely. IMO Spock and T’Pring are incompatible on a deep level that makes the bond unpleasant for both. T’Pring may have been as happy as Spock to delay consummation as long as possible. Maybe the situation didn’t begin to bite until she found a man she did want, Stonn, and couldn’t have him because she’s trapped in this marriage that isn’t a marriage. It’s only then she becomes angry and begins to resent, even hate Spock.
I loved it. Great start to the new show.
Bobby
princessroxana: I didn’t say that everyone who objects to the casting of Adrian Holmes is racist, I said the casting of Holmes has served to reveal many racists among Trek fans, who are purists of a different sort than you meant.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@65 “So is Chapel a doctor or a nurse? Pike refers to her as “doctor” before she injects him. Maybe it was a dialogue slip-up.”
Possibly doctor as in PhD or other doctoral-level researcher, but not an MD or equivalent?
@64 – I had the same question about M’Benga. If he’s the CMO then what happened when McCoy comes aboard. M’Benga should have more seniority than McCoy if nothing else. Perhaps he left Starfleet for a while and then re-enlisted at a lower rank. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense no matter how it happens.
Regarding the Gorn, Lorca had a Gorn skeleton in his ready room. It’s likely that it didn’t belong to Mirror Lorca unless he somehow brought it with him when he crossed over. He also had a tribble yet both Spock and McCoy were totally unfamiliar with them.
All in all, a promising start with a good cast, They do try to tie into TOS a bit too much. Hopefully they’ll realize that it’s a big universe and not everything needs a TOS connection.
@64/roxana: “But I don’t think it’s entirely fair to label people who did have a problem with race swapping an established if obscure character ‘racists’. Maybe they’re just purists?”
TAS Kor and Koloth didn’t look like John Colicos or William Campbell, nor did TAS Kyle look like John Winston. But that’s never generated a “purist” uproar. Yet somehow this has.
You never get a fan uproar over Jimmy Olsen not being a redhead, or Wolverine being a foot too tall, or Charles Xavier being from England instead of New York. But every time a nonwhite actor plays a formerly white character, the same screaming happens, like clockwork. “Purism” is just the excuse they hide behind.
@65/garreth: “So is Chapel a doctor or a nurse? Pike refers to her as “doctor” before she injects him. “
There are many kinds of doctorate. According to the TOS bible, Chapel “holds several university degrees in Research Medicine.” If any of them is a Ph.D., that would make her a doctor.
Stuck waiting for Paramount+ to launch in the UK so two thoughts without having seen it…
M’benga ‘demotion’ – He did a residency on Vulcan, then served on the Enterprise to be there for the Spock transfusion episode to Sarek – what’s to say that he didn’t serve on the Enterprise prior to going to Vulcan and that something causes him to want to improve his knowledge of Vulcan Medicine? Not least, new Captain wanting his own senior staff around him and/or refit for another 5-year mission gives time for other projects – we saw in the films how Spock went off for Kolinahr after all, and Beverly went to Starfleet Medical for a year and returned – albeit it to the same job… but transfers are possible!
Dr. Boyce – does everything have to be explained in episode one? Even if we’re back to episodic, if all they had done in this episode was answer fan queries about continuity, would there be time for any story?
3-man Crew on the Archer – some people are commenting elsewhere on the crew being too small for a massive ship – are there any scenes where the Enterprise and the Archer are shown with the same frame of reference for sizing – or is it all one-or-the-other and/or view screen images? Could it merely be a one-nacelle’d runabout-type ship (albeit with more sensors etc. for first contact missions)?
I think my expectations were too high because I didn’t *love* the episode the way I thought I would. Now don’t ask me what I was expecting because I don’t know. It was a “this is a nice” vibe instead of a “this is great!!” vibe. But this is just the first episode. I’m thinking the more I get to know the characters, the more I’ll love the show.
Pike’s big speech on Kiley planet seemed too pat for me. What the planet’s leaders will suddenly settle their differences because Pike made this “we used to be like you’ speech? OTOH, it was very reminiscent of the speeches Kirk used to make.
My initial impression was Chapel was going to be a nurse so i was pleasantly surprised to learn that she was a civilian researcher (since we do know in canon that she gave up a promising career in genetic research to join Starfleet) Now I’m really wondering (not for the first time) if we’re going to see Roger Korby, or at least hear about him.
I do have to agree that her personality doesn’t match what we saw in TOS. But then, this is 7 years earlier. Maybe she’s overcompensating because she’s new on the ship? Or maybe she had experiences in the next seven years that make her more serious, less chirpy.
I didn’t have an issue with the Gorn. After all, they *did* attack Cestus III. Now, we know it was because they viewed the colonists as trespassers but it’s not like they requested a dialogue with the colonist leaders–they just destroyed it. So, maybe that’s what happened here. Maybe they saw La’an’s colony ship as interlopers and got rid of them. It’s also possible that they saw humans (so completely different than themselves) as a lower form of life. I don’t think any true diplomatic dealings occurred between the Gorn and Starfleet until Arena.
It was so awesome seeing Captain April! That’s the one person I was hoping we’d see. I for one love the idea that they went for diversity instead of sticking to TAS canon. At the time, the casting was announced my main concern was he was too young–April should be about 65 now. But the gray beard helps a lot, and the actor seems to play it older so I can easily believe April is 65. (BTW, I still think a mandatory retirement age of 75 is ridiculous but that’s what TAS gave us)
Really interested in Spock/T’Pring. I love that we see the sows of her dissatisfaction with Spock. She wants a mate on Vulcan, not “galivanting across the galaxy”
Sam Kirk being in Starfleet is surprise but also interesting!
One more thing–I’d love to see Dr. Boyce again. I got the gist that they need a new CMO since he retired. But his relationship with Pike seemed so close in “The Cage”, I think it’d be great to see him.
@krad no score out of 10?
From your review I’m guessing a “wonderful” 9 out of 10.
Bob: I only do rankings out of 10 for the rewatches, not the real-time reviews.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@74/Mary: My issue with the Gorn is not whether it can be reconciled in-story, but whether the storytellers in real life should have chosen to use them that way in the first place. Stories are not just about facts and events, they’re about messages and themes. The point of “Arena” was that the Gorn were not monsters despite our first impression. It was a statement about rejecting xenophobia and seeking an alternative to conflict, which is one of the core themes of Star Trek. So when latter-day productions choose to use the Gorn as monsters (a trend not limited to this series), when they say “No, the kneejerk xenophobic reaction was right after all,” it misses the point and betrays the spirit of Gene Coon’s story.
I just had the depressing thought that one day M’Benga will likely be replaced by Mark Piper.
Incidentally, I was just reminded that this series takes place in the same year as Star Trek Into Darkness over in the Kelvin Timeline. But Kelvin’s Uhura is already a lieutenant by this point and seems more tough and jaded than SNW’s Eager Young Space Cadet Uhura. I wonder how their life experiences differed to shape them so differently.
Also, I found out that the navigator played by Rong Fu is named Jenna Mitchell. Any relation to Gary Mitchell?
Wow, this episode is so much better than any of the new series. The story was fast paced, but no crazy-oh-we-will-all-die-together-with-the-universe at every minute, no 5 minute crying-whining scenes and YET they are able to show real emotions.
The cliche story was really done surprisingly well, and they made me interested and invested to get to know all crew members better. I’m still surprised – I expected it to start well, but the episode exceeded my expectations. :)
I’m not sure how depicting the relationship with the Gorn in a nightmarish manner, by one person mind you, is a betrayal of the message from “Arena,” since the lesson hasn’t been learned yet. Discovery very much depicted the Klingons as brutal warmongers at first, but that didn’t ruin the message of “Errand of Mercy” for me.
Rather, a betrayal would be to have the Gorn referred to in that way in the 24th or 25th century.
@85/Ovaltine!: “I’m not sure how depicting the relationship with the Gorn in a nightmarish manner, by one person mind you, is a betrayal of the message from “Arena,” since the lesson hasn’t been learned yet.”
Again: I am not talking about what the in-story “facts” are. I am talking about real-life creative choices. It’s about how practically everything that’s used the Gorn in recent years, from the Kelvin tie-in video game onward, has reduced them to mere monsters, ignoring the resolution of “Arena” rather than building on it.
It’s not about whether the lesson has “been learned yet” in story, because the important stuff about a story is not just what happens within it, but what it says to us here in reality. Even prequels should be conceptually and thematically informed by earlier stories, because they come later in real life. I want to see stories that move the Gorn forward from “Arena,” that build on its resolution, rather than ones that ignore or reset it so they can be reduced to the monsters we aren’t supposed to see them as anymore. It’s not about how the characters see them. It’s about how the creators want the audience to see them. And modern creators consistently get that wrong.
“Discovery very much depicted the Klingons as brutal warmongers at first”
I don’t agree at all. It very much showed them as a people with complexity and nuance, with T’Kuvma’s motive being to bring the fractured Houses together behind a common goal, rather than just destruction for its own sake. It built on decades of prior storytelling, even stories set later in the timeline, and used what we’ve learned about Klingon Great Houses, Klingon beliefs, Klingon death rituals, and so forth.
Did it have to be the Gorn? Couldn’t they have invented a new race?
The problem is M’Benga is chief medical officer. Sure he can go off on a new assignment but why would he come back to the Enterprise as a junior doctor? Again why not a new character. Is M’Benga the only black surgeon in Starfleet? I emphatically doubt it!
Too many call backs! The cadet at communications doesn’t have to be Uhura and the civilian staffer doesn’t have to be Chapel. Open up the universe a little!
Love the review other than the part about Trekkies showing how racist they are. I simply don’t believe this to be the case. I do however believe that there are a lot of older Trekkies that are absolutely married to cannon. It’s literally like the Bible to some. I do get their point imagine Janeway recasted as a man or Ben Cisco re casted as a white person how that would fly. I don’t think it has anything to do with race or gender and I do believe them when they say it’s about cannon and continuity. I love the show so far and I do like the look of the Robert “Bob” April character. Idk if I would have made him a cannon character or if i would have made him some bad ass admiral of another name. Either way I’m happy with the show.
I don’t understand this “race swapping” controversy. As far as I can tell, April is still the same race: human.
yes, I’m being cheeky. I just find the suddenly common and casual use of a subtextually loaded phrase such as “race swapping” really depressing.
Regarding the tropes though: This whole show is meant to be a “return to form”, if I understand correctly. So, I would expect several revisits of twice told Star Trek ideas. At the same time, though, the diversity and depth of the cast indicates that this won’t be a glory hole of recycled macho nostalgia that plagued the recent movies.
Loved this premiere! It was like old times again. Has the perfect mix of old ST:TOS feel with a more futuristic aesthetic. And Anson Mount just nails it with every scene.
I saw that apparently the movie Silent Running is now canonically a part of the Star Trek timeline. This pleases me.
@87/roxana: “Did it have to be the Gorn? Couldn’t they have invented a new race?”
I wish they had, or maybe reused some underutilized species like the unidentified alien raiders from ENT: “Fight or Flight,” say. Or, heck, the Kzinti, since Lower Decks has reaffirmed their canonical status.
“The problem is M’Benga is chief medical officer. Sure he can go off on a new assignment but why would he come back to the Enterprise as a junior doctor? Again why not a new character.”
I agree it could’ve been a new character, but maybe there’s good reason for using M’Benga. I like the idea that Spock previously served with a doctor who was an expert in Vulcan medicine, because that adds context to his disdain for McCoy’s medical skills later on. If he went from a CMO who really understood his needs to one who treated him like some weird inexplicable alien, that could explain why he and McCoy butted heads so much.
As for why M’Benga came back, it could’ve been specifically at McCoy’s request (or Spock’s) to compensate for his lack of expertise with Vulcans. And I’m not sure M’Benga was necessarily subordinate. After all, a starship needs duplicate personnel on different shifts.
Anyway, it’s not unheard of for someone to go from a head position to a secondary position — for instance, Robert Hewitt Wolfe went from showrunner on Andromeda and The Dresden Files to consulting producer on The 4400. There can only be one boss at a time, after all.
“Too many call backs! The cadet at communications doesn’t have to be Uhura and the civilian staffer doesn’t have to be Chapel. Open up the universe a little!”
I’m no fan of gratuitous continuity callbacks, but I like the idea of giving Uhura the fuller character development she never got on TOS. I’m iffier about Chapel, but she was also underdeveloped, so I’m willing to see how it plays out.
@90/Winchell Chung: Oh, you mean the bit about the forest domes. It’s not quite the same as Silent Running, since there, the forests were sent up to preserve them from environmental collapse, while here it was to protect them from WWIII. Also, they wouldn’t let a Universal film be canonical in Paramount’s Trek universe (although I tend to assume that Universal’s The Questor Tapes took place in the Trek universe, and that Warner Bros.’ Genesis II/Planet Earth are the alternate timeline where Gary Seven failed to prevent orbital nukes from proliferating.)
Still, if it was a deliberate homage, it’s a nice tribute to ST:TMP’s effects artist Douglas Trumbull, alongside the Robert Wise tribute with The Day the Earth Stood Still.
@86 I concur; it’s a shame the show seems to be regressing in this specific area. My only hope is that there is more to La’an’s account than we seen. And given what the creative team is doing so far, I’m tentatively giving them the benefit of the doubt.
@91 Of the three returning characters, I would rank as most interesting/needed as M’benga, Chapel and Uhura, mostly because of screen time. I don’t find the complaints about M’benga to be that valid, honestly, because he’s pretty much a blank slate, less so for the other two.
Quoth Clint: “Love the review other than the part about Trekkies showing how racist they are. I simply don’t believe this to be the case.”
Then you’ve missed a lot of the fulminating I’ve seen online from alleged Trek fans on the subject. Trust me, it’s completely racist. Be grateful that you’ve missed it, it’s pretty fucking ugly.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@88, But Robert April isn’t anywhere near as important and central a character as Janeway it Cisco. He is in fact thoroughly obscure being featured only in one TAS episode where he’s drawn like an older Kirk. It’s really not that important a change. But on the other hand there was no need to make the character Robert April at all. Why not an entirely new character, an old mentor of Pikes who reappears from time to time with wise counsel? Too many callbacks are a mistake as it creates the probability of continuity snarls. And Great Bird knows we’ve had enough of those!
Honestly, the first episode was brilliant, I’ve always wanted a Star Trek show that focused on first contact and bending/breaking the prime directive and it completely delivered.
Of course Iain Banks fans know “bending/breaking the prime directive” is basically Special Circumstances the TV show and what’s so wrong with that idea?
This show was unbelievably good. It made me laugh and cry and cheer. Anson Mount’s interpretation of Pike is charming and heroic at the same time. Ethan Peck is even better here than he was in Discovery. Uhura’s quick thinking with the “rabbit” was a wonderful insight into her mostly unexplored character. And I loved Kyle, who seemed to be a stand-in for all the nerdy young guys who love Star Trek.
I had two very small complaints. The initial graphics of the title (the very, very beginning) seemed cartoonish to me. And I thought it was a mistake to show Spock naked, because there was absolutely nothing nonhuman about his body.
Everything else about the episode was absolutely perfect. I was impressed with the quality of the writing. This was on a level with the best episodes of TNG or DS9. I can’t wait for the next one!
Re M’Benga’s apparent demotion: It’s not unheard of for someone in a senior position to get tired of the fact their time is tied up with admin and take a nominal demotion to a more hands-on role. (It’s basically what Kirk does in TMP after all.)
I know it’s a ridiculous quibble, but it bugs me a little that the alien culture assigns the same meaning to red and green lights that we do. I suppose it’s the same mechanism that causes near-exact duplicates of Earth to show up here and there.
@99, Okay, I can buy that. M’Benga is dissatisfied with his current assignment and when he hears his old ship is looking for a specialist in Vulcan physiology he jumps at it though it means a small demotion, because being a ship’s doctor is what he enjoys,not whatever he’s doing now.
THIS CANNOT BE REPEATED ENOUGH
Seriously, this is what Star Trek is about and I’m utterly mystified why the powers that be kept churning out dark, gritty, apocalyptic stuff taking place in scenarios you’d never want to find yourself. There’s a reason people still watch TNG.
Ditchwitch: Spock wasn’t naked, he was shirtless, and we’ve seen Spock shirtless before, in the original series’ “Patterns of Force,” complete with Leonard Nimoy’s lovely thatch of chest hair……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I agree with some others that the first contact alien culture depicted here is too human like in culture. It was the neck ties that pulled me out of the story.
I’m looking forward to seeing the initial formation of Chapel’s longing for Spock and Spock and Uhura having singing/harp playing duets.
@98/ditchwitch: But we didn’t see Spock completely naked. For all we know, Vulcans have cute little pig tails right above their buttocks.
@96/roxana: “But on the other hand there was no need to make the character Robert April at all.”
I don’t agree. Discovery already established that Pike was April’s first officer, so there’s already a relationship between them. Besides, April is the only captain of NCC-1701 that we’d never seen in live action, and he was its first captain. Why not bring him in at long last?
And I love the retcon that the first captain of the Enterprise was not another white guy after all. Although I wish they’d kept his English accent.
@105/garreth: “I’m looking forward to seeing the initial formation of Chapel’s longing for Spock”
I’d rather not, really. It was rather a pathetic character trait and it’s aged very poorly. I wouldn’t mind if the show just ignored it. After all, it wasn’t until the Psi 2000 virus released her inhibitions that Chapel confessed her love. Maybe it was just subconscious until then, so they don’t have to do stories about it.
“For all we know, Vulcans have cute little pig tails right above their buttocks.”
Nope. We saw otherwise in ENT: “Harbinger.”
Unless it’s just the guys…
@97 – The problem I had wi breaking the Prime Directive was that Pike was basically showing the natives that the Federation had a “bigger stick” than they had, basically saying that the Federation could kill them all at any time if they wanted to. Showing up and saying that they should join the Federation because they were powerless against the UFP seems totally opposite of what they should be doing.
Add to that the fact that Pike only got away with it on a technicality just adds to thw wrongness of it
I haven’t seen a pilot this earnest in a long time. Written, directed and acted with pure joy on almost every scene. It’s really going for that ’60s adventurous spirit while also being conscious enough that it’s a 2022 production that can’t fall into the social pitfalls of the ’60s.
It’s clear that Goldsman, Lumet, Kurtzman and Myers are acutely aware of how Discovery and Picard (and to a lesser extent, Prodigy) have been prestige streaming serialized affairs. Strange New Worlds opens with an episodic pilot that wouldn’t feel out of place in TOS, right down to the captain openly convincing the pre-Warp aliens to put aside their issues for the greater good. It couldn’t get any more optmistic than that. The difference is Anson Mount’s Pike is a lot more convincing* in his speech than Shatner tended to be.
*I haven’t seen a lot of other Anson Mount roles, but he’s clearly one who can elevate the material. His Black Bolt was one of the few interesting performances on the otherwise dismal Inhumans.
I like this a lot. The casting couldn’t be more perfect. Peck as Spock, Romijn as Number One. Chapel, the new Uhura. And nice bit of misdirection with the arrival of ‘Kirk’. This is how you play with continuity and audience expectations. Smart writing across the board.
And the plot? Classic Trek through and through. And while we’ve seen this story before, you can see the passion and commitment from everyone involved. This is promising.
I’ll admit the continuity police in me was initially baffled by the choice of casting in Robert April. But I took a minute and came to the conclusion it didn’t really matter. We’ve seen Trek recasting roles with different character takes before (Saavik being the most obvious). And it’s not as if TAS didn’t have enough internal inconsistencies of its own. Even TAS/TNG writer Fred Bronson – who technically created the character when he wrote Counter-Clock Incident – openly gave his stamp of approval to the show and the new casting. I didn’t know Adrian Holmes very well other than a guest spot on Moore’s Galactica, but it didn’t take more than the opening scene with Pike to convince me. Admirals are notoriously hard to get right on Trek, and this version of April looks and feels like someone who’s been on Pike’s shoes, aware of the pressure of his job. I hope we see more of him in the upcoming shows.
And yes, I know April was in the original Trek bible prior to filming The Cage and casting Hunter as Pike. But Roddenberry wouldn’t have lived to see this, regardless. He’d be over 100 now. The point is the closest we have to a living writer from the ’60s/’70s Trek era still alive to see this recast is Bronson.
@106/CLB: Regarding Chapel and Spock, there is a scene from the season one preview at the end of episode one where Chapel and Spock embrace so clearly something is going on.
Regarding Vulcan anatomy: oh yes, as soon as I submitted my post I remembered that scene from “Harbinger.” But good point that maybe the males are still different. And we all know that Vulcans have internally different anatomy from humans including green blood so that makes them sufficiently alien beyond the pointed ears and slanted eye brows.
@109/Eduardo: “And yes, I know April was in the original Trek bible”
Well, yes and no. That “Robert April” was the same character who was renamed Christopher Pike by the time shooting began. It was Bronson who created April as a separate character from Pike.
@110/garreth: “Regarding Chapel and Spock, there is a scene from the season one preview at the end of episode one where Chapel and Spock embrace so clearly something is going on.”
Friends can embrace.
Two things I absolutely loved:
1) The whole outdoors in the snow horse riding sequence was awesome. They certainly don’t spend that much for outdoor location shooting for the average (non pilot) episode, do they? And I want to know, was he really riding in that deep a layer of snow (or was it somehow enhanced)? I’m guessing they either used a helicopter for the part where the shuttle lands, spooking the horse, and removed the helicopter and put in the shuttle. (Or that everything was CGI except for the horse and rider, if they were worried about actually scaring the horse?)
2) I had a rare literal LOL when Pike added, “(I’m) really not in the mood for an ‘although’ right now” after Spock said he had located Una and the others, “although…” Anson Mount is so good at those little lines, the ones where his version of Christopher Pike breaks through the standard Starfleet dialogue.
@112 Presumably any practical effects for the shuttle were shot separately from the horse because you really don’t want anything interesting happening when a horse is only on its hind legs.
SNW has use of that VR wall that Discovery also makes extensive use of. But the horse riding through the snow really did look like location shooting unless I’ve been fooled.
@krad
78. “I only do rankings out of 10 for the rewatches, not the real-time reviews.”
Fair enough, reviewers prerogative, and I thought that might be the case. I’d be interested to see how your opinion of this episode holds up by the end of the season. With the recent rewatch of Enterprise fresh in mind I cannot help but recall how quickly my initial enthusiasm waned, diminishing the pilot episode in retrospect.
Discovery gave this show a running start and it has a strong central trio, so I’m optimistic.
@114/garreth: From the pictures I’ve seen, the VR wall volume they use on Trek isn’t big enough to accommodate horse riding. I’d imagine they did it on location with big bluescreen backdrops behind Mount and his, err, mount. I’ve seen them do it that way in behind-the-scenes videos on The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
I have many thoughts about this delightful pilot.
Confession: I was one of those that was a little miffed when I saw that they’d changed April to a different race, because they’ve gone to a lot of effort recently to canonize TAS and it seemed weird to ignore it here. But then I figured it out. There’s the (admittedly apocryphal) story about the color-blind director on TAS that gave us pink tribbles and purple Klingon uniforms; he obviously was responsible for accidentally coloring Commodore April white.
I don’t think the Gorn as described in this story actually contradicts the lesson of “Arena” that much. They wiped out the entire human colony on Cestus III, probably in a brutal manner that wasn’t shown because it was NBC in the 60s. The breakthrough of that episode was both races realizing that the other was intelligent and reasonable.
I’m also puzzled by M’Benga’s apparent demotion later in life, but I’m sure part of it was simply Captain Kirk wanting his guy as CMO and I expect we’ll see Dr. McCoy (and maybe Mr. Scott) with Paul Wesley’s Kirk next season.
“Screw General Order 1.” I’ve been waiting a long time to hear a Starfleet captain say those words when there are potentially billions of lives at stake. I’m very excited to see where this show goes.
I find that Krad’s interpretation of this series’ (and of TOS and DSC) view of Pike’s impending disability as problematic and ableist fascinating but debatable. Yes, a severe disability is not necessarily the end of a full life, but it is still very human to live in fear of the knowledge of that impending injury and of knowing of how exactly it will upend this particular person’s life. As Pike said, he didn’t just witness it, he experienced the traumatic agonizing pain of what will cause his future disability. I wouldn’t expect any less than for someone to be haunted and disturbed by such an experience. And who is it for any one of us to say how someone should react to knowledge of existing with that kind of severe a condition? Pike is already established as an adventurous and vital man, enjoying horseback riding no less. Being confined to a chair with extremely limited means of communication is indeed going to be the “death” of the man he currently is so of course he’ll mourn that.
I’m reminded of an a real life incident that occurred last year. A 20 year old college student in Chicago was shot by a stray bullet that went through his neck as he sat in a train at a train station. He survived that initial incident but awoke in the hospital paralyzed and kept alive by life support. He realized his situation and was informed that his prognosis for improvement beyond his current state was bleak. He couldn’t speak, but signaled through blinking to his family the devastating but brave decision to be taken off life support rather than live a life that way. His parents honored his wishes and he died shortly thereafter when the machines were turned off. So the point I’m making is that it’s not enough for one to survive, one has to be able to live and enjoy life. That is an entirely subjective view from person to person so I can’t blame Pike for feeling the way he does. But I think it’s great that this series is acknowledging his trauma and will continue to address how he’ll try to come to peace with his eventual fate.
#117.
The breakthrough of that episode was both races realizing that the other was intelligent and reasonable.
Was it? It’s been a while since I watched “Arena,” but I don’t recall the Gorn having any realization. Isn’t it Kirk and the Metron who have the heart-to-heart at the end? I think I always assumed the Gorn went back to his ship and kicked the walls because he didn’t get to chew Kirk’s face off.
Come to think of it, he was presented as more of a force of nature than a character, hissing and throwing rocks and steadily advancing. Did he even get a name?
@119 It’s been a bit since I’ve seen it as well, but my memory is that the Gorn Captain did return to his ship with the knowledge that the Federation wasn’t actually an invading force. I could very well be wrong about that.
#120.
You may be right. I can’t remember what dialogue is exchanged after Kirk returns to the ship. Oh well, time for a rewatch!
@117/Chase: “Confession: I was one of those that was a little miffed when I saw that they’d changed April to a different race, because they’ve gone to a lot of effort recently to canonize TAS and it seemed weird to ignore it here.”
Canon is not about details. Canons contradict or alter their superficial details all the time, like James R. Kirk becoming James T. Kirk, or San Francisco’s skyline or Vulcan’s appearance from orbit changing from one production to another. Canon is about the whole, not the parts. It refers to the complete body of works that purport to represent a common reality, even when they differ from each other on the details.
Besides, our culture is too hung up on the artifical construct of “race” as if it were somehow more important than other things that define a person. Why is the difference in Adrian Holmes’s pigmentation a bigger issue than the fact that he’s sixteen years too young for the character, or that he doesn’t have an English accent, or that April is portrayed here as an admiral rather than a commodore? If anything, the change in his ethnicity is the least of the inconsistencies.
@119/Ovaltine!: “Did [the Gorn captain] even get a name?”
Not canonically, but he’s been given various ones in comics and role-playing games: https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/S%27alath#Background
@120/Chase: “my memory is that the Gorn Captain did return to his ship with the knowledge that the Federation wasn’t actually an invading force.”
Not as such. We never saw his reaction after Kirk spared him, but Kirk said afterward, “We can talk. Maybe reach an agreement.” It was left up in the air, but implied that peace was possible.
@122 I fully agree that April’s single appearance in TAS shouldn’t have been binding on the producers. My original comment about the cause for that was mostly a joke.
I have a theory or two about the rank inconsistency: maybe commodore is an assignment instead of a rank. An admiral who temporarily assumes command of a special mission might be called “commodore.” On the other hand, it could be that the rank of commodore and rear admiral, lower half are interchangeable.
@123 I have it lodged in my head that commodore and rear admirable are interchangeable, as well….so any debate about that seems irrelevant to me.
Watching again, I realize that La’an is basically the franchise’s second attempt at Tasha Yar — a security chief who joined Starfleet because one of its officers rescued her from a traumatic childhood. But she’s already being handled much better than Tasha ever was, and played by a considerably more impressive actress.
Really, I’m impressed with the cast all around. They’re an appealing bunch and they have good chemistry. I’m still struck by how well Celia Rose Gooding captures Nichelle Nichols’s voice (as well as her fingers-on-the-earpiece gesture) — though I still find it impossible to see Jess Bush’s Chapel as the same person as Majel Barrett’s Chapel, because Bush’s Chapel is enormously more fun and impish.
The depictions of WWIII seem fairly consistent with how the novels described it. The detonations shown at NYC, Washington, and Paris seemed to be aerial explosions rather than ground strikes, causing a considerable amount of structural damage to buildings and landmarks but not completely vaporizing the cities.
I find it unfortunately America-centric that Pike implied the US’s Second Civil War led directly to WWIII. However, given that the rise of authoritarianism in this country is connected to similar processes in other countries, maybe that’s what he meant. I just hope this is one prediction that gets dated fast.
@123. I am by no means an expert on Naval ranks, but I’m a huge fan of the Patrick O’Brien Aubrey Maturin series, and as I recall, you are correct, Commodore is a designation provided to someone who has been assigned to command more than one ship at a time. Typically would go to someone with an admiral’s ranked but not a prerequisite.. Rear Admiral derives from junior Admirals being assigned duties in the back of the fleet, so typically a rear Admiral is a new Admiral.
I always thought that Ensign Ro was their 2nd attempt at the tough female officer who had a harsh childhood. Of course Ro was there to conflict with the other characters and be cynical about the Federation and Yar credited the Federation for saving her and thought it was the bee’s knees. But nevertheless I got the feeling that Ro was Tasha Yar 2.0 when I was watching her TNG episodes.
Personally I’m not entirely happy with Spock, a touch telepath, hugging anybody. There’s a reason why Vulcans limit physical contact and regard hand stroking as foreplay. I’m not thrilled with Spock kissing T’Pring either but they are after all Bondmates. Maybe they’ve experimented with human expressions of affection before and liked it.
CLB, I don’t think the race swapping of Robert April is really a big deal seeing how obscure the character is. Making Kyle, a well established character suddenly Asian does bother me. Especially as it is so completely unecessary, that the character be Kyle at all. It’s ten years before Kirk took command of the Enterprise there is no reason for the junior officers to be the same people and excellent reason for them not to be. An Asian transporter chief is just fine. Calling him Kyle is not!
Even though SNW is returning to a more episodic format, I’m curious as to whether this series will also emulate Berman-era Trek and have every episode focus on a singular character or two. I’m guessing not, with only 10 episodes per season. But if it is the case, then the premiere starts off this pattern by being mostly about Pike and Spock, with some important attention paid to La’an.
@128/Tim Kaiser: “I always thought that Ensign Ro was their 2nd attempt at the tough female officer who had a harsh childhood.”
Yes, but she didn’t join Starfleet because a Starfleet officer rescued her from that harsh childhood, she wasn’t a human colonist, she wasn’t the Enterprise‘s security chief, and she wasn’t a main-title regular. Ro had one thing in common with Tasha, but La’an has an almost identical character description.
The main difference between La’an and Tasha is the same one you point out about Ro, as both are more edgy, cynical characters who aren’t necessarily on board with Starfleet’s optimism. Tasha’s reverence for Starfleet’s nobility blunted her edge from the start. I’m tempted to say that La’an is the character Tasha should have been.
@129/roxana: Well, it’s 2259, so it’s more like 5-6 years before Kirk takes command. And Kyle is a common name; we don’t know if this is the same Kyle from TOS. After all, the navigator in this episode was named Jenna Mitchell, and she’s clearly not the same person as Gary Mitchell, who will be sitting in the same chair 6 years from now. So maybe it’s just a coincidence.
I’ve watched the episode a few times now and I think I like it even better after having a week to think about it. I’m also pretty sure that Chapel was already checking Spock out when she said ‘you first’ in the sickbay scene.
I’m also among those really glad to see Robert April after being excluded from the Kelvin-verse stories. I’m old enough to already have been a Trek fan when TNG premiered, but young enough to have missed TAS until I got P+. Capt April was featured in a ‘chose your own adventure’ style book that I ordered from a school catalog in 3rd grade. It was Star Trek: Voyage to Adventure by Michael J. Dodge.
@132/TribblesandBits: “I’m also pretty sure that Chapel was already checking Spock out when she said ‘you first’ in the sickbay scene.”
After rewatching once, I agree. Though it was more of a fun, flirty attitude than the pathetic needy unrequited obsession of TOS Chapel. I don’t mind reinventing the character in a more empowering and upbeat way, but I think it’s going to be hard to see a plausible throughline from this Chapel to that one.
“I’m also among those really glad to see Robert April after being excluded from the Kelvin-verse stories.”
April did appear in the non-canonical comics prequel to Into Darkness, but as a villain secretly connected to Admiral Marcus and Section 31. I think that was based on an early plan to include him in the movie in a similar capacity. The comic also retconned the Kelvin Enterprise into the successor to April’s lost Enterprise, which would make it the equivalent of the E-A arriving nearly 30 years early rather than the E arriving 13 years late.
The funniest possible way to handle the two Kyles would be to make them twins without any further explanation.
@133 CLB – I agree about Chapel. I certainly don’t mind if they abandon her ToS persona. I really like this version Chapel and I hope they don’t write themselves into a corner over it. I’d kinda hate to lose Roger Korby over it, but that is mainly because I thought he had a cool job. Studying extinct cultures for applicable medical breakthroughs in the present always seemed like great futurism to me.
I wasn’t aware of those Kelvin comics or Capt. April’s inclusion, but that sounds like an interesting story. I suppose I could have checked memory beta before making my statement.
I’d like to know what the in-canon explanation is for Star Fleet getting rid of the sensible women’s uniforms used on Discovery and Pike’s Enterprise and going with horrid miniskirts and go-go boots on Kirk’s ship.
@136/Kiwi: Fashion is rarely sensible. In TOS’s day, miniskirts and go-go boots were seen as progressive and empowering. Perhaps the fashion sensibility of the mid-2260s matches that of the mid-1960s.
(Although the TOS uniforms are technically mini-culottes or mini-skorts.)
I’m more concerned with why they’d ditch something as useful as that emergency medical transporter in sickbay.
The mini-skirts weren’t going to exist in STRANGE NEW WORLDS but Rebecca Romijn insisted on having them.
https://www.slashfilm.com/850009/rebecca-romijn-insisted-on-wearing-a-starfleet-dress-on-star-trek-strange-new-worlds/
And Nichelle Nichols had this to say:
“I was wearing them on the street. What’s wrong with wearing them on the air? I wore ’em on airplanes. It was the era of the miniskirt. Everybody wore miniskirts.”
A quick thought without having read all of the comments yet: I’ve always greatly appreciated Trek’s optimistic future — the harmony among peoples, or Earth and Federation members at least; the focus on expanding oneself through pursuit of art; the medical innovations, for sure. But never has there been such a sad, terrifying reminder that the optimistic future we see in the shows is partly because of, and well after, the dire future our society faces in the short term.
@83/th1: Thanks for mentioning the lack of tears. It was so nice not to have to slog through countless minutes of watching Michael cry every time the wind shifted. And, thank heavens, no navel gazing.
If the future episodes of SNW are only half as good as the premier, we will be in for a great series.
@139/Arben: “But never has there been such a sad, terrifying reminder that the optimistic future we see in the shows is partly because of, and well after, the dire future our society faces in the short term.”
Not only that, but this portrayal of WWIII was far more apocalyptic than the original. Spock said in “Bread and Circuses” that WWIII killed 37 million people, but Pike said here that it killed 30% of the world’s population, which would be more than two billion people.
@91. CLB — I like your thoughts on M’Benga there. He indeed may not be subordinate to McCoy during his later tour in any but the strictest sense beyond seniority of current term. Frank Lautenberg retired as the senior U.S. Senator from New Jersey in 2001 after nearly two decades but was urged by the party due to a scandal to run again the next year and served as the state’s junior U.S. Senator. Of course, since while seniority there has its benefits it’s not a command hierarchy and McCoy surely has oversight of M’Benga as Chief Medical Officer, that’s not apples-to-apples.
@104. KRAD — My exact thought: Spock has a lot of chest hair to grow by the time he turns into Leonard Nimoy. Or he just kinda went overboard when he shaved off the Discovery beard. Perhaps it’s a Vulcan ritual?
@141. CLB — Inflation suuuuucks.
Something I just noticed when rewatching this episode on YouTube with earphones.
I swear at the 25:25 mark during the discussion in sickbay I hear a distinct buzz in the background that reminds me of the TOS episode Wink of an Eye. I wonder if that is going to be significant in an upcoming episode?
https://youtu.be/WmumGjQanZs?t=1510
Ok, some things now make better sense. When Lt. Kirk came on screen, I thought they said George Kirk! I thought, Wow, we have Kirk’s DAD on the Enterprise…
Brother does make more sense!
I’ve been waiting for this show for some time and it did not disappoint. This was some good old-timey Trek for sure and it made me just as happy as TOS did when I started watching (not until after Star Trek IV came out I’m sorry to say). I love Discovery hard but this just felt so good! (And my favorite Star Trek show is still Lower Decks.) My husband’s first comment to this show was, “Do you have to know how to ride a horse in order to be a Starfleet captain?”
More please!
@144/charlie E: We know George Kirk Sr. is still alive at this point in the Prime timeline, since he lived long enough to see his son take command of the Enterprise about 5-6 years after this.
It’d be amazing if they managed to get Chris Hemsworth to show up and add about 14 years to him with makeup (or maybe not bother, given the Robert April precedent). Seems unlikely that they could afford him, though.
My husband and I misinterpreted Sam Kirk as James T.’s father rather than brother (brother makes much more sense, of course), and I did think it was entirely appropriate that James T. would have been fathered by a dude with a pornstache.
@146/CLB: “We know George Kirk Sr. is still alive at this point in the Prime timeline, since he lived long enough to see his son take command of the Enterprise about 5-6 years after this.”
Can you remind me where this was mentioned? I’ve been racking my brain, but can’t recall where this came from.
For years I’ve been using the chirps of a communicator opening on my cellphone for incoming messages, rather than the tone sequence used in TOS. It’s nice to learn that it now agrees with canon.
Here’s what surprises me: It’s been over 10 days, and I still haven’t seen any fan art updating Robert April in “The Counter-Clock Incident” to look like a TAS-style rendering of Adrian Holmes. I was sure somebody would’ve gotten right on that.
Incidentally, the preview for episode 4 reveals that it will involve the Gorn, and that got me thinking. I said earlier in this thread that “Starfleet isn’t supposed to know about the Gorn for another 7-8 years,” but in looking at a transcript of “Arena,” I think that isn’t necessarily the case. Kirk spoke about “a creature apparently called a Gorn” in his log entry on the asteroid, but nobody else ever explicitly expressed unfamiliarity with the Gorn’s existence. In the first half, they were simply an unseen enemy. The shock Uhura and the others showed when they first saw the Gorn on the viewscreen was intended at the time to be shock at seeing this new scary alien for the first time, but it plays just as well as a shock of recognition. Not only that, but McCoy later says “The Gorn simply might have been trying to protect themselves” even though he hasn’t heard the word “Gorn” spoken aloud by Kirk or the Metrons. That was a plot hole at the time, but now we have an explanation — that some people *did* know about the Gorn already, so McCoy could recognize one on sight.
So this is one of those cases where a new show initially seems to contradict prior canon, but when you examine it closely, you realize it just contradicts our assumptions about canon rather than the letter of the text.
Okay, there’s still Kirk’s unfamiliarity to deal with, but then, he didn’t know who Surak was in “The Savage Curtain,” and that didn’t stop the prequels from talking about Surak as a well-known historical figure. Not to mention the other things treated as novel in TOS but showing up in the prequels, like cloaking devices and time travel.
#14: Agreed that this seems to have taken some lessons from The Orville. Which also did at least one “screw the prime directive” episode, where a speech stopped centuries of war.
For what tiny little value it’s worth, I had critiques, and they are rough, but the texture and feel of the show wins wins wins, and that goes a long way.
Critiques not already mentioned here include like, what was the conflict about where the leaders hadn’t spoken directly in a century? We don’t care what the conflict was about? I mean, in a poetic sense that’s cool, but in reality that wouldn’t happen. We know that our current divides are about a lot of things. I think a stronger, more 21st century lesson would touch on how a conflict can be about a lot of things, legitimate concerns, but coexisting is necessary for the continuation of the human and animal species. So it struck me both as a kind of dated, preachy plot hole and a missed opportunity.
Also it was like he was the white savior trope, coming in without knowing much of anything and lecturing, and at gunpoint too. One big marker separating the 20th from the 21st century at this point is awareness of power dynamic. You have to be extra careful and circumspect about power; people will not be themselves if they perceive themselves in jeopardy due to a powerful person asking them to do something; this is a theme in many ways. “Punching up” for example. I’m not saying the show needed to get into all that in so many words, but I think it would have benefitted from a little more effort than a Kirkian “ooh baby it’s a wild world” speech.
It could have been improved by revealing the ship after he had already made headway with them and not using it to create a crazy killer’s basement type situation. It could have been improved by conversations with the guys they kidnapped, who maybe calmed down and then started to talk about their ideas for peaceful resolution, and then Pike is just the guy who gets the leaders to listen.
It felt too pat for him to be so sure he could extend an invitation to join the Federation. It felt too pat for the news to never get out how they discovered warp stuff, are they going to hush up the whole planet like “don’t tell on us!” It felt too pat for Pike to “screw order 1” in the first episode, like that’s a pretty serious choice in-universe, I mean Picard was willing to let people die over it and it has always been a big internal conflict for captains. Leading up to it, perhaps he realized his inevitable death will be related to following the rules too closely. Perhaps he spends a minute deliberating and New Tasha convinces him to say screw it. Perhaps the Enterprise (though cloaked) (btw cloaked? that’s a serious continuity problem, couldn’t they have been hiding in any other way?) is at risk of being affected by the bombs and he has to do something quick to save the planet and the ship. Maybe that’s too dramatic, but it is kind of called for when breaking the Amazon Prime is going to happen.
I’m a little annoyed that his mission was to save the princess, and she didn’t even have the kickass wiseassness of Leia when they do. Spooning the wall was the best she had done? They didn’t even muss up her hair or interrogate her?
I wonder if there was a better worked out 2-hour pilot draft and then it was cut down.
That said, I loved the characters, the dialogue, the cinematography, the pacing, the hopefulness, the realism, the tone.
Oh FTR I didn’t love the music’s heavy handed use of star trek nostalgia; a lighter version of that has always been fine by me.
I need to catch up on the next two now. Sorry I’m late ;)
Seems to me Pike was deliberately using the power differential to intimidate, like The Day The Earth Stood Still. Not by any means the best first contact protocol but seeing it was kind of the Federation ‘s fault these folks were suddenly on the Eve of Destruction he had some justification for drastic action.
@152/jofesh: “We know that our current divides are about a lot of things.”
I don’t think that’s really true when you get right down to it. There are a lot of excuses for them, but when you strip away the excuses, the conflicts usually boil down to a handful of rich and powerful people seeking to manipulate people into giving them more wealth and power by exploiting their beliefs and fears. Not that the issues we disagree on aren’t meaningful, but we could more easily work them out diplomatically if people in power didn’t deliberately stir people up against each other as a distraction. Look at the people leading the charge for violence or intolerance on the basis of religion or race or gender or whatever, and you usually find that they’re just power-hungry politicians or plutocrats who don’t really believe what they’re saying but are just using it to trick people into following them, or into turning on each other so they don’t unite against the power-hungry politicians and plutocrats.
“Also it was like he was the white savior trope, coming in without knowing much of anything and lecturing, and at gunpoint too.”
I don’t think so. The white savior trope is “our way is better than yours, so you should be like us.” Pike’s message was “our way almost destroyed us, so please learn from our mistakes and avoid being like us.”
“It felt too pat for him to be so sure he could extend an invitation to join the Federation.”
Any more than Kirk being sure he could negotiate a truce among the gangs of Iotia? What people today tend to forget about the TOS era is that frontier captains did in fact have that kind of authority, because they were often the only Federation authority on the scene and had to be empowered to make policy or military decisions when consulting superiors in a timely fashion was impossible.
“Perhaps the Enterprise (though cloaked) (btw cloaked? that’s a serious continuity problem, couldn’t they have been hiding in any other way?)”
Where did you get the idea they were cloaked? Pike ordered Ortegas to descend into a low orbit so the Kiley could see the ship. As directed, it happened ridiculously fast, but there was nothing about cloaking.
Oh ok, if it wasn’t cloaked then my bad. In my memory it seemed to just appear. I would think if it were descending, there would be some roaring noises and things. Which could have been a cooler more real moment but whatever. These are all smaller points compared to the joy at watching a show that feels like it is getting it more right than we’ve seen lately.
@154 – Kirk didn’t negotiate a truce among the gangs of Iotia, he imposed a new regime. Kirk alone decided who would be the top boss, who would be his second in command and told everyone else they had no say in the matter. There was no negotiation. He showed off the power of the Enterprise and let them know that they could kill people as easily as they stunned them.
“KIRK: Hey, Bela, no, no, no. The Federation can’t get connected with a small-time operation like this. No, I was thinking, Bela, you would be the top boss. Krako, you’d be his lieutenant. The rest of you, I don’t want any trouble from the rest of you because you’ll have to answer to the Federation.”
There’s no negotiations. There’s imposition of a dictatorship. Kirk even says that the Iotians will be forced to agree. No input on their side at all.
SPOCK: Highly irregular, to say the least, Captain. I’m also curious as to how you propose to explain to Starfleet Command that a starship will be sent each year to collect our cut.
KIRK: Yes, that’s a very good question, Mister Spock. I propose our cut be put into the planetary treasury and used to guide the Iotians into a more ethical system. Despite themselves, they’ll be forced to accept conventional responsibilities.
So who decides what is ethical for an alien race? Certainly not the natives themselves in this case. It was a wholly internal matter even though it was based on a book from Earth. Nobody on the Horizon forced the Iotians to base their culture on The Book. They decided for themselves. And the PD was not in effect at the time so the only violation was Kirk’s, not the previous crew
I was really hoping this show would be great, and yet I have soooo many complaints… Perhaps I’m getting old. I’m still giving it the benefit of the doubt and looking forward to next episodes.
@2 / Ovaltine! – As the only person who noticed the flag and mentioned it here – yes, yes, it was. As a Ukrainian myself, I facepalmed so much. Not because my country is used for an aesop, but because that’s just lazy.