Sort of lukewarm reception from me. I realize my enjoyment of Strange New Worlds is very much dependent on Pike, and while nurse Chapel and the doctor do a good job, it is not quite enough. I am...
Sort of lukewarm reception from me. I realize my enjoyment of Strange New Worlds is very much dependent on Pike, and while nurse Chapel and the doctor do a good job, it is not quite enough. I am really tired now of flashing lights and endless fistfights. After being somewhat disappointed with Picard I was hoping Strange New Worlds would be the place for less action oriented Trek. The overall story is fine, but in a weird way both too big and too small. It is high stakes with the threat of another Klingon war, but it is all started and resolved rather quickly. I am also not entirely sold on the humor yet. Spock with a hangover isn't quite right. The "For Nichelle" message at the end gave me misty eyes though. Hoping for more Pike in the next episode!
Agree completely, what happened with the camera at the last transport scene? Now that i think about, the scenes involving Spock were the ham fisted ones.
Agree completely, what happened with the camera at the last transport scene? Now that i think about, the scenes involving Spock were the ham fisted ones.
tbf, TOS Klingons also were not really the spacebushido guys that we saw in TNG and later. It did strike me as an attempt to kind of reconcile the two attitudes the species has had onscreen.
tbf, TOS Klingons also were not really the spacebushido guys that we saw in TNG and later. It did strike me as an attempt to kind of reconcile the two attitudes the species has had onscreen.
So, I've been thinking a lot about this over recent days and I feel like the back half of the episode is significantly stronger than the front half (unexplained spacewar pcp notwithstanding). The...
So, I've been thinking a lot about this over recent days and I feel like the back half of the episode is significantly stronger than the front half (unexplained spacewar pcp notwithstanding).
The front half suffers greatly from having a "stealing the Enterprise" plot that is entirely uninspired and very low-stakes. Having watched Search for Spock recently this really stood out to me. It all feels quite rushed and then at what should be the climax of the entire thing, they stop to do something what I have taken to calling "The Joke".
It's The Joke That They Always Do, the one where someone new sits in the Captain's chair and suddenly everyone on the bridge loses their mind and just starts going "do the thing! do the THING!" - at this point it's become very tired, having been done to death in all the new shows for some reason, but this one was particularly egregious for two reasons - first, because it came at the expense of the quality of the plot, and second, because if you haven't watched any Star Trek since the last episode of Picard came out, they did this exact same joke in the previous broadcast episode. It's back-to-back The Joke. Do the productions even talk to each other?
That being said, some good moments overall. I enjoyed the main concept of the episode, preventing a space false flag is (I think) fairly new for Trek which is pretty hard to pull off in a show with a corpus this large. Also very glad to have reasonable Klingons back and used to good effect.
I noticed a lot of tropes in the episode. They are a little tiring, but I think maybe they are actually supposed to be homages? Like the drinking scene where the small woman drinks a large man...
I noticed a lot of tropes in the episode. They are a little tiring, but I think maybe they are actually supposed to be homages?
Like the drinking scene where the small woman drinks a large man under the table. Is that an homage to Raiders of the Lost Arc?
Last season they did several obvious homages, for example to Alien.
Also a few of the scenes in this episode seemed more like Star Wars than Star Trek.
I feel like the episode was ok but I agree that it was a bit disappointing. The show has a lot of potential and I hope it hits it's stride before it's canceled or completely overhauled.
I'm a old-trek fan. DS9 is one of my absolute favorite shows ever, TNG and TOS are great. VOY I felt was just okay (with some great episodes), and I didn't get past the first season of ENT. I...
I'm a old-trek fan. DS9 is one of my absolute favorite shows ever, TNG and TOS are great. VOY I felt was just okay (with some great episodes), and I didn't get past the first season of ENT.
I haven't really given nu-trek much of a chance. Is it worth getting into SNW without being up to date with the rest of nu-trek? Or should I be giving nu-trek as a whole more of a chance? (and where should I start if so?)
Something about Discovery that I think rubs people the wrong way is how they develop its characters. The show really likes to explore the mental health of its cast, and it frequently uses its own...
Something about Discovery that I think rubs people the wrong way is how they develop its characters. The show really likes to explore the mental health of its cast, and it frequently uses its own sci-fi plots as metaphors for dealing with problems like trauma, trust, and PTSD.
This isn't new to Star Trek as a whole, but in the past these elements were often relegated to singular episodes. We would see a character deal with trauma in one episode, and then it would never be acknowledged again (*cough*O'Brien*cough*).
As a result, Discovery ends up feeling a lot more touchy-feely than past series', and often dispenses with the stoic professionalism the Berman-era shows were known for as these characters continually grapple with their problems over the course of an entire season.
Once I started to recognize this (and the series moved away from being a TOS prequel), I began to appreciate it a lot more. It doesn't scratch that same itch TNG or DS9 would, but I'm not sure it needs to now that we have Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds.
I watched two seasons of Discovery and was mostly disappointed. I think you have a good point about the touchy-feely stuff. It's something that I got used to I guess. For me, the problem wasn't...
I watched two seasons of Discovery and was mostly disappointed. I think you have a good point about the touchy-feely stuff. It's something that I got used to I guess. For me, the problem wasn't that people talked about their feelings too much. The problem was that people would be best friends who loved each other totally even though they shared only a little bit of screen time on an episode or two. It didn't feel earned.
Strange New Worlds is not like that, but there is something a little off-putting about how informal the crew acts with each other. It's fine I guess, but a lot of them act like high school students or something. Nurse Chapel in particular acts very young with her smirkiness and the way she kind of runs around.
The Enterprise in this show is pretty much a military vessel, it seems the crew is just a little too informal. The Lower Decks is like that too (I think, I've only seen one ep so far) but to be fair that one is a cartoon.
I think this is reflective of how much real-world work culture has changed in the last 30 years. When I was a kid, most white-collar jobs really were white-collar; my dad actually went to work...
but there is something a little off-putting about how informal the crew acts with each other
I think this is reflective of how much real-world work culture has changed in the last 30 years. When I was a kid, most white-collar jobs really were white-collar; my dad actually went to work every day wearing a tie, and that was normal. Today I work in a similar profession, making a six-figure salary, and I would never even consider a job at a place that doesn't let me show up in jeans and a t-shirt. And the rapport and idle conversation I have with my co-workers definitely feels a lot more informal and snarky than what I remember my dad's workplace being like.
The first season of SNW is the closest we get to the classic episodic style of TOS and TNG. And it features Pike and Spock before TOS, which I think is plenty of knowledge to get started. But...
The first season of SNW is the closest we get to the classic episodic style of TOS and TNG. And it features Pike and Spock before TOS, which I think is plenty of knowledge to get started. But seems like you start with Season 1.
It does not feel like nu-trek. SNW is TOS with a budget. I think it was okay, but other TOS fans tend to love it. IMHO, COVID restrictions hurt the show deeply because the ship was largely empty...
It does not feel like nu-trek. SNW is TOS with a budget. I think it was okay, but other TOS fans tend to love it. IMHO, COVID restrictions hurt the show deeply because the ship was largely empty and all we saw were the main characters. Hopefully, that won't be an issue in the new season. And I don't like the emotionless captain either, I appreciate the direction they were going but I think they went a little too far. He was basically a Vulcan.
Strange New Worlds Season 1 is available for free on YouTube if you want to give it a go on its own. There is a bit where Spock has some family that is featured in Discovery that is referenced in...
Strange New Worlds Season 1 is available for free on YouTube if you want to give it a go on its own. There is a bit where Spock has some family that is featured in Discovery that is referenced in a scene, but it doesn't really come up again and you can fill in the blanks on your own. Otherwise, feel free to jump right in.
I was disappointed. I loved the first season of Strange New Worlds. I was left cold by this season opener. I felt like it incorporated more elements from the other Trek series I don't like: the...
I was disappointed.
I loved the first season of Strange New Worlds. I was left cold by this season opener. I felt like it incorporated more elements from the other Trek series I don't like: the dark lighting, the gratuitous fist fights, the poor motivation.
The set piece of the episode was a 5-minute fist fight between two Starfleet medical personnel and a group of Klingons. I can't even say how many types of wrong that was! The illicit juicing to power up our Starfleet folks. The dim lighting. The gratuitous violence. A doctor on the edge of killing someone just to get information. No. Just no.
Spock stealing the Enterprise to save a crewmate was predictable and trite. And it wasn't sold very well on-screen. I didn't buy it. Spock felt wooden rather than stoic. And then, him having emotions was just awkward. I'm not a fan of this character arc.
Also, was the bridge in basic darkness at one point? I hope that was just something to do with the overhaul at Starbase One, and will not be the new aesthetic. One thing I liked about SNW was that it was shot in light.
This is giving me bad vibes.
On the plus side, we got Carol Kane as a quirky new Chief Engineer. We got... umm... well, we got that one good thing.
Let's hope this is just an aberration. However, shows usually lead with their best material in an opening episode. I sincerely hope this is not the best that this season will have to offer.
I totally feel you on the violence. The first season wasn’t too bad for it, but it turned me right off Picard, for example. It doesn’t feel very Trek. Not that I expect there to be no violence:...
I totally feel you on the violence. The first season wasn’t too bad for it, but it turned me right off Picard, for example. It doesn’t feel very Trek. Not that I expect there to be no violence: where they are and what they’re doing as Star Fleet necessitates it sometimes, but it shouldn’t be the focus, you know? This kind of ‘gritty’ realistic hyper violence that has become very normal across modern TV shows. I also find those sequences very boring, and the overproduction was kind of cringey at points: the spinning camera, the whole pupil dilating bit, the slow-mo, oh no!
I really love the design of Starbase 1. They put a mountain under a glass dome and put it in orbit around Jupiter. That's awesome. Also, I love watching Spock grow into the mature, confident adult...
I really love the design of Starbase 1. They put a mountain under a glass dome and put it in orbit around Jupiter. That's awesome.
Also, I love watching Spock grow into the mature, confident adult he will eventually become. This version of Spock isn't there yet, but he's working on it, and it's a joy to watch.
That was not a good start. I'm disappointed because season 1 was alright. The ships sound like Star Wars now. All that bzzz in the opening fly overs. I am beginning to despise dialog that does the...
That was not a good start. I'm disappointed because season 1 was alright.
The ships sound like Star Wars now. All that bzzz in the opening fly overs. I am beginning to despise dialog that does the sassy ironic "I don't wanna be shot, that would be, like, bad". It's so tired at this point. The "say the thing" joke is worn out, they have done it in Discovery (twice?), Lower Decks, and now here. Also, Spock controls his emotions, he's not mentally deficient as his let's go phrase implied. "Vamanos" would have been better.
The drinking scene was lifted from the first Indiana Jones, it was pure trope.
What was the green gloop? It wasn't explained, and why does the doc carry it everywhere now? No idea. The fights were too much. They went on too long, had "eating a crisp apple" sound effects, headache-causing strobe lights, and came out of nowhere. When did the doc and nurse become some hardened Rambo types?
I hope the season isn't going to be a Spock and Chapel soap opera. They already did vulcan-human becomes emotional in Discovery, now it's here again.
Seems like they are doing a save the know galaxy plot too with the Gorn. I prefered the "planet of the week" style serialised episodes, the big mystery box overarching plots from other new Trek shows were weaker.
I hope it is less Star Wars next week, and doesn't have Spock being an emotional wreck. If the writing has doubled down on the weird "humor" tone from the other new trek shows then the season might not be salvageable.
Sort of lukewarm reception from me. I realize my enjoyment of Strange New Worlds is very much dependent on Pike, and while nurse Chapel and the doctor do a good job, it is not quite enough. I am really tired now of flashing lights and endless fistfights. After being somewhat disappointed with Picard I was hoping Strange New Worlds would be the place for less action oriented Trek. The overall story is fine, but in a weird way both too big and too small. It is high stakes with the threat of another Klingon war, but it is all started and resolved rather quickly. I am also not entirely sold on the humor yet. Spock with a hangover isn't quite right. The "For Nichelle" message at the end gave me misty eyes though. Hoping for more Pike in the next episode!
Agree completely, what happened with the camera at the last transport scene? Now that i think about, the scenes involving Spock were the ham fisted ones.
tbf, TOS Klingons also were not really the spacebushido guys that we saw in TNG and later. It did strike me as an attempt to kind of reconcile the two attitudes the species has had onscreen.
Totally agree there, these Klingons are more like the TOS personalities mixed with the TNG prosthetics.
So, I've been thinking a lot about this over recent days and I feel like the back half of the episode is significantly stronger than the front half (unexplained spacewar pcp notwithstanding).
The front half suffers greatly from having a "stealing the Enterprise" plot that is entirely uninspired and very low-stakes. Having watched Search for Spock recently this really stood out to me. It all feels quite rushed and then at what should be the climax of the entire thing, they stop to do something what I have taken to calling "The Joke".
It's The Joke That They Always Do, the one where someone new sits in the Captain's chair and suddenly everyone on the bridge loses their mind and just starts going "do the thing! do the THING!" - at this point it's become very tired, having been done to death in all the new shows for some reason, but this one was particularly egregious for two reasons - first, because it came at the expense of the quality of the plot, and second, because if you haven't watched any Star Trek since the last episode of Picard came out, they did this exact same joke in the previous broadcast episode. It's back-to-back The Joke. Do the productions even talk to each other?
That being said, some good moments overall. I enjoyed the main concept of the episode, preventing a space false flag is (I think) fairly new for Trek which is pretty hard to pull off in a show with a corpus this large. Also very glad to have reasonable Klingons back and used to good effect.
I noticed a lot of tropes in the episode. They are a little tiring, but I think maybe they are actually supposed to be homages?
Like the drinking scene where the small woman drinks a large man under the table. Is that an homage to Raiders of the Lost Arc?
Last season they did several obvious homages, for example to Alien.
Also a few of the scenes in this episode seemed more like Star Wars than Star Trek.
I feel like the episode was ok but I agree that it was a bit disappointing. The show has a lot of potential and I hope it hits it's stride before it's canceled or completely overhauled.
I'm a old-trek fan. DS9 is one of my absolute favorite shows ever, TNG and TOS are great. VOY I felt was just okay (with some great episodes), and I didn't get past the first season of ENT.
I haven't really given nu-trek much of a chance. Is it worth getting into SNW without being up to date with the rest of nu-trek? Or should I be giving nu-trek as a whole more of a chance? (and where should I start if so?)
Something about Discovery that I think rubs people the wrong way is how they develop its characters. The show really likes to explore the mental health of its cast, and it frequently uses its own sci-fi plots as metaphors for dealing with problems like trauma, trust, and PTSD.
This isn't new to Star Trek as a whole, but in the past these elements were often relegated to singular episodes. We would see a character deal with trauma in one episode, and then it would never be acknowledged again (*cough*O'Brien*cough*).
As a result, Discovery ends up feeling a lot more touchy-feely than past series', and often dispenses with the stoic professionalism the Berman-era shows were known for as these characters continually grapple with their problems over the course of an entire season.
Once I started to recognize this (and the series moved away from being a TOS prequel), I began to appreciate it a lot more. It doesn't scratch that same itch TNG or DS9 would, but I'm not sure it needs to now that we have Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds.
I watched two seasons of Discovery and was mostly disappointed. I think you have a good point about the touchy-feely stuff. It's something that I got used to I guess. For me, the problem wasn't that people talked about their feelings too much. The problem was that people would be best friends who loved each other totally even though they shared only a little bit of screen time on an episode or two. It didn't feel earned.
Strange New Worlds is not like that, but there is something a little off-putting about how informal the crew acts with each other. It's fine I guess, but a lot of them act like high school students or something. Nurse Chapel in particular acts very young with her smirkiness and the way she kind of runs around.
The Enterprise in this show is pretty much a military vessel, it seems the crew is just a little too informal. The Lower Decks is like that too (I think, I've only seen one ep so far) but to be fair that one is a cartoon.
I think this is reflective of how much real-world work culture has changed in the last 30 years. When I was a kid, most white-collar jobs really were white-collar; my dad actually went to work every day wearing a tie, and that was normal. Today I work in a similar profession, making a six-figure salary, and I would never even consider a job at a place that doesn't let me show up in jeans and a t-shirt. And the rapport and idle conversation I have with my co-workers definitely feels a lot more informal and snarky than what I remember my dad's workplace being like.
The first season of SNW is the closest we get to the classic episodic style of TOS and TNG. And it features Pike and Spock before TOS, which I think is plenty of knowledge to get started. But seems like you start with Season 1.
It does not feel like nu-trek. SNW is TOS with a budget. I think it was okay, but other TOS fans tend to love it. IMHO, COVID restrictions hurt the show deeply because the ship was largely empty and all we saw were the main characters. Hopefully, that won't be an issue in the new season. And I don't like the emotionless captain either, I appreciate the direction they were going but I think they went a little too far. He was basically a Vulcan.
All in all, it's worth a shot.
Strange New Worlds Season 1 is available for free on YouTube if you want to give it a go on its own. There is a bit where Spock has some family that is featured in Discovery that is referenced in a scene, but it doesn't really come up again and you can fill in the blanks on your own. Otherwise, feel free to jump right in.
Sadly it seems those YouTube videos aren't available in my region :(
Just watch may be able to help you then? It's on Paramount Plus or wherever that content would be carried in your area. https://click.justwatch.com/a?r=https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/star-trek-strange-new-worlds?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android
I was disappointed.
I loved the first season of Strange New Worlds. I was left cold by this season opener. I felt like it incorporated more elements from the other Trek series I don't like: the dark lighting, the gratuitous fist fights, the poor motivation.
The set piece of the episode was a 5-minute fist fight between two Starfleet medical personnel and a group of Klingons. I can't even say how many types of wrong that was! The illicit juicing to power up our Starfleet folks. The dim lighting. The gratuitous violence. A doctor on the edge of killing someone just to get information. No. Just no.
Spock stealing the Enterprise to save a crewmate was predictable and trite. And it wasn't sold very well on-screen. I didn't buy it. Spock felt wooden rather than stoic. And then, him having emotions was just awkward. I'm not a fan of this character arc.
Also, was the bridge in basic darkness at one point? I hope that was just something to do with the overhaul at Starbase One, and will not be the new aesthetic. One thing I liked about SNW was that it was shot in light.
This is giving me bad vibes.
On the plus side, we got Carol Kane as a quirky new Chief Engineer. We got... umm... well, we got that one good thing.
Let's hope this is just an aberration. However, shows usually lead with their best material in an opening episode. I sincerely hope this is not the best that this season will have to offer.
I totally feel you on the violence. The first season wasn’t too bad for it, but it turned me right off Picard, for example. It doesn’t feel very Trek. Not that I expect there to be no violence: where they are and what they’re doing as Star Fleet necessitates it sometimes, but it shouldn’t be the focus, you know? This kind of ‘gritty’ realistic hyper violence that has become very normal across modern TV shows. I also find those sequences very boring, and the overproduction was kind of cringey at points: the spinning camera, the whole pupil dilating bit, the slow-mo, oh no!
I really love the design of Starbase 1. They put a mountain under a glass dome and put it in orbit around Jupiter. That's awesome.
Also, I love watching Spock grow into the mature, confident adult he will eventually become. This version of Spock isn't there yet, but he's working on it, and it's a joy to watch.
That was not a good start. I'm disappointed because season 1 was alright.
The ships sound like Star Wars now. All that bzzz in the opening fly overs. I am beginning to despise dialog that does the sassy ironic "I don't wanna be shot, that would be, like, bad". It's so tired at this point. The "say the thing" joke is worn out, they have done it in Discovery (twice?), Lower Decks, and now here. Also, Spock controls his emotions, he's not mentally deficient as his let's go phrase implied. "Vamanos" would have been better.
The drinking scene was lifted from the first Indiana Jones, it was pure trope.
What was the green gloop? It wasn't explained, and why does the doc carry it everywhere now? No idea. The fights were too much. They went on too long, had "eating a crisp apple" sound effects, headache-causing strobe lights, and came out of nowhere. When did the doc and nurse become some hardened Rambo types?
I hope the season isn't going to be a Spock and Chapel soap opera. They already did vulcan-human becomes emotional in Discovery, now it's here again.
Seems like they are doing a save the know galaxy plot too with the Gorn. I prefered the "planet of the week" style serialised episodes, the big mystery box overarching plots from other new Trek shows were weaker.
I hope it is less Star Wars next week, and doesn't have Spock being an emotional wreck. If the writing has doubled down on the weird "humor" tone from the other new trek shows then the season might not be salvageable.
SPOILER
On Commander Pelia, here's what I have.
Episode Premiere has been posted to YouTube (US Only) https://youtu.be/-lf0arjnFu4