Star Trek

Star Trek TOS – Season 1 – Part 1 – E01-13

Sep 23rd, 2024

So, this one feels slightly tricky. I have been making notes about episodes as I watch them, but also I have been writing up some on a private forum and having some back-and-forth there. Actually, maybe this will make it much easier.

Anyway, since Discovery is over, and I am caught up on Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks, I decided to move on to Star Trek, The Original Series (TOS). I really want to rewatch the TNG era stuff, but I am kind of trying to knock out all of the “older era” stuff first. Also, as it turns out, I really have not watched TOS, basically ever. I have watched the TOS movies a whole lot, I have seen TNG and DS9 a ton. I am sure I have watched a few TOS episodes here and there, though so far, non of it seems familiar at all.

I have kind of gone back and forth on how to break this up. The “new shows” are all framed around ten episodes seasons and arcs, which makes things pretty short, comparably. Discovery is 15 episodes less and 2 seasons longer. I don’t think 10 episode chunks really works out too well either, that makes 8 posts total. Also, I am not really doing “write-ups”, just more, thoughts and observations. Not to mention it’s a nearly 60-year-old show with a planet of fan analysis and thought on it. I am not really “breaking news ground” here for anyone but me.

One thing I do want to throw in a bit is some occasional thoughts on how it relates to the new shows and that expanded continuity. So anyway, basically, some episodes may get lots of detailed comments, and others may get almost nothing.

S01E01 – The Cage

Side note, I watched this after watching later episodes, just before The Menagerie. The Cage is the originally unaired, then 20 years later aired pilot. Unlike the main show, the core cast consists of Captain Pike, Mr Spock, Number One (who does not have a real name) and a Doctor whose name I forget. No one else is familiar, even the Yeoman chick is different (not Yeoman Rand). Pike, Spock, and Number One would “go on” to be the main cast members in Strange New Worlds.

Which leads me to my first note, Pike comments about “I’m not used to women on the bridge” to Yeoman Colt. Which is funny in the context of both Discovery and Strange New Worlds, where there were plenty of women on the bridge. Both ships had women at the helm. The show itself also makes it an in joke since Number One is right there piloting the ship, and is literally second in command.

The episode itself kind of feels really rough and the acting, especially by the non main cast feels kind of stiff. There is also some neat stuff that I kind of like more than what we got. Like how they put on those little jackets on the away mission. The Jackets are ugly, but this sort of gear is something that shows up a lot more in the current gen Trek versus a lot of the older Trek where they just wear their uniforms all the time. It’s also interesting how many little “Trek lore” things are there, like Talos system is the main focus, and they mention Rigel VII and “M Class” planets. They mention Orions and there is a green Orion girl at one point. I don’t think there have been any Orions mentioned or shown at all at this point where I am in the main Kirk episodes.

There is also a lot of weirdness. They mention using “Rockets” which feels like it was replaced by “Impulse Engines”. They go to “Time Warp” and mention how humans have “broken the time warp barrier.”. They also push it right up to “Time Warp Factor 7”. At this point in the main episodes, most of the time, Enterprise only goes Warp 1. I think in one episode they pushed it to Warp 4 or 5.

The whole plot also had this weird underpinning note about a race of aliens who got so caught up in watching and following dreams (TV) their society collapsed. Feels a bit contradictory for a TV show. The whole show weirdly feels MORE Sci-Fi like than the main show has. I mean, Star Trek is definitely Sci-Fi, but The Cage just feels a bit more so in some ways.

It’s probably worth noting that there are references to this episode later in Discovery, when Pike has to return to Talos. I honestly can’t even remember WHY he went back, but he did.

S01E02 – The Man Trap

There is a lot of weirdness around order film d and order released, but I am just going off the order listed on Paramount+ and IMDB.

During a seemingly routine checkup away mission, Bones runs into an old flame, but she has been replaced by some sort of shape shifter who is sucking the salt from people to survive. Something like 4 or 5 people are killed, which is kind of nutty. I have started keeping a sort of running tab of how many crew members died, though the deaths seem to have slowed down quite a bit.

You can really tell they are still trying to get a handle on what exactly they want the show to be with style and uniforms.

S01E03 – Charlie X

Just to go a long with my running tally of death, they mention at one point that the Enterprise has 428 crew members. The Enterprise has to escort a seeming regular young man only to find out he has telepathic powers. The kid kind of feels like a sort of Q/Human hybrid, he can sort of “make whatever he wants happen.” The kid is really annoying and the whole thing is kind of a metaphor for puberty I think.

Three people are killed in this one including Yeoman Rand, but by the end, everyone is restores, except the crew of the Antares, which was listed as 20 people.

S01E04 – Where No Man Has Gone Before

Speaking of Q, I believe this episode was reconned in a book that the cause of the ESP powers gained by the crew members was from a lost/trapped member of the Q continuum. There seems to be a lot of push on telepathic and ESP powers in these earlier episodes, I suppose it’s a cheap and easy way to make it seem futuristic without actually having to have fancy effects. There are also a lot of weird uniforms in this one.

A few things that feel off. They track down an old Earth ship that drifted to the Galaxy’s edge 200 years ago. Star Trek Enterprise I believe was 100 years ago and was the first really Warp Capable Earth Ship, and I am not sure First Contact was more or less than 200 years, but either way, that seems really too early.

One thing though, I really found interesting. In Star Trek Discovery they go to th edge of the galaxy and they have to leave the galaxy and breech the barrier and everyone acts like it’s a HUGE deal, it’s “never been done.” But here we are, episode 4, maybe even the first one actually produced, and they are exiting the galaxy.

Nine people died in this episode.

S01E05 – Naked Time

Aye, it’s Nurse Chapel finally. I am sure anyone who cares knows, but Chapel in TOS, is played by Majel Barrett, who also played Number One in the Cage, and later plays the ship’s computer voice and Leaxana Troi. She was Gene Roddenberry’s girlfriend at the time of TOS and later they were married. Roddenberry of course being the creator of Star Trek.

Chapel in this feels soooo so different than the SNW Chapel. Honestly, for what I have experienced so far, Chapel from SNW would have almost been better as a version of Yeoman Rand. Rand is in this show a lot and goes on away missions and such a lot. Rand feels way more like a former war fighter that Chapel on SNW is shown to be.

Naked Time is one of those “people put it in lists” episodes, and it’s one of the better ones so far. I believe this is the first time we have seen Sulu, and he gets to run around with his shirt off sword fighting people. Also notable for firsts, they are calling the medical area “Sickbay” now instead of of “The Dispensary.”

As for the plot, there is basically a virus going around the ship that causes people to become emotionally less inhibited. Both Spock and Kirk have some pretty good moments here, but Spock’s is definitely better than Kirk’s.

We have had some form of singing in two episodes now as well, which makes the musical episode of Strange New Worlds feel less random. Like, singing in Star Trek has been a thing since forever too!

The episode ends on a random time travel moment where they sort of rewind time a few hours to avoid getting the virus in the first place. I am told this episode was supposed to air later and lead into another time travel themed episode, but I have not gotten there yet.

S01E06 – The Enemy Within

It’s Thomas Kirk(er)! That was a little TNG joke, they basically did this plot in TNG with Riker. Kirk gets split into two people by a transporter accident. It’s not quite the same as Thomas Riker though because Kirk has his personality split as well, one Kirk is aggressive and rude and the other is meek and cowering.

Because they are not sure what is happening with the transporter, Sulu and some others get stranded. I guess there is only one transporter room. Didn’t the Enterprise have a medical transporter in Strange New Worlds? Oh wait, that technically has not happened yet, despite being in the past. No shuttle to manually rescue them either. I guess they all got destroy d during that battle with Control years ago, no wait, that didn’t happen in the past yet either.

Ok, I’ll stop.

This is probably my favorite episode so far and feels the most “Like Star Trek” of everything so far.

Bones says the line for the first time, “He’s dead Jim!”. In relation to the death of the poor Space Dog in a costume.

S01E07 – Mudd’s Women

Mudd is one of the few reoccurring characters in TOS Lore. And one of the few that I had heard of before watching the show. I believe (and I may be wrong, i didn’t double check), Mudd shows up in 3 TOS episodes and one episode of the TOS Animated show. He is also in 2 Episodes of Discovery and maybe at least one TOS video game.

When he shows up, he uses a fake name. Despite that his real name is in the show title, and that the Closed Captions for the show, list him as “Mudd”. Maybe neither of those were an issue during the original run. Mudd is trying to sell some women as wives to a bunch of miners on a barely habited planet. What the heck is with all the mostly deserted planets in this galaxy? How is it at all sustainable for 1-5 people to live alone on a planet? Especially for such an important resource as Lithium Crystals, which I think may be the first mention of them, though it’s not clear if this is the same as Dilithium used to power the warp drives. Shouldn’t there be a fairly large operation on this planet? How do they even get the crystals off the planet?

Anyway, it turns out that Mudd’s women are actually “ugly and older” than they appear, but he keeps giving them some sort of serum to make them more desirable, both visually and through some sort of pheromonal interactions, to everyone. Before they arrive at the planet though Mudd’s identity is revealed and there is a pretty amusing trial because Mudd in general, is an already wanted criminal. It’s not real clear what happened to Mudd in the end though. The women end up with the men, despite their “lack of beauty”, and Mudd retreats with Kirk to the Enterprise, but then he just sort of vanishes. Did they throw him in the brig?

I also want to take a moment to compare this Mudd a bit with Rain Wilson’s Mudd from Discovery. This Mudd is a lot more of a jokey goofball than the Discovery take, who is quite menacing really, especially after murdering Lorca dozens of times in a time loop. I think I might like this Mudd a bit better really.

S01E08 – What are Little Girls Made Of

If I were making an “essential episodes” list in relation to TOS and Discovery and SNW, I would definitely include this episode. Season 3 of Strange New Worlds is supposed to have some plots involving Doctor Korby and Christine Chappel and basically will probably serve as a prequel to this specific episode. The Enterprise heads to planet Exo 3 to meet with Doctor Korby who was Christine Chapel’s former fiancé. Kirk and Chapel beam down together because Korby insists on showing Kirk what his research has found. It turns into an android fueled Invasion of the Body Snatchers episode.

Didn’t we do this plot? The Evil Kirk Clone thing?

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. And there were a couple of Redshirts sent down as well, but they quickly get killed off, add in two for the Body Count, which seems to have lessened quite a bit since the series started. Kirk gets replaced by an android which gets sent back to the Enterprise, these androids want to get off the planet I guess, though I’m not sure why they went to so much trouble since Kirk would have just, beamed them all up if they had asked. Fortunately, Kirk was smart and gave himself a “fake memory” during the clone process and the fake gives itself away by insulting Spock.

Meanwhile Kirk is stuck on the planet fighting androids trying to escape, he tries flirting with the lady android to no avail, sadly, he doesn’t try to flirt his way past the big male android. Also these androids are a good example of why we need Assimov’s laws of robotics. Because they are kind of murderous. Chapel doesn’t serve a ton of purpose on the planet other than getting just generally traumatized by pretty much everything. Tricked by fake Kirk, and tricked by Korby and just generally kind of terrorized.

Kirk also mentions his brother George Kirk at one point, which was the first time that came up.

S01E09 – Miri

Hey! They found Slartyblartfast’s backup Earth! It’s just like Earth, same continenbts and everything. Apparently this was a sort of, concept that was supposed to be more prevalent in TOS, the whole “other Earths” thing. This one is populated by some zombie people? I guess? Or it’s just some sort of weird ageing virus. They encounter a small colony of Children who, age weirdly, or something, they are all hundreds of years old, but still children, the virus basically makes them go crazy and age rapidly when they reach puberty.

Also, 3 trained miners running a planet alone was kind of ridiculous, but a dozen or so actual minors, running a planet alone, for hundreds of years, WHILE battling the occasional zombified crazy adult, that’s a bit much. It’s clearly just an excuse to reuse the sets from the Andy Griffith Show.

Anyway, the away team contracts the virus, which gives them 7 days left before they all die from it, and because the children stole the communicators, they have no way of quickly synthesizing a cure using the ship’s computer. Ok, more accurately, Kirk, McCoy, Spock, and Rand all get the virus, the random redshirts don’t seem affected at all. Rand basically admits that she has wanted to get in Kirk’s pants, though in a very round about way, and to make a reveal that is wholly unrelated to wanting Kirk to notice her.

Miri, who is one of the children that the away team befriends, has basically fallen in love with Kirk. They sort of use this as a tell that she is “about to become a woman” because she is having “womanly feelings”. It’s a little creepy, but at one point Kirk shows up and the other kids start calling him “Mr Lovey Dovey” and start chanting “BONK!” or something similar at him.

(INSERT BONK MEME)

It does lead to a funny line at the end were Kirk comments that he isn’t into “older women”. Given Miri, while physical is, 14 or 15 I guess, is in fact, like 200-300 years old.

They manage to cure the virus in the end, but like Mudd, it’s not real clear where the kids went. did they just leave all those kids there alone? They also never even attempt to really explain why this planet looks EXACTLY like Earth. Also, why didn’t they call this episode “Neverland”?

S01E10 – Dagger of the Mind

Man, what a weirdly predictable episode, though it was pretty good. The Enterprise is transporting supplies to a prison planet, and I immediately thought, “they are going to also beam something up and it will have a prisoner inside.” and sure enough, they do.

But it’s not just any prisoner, it’s actually the escaped director of the prison. It seems his assistant(??) has basically brain wiped everyone on the planet into being perfect obedient slaves. This is pretty much just an excuse for Kirk to go down to the planet with some random woman whom he apparently sort of had a thing with at a Christmas party. It’s kind of weird, because we have never seen this character, nor the Christmas Party mentioned several times. She is supposed to be McCoy’s sort of, representative, to prove that the prison is fishy, but all she does is side with the crazy prison doctor.

Anyway, Kirk gets captured and pseudo brainwashed into thinking he is madly in love with this random woman, something that doesn’t seem to get resolved or cured at all by the end of the episode (this is starting to become a trend). Eventually though the mad doctor gets knocked out in the brainwashing chamber and becomes a vegetable, then a dead vegetable.

Did I say I enjoyed this episode? Maybe it wasn’t so great. I do believe this was the first time Spock did the Vulcan neck pinch thing and the Vulcan Mind Meld.

S01E11 – The Corbomite Maneuver

Ok, maybe I was thinking of this episode as the one I enjoyed.

Because I like tracking these little “first time” moments, McCoy says thing he is known for, “Damn it Jim, I’m a Doctor not a shuttle conductor.” I am pretty sure that’s new. What the hell is a shuttle conductor?

The Enterprise encounters a mysterious cube blocking their path. You might wonder how you can be blocked in the vastnness of space, well, it moves to keep blocking them. There is also this really annoying and winey crew member ont he bridge with Lieutenant Bailey. I have a note in my notes that simply reads, “Spock hates crewman Bailey.” Anyway, they end up shooting the cube with phasers to escape. I am pretty sure this is the first time the ship has fired phasers at anything. We don’t have torpedoes or shuttle craft yet but we have phasers!

The little cube though is replaced by a big sphere that threatens to destroy the enterprise, but offers them ten minutes to “pray to their deities.” Bailey kind of flips out that everyone is so calm about their imminent doom and he gets relieved of duty. Who is this joker again? Kirk bluffs the alien that they won’t be killed so easily because they are protected by a fake material called Corbomite, so instead the Alien ops to tow the Enterprise to a nearby planet and leave the crew stranded there. The ship manages to out maneuver the alien and escape from it’s clutches, and the alien reveals himself to be a much smaller, and much less menacing enemy, who was just looking for friends, basically.

They leave Bailey behind to be the alien’s friend. There are so many ways to go with this on head canon. Did Bailey make the alien decide to end itself? Did Bailey annoy the alien enough that the alien kills him and then decides humanity must pay for his suffering? Yet another unresolved plot device I guess.

S01E12 – The Menagerie Part 1 | S01E13 – The Menagerie Part 2

I mentioned at the start I thought it would be fund to wrap around back to Captain Pike for this post. Let me just start off, watching The Cage and The Menagerie back to back was a huge mistake. The Menagerie Part 1 is like, 50% clips from The Cage. Part 2 is like, 99% clips from The Cage. Part two is so much repeated material I don’t even have any notes on it. They just went back to “present day” when they needed to insert a commercial break.

Part 1 at last has some interesting set up plot. The Enterprise gets summoned to Starbase 11, only to discover that no such transmission was actually made. It turns out Spock had altered the data banks to force the ship to Starbase 11, where a crippled Captain Pike now resides. This Pike is AFTER the “Pike saves some cadets and becomes a wheelchair-bound paraplegic” moment that was shown to Pike during Discovery and that haunts him in Strange New Worlds.

Spock does more computer manipulation and hijacks the Enterprise, basically telling the crew that Captain Kirk has sent them on a secret mission. That mission, is to return Pike to Talos IV, so that he can live out his life in the comfort of fantasy created by the Talosians. Apparently going to Talos IV is the “only death penalty” still on Starfleet’s books, which seems a little extreme honestly. Also, Pike, realizes Spock’s plan and protests, very adamantly. Pike does not want this.

Anyway, Kirk and the Station 11 Admiral head out in a shuttlecraft to chase the Enterprise. We FINALLY have shuttles! Well, a, shuttle. the shuttle isn’t capable of keeping up though and runs out of power, and Spock rescues them, but not before locking in the ship’s course and locking everyone out of the computer. Do they not have Cybersecurity in the future?

Anyway, what follows is a trial of Spock for the mutiny, which mostly consists of clips from The Cage. In the end, it turns out the Admiral riding along with Kirk was also a Talosian illusion, and there was no actual court marshal and everyone is saved” from the death penalty.

Yay? I guess? I mean, if I were Kirk, I might still be a little upset with Spock.

So that wraps up my part one for my Star Trek The Original Series thoughts. Future installments may be a bit more brief, at least, they won’t have as much “introduction” tacked on to the front.

Star Trek – Lower Decks (S1-S4)

Aug 26th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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So, unlike Discovery, this show is a lot more serialized, which is much more Trek-like honestly. There is some loose callbacks within the seasons, mostly at the end of the seasons, but otherwise, each episode is mostly just its own mission or activity. Or more often, several missions or activities.

Unlike most Trek shows, this one follows the “lower decks” crew. As the name would suggest. There is a bridge crew that shows up, but they are not the focus. Instead, it’s, all those people running around in the background shots of every episode, doing God knows what, keeping the ship running. At least that’s the pitch, but the command crew gets quite a bit of screen time and characterization as well, particularly the Captain.

The show in general is kind of a huge love letter to Trek fans. It makes fun of a lot of Trek Tropes, but it does so in a very tongue-in-cheek way that makes it feel like it’s meant in a good way. Like, “We all know this is kind of dumb, but we are just going to not be serious about it.”. There are a lot of moments where the main 4 are literally stating, “We don’t know what is happening, that’s the senior officer’s job.”

The characters are all pretty likable as well. The two core heroes are Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler. They are basically your traditional odd couple type, and best friends on the ship. Mariner is highly able and experienced but has a massive history of avoiding the rules and general self-sabotage, while Boimler is an overachiever who can’t really get anywhere because he constantly gets in his own way. The secondary pair of heroes are D’Vana Tendi, an overly eager Orion medical ensign and Sam Rutherford, an obsessed with his work Engineer.

In addition to all the nods and jabs at Trek over the years, the show also does a good sort of deconstruction of the “lower tier life” of any large personnel outfit. They do their job well, but they also get annoyed by all the going-in-blind nonsense that the people up top push down on them. It’s almost like “The Office in Space” in that sense. Though the leadership isn’t completely incompetent on Lower Decks.

The crew is part of the USS Cerritos (another joke because it’s named after a boring small California Town). They go around doing primarily “2nd Contact” jobs. Once Starfleet has met with an alien planet for First Contact, the Cerritos is part of a group that comes in and helps them get things set up. They also do a lot of standard “scan this rock” style missions as well, and getting into other trouble.

There are a ton of references to previous Trek Material ranging from straight full plot parody to random nods here and there. There have also been episodes devoted to basically every one of the original Treks, though the TOS now was technically part of Strange New Worlds. A lot of the popular main characters have made cameos as well, voiced by their original actors.

The show has its own running gags and plots too though. The Pakleds are the pseudo-regular villains for the Cerritos, for example. The Pakleds themselves are kind of a ridiculous joke of an enemy, mostly known for being absolutely dead stupid. There is an entire regular subplot about how Mariner is very capable but just doesn’t want to move up in the ranks at all and keeps self-sabotaging herself. Also, despite that the Cerritos is supposed to kind of be a screw up ship, they always manage to save the day like the “big boys”.

It fills a nice hole in the Trek world right now, which feels like it’s trying to do a variety of things to appeal to everyone. Discovery has its single-character deep drama. Strange New Worlds is more “traditional Trek” but still a bit more lighter in nature, Lower Decks is a full-on comedy, that still does a good job of making things feel appropriate for the in-universe world. Granted, it has its exaggerations, Riker’s cameo in particular kind of felt a little too exaggerated. But overall, it’s a good show.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds

Aug 5th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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Despite that I’ve been writing about Star Trek Discovery, what really brought me back to Star Trek was Strange New Worlds. I had tried and given up on Discovery several times, not making it past the first episode, and I wasn’t hearing much great and Star Trek Picard. I was hearing good things about Strange New Worlds. I know the timelines and continuity is iffy, but it’s essentially a prequel series to The Original Series.

Something I kind of realized when starting SNW, is that I have never really watched TOS. I have seen episodes here and there for sure, and I have watched the movies many many times. I even have a pile of notes on the Animated series somewhere so I could forget to blog about it. But I have not really watched TOS properly. I may have to fix that. I am fairly familiar with it, but more with elements from the movies. For example, I forgot Nurse Chapel was there on TOS quite a bit, she is a main character here in SNW. There are actually several minor crew members in SNW that are also minor crew members in TOS.

Anyway, I also am aware of Captain Pike and how he fit into TOS. He was captain in the TOS pilot, and in a later episode after he was basically crippled into a space wheelchair thing. Basically, he was Captain of The Enterprise before Kirk. Which is the story SNW is showing us. The more interesting TOS character here is young Spock, who served under Pike before serving under Kirk. Rounding out the TOS characters is Uhura, who served as Communications Officer under Kirk, though she is a lot more floaty in her duties here under Pike. Part of her story is sort of, finding her place.

The show has its own share of new characters though, or in some cases, fleshed out minor characters. Pike has his Number One, who didn’t have a name in TOS, or in her Season 2 Discovery appearance. She gets a name finally, though it’s funny because her first name is “Una”, which is suspiciously close to “Uno”. There is the previously mentioned Nurse Christine Chapel, and her partner in crime Doctor M’Benga. Chapel was fairly present in TOS, but M’Benga actually did appear as well in a couple of episodes. The main cast is rounded out with Security Chief La’an Noonien Singh, whom is a descendant of well known Star Trek villain Khan Noonien Singh. And lastly, probably my favorite of the new characters, Lt. Erika Ortegas, who helmsman under Pike.

Oh right, there is also Captain Christopher Pike. I am really enjoying Pike as captain, though he does come off as feeling very Kirk-like at times. That may be a side effect of just how much more like Star Trek this show feels as a whole. Especially next to Discovery (Though I watched Discovery AFTER watching SNW). Unlike Discovery, this show is all about the crew and their interactions with each other.

There is a lot of strange irony going on that Ortegas is my favorite character here, and Unlike her character and feel like I know more about her character than most of the Discovery Crew. The irony being that Ortegas isn’t even a very fleshed out character. There was even kind of a memory episode where everyone lost their memory and Ortegas summed up her entire character as, “I fly the ship.”

Which bring up another thing I like about this show, it’s much more episodic in nature. There are hints of an underlying narrative, but it’s just that, it’s an underlying narrative, and less so a running plot thread. There are also a lot of subtle nods to various things in Trek. Characters that show up later again and such. A lot of the show revolves more around the character interactions as well, which is so nice because part of what makes Trek enjoyable is a fun crew that gets along. We still get history for these characters as well, with touches on La’an’s unsteadiness about her ancestry, or Chapel and M’Benga’s time during the Klingon War where they did some.potentially shady missions. There is exploration of Spock’s relationship with his Vulcan fiance T’Pring, complicated by his increasing feelings for Nurse Chapel.

But there are also a lot of fun goofy stuff going on. We get an entire musical episode when the crew encounters a special rift with a proclivity for music. There is also a really fun crossover episode with Lower Decks, where two of the Lower Decks members, Ensigns Boimler and Mariner, are transported to the “real world” past.

We also get some nods at things to come. Pike is haunted by a memory he was given during his time on Discovery, about his future death. He knows he is going to die and he knows there is nothing he can do to stop it. There are also several cameo appearances by a young Lt James T. Kirk. I am a bit torn on Kirk. The actor does a really good job and I like his character, but he doesn’t really look or act like Shatner. Funny enough, he looks like Jim Carey, who is most responsible for parodying Kirk and basically creating the “Kirk… talks like … he hasa weird… speech impediment” trope, that isn’t really very accurate.

Kirk doesn’t yet serve on the Enterprise though, so he only shows up occasionally.

Anyway, rather than push seasonal write ups, I figured I would wrap Season 1 and 2 up into one, general thoughts, write up. Overall, Strange New Worlds is really great though, and it’s done a great job of pulling me me back to Star Trek.

Star Trek Discovery – Season 5

Jul 29th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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And now for the final season of Star Trek Discovery. I have a whole mess of notes to make sense of, and a lot of them are more just, about the series in general. So let’s see where we boldly go on this one.

Actually, it turns out it’s not that much. I kind of had a hard time caring enough to finish this series and season and the whole series has felt a bit downhill for a while.

After feeling a bit more like Star Trek for the last few seasons, Discovery seems like its fully embraces its Not Trekiness. It feels a lot more like Star Wars for some reason (again). They even picked up that Sith girl from Ahsoka. Ok, not really, they just told ok her hair and style.

Is this the end? Well, actually, it is, I guess.

They also pulled Tilly back, though she doesn’t really feel like she does a lot this season. The cast on this show has been so weird all around, and I wonder if it’s something behind the scenes happening or what. The Bridge Crew is almost entirely new people, and the few remaining old characters, Tilly and Saru mostly, feel like they have been shoved off to the back burner the way the old Bridge Crew were.

Owosekun and Detmer get their leave “explained” and “acknowledged” but neither even appears in the episode where it happens.

We do get a new First Officer, again, and Adira is more interesting again, without Grey, except the writers completely forgot they were a Trill. It really has not come up at all since Season 3, and it amounted to, knowing where the Federation is, and suddenly knowing how to play the cello. I mean, why don’t we get to see that more? It’s little things like, “Let’s show this character playing cello” that make Star Trek interesting. This whole series really is just ‘The Michael Burnham Show.” Adira being an Ensign is fine, they are inexperienced in Starfleet. Adira being and acting like a know nothing after having many lifetimes of memories, is a whole new annoyance.

Just to wrap up the Adira thing, they did go back to Grey again, on Trill. And they broke up. It kind of felt like their story was going there, as I mentioned in the Season 4 write-up. I am surprised they didn’t just do it back then, but I guess they didn’t have time with the Burnham show going on.

As for the new First Officer, he is a disgraced captain, whom Burnham decides will be her new bestie. The whole setup is honestly kind of weird, they meet up on Not Tatooine and ride together on some Not Speeder Bikes and then he gets in trouble for screwing up and letting the bad guys get away. It’s kind of forgivable because he is probably the most interesting character in the season. It’s kind of a shame that the rest of the old regulars all seem to have been dumped with not a lot of characterization while this guy swoops in and gets to be interesting.

Back to the core plot.

It’s another MacGuffin Hunt chase. And it’s very literal this time. Find a thing, solve a puzzle, find the next thing, repeat.

In general, I actually really really really hate this specific plot device in everything, not just here. Indiana Jones, for example, uses it. My main problems are, traps and puzzles which survived hundreds of thousands of years undisturbed. I could go with it for 1 or 2 parts of these puzzle chains, but half a dozen?

Plus, anyone could stumble upon the middle section of a puzzle chain, or even the end, but generally speaking, only the last step actually matters.

The puzzle chain leads to quite a bit more surface level action, which is part of why this all feels more like Star Trek again.

They did do a little nod back to the Mirror Universe, though it really leans into the whole “how did this all survive hundreds of years? At least they are consistent with the Mirror Universe references. No mirror people, but they find the abandoned Mirror Universe Enterprise and pull it through the wormhole. It’s basically an excuse to reuse the Strange New Worlds sets.

Also the Federation is going to be really confused when Burnham shows up with yet another 23rd century star ship in nearly perfect condition.

They also found logs that implied the Mirror Universe Terrans from the ISS Enterprise managed to escape to the Prime Universe. Which feels odd because Georgiou had an ENTIRE plot around having to leave, due to some universe sync issues.

The puzzle chain is following through the path of these Romulan Scientists in search of Progenitors Technology. The Progenitors were in an episode of TNG where the crew, along with some others, discovered this species called The Progenitors, whom had essentially created all life in the universe. It was partly used as an explanation as to why all the aliens look “more or less like humans.”

There is also a nod towards Deep Space Nine with the Breen being the main antagonists.

I kind of wish they had brought back and explained what happened with the Klingons. Even just maybe putting one of the puzzle steps on a Klingon planet would have been nice. Actually, a fun idea may have been to revisit the Time Crystal planet, and basically, because time is wonky there, they have to kill time and wait for the clue to be deposited first.

Now I am just making up fan fiction.

The Breen plotline is just, kind of weak. Some sort of Breen Prince or something falls in love with a human girl, who just happens to have connections to Book. The Breen Prince kills some Breen and now they are hunting him down as a traitor, so the Breen dude wants the Progenitor tech to trade for his life.

But then he dies, and the Breen just sort of, decide to follow his human girlfriend. I think maybe she was his wife by that point.

Anyway, Burnham managed to solve the puzzle of course and gets the opportunity to turn down becoming a literal God level Mary Sue.

But not before we get the most ridiculous Spore Drive moment in all of the series. Oh the Spore Drive. The magic mushrooms that can always save the day. The Breen have this massive ship, and the Discovery needs to stop it, and apparently, despite never coming up once before, the ship can suddenly separate off the saucer section. And they do this sort of, Spore Drive Magic, using the two halves, to transport the giant ship away. It’s neat to watch, I guess, but it kind of breaks an already broken magic plot device in an annoying way.

Speaking of random out of the blue never mentioned plot device. Saru is doing some side plot stuff involving the Breen, and he needs to get somewhere fast, and the Federation suddenly has this thing called the Pathway Drive. It’s never explained or anything, but it’s basically just “The writers hate that Warp Travel is slow”, much like the Spore Drive.

Another thing that I mostly just want to gripe about, the Progenitor puzzle “make the shape out of the one between the many” really, REALLY felt like it was trying to hard to echo “The Needs of the Many” line.

Also, why don’t shuttles get cute names anymore. It’s just “Disco #5”

Star Trek Discovery – Season 4

Jul 22nd, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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As expected, despite there technically being ways, the crew is just staying in the Future’s Future. This season has been kind of meh overall, it really really feels like a rehash of the last two seasons except now Space Elon is the bad guy.

Also, are the actors getting bored with the show? Or maybe just, COVID messed up everyone’s schedules? It feels like a lot of the lesser characters started leaving near the end of the season. At least, the ones they didn’t give some characterization to. Last season they sort of gave Detmer a few bits of actual characterization beyond “pilot”. This season’s spare characterization cycles seem to be going to Owosekun. The other “person who sits up front.”

And of course, Tilly left, (she comes back). It really feels like they got rid of Tilly as Stamits’ engineering buddy and replaced her with Adria. More specifically, they took everything interesting about Tilly and put it in Adria, and everything kind of annoying about Tilly, and put it in Gray Tal. And neither half works as well when it’s split. Tilly is the Gestalt.

Speaking of Adira and Gray, they had a sort of, subplot going on early in the season, that stemmed from the weird Holo version of Gray. I am glad it ended fairly early on, with Gray leaving for Trill. I feel bad, but I found Gray to be incredibly annoying as a character. Way way too chipper, he made Adria’s character extremely wishy-washy and worse from her previous time, and he wasn’t ever actually part of the crew, which made him doing crew things (rarely) weird.

Not to mention the whole, “Lets synthesize you a body so you can be a real boy and extract your Trill consciousness,” kind of feels like it’s really screwing with Trill Lore.

It feels like they wanted to make Wesley seem less annoying by comparison. I suspect he will show up again more, and that’s fine, I just kind of hated him as a “regular.” And after his departure, Adira already feels more like their old self a bit more. Which is great.

The core plot arc for the season involves this giant black hole anomaly thing that sort of, showed up out of nowhere and started gobbling up planets. But it’s “random and unpredictable”. Eventually Space Elon (Tarka) shows up to be smug and annoying and screw things up for his own gain.

The black hole eats Book’s planet which kind of turns him into a huge emotional mess because we just got to meet his family (how convenient) who were of course, on the planet. This all leads to a lot of discussion a d politicking by the Federation leaders. It’s kind of crazy how suddenly the Federation is this whole thing again after being in literal shambles even BEFORE the Burn happened. Anyway, Burnham wants to negotiate with whomever is controlling the wormhole.and Space Elon wants to nuke it. The Federation decides to vote on whether or not nuking black holes is a good idea or not and decide that no, it’s not, that’s a stupid idea.

Not one to take no for an answer, he convinced Book to sneak away on their own to blow it up anyway. They also steal a prototype new Spore Drive, to put in Book’s ship, because the writers realized how impossible the story would be with regular Warp.

There is some chasing for a while and relationship drama because Burnham isn’t real happy about Book going against her and trying to nuke a black hole. Eventually, Discovery stops them, but Tarka manages to pull off his plan anyway.

This literally amounts to nothing.

They blow up the core. The thing goes away, then it just, come back. Like less than a minute later.

But a long the way we learned that the source is coming from our beyond the Great Barrier. We went to the Future’s Future, now it’s time to go to Outer Outer Space. Also Book and Tarka escape away, and we learn some backstory that is supposed to make Space Elon sympathetic but mostly just makes us wonder if he was gay for that alien dude or if they were just “roommates”.

It’s never stated. Potentially killing billions of people for a “roommate” feels a little extreme though.

So Discovery, because it’s the only ship that can do anything, Spore Jumps to the edge of the galaxy, because apparently, the Spore Drive doesn’t work outside of “the known universe”. Somewhere a sleeping Chief Engineer had to wake Up and tell Jett Reno to clean the dust off the warp core, because they were stuck using traditional warp for a while.

After passing into Outer Outer Space, Discovery encounters a giant shielded egg thing belonging to the unknown aliens. They make a detour to a nearby planet and find some long dead original civilization of these aliens. The President of the Federation also shows that she doesn’t know anything about how the Federation operates here too, because she protests that Burnham should not be beaming down to the planet. It’s like she doesn’t understand that even.on a ship with hundreds of crew members, only the senior officers and Captain ever get to actually leave the ship.

On the away mission, they discover that the aliens communicate through emotions. My first thought was, too bad they don’t have a Betazoid on board, but then I remembered that Book is also an Empath. Seems like the logical plot run, but nope, they don’t go that route.

Instead they use some sciencey stuff to work out the emotion language.

I want to touch on an issue with Discovery here. It’s become increasingly annoying, and by the end of the series, it’s bad enough that it’s literally used for jokes in the finale. They really really really gloss over the science parts. Like, all Trek science is kind of techno babble.mumbonjumbo, but it’s somewhat consistent and at least pays lip service to making sense in world.

Science in Discovery feels like the writers took a bunch of Trek science terms, put them in a tumbler, and started pulling them out randomly.

It’s like when CSI talks about “Port Forwarding the dev shell antivirus driver over the RAM chip interface”, but with Trek terms. It’s all words that mean something, but it’s output as gibberish.

Anyway, they work it out and start negotiations with the aliens. And they have to because suddenly both Vulcan (Sorry, N’Varr) and Earth are being threatened by the black hole thing now. Which feels weird because those two planets feel like they aren’t close enough to be threatened, but then it’s the Michael Burnham Show, and those are both her home planets, so, WE GOTTA UP THOSE STAKES FOR HER!

Burnham, Saru, and the various Federation emissaries on board, all beam down to start negotiations.

Also Book and Tarka also came to join the party, in secret, and somehow they don’t have nearly as much trouble getting around and through the barrier as Discovery did. Tarka, still hell bent on ….

Fuck it, it’s actually not clear WHAT Tarka is even doing.

He was a prisoner, he met a smart alien he may or may not have been in love with, he escaped the prison, but his friend didn’t, but he seems to think his friend escaped to another dimension. The pair had been working on a dimension-jumping project while in prison. Anyway, Tarka needs the power source the aliens use to power the dimension thing, but he also wants to blow it up, for, some reason.

It’s all very, kind of dumb.

Anyway, Tarka threatens the aliens, which freaks them out but then Discovery proves themselves to be true by stopping Tarka.

This also involves several moments of “This character is going to sacrifice themselves or die” that never happen because, Transporters exist and we can’t kill off characters anymore, I guess.

Overall the season felt kind of weak, and the show is starting to fall deep into iffy territory. I’ll probably go on about a lot of this for the Season 5 write up, or if it gets long, it will just be its own post.