Its the end of the season, which kind of stinks because it means I am out of new Trek. I suppose I could watch some old Trek. I have never watched Enterprise before, maybe I’ll look into that.
S01E08 – The Life of the Stars
The previous SAM centered episode was decent, but kind of annoying in places. This one is also SAM centered, and its, much much better overall. Primarily it focuses on two characters, SAM and Tarima, as they both deal with their lingering Trauma from the Miyazaki incident. Tarima is back, but now part of Starfleet Academy instead of War College. I guess someone decided that it was a bad idea to put the girl with mind bullets in the school that is centered around violence.
She is not happy about it.
Meanwhile SAM continues to glitch out worse and worse before passing out, if a Hologram can do that. Its decided that Captain Ake and The Doctor need to take SAM to her home world to be fixed.
Though before that, we also get the larger framing for the story, with the return of Tilly from Star Trek Discovery, as a guest instructor. Which is kind of cooler than “Guest starting Mariner as not Mariner.” I actually have to say, I was a bit lost as to why Tilly wasn’t in this series to start with, it felt like they were backdoor piloting the concept in the final season of Discovery, and I thought she was supposed to be one of the instructors. Maybe she will become a regular in season 2 or something. They bring Tilly in to help the cadets deal with their lingering trauma from the Miyazaki, and they do a play. It’s never mentioned by name but it’s play from 1938 by Thornton Wilde called Our Town.
The themes of this play actually fit fairly well with the themes of the show, though given that the mother in the play dies during childbirth, I half expected them to kill off the Doctor, which I’ll get to in a bit. Part of the plot of the play involves two people getting married and how they are unsure if they love each other, despite previously very much seeming to. Which parallels Caleb and Tarima’s recent problems quite a bit. Darem even gets a little bit of a speech about marriage (as the Stage Director Character) which feels like it fits his recent marriage pretty well. The play itself had been chosen by SAM, though she doesn’t get to participate due to her issues, but the latter half of the play involves the ghost of a dead character and the concepts of eternity, which follow somewhat with SAM and The Doctor, being immortal holograms.
Anyway, the core issue with SAM is essentially that she never had a childhood and never needed to “grow up” and thus her consciousness doesn’t actually know how to deal with any real trauma moments. She is essentially, a very smart baby, with plenty of book smart ability, but no learned smarts ability. Ake and the Doctor convince SAM’s people not to destroy her but to solve this problem. The solution is to give her the life she missed. As time works different and is dilated on the Hologram species’ home world, The Doctor is able to take on the role of parent to SAM, who is reborn, as an actual baby, and lives out her lifetime to the age she was when she left. It’s also a very nice throwback to The Doctor’s holographic daughter from Voyager, who ended up dying. It’s a sort of, trauma healing moment for both of them, over the course of 20 years, give or take.
One funny thing here, they don’t really ever explain what Captain Ake did during all of this. Now, most likely, she left the planet and time dilation zone, waited around for a few hours, then went back and picked them up after what would have been years to the holograms. BUT. It occurs to me, that Captain Ake is not human, it’s entirely possible she just, hung out there for many years. Not likely, but maybe. It actually might have been a bit of a fun sort of gimmick to have had her stay to be SAM’s mom, but I Ake is already basically Caleb’s mother, in a way, so that would have been a bit weird probably. Plus, it’s give or take 20 years inside, and a week or something outside, but still, even for a Lanthanite, living an extra 20 years might screw with them a bit, mentally. Not to mention that the hologram planet probably does not have food for a non hologram person.
S01E09 – 300th Night
I expected a two part season final, and held off watching Episode 9 until 10 dropped and it paid off. Because it was a two part deal. We get the return of Nus Braka, which was expected, and essentially the resolution of Caleb’s hunt for his mother plot.
But it starts with the resolution of the “mystery heist” that Nus Braka pulled during the Miyazaki incident. It seems he stole some sort of Omega Particle variant. The Omega Particle was a plot device from Voyager that Janeway had knowledge of. Its a sort of, Space Nuke that messes up large areas of space making warp travel impossible. Nus detonates one in a relatively random star system as a display of power.
Because Starfleet is also having a celebration on Betazoid the entire fleet is recalled to provide defense. The expected plot twist is that you expect an attack on the fleet. Instead, Nus has scattered space mines with the particle around Federation space, with the threat to destroy them all, effectively trapping Starfleet inside, permanently. So he and other splinter groups can form a new, anarchist society, outside the bubble of Starfleet.
Nicely, there is a comment at one point that Discovery can’t use its spore drive either, without triggering the mines. A little potential plot hole someone thought of.
So what’s the fix? Well, Caleb has finally decoded the messages from his mother and tracker down her location. He and several of the cadets (SAM, Genisis, and Darem) steal a shuttle and head there, before the mine bubble is activated. This puts them outside the Bubble. One shuttle and a few cadets are not really much to go with though. Fortunately, Tarima and Jay-Den, who are still on the Athena, fess up to Captain Ake, who sets off in pursuit of the cadets along with the Doctor and Reno.
Which puts them, also outside the bubble.
Meanwhile, Caleb and his friends track down his mother, who is pretty skittish and distrusts Starfleet for destroying her life years before. They get caught, but not before Athena shows up to beam them away and rescue them.
The planet is kind of my favorite part of the episode. I really liked the little “seedy underbelly” environment. Its not something we see a lot in Star Trek, with its clean everything most of the time. We saw a bit of this during Discovery as well. It kind of feels like Star Wars, but not quite.
The episode ends in a pursuit of the Athena by the Venari Ral and Nus Braka. They manage to capture the ship, which is under crewed and based on its last encounter, isn’t really equipped for combat anyway. They seperate the saucer section, leaving the nacel wings and the outer saucer atrium behind.
Only to learn about the mine field bubble and that they cannot return to Federation space, nor is any help coming.
S01E09 – Rubicon
The episode opens up right where 300th Night left off. The Venari Ral easy catch up to the wounded and weaker saucer. Nus boards, surprised that Captain Ake and Anisha Mir are together considering Anisha hates Ake. He gives a little show as he does before taking them and destroying the saucer and everyone on board.
Or so it seems. Reno and the Doctor had used the Doctor’s holo emitter to create a fake hologram explosion. Everyone reunites on the bridge but the Doctor is kind of broken, kind of understandable since it feels like a personal holo emitter probably is not really designed to handle an entire… partial… ship.
Reno rallies the cadets and they hatch a plan to hijack the control signal of the mines and render them inert. They spend most of the episode working to this end while Reno gives encouraging talks.
Meanwhile, Nus puts a new plan in motion, one I can’t imagine was planned at all. He and the Venari Ral have co-opted the Athena atrium and are holding a trial for Captain Ake, as a representative of The Federation, and Anisha Mir gets to decide their fate. Its pretty standard Star Trek fare, the Federation is good, but we can’t always be perfect, oh yeah, you are a criminal too Nus Braka, etc etc.
Eventually the Cadets and Reno manage to disable the mines and sort of, prove that Nus’s father, not the Federation, destroyed Nus’s home planet and all of his rage was unjustified. The fleet shows up and everyone is rescued.
The Series So Far
I have to say, I am really enjoying this show. I think Season 2 is done shooting, so I am looming forward to that. I am kind of really annoyed by discussions about anything newer in Star Trek being filled by people bitching about “woke” nonsense. Facebook keeps showing me random Trek groups and its always nonsense about how “terrible” new Trek is for having gay Klingons, or posts about how its always been woke. And this is elsewhere as well.
But enough about that. My only real complaint is that its a short season. I have seen talk online from show runners that they want to start doing longer seasons again in general. Ten episodes really is not.enough, especially for shows like Star Trek with an ensemble cast. Of the ten episodes, essentially 4 were dedicated to the Caleb Mir finding his mother and Nus Braka is a villain” plot. Of the 6 remaining we got a couple of SAM episodes, a couple of Tarima episodes, one for Jay-Den, and one with Genesis and Darem combined. Its just not enough time to properly flesh everyone out.
Discovery kind of avoided this because it really only had like 4 main characters, Burnham, Stamets, Tilly, and Saru. And two of those were basically extensions of Burnham.
Strange New Worlds on the other hand, kind of does have this problem. They do a decent job of densely filling episodes, but also, it feels like we have gotten more for James Kirk, who is not even part of the crew, than we have for Ortegas and Uhura. Uhura feels like a big offender here because she was really pushed during the lead up to the series release. Like she would be more Spock tier in plot time.
Anyway, I am looking forward to more Academy. The whole “future tech” feels way less out of place here than Discovery, because it just, is the future, and not, TOS but weirdly higher tech. Even SNW manages to avoid this problem pretty well and its literally the same ship as TOS.
Which is another point. This show is 900+ years past TOS. If anything, the future should be MORE different. Its like present day us compared to medieval times.
Completely unrelated to the show, why is it such a fucking pain to get screen shots these days. The site itself blocks print screen, and the official release promo images are so ass. I want something to illustrate what I am talking about here people.
