Star Trek Social Club

Since this is our first episode discussion on Lemmy, we have a couple of reminders about our expectations.

Constructive Criticism - criticism is welcome, but please put some effort into explaining why you did or didn't like something. Just saying something was "good" or "bad" isn't exactly laying a foundation for discussion.

Spoilers - when a new episode airs, we enforce spoiler tagging for approximately one week. When creating threads about episodes that are less than one week old, please keep spoilers out of the post title, and use spoiler tags in the body of your post. Obviously, spoilers for this episode are allowed in this thread.

1. I am 100% here for the chaotic energy that Carol Kane is going to bring to this show.
2. The Klingon captain had exactly the right amount of swagger and sassiness that a TOS-era Klingon captain is supposed to have. I'm glad that they're moving on from some of the Discovery Klingon characterization while also resisting the urge to jump right to them behaving like TNG Klingons.

Ortegas inverted her controller settings as everyone should 🎮

For the love of Pete can we stop with all of the lame catch phrases and dumb jokes? Spock should have just uttered something simple suiting the Vulcan personality/character, like "proceed". But no, we have to get a lame line one step above a fart joke...

Pelia is like "I have been alive for hundreds of years and I'm going to make that everyone else's problem."

Regarding Nurse Chapel almost dying - this is one of the TV/movie tropes that I think is such a cheap and terrible device and I am tired of it. Discovery was full of these scenes where they make you believe a main character really almost died, only to survive after all, and having their crew mates weep for them (I am looking at you Burnham). There are much better ways to create good drama.

As President of the Spock/Chapel fanclub and a sucker for Klingons, I feel that this episode was plucked out of my brain.

I loved it.

I’m also glad they began to explore a bit of post war PTSD through M’Benga. It’ll be interesting to see how far they go with the Gorn.

The M'Benga-and-Chapel-are-Max-Payne sequence went on far too long: only one group aboard the ship had weapons (and Stormtrooper accuracy) of any kind? I'd have preferred a stealthier sequence: after reprogramming the transponder, they use a series of Jeffries tubes to get to the airlock with the intent of opening it to escape but the ship takes off to ruin that plan.

Other than that, it was a decent episode to get the season going. Spock's emotional journey will be a focal point of the season, which I'm okay with. ~~SPECTRE~~ The Broken Circle Gang is probably going to show up again and I wonder if we'll eventually see some TOS villains retconned to be members. Carol Kane will be fun and with what was said of her species, I'm betting on her making at least two ENT references during the season.

Interesting that the false-flag ship is Crossfield-class: the saucer is a clear match but the drive section is completely different. Were the Discovery and Glenn modified from that spec to fit the spore drive research project or was the ship we saw a wartime refit of the class?

Meta: Would it be possible not to use NSFW for spoilers? I don't really like having all the porn subs showing up in my "All" feed, but I feel like I have to keep NSFW ticked if people are using it for spoilers and not just porn.

Not a terrible start but sadly not one of my favorite episodes for sure.

I don't really know how to describe what I didn't like, but I think it boils down to just how disjointed and rushed the pacing feels. For something so high stakes, it all felt really easy and predictable and just a bit boring.

It also felt like they were really really aggressive about making sure you understood the message about Spock. Seriously felt like a character was going to wink at the camera whenever they said something like "you're not a normal Vulcan!".

If I had to describe it, I'd probably go with Saturday morning cartoon surprisingly. A lot of story crammed into not enough time, with a heavy handed message about a character.

I didn't hate it, don't get me wrong. It just wasn't unique or interesting like so many episodes are.

Carol Kane is such a gem for this show, I can tell already.

I must say I'm already a big fan of Pelia.

~~I'm not entirely sure if I have to spoiler tag this since this is in the discussion thread but I will anyways since the rule doesn't say the threads are an exception to the rule.~~ Edit: Thanks ValueSubtracted for the clarification on this.

Really disliked this one. And I loved just about all of season 1.

One of the main things for me is that the pacing felt far too quick.

For instance, when getting the injection of the super serum, they only briefly mentioned M'Benga's issue with it and quickly moved on without any sort of issues beyond that brief line.

I also have some issues with the characterization and general way the crew acted. They seemed a lot less professional in this and unlike an actual Starfleet crew.

Spock's emotional side, while I suppose justified in-universe, made him feel a lot less "Spock" to me. I was fine with his behavior in season 1 but this just feels a bit far, to the point of him being nearly unrecognizable. His "I would like the ship to go. Now" make me physically recoil in cringe with how unfunny I found it to be.

M'Benga and Chapel just beating up a bunch of bad guys three separate times felt incredibly unnecessary and I fail to see any sort of reason there couldn't have been some sort of clever escape rather than bland, mindless fighting. I think I skipped a whole minute total of them just punching the bad guys with how long the scenes drew on for. And the way M'Benga's issue with the super serum was just brushed over with a fleeting line came across as poorly executed.

La'an outdrinking a klingon seemed rather ridiculous and all I could think of was that it seemed like a bad D&D introduction to a stereotypical "cool" character. And then her burping? Did they really need a burp joke in this? It came across as uncharacteristically juvenile for the show.

That said, I did like a bit of it. Visual effects were great as always and I appreciated the slightly different intro. I'm glad the cliffhanger from last season both wasn't immediately resolved or dwelled upon too much. The false flag operation was a neat idea and it was cool to see yet another type of ship. The Klingons looked and sounded perfect and much more similar to how they were in 90s Trek, I'm glad the design was changed to this from their design in Discovery.

Overall, I very much disliked it, despite a few positive elements to it. No hate, I just disliked those parts of it I talked about.

Finally, this isn't any sort of issue I take with the show but they said that the false flag ship was Crossfield class. However, it didn't look anything like a Crossfield class beyond the ring in the saucer. Did Starfleet change the Crossfield class to a different design?

Thoughts and observations written as I watch- I'll be putting this on both Reddit and Lemmy, since infinity diversity/infinity combinations:

• Wheeee, NCC-1701 in the Star Trek tag!

• Previously: Last season happened.

• Little ships flying!

• Wonder who the lawyer that Una and Pike have tried to reach is.

• Oh, hey, the Vulcan musical instrument whose name I can't remember!

• “Fascinating.” “Isn't that usually his line?”

• The fellowship on archeological medicine? Is that a reference to Dr. Korby?

• “We must steal the Enterprise.” Buddy, if I had a nickel every time someone had to steal the Enterprise, I'd have several nickels.

• Lt. Mitchell gunning for series regular next year with how much screen time she's had early on this episode.

• Okay, having Carol Kane is already paying dividends.

• And, yeah, Carol Kane doesn't need alien makeup to be an alien. She's already an alien.

• I'm still not sure if the emphasis one the warp catch phrase is amazing or annoying, but this scene was funny.

• KLINGON UPDATE: RIDGES!

• So clearly La'An's augmented ancestors were genetically engineered to drink a lot. Which, y'know what? Fair.

• Ah, the borderlands, where utopian rules go away and everyone becomes a Ferengi.

• Congratulations to Uhura on graduating from the Academy.

• Ah, the old "I have technology that I'm totally not making up that will blow you up" bluff!

• New transporter chief?

• Okay, so the angry borderlands people are trying to do some sort of false flag thing.

• Redundant Klingon organs, the old standby.

• Roided-up doctors can tell you what bones they broke as they break them.

• These are obviously Discovery sets.

• This action scene, while well-done, is way too long.

• A D7!

• “We've gotten out of worse.” “No, not really!”

• “This I've got to see!”

• I wonder if “Lanthanite” is a synonym for “El-Aurian”

• Pelia knowing that being on the Enterprise means adventure is further proof that those ships are goddamn weirdness magnets.

• Gorn. Yes, it stretches canon but fuck it the Gorn are awesome we'll come up with an explanation later.

• “For Nichelle”

• Overall, while not one of the better episodes, it still was a good start to the season. It wrapped up one of the hanging threads of last year (La'An), we continued to see some of Young Spock's struggles with his emotions before he became the more-Vulcan Spock that Nimoy was in the main TOS series, and we got our first look at Carol Kane as the nutty new engineer. Overall, I'll call that a win!

I just love this show, the feeling I get when the intro rolls is the same as when I was I was 15 watching the TNG intro on TV. The characters all feel special and unique even if I've seen every episode of every series.

I loved that they gave Dr. M'Benga some screentime front and center and showed that he can throw down if necessary, even if it was with the help of some super serum stuff. And while I even loved his (and Nurse Chapel's ) elaborate fight scene and enjoyed the way they filmed it, I'm also not sure if it quite fits with Star Trek. Just not sure yet with the excessive slow motion. The camera angles however were some great artistic choice. But overall one great start to season 2.

Did anyone else giggle uncontrollably at “we must steal the Enterprise”?

I'm so happy to have SNW back. Whoever decided to put Carol Kane in the show needs to get a raise; she is absolutely spectacular. I'm very curious to see where her character goes.

I enjoy the idea of Spock being more emotional it really puts it into perspective that Vulcans have emotions they just try to keep them under lock and key and Spock being half human is having a harder time with that compared to most Vulcans is... relatable.

I did not like weird green super power drug that Chapel and M'Benga took to fight the the Klingons. It came from no where, the shot on the eyes right out of Dread made me think it was literally Slo-Mo from that movie. It really wasn't necessary, they could have just grabbed phasers somewhere instead.

I'm not realy sure how I feel about them using the term false flag in Star Trek. The plot makes sense but still it's a very charged term today.

My gut feeling is that with a couple changes this episode would have hung together better-

1. Have them take a shuttle instead of the Enterprise. This lowers the stakes for our command crew and simply makes more sense than half the crew (that wasn't on leave) agreeing to steal a ship. It also means they need to figure out a different way to deal with the fake Federation ship at the end of the episode is some way other than 'shoot it with bigger guns'
2. Have Chapel and M'Benga do something within their character strengths to escape instead of magic drug that lets them hand-to-hand fight their way through a dozen or more Klingons.

That said, there were a lot of things I DID like about the episode, including the Klingon Captain at the end and the new Chief Engineer.

I'm not sure how I feel about a Pike-lite episode kicking off the season. Although I like that separating the party gave us more backstory on M'Benga. Ortegas next please?

Was the planet inspired by Zhangjiajie National Park?

Lastly, were I a captain my "thing" would either be "All in" or a comedic "Yatta!!!"

Really delighted with this episode.

No complaints. Can’t really buy into the nitpicks on this one. It seemed completely Trek, and gave many of the ensemble their moments to shine. Production design gorgeous, virtual staging more seamless, costumes excellent, vfx great.

I like how M’Benga has hoarded the green vial as part of his lingering trauma. Better, we finally see a physician giving himself the juice instead of Kirk or some other command officer. In fact, one has to wonder if McCoy carried a stash provided by M’Benga.

Spock’s unresolved feelings for Chapel are well crafted and mirror the lingering pain we see her left with in TOS. It makes those scenes with Chapel in TOS comprehensible instead of cringe-inducing.

I love the new engineer, but she sort of disappeared after Enterprise left space dock and didn't show back up until the conclusion. I figured a thrill seeker like her would have kept busy?

Not a bad start, although the episode felt somewhat lackluster. The character writing felt a little wooden, too much stuff is explicitly said instead of letting it hang in the subtext. Also there had better be a good explanation in future episodes as to why the hell Dr. M'benga keeps a couple of vials of punching serum handy at all times.

The visuals were great. The Klingon makeup was toned back a bit more towards a TNG-era look, but you can still see the more distinct Discovery skull shape. Overall a good mix between the two I'd say. The visuals from Spacedock feel very Discovery as well-- nice to see those starfleet drones being used outside of Control trying to kill everyone.

Chris Fisher, who lasted directed A Quality of Mercy, directs the hell out of the two SNW eps he's helmed. Wow, are they creative.

So much to say, but all I can I say is that this show just makes you smile from ear to ear and tug at your heartstrings.

Ethan Peck just knocks this episode out of the goddamn park too. He nails the funny, the serious, the inner tumultuousness of Spock.

Also glad we get to see so much of M'Benga and Chapel and their relationship too. Seems like with a war amongst the Gorn brewing, we'll see it mirrored alongside everyone's experiences in the Klingon War.

This is a fine episode, but I felt it tried to take on too much when it absolutely did not need to. The stolen starship thing never felt purposeful. I presume its intent is to help set up why the enterprise is going so deep into klingon territory, but i’m just not sold on that. I think an espionage/stealth set up would’ve been a better balance (especially with later sneaking through the asteroids).

Others have brought up Spock’s emotion and how it’s seemingly exceeding TOS Spock. Personally, Im not too concerned with this. I tend to be pretty fast and lose with canon (i’m here to have fun, not stress over every thing). With that said, my best theory is that between now and The Cage, Spock will have some traumatic event which forces him to lock away his emotions further.

What was the magic hypo serum they used? Was it the lost Captain America serum? Or has that been referenced / used before somewhere else in universe that I don’t recall?

I think this episode was fine. Glad to have it back, and hoping we don't have too many more breaks between shows again. :D

I didn't really love this episode. I agree with other users that it feels a bit more DIS than SNW s1. I think maybe because of the pacing &/or the action, or maybe just how OTT the plot is, like stealing the Enterprise should be a bigger deal than it is here imo, it just feels a bit ... almost routine? Also I feel like I am the only person on the internet with this opinion, but I really like Spock's relationship with his fiancée and I don't particularly care for the whole Spock/Chapel sub-plot, soooo I am sad to see that continuing. I also didn't enjoy the overtly -> overly emotive Spock, it reminded me of the films, and the Chapel nearly dying bit again felt more DIS than SNW s1. Also, I counted like four different occasions of somebody remarking on Spock being a very un-Vulcan Vulcan, which really felt like a bit much...?

It was very nice to see more of M'Benga, though. He is a great character and I felt like we didn't see enough of him in s1. It felt weird having very little Pike or Number One, though. I hope this is not going to be the standard going forward, it feels like going backwards after SNW seemed to spend a whole season trying to reassure us that they understood what people hadn't liked about DIS?

Oh also -- the new chief engineer seems cool.

Spock steals the Enterprise (again) -- what more could I ask for?

Also yeah -- I really love how SNW is establishing that Spock has been, in the words of Eleanor Shellstrop of The Good Place, a messy bench who loves drama, since, you know, forever. How did he put it? "I thought it was obvious. I am proposing we steal the Enterprise." Amazing.