Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

i thought this was good and so regretfully suppose i will continue paying paramount plus their trek tax for the next couple of months

spent probably a little too much time yesterday mentally workshopping convoluted scenarios whereby chris pike might avoid his melty fate, which probably means that i like the character

omg that's my friend dan!!

i really like that they introduced it so early on in Discovery, because it allows Mount to do more acting-wise with the character imo

Yeah it has to be a given we know his fate, right? They cant fuck with that fact at least. Surely.

It’s canon a couple times over, and if they try to timey wimey it people will be pissed.

I thought this was fine and is a welcome change from Disco and Picard nonsense, but the limits of Trekian optimism butting heads with trying to comment on contemporary ills really showed some strain and the resolution felt way too easily gotten.

anson's gonna melt, but it's like a decade away

somewhat awkward in that, while he talks about foreseeing his death, the melting won't actually kill him

this has not gone over well with disabled trek fans

just hope these characters can do something/anything better than being diverse and talking a lot. already like that one officer complaining about shit happening on her watch

yeah we can only hope

i think that aspect adds dimension

ie pike seeing the future & ~interpreting~ it as his death

yet we know that isnt the case

No I think he knows its not his death! He said something like "I saw my death... well, the death of me as I know me" or similar, suggesting what was left might as well have been dead? Which I can see disabled people having an issue with tbrh

As for me, I cant get past thinking of it like this.

https://morbotron.com/meme/S04E12/541823.jpg?b64lines=IEdvIFsgQmVlcCBdIHlvdXJzZWxmLg==

This was good: https://thatshelf.com/star-trek-discoverys-depiction-of-captain-pikes-disability-is-a-betrayal-of-roddenberrys-utopian-vision

"Betrayal" is a bit strong (I'm not sure Roddenberry had significant enough morals to betray) but the piece makes some good points without falling into fannish entitlement

Oh and nu-Chapel seems great and I loved T'pring's retro-futurist makeup.

Nu-Chapel seemed very familiar but then I realized it was just the Phoebe Bridgers hair, pretty sure I've never seen her in anything else.

I mean really, someone who is so disabled they cant move or speak and have to control a wheelchair with their mind and are just basically a floating head, doesnt sound like a life, disability advocacy is one thing but cmon. This isnt "the mere act of sitting in a wheelchair".

I rather liked this new episode, had the exact setup of a classic one-off but with plenty of its own distinct touches and interactions between characters.

only 5 minutes into this new ep but just dropping in to say that Christopher Pike's high hair is doing a LOT of important work on this show

already know more about pike's bridge crew than i've learned in four seasons about discovery's

take sides: pike's hair vs. spock's sideburns

i do think it's been well done so far, but i hope the entire season/series isn't haunted by pike's ~fate~. after all, he does love this job

this show is a real pleasure so far - absolutely nailing it but in an almost understated way

yep I reckon the character work is great (especially vs Disco) - that early scene in Pike's quarters had me grinning - feels like they have uncovered some ancient wisdom from a lost civilisation that "likeable characters that you wanna spend 1hr/week with" is a good TV formula

I've found the 'haunted by future' aspect quite interesting so far - feels like they might be building it into a slow burn plot development rather than just brooding about it? as you say mookieproof, it has been done with a fairly light touch thus far - I'm sure the device must have been used before? but it definitely adds something here, and I think stops Pike from being a bit one dimensional... and dare I say even adds a touch of profundity to the whole thing?

Some very bad CGI this week, not a big deal but the Shepherd captain on the view screen looked baaaaaad.

Some very bad CGI this week, not a big deal but the Shepherd captain on the view screen looked baaaaaad.

Some very bad CGI this week, not a big deal but the Shepherd captain on the view screen looked baaaaaad.

kept getting an error in Safari, oops.

tbf he was probably actually clint howard in prosthetics

no need to bang on about it milo jeez <3

Rob Bricken with a solid rave for the show that hits a lot of good points we've mentioned in the thread and elsewhere:

https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-tv-paramount-plus-pike-spo-1848923327

i just noticed spock’s sideburns have a slightly arty curve to them & i hate it

pike’s hair however is majestic & i am here for it

really enjoyed this ep,

I am hoping his hair gets higher every episode.

I kept thinking of this
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/84/67/418467cb44c622620a11d8186fa94fdb.jpg
except I was remembering it as going up wards as well as forward.

Maybe memory incorporating bits of one or both of these which are of a similar vintage I think. Certainly saw them a couple of decades back
https://cdn.onebauer.media/one/empire-tmdb/films/45145/images/tTagCxKrhFlM5N0TEHQLqrnnf7V.jpg?format=jpg&quality=80&width=960&height=540&ratio=16-9&resize=aspectfill

i just noticed spock’s sideburns have a slightly arty curve to them & i hate it

That's how he shows emotion. When pon farr hits they turn into majestic whorls.

lmao

I thought the editing was a little slack, but as stated making these characters believable people with real personalities is a welcome change of pace from Disco.

I'm warming up to Peck, I'm pretty sure that his "I apply rigorous logic to defuse tension" was meant as a joke and his little look of disappointment at Uhura not acknowledging it was a small treasure.

yeah i loved that

i think peck is great, but i was a fan from the off when he first showed up in Disco

i understand that avoiding contractions and insisting on 'the = thee' and 'a = long a' is a handy way to make him seem alien, but i don't really recall nimoy (or jolene blalock) doing that?

nimoy definitely did the sense-ors thing that lower decks made fun of tho

in any case, i think peck's pretty good

Yeah Peck's solid; it's a hell of a thing to be the actor to take on an utterly iconic role -- and the second one to do it at that -- but he seems to have it pitched just right.

yeah i think both he & quinto both have acquitted themselves really well, avoiding doing an impression but honoring what’s been established if that makes sense - a difficult balancing act to be sure

peck has a lovely sonorous tone to his voice too which i love

goddamn that was a great episode!
oldschool submarine style = my fave

agreed

points off for ‘we’ve got this’ tho

no! BONUS point for deploying it in a MISSION and not derailing the entire story to talk abt feelings in the process. Also WE vs YOU.

sorry lots of all caps, v animated

Yeah, great episode.

ah I see from up the thread, she isn't Drummer from The Expanse

Is that a conscious thing they did or is it just chance? Seems to be a widespread reaction. Is it a case of this person would have been cast if available. Is there a character type both fit or just a chance physical resemblance.

Very glad this series seems to be... ok and perhaps even good? It hasn't come to the UK channels yet though.

I am HERE for Pike and Spock's leather away mission jackets.

liked ep 4 - ep 3 clunked a bit I thought, but this was good stuff - the gr0n felt proper menacing

hijinks!

That was very enjoyable.

Excellent fun, and a perfect counterbalance to last week.

yeah i really enjoyed that one!

Mm idk, I love Ethan Peck's Spock but this series is heavily leaning into his "human side" in the writing, and thus Peck's performance. Most of these two seasons so far, Peck seems to be a hormonal teenager barely keeping a lid on his explosive emotions, rather than Nimoy's extreme-blasé approach. Nimoy's Spock has a vibe that reminds me of a cork bulletin board on the wall of a corridor at a university. Peck feels more like a nerd having a late-onset puberty

And one interpretation of the character being older/more experienced than the other...I mean, works for me.

loved it when Spock shows that adult Gorn who is the boss in what was a cracking cliffhanger finale. I think I can vaguely remember seeing the og Gorn episode when I was a kid. I like the way these brutal egg laying nazi lizards communicate their terms with simple diagrams. I was looking up their st history and saw something about an unused scene from one of the movies shot for Riker's bachelor party which featured a Gorn who was a guest there as one of Worf's friends. Obv they used to be a bit more verbal and were socially polite enough not to lay eggs in fellow guests.

Making the Gorn a proto-Borg is kind of trite (and I guess the writers really want a race where Starfleet can kill without moral compunction, maybe they'll serve in part 2 but I have my doubts, since I didn't think the Klingon episode had much depth to it either), and the BOBW hook was frustrating more than anything for me.

I was thrilled (on this episode as with others) to see the crew on the bridge functioning as a unit, contributing to tactics and functionality, instead of the typical ways that problems have been historically resolved:

1. Captain orders x to press a button
2. Captain orders y to press a button
3. Captain orders z to press a button
4. Captain gets frustrated, doesn’t ask for help
5. Spock/Data/Wesley offers a solution

1.1 (visual representation of astronomical phenomenon roughly the size of a golf ball at a 20-meter distance)
1.2 enhance!

xpost Yeah that absolutely struck me as well, this last episode showcased the idea of a team functioning and everyone doing their roles to the best they could depending on where they found themselves. Smart!

Catching up and the episode with the Klingon general was totally a M.A.S.H ep

pretty sure that hawkeye never butchered his (enemies)? can't quite speak to him dealing with a half-assed yet righteous defector, although TNG did

Detailed interview with SNW cinematographer Benji Bakshi.
https://filmmakermagazine.com/122716-interview-cinematographer-benji-bakshi-star-trek-strange-new-worlds/

this is cool but also i don't think 'Each Episode is Like Its Own Movie' is really what people want?

i mean i would happily take shittier graphics or whatever for 15-20 episodes rather than ten

same with 'foundation' et al

bottle shows can be good

I agree, but also one of the things I love about this show is how lush it looks. I am tired of all my shows (Warrior, Perry Mason, even the SATC reboot) deteriorating to the point where they don't even have full-room sets, and everything is just people standing on a tiny set in front of a shitty green screen. Strange New Worlds has somehow always managed to look expensive, and I do want an element of that. Some sort of happy medium.

Trying to imagine this show with TNG/Voyager's "fluorescent office lighting" cinematography.

Yeah it looks gorge and that’s part of the appeal for me.

Absolutely agreed on this. It’s remarkable and great.

pike's hair is of course the most impressive special effect but the rest of it isn't far off, the quality of the cg often surpasses movie-quality - it's a remarkable achievement on a tv budget

still not entirely sold on the shiny black bridge tho tbh, doesn't feel properly trek in a way that the rest of the show absolutely does

maybe they’ll have an episode where they install carpet on the bridge

it's the one move the gorn couldn't possibility anticipate

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F5yysJ6XkAABk73.jpg:small

I...didn't expect this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txQqpGr1qQw

The other one before it ("Skin a Cat") is also hilariously stupid.

skin a cat was v silly but it made me lol

Same!

Only recently finished this season and Leee OTM - though I thought less of the borg than of Alien and the millions of video game monster races inspired by same, also designed to be killed without moral compunction.

SNW is without a doubt the best of the current Trek series but there's a certain militaristic streak that wasn't there as much in older Trek, despite the navvy structures and etc. Just a general development in American genre stories maybe.

The tape warble on the opening animated theme is a great touch, tho I think the frame-dropping is the only retro element they didn’t quite land.

True, the direct antecedent of SNW-Gorn are the xenomorphs. What really struck me is that killed a juvenile and I expected some kind of on-screen hand-wringing -- but no, I don't think that ever happened.

On the militaristic thing, it's always been there, albeit sporadically -- and I hate to say it but DS9 probably established SF-as-a-military in wider Trek.

Yeah it's always been in the mix but I feel like it's encroached more and more. One difference is I think the almost total focus on the trauma of war as experienced by "our guys", with the other side usually reduced to an anonymous threat. Ds9 still cared far more for its Cardassian characters, and even for the Jem Hadar.

Yeah, DS9 was really good at the whole horrors of battle thing, with what happened to Nog and Kira's war trauma and Garak's dark past as a possible torturer/assasin (??). I feel like in DISCO and SNW the baddies are often pretty one-dimensional and "bad". Like OK there was mirror Lorca and Georgiou, but they're neither of them a Dukat.

And its prob been said here many times but that is the problem with modern TV! Shows don't get a chance to fucking flesh out characters. We barely had time to grow fond of Hemmer and then he was gone. I can't even REMEMBER that character in Disco that appeared and disappeared within like 2 episodes.

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— Star Trek Minus Context (@NoContextTrek) October 3, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzR5KOilk8c