Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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.

pic.twitter.com/rR60zfkZ78

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

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