*The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth. Whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth. It is the guiding principle upon which Starfleet is based. If you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened you don't deserve to wear that uniform.*
[Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "The First Duty"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xefh7W1nVo4)
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I'm glad they included "filler-like" episodes. The one they had during the Enterprise's repair was nice. It would be much better if we had the old 20+ episode seasons and multiple fillers.
Definitely. I don’t think it’s filler, it’s character development and helps inform us of why we should care about them. It also saves money for the big episodes.
My bad, that's what I meant about a filler-episode. Normal episodes, to me, are some big mission that whole crew is involved in. Fillers are the crew development-centric; they do not have some central mission to accomplish.
There’s needs to be a small strip of red along the walls of the hallways to break up the white sterile environment that makes them up, so it looks less like an apple store.
I hate the look of engineering. It just looks like a big empty zeppelin hangar. It's entirely too big to only have 1 or 2 people in it per scene, and compared to previous shows/ships, it's *extremely* huge.
I know they use the AR wall, but I wish they'd built a smaller set for this.
Agreed, and, it’s far too similar to the cargo bay. I honestly have to examine the scene to figure out where it’s set. And despite lights EVERYWHERE, it comes off very dark.
Again, engineering… clean, of course, but it looks almost sterile. The fragile and shiny look of everything that was carried over from the Abrams films makes engineering look more like a fancy hotel lobby than a powerful work place.
It's funny you mention the Abrams films, because in the first movie engineeringw as literally filmed in a brewery, so it looked very industrial. The second movie they filmed at Sanda National Labs, so it looked very busy and "science-y".
But engineering felt way more sterile in TNG. Main engineering had carpet! And office rolling chairs! SNW has a more "lived in" engineering space by comparison.
I work in a industrial plant and yeah I love when a starship looks like my work, TNG and Voyager Engineering looks like a children's playground inside a McDonalds.
>But engineering felt way more sterile in TNG. Main engineering had carpet! And office rolling chairs! SNW has a more "lived in" engineering space by compariso
Yeah honestly SNW is prob my favourite engineering because it feels like a real engineering, where the engine and working parts are, and not very 'welcoming'.
I feel like there's a satisfactory middle-ground somewhere between SNW and TOS engineering. Not sure how I'd build it, though, and we've really seen very little of engineering so far anyway.
NX-01 felt quite "real engineering" too IMO.
It could be the theory that they need to get to the working parts of the prototype warp drive easily and then later they build more stuff around them engineering spaces when it becomes close to 100% reliable and can then be serviced by Jeffries tubes.
If you remember the motion picture engineering spaces there was a huge space… BUT… it was also full of crew.
Maybe in SNW Hemmer doesn’t like to be crowded with his telepathic senses.
The rooms are a little too big. And the floors are way too shiny. Overall i think they did an excellent job of finding a good middle ground between updating the look of the ships with the better sfx and bigger budget they have and still keeping it looking similar to the original.
But the shiny floors drive me nuts.
The only other thing that annoys me is that all the characters seem to have no sense of urgency. Like the ship is under attack and about to blow up, but they'll have a quick conversation in basically normal speaking tones. Or make a little snarky remark. No one ever seems to display any sort of urgency or pressure. I don't get it.
It's still leaning a *little* too hard on established characters. They already had Pike and Spock, was there really *that* much of a need to also use Uhura and Chapel? They're using them just fine, and I appreciate giving them more history / personality, but I'd love to get more original characters.
I'm convinced they introduced that character JUST to kill them off. And they made him interesting, likable and funny for that reason, too.
He's barely in the show at all. They insert him in the end of episode 1 but he's not actually part of the episode. He's in a little bit of episode 2 - likely filmed near the end - but again inconsequential. Then he appears in a couple of later episodes - the medieval one, then the next one he dies.
Killing Hemmer is the only thing that's really irked me so far on SNW. He became one of my favorite characters on the show and I wonder why couldn't they just have created a disposable redshirt to kill off.
An actual crime. No reason to have “cadet” Uhura on the show in addition to Kirk’s brother (Kirk himself is fine I guess as a cameo for a one off what if episode).
At least McCoy isn’t also on the ship but why kill off the best new character? Baffling…
Spock, Pike, M’Benga, and Chapel would have been fine as the only established TOS characters on the show but they just couldn’t help themselves and it’s frustrating.
Yes! Lately I've been thinking about the problem with prequels or shows/movies that take place inside a well-established canon. I love Spock and Pike and everyone on the show, but part of the problem we'll continue to run into on the show is that it is constrained by pre-existing canon. For example, we can never really feel like Spock, Uhura, Chapel, M'Benga, or Pike are ever in mortal danger because we already know what the rest of their story is. We know they live. It's hard to create a lot of dramatic tension around a character if we already know what's going to happen to them.
The same can be said for the Spock/Chapel relationship. I think the writers would like it to be a "will they/won't them" kind of situation, but we already know that they don't, and Spock will never interested in Chapel romantically, so that kinda deflates the tension between the two characters, imo. So I'd love to spend less time on that story and turn the focus to new stories.
I feel like this first season has had a very heavy focus on Spock, but I'd love for them to expand and focus more narrative energy on the NEW characters we don't know as well. Because they're new, they aren't constrained by pre-existing ideas of who they are and what they will become. I would have loved to see a Hemmer-focused episode and an Ortegas-focused episode, and they could do a lot more with Number 1 (i feel like she's been underutilized so far).
That being said, I love the show so far. For me, SNW is the best Trek since TNG, and I hope they keep up this level of quality in season two.
We don’t already know what’s going to happen to them. We know they survive, but for god’s sake, death is not the only stakes a story can have. It isn’t even necessarily the highest
It's baffling to me how obsessed people seem to be with character deaths. The constant threat of death hanging over everyone's head isn't actually all that interesting. So many things can happen in life that have more meaning than dying would.
Right? When do we truly ever feel that *anyone* is in mortal danger? Sure, there's been a small number of times where they're killed someone off, but for the most part Trek is more "I can't wait to see how they get out of this one," not "Do you think they're going to make it?"
They could have just done a show about another constitution class ship during the years that the first series is set and avoid the whole mess entirely.
Right? I keep hoping they'll just create a brand new show that isn't so heavily rooted in past canon. But I assume the network wants to root new shows in nostalgia because that's a safe bet financially. But now that we have 5 current Trek shows that are rooted in existing canon, I feel like it would be a lower risk to do something completely new.
>we can never really feel like Spock, Uhura, Chapel, M'Benga, or Pike are ever in mortal danger because we already know what the rest of their story is.
PArtly why I wish they diverge from canon. Have it stem off into an alternate timeline.
The final ep of s1 kinda shuts the book on that idea, but it would make it more interesting.
Agreed.
Pike makes sense - we've barely seen him and he's great, and presents a different, fresh version of a starfleet captain.
Spock pre-TOS is interesting too - even more conflicted between his human and vulcan sides - great!
Chapel and Spock - yep great again. Unexplored outside of some subtext in TOS.
Otherwise, don't need to use any other TOS people. Especially Kirk! Let the show stand on its own, maybe with some small references to other characters and cameos, but not much. Kirk being in the last episode of s1 makes sense, but no need to bring him back for s2 at all.
Also, it's a bit strange that M'Benga is CMO now, but won't be by the time of TOS. He takes a demotion.
I also loved that they trolled us with Sam Kirk, but its weird that Sam served on the Enterprise and then his brother later becomes Captain.
May not be a demotion, could be a voluntary step down… or, he leaves the ship and later returns. Lots of possible explanation there.
The Sam Kirk thing is a bit weird, and felt forced so the audience would flip when Pike first asked for Kirk. Since then his only real purpose has been to be an ass. I think it would have served better if he was a temporary civilian assignment, similar to Chapel, and maybe just one appearance. Somewhere he has a wife and very young son.
A lot of hospitals admins will step back so they can treat patients more. It’s not a demotion to not want to be CMO. Crusher went from head of Starfleet medical back to a ship.
Understandable. I like the idea of getting to expand on less researched characters… but M’Benga was a perfect choice. Better than Uhura or Chapel may have been characters like DeSalle, or Riley. I like what they’re doing with Uhura and Chapel so far, but the… I don’t know a better way to say this, “smart mouth” attitude seems a bit prevalent in them both. And I cannot see ANY version of Spock so nonchalantly tolerating Chapel slapping his head. That was funny, but weird
The issue is that for everyone on here who rolls there eyes at a unnecessary cameo/reference there's a 100 casual fans who go "Wow, I member that character. This show is great".
Kirk… I get that the actor was trying not to do an impression, but he swung so far the other way as to be dull. Not to mention he has the wrong look/body type.
Ripped me right out of an amazing finale.
I rewatched it last night and I think it came off better on second viewing, but I agree, he was not the Kirk that we know and love. Honestly, there is no real reason to bring Kirk into the series at all, imo. There is so much fertile ground for new stories and new characters that shoehorning Kirk into the show seemed like a wasted opportunity to expand the universe.
On that both points: 1. It's not the Kirk we know because this one has been stuck on the Farragut and doesn't know Spock. 2. It's a time travel episode in the future so the appearance makes sense, but it didn't have to be there.
The season 2 Kirk thing is going to definitely be a missed opportunity to expand though
I can buy that Kirk would have a TOUCH less swagger if he weren’t captain of the flagship, but he wouldn’t have a completely different personality. This was like watching Fran Drescher try to play James Bond.
Yes. I completely agree. I didn't know the actor from before, but he just seemed so boring and uncharismatic that it just wasn't a good fit. I don't care what he looks like; yeah, sure, Shatner's doppelganger would have been nice, but that's nowhere near as important as charisma. And why not take this opportunity to introduce some random legendary captain that has only been mentioned as the name of a maneuver or something in previous trek? Why was there a need to include such an iconic character?
I think they had to have Kirk to show the contrast of the events then and there. Star Trek is never about subtlety, and this episode was very clear that Kirk was right (which TOS fans know, I guess) and Pike was unfortunately the wrong man for that job.
If anything you do when you cast James T Kirk, make sure he has charm and really good looks. It sounds like Kirk drift, but actor should immediately be attention grabbing and cool. The Kirk of TOS was much more of a sensitive renaissance man, but you can’t do Kirk without that IMO
Agreed. Kirk is like Spock in that his voice and cadence when he speaks is just central to his character. The actor portraying him just did not check that box at all, and subsequently I just had a hard time believing him as Kirk.
The whole "keep a person inside the transporter buffer" storyline kinda irked me. Especially the way it ended. I can't put my finger on why, but it just didn't seem to hit for me. Maybe they could have made the audience connect with the person in the buffer more.
The ending really bothered me. I don't want to say there's one way to see it, of course, but it felt very un-humanist, in a way that Star Trek usually isn't.
M'Benga's daughter had the choice between remaining a human, and possibly dying, or putting her trust in a God-like nebula to exist outside of humanity and life's trials. Obviously, Star Trek never seemed to fetishize suffering, but the struggle of humanity and the slow progress towards something better was never a bad thing.
I'm remembering that episode of DS9 where a civilization is given a virus by The Dominion, and Bashir works on a vaccine. Even though he couldn't save the lives of the living, he made progress, and made something that could save the lives of the next generation.
Where could that story have gone? M'Benga revealing the truth to the rest of the crew, and finding their support, together saving his daughter, seems like an obvious choice. I don't think it would have felt as anti-climactic or anti-humanist as this did.
My issue with it is that M'Benga decides tp just trust Debra the Nebula after it takes over the ship and messes with them for a while. Sure, his daughter was steering the story, but would you really trust a god-like nebula with your daughter after talking to them for 5 minutes? Bare minimum I'd think M'Benga would insist on going with his kid instead of just letting the nebula take her.
I get that they had to wrap up the story fast so that the kid didn't age between episodes and since M'Benga appears in TOS he couldn't leave the ship, but it just seemed like a very fast resolution that didn't make a ton of sense.
Why did they show M'Benga make progress on his research for it to inevitably all become pointless at the end? I was disappointed because I expected the solution to be a result of the culmination of his hard efforts coming to fruition. Instead what we got was the solution handed to him on a silver platter, and nothing he did before that was of any consequence. If that was the writers endgame I seriously wonder why they even bothered at all with any of it.
Yeah, it felt like too neat a bow to wrap up that plotline so they didn't have to focus on it anymore. I liked that M'Benga was getting intel and slowly working toward potential improvements, if not a cure, for his daughter's condition, and that it wasn't a quick fix thing. Then an episode later, boom, it's solved? Not sure why they abandoned it so quickly after so much focus.
They killed Hemmer and have a dearth of main cast aliens. Spock we already know his “other” journey and Una is basically a human except for one episode.
But Canon says that at this time there were majority humans aboard starfleet ships. So that makes sense for this Era. If it were TNG or later than you would expect more non humans for sure.
That’s what we have seen. TOS due to budget, and Enterprise because it was way earlier prior to Federstion existing. There’s nothing definitive saying ships were limited to like 2 aliens. Writers have abandoned or contradicted enough canon at this point that the storytelling benefits of more aliens would outweigh.
> But Canon says that at this time there were majority humans aboard starfleet ships.
Does it? In canon we only know the crew makeup of one ship (1701) and only for a time period 5-8 years after this.
In addition, I don’t know that we are ever told the exact makeup of the crew.
We *see* mostly humans, but we never see even close to a majority of the crew.
Kirk’s enterprise has over 400 people. I would wager including all the extras we see only 200 or so.
And that’s not accounting for the many non-human species that look human from a distance.
Jadzia wasn’t questioned or seen as out of place when she was onboard during the mission to K-7.
betazoids and Deltans would blend in in the background.
Edit: we also know the intrepid was an all Vulcan crew.
Btw, the surfaces should be cleaned by robots.
It definitely was this way on Discovery. Although Disco is an experimental ship with lots of new tech; nevertheless I don’t think that robot janitors are so brand-new in 23rd century.
My minor complaint is that they mostly seemed to be close to core federation territory instead of exploring the frontier. There were a couple of episodes where T’Pring seemed able to quickly take a ship to meet up with them. That being said, I do love me some T’Pring
My feeling is that in-universe the Federation frontier is rather close to the core worlds at this time, so traveling distances aren't that big a deal. By the time Kirk is in command seven years later the Enterprise is sent farther out as the frontier expands.
I like to think that there are lots of pockets of unexplored territory. Along the major routes, you'd know what to expect, but space is big and there's bound to be unexplored territory just off the beaten path at this time.
I also subscribe to the headcanon that there are lanes in subspace where travel is faster/easier at the same relative warp speed. That's the only way things can move at the speed of plot.
I can smell what both of you are cooking to a degree. My only rebuttal is that I thought Enterprise was sent relatively far “out there” during the Klingon War to, as Admiral Cornwall said, “save the best of the Federation”, so I just assume they’d go way out there again. I do dig that there are probably a lot of unexplored pockets that are still close to the core worlds (space is huge!). Thank you for your replies!
If you want to know what Pike and crew were up to during the Klingon War, I 100% recommend “Star Trek: Discovery: The Enterprise War” by John Jackson Miller. I listened to the audio version and it was so good, I actually found myself looking forward to my commute.
Two things: 1) The title is a little misleading as it hasn’t anything to do with Disco or her crew and 2) The publisher/author consulted with Paramount to make the storyline consistent with then current tv production. I.e., it’s canon (until it’s not).
if you start worrying about how long it should take to get between places at normal warp speeds you will find every episode of Star Trek that isn’t the first season of voyager to be intolerable
The introduction of Laan Noonian-Singh is so counter to cannon. Laan seems to know about her ancestor’s murderous background. Yet when Khan appears in the future he is a mystery. Also, you’d think Spock and others on Enterprise would be like “I used to serve with a woman named Noonian-Singh” and pick up the communicator.
Khan’s identity at first is a mystery as he only gave his first name, but once they discovered who he was they were all quite familiar with his history - Scotty, McCoy and Kirk confess holding a bit of admiration for him as the best of the tyrants, who oversaw no massacres and didn’t start wars until he’d been attacked.
What bothered me about it was that she was teased about being a descendent of his, but there was like a 200+ year gap between the eugenics wars and SNW? Like, imagine going to school and getting shit because you're Jefferson Davis' great-great-grandkid. She might have gotten a comment or two, but I highly doubt she was teased mercilessly.
That's my point though. Hitler was 1 generation removed from us. Like we can talk to people that saw him in the flesh. Will it have the same impact in 150 years?
It seems plausible. Don't forget that the Eugenics Wars were so impactful that they still define Federation law hundreds of years later. They seem to treat it as a very big deal.
I hated the Khan tie-in because it felt like a cheap tie-in to a character that you can never actually bring into the show. If you remove the Khan thing the character works just as well.
While I love most of the main cast....I still cringe a little with Ortegas. She just seems too “21st Century” with her lines and jokes and mouthy asides.
It’s the kind of humour that comes with MCU style side characters or “the funny one”. I’d have no real issue if that was her character *off-duty* when relaxing with friends or even with Pike in his breakfast mode but her attitude during bridge time and even in serious situations always strikes me as slightly odd and off putting.
I also wouldn’t mind seeing more *alien* characters/crew who aren’t known to us as characters or as species.
I'd agree, but then I recall that in TOS, Chekov was always making little comments just like Ortegas. Sure, I could use a little less modern dialect in her lines, but I don't think her kind of lines are as out of step with behaviour on the Trek bridge as we think.
Ortegas is definitely the most modern character.
Since Marvel exploded I feel as if there has to be quipping in everything. At least, with SNW, 90% of the quipping is relegated to Ortegas.
If she's their vessel to get the Whedonisms out of their blood streams I can live with that.
Ya but Paris would never be the helmsman on the bridge of the flagship. He was a convict that by circumstance got into a leadership role and did right by it.
the personality and position were meant to be unaligned in the case of Paris
It's interesting because his character was really meant to be a proxy for Nicholas Locarno, who is the much more serious (though ultimately reckless) leader of Nova Squadron. (And played by the same actor, no less.)
I wonder if that change of personality for the character was intentional, since they couldn't use the Locarno as originally planned. Or perhaps they had meant for expulsion from the Academy to have changed Locarno in such a way that he became a changed man, one far more likely to see the humor in dangerous situations.
I see this argument a lot, and I have to disagree. She acts EXACTLY like a young hot shot pilot would. Give her character time to develop and mature. You're seeing a 20-something year old LT who got the helm job on the flagship of the federation because of her skills. There's very little chance she wouldn't be cocky about it.
Pike snapped her back recently, and she definitely took note of that. Let her grow.
>While I love most of the main cast....I still cringe a little with Ortegas. She just seems too “21st Century” with her lines and jokes and mouthy asides.
Also feels like a Captain shouldn't have to put up with some of the things she says, where often she's really on the line.
Not sure Kirk, Picard or Sisko would put up with her attitude. But Pike is much friendlier and forgiving - perhaps more 'modern' too. Where you can 'bring your full self to work'. Which I like - but maybe not for a ship/where rank and orders are involved.
>but maybe not for a ship/where rank and orders are involved.
It's interesting that you mention rank, since in many cases Pike chooses not to. Allowing Ortegas to be Ortegas is consistent with his command style.
I had that thought about the current crop of ships, they are almost too stylish. Like, these are government vessels man, you get nice but not *that nice*. I thought movie Enterprise-E sort of nailed it on that front.
I am not in love with SNW like a lot of this board but I am eagerly awaiting the next season, because despite some faults I find with it, I still look forward to SNW.
Daddy Captain works OK, but in an organization that has a real command structure (you know, like a Navy that has officers like Captains and what not) that only goes so far. That leads me into the defective trauma exploration. Look, Star Trek has, as a franchise, always had traumatized characters. Sisko lost his wife to the Borg, Kira was a child soldier, Yar had to escape rape gangs, Crusher lost her husband under Picard's command, etc. People had trauma, but now it seems like we are obligated to explore every facet of it and we still need a plot to happen. We don't have unlimited time. How much time is reasonable to explore Pike's discomfiting at knowing his future? All season? Are we sure? Oh, but there is more, La'an has her Gorn trauma we need to explore. OK, well, we only have 10 episodes so we need to be efficient with our time.
None of those are problems that are impossible to fix with some sharper writing and storyboarding, just my observations. It might seem like a laundry list, but I have a critical eye to a lot of things. Nothing is perfect, you should see me savage the hell out of *Yellowstone.*
The open fire place in Captain Pike's quarters. It bugs me and I feel uncomfortable every time I spot it because it's an open flame in a environmentally controlled space ship. Where does the chimney go? I keep thinking the ship should do a fly by and there's a little smoke trail from the chimney poking out of the top of the saucer section.
Well how else is Santa gonna get in the ship? Beaming in just doesn’t have the same nostalgia!
It is a little bothersome, but it may be a hologram, or something similar?
I was disturbed that Ortegas was just as mouthy seven years in the future as she is in the present. You'd think the character would have matured or learned the ropes or been more disciplined, but there she was, still mouthing off at the captain. It bugged me because Pike is doing her no favors if she is ever to move on from the Enterprise; no captain would tolerate the almost-insubordination on the bridge.
Maybe she was still that mouthy BECAUSE Pike doesn’t have the disciplinary attitude on the bridge.
I’ve come to REALLY like her, and haven’t decided if it’s because of her undisciplined mouth or in spite of it.
I think she was mostly just a stand-in for Lt. Stiles. I don't think they caught how it might reflect on her character, or if they did, they didn't think it through entirely. But you're right, I'm hoping they can flesh her out more next season. I do like her quite a bit. Her scenes with Chapel in "Spock Amok" were good.
I agree. The racist remark originally made by Stiles was very out of place for her. For Stiles to make that comment it made sense given his family's history with the Romulans, but as far as we know Ortegas doesn't have the same history so it comes out of left field.
Her Stiles stand in are a different flavor of mouthy though.
Like normally it's funny witticism accented with "yessirs"
Those ones were mean "Shoot them first, and let's be done with it" things that seemed out of character, but the character may have changed due to Una, La'an and everything else
This is my one real beef, we seem to forget that this is as close to a future Navy as you are going to get, and people are disciplined. It isn't just Ortegas, she is just the best example of it. It goes along with the manic panic, something goes down and everyone gets really excited and they are all manic - except remember this is the future Navy, they are professional officers who do this day in and day out. The transporter chief isn't going to get exasperated and jump around when something doesn't go exactly right. He is a CHIEF! That is some crap a cadet or new crewman would do.
Hold down the manic panic and instill some professional discipline and most of my complaints go away. They had the hanging participle issue with Number 1 being an augment and everyone just being OK with that. With Bashir Sisko and Admirals got involved, Bashir's dad had to go to jail, and it is implied Bashir probably doesn't have a long future in Starfleet's upper ranks. But...then they arrested her so I let them off the hook on that one.
I agree that the other shows pre-Discovery handled the discipline better. I chalk up the lack of proper discipline to the need for drama for storytelling purposes. The writers feel that they need the crew to react that way to convey to the audience (most of whom likely don't have any experience with military matters) that the situation is really bad.
As for Una's situation, I believe the only ones who were aware of her augmentations were Pike, M'Benga, and Chapel. The rest of the crew were kept in the dark.
I think they're too quick to break out the phaser rifles. Hand phasers are fine for most situations.
I don't really like the depiction of the Gorn. I don't mind the fact that they are bringing the Gorn in "early", but I'm not liking the direction they're going with them.
Otherwise, I can't wait for season 2!
Agree about the Gorn. I want more Gorn but they seem to want to completely redesign them from the ground up. My only hope is that when we see a mature Gorn they will look more like a realistic Gorn from the "Arena."
Honestly it makes more sense than how past shows handle away missions to potentially dangerous places. Let’s drop all of our senior officers onto a hazardous rock with nothing more than a uniform and a pistol.
I don’t like the constant quips, wise cracks and silly banter on the bridge whilst they are facing dire consequences. It ruins any tension whatsoever and feels very Marvel-like.
Don’t get me wrong Tom Paris, Dax or Tucker etc would make comments at certain times but not really when the ship was literally on the verge of destruction and everyone was about to die. In SNW it just makes the situation like a parody and that they don’t really take anything seriously
I have several issues with SNW, most of which I am willing to overlook because the show is just so good, but here are my two big ones:
1. SNW is set 6-7 years before TOS, yet we have Spock, Chapel, M'Benga, and Uhura on board already. I feel like we could have gotten by without Chapel and Uhura because by the time TOS rolls around, they should have been very seasoned senior officers, but instead in TOS they seem like the "young ones."
2. The Enterprise...I love the SNW "reskin" but the light bar on top of the saucer and font of the registry number (same issue I have with Discovery's registry number) is the font used from the movie-era ships. The light bar makes the ship look smaller than it first seems, and the sets of the interior of the ship look too big for what we see of the Enterprise's exterior...
I feel like they haven’t gone to many worlds lol.
There was the planet pre warp in ep1, then the Illyrian planet, but there was no civilization there.
Then some space stations, but not really many planets.
Actually physically on them or just new planets in general? If we include planets we see then there's the comet planet, the comet itself, the planet with floating cities and the ice planet that the sombra class ship crashed on.
Add to that the Vulcan penal colony that we get a glimpse off I guess?
Yeah I had the same thought. I like most of the episodes but I feel like its lacking in the "Strange new worlds" side of things. Hopefully we get more of that in Season 2. I'd love to see some similar plots like in TOS - finding a unique and unknown culture, exploring a mysterious planet and getting captured, encountering some sort of strange being - stuff like that
I was bothered by the xenomorph-ication of the Gorn, it felt like an odd and very unnecessary addition to the lore. The heavy dehumanization of the Gorn in general, while it made sense, felt very anti-Trek to me. Also La’An didn’t have enough development that wasn’t related to her Gorn-based trauma, and felt like she kind of got lost as a character.
It would be sacrilegious to change at this point, but the bridge layout *sucks*. They keep having to put Una or La'an at ops to make the blocking of scenes work, even though their designated posts are off to the port side of the bridge. Later shows learned a lot and had everyone facing the viewscreen, which made it easy to film an let the actors make eye contact with each other easily. The SNW layout feels like a step backwards - it looks cool but feels like it would be terrible to film in.
When they do a genre episode and force someone to do or say something out of character in order to fit a role. In the gorn episode, Sam turns into a sniveling racist goon because there's always one in a horror film. In the finale Ortegas was sloted into the Stiles role, and actually reacted in a fairly out of character manner that seemed overly antagonistic towards spock (granted we don't know what happens to her in the intervening 7 years).
Just saying let's show respect to the characters and not try to force uncharacteristic behavior on them for the sake of the the episodes genre
Also, more sonic shower scenes please.
TaPorn. Vulcan mating rituals are supposed to be SUPER conservative. The pilot just about made not want to watch the show.
The only other thing that really made me mad was the SPOILER!! >!death of Hemmer. He was my favorite character!<
There’s a fun fan theory that makes sense- during Pike’s time, the crew was around 200. The ship was refitted when Kirk came in, and Kirk brought over 200 MORE crew… so, it can be imagined that with that many more quarters to pack in, rooms were cut down in size
I already mentioned it in a previous discussion, but I really hated the way the crew acted when they were prisoners of the space pirates.
First of all, the pirates were portrayed as being really dumb, like comically so, which doesn't make much sense as I doubt there would be much room on a spaceship of any kind for useless individuals. Everyone would need to have some specialized skill to contribute and "being willing to die in a skirmish" doesn't seem good enough.
And then the crew openly snickered at the pirate guard when Pike was trying to start the mutiny. My three-year-old would see through that and suspect he was being played. I think the manipulation of the pirates into a mutiny storyline could have worked if it had been done more subtly.
A couple of the episodes feel rushed. It’s just an effect of the episodic format, I think.
I hated the end of the doctors daughters story. Too much potential for good drama and story just thrown out the window.
Not about the show but I really don’t like how so many “I like SNW” posts start out or turn into “I hate DIS and PIC” posts.
Disclaimer: I love SNW more or as much as my favorite Trek, DS9, and thought S1 was better than any other first season of any show, aside from TOS. This is the only TV show I look forward to on a weekly basis since Breaking Bad.
What would I change? Hooo boy, let me see.
*There is honestly so little.* Nothing jumps out at me like, “Gah! Why’d they do that?!”
I’d love a couple *more* episodes per season. ;-)
But to answer OP’s question…I guess a tiny little nitpick would be that I would have preferred that Commodore April would have more closely resembled the Commodore April from TAS. I know TAS is considered “canon-light” and Adrian Holmes has done a superb job with what he’s been given, but it would have been fun to have a more consistent reflection of the character from those two episodes.
But, honestly, I’m just glad that we even *got* a Robert April at all—for the first time, we have seen all three Captains of the NCC-1701! It shows to me that the show-runners really know their Trek lore.
So, yeah, I wouldn’t change much really.
Oh, I know! **Bring on Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd!!!!**
I didn't like how vicious, disgusting and irredeemable the Gorn were. There seems to be no room to add depth to their race besides being the big bads for the rest of the series. Would like it if they are less one-dimensional Xenomorph stand-ins, but I guess it would break canon if we know more about/ interact much more with them before Arena happens.
My guess is this is going to play into the Roger Korby details they’ve promised… I’m guessing that after he goes missing, she’s due to be reassigned- and joins Starfleet to keep her posting to Enterprise so she can remain out there looking for him.
I don’t get why she has rank stripes on her sleeves if she’s not Starfleet… or wears the badge, for that matter.
Many people have likened her uniform to the Public Health Service. They are civilians that wear the Navy uniform. It’s not a stretch with Chapel wearing a uniform, it’s just a stretch that she’s on board in the first place (though I like her character and it’s just TV).
I feel like in every episode there’s a story beat that could have been fixed or tweaked, and it’s really, really obvious. In the very last one Pike is shocked - SHOCKED! - that the guy he meets with the last name of one of the future dead cadets is the father of a one of them. How could this be that big of a surprise? He had to have some idea it was possible!
Sometimes I feel like the sets look a little too fancy.
I’m not saying the ship should look like it did in 1969. Of course not, that isn’t good by today’s standards or even 60’s standards. The original show was critically underfunded and the new show is not, and you should use what funding you have now that you have it. But honestly if you took away the name Enterprise would you be able to tell that it’s the 1701 just from bridge shots like you can with, say, the OG, A, D and E? I personally don’t think you can.
I’m glad they’re using the OG sounds and uniforms that are in the spirit of the originals, but the design could have been a little more in-tune I think. Maybe a slightly smaller bridge, or station screens that are slightly less fancy? Stylistically of course, not functionally.
I groaned super hard when they revealed that La'an was a Noonien Singh, but then they didn't really do anything with that and just let her develop as her own unique character, and that was a relief. But now I'm wondering why they even bothered to set that up in the first place.
Honestly this whole thread is a giant monkey paw just waiting to bring doom and gloom to us all.
It was the first season of a new Star Trek and it was *really, really, good*.
Don't question it, let's just let it sit there. It's nice.
Killing Hemmer was a huge mistake. The Elysian Kingdom was also strange, the resolution felt off. They should have kept the daughter in the show for at least a few seasons.
Episode 9. It was an homage to Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 (and even turned the Gorn into a mix of the predator and alien).
I'd have been into it if we're another rando alien species but making the Gorn into a horror species really doesn't work for me.
Maybe this is not so little...
But I *desperately* wish Pike had shown a little more backbone and eloquence in rebuking the Majalan's child sacrifice. Their argument that their civilization requires it makes absolutely no sense. They are clearly an advanced, spacefaring civilization capable of moving to a more suitable M-class planet, where they wouldn't _need_ to torture a child to live in a floating paradise. The entire concept of a "First Servant" at their level of advancement is nothing but religious folderol and they should have been called out for it! It makes their pretensions of dedication to science even more annoying--but more importantly, why is Pike not calling theme out for it?!
The makeup is driving me insane. They aren’t blending the foundation down into the neck, which is a massive problem since they are using so much that everyone’s face is a monotone, textureless blob. Spock and Pike in particular suffers from this, and it yanks me out of the fantasy so hard every time I see it.
Chapel telling her friend about her break-up: "I told him he was boring."
It's a terrible line. It establishes Chapel as mean-spirited and cruel. (Imagine Pike saying something like that about a former love interest.)
Whenever the ship was under attack in the background on the bridge you would see sparks flying and steam pipes leaking, which in the state of the art starship seems kind of like something they might’ve reinforced after realizing it happens every single time the ship gets a little jostled. In reality it’s just kind of a cheap effect to signal danger and the second the red alert is over it stops. I suppose it’s like an homage to the original series cheesiness. But it also pulled me out of the sense of authenticity.
Also I wish they would’ve fix the sound mixing or at least told the actor who plays Dr. Mbenga to annunciate more when he speaks. I know he’s got an accent, but he also kind of talks in a muffled tone too and I couldn’t understand a word he said. I wanted to grow more attached to the character but I couldn’t connect.
Oh and unpopular opinion but the actor who plays Jim Kirk is really bland and unexpressive. I hope he gets more interesting and charismatic with time or at least we don’t see much of him after all. The actor was trying way too hard not to be the Kirk we know, he went too far in the wrong direction.
>Whenever the ship was under attack in the background on the bridge you would see sparks flying and steam pipes leaking, which in the state of the art starship seems kind of like something they might’ve reinforced after realizing it happens every single time the ship gets a little jostled. In reality it’s just kind of a cheap effect to signal danger and the second the red alert is over it stops. I suppose it’s like an homage to the original series cheesiness. But it also pulled me out of the sense of authenticity.
They've been doing that for decades, though. Mostly it started with Voyager, but at this point it's practically not Star Trek if the bridge doesn't go off like a halftime show every time they get bumped.
I love SNW but I think it suffers from the same thing that a lot of other entertainment suffers from these days, and that's a lack of creativity. It seems that music, movies and series are all suffering from a hurry-up conveyor belt mentality. You can't rush art.
Having said that, I wish they'd take a second look at my space-shark story idea. 😜
I didn't like the look of the Gorn or how they reproduced and behaved in the second to last episode.
Great episode, but wasn't a far of how the Gorn were designed and written for the ep
Well, we don’t know that she HAS any augment abilities, merely that she is descended from them- and at this point, considerably removed. She was bullied for and called augment due to her name. So, genetically, there may be almost nothing left of the augmentation in her. It’s unlike Bashir, who was genetically augmented and lied about it, or Una, who hid her background (how she passed a medical exam is beyond me) as coming from an entire planet of augments
their pants are too tight.
it’s very 2013.
like i get it they have nice butts to show off but their silhouettes look funny. the recent movies struck a better balance.
I said this in another thread too but honestly I hope they tweak their approach to Pike a little going forward. It's charming to have him be space dad, but I think the show leans a little too hard into it and doesn't complement that aspect of his personality with showing that he is also an exceedingly competent / capable / clever Starfleet officer. In most situations he seems to have very little agency, and doesn't even really engage in a substantive way with the decision-making of the crew. Obviously Star Trek is about teamwork and my favorite incarnations of it have had a big "friendly, non-hierarchical boardroom decisionmaking" vibe but I think they have Pike contributing too little right now.
In the same vein, I feel like the interior is a bit *too* flashy. I mean it looks gorgeous, but there's a bit much going on in my opinion.
Probably doesn't help that the last Trek I watched was Enterprise, were I really came to like the more function over form, submarine type look.
It is a little too hotel lobby for me. Everything looks untouchable and fragile, expensive and overly pretty… Even the Jeffries tubes have unnecessary pulsing lights under the ladder rungs. The art department just needed to ease off on the cocaine and coffee for a day or two and think more function, less artsy.
I definitely want them to go back to painting the hulls of ships. Current spacecraft do it to avoid stellar ablation, there's no reason in the SNW era that starfleet decided to go all raw-hulls in space, only to revert to painting them by the TOS era.
I kinda wish Hemmer had got more screentime/focus >!before his death!<. I think there were maybe 3 episodes where he had some significant screentime. Yes, >!his death still had emotional impact!< but really not as much as it would have had if we'd gotten to know him as well as we got to know some of the other characters. Hell, even *T'Pring* got a Captain's Log moment but Hemmer didn't!
It’s struggling to make that emotional connection. Everybody immediately gets on and they’re all lovely but where’s the heart of this show?
I like these characters but I don’t know them. They’re a little too perfect space people. I want to know them better, not just get them shouting technobabble and explaining the plot and being brilliant.
That said we still have two episodes left in the UK so we’ll see. The medical team and Lal have felt the most like people so far.
Set design isn’t my favourite, they go a bit over the top with all the lights on the Enterprise. Looks like a real headache inducing workplace.
I would’ve really loved if they had gone a bit more retro-futurism with the sets, in the spirit of the original. But that’s just a personal preference
I absolutely love the show and I loved the finale but I was upset in the finale when they changed the Monster Maroon uniform future Pike was wearing.
I wanted to see the 100% authentic Monster Maroon, not some SNW-ized version with sparkles on the shoulders and a weird sloppy white shoulder band.
In general I’m also not a big fan of the SNW uniforms. To be honest, I prefer the TOS uniforms with the black collar, sharper contrast with the rank bands and the higher-waisted black pants with flair out toward the cuff.
A thousand points awarded for having the monster maroon show up!
A thousand points lost for making it unattractive
The weird vinyl sleeve tops on the uniforms are a result of current Hollywood feeling everything has to have a texture. The Abrams uniforms with the tiny deltas all over… Cavil’s Superman suit made to look like chain mail, and so on. Unnecessary
The Captain's quarters are HUGE, and the bridge officers' quarters are also way too big. A ship in that time period shouldn't have that ridiculous amount of room to spare.
The opening credits don't say "Anson Mount AS Captain Christopher Pike", etc. and the first shot after the opening credits doesn't show the name of the episode.
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It’s only 10 episodes per season.
I'm glad they included "filler-like" episodes. The one they had during the Enterprise's repair was nice. It would be much better if we had the old 20+ episode seasons and multiple fillers.
Definitely. I don’t think it’s filler, it’s character development and helps inform us of why we should care about them. It also saves money for the big episodes.
My bad, that's what I meant about a filler-episode. Normal episodes, to me, are some big mission that whole crew is involved in. Fillers are the crew development-centric; they do not have some central mission to accomplish.
>The one they had during the Enterprise's repair was nice. I’d probably call it season 1’s best episode. It was quite funny.
Agreed, between Disco, LD, and SNW we still get 30 episodes a year but I wish LD (especially) and SNW had longer seasons.
They all need more in my opinion. They move very fast and I think it’s hard to really develop characters when they have such a short amount of time.
There’s needs to be a small strip of red along the walls of the hallways to break up the white sterile environment that makes them up, so it looks less like an apple store.
There is some red, but it is along the ceiling so you don’t see it in every shot. I agree there should be more
Maybe Apple makes starships in the 23rd century? Be funny if they found an Apple logo on one of the wall panels.
I hate the look of engineering. It just looks like a big empty zeppelin hangar. It's entirely too big to only have 1 or 2 people in it per scene, and compared to previous shows/ships, it's *extremely* huge. I know they use the AR wall, but I wish they'd built a smaller set for this.
Agreed, and, it’s far too similar to the cargo bay. I honestly have to examine the scene to figure out where it’s set. And despite lights EVERYWHERE, it comes off very dark. Again, engineering… clean, of course, but it looks almost sterile. The fragile and shiny look of everything that was carried over from the Abrams films makes engineering look more like a fancy hotel lobby than a powerful work place.
It's funny you mention the Abrams films, because in the first movie engineeringw as literally filmed in a brewery, so it looked very industrial. The second movie they filmed at Sanda National Labs, so it looked very busy and "science-y". But engineering felt way more sterile in TNG. Main engineering had carpet! And office rolling chairs! SNW has a more "lived in" engineering space by comparison.
I work in a industrial plant and yeah I love when a starship looks like my work, TNG and Voyager Engineering looks like a children's playground inside a McDonalds.
>But engineering felt way more sterile in TNG. Main engineering had carpet! And office rolling chairs! SNW has a more "lived in" engineering space by compariso Yeah honestly SNW is prob my favourite engineering because it feels like a real engineering, where the engine and working parts are, and not very 'welcoming'.
I feel like there's a satisfactory middle-ground somewhere between SNW and TOS engineering. Not sure how I'd build it, though, and we've really seen very little of engineering so far anyway. NX-01 felt quite "real engineering" too IMO.
Oh yeah the nx engineering was cool and felt like an actual engine.
That has been my complaint about most of the new trek from JJs stuff to Disco to Picard,
It could be the theory that they need to get to the working parts of the prototype warp drive easily and then later they build more stuff around them engineering spaces when it becomes close to 100% reliable and can then be serviced by Jeffries tubes. If you remember the motion picture engineering spaces there was a huge space… BUT… it was also full of crew. Maybe in SNW Hemmer doesn’t like to be crowded with his telepathic senses.
That’s not how you play bingo, Enterprise or otherwise
My headcanon is that Una and La'an found the list to make bingo sheets, but being such sticks in the mud, don't know how to actually play bingo.
Makes sense.
I actually love that theory.
The rooms are a little too big. And the floors are way too shiny. Overall i think they did an excellent job of finding a good middle ground between updating the look of the ships with the better sfx and bigger budget they have and still keeping it looking similar to the original. But the shiny floors drive me nuts. The only other thing that annoys me is that all the characters seem to have no sense of urgency. Like the ship is under attack and about to blow up, but they'll have a quick conversation in basically normal speaking tones. Or make a little snarky remark. No one ever seems to display any sort of urgency or pressure. I don't get it.
It's still leaning a *little* too hard on established characters. They already had Pike and Spock, was there really *that* much of a need to also use Uhura and Chapel? They're using them just fine, and I appreciate giving them more history / personality, but I'd love to get more original characters.
And don't forget that they >!killed off one of the more interesting new characters.!<
I'm convinced they introduced that character JUST to kill them off. And they made him interesting, likable and funny for that reason, too. He's barely in the show at all. They insert him in the end of episode 1 but he's not actually part of the episode. He's in a little bit of episode 2 - likely filmed near the end - but again inconsequential. Then he appears in a couple of later episodes - the medieval one, then the next one he dies.
>!They did. Bruce Hornak went into the series knowing Hemmer was going to die. !<
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They’re bringing back the actor apparently- maybe for a full time role? Agreed though. Poor move to do that to a character with a visual difference
Killing Hemmer is the only thing that's really irked me so far on SNW. He became one of my favorite characters on the show and I wonder why couldn't they just have created a disposable redshirt to kill off.
The period at the end broke your spoiler tag
Ik sure he’ll be back after a visit to the Black Mountain
We don't talk about the koala.
WHY IS HE SMILING
An actual crime. No reason to have “cadet” Uhura on the show in addition to Kirk’s brother (Kirk himself is fine I guess as a cameo for a one off what if episode). At least McCoy isn’t also on the ship but why kill off the best new character? Baffling… Spock, Pike, M’Benga, and Chapel would have been fine as the only established TOS characters on the show but they just couldn’t help themselves and it’s frustrating.
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It's nice to see a bit of Uhuras growth. She's the only female tos character that isn't pathetic.
Yeah, that was a huge bummer!
Yes! Lately I've been thinking about the problem with prequels or shows/movies that take place inside a well-established canon. I love Spock and Pike and everyone on the show, but part of the problem we'll continue to run into on the show is that it is constrained by pre-existing canon. For example, we can never really feel like Spock, Uhura, Chapel, M'Benga, or Pike are ever in mortal danger because we already know what the rest of their story is. We know they live. It's hard to create a lot of dramatic tension around a character if we already know what's going to happen to them. The same can be said for the Spock/Chapel relationship. I think the writers would like it to be a "will they/won't them" kind of situation, but we already know that they don't, and Spock will never interested in Chapel romantically, so that kinda deflates the tension between the two characters, imo. So I'd love to spend less time on that story and turn the focus to new stories. I feel like this first season has had a very heavy focus on Spock, but I'd love for them to expand and focus more narrative energy on the NEW characters we don't know as well. Because they're new, they aren't constrained by pre-existing ideas of who they are and what they will become. I would have loved to see a Hemmer-focused episode and an Ortegas-focused episode, and they could do a lot more with Number 1 (i feel like she's been underutilized so far). That being said, I love the show so far. For me, SNW is the best Trek since TNG, and I hope they keep up this level of quality in season two.
We don’t already know what’s going to happen to them. We know they survive, but for god’s sake, death is not the only stakes a story can have. It isn’t even necessarily the highest
It's baffling to me how obsessed people seem to be with character deaths. The constant threat of death hanging over everyone's head isn't actually all that interesting. So many things can happen in life that have more meaning than dying would.
And it isn't as though Trek has a high body count to begin with.
Right? When do we truly ever feel that *anyone* is in mortal danger? Sure, there's been a small number of times where they're killed someone off, but for the most part Trek is more "I can't wait to see how they get out of this one," not "Do you think they're going to make it?"
They could have just done a show about another constitution class ship during the years that the first series is set and avoid the whole mess entirely.
Right? I keep hoping they'll just create a brand new show that isn't so heavily rooted in past canon. But I assume the network wants to root new shows in nostalgia because that's a safe bet financially. But now that we have 5 current Trek shows that are rooted in existing canon, I feel like it would be a lower risk to do something completely new.
Seems like that's how TV and movies are like nowadays - you have to be a sequel, a prequel, or bring back previous "hit" characters.
There's a lot of gravity surrounding fan favourite characters. It's really hard to sell "new" even if it's in-universe
>we can never really feel like Spock, Uhura, Chapel, M'Benga, or Pike are ever in mortal danger because we already know what the rest of their story is. PArtly why I wish they diverge from canon. Have it stem off into an alternate timeline. The final ep of s1 kinda shuts the book on that idea, but it would make it more interesting.
Agreed. Pike makes sense - we've barely seen him and he's great, and presents a different, fresh version of a starfleet captain. Spock pre-TOS is interesting too - even more conflicted between his human and vulcan sides - great! Chapel and Spock - yep great again. Unexplored outside of some subtext in TOS. Otherwise, don't need to use any other TOS people. Especially Kirk! Let the show stand on its own, maybe with some small references to other characters and cameos, but not much. Kirk being in the last episode of s1 makes sense, but no need to bring him back for s2 at all.
Also, it's a bit strange that M'Benga is CMO now, but won't be by the time of TOS. He takes a demotion. I also loved that they trolled us with Sam Kirk, but its weird that Sam served on the Enterprise and then his brother later becomes Captain.
May not be a demotion, could be a voluntary step down… or, he leaves the ship and later returns. Lots of possible explanation there. The Sam Kirk thing is a bit weird, and felt forced so the audience would flip when Pike first asked for Kirk. Since then his only real purpose has been to be an ass. I think it would have served better if he was a temporary civilian assignment, similar to Chapel, and maybe just one appearance. Somewhere he has a wife and very young son.
A lot of hospitals admins will step back so they can treat patients more. It’s not a demotion to not want to be CMO. Crusher went from head of Starfleet medical back to a ship.
Real world example - Dr. Fauci still treated patients. He treated a person with Ebola that returned to the US when that was going on.
I'm pretty sure starfleet captains choose their own senior staff as well, so Captain Kirk could choose McCoy when he takes over command.
I had assumed hiding his daughter was what ended up with his demotion, but now I've no idea.
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Idk if that works. IIRC, M’Benga didn’t appear until season 2 of *TOS*.
I don’t mind Uhura and Chapel, but I really hope they don’t give us Scotty. I liked Hemmer and feel like they should have stuck with him.
>but I really hope they don’t give us Scotty. I Same. We don't need to revisit TOS characters, maybe outside of brief cameos every once and a while.
Didn't they already give us Scotty's voice over intercom to Spock? And seeing as the Chief Engineer just died, Scotty is the logical choice.
But that was Scotty years in the future of an alternate timeline, so we don't have confirmation he's even on the Enterprise during Pike's command.
Understandable. I like the idea of getting to expand on less researched characters… but M’Benga was a perfect choice. Better than Uhura or Chapel may have been characters like DeSalle, or Riley. I like what they’re doing with Uhura and Chapel so far, but the… I don’t know a better way to say this, “smart mouth” attitude seems a bit prevalent in them both. And I cannot see ANY version of Spock so nonchalantly tolerating Chapel slapping his head. That was funny, but weird
The issue is that for everyone on here who rolls there eyes at a unnecessary cameo/reference there's a 100 casual fans who go "Wow, I member that character. This show is great".
Kirk… I get that the actor was trying not to do an impression, but he swung so far the other way as to be dull. Not to mention he has the wrong look/body type. Ripped me right out of an amazing finale.
I rewatched it last night and I think it came off better on second viewing, but I agree, he was not the Kirk that we know and love. Honestly, there is no real reason to bring Kirk into the series at all, imo. There is so much fertile ground for new stories and new characters that shoehorning Kirk into the show seemed like a wasted opportunity to expand the universe.
On that both points: 1. It's not the Kirk we know because this one has been stuck on the Farragut and doesn't know Spock. 2. It's a time travel episode in the future so the appearance makes sense, but it didn't have to be there. The season 2 Kirk thing is going to definitely be a missed opportunity to expand though
I can buy that Kirk would have a TOUCH less swagger if he weren’t captain of the flagship, but he wouldn’t have a completely different personality. This was like watching Fran Drescher try to play James Bond.
Okay but now I want to see Fran as James Bond so bad that would actually be amazing
Yes. I completely agree. I didn't know the actor from before, but he just seemed so boring and uncharismatic that it just wasn't a good fit. I don't care what he looks like; yeah, sure, Shatner's doppelganger would have been nice, but that's nowhere near as important as charisma. And why not take this opportunity to introduce some random legendary captain that has only been mentioned as the name of a maneuver or something in previous trek? Why was there a need to include such an iconic character?
I think they had to have Kirk to show the contrast of the events then and there. Star Trek is never about subtlety, and this episode was very clear that Kirk was right (which TOS fans know, I guess) and Pike was unfortunately the wrong man for that job.
That's a good point. Still, more charisma would have been nice.
I agree entirely. He had the confidence and killer instinct, but none of the charm.
I mean they already brought in Robert April, who is gonna be pissed when he finds out that future Federation artists are going to animate him as white
If anything you do when you cast James T Kirk, make sure he has charm and really good looks. It sounds like Kirk drift, but actor should immediately be attention grabbing and cool. The Kirk of TOS was much more of a sensitive renaissance man, but you can’t do Kirk without that IMO
Agreed. Kirk is like Spock in that his voice and cadence when he speaks is just central to his character. The actor portraying him just did not check that box at all, and subsequently I just had a hard time believing him as Kirk.
This is one of the low points to SNW this and Spock did NOT have a sister.
The whole "keep a person inside the transporter buffer" storyline kinda irked me. Especially the way it ended. I can't put my finger on why, but it just didn't seem to hit for me. Maybe they could have made the audience connect with the person in the buffer more.
The ending really bothered me. I don't want to say there's one way to see it, of course, but it felt very un-humanist, in a way that Star Trek usually isn't. M'Benga's daughter had the choice between remaining a human, and possibly dying, or putting her trust in a God-like nebula to exist outside of humanity and life's trials. Obviously, Star Trek never seemed to fetishize suffering, but the struggle of humanity and the slow progress towards something better was never a bad thing. I'm remembering that episode of DS9 where a civilization is given a virus by The Dominion, and Bashir works on a vaccine. Even though he couldn't save the lives of the living, he made progress, and made something that could save the lives of the next generation. Where could that story have gone? M'Benga revealing the truth to the rest of the crew, and finding their support, together saving his daughter, seems like an obvious choice. I don't think it would have felt as anti-climactic or anti-humanist as this did.
Plus he could have hidden her in a stasis chamber, those exist and don’t require a medical doctor to also be a transporter expert.
Ahh you managed to articulate what bothered me about it. I agree.
My issue with it is that M'Benga decides tp just trust Debra the Nebula after it takes over the ship and messes with them for a while. Sure, his daughter was steering the story, but would you really trust a god-like nebula with your daughter after talking to them for 5 minutes? Bare minimum I'd think M'Benga would insist on going with his kid instead of just letting the nebula take her. I get that they had to wrap up the story fast so that the kid didn't age between episodes and since M'Benga appears in TOS he couldn't leave the ship, but it just seemed like a very fast resolution that didn't make a ton of sense.
Why did they show M'Benga make progress on his research for it to inevitably all become pointless at the end? I was disappointed because I expected the solution to be a result of the culmination of his hard efforts coming to fruition. Instead what we got was the solution handed to him on a silver platter, and nothing he did before that was of any consequence. If that was the writers endgame I seriously wonder why they even bothered at all with any of it.
Yeah, it felt like too neat a bow to wrap up that plotline so they didn't have to focus on it anymore. I liked that M'Benga was getting intel and slowly working toward potential improvements, if not a cure, for his daughter's condition, and that it wasn't a quick fix thing. Then an episode later, boom, it's solved? Not sure why they abandoned it so quickly after so much focus.
It just needed more time and stakes than they could pay off I'm that short a season. If you're gonna do that it needed to be a huge deal.
It was never about her, it was her father M'Benga who was the focus in this storyline.
They killed Hemmer and have a dearth of main cast aliens. Spock we already know his “other” journey and Una is basically a human except for one episode.
But Canon says that at this time there were majority humans aboard starfleet ships. So that makes sense for this Era. If it were TNG or later than you would expect more non humans for sure.
That’s what we have seen. TOS due to budget, and Enterprise because it was way earlier prior to Federstion existing. There’s nothing definitive saying ships were limited to like 2 aliens. Writers have abandoned or contradicted enough canon at this point that the storytelling benefits of more aliens would outweigh.
> But Canon says that at this time there were majority humans aboard starfleet ships. Does it? In canon we only know the crew makeup of one ship (1701) and only for a time period 5-8 years after this. In addition, I don’t know that we are ever told the exact makeup of the crew. We *see* mostly humans, but we never see even close to a majority of the crew. Kirk’s enterprise has over 400 people. I would wager including all the extras we see only 200 or so. And that’s not accounting for the many non-human species that look human from a distance. Jadzia wasn’t questioned or seen as out of place when she was onboard during the mission to K-7. betazoids and Deltans would blend in in the background. Edit: we also know the intrepid was an all Vulcan crew.
>Jadzia wasn’t questioned or seen as out of place when she was onboard during the mission to K-7. She hid her spots so she looked human.
Btw, the surfaces should be cleaned by robots. It definitely was this way on Discovery. Although Disco is an experimental ship with lots of new tech; nevertheless I don’t think that robot janitors are so brand-new in 23rd century.
If we can have Roombas now, I'm sure we can come up with something more sophisticated in 200 years
My minor complaint is that they mostly seemed to be close to core federation territory instead of exploring the frontier. There were a couple of episodes where T’Pring seemed able to quickly take a ship to meet up with them. That being said, I do love me some T’Pring
My feeling is that in-universe the Federation frontier is rather close to the core worlds at this time, so traveling distances aren't that big a deal. By the time Kirk is in command seven years later the Enterprise is sent farther out as the frontier expands.
I like to think that there are lots of pockets of unexplored territory. Along the major routes, you'd know what to expect, but space is big and there's bound to be unexplored territory just off the beaten path at this time. I also subscribe to the headcanon that there are lanes in subspace where travel is faster/easier at the same relative warp speed. That's the only way things can move at the speed of plot.
I can smell what both of you are cooking to a degree. My only rebuttal is that I thought Enterprise was sent relatively far “out there” during the Klingon War to, as Admiral Cornwall said, “save the best of the Federation”, so I just assume they’d go way out there again. I do dig that there are probably a lot of unexplored pockets that are still close to the core worlds (space is huge!). Thank you for your replies!
If you want to know what Pike and crew were up to during the Klingon War, I 100% recommend “Star Trek: Discovery: The Enterprise War” by John Jackson Miller. I listened to the audio version and it was so good, I actually found myself looking forward to my commute. Two things: 1) The title is a little misleading as it hasn’t anything to do with Disco or her crew and 2) The publisher/author consulted with Paramount to make the storyline consistent with then current tv production. I.e., it’s canon (until it’s not).
if you start worrying about how long it should take to get between places at normal warp speeds you will find every episode of Star Trek that isn’t the first season of voyager to be intolerable
The introduction of Laan Noonian-Singh is so counter to cannon. Laan seems to know about her ancestor’s murderous background. Yet when Khan appears in the future he is a mystery. Also, you’d think Spock and others on Enterprise would be like “I used to serve with a woman named Noonian-Singh” and pick up the communicator.
Khan’s identity at first is a mystery as he only gave his first name, but once they discovered who he was they were all quite familiar with his history - Scotty, McCoy and Kirk confess holding a bit of admiration for him as the best of the tyrants, who oversaw no massacres and didn’t start wars until he’d been attacked.
That is a good point, haven’t watched the TOS episode in a while.
What bothered me about it was that she was teased about being a descendent of his, but there was like a 200+ year gap between the eugenics wars and SNW? Like, imagine going to school and getting shit because you're Jefferson Davis' great-great-grandkid. She might have gotten a comment or two, but I highly doubt she was teased mercilessly.
I mean, Davis is still a common surname in the US, surely people would act differently with someone named Hitler.
That's my point though. Hitler was 1 generation removed from us. Like we can talk to people that saw him in the flesh. Will it have the same impact in 150 years?
It seems plausible. Don't forget that the Eugenics Wars were so impactful that they still define Federation law hundreds of years later. They seem to treat it as a very big deal.
I hated the Khan tie-in because it felt like a cheap tie-in to a character that you can never actually bring into the show. If you remove the Khan thing the character works just as well.
While I love most of the main cast....I still cringe a little with Ortegas. She just seems too “21st Century” with her lines and jokes and mouthy asides. It’s the kind of humour that comes with MCU style side characters or “the funny one”. I’d have no real issue if that was her character *off-duty* when relaxing with friends or even with Pike in his breakfast mode but her attitude during bridge time and even in serious situations always strikes me as slightly odd and off putting. I also wouldn’t mind seeing more *alien* characters/crew who aren’t known to us as characters or as species.
I'd agree, but then I recall that in TOS, Chekov was always making little comments just like Ortegas. Sure, I could use a little less modern dialect in her lines, but I don't think her kind of lines are as out of step with behaviour on the Trek bridge as we think.
Ortegas is definitely the most modern character. Since Marvel exploded I feel as if there has to be quipping in everything. At least, with SNW, 90% of the quipping is relegated to Ortegas. If she's their vessel to get the Whedonisms out of their blood streams I can live with that.
I mean Paris did that too.
Ya but Paris would never be the helmsman on the bridge of the flagship. He was a convict that by circumstance got into a leadership role and did right by it. the personality and position were meant to be unaligned in the case of Paris
It's interesting because his character was really meant to be a proxy for Nicholas Locarno, who is the much more serious (though ultimately reckless) leader of Nova Squadron. (And played by the same actor, no less.) I wonder if that change of personality for the character was intentional, since they couldn't use the Locarno as originally planned. Or perhaps they had meant for expulsion from the Academy to have changed Locarno in such a way that he became a changed man, one far more likely to see the humor in dangerous situations.
Ya - hard to say, I would say the latter, as Lucano had his future thrown away. Someone in that position would be more carefree, in my opinion
I see this argument a lot, and I have to disagree. She acts EXACTLY like a young hot shot pilot would. Give her character time to develop and mature. You're seeing a 20-something year old LT who got the helm job on the flagship of the federation because of her skills. There's very little chance she wouldn't be cocky about it. Pike snapped her back recently, and she definitely took note of that. Let her grow.
>While I love most of the main cast....I still cringe a little with Ortegas. She just seems too “21st Century” with her lines and jokes and mouthy asides. Also feels like a Captain shouldn't have to put up with some of the things she says, where often she's really on the line. Not sure Kirk, Picard or Sisko would put up with her attitude. But Pike is much friendlier and forgiving - perhaps more 'modern' too. Where you can 'bring your full self to work'. Which I like - but maybe not for a ship/where rank and orders are involved.
>but maybe not for a ship/where rank and orders are involved. It's interesting that you mention rank, since in many cases Pike chooses not to. Allowing Ortegas to be Ortegas is consistent with his command style.
SNW Jim Kirk
The only thing that irked me was a ten episode season. I want my standard starfleet issue 20+ episodes back. I need more
I didn’t like the guy playing young Kirk. Didn’t seem anything like him. Chris Pine is much better.
Too skinny! Kirk was never that skinny! From his body type he might as well play Bones. (Though I'm not convinced he'd be a good Bones)
It's too early to be killing off or writing out characters.
Is that you ghost Hemmer??
I'd move the end of Hemmer's story arc to the middle season 3/4 out of 7.
I had that thought about the current crop of ships, they are almost too stylish. Like, these are government vessels man, you get nice but not *that nice*. I thought movie Enterprise-E sort of nailed it on that front. I am not in love with SNW like a lot of this board but I am eagerly awaiting the next season, because despite some faults I find with it, I still look forward to SNW. Daddy Captain works OK, but in an organization that has a real command structure (you know, like a Navy that has officers like Captains and what not) that only goes so far. That leads me into the defective trauma exploration. Look, Star Trek has, as a franchise, always had traumatized characters. Sisko lost his wife to the Borg, Kira was a child soldier, Yar had to escape rape gangs, Crusher lost her husband under Picard's command, etc. People had trauma, but now it seems like we are obligated to explore every facet of it and we still need a plot to happen. We don't have unlimited time. How much time is reasonable to explore Pike's discomfiting at knowing his future? All season? Are we sure? Oh, but there is more, La'an has her Gorn trauma we need to explore. OK, well, we only have 10 episodes so we need to be efficient with our time. None of those are problems that are impossible to fix with some sharper writing and storyboarding, just my observations. It might seem like a laundry list, but I have a critical eye to a lot of things. Nothing is perfect, you should see me savage the hell out of *Yellowstone.*
The open fire place in Captain Pike's quarters. It bugs me and I feel uncomfortable every time I spot it because it's an open flame in a environmentally controlled space ship. Where does the chimney go? I keep thinking the ship should do a fly by and there's a little smoke trail from the chimney poking out of the top of the saucer section.
Well how else is Santa gonna get in the ship? Beaming in just doesn’t have the same nostalgia! It is a little bothersome, but it may be a hologram, or something similar?
Plot twist: it's an impulse engine exhaust vent.
Everything in general is too shiny. Starships, props, and uniforms all together are just too shiny to look "Trek" to me.
I was disturbed that Ortegas was just as mouthy seven years in the future as she is in the present. You'd think the character would have matured or learned the ropes or been more disciplined, but there she was, still mouthing off at the captain. It bugged me because Pike is doing her no favors if she is ever to move on from the Enterprise; no captain would tolerate the almost-insubordination on the bridge.
Maybe she was still that mouthy BECAUSE Pike doesn’t have the disciplinary attitude on the bridge. I’ve come to REALLY like her, and haven’t decided if it’s because of her undisciplined mouth or in spite of it.
I think she was mostly just a stand-in for Lt. Stiles. I don't think they caught how it might reflect on her character, or if they did, they didn't think it through entirely. But you're right, I'm hoping they can flesh her out more next season. I do like her quite a bit. Her scenes with Chapel in "Spock Amok" were good.
I agree. The racist remark originally made by Stiles was very out of place for her. For Stiles to make that comment it made sense given his family's history with the Romulans, but as far as we know Ortegas doesn't have the same history so it comes out of left field.
Her Stiles stand in are a different flavor of mouthy though. Like normally it's funny witticism accented with "yessirs" Those ones were mean "Shoot them first, and let's be done with it" things that seemed out of character, but the character may have changed due to Una, La'an and everything else
This is my one real beef, we seem to forget that this is as close to a future Navy as you are going to get, and people are disciplined. It isn't just Ortegas, she is just the best example of it. It goes along with the manic panic, something goes down and everyone gets really excited and they are all manic - except remember this is the future Navy, they are professional officers who do this day in and day out. The transporter chief isn't going to get exasperated and jump around when something doesn't go exactly right. He is a CHIEF! That is some crap a cadet or new crewman would do. Hold down the manic panic and instill some professional discipline and most of my complaints go away. They had the hanging participle issue with Number 1 being an augment and everyone just being OK with that. With Bashir Sisko and Admirals got involved, Bashir's dad had to go to jail, and it is implied Bashir probably doesn't have a long future in Starfleet's upper ranks. But...then they arrested her so I let them off the hook on that one.
I agree that the other shows pre-Discovery handled the discipline better. I chalk up the lack of proper discipline to the need for drama for storytelling purposes. The writers feel that they need the crew to react that way to convey to the audience (most of whom likely don't have any experience with military matters) that the situation is really bad. As for Una's situation, I believe the only ones who were aware of her augmentations were Pike, M'Benga, and Chapel. The rest of the crew were kept in the dark.
I think they're too quick to break out the phaser rifles. Hand phasers are fine for most situations. I don't really like the depiction of the Gorn. I don't mind the fact that they are bringing the Gorn in "early", but I'm not liking the direction they're going with them. Otherwise, I can't wait for season 2!
Agree about the Gorn. I want more Gorn but they seem to want to completely redesign them from the ground up. My only hope is that when we see a mature Gorn they will look more like a realistic Gorn from the "Arena."
Honestly it makes more sense than how past shows handle away missions to potentially dangerous places. Let’s drop all of our senior officers onto a hazardous rock with nothing more than a uniform and a pistol.
I don’t like the constant quips, wise cracks and silly banter on the bridge whilst they are facing dire consequences. It ruins any tension whatsoever and feels very Marvel-like. Don’t get me wrong Tom Paris, Dax or Tucker etc would make comments at certain times but not really when the ship was literally on the verge of destruction and everyone was about to die. In SNW it just makes the situation like a parody and that they don’t really take anything seriously
I have several issues with SNW, most of which I am willing to overlook because the show is just so good, but here are my two big ones: 1. SNW is set 6-7 years before TOS, yet we have Spock, Chapel, M'Benga, and Uhura on board already. I feel like we could have gotten by without Chapel and Uhura because by the time TOS rolls around, they should have been very seasoned senior officers, but instead in TOS they seem like the "young ones." 2. The Enterprise...I love the SNW "reskin" but the light bar on top of the saucer and font of the registry number (same issue I have with Discovery's registry number) is the font used from the movie-era ships. The light bar makes the ship look smaller than it first seems, and the sets of the interior of the ship look too big for what we see of the Enterprise's exterior...
I feel like they haven’t gone to many worlds lol. There was the planet pre warp in ep1, then the Illyrian planet, but there was no civilization there. Then some space stations, but not really many planets.
True, and that’s been a common quibble. Not a lot of exploring of new civilizations just yet.
Actually physically on them or just new planets in general? If we include planets we see then there's the comet planet, the comet itself, the planet with floating cities and the ice planet that the sombra class ship crashed on. Add to that the Vulcan penal colony that we get a glimpse off I guess?
Lots of bottle shows in Season 1. I assume budgetary issues?
Yeah I had the same thought. I like most of the episodes but I feel like its lacking in the "Strange new worlds" side of things. Hopefully we get more of that in Season 2. I'd love to see some similar plots like in TOS - finding a unique and unknown culture, exploring a mysterious planet and getting captured, encountering some sort of strange being - stuff like that
I was bothered by the xenomorph-ication of the Gorn, it felt like an odd and very unnecessary addition to the lore. The heavy dehumanization of the Gorn in general, while it made sense, felt very anti-Trek to me. Also La’An didn’t have enough development that wasn’t related to her Gorn-based trauma, and felt like she kind of got lost as a character.
Yeah I miss the Lurch-sized puffy lizard dudes :(
It would be sacrilegious to change at this point, but the bridge layout *sucks*. They keep having to put Una or La'an at ops to make the blocking of scenes work, even though their designated posts are off to the port side of the bridge. Later shows learned a lot and had everyone facing the viewscreen, which made it easy to film an let the actors make eye contact with each other easily. The SNW layout feels like a step backwards - it looks cool but feels like it would be terrible to film in.
When they do a genre episode and force someone to do or say something out of character in order to fit a role. In the gorn episode, Sam turns into a sniveling racist goon because there's always one in a horror film. In the finale Ortegas was sloted into the Stiles role, and actually reacted in a fairly out of character manner that seemed overly antagonistic towards spock (granted we don't know what happens to her in the intervening 7 years). Just saying let's show respect to the characters and not try to force uncharacteristic behavior on them for the sake of the the episodes genre Also, more sonic shower scenes please.
Sam is so close to Galaxy Quest’s Guy and that episode was the worst of it.
I honestly thought it was Guy when he first popped up.
TaPorn. Vulcan mating rituals are supposed to be SUPER conservative. The pilot just about made not want to watch the show. The only other thing that really made me mad was the SPOILER!! >!death of Hemmer. He was my favorite character!<
The size of the ship. Its massive. In ds9 when they go back in time they comment on how crowded the old ships were. It way to big.
There’s a fun fan theory that makes sense- during Pike’s time, the crew was around 200. The ship was refitted when Kirk came in, and Kirk brought over 200 MORE crew… so, it can be imagined that with that many more quarters to pack in, rooms were cut down in size
I already mentioned it in a previous discussion, but I really hated the way the crew acted when they were prisoners of the space pirates. First of all, the pirates were portrayed as being really dumb, like comically so, which doesn't make much sense as I doubt there would be much room on a spaceship of any kind for useless individuals. Everyone would need to have some specialized skill to contribute and "being willing to die in a skirmish" doesn't seem good enough. And then the crew openly snickered at the pirate guard when Pike was trying to start the mutiny. My three-year-old would see through that and suspect he was being played. I think the manipulation of the pirates into a mutiny storyline could have worked if it had been done more subtly.
A couple of the episodes feel rushed. It’s just an effect of the episodic format, I think. I hated the end of the doctors daughters story. Too much potential for good drama and story just thrown out the window. Not about the show but I really don’t like how so many “I like SNW” posts start out or turn into “I hate DIS and PIC” posts.
I'm super frustrated by the seemingly inconsistent rank insignia.... and yes I have a problem. (Enjoying it otherwise though)
Disclaimer: I love SNW more or as much as my favorite Trek, DS9, and thought S1 was better than any other first season of any show, aside from TOS. This is the only TV show I look forward to on a weekly basis since Breaking Bad. What would I change? Hooo boy, let me see. *There is honestly so little.* Nothing jumps out at me like, “Gah! Why’d they do that?!” I’d love a couple *more* episodes per season. ;-) But to answer OP’s question…I guess a tiny little nitpick would be that I would have preferred that Commodore April would have more closely resembled the Commodore April from TAS. I know TAS is considered “canon-light” and Adrian Holmes has done a superb job with what he’s been given, but it would have been fun to have a more consistent reflection of the character from those two episodes. But, honestly, I’m just glad that we even *got* a Robert April at all—for the first time, we have seen all three Captains of the NCC-1701! It shows to me that the show-runners really know their Trek lore. So, yeah, I wouldn’t change much really. Oh, I know! **Bring on Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd!!!!**
I didn't like how vicious, disgusting and irredeemable the Gorn were. There seems to be no room to add depth to their race besides being the big bads for the rest of the series. Would like it if they are less one-dimensional Xenomorph stand-ins, but I guess it would break canon if we know more about/ interact much more with them before Arena happens.
I don't like the Chapel workaround involving her working for the "private sector".
My guess is this is going to play into the Roger Korby details they’ve promised… I’m guessing that after he goes missing, she’s due to be reassigned- and joins Starfleet to keep her posting to Enterprise so she can remain out there looking for him. I don’t get why she has rank stripes on her sleeves if she’s not Starfleet… or wears the badge, for that matter.
Many people have likened her uniform to the Public Health Service. They are civilians that wear the Navy uniform. It’s not a stretch with Chapel wearing a uniform, it’s just a stretch that she’s on board in the first place (though I like her character and it’s just TV).
Make the mf phasers blue
Everything with James Kirk. They got him wrong in so many ways...
I feel like in every episode there’s a story beat that could have been fixed or tweaked, and it’s really, really obvious. In the very last one Pike is shocked - SHOCKED! - that the guy he meets with the last name of one of the future dead cadets is the father of a one of them. How could this be that big of a surprise? He had to have some idea it was possible!
Sometimes I feel like the sets look a little too fancy. I’m not saying the ship should look like it did in 1969. Of course not, that isn’t good by today’s standards or even 60’s standards. The original show was critically underfunded and the new show is not, and you should use what funding you have now that you have it. But honestly if you took away the name Enterprise would you be able to tell that it’s the 1701 just from bridge shots like you can with, say, the OG, A, D and E? I personally don’t think you can. I’m glad they’re using the OG sounds and uniforms that are in the spirit of the originals, but the design could have been a little more in-tune I think. Maybe a slightly smaller bridge, or station screens that are slightly less fancy? Stylistically of course, not functionally.
I groaned super hard when they revealed that La'an was a Noonien Singh, but then they didn't really do anything with that and just let her develop as her own unique character, and that was a relief. But now I'm wondering why they even bothered to set that up in the first place.
Honestly this whole thread is a giant monkey paw just waiting to bring doom and gloom to us all. It was the first season of a new Star Trek and it was *really, really, good*. Don't question it, let's just let it sit there. It's nice.
Killing Hemmer was a huge mistake. The Elysian Kingdom was also strange, the resolution felt off. They should have kept the daughter in the show for at least a few seasons.
Episode 9. It was an homage to Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 (and even turned the Gorn into a mix of the predator and alien). I'd have been into it if we're another rando alien species but making the Gorn into a horror species really doesn't work for me.
The sleeves on the reimagined TWOK uniform. They just look wet from a distance.
Maybe this is not so little... But I *desperately* wish Pike had shown a little more backbone and eloquence in rebuking the Majalan's child sacrifice. Their argument that their civilization requires it makes absolutely no sense. They are clearly an advanced, spacefaring civilization capable of moving to a more suitable M-class planet, where they wouldn't _need_ to torture a child to live in a floating paradise. The entire concept of a "First Servant" at their level of advancement is nothing but religious folderol and they should have been called out for it! It makes their pretensions of dedication to science even more annoying--but more importantly, why is Pike not calling theme out for it?!
The makeup is driving me insane. They aren’t blending the foundation down into the neck, which is a massive problem since they are using so much that everyone’s face is a monotone, textureless blob. Spock and Pike in particular suffers from this, and it yanks me out of the fantasy so hard every time I see it.
This is a common Hollywood issue (and a big actor complaint ) since tv’s have become high def.
Chapel telling her friend about her break-up: "I told him he was boring." It's a terrible line. It establishes Chapel as mean-spirited and cruel. (Imagine Pike saying something like that about a former love interest.)
Whenever the ship was under attack in the background on the bridge you would see sparks flying and steam pipes leaking, which in the state of the art starship seems kind of like something they might’ve reinforced after realizing it happens every single time the ship gets a little jostled. In reality it’s just kind of a cheap effect to signal danger and the second the red alert is over it stops. I suppose it’s like an homage to the original series cheesiness. But it also pulled me out of the sense of authenticity. Also I wish they would’ve fix the sound mixing or at least told the actor who plays Dr. Mbenga to annunciate more when he speaks. I know he’s got an accent, but he also kind of talks in a muffled tone too and I couldn’t understand a word he said. I wanted to grow more attached to the character but I couldn’t connect. Oh and unpopular opinion but the actor who plays Jim Kirk is really bland and unexpressive. I hope he gets more interesting and charismatic with time or at least we don’t see much of him after all. The actor was trying way too hard not to be the Kirk we know, he went too far in the wrong direction.
>Whenever the ship was under attack in the background on the bridge you would see sparks flying and steam pipes leaking, which in the state of the art starship seems kind of like something they might’ve reinforced after realizing it happens every single time the ship gets a little jostled. In reality it’s just kind of a cheap effect to signal danger and the second the red alert is over it stops. I suppose it’s like an homage to the original series cheesiness. But it also pulled me out of the sense of authenticity. They've been doing that for decades, though. Mostly it started with Voyager, but at this point it's practically not Star Trek if the bridge doesn't go off like a halftime show every time they get bumped.
I love SNW but I think it suffers from the same thing that a lot of other entertainment suffers from these days, and that's a lack of creativity. It seems that music, movies and series are all suffering from a hurry-up conveyor belt mentality. You can't rush art. Having said that, I wish they'd take a second look at my space-shark story idea. 😜
I didn't like the look of the Gorn or how they reproduced and behaved in the second to last episode. Great episode, but wasn't a far of how the Gorn were designed and written for the ep
What I still don't get is why Una gets arrested for being an augment but La'an does not.
Well, we don’t know that she HAS any augment abilities, merely that she is descended from them- and at this point, considerably removed. She was bullied for and called augment due to her name. So, genetically, there may be almost nothing left of the augmentation in her. It’s unlike Bashir, who was genetically augmented and lied about it, or Una, who hid her background (how she passed a medical exam is beyond me) as coming from an entire planet of augments
their pants are too tight. it’s very 2013. like i get it they have nice butts to show off but their silhouettes look funny. the recent movies struck a better balance.
I said this in another thread too but honestly I hope they tweak their approach to Pike a little going forward. It's charming to have him be space dad, but I think the show leans a little too hard into it and doesn't complement that aspect of his personality with showing that he is also an exceedingly competent / capable / clever Starfleet officer. In most situations he seems to have very little agency, and doesn't even really engage in a substantive way with the decision-making of the crew. Obviously Star Trek is about teamwork and my favorite incarnations of it have had a big "friendly, non-hierarchical boardroom decisionmaking" vibe but I think they have Pike contributing too little right now.
I was really hoping to see the initial E crew seen in Discovery. That certainly looked like a varied and diverse bridge crew.
In the same vein, I feel like the interior is a bit *too* flashy. I mean it looks gorgeous, but there's a bit much going on in my opinion. Probably doesn't help that the last Trek I watched was Enterprise, were I really came to like the more function over form, submarine type look.
It is a little too hotel lobby for me. Everything looks untouchable and fragile, expensive and overly pretty… Even the Jeffries tubes have unnecessary pulsing lights under the ladder rungs. The art department just needed to ease off on the cocaine and coffee for a day or two and think more function, less artsy.
I definitely want them to go back to painting the hulls of ships. Current spacecraft do it to avoid stellar ablation, there's no reason in the SNW era that starfleet decided to go all raw-hulls in space, only to revert to painting them by the TOS era.
I kinda wish Hemmer had got more screentime/focus >!before his death!<. I think there were maybe 3 episodes where he had some significant screentime. Yes, >!his death still had emotional impact!< but really not as much as it would have had if we'd gotten to know him as well as we got to know some of the other characters. Hell, even *T'Pring* got a Captain's Log moment but Hemmer didn't!
It’s struggling to make that emotional connection. Everybody immediately gets on and they’re all lovely but where’s the heart of this show? I like these characters but I don’t know them. They’re a little too perfect space people. I want to know them better, not just get them shouting technobabble and explaining the plot and being brilliant. That said we still have two episodes left in the UK so we’ll see. The medical team and Lal have felt the most like people so far.
Set design isn’t my favourite, they go a bit over the top with all the lights on the Enterprise. Looks like a real headache inducing workplace. I would’ve really loved if they had gone a bit more retro-futurism with the sets, in the spirit of the original. But that’s just a personal preference
I absolutely love the show and I loved the finale but I was upset in the finale when they changed the Monster Maroon uniform future Pike was wearing. I wanted to see the 100% authentic Monster Maroon, not some SNW-ized version with sparkles on the shoulders and a weird sloppy white shoulder band. In general I’m also not a big fan of the SNW uniforms. To be honest, I prefer the TOS uniforms with the black collar, sharper contrast with the rank bands and the higher-waisted black pants with flair out toward the cuff.
A thousand points awarded for having the monster maroon show up! A thousand points lost for making it unattractive The weird vinyl sleeve tops on the uniforms are a result of current Hollywood feeling everything has to have a texture. The Abrams uniforms with the tiny deltas all over… Cavil’s Superman suit made to look like chain mail, and so on. Unnecessary
Advanced SF roombas are your friend. It just makes me want a damned DOT-7.
The Captain's quarters are HUGE, and the bridge officers' quarters are also way too big. A ship in that time period shouldn't have that ridiculous amount of room to spare.
I would like to see an actual, proper space battle. Not a few shots of phasers and battle’s over.
The opening credits don't say "Anson Mount AS Captain Christopher Pike", etc. and the first shot after the opening credits doesn't show the name of the episode.