Star Trek

A general discussion forum, plus hauls and silly games.
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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Strange New Worlds
season 2, episode 8

Spoiler
The Enterprise picks up a Klingon ambassador, Dak'Rah, who had defected during the war and is now a big part of peace talks between the Federation and Klingon Empire. While the majority of the Enterprise crew didn't participate in the war, those that did have a problem with him being on the ship for atrocities he'd done during the war. He's known as "Butcher of D'Gal" for killing his own men.

Turns out, it's all a lie. M'Benga was actually the Butcher of D'Gal, having taken a dose of the temporary super soldier serum we saw him and Chapel take a few episodes back. Dak'Rah hid during the attack and simply took credit for it afterword to gain favor with the Federation. He confronts M'Benga who wants nothing to do with him, and eventually Dark'Rah is stabbed and killed by M'Benga.
I didn't care for this episode. Sort of reminded me of DS9's "The Siege of AR-558"... Only, as I've said for so many episodes this season, not well written. I really didn't like what it did to M'Benga as a character. I get they want to show us a character suffering from PTSD and all but... It's not very Star Trek with how it is dealt with. Or rather, the lack there-of. Same thing with Pike doing absolutely nothing despite seeing how uncomfortable certain crew members are, and even Number One pointing it out to him. It made Pike look incompetent as a Captain.
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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Star Trek: The Musical aka Strange New Worlds
season 2, episode 9

Spoiler
The Enterprise is studying a subspace fold that Spock believes they can utilize to enhance subspace communications, but so far without luck. Pelia suggests using a song instead (not sure why this would make any difference) so Spock and Uhura try it... The Subspace fold sends out a pulse which causes the crew to break out in song.

Spock theorizes the subspace fold is affecting the quantum uncertainty field of their reality. Basically, the idea they're going with is a multiverse concept where some other reality where they sing like in musicals is bleeding over into their reality, causing them to sing at moments of high emotion. It's just... this is too silly of a concept for Star Trek to me. Spock theorizes they can use the Heisenberg compensator in the transporter to shoot a beam from the deflector dish to restore the fold and restore their own reality. I swear the writers are just throwing random technobabble they've heard in random episodes together at this point. The plan fails and only causes the field to expand, getting the Klingons attention who intend of shooting at the fold to close it (they claim because the singing causes them dishonor... since when? Klingons traditionally tell their history and war stories in song. The Enterprise crew also calls the Klingon ships K’Tinga class, even though they are D-7s), which the crew determines will destroy half the galaxy, having considered the idea already. Eventually Uhura determines every time they sing it causes the field to spike (even though she also says it's barely noticeable). So what they need is a big musical finale, which somehow closes the fold.

James T. Kirk returns yet again for this episode, I feel further breaking the canon that he shouldn't really know Pike. I feel like we're seeing him more than his brother, who is actually supposed to be a crew member of the Enterprise. Not really sure why James is here. They mention he's on the Enterprise to shadow Una to prepare for his duties as a first officer, but it's pretty obvious the writers just needed an excuse for him to be there for La'an's songs. He ends up telling her he's sort of in a relationship with Carol, who is pregnant. It would have been nice if they'd showed another Federation starship dropping him off. He beams aboard, seemingly from nowhere.

The Klingon captain in this episode is played by Bruce Horak, who previously played Hemmer.
To be honest, I don't know how I feel about this episode. I mean, obviously it's meant to just be a silly and fun episode. Which is was. But it was too silly for my taste when it comes to Star Trek. And the in-universe explanation they gave for why they were singing, as well as all the potential solutions they came up with, just didn't work for me.
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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Startrek.com has posted a first look at Prodigy season 2. No idea where or when these episodes will air at though since the "home of all things Star Trek" has kicked the series off the platform... I'm not bitter about it. What would give you that impression? At any rate... The clip shows us the EMH, voiced by the one and only Robert Picardo, taking the kids to the brand new USS Voyager-A. I remember seeing a while back that he had said he'd been approached about reprising his role. I'd have liked to see him in live action again, but it's good to see the character turn up here. The Doctor explains the new Voyager is a "Lamar special class science vessel", which looks like a cross between an Intrepid-class and a Sovereign-class (even notice details of the Sovereign's captain's yacht). The CGI model looks a little rough to me... like they literally just blended the two models together... I like the overall look of the ship, I just wish they'd made it a bit more distinct.
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andersonh1
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Re: Star Trek

Post by andersonh1 »

That was a fun clip. Nice to see the Doctor is just as full of himself as ever! :lol:
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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Strange New Worlds
season 2, episode 10
Season Finale

Spoiler
The USS Cayuga is visiting the colony world of Parnassus Beta, where Chapel is giving them a hand. Captain Batel has a chat with Pike when the comm line suddenly goes down. A shuttle crashes nearby, and a Gorn warship looms in the sky. The Enterprise receives a garbled distress call and, on the way to help, Admiral April advises Pike that Starfleet wants to avoid a war with the Gorn (why isn't attacking a Federation colony automatically considered an act of war? For some reason, it's not considered to be a Federation colony, despite being a human colony clearly getting support from the Federation... I dunno, this makes no sense). The Enterprise discovers the wreckage of the Cayuga, but are unable to use their sensors, transporters or comms. They're still able to receive signals from outside whatever is blocking them however, with Starfleet sending them a message from the Gorn, showing a border line going through the middle of the solar system. No idea how this works, considering the orbit of the planets will take them to the other side of the border at some point. The Enterprise cannot cross the line, but they decide to sneak a shuttle through the debris field of the Cayuga to look for survivors on the planet.

The crew seem oddly gung ho about killing the Gorn, breaking out new weapons and scanners designed specifically to fight them. I get their last encounter was traumatic, but it's odd for Starfleet officers to be so... out for blood. They eventually locate survivors, after running into a trap set by Montgomery Scott, the survivor of the shuttle that crashed at the start of the episode. Scotty reveals he he'd come from the USS Stardiver, which was surveying a nearby red supergiant, and was destroyed by the Gorn after some unusual solar mass ejections. Scotty survived by jury-rigging the shuttle for more range, and built a device that allowed him to fool the Gorn sensors. Pike, Scotty and Batel go to recover this device. Meanwhile, the Enterprise crew comes up with a plan to use the remains of the Cayuga saucer section to destroy the Gorn jamming device. Spock sets a few rockets, and Chapel, who somehow is the only person shown to have survived on the Cayuga (the Enterprise crew never properly checks for survivors on the saucer, so who knows how many people they inadvertently killed with this maneuver), helps him fight off an adult Gorn, who is trying to gain access to the computer.

With the Gorn jamming device destroyed (which... the plan was to make it look like the saucer's orbit naturally decayed, but it clearly just makes a quick bee-line to the Gorn device on the planet, so I dunno who the crew thinks they're fooling), the Enterprise is able to beam up Spock and Chapel, as well as Scotty, Pike and Batel (whom Chapel immediately puts into stasis, because she's been infected by Gorn embryos) but the rest of the survivors and away team have been beamed up by the Gorn. As the Enterprise comes under attack by the Gorn ships, Pike is faced with a decision to either fight back and save their crewmates, or leave... TO BE CONTINUED.
For the most part, I felt this episode was slow. They spent a great deal of time explaining things, which slowed down the story. Some of which seems unnecessary with the unnecessary changes they've made to the Gorn. I'm still not a fan of what they're doing with the Gorn in this series. It just doesn't work with what we know of the Gorn established in previous series, and I'm not sure how this is supposed to work with TOS, since Starfleet shouldn't even know about the Gorn yet. Unless they plan on explaining more changes to the timeline thanks to the temporal wars, like they've done with the Eugenics War earlier in this season.

I did enjoy seeing
Spoiler
Scotty. I felt the actor, Martin Quinn, did a pretty good job of it (and is actually from Scotland). Although it's making feel like we're going to see TOS characters altogether at some point (they're only missing Sulu, Bones and Chekov), which has me somewhat concerned. This is supposed to be a series about Pike's era as Captain of the Enterprise, not TOS crew. We don't need to see TOS crew besides Spock in this series.
.

For the season overall... Pretty disappointed in it honestly. I felt the first season was much stronger in terms of story telling. This season felt like a bunch of gimmicks. Which, in terms of the Lower Decks crossover was pretty good, but the rest I didn't really feel landed. And it also caused some tonal whiplash from one episode to the next... dark, comedy, dark, silly musical... I think they could have done a much better job with this season.
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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Lower Decks
season 4 episode 1


I'm not usually one to get goosebumps when a certain theme song plays, but this episode got me when the Voyager theme kicked in. It was great seeing the USS Voyager in this episode as a few Cerritos crew took the ship to Earth to become a museum. Nice that they show her spending some time as a museum on the grounds at Starfleet headquarters, as Admiral Janeway said happened in her timeline, and mention that it'll eventually be taken to the fleet museum where we saw it in Picard.
Spoiler
The hijinks were fun call backs to many Voyager episodes. While I did enjoy the majority of it, I think they took a few of them over the top... How did the Macrovirus turn a Borg nanoprode into a macroprobe? Why was the Clown one of the holograms created when he was never in Voyager's computer system? And they use Neelix's cheese to break the ship? In the actual Voyager episode, the problem was that the bacteria in the cheese caused a virus to spread to the bio-neural gel packs. It wasn't the cheese itself. And rather than deal with the moral issues of multiple "Tuvix" situations, they downplay it by turning them all into a blob creature. To separate them all back to normal, they use a modified tricorder can detect... personalities. They could have come up with something better.
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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Very Short Trek

I'm not going to bother reviewing these, but I did want to comment on them... These are supposed to be funny little clips in The Animated Series style to celebrate TAS 50th anniversary. I'd have to say it fails miserably at that. I've watched the first two, and they're just terrible. The first episode was "Kirk" (not sure if he was actually supposed to be or not) using idioms like "skin a cat", which offends various crew members. They quickly run the joke into the ground and simultaneously take it too far with aliens that have knickers, a butt and a screw for heads. The second episode is Spock not understanding humor and shows a gag reel... Well, it started out with something gory which wasn't funny and it never got funny.

I have to wonder who approved these stories or thought this was a good way to celebrate the original Animated series.

Edit: They're all out now. The last two episodes were alright, and was more what all of the episodes should have been.
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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Lower Decks
season 4 episode 6 - Parth Ferengi's Heart Place


The Cerritos along with the Toronto visits Ferenginar to discuss the Ferengi's formal application for Federation membership. We get the guest stars of Max Grodénchik as Rom and Chase Masterson as Leeta. Great to hear their voices again. Rom is still Grand Negus, running the government alongside Leeta, and they have continued the reforms Grand Negus Zek started during DS9. For some reason, they portray Rom as an idiot obsessed with baseball and Leeta tries to get the contract rewritten to favor Ferenginar, which turns out all to be as test to make sure humans understand the Ferengi culture, before signing the original contract. Which... Why? Didn't they learn humans understand Ferengi culture during DS9? Besides, Rom was never the conniving type of Ferengi, and they're changing the Ferengi culture to make it more fair and balanced anyway. What's the point of going through all this? Meanwhile, the Lower Deckers are sent to update the Federation travel guide on Ferenginar. Decent enough episode, I just think they could have come up with a better twist, or at least a better explanation for it.
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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Star Trek: Prodigy has found a new home on Netflix.
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Star Trek

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Some interesting developments in this weeks Lower Decks, "The Inner Fight"...
Spoiler
Starfleet gets intel that the mysterious ship attacking non-Federation ships is a former Starfleet officer. On this list are Seven of Nine (despite not actually having been an officer at this point), Beverly Crusher, Thomas Riker and Nick Locarno. Seven we know from Picard has gone to join the Fenris Rangers, while Beverly is off raising her and Picard's son in secret. Interesting to learn Thomas Riker may still be alive. Last we saw him, he was given a life sentence by the Cardassians after stealing the Defiant to attack them. And Locarno was kicked out of the Academy after admitting he and his teammates lied after a fellow cadet was killed following an accident of a banned stunt they attempted.

Turns out the reason Mariner wants to remain an Ensign is because she was friends with Sito Jaxa, one of the other cadets in Locarno's group (despite Sito saying she had no friends at the academy following the incident). After she was killed (in TNG episode Lower Decks), Mariner decided she didn't want to become a Captain who'd possibly have to order her friends to their deaths some day. Not sure why she thinks she has to stay an ensign to avoid giving that sort of order. I mean, that wasn't something Troi had to deal with until she took the bridge officer's test, despite already holding the rank of a lieutenant commander. Granted, being a counselor I think made her generally exempt from the usual command structure, but still...

As it happens, the pilot of the mysterious ship turns out to be Locarno, with Robert Duncan McNeill reprising the role. Be interesting if they address why he and Tom Paris are so similar, having been played by the same actor and have similar backstories for getting kicked out of Starfleet academy.
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