view the rest of the comments
Star Trek Social Club
r/startrek: The Next Generation
Star Trek news and discussion. No slash fic...
Maybe a little slash fic.
Rules
1 Be constructive
All posts/comments must be thoughtful and balanced.
2 Be welcoming
It is important that everyone from newbies to OG Trekkers feel welcome, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, religion or race.
3 Be truthful
All posts/comments must be factually accurate and verifiable. We are not a place for gossip, rumors, or manipulative or misleading content.
4 Be nice
If a polite way cannot be found to phrase what it is you want to say, don't say anything at all. Insulting or disparaging remarks about any human being are expressly not allowed.
5 Spoilers
Utilize the spoiler system for any and all spoilers relating to the most recently-aired episode. There is no formal spoiler protection for episodes/films after they have been available for approximately one week.
6 Keep on-topic
All submissions must be directly about the Star Trek franchise (the shows, movies, books, etc.). Off-topic discussions are welcome at c/Quarks.
7 Meta
Questions and concerns about moderator actions should be brought forward via DM.
Upcoming Episodes
| Date | Episode | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 09-03 | SNW 4x07 | “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” |
| 09-10 | SNW 4x08 | “Orders of Magnitude” |
| 09-17 | SNW 4x09 | "Once La’An a Time" |
| 09-24 | SNW 4x10 | "Tomorrow's Enterprise" |
| TBA | SFA 2x01 | TBA |
Wondering where to stream a series? Check here.
I feel like there were only 3 good episodes this season and 2 of them were very fan service. Tomorrow's Enterprise (this one) and Order of Magnitude (the badmiral one), and Off-Hour (the disaster one).
Soap Opera, Stoner Vacation, Dinosaur planet, weren't bad. But I do have a hard time recommending them.
Ghost Ship was really good, didn't feel like Star Trek. But it was good horror.
Casablanca and the Muppets, were cool concepts, but did not gel with me. They might be good, but need to give them time to age a bit in my brain.
Anyway, about this episode. Conceptually fantastic. Scott and Urural hooking up seems fine, there is a bit of playful interactions with them in the films, and I actually haven't watched all of TOS yet, but from some of the discussions of reddit, it appears there is also some implications there. So I feel that's kind of interesting.
Jumping forward to Star Trek: Year One pilot is fun, since we now know that won't be happening at all. And it did feel very classic Star Trek with the banter about bluffing in poker and Spock not getting it. It seems weird with all the work SNW did to get Spock more in touch with his human side, that he now feels more estranged then ever. But, it kind of works? Like it didn't break my suspension of disbelief at all.
I thought Pike was still a Captain during The Menagerie, but Memory Alpha says he was a Fleet Captain, which I guess is a billet and not an official rank? So maybe he was a Rear Admiral but serving as a Fleet Captain? I don't know man... military ranks be confusing. Time travel non-sense can also play a role...though that feels a bit disingenuous.
Also, I feel that the Enterprise was WAY too close to the event horizon. I can somewhat excuse Uhura jumping in to the black hole and not being crushed in to a singularity, because I feel like it was likely some kind of artificial blackhole, maybe made by the Prophet to give birth? I honestly would prefer if it was not the Prophets, because I feel like the universe feels too small now with all the recurring aliens. For all of Roddenberry's faults, making TNG need to stand on its own merits and force the writers to not reuse legacy TOS content was a really wise decision.
With that said, I hate that the best of SNW is the best of TOS. Two remakes of Balance of Terror, a remake of Arena, and this. There is a lot I like about SNW, but the best is not original content, and that annoys me.
You know what really annoyed me most about this episode. No one believed Uhura! You got to be shitting me, fucking weird ass time shit happens all the time, and they just encountered weird aliens living in a blackhole, why would you not believe her, or at least humor her, especially since you don't have any other leads. Picard didn't gaslight Beverly when she was in a similar situation when she was trapped in a pocket universe that was slowly falling apart. One of the things that annoys me the most about the new Star Trek is just how unprofessional everyone is. I can live with things being a bit more loose and casual, but just be professional about it.
Anyway, great episode, and in retrospective, I thought I didn't enjoy this season, but it turns out I actually did. So...there is that.
SNW has played fast-and-loose with what was established in "The Menagerie" - Kirk does call Pike "Fleet Captain" at the beginning of the message, and goes on to tell Commodore Mendez that he met Pike when he was promoted to fleet captain. It's not explicitly stated, but the obvious implication is that this was the only time Kirk met Pike.
But, Pike has already been temporarily promoted to fleet captain, back in "Lost In Translation." He does indeed meet Jim Kirk in that episode, which basically fulfills what Kirk said in TOS. Obviously, they've met many times since then, but it doesn't technically break anything, even though it clearly wasn't the original intent back in "The Menagerie".
I actually think this will end up being a common opinion. For all the hand-wringing about the "gimmicks," I think every individual episode was...fine, at worst. And I would strongly recommend taking another look at "A Case of Chiaroscuro" some day - I think it's pretty top-tier.
Fortunately, there's just enough wiggle room to accept the alternate explanation that Kirk is saying "I've known him since his promotion to Fleet Captain".
The other slightly odd bit of mild discontinuity is that half of the main TOS characters in The Menagerie Part I (Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty) know Captain Pike very very well, but none of them aside from Spock act like they do, nor do they display any dismay at discovering what's happened to their dear former captain (which Kirk only learns on visiting the base). Spock evidently has known for some time; long enough to have concocted his scheme and write the necessary route into a computer auto-navigation program, at least. But it's not clear whether anyone else found out before the episode. In any case, there isn't enough dialogue for these other characters in the episode to draw any concrete conclusions either way.