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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount, May 5)

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Js1

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2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Yep. Helps that the main cast were together in Discovery.  This is so much better than the other shows.

Mount elevates the whole cast. He’s SO damn charismatic. Peck really studied Nimoy - nailing that  

La’al is giving me Cara Drummer from The Expanse vibes. Love that. 

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27 minutes ago, Red Five said:

Do I need to watch Discovery prior to watching this?

No.

18 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

They're not going to have that stupid spoor drive in this, are they?  That's when I bailed on discovery.  Fuck that unrealistic bullshit.

No. 

15 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Is Kurtzman at all involved in this show? 

This is mostly Goldsmith, at least in the first episode (he directed and co-wrote).  Kurtzman is busy on other projects, but has some writing/production credits (which could simply be from an event in the first episode that is a passing mention of an event in Discovery.  Kurtzman has been busy on The Man Who Fell to Earth for HBO or Showtime or whoever.

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2 hours ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

They're not going to have that stupid spoor drive in this, are they?  That's when I bailed on discovery.  Fuck that unrealistic bullshit.

In case you forgot 

Spoiler

They declared the crew dead and classified the spore drive technology/gave up on it. Hence why we have never heard of it post-Disco in the timeline. Gave themselves a good out since Disco went so far in the future and they have like 1000 years of no Spore drive to work with

 

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2 hours ago, Red Five said:

Do I need to watch Discovery prior to watching this?

I’d actually suggest season 2 solely bc there’s quite a few references to the events that involved Pike’s time as captain of the Discovery 

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1 hour ago, Js1 said:

I’d actually suggest season 2 solely bc there’s quite a few references to the events that involved Pike’s time as captain of the Discovery 

True, but if you are familiar with Pike from TOS/The Cage, you're part of the way there.

Also, we really need Spock to have hot married Vulcan sex.  Words that a teen/20-something/30-something me thought I'd never utter.

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So I watched it again over dinner with my wife, and she liked it, she bailed on Disco/Picard because she has enough serialized dramas in her life.

First Impression: This is the best first episode of a Star Trek TV series I've seen in many years.   Certainly beats the hell out of anything in the current crop of Star Trek.  It felt like a Star Trek series created in the 60s or 70s with better effects/looser restrictions/etc., and this actually felt like the closest thing we've gotten to a Gene Roddenberry show since TOS (sorry TNG). I'd argue that it's better than the DS9/Voyager/Enterprise first episodes. Those three shows (and TNG) did not have the baggage that Discovery and Picard have saddled us with at times, and SNW benefitted from an incredibly low bar set by Disco/Picard.  And I have nothing against Prodigy (not the target audience) or Lower Decks (it's a comedy set within TNG's era, and I like it), but they are animated series.  SNW feels like it was made by people who give a shit about Star Trek.

Actors/Characters:  Felt like the crew was an actual crew and had actual chemistry, and you completely understood where everybody was coming from.  Does help that we got the Holy Trinity of Pike/#1/Spock throughout much of S2 of Disco.  Pike bent/broke rules not because "I'M CAPTAIN PIKE AND I CAN BEND OR BREAK RULES BECAUSE FUCK YOU" like we got with Disco, but because of thoughtful decisions that he agonized over (and I got shades of TOS Kirk at times in his decision-making).  Spock and Number One were just fine (as they were in Disco and the shorts). Uhuru was great, navigator was great, tossing a Noonien Singh descendant into the mix was just fine (and if you paused the screen and read her entry in Pike's data pad thing, you probably see who the Big Baddie this season is).  I think she played well off of Spock.  Spock's wife homerdrool.gif.  The doctor was great.  Nurse Chapel homerdrool.gif.  The crew just blended together well and there wasn't a bunch of bullshit artificial drama meant to make them hate each other from the moment they meet and then finally come around and be friends later in the season.  If Noonien Singh had been introduced in Disco, it would have been "OMG EVERYBODY HATE HER UNTIL SHE PROVES HERSELF!"  Pike dealing with his future was handled really well.

Plot: A Star Trek episode with a beginning, middle, and end, all in one episode, and you don't have to wait till late in the season to see if it pays off.  And we got the old-school TOS moral/message/metaphor of Roddenberry holding a mirror up to society, but handled well (post-TOS shows could mangle this, although TNG and DS9 had a couple that were awesome).  It just was just a starship with a crew who liked each other, who were out meeting aliens and exploring space.  So happy they avoided the dumb turbo action bullshit and lots of explosions of the Abrams/Kurtzman movies. Major conflict was resolved because Pike stayed cool and used his head.

Classic Star Trek: Pike didn't steal or destroy the warp bomb, but just used his head and gave them a choice of getting their shit together and joining the Federation, or destroying themselves.  We saw lots of Vietnam/Cold War messaging throughout TOS, and SNW was obviously made before the Ukrainian war, but it will be interesting to see if we get shades of the Ukraine/Russian stuff tossed into the mix.

Production: This was the series that a lot of us have wanted.  Competently made, and I mean that as a compliment. Loved the "bright" feel to it, something we were missing with Disco and Picard, and not washed out/lens flared/Abramsversed.  Felt very expensive, felt like lots of physical sets, and effects weren't there just for their own sake.  Pacing was great -  never looked at my watch.  

Random Notes:

  • Loved the look of the Enterprise
  • Loved the look of the Tricorder - felt old school TOS with the same aesthetics, just some updates to make it look modern.
  • Loved the look of various instrument panels, tools, etc. (same feelings as Tricorder)
  • Thought the bridge and captain's quarters were a little too big 
  • Loved the transporter stuff

More Randomness.  They kept the 1960s Samuel Kirk Pornstache with SNW's Samuel Kirk.

deadgeorge.jpg

Samuel-Kirk-Strange-New-Worlds.png?q=50&

 

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Spoiler because this is about the future

Noonien Singh's background

Spoiler

If you read Pike's data pad thing, and listened to what she said, the Gorn are going to be the baddies going forward.  The datapad fleshed things out more.

45-second scene from next week's episode, I laughed at what Spock did.

Spoiler

 

 

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Crap, I left this out:  When Pike beamed in between the two leaders, that was a callback to "The Day The Earth Stood Still" that he was watching earlier in the episode when he was in Montana.

And the guy who directed The Day The Earth Stood Still was friends with Roddenberry and even directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Starting out the series with a spot-on reference to The Day The Earth Stood Still was a fantastic way to start things.

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bolverk

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One other additional detail that harkens back to TOS was the lack of concern or even explanation about why Earthling voyagers would speak the same language or breathe the same air as the beings who live on the planet they're visiting.

It's just a fun ride.

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Parliament

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On 5/5/2022 at 2:41 PM, atomheartbevo said:

Kurtzman has been busy on The Man Who Fell to Earth for HBO or Showtime or whoever.

Thanks for that.  Now I know to avoid The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Episode 1 was good.  Didn't try to do too much, showed us some things and left some things for later.  I'm Team La'an.  I generally dislike prequels, and this show would be better if they just put them all in the Picard time.  But, knowing Pike's end really raises the stakes.  And that's cool.

So screw it.  I'll forget Picard and keep my Paramount subscription.

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Buzzrock

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How the heck are they going to square La’an? Seems like a big miss that no one would have brought up the fact that one of Khan’s relatives had served on the Enterprise.

It’s a rhetorical question of course. I’ll be interested to see how they do it.

And I had no idea there was a TOS episode that had Khan in it and began the whole saga. Checking that out now.

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6 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

How the heck are they going to square La’an? Seems like a big miss that no one would have brought up the fact that one of Khan’s relatives had served on the Enterprise.

It’s a rhetorical question of course. I’ll be interested to see how they do it.

There's over 400+ crew members, and at this point in time, Khan should have had tens of thousands of descendants.  Being a descendant, and being that her family's colony was wiped out, I'm guessing that's one of the ships of Khan's followers that was sent out.  I'm really intrigued by how they are handling the Gorn.

6 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

And I had no idea there was a TOS episode that had Khan in it and began the whole saga. Checking that out now.

A very interesting one, given that it spawns Wrath of Khan.

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47 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

Tens of thousands? 200 years is only about 8 generations.

Depends on the size of the families - if I recall, Khan's people bred like rabbits (breeding a race of supermen or whatever).

I have ancestors from the 1780s/1790s that have nearly 50,000 living descendants.

  • First Generation: 8 kids
  • Second: 48 kids (say the first generation had 6 kids apiece)
  • Third: 240 kids (say next gen had 5 kids apiece)
  • Fourth: 960 kids (say 4 kids)
  • Fifth: 3,800+ kids (say 4 kids)
  • Sixth: 15,000+ (say 4 kids)
  • Seventh: 45,000+ (say 3 kids)

That's nearly 220 years or so right there if we say around 30 years between generations, and the reality is that it would be closer to 20-25.  And I'm being generous with the earlier generations - chances are the first four generations would have been at least 6 apiece.  But I'm also applying 18th/19th century agricultural demographics to Star Trek.

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I can only imagine what social media would have been like in if it had been around for TOS in the 60s or TNG in the 80s. I followed a couple of deep discussions about Trek in general, and it turned towards the first episode of Strange New Worlds.  Some people were grumbling that this first episode was just the Cold War/nuclear proliferation/Cuban Missile Crisis, repackaged as a Star Trek episode and that this was already done in TOS and done multiple times in TNG.    

Yeah, it has already been done, but while a lot of people picked up on them using the Cold War/Cuban Missile Crisis/etc. as the backdrop, I kind of feel like it was more about the opportunity for the writers to retcon World War III/Eugenics War, which means that they will probably answer @Buzzrock's questions about La’an in future episodes.  It wasn't subtle either - Pike literally telling them about the events leading up to the Eugenics War which devastated Earth.

Without spoiling the TOS episode @Buzzrock they've had to retcon the dates around World War III/Eugenics Wars in the past and move it a little farther out at least once before SNW - originally it was supposed to happen between 1992-1996.

Also, there is an episode of Enterprise, Borderland, that was in the 4th season, that discusses the Eugenics Wars, but I don't know about jumping into the 4th season of Enterprise for one episode, unless you've watched it before.

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8 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I can only imagine what social media would have been like in if it had been around for TOS in the 60s or TNG in the 80s. I followed a couple of deep discussions about Trek in general, and it turned towards the first episode of Strange New Worlds.  Some people were grumbling that this first episode was just the Cold War/nuclear proliferation/Cuban Missile Crisis, repackaged as a Star Trek episode and that this was already done in TOS and done multiple times in TNG.    

Yeah, it has already been done, but while a lot of people picked up on them using the Cold War/Cuban Missile Crisis/etc. as the backdrop, I kind of feel like it was more about the opportunity for the writers to retcon World War III/Eugenics War, which means that they will probably answer @Buzzrock's questions about La’an in future episodes.  It wasn't subtle either - Pike literally telling them about the events leading up to the Eugenics War which devastated Earth.

Without spoiling the TOS episode @Buzzrock they've had to retcon the dates around World War III/Eugenics Wars in the past and move it a little farther out at least once before SNW - originally it was supposed to happen between 1992-1996.

Also, there is an episode of Enterprise, Borderland, that was in the 4th season, that discusses the Eugenics Wars, but I don't know about jumping into the 4th season of Enterprise for one episode, unless you've watched it before.

There was a Eugenics War in the 90 with Khan. They’ve repeatedly said Eugenics WarS with a S. I’d say there may have been another eugenics conflict between the second American civil war (i doubt it was an actual war, but exactly what we are seeing now in our society) and WW3, somehow having to do with Adam Soong after the Picard stuff. 

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Speaking of Enterprise, I kind of started rewatching it again, as it's the last of the Rick Berman/Brannon Braga Star Trek, and it's interesting - Enterprise was also the last Star Trek TV made with direct links to Gene Roddenberry (Berman and Braga worked for/with him on TNG, etc. in the 80s).  It's the last of Star Trek TV that has links to the more literary sci-fi roots of Star Trek in the 50s/60s/70s - a lot of Star Trek writers were actually published (and respected) sci-fi authors.  That's versus Kurtzman coming in with a movie-making/writing background, which is why I think Disco and Picard feel so unlike earlier Trek TV.  I can argue that Picard feels like a 2-hour movie stretched out to 10 episodes.

Anyways, I feel like them making a massive nod to The Day The Earth Stood Still (the director also directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture) as well as Childhood's End (Arthur C. Clarke) in this first episode is why I'm feeling so optimistic about SNW getting back to ST's roots, but I'm also setting myself up to be disappointed.

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6 minutes ago, Js1 said:

There was a Eugenics War in the 90 with Khan. They’ve repeatedly said Eugenics WarS with a S. I’d say there may have been another eugenics conflict between the second American civil war (i doubt it was an actual war, but exactly what we are seeing now in our society) and WW3, somehow having to do with Adam Soong after the Picard stuff. 

Yeah, this is one of those times that you can tell the early writers were just happy to get three seasons out of Star Trek - in the late 60s,  some of the folks working on TOS had literally been alive from the time of the first powered airplane flight to the moon landing. I'm sure the 1990s seemed a long way off in the distant future, given how fast technology and society had been moving along.  And here we are with Star Trek going on 50+ years now.

I'm probably reading into it too much, but I kind of wonder if Pike retconning the Eugenics Wars timeline a bit and La'an's mentions of the Gorn was the most important thing in the first episode, as far as future plots/character development.

Edit: They did shoehorn a map of the universe into the episode, showing all of the familiar locations/planets/etc. as well.

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20 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:


This is also true. Definitely feels like a spiritual successor to TOS and TNG. The production is really good too. Pike’s hair is ridiculous but who cares.

I’m close to Anson Mount’s age and if I had his hair, I’d wear it in ridiculous styles showing it off.

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1 hour ago, Buzzrock said:


This is also true. Definitely feels like a spiritual successor to TOS and TNG. The production is really good too. Pike’s hair is ridiculous but who cares.

My wish is it gets bigger and bigger every episode.

No 49 year old man should look that good, but thank God he does. 

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On 5/9/2022 at 4:33 PM, Buzzrock said:

How the heck are they going to square La’an? Seems like a big miss that no one would have brought up the fact that one of Khan’s relatives had served on the Enterprise.

It’s a rhetorical question of course. I’ll be interested to see how they do it.

And I had no idea there was a TOS episode that had Khan in it and began the whole saga. Checking that out now.

If you watch today’s episode 

Spoiler

She says Khan is an “ancestor” which you don’t really refer to a grandparent as that. So they may be murky on the exact relationship.
 

So far, only Pike and Number One know her background. So I don’t think it’ll be a huge thing she reveals to everyone on the crew to square with Kirk/Spock/Uhura not knowing much about Khan in TOS or being like “oh hey, didn’t y’all serve with Khan’s ancestor?”

 

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2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

In just under 10 years (on-screen time).

 

SNW season 1 is 2258
Kirk takes command of the Enterprise in 2265

So 8 years.  Will be interesting to see if Paramount stretches SNW out for 8 seasons or maybe 4, at which point it leads to Kirk taking command and the events of TOS. 

 

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