Logline
A distress call from Lt. Noonien-Singh compels Spock to disobey orders and take the USS Enterprise and its crew into disputed space, risking renewed hostilities with the Klingons in a bid to aid their shipmate.
Written by Henry Alonso Myers & Akiva Goldsman
Directed by Chris Fisher
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I’m not entirely sure if I have to spoiler tag this since this is in the discussion thread but I will anyways since the rule doesn’t say the threads are an exception to the rule.Edit: Thanks ValueSubtracted for the clarification on this.Really disliked this one. And I loved just about all of season 1.
One of the main things for me is that the pacing felt far too quick.
For instance, when getting the injection of the super serum, they only briefly mentioned M’Benga’s issue with it and quickly moved on without any sort of issues beyond that brief line.
I also have some issues with the characterization and general way the crew acted. They seemed a lot less professional in this and unlike an actual Starfleet crew.
Spock’s emotional side, while I suppose justified in-universe, made him feel a lot less “Spock” to me. I was fine with his behavior in season 1 but this just feels a bit far, to the point of him being nearly unrecognizable. His “I would like the ship to go. Now” make me physically recoil in cringe with how unfunny I found it to be.
M’Benga and Chapel just beating up a bunch of bad guys three separate times felt incredibly unnecessary and I fail to see any sort of reason there couldn’t have been some sort of clever escape rather than bland, mindless fighting. I think I skipped a whole minute total of them just punching the bad guys with how long the scenes drew on for. And the way M’Benga’s issue with the super serum was just brushed over with a fleeting line came across as poorly executed.
La’an outdrinking a klingon seemed rather ridiculous and all I could think of was that it seemed like a bad D&D introduction to a stereotypical “cool” character. And then her burping? Did they really need a burp joke in this? It came across as uncharacteristically juvenile for the show.
That said, I did like a bit of it. Visual effects were great as always and I appreciated the slightly different intro. I’m glad the cliffhanger from last season both wasn’t immediately resolved or dwelled upon too much. The false flag operation was a neat idea and it was cool to see yet another type of ship. The Klingons looked and sounded perfect and much more similar to how they were in 90s Trek, I’m glad the design was changed to this from their design in Discovery.
Overall, I very much disliked it, despite a few positive elements to it. No hate, I just disliked those parts of it I talked about.
Finally, this isn’t any sort of issue I take with the show but they said that the false flag ship was Crossfield class. However, it didn’t look anything like a Crossfield class beyond the ring in the saucer. Did Starfleet change the Crossfield class to a different design?
The Crossfield mismatch jumped out to me as well. A response earlier in this thread suggested perhaps the Klingons put the saucer of a Crossfield with the drive section of a different class because that is what they had lying around. Not explicitly stated, but that makes sense to me.
I agree with a lot of your concerns. Two medical staff taking drugs and beating a mob of Klingons senseless with little hesitation and no apparent ramifications is horribly, horribly out of tone with what I’ve come to expect from Trek.
Spock is another issue. I’m fine with him undergoing growth and having a full character arc - but I really don’t see this Spock becoming the one in TOS — a Spock who disobeyed direct orders from Starfleet and was reluctantly able to potentially kill two crew members goes on to have the disastrous experience as leader in the Galileo Seven? Best I can see is he actively goes as hard as he can on suppressing his human side in the near future but that wouldn’t make him suddenly forget what emotions, illogic, and all that human baggage feels like when he’s interacting with humans later in his career.
(And for the record - I really enjoy Ethan Peck as Spock and watching his struggles with his emotional control. I just don’t feel like it’s the same character as in TOS and don’t see how he’d get there.)
Yes, this is my main complaint with this episode and SNW wrt Spock in general. I sort of get the idea that he’s going on an arc from “Smiling Spock” in the cage to TOS, but it’ll be a real weird kind of change over to TOS Spock IMHO from this. And like you said, how does he become the Spock in the Galileo Seven? At this point it sort of seems like he’d need a mind wipe or something…
I certainly would have thought something like him saying “It is illogical to require “a thing” to carry out lawful orders lieutenant.” and if pressed again something like “We do not have time to waste - carry out your orders”.
This “everyone has a thing” is stupid, and to do it in multiple series?
And Spock’s whole thing to continue to wait / worry about M’Benga and Chapel after saying their choice was logical didn’t fit for me, nor did his reaction to Chapel. How does he go from that to TOS “ignoring/not noticing” Chapel’s thing for him, and lack of interest in her?
I noticed Kirk didn’t have a “thing” in TOS. It’d be funny if he at least thought having a warp catch phrase was stupid and didn’t do it in SNW.
I recall reading somewhere that Akiva is trying to arc spock from “smiling spock” in The Cage through koh’linar and into TOS spock over the lifespan of SNW. Spock ditching his emotional blocks and starting to ‘lose it’ already this season would play directly into that plan. He continues unraveling for, say, this season and part of next, and then he embraces koh’linar to regain composure and control of his emotions. Perhaps McCoy is around for this particular event, witnessing Spock’s ‘transition’ into a computer, setting up all the remarks from TOS.
Except Spock didn’t do Koh’linar till TMP, or are you suggesting that there were different stages of the ritual?
@Jceggbert5 @Frainian that makes a lot of sense. I was sort of wondering how they might navigate Spock’s lack of understanding of human emotions and behavior in TOS.