Janeway also attempts to give CPR to a dead crewman in Voy: Scientific Method

SNW I thought did a pretty good job of blending TNG and Disco and they look pretty good. Overall, probably TNG though

Ah, I understand your comment better. I am still not sure it’s enough to turn it (generally) into a no-go term. Plenty of news outlets have been commenting on Russian false flags against Ukraine and that’s used more in the context of how it’s used in this episode.

+1 for the complaint on the ‘do the thing’ comment. I feel like it’s because engage/make it so have become somewhat of a meme from Picard in TNG and they’re looking to replicate that.

But the idea every captain has their thing is one seemingly from the new Treks. In the past series, engage is used frequently by Kirk, Janeway and Sisko. (Kirk also frequently uses warp speed Mr sulu, ahead warp factor 1, take her out, first star to the left and straight on till morning etc.) They’ve been really pushing ‘let’s fly’ from Discovery, but it’s a terrible line and trying to force it just makes it cringy. I wish they’d used that time to expand the stealing the Enterprise plot a little more.

Yeah, the drug scene didn’t feel great to me, they literally could have just found phasers or found a cleverer way around it.

I was wondering if you could explain the issue with the term ‘false flag?’ As far as I was aware, it’s when party A carries out an action and tries to frame party B for it - which was exactly what was happening here.

Overall, a pretty good episode! I am slightly conflicted - I really like the character development of this Spock, but it’s also less and less feeling like the Spock we’ll eventually see in TOS. As the Klingon captain said, ‘the least Vulcan like Vulcan ever’ - whereas Spock in TOS is trying to suppress his human side and it takes him till like Star Trek VI to actually act on a hunch. But I am also conflicted as I really like this character too.

The stealing the Enterprise scene, I think Search for Spock is laughing… The CGI of the Enterprise manuvering away from space dock and escaping to warp was amazing though - one of the best uses of 3D space in Star Trek ever but pausing for like 5 minutes whilst stealing a ship to decide what his ‘line’ is going to be… I wish the new series would stop their pre-ocupation with this, it’s kind of famous because Picard uses Engage and Make It So enough to be memeable, but most of the time people from Kirk to Janeway to Sisko also use Engage. (Kirk also frequently uses warp speed Mr sulu, and ahead warp factor 1, take her out, first star to the left and straight on till morning.) And so every captain doesn’t have their thing. Pike’s ‘hit it’ is ok, but ‘Let’s Fly’ is kinda dumb and ‘I want to go, now’ is out of character and just a really unnecessary part of the story. It’s also not going to be memeable when it’s forced.

I really didn’t like the scene where M’Benga and Chapel use some kind of drug to give them super strength to fight off a whole ship of Klingons and then the torture scene? Star Trek should be cleverer than that and made me lose respect for both of the characters. At least the Klingons look like Klingons again.

I like the new chief engineer a lot more than I thought I was going too though!

Star Trek has always been kind of lax when officers disobeying orders save the day, but I thought the admiral should have been angrier and I really hope there’s a scene in episode 2 where Pike and Spock talk about it.