Logline
A temporal anomaly traps the crew inside a soap-opera reality while Pike confronts a life he lost.
Written by: Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff
Directed by: Anna Dozoka
Annotations for 4x07 up at: https://startrek.website/post/44182844
One of the things I love about Star Trek is when it allows us to see the best of humanity when faced with hard sci fi, working together despite adverse circumstances. TNG exemplified the utopian vision of humanity struggling against the odds but working together to get by. Voyager took aliens-of-the-week to an extreme yet still kept space for good character interactions alongside the sci-fi. Even DS9, which in its conception is closest to a soap opera, managed to mix family dynamics with spacefaring adventure. I will accept these older series had their fair share of stinkers, but all of these series were able to blend pastiches of classic film and stories into their episodes without it being hammy and grating.
Now, this episode. The key line is “Space adventures leave little time for humans to deal with their inner struggles”. This line is important because it is wrong.
- We’ve barely had any space adventures
- The best star trek does allow time for humans to deal with inner struggles
I enjoy Rhys Darby but not in this one. I’m glad they didn’t make this one be all a dream in the end and I like that the final scenes show some real character moments, but Uhura and M’Benga (and possibly also Pike) could have had their conversations in amongst non-gimmicked episodes. Also, the ship has a counsellor? Either they’re new, or haven’t been doing their job very well. How many times has Spock broken up with someone now? Didn’t care for the gimmick this episode. I fast forwarded through parts of it.
The key line is “Space adventures leave little time for humans to deal with their inner struggles”. This line is important because it is wrong.
It’s a little odd - I agree that it’s the key line of the episode, but I don’t think it’s necessarily meant to be universally true (though it does reflect Pike’s beliefs, or at least his avoidance of dealing with his own stuff [Edit: This is almost universally true of our captains over the years]), and I don’t think it’s really the point of the episode.
What I took away from it is a meditation on reality and perception - in a way, maybe the key line was actually what Pike said about the details fading, but the memories remaining. I think anyone who has experienced enough loss in their lives would find that pretty impactful.
I was enjoing the soap opera silliness up until that point, but I ended up really respecting the statements they were making through Pike’s journey. It takes on an added dimension when you consider where he ends up, living out the rest of his days in a Talosian illusion. I wonder if Juliet will be there…
What the heck, I might as well make this my top-level comment and include some other scattered thoughts:
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Soap operas deserve more respect than they generally get - those people work.
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On that note, it was great to see Marlena herself, Deidre Hall, as the counselor. It’s hard to imagine a better choice.
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I’m glad Spock slept through this one - he’s hallucinated more than enough this season. And Ethan Peck crushed it as Evil Twin Sybok.
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One thing I do think has been missing this season is connective tissue for the character arcs. I suppose it’s been there for La’An, but she’s mostly been treading water. It was nice to see her dealing with the fallout of a breakout she initiated, but it still seems fragmented. The same can be said for pretty much everybody else.
I agree that Pike’s retrospective of his alternate life was a good idea to explore - its the kind of thing that older trek series would quickly shuffle on after that week’s episode (like O’briens stint in virtual jail). Pike has done a lot of thinking about coming to terms with his vision of his own future, so thinking about his alternate future was a necessary next step.
I just wish it had been given a better story in which to bubble about. If it’s a serious character point, let it be told in a serious story. Let us see his job as a captain of a discovery-science-diplomacy ship lead him down that path of self reflection. Adding a comedic glamour filter on top of everything, in my opinion, cheapens the end result. It bugs me that so far we had erica/scotty needing to be drunk to learn to get along, spock needing to be dreaming / nightmaring, and now pike and co. stuck in a Q game in order to grow as people.
I actually had no idea who Deidre Hall was, though from the visual language I got the impression she was meant to be “someone important”. I assumed they had picked a random actress and were making a meta-joke about guest actors on TV shows. I was half expecting her to vanish at the very end.
I actually had no idea who Deidre Hall was
For those who have never seen it, she’s been on “Days of Our Lives” for 50(!) years.
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The beginning was quite funny, i love how the series decided to stop taking itself seriously this season, but when the sillyness transformed into drama, i felt it falling apart
