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.

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.

1. We’ve barely had any space adventures
2. 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.

One big thing you need to think about is accessibility. This is something that came up in a conversation with a local representative in the UK - for children in public schools it is a requirements that any technology have good accessibility and not leave anyone behind. And accessibility tools on linux are, suffice to say, not great. Especially when compared with those on other closed systems. My local government ended up going with iPads for kids in schools, and the accessibility tooling on these was a factor in that choice.

I was wondering if this was meant to be the “origin story” of the dermal regenerator.

For a moment I did wonder if pelia was going to be the one who goes out to take the readings, and it would be her going out with a bang.

This one felt like we were halfway towards a proper episode. The plot had a big ethical decision, it had opportunity for growth, a decent if treknobabbly sci fi threat. But this episode really suffered from prequelitis - it never really felt that Chapel was going to do anything other than try to save Mbenga, we know mbenga survives in some capacity anyway, and Chapel’s decision is made within seconds with little room to explore “when should you let a patient go”. Ditto Spock’s grand sacrifice going out into the radiation, and a lack of tension around the pod being ejected. There was a lot going on here, possibly too much. The clear stand outs here are Scotty getting his drive and motivation to own engineering on enterprise, and nurse chapel getting the push to likewise take more agency of her life on enterprise.

I guess this is meant to be borrowing from the 24 style of show - the only 24 I’ve ever seen was when the Simpsons parodied it. Overall I didn’t really like that particular style of direction / editing, but it wasn’t terrible. It kind of bugged me that we only learnt what the threat we were counting down to was half way through the episode. This episode would probably have worked just as well without the counter, it didn’t add anything for me.

Random notes:

• The reference to the lift sketch was amusing
• Getting a bit more scortegas friendshipping is cute
• Good we managed to avoid some lizard space babies at warp limit
• Once again our Vulcan cadet comes up with a line that sounds superficially vulcan but which under scrutiny makes no sense (“I’m a vegetarian, therefore the thing you said about meat is illogical”).
• Lastly, this is probably one of the first instances where the crew acknowledge that starfleet ships apparently do not having proper electrical wiring and grounding on the control panels. That got a laugh out of me. They should fix that.

Indie games are good, but if privacy is a concern be careful of any game developed in a big engine like unity. My firewall pings a warning every time I launch a unity game because they all send analytics data back to unity. If it’s single player and you block all outgoing connections by default, you’re fine though.

Worth noting that the trendline in that plot would be pointing down anyway, before you include season 4. That tends to happen for every long running TV show.

It can be a bit difficult to get a read on what Vulcans are thinking as a viewer, It can’t be easy to act them out. I did think ethan peck was good in this one

“high jinks” might be intentional, and meant to be the vulcan’s way of being dismissive of the human’s nonsense by deliberately pronouncing it as two words.

I went into this episode blind, but the moment Scotty mentioned the puppet was going to be the transporter payload I knew we were in for a tuvix situation. I did not realise it would be quite on this scale. I don’t hate the premise of the episode. It reminded me a lot of the TNG episode where they all get turned into children, and this is a universe where Tom Paris got turned into a lizard after all. I do absolutely hate the cop-out at the end where it turns out it was all a dream. It means that spock was the only character that had opportunity for development and growth, and no-one else gets to share in that. Either go all in on the zany adventures, or dont, but never waste the audience’s time like this.

But hey, you want puppets, I’ll judge you on the puppets. I think they were generally well designed. While the “body language” was expressive, I don’t think the faces were as good as they could have been - There were only a handful of times where changes in eyes and eyebrows really stood out. I also feel that the writing and voice acting for the puppet character’s dialogue was not great, but that gets hand-waved away at the end where we realise as puppets they’re not quite the same people The endpoint of letting go and embracing the madness was a nice resolution to the absurd situation, however I did not feel like the cartoon physics played through.

The orion plot was OK, used as the necessary antagonists to drive the plot. But other than some moments from Joe Lo Truglio, who was a perfect choice for an empathetic male orion, the invaders could have been any invading alien species and nothing really specific to orions was needed. I’m also confused by the huge orion vessel, unless I’ve misread the scale, there should be hundreds at least but at no point did anyone think to help out the 3 or 4 orions actually invading the enterprise. But maybe none of this matters, because hey, it was all a dream.

With some of the other gimmicky episodes, I’ve instantly wanted to re-watch them once I finished. Here, once was enough, which is not a great indicator for the episode overall.

Kor was good. When a new Klingon character is introduced, they need something to differentiate themselves from the stereotype of the honor-bound aggressive wine-guzzler. Kor here stood out in his approach to running the occupation and his presence on the screen.

This is the first episode this season that I’ve really enjoyed.

The direction, lighting, filtering, was all great and on point. I really enjoyed the story, the A plot was a nice wartime rebel story and the B plot was pretty decent too. I was feeling shades of some of the “retro themed” ST episodes from the 90s. The set design was great on the planet.

The Klingons here are used well - seeing the way they act during wartime here they feel almost cardassian in how they treat the native population, but out also makes sense given what we’re told about how they acted during this time. I liked seeing Scotty and Ortega just hanging out. La’an getting help to deal with her problems is good, and seeing her doggedly chase down the truth was nice, though I’m a little unclear in exactly what the chain of events was with the signals and the transporter. Mbenga and una were really sharp on the planet and I enjoyed their acting.

Mixed bag of an episode.

I liked that we got some proper character development - Spock and Kirk coming closer together, an origin point for their friendship is good to see, and the hallucination was a useful way to explain why spock would be willing to open up to such a friendship in the first place. Ortegas and Scotty similarly got some satisfying growth, and the quite unprofessional arguing between them didn’t end drag on for too long.

I did not like the first couple of acts. I know this is meant to be a comedy episode, but none of the jokes really landed for me, it was just kind of a slog to get through. I’m not a big fan of “stoner / drunk” humour in other shows, and it’s not a whole lot better here. I am not sure if the alien host was meant to be funny or charming, but they just came across as mildly annoying. If I compare this to pleasure-planet episodes we’ve seen in other trek shows, I don’t feel the pleasure planet really added a whole lot. CG sequences aside, they were in a fancy hotel more than an actual planet.

Something that really bugged me is that despite repeated references to alternate shifts, at no point did any of the “alphas” think that maybe it might be worth handing off the negotiations or asking for help with the bomb. It speaks to a kind of arrogance that doesn’t really play well given the whole point of the episode is learning to rely on others.

The final act is again mixed. The idea of a pressure bomb, the sci fi equivalent of a landmine, is a great way of building tension, brings ortegas and scotty together fully. But that it then also provides the solution for the diplomatic problems make no sense. The aliens say that particular type of bomb is part of a peace ritual that hasn’t been seen in generations, but then why would a separatist use that for their sabotage?

Overall it was alright, but not amazing.

I don’t disagree with that… I guess limited character growth is one of the disappointing outcomes for any prequel media.

This was a very creepy episode, and as a standalone sci fi fantasy horror piece it works well. But it doesn’t feel trek. Here’s my conspiracy: With the dramatic different in tone, direction, the repeated references to section 12, this is a Poorly Disguised Pilot that the producers were using to test the waters for an x-files like section 12 spinoff.

Overall, I did not enjoy it. I don’t seek out this kind of film normally, and I might have enjoyed it if it had led to anything interesting happening, but ultimately it has not left them with any further progress. All the dramatic moments between the away team and the “others” they hallucinated were basically “then they woke up and it was all a dream”, so no relationship progress there. And within themselves, aside from more unresolved trauma, Spock seems no closer to aligning his human and vulcan selves, La’an hasn’t really learned anything new about her violent tendencies she didn’t already know from the last episode, and Kirk never even got to have the chat with his family because the network apparently cut out.

Vulcans can be arrogant, but they also have some personality to balance it out. I think part of the problem is we haven’t seen much, other than a sliver of backstory at the end of the episode

I do think the away team section needed another pass, either on the writing or the direction. It had some action moments, but at the same time it didn’t feel like anything the away team actually did carried any impact,and never that they were in any real danger. The only bit that actually felt it had real energy was the archeopteryx getting punched in the face.

I have mixed feelings about this episode.

The A story, with the diplomacy, philosophising about how to encounter and deal with new species, I enjoyed a lot. The ending of the time loop was rather inevitable, it being a time loop set in the past, but it worked. It was a difficult choice and it had to be made. “Pike must suffer” I guess. The translation system leaking information through subtle differences in grammar is a nice idea, it felt a bit underused as a concept though, would have been a good topic for Uhura to explore. This kind of political, philosophical, with a hint of sci-fi, story is exactly what I want from Star Trek. More of this please.

The B story, down on the planet, with the dinosaurs, didn’t grab me. First off, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just fly the shuttle right to the wreck, why did they need to deal with the Rex? Other than getting the drive, this entire section could have been cut and the episode would not have lost anything. I get the feeling the VFX artists had a lot of fun with that section though.

Overall, it was an okay opener. Extra remarks:

• Our new vulcan is a flanderisation of vulcans, and not in a good way. “I am familiar with all earth dialects”. Really? All 7000+ of them? I hope they get their comeuppance at some point soon.
• Pelia’s voice seems much raspier this season. She makes another DW reference. Didn’t work for me, it felt a bit too obvious and in your face. If they’re going to keep making these, something more subtle might have worked, particularly for this episode given DW has had a few dinosaur episodes.
• I am really enjoying the Scotty vs Ortegas game. Looking forward to more of this
• La’An’s business looks interesting, though I hope wherever this goes is distinct from the stuff we’ve already covered with Bashir, Una, and Khan.

Those other services are not great but they are at the very least not actively promoting AI-generated child abuse imagery. It’s an incredibly low bar, but they do pass it.