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
A note about episode discussions on startrek.website
Right now, the plan is to post the /c/startrek discussion when the episode drops on Thursdays. Once the global community has had some time to watch and digest what they’ve seen, the /c/daystrominstitute discussion will go live on Sundays for a more in-depth analysis. This is subject to change as we evaluate what works best for the community as a whole.
I didn’t really love this episode. I agree with other users that it feels a bit more DIS than SNW s1. I think maybe because of the pacing &/or the action, or maybe just how OTT the plot is, like stealing the Enterprise should be a bigger deal than it is here imo, it just feels a bit … almost routine? Also I feel like I am the only person on the internet with this opinion, but I really like Spock’s relationship with his fiancée and I don’t particularly care for the whole Spock/Chapel sub-plot, soooo I am sad to see that continuing. I also didn’t enjoy the overtly -> overly emotive Spock, it reminded me of the films, and the Chapel nearly dying bit again felt more DIS than SNW s1. Also, I counted like four different occasions of somebody remarking on Spock being a very un-Vulcan Vulcan, which really felt like a bit much…?
It was very nice to see more of M’Benga, though. He is a great character and I felt like we didn’t see enough of him in s1. It felt weird having very little Pike or Number One, though. I hope this is not going to be the standard going forward, it feels like going backwards after SNW seemed to spend a whole season trying to reassure us that they understood what people hadn’t liked about DIS?
Oh also – the new chief engineer seems cool.
I didn’t really love this episode. I agree with other users that it feels a bit more DIS than SNW s1.
Haven’t seen the episode and I stopped here, I just read it because that was something I was worried since the trailers… I really hope I’m wrong but it seemed a lot a new JJA Star Trek that I didn’t dislike so much as others but I loved S1 because it was so similar to TOS.
Some users in this post really loved it, it’s probably worth checking out just in case. I will definitely be watching e2 at least, and I hope it will get back on track (according to my tastes).
I watched it, it was meh. I loved the new engineer but the fights were awful and too long. It didn’t seemed SNW tbh, I hope it’s just the start
I also agree on your pov on Spock and Chapel and all the rest.
I’m sorry you didn’t like it, Iiii obviously didn’t particularly either. It makes me remember how they were all talking about already filming s2 when s1 came out. It is disappointing. I hope they will get back to the SNW of s1. What is most frustrating is that Lower Decks is consistently good Trek specifically, so they do still know how to do it, they just don’t seem to want to put any money into it? Even though their shows keep eventually petering out because the core audience of Star Trek is – weirdly enough – Star Trek fans. I am concerned that they will not listen to negative -> lukewarm feedback because they will just be like oh now you don’t like the good one either, we can’t please you! But, like, you can! It’s so easy! You’re already doing it with Lower Decks, all you have to do is make good Star Trek that isn’t some weird action movie/soap opera mash up with Star Trek theming.
It’s not that I didn’t like it, I hoped more, well every ST series has mediocre episodes, in S1 the episode in costume was not my cup of tea, maybe we are unlucky that this was e1, will see the rest of the season if it get better.
Yes, I did like things about it also and I am hopeful next week will be a return to form. I feel like they can’t go very wrong with the Lower Decks crossover at least. (I hope…)
(Keeping my response spoiler free as far as I can to take your not having watched the show in account).
I am diehard anti-disco, it just didn’t do anything for me as a Star Trek show. I wouldn’t quite peg it as Disco-like, I’d peg it as closer to Picard season 3 or maybe Dominion War-esque in tone and design. Touches on some interesting concepts, some interesting world building to fill out that era, and seems designed to add new nuances to expand on M’benga after his daughter situation was resolved season 1.
I will say, I think the milage you’ll get out of the episode is going to be pretty reliant on how much you like M’benga. He’s one of my favourite characters in the series, so for me, I enjoyed the episode quite a bit. If you’re not an M’benga fan, I can see you enjoying it quite a bit less.
Finally had time to watch it tonight and I thought it was great.
I feel like what seemed corny or off was on purpose. Spock is on a learning curve with his emotions/duty conundrum and we certainly felt that.
Looking forward to next week!
That was my interpretation too. I’m cautiously optimistic!
I also enjoyed this week’s episode. I don’t care for how close Spock and nurse Chapel are, but ok that’s fine I guess lol
I hope to see more cooking.
Before season 1, I was sceptical about what I’d heard of the direction they were taking with Chapel, but Jess Bush’s depiction of her has been one of my favourite things about the show so far. I’m happy to see more of her and Spock working their way through this.
After like the first episode with Chapel where I was a little ~~ ehh, I really do like how the character has progressed. I feel like this is the one place where I’m really liking the character changes.
I must say I’m already a big fan of Pelia.
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@End0fLine @LibraryLass In my head, she is always in an unintelligible shouting contest with Andy Kaufman.
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To me she will always be the witch from Princess Bride.
Edit: “I’m not a witch, I’m your wife! But after what you just said, I’m not even sure I want to be that any more.”
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I wouldn’t give you shit for it, but I would hand you a well-used DVD of the movie and tell you go watch it immediately. It’s a good time.
It’s one of the funniest, most exciting, most romantic movies ever made. I’ve met in all my life only one person who didn’t enjoy it and she was kind of awful in general. I would bet you would like it too.
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Not going to give you shit but I am going to suggest you should watch it at your earliest opportunity. I suspect you will enjoy it a lot and wish you’d seen it sooner.
Pelia is like “I have been alive for hundreds of years and I’m going to make that everyone else’s problem.”
If my memory is correct, this episode contained more than half of the scenes from the trailers, most of which were theorized to be from different episodes.
That leaves two possibilities:
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this episode is the most interesting episode, which would be unfortunate but not unheardof for Paramount
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the best is yet to come, and we have no idea what’s coming.
I choose to believe the second, for now, and I’m excited.
In one of the panels Anson Mount was saying that if you think the Lower Decks cross-over episode was the craziest thing they’ve done for season 2, we would be surprised what else to see, so yeah, I think we are in for a good treat.
So, I used to work in TV marketing at the network level and I can tell you typically trailers are made up of the first three episodes or less. No real secret why though - usually the show is still working on the other episodes.
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Not a bad start, although the episode felt somewhat lackluster. The character writing felt a little wooden, too much stuff is explicitly said instead of letting it hang in the subtext. Also there had better be a good explanation in future episodes as to why the hell Dr. M’benga keeps a couple of vials of punching serum handy at all times.
The visuals were great. The Klingon makeup was toned back a bit more towards a TNG-era look, but you can still see the more distinct Discovery skull shape. Overall a good mix between the two I’d say. The visuals from Spacedock feel very Discovery as well-- nice to see those starfleet drones being used outside of Control trying to kill everyone.
nice to see those starfleet drones being used outside of Control trying to kill everyone
As long as Dots don’t show back up on the Enterprise, I’m good.
undefined> Also there had better be a good explanation in future episodes as to why the hell Dr. M’benga keeps a couple of vials of punching serum handy at all times.
It was immediately before that. Because of what he went through on that moon he was stationed on during the war.
Also there had better be a good explanation in future episodes as to why the hell Dr. M’benga keeps a couple of vials of punching serum handy at all times.
He was a frontline doctor during a conflict with an enemy that considers medics viable targets.
Nice episode, I was expecting a cliffhanger at the end showing what Pike was up to.
I am curious about the Lanthanites, I’ve had visitor before, like Guinan in 1890s, but a whole species living among side humans, maybe they don’t have a big population, I bet they could be the origin of many human myths. I wonder what was their reason.
Maybe It will help with Una’s trial, since both pretended to be humans.
Also, in TOS there was about an Immortal Human, maybe he was a Lanthanite and just didn’t know.
I am unsure how Lanthanites can have a distinct accent if they spent centuries successfully blending in, but I agree that it’s interesting.
Maybe they first arrived in Romania, centuries ago, or some such.
Then once Earth discovered Romanians (or whatever) are actually different species, it put a lot of things in perspective.
(like, the legends of vampires?)
@FormerGameDev I hope not. Romanians being another species is too close to pushing on bigotry against the Romani.
Romanians and Romani aren’t the same thing. But yeah, probably best not to imply that any human ethnicity are secret aliens.
@LibraryLass Yup I know but many don’t. Agreed.
Could easily just make a whole new country/geographic location up, like Marvel did.
@FormerGameDev yeah not a bad idea. I don’t recall them doing so for Earth locations before but that doesn’t have to stop them.
TOS explained our ancient deities as aliens (basically), why not an entire segment of earth people? :D I guess it depends on just how many of the Lanthanites there were on Earth. But there’s a bit of a clue that there’s at least enough that there’s a known accent, even if it’s not very common.
Could perhaps be that at one time there was a large population, but they decided to vacate Earth after coming out, so their accent is largely unknown to the general population?
i’d guess probably more like they just had a very small community, though, not like an entire nation.
Blending in doesn’t mean they wholly abandoned their original culture. It just means that humans never got to see it.
Structural differences in their larynx, tongue, or lips seem likely.
The M’Benga-and-Chapel-are-Max-Payne sequence went on far too long: only one group aboard the ship had weapons (and Stormtrooper accuracy) of any kind? I’d have preferred a stealthier sequence: after reprogramming the transponder, they use a series of Jeffries tubes to get to the airlock with the intent of opening it to escape but the ship takes off to ruin that plan.
Other than that, it was a decent episode to get the season going. Spock’s emotional journey will be a focal point of the season, which I’m okay with.
SPECTREThe Broken Circle Gang is probably going to show up again and I wonder if we’ll eventually see some TOS villains retconned to be members. Carol Kane will be fun and with what was said of her species, I’m betting on her making at least two ENT references during the season.Interesting that the false-flag ship is Crossfield-class: the saucer is a clear match but the drive section is completely different. Were the Discovery and Glenn modified from that spec to fit the spore drive research project or was the ship we saw a wartime refit of the class?
only one group aboard the ship had weapons (and Stormtrooper accuracy) of any kind?
you do remember they were trying to buy phasers from La’an? Those were the only phasers they had, it would seem.
Were the Discovery and Glenn modified from that spec to fit the spore drive
Yes. IIRC that was stated in of the first handful of Discovery episodes. (possibly the one where they encountered the Glenn?)
also can we please stop it with the trope “oh no, how are we going to survive this jump through space without a suit? …Oh whaddya know we’re just fine.” Just give them fucking suits, it’s lazy writing to create more suspense for no reason.
Right!?! Nobody watching is going to think their are going to kill off two of the main cast members in the first episode…
So Die Hard on a spaceship? We did that with Starship Mine already but I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Is Starfleet’s version of the Hippocratic oath “First, do no harm, unless you have to, in which case go hard.”?
As for the Crossfield-Class, I thought it might either be that the classification of Discovery made them change the format of it for obfuscation purposes. Either that or they built that ship from salvaged parts from the war, and the saucer/transponder was from a Crossfield, and Uhura was simply reading from the transponder code the ship class.
That was my take as well on the ship. My reading was that they picked up a bunch of salvage from the war, and kit-bashed it all together to make a ship.
On a meta level, they almost certainly did just that to create the ship model. Took the Disco saucer and fiddled with the rest a bit.
Is Starfleet’s version of the Hippocratic oath “First, do no harm, unless you have to, in which case go hard.”?
LOL
One must protect oneself, too, I suppose.
If they had super-soldier drugs the whole time why didn’t they use them against the gorn or any other combat that occurred in season 1?
Maybe its use is prohibited in the federation and they only had access due to being on the extremists’ ship?
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@End0fLine @scarecrw This is correct.
Way back in ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ Q when dressed as a soldier of one of the armies of World War III was shown using a retractable stimulant dispenser. Not sure if the green stuff was intended as a nod towards that.
To be honest when I was watching the scene I thought I had missed something from last season. Threw me off balance for the rest of the episode.
I also thought I forgot something from last season, it’s literally why I checked reddit and wound up here. Regardless of if prior lore established the existence of these stimulants, the fact that there was basically no discussion of what they are or the fact the doctor carries them around before they use them was very jarring.
That’s where my mind went as well
Presumably they have nasty side effects and the only reason they resorted to them here was because the only other option was oblivion.
I’d like to see them going through some bad consequences of using that stuff.
I mean I’ve been thinking that about the entire genetic modification thing, even last season.
my presumption is that M’Benga has it, and it’s his personal supply, that would be at best frowned upon, at worst, illegal for him to have.
Really delighted with this episode.
No complaints. Can’t really buy into the nitpicks on this one. It seemed completely Trek, and gave many of the ensemble their moments to shine. Production design gorgeous, virtual staging more seamless, costumes excellent, vfx great.
I like how M’Benga has hoarded the green vial as part of his lingering trauma. Better, we finally see a physician giving himself the juice instead of Kirk or some other command officer. In fact, one has to wonder if McCoy carried a stash provided by M’Benga.
Spock’s unresolved feelings for Chapel are well crafted and mirror the lingering pain we see her left with in TOS. It makes those scenes with Chapel in TOS comprehensible instead of cringe-inducing.
I just love this show, the feeling I get when the intro rolls is the same as when I was I was 15 watching the TNG intro on TV. The characters all feel special and unique even if I’ve seen every episode of every series.
I’ve wanted a whole show about the years when Pike commanded the enterprise since I saw The Managerie as a kid. I’m so happy we’re finally getting it and it’s so good.
I love the new engineer, but she sort of disappeared after Enterprise left space dock and didn’t show back up until the conclusion. I figured a thrill seeker like her would have kept busy?
Carol Kane is awesome, but I kept waiting for her character to reveal she was faking the accent. It just sounded like someone doing a bit, and seemed so over the top I was sure it wasn’t serious.
There are actors who always play themselves.
With some of them, that’s exactly what you want.
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boo. don’t delete comments. every single one is vaible while this grows out. Would have been intrested to hear what you had to say.
I deleted one earlier today by accident. The tiny little trash can is right next to the edit button, and I don’t yet have the muscle memory for avoiding it.
ah okay no worries then mate. yeah growing pains i feel that. I love to see history being preserved. be proud of everything you type!
That’s one reason I won’t be deleting my old reddit accounts, even if I don’t use them anymore. I have probably thousands of pages worth of comments going back fifteen years on that damned website. It’ll probably disappear at some point, but it won’t be at my hand.
Fair enough.
Engineering is a busy station.
Fun episode, but bits and pieces always felt a little off. Pelia was fantastic - love seeing competent non-main-characters in any sort of fiction.
Chapel/Spock… ugh. Not so much.
Whats with the wierd “Crossfield” class?
I’m going with the thought that others have posted, since it’s probably quite unlikely that the Klingons just stole an entire ship, that this ship must’ve been hacked together out of salvage from the War.
I bet we’re going to see that Pelia was involved in things during the ENT era, and possibly also that she might connect to Scotty too.
Oh my gosh, I agree about Chapel/Spock! I thought I was the only person in the world.
Might be the standard Crossfield, with Discovery and Glenn being modified variants to support the spore drive.
I would like the strange and new to go. Now.
That’s a cryptic comment. Is this going to be one of those “I hate everything new about Star Trek but I keep watching it for some reason anyway” things?Not at all. I love the new. I want more new.
This show is great. But I wish the title had gone to something different.
Ah thank goodness. Haters got me paranoid.
He’s parodying Spock’s “I would like the ship to go… Now.”
I think this got things off to a reasonable start, but it doesn’t feel like the strongest episode out of the gate. Maybe it’s because the show deliberately chooses not take on the cliffhanger of the last season in the first episode. Starting the season with only part of the cast undertaking the mission I think also makes the episode feel a bit slight.
It’s also a bit of a darker episode than the last season, but I’m not sure if engaging with the Klingon civil war aftermath is actually necessary in this episode. In fact, leaving out the Klingon stuff here would make it a bit less stodgy to me. I guess there is some curiosity as to what SNW characters were doing during the war, but it really feels like here, the only reason they framed this entire episode around the war was so that M’Benga and Chapel could juice themselves up with a substance that they never quite introduce before using it and Die Hard Klingons for a chunk of the episode. There’s maybe some M’Benga trauma, but giving the character another trauma moment where some (particularly Ortegas) remain comparatively lightly characterized feels…meh.
It’s probably all the Discovery elements, both in plot and in set design on screen, that make me feel this way, but I was hoping that Discovery would learn the best lessons from Strange New Worlds. This episode has me slightly worried that instead of that, Strange New Worlds may be learning some bad lessons from Discovery. That said I’m hoping things get better across the season. I thought this was good but just not quite what I wanted from the season opener.
