Logline
When the USS Enterprise investigates an attack on a colony at the edge of Federation space, Captain Pike and his crew face the return of a formidable enemy.
Written by Henry Alonso Myers
Directed by Maja Vrvilo
Scotty!
Playing it kinda like Simon pegg, Which is honestly great. Looking forward to seeing more tos characters introduced next season.
Looking forward to seeing more tos characters introduced next season.
I am the opposite. I was hoping SNW would be its own TOS era but modernised show without being beholden to TOS apart from whatever canon we have for pike and Spock.
TBH, this transition into TOS prequel has tainted the show for me. Iāll prob never love it. We got more Scotty in this episode than we did Ortegas, Laāan or Number One (or their abouts). I know about Scotty. Heās been rebooted already in the past decade or so. How about more SNW characters?! How about new characters?!
Iām pretty comfortable on this hill now.
To me it was a TOS prequel from the start, I was expecting characters from the original to be introduced at some point, even if they end up being one or two episode cameos until closer to the end of the series where it has to at some point hand over to kirks enterprise with his crew. They are of course giving Kirk some more time than that as his character needs to be built into the kirk that will take command in a few in universe years, Spock is still young and learning to be fully Vulcan, Uhura is young and still building confidence etc etc etc.
I suspect we will get similar 2 or 3 episode arcs for the other as-yet unseen TOS crew in the next couple of seasons, I donāt know how many seasons they are planning on, but I suspect 5 or 6 considering it is the flagship show in the franchise and as a whole is doing increasingly well.
Iām not too dissimilar from you, but expected cameos. Even Kirk in the S1 finale worked for me, because it was mostly about Pike but also a bit meta about the differences between him and Kirk. Continuity is great after all.
My point is that thereās a line beyond which the show leans prequel, and S2 has crossed that line IMO.
Which is fine, if thatās what people want, which I suspect is the case. I also suspect a TOS reboot would go down well and the execs are fully aware of this. But, is this really good for Trek or even good Trek? When was the last time we had new trek that wasnāt a prequel or driven by nostalgia? Lower Decks? Iām not a Discovery fan, but it surely tried, as did Picard S1 Iād say. Otherwise you might have to go all the way back to DS9. Thing is weāre as far from DS9 now as it was from TOS. SNW was something fresh, a true example of Trek being back on track by retaining the core but doing something new. The more it leans prequel, for me, the more I begin to feel all of nu-Trek is a missed opportunity and not worthy of celebration, which honestly saddens me (apart from lower decks, now my definitely fav new Trek!)
I would have it run until Kirk takes over as captain. Then jump forward to just after The Motion Picture.
This not only gives them about a decade of time before TWOK thatās barely been touched by the screen canon, they can do a design revamp to freshen the series up using TMP as a starting point, and they handle the fact that with a series per year the actors are going to quickly age ahead of their characters.
I very much wanted SNW to be its own show for at least a few seasons.
Itās not the Pikeās Enterprise I fan-campaigned for based on The Cage or Discovery season two.
Iām enjoying it for what it is even so, and accepting that the powers that be at Paramount wanted āfamiliar facesā in their new Star Trek offerings, which means legacy characters. Itās the best of the new live action Trek whatever. All to say that I appreciate your frustration, Iāve decided to make peace with it myself.
Cheers! I had hoped weād get a main cast focused finale and was triggered to have Scotty turn up so prominently. So thatās 4(?) out of 10 episodes in S2 with a major TOS appearance? (5 out of the last 11 counting the finale of S1) It was a āmaybe they wonāt cross the line for me ā¦ oh ok theyāve crossed the lineā moment.
Interestingly, in the ready room for this episode, thereās Kurtzman talking about bringing in Scotty, and he speaks about bringing in the TOS characters as something they were always going to do over time. Iād be curious to know how publicly that was stated because I missed it and if it were known from the top I certainly wouldnāt have been so excited for the show. Especially given, as I remember anyway, back at the end of Discovery S1 when Pike and the enterprise first showed up, there was some blow back that Discovery was going to devolve so quickly into TOS prequel nostalgia and not remain its own thing (that Discovery was a TOS prequel might not have sat well with many Trek fans at the time either though I donāt recall). The show assured us that itāll still stay Discovery and that the enterprise was just a cameo of sorts, and then we got Pike, who everyone loved and Discovery, to its credit, remained its own thing even with Spock turning up (and had maybe its best or at least most interesting or bold season??).
Unless everyone but me knew SNW was going to be a TOS prequel, it feels like the needle has moved since then into a more ready acceptance of prequel/reboot material ā¦ which, if true, is not great TBH.
As for making peace
with it ā¦ yea, Iāll still watch SNW and probably enjoy a lot of it. Whatās been lost for me, if the prequel feeling continues, is that Iāll never āloveā SNW, and it will ultimately be āokā for me, and new-Trekās legacy will, for me, have lost its shining light and fall back to mediocrity, unfortunately.
If someone came to me and said they donāt watch Trek anymore because itās gotten stale since the 90s (which has happened), now, I would say fair enough, but at the beginning of S2 I would have said (and did say) āhave you watched SNW?ā
Looking forward to Lower Decks though!
Cheers for the sympathies!!! (sorry for the rant!)