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
They did it again TOS purists
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you wanted a rubber suit, so they gave you a rubber suit.
Annotations up at: https://startrek.website/post/777051
My biggest gripe with this episode is
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that it could been easily a double episode THIS SEASON with more breath, I hate those cliffhangers but the plot armor was too strong here, we already know who will survive and who don’t even before the start of the episode xD
I expect we’ll see Sulu, McCoy and more Scotty next season:::
I loved the colony design. It kinda makes sense. There’s an endless number of planets out there, so why not found a colony for your weird LARP phantasies? “Hey, you wanna join my colony reminiscent of Victorian England? There’d be bustle skirts, butlers and bat’leths.”
I had a feeling right from the urgency of the first minutes that they were setting this episode up as SNW’s version of “The Best of Both Worlds”. And the elements are certainly there. A superior enemy. A plan to fool them with technobabble. A crewmember held hostage – just this time it’s split up between Captain Batel being infected, and La’an, M’Benga and Kirk (and colonists) captured. And a cliffhanger. I had hoped that they wouldn’t do cliffhangers in this show – especially season-ending cliffhangers when we don’t even know when the next season will air. (2025 maybe?) Or if they did it then at least do it DS9 style where it’s more like a teaser of things to come instead of an actual cliffhanger.
Oh well, at least they didn’t kill off Batel immediately, and I hope they won’t do it in season 3. I’d like to see more of her and of her relationship with Pike because I think it’s a really interesting relationship dynamic for a Starfleet captain to have a truly equal partner.
I’m not quite keen on the physics in this episode. Would the Gorn really be fooled by the Cayuga’s saucer suddenly “naturally” accelerating towards the planet from the orbit of its moon? That already bugged me in Star Trek Into Darkness when the ship suddenly “fell” towards Earth. Yes, this is a Science Fiction show but they could really use a science advisor for this basic stuff.
Finally, I wonder if every season will bring in another TOS cast member, and who will be next. Sulu? (he’d be an astroscientist though, unless they ignore the 2nd TOS pilot episode) Cadet Chekov? Bones? Janice Rand?
This all sounds a bit negative but I actually enjoyed the episode. It wasn’t the best episode of the season but still above average. I just hope that season 3 will come rather sooner than later.
I’m not the most accurate and precise regarding the lore but for what I remember of TOS (that was my favorite series) we should expect Sulu being the next one, then Bones should be in the cast together with Kirk later. Seeing that every one that will not be in TOS is now in Gorn hand’s I think we already know why. I don’t think it’s a coincidence
Seeing that every one that will not be in TOS is now in Gorn hand’s I think we already know why.
M’Benga and Sam Kirk show up in TOS though. The only one in danger is La’an. (and I’d be pissed if something happened to her because I think that Christina Chong is a super strong actor, and possibly the breakout star of this show)
Oh that was the same doctor? Never connected the two. I was thinking also about Ortega. Sam disappeared in TOS until he died so maybe he got traumatized from the incident.
As I note in my annotations, I got very emotional whenever I heard them refer to Scotty as “Mr Scott”. Not sure why, it just sounded so right. When they said, “Thank you, Mr Scott,” I mentally added: “That’s something he’s going to get used to hearing over the years.”
The moment I heard Pike say he missed Batel and then praise Ortegas I immediately knew they were going to be placed in jeopardy and sure enough…
It was also immediately obvious when the Gorn youngling left Batel alone why it did so, so glad they didn’t string that out as some big mystery.
The colony design meant that filming exteriors was cheaper, I suppose. It’s the equivalent of building a gated community as a Ren Faire, though there’d definitely be a demand for it.
Wish they’d have given some hints to why that Gorn was on the Cayuga saucer, though. Why was it trying to access command level functions? Intel or something else? And how did it get there without Enterprise noticing or was it there before they arrived? Questions, questions…
At least Martin Quinn, who plays Scotty, is a Paisley boy like David Tennant and Steven Moffat, which means using his natural accent will be easier to make out, as the Paisley accent is less harsh than, say, a Glaswegian one. He’s a bit young for Scotty though, at 28. I’d always assumed Scotty was at least five to ten years older than Kirk.
Nice, fast moving action finale - but I echo the frustration at having this be a cliffhanger.
I would like to know why the Gorn was there too, but the Gorn didn’t notice Spock boarding and so there’s no reason to believe Enterprise would have notice a Gorn boarding. It’s also possible it was beamed over when the Cayuga was destroyed to find something or to access the ships systems.
I swear if anything bad happens to Ortegas I will riot. That lady has surpassed Tom Paris as my favorite pilot and with all the banter with Pike I worry for her well-being.
