Star Trek Strange New Worlds, what did you think?

[Umbran]

It's good. It's optimistic. It's what we aspire to.

And that's the real thing, for me.

Discovery has been nice, but the most recent season I haven't finished yet because the sheer number of personal crises swept away the optimism. It isn't optimistic when everyone is miserable.

As an aside, I am finding this to be a flaw of the short-season patterns from TV today. In the past, those crises would be spread out, focusing on one character at a time, but when you have half the episodes, they come all at once, and pile up deep. It makes satisfying ensembles difficult to do, honestly.

(I am glad that they seem to be moving away from the whole, "Pike is preoccupied with how he is going to die" thing, because that doesn't seem to add much to the gestalt of the program.)

One of the things to note is, as I understand it, while the individual episodes are self-contained plot, they are trying to do character development arcs across the season. Pike's relationship to his future is apt to be a continuing major theme, but it should change and develop at the series progresses.

 

[Stalker0]

Episode 4 was another really great one. It actually gave some fun feeling of submarine combat, even including the various sound effects. It was cool, intense, but at the center was L'anns story, and that I think is what is setting this trek apart from some of the recent incarnations. Yes their booms and action and excitement, but the series never forgets that characters drive your show, and keeps the story coming back to them.

I will...just ignore the whole dr is giving an Illyrian (aka a completely alien species) a straight up blood transfusion, when he doesn't have any of his fancy blood synthesizers...hehe this may be the sore point of the show for me, but I'm enjoying it enough to just let that one go.

I also had one more thought about episode 3. So one factoid is that the bio filters in transports filter out EVERYTHING they do not recognize. This means that in order for transporters to lock on and transport aliens that the federation is not familiar with, the transporter technicians are having to turn off some safety's on the biofilters, aka the biofilters only remove known hostile agents, but can't remove unknown signatures (because if they did it would be VERY bad for Mr New Species). So effectively this introduces a lot of risk of alien pathogens in such a circumstance, so I can imagine Captains being very hesitant to do that under most circumstances.

 

[Ondath]

I feel exceptionally lucky to be a young adult while a good, optimistic Star Trek series is airing on TV (since the last time that happened was... what? 1999?), and boy do I enjoy it! They actually managed to make the Gorn look scary. These guys!

I really hope the rest of the season keeps the same tone and quality.

 

[Vael]

I really like how the show is using Uhura, and that she's being rotated around the ship to learn different areas before specializing. It mixes up the character interactions and is just a smart setup.

 

[Ryujin]

I really like how the show is using Uhura, and that she's being rotated around the ship to learn different areas before specializing. It mixes up the character interactions and is just a smart setup.

It feels, to me, like they're using Uhura as the viewers' proxy.

 

[Hex08]

Episode 4 was another really great one. It actually gave some fun feeling of submarine combat, even including the various sound effects. It was cool, intense, but at the center was L'anns story, and that I think is what is setting this trek apart from some of the recent incarnations. Yes their booms and action and excitement, but the series never forgets that characters drive your show, and keeps the story coming back to them.

I will...just ignore the whole dr is giving an Illyrian (aka a completely alien species) a straight up blood transfusion, when he doesn't have any of his fancy blood synthesizers...hehe this may be the sore point of the show for me, but I'm enjoying it enough to just let that one go.

I also had one more thought about episode 3. So one factoid is that the bio filters in transports filter out EVERYTHING they do not recognize. This means that in order for transporters to lock on and transport aliens that the federation is not familiar with, the transporter technicians are having to turn off some safety's on the biofilters, aka the biofilters only remove known hostile agents, but can't remove unknown signatures (because if they did it would be VERY bad for Mr New Species). So effectively this introduces a lot of risk of alien pathogens in such a circumstance, so I can imagine Captains being very hesitant to do that under most circumstances.

The entire time I was watching this episode I kept thinking about the TOS episode Balance of Terror, it's one of my favorite episodes and it also evoked submarine combat. Wrath of Khan also did that really well.

La'an is rapidly becoming one of my favorite characters on the show, second only to Pike (and it's a close second) so I loved that we got more of her story.

At first the whole blood transfusion thing bugged me too but the more I thought about it the less it bugged me. I figure if so many of the Trek alien races can interbreed then why not transfusions?

All in all, another really good episode.

 

[Rabulias]

Another satisfying episode! I was a bit distracted in episode 3 by a lot of "plot convenience playhouse presents" along with allusions to La'an's backstory that were unclear. Now we have a bit more about La'an's history and background, but I do want to know more (and I think we will get it in time). How "augmented" is she? Would the offspring of an augment be considered augmented by the Federation? Is her status known to Starfleet? Episode 3 made it fairly clear she is related to Khan (she alluded to him being an ancestor), but is she a direct descendant (did Khan father children and leave them behind when he left Earth on the Botany Bay?), or is Khan like her great great great uncle or a distant cousin? I feel they have a story to tell about the augments otherwise they would not have made La'an's as she is.

 

[Mort]

Another satisfying episode! I was a bit distracted in episode 3 by a lot of "plot convenience playhouse presents" along with allusions to La'an's backstory that were unclear. Now we have a bit more about La'an's history and background, but I do want to know more (and I think we will get it in time). How "augmented" is she? Would the offspring of an augment be considered augmented by the Federation? Is her status known to Starfleet? Episode 3 made it fairly clear she is related to Khan (she alluded to him being an ancestor), but is she a direct descendant (did Khan father children and leave them behind when he left Earth on the Botany Bay?), or is Khan like her great great great uncle or a distant cousin? I feel they have a story to tell about the augments otherwise they would not have made La'an's as she is.

Considering her response to meeting someone who is augmented (from last week) I think her being augmented was an early misdirect and that she's not augmented at all - even with the famous last name (which again, likely a misdirect).

Liked the episode, another strong showing (and stronger, IMO, than last week).

Though (and this is a fairly small gripe) I do hope they limit the hallucinations while in tense situations. It was REALLY overused on Picard and I hope they don't overuse it on this show.

 

[Ryujin]

Another satisfying episode! I was a bit distracted in episode 3 by a lot of "plot convenience playhouse presents" along with allusions to La'an's backstory that were unclear. Now we have a bit more about La'an's history and background, but I do want to know more (and I think we will get it in time). How "augmented" is she? Would the offspring of an augment be considered augmented by the Federation? Is her status known to Starfleet? Episode 3 made it fairly clear she is related to Khan (she alluded to him being an ancestor), but is she a direct descendant (did Khan father children and leave them behind when he left Earth on the Botany Bay?), or is Khan like her great great great uncle or a distant cousin? I feel they have a story to tell about the augments otherwise they would not have made La'an's as she is.

I think that it's fair to assume that Khan Noonian Singh is somewhat like Genghis Khan, from whom an estimated 0.5% of the current world population is descended.

 

[Umbran]

I will...just ignore the whole dr is giving an Illyrian (aka a completely alien species) a straight up blood transfusion, when he doesn't have any of his fancy blood synthesizers...hehe this may be the sore point of the show for me, but I'm enjoying it enough to just let that one go.

Well, do remember that he didn't officially know she wasn't human until last episode. They are already working with the assumption that in most ways she passes for human, except when she doesn't...

So one factoid is that the bio filters in transports filter out EVERYTHING they do not recognize. This means that in order for transporters to lock on and transport aliens that the federation is not familiar with, the transporter technicians are having to turn off some safety's on the biofilters, aka the biofilters only remove known hostile agents, but can't remove unknown signatures (because if they did it would be VERY bad for Mr New Species). So effectively this introduces a lot of risk of alien pathogens in such a circumstance, so I can imagine Captains being very hesitant to do that under most circumstances.

What you've failed to get is that the more you think about transporters, the less sense they actually make. They are perfectly fine as long as you don't think about them too much. Let Mr. Kyle handle the difficult part of making them work.