oh yeah there is a scene where she hugs him, it was probably then that something "felt off"
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 3 Viewing (Spoilers)
- Thread starter Omand
- Start date
Goodsport
Explorer
Interestingly, Jess Bush (who plays Nurse Chapel) finally got to speak in her natural Australian accent in the mansion scenes.
By the way, in that episode of Last Frontier, was the crew of the U.S.S. Adventure finally able to successfully retrieve its stolen brain cells to get back its joy?
-G
By the way, in that episode of Last Frontier, was the crew of the U.S.S. Adventure finally able to successfully retrieve its stolen brain cells to get back its joy?
-G
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Finally watched the last episode of S2, which I'd somehow missed, and now on E3 of S3.
Strange New Worlds is really operating on a much higher hit-rate than any other Trek show except DS9. I mean, it needs to, with only 10 episodes a season, but they've been managing it.
S2E10 and S3E10 (Hegemony Part I & II)
Pretty perfect Mass Effect 2, I mean, I know, Trek did it first but it shows how extremely close Mass Effect was to Trek and I though the Hegemony episodes were very good though I was a bit surprised they did, in the end, have to just abandon the colonists (unless I misunderstood, but I don't think I did). There was some implication they might come back for them, but they were getting digested by the second so they'd be long gone even days from then, let alone 3+ months later, which we skip to next episode. But still, that works. Also the colonists totally asking for it, frankly, so I can't care too much!* I really enjoyed how alien the Gorn continue to be, too, they just aren't like, even looking at the same book as all the other races - presumably they're one of those sentients not created by Founder meddling (despite a semi-humanoid body plan). Hell their sentience doesn't even quite seem to be "full" despite being technological (see Blindsight by Watts). I do have some slight questions about how they could be so influenced by CMEs etc. but like at least their home system was implied to be very "like that" so it made some sense.
S3E2 Wedding Bell Blues
Near-perfect vibes and great counter-point to the space horror of previous episodes. Also just really nailed all the elements of such an episode and avoided cringe if you ask me. I particularly enjoyed Spock's "Yes, I understand completely." at the end. Me too Spock, me too. Absolutely great and no notes.
(I bet some people hated this - I expected to, but I really didn't!)
S3E3 Shuttle to Kenfori
Back to space horror! Solid but it did immediately fell into one of the traps a previous-season episode did.
Now it is time for "Ruin Explorer gets mad about nothing hour". Please skip this bit if you don't enjoy people getting unreasonably exercised about ridiculous weird mistakes that don't matter in the grand scheme of things.
That mistake being narrow-minded Americanocentrism, and not only Americanocentrism, but a particularly ignorant kind of Americanocentrism that's specific to a time and place, not even "American tradition" in general (short as it might be). Previously it was Fruit of the Poison Tree being a dominant legal principle and operating like it does in the state of NY in the 20th century specifically (and very few other places, even in the US, most places have a saner take on it), which is a repulsive and I'd go as far as to say somewhat depraved legal doctrine and there's no way the basically utopian Federation would be using it (in that form). This time was bloody HIPAA lol of all things, with them jamming a ridiculous claim into poor Dr M'Benga's mouth, that being that the good doctor could not tell the captain the medical status of his crew. I mean, in what universe?! That's not only ridiculous, it's not only obviously unworkable (obviously the captain of military or quasi-military ship necessarily must be able to ask that - esp. as crew will frequently be incapacitated and unable to give permission), it's also not aspirational (that level of ironclad ultra-privacy exists in the US solely because of lawsuits), and worst of all - it's canonically not the case Star Trek! As established by countless episodes of all seasons of Trek where the captain or similar asks that and is answered, INCLUDING BLOODY STRANGE NEW WORLDS ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS!!! What the... who wrote this? Who didn't stop and go "Oh that's obviously dumb, whoops", who read that script and didn't go "Uh, [writer], that cannot be how this works...".
I literally had to go back over the line to double-check I hadn't misheard. I turned on subtitles even. But here's the line "You know the condition and treatment of aaaaaaany [he really stresses that] crew member is confidential unless they jeopardize the rest of the crew". No, Strange New Worlds writer who is victimizing my beloved Dr M'Benga, I know that ISN'T true, actually. That'd have to have been a Star Fleet regulation that existed for like A MONTH. Like the line should have been "You know since last month's memo, procedure has changed and..." lol for god's sake. All will be forgiven if in a future episode they contradict this and say "Good thing that regulation got repealed, eh?"! And he immediately violates it so why even...?
Ok so now I checked and they had TWO writers on this, Onitra Johnson and Bill Wolkoff. They've written 14 and 5 episodes of SNW respectively! I guarantee you in one of those episode Onitra was on, the captain asked after the health of a crew member, and didn't get told to shove it. And I'm very sure one of the Wolkoff episodes also specifically featured such a subplot! Yet they both thought "This line makes sense!". This presumably survived multiple script-reads!
What's really silly is they could have done have the exact same thing but made it a matter of rank and situation and that would have been - "Captain, you know a captain cannot ask about the treatment or condition of another captain outside of an emergency", or equally that she wasn't technically in his crew so he couldn't ask (it would make sense to not be able to ask about civilians etc. if they didn't threaten the crew) but no, we get this HIPAA privacy-style "u cant ask that" nonsense. Which again, not only obviously unworkable, but the opposite has happened countless times on Star Trek. It's a common subplot!
Anyway it doesn't matter so long as they equally forget this crazy line ever happened next time it's an issue, which hopefully they will.
And it makes EXTRA NO SENSE for this to be a possible rule in an episode when Number One is being talking a lot about "insubordination" and "chain-of-command". So they know this is a military vessel and under military rules! You can't have the captain unable ask about crew member health on a military vessel (or wessel)!
Pedantry break ends!
But the episode overall is decent, if again very Mass Effect-y - the concept of hybridization as a solution is very Star Trek-y, there's a classic and rarely-seen phaser overload, there's a lot of Dr M'Benga (always a good thing imo), disruptors do some actual disrupting, and both the Captain and M'Benga's positions make sense. An A, B and C plots as well, which is rarely seen. Also "I walked right into that one" had me absolutely cackling, practically Archer-style humour lol (certainly very Lower Decks-esque). Also "You're keeping score?!" - again, Archer-coded. Classic Star Trek "battle cruiser at 100km" - visuals clearly show that is like, at most low single-digit km away (that's fine it's always been like that, artistic licence!).
Ortegas and Dr M'Benga remain my favourite characters. Bad boys/girls of Star Fleet represent!
(Also very clear why Number One never made captain, Illyrian-ness wasn't it, she's not good at understanding the crew.)
Next up S3E4 and I can read the rest of the thread!
* I mean, come on, intentionally having set up a new colony outside of Federation space (oh wait it's exactly Mass Effect 2 again!), so presumably intentionally not being part of the deeply communitarian and avowedly anti-capitalist Federation, and worse mimicking (at least aesthetically, but LARPers gonna LARP) a somewhat ghastly ultra-capitalist society (the societal ills of which were... formidable) is asking for massive trouble. Nay demanding it! Seriously like dressing up and acting like "Small Town" 1950s America in like 2260 is the direct equivalent of having a town acting out being a town or city (I mean, 5000 people is a small city in 1700s terms) from the Ottoman Empire or maybe Imperial France or Imperial Russia in the 1710s would be now. So I suspect those people had some fairly scary ideas! Did that mean they deserved to be eaten by space monsters? Perhaps not but this was definitely a "Im built different" situation.
Strange New Worlds is really operating on a much higher hit-rate than any other Trek show except DS9. I mean, it needs to, with only 10 episodes a season, but they've been managing it.
S2E10 and S3E10 (Hegemony Part I & II)
Pretty perfect Mass Effect 2, I mean, I know, Trek did it first but it shows how extremely close Mass Effect was to Trek and I though the Hegemony episodes were very good though I was a bit surprised they did, in the end, have to just abandon the colonists (unless I misunderstood, but I don't think I did). There was some implication they might come back for them, but they were getting digested by the second so they'd be long gone even days from then, let alone 3+ months later, which we skip to next episode. But still, that works. Also the colonists totally asking for it, frankly, so I can't care too much!* I really enjoyed how alien the Gorn continue to be, too, they just aren't like, even looking at the same book as all the other races - presumably they're one of those sentients not created by Founder meddling (despite a semi-humanoid body plan). Hell their sentience doesn't even quite seem to be "full" despite being technological (see Blindsight by Watts). I do have some slight questions about how they could be so influenced by CMEs etc. but like at least their home system was implied to be very "like that" so it made some sense.
S3E2 Wedding Bell Blues
Near-perfect vibes and great counter-point to the space horror of previous episodes. Also just really nailed all the elements of such an episode and avoided cringe if you ask me. I particularly enjoyed Spock's "Yes, I understand completely." at the end. Me too Spock, me too. Absolutely great and no notes.
(I bet some people hated this - I expected to, but I really didn't!)
S3E3 Shuttle to Kenfori
Back to space horror! Solid but it did immediately fell into one of the traps a previous-season episode did.
Now it is time for "Ruin Explorer gets mad about nothing hour". Please skip this bit if you don't enjoy people getting unreasonably exercised about ridiculous weird mistakes that don't matter in the grand scheme of things.
That mistake being narrow-minded Americanocentrism, and not only Americanocentrism, but a particularly ignorant kind of Americanocentrism that's specific to a time and place, not even "American tradition" in general (short as it might be). Previously it was Fruit of the Poison Tree being a dominant legal principle and operating like it does in the state of NY in the 20th century specifically (and very few other places, even in the US, most places have a saner take on it), which is a repulsive and I'd go as far as to say somewhat depraved legal doctrine and there's no way the basically utopian Federation would be using it (in that form). This time was bloody HIPAA lol of all things, with them jamming a ridiculous claim into poor Dr M'Benga's mouth, that being that the good doctor could not tell the captain the medical status of his crew. I mean, in what universe?! That's not only ridiculous, it's not only obviously unworkable (obviously the captain of military or quasi-military ship necessarily must be able to ask that - esp. as crew will frequently be incapacitated and unable to give permission), it's also not aspirational (that level of ironclad ultra-privacy exists in the US solely because of lawsuits), and worst of all - it's canonically not the case Star Trek! As established by countless episodes of all seasons of Trek where the captain or similar asks that and is answered, INCLUDING BLOODY STRANGE NEW WORLDS ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS!!! What the... who wrote this? Who didn't stop and go "Oh that's obviously dumb, whoops", who read that script and didn't go "Uh, [writer], that cannot be how this works...".
I literally had to go back over the line to double-check I hadn't misheard. I turned on subtitles even. But here's the line "You know the condition and treatment of aaaaaaany [he really stresses that] crew member is confidential unless they jeopardize the rest of the crew". No, Strange New Worlds writer who is victimizing my beloved Dr M'Benga, I know that ISN'T true, actually. That'd have to have been a Star Fleet regulation that existed for like A MONTH. Like the line should have been "You know since last month's memo, procedure has changed and..." lol for god's sake. All will be forgiven if in a future episode they contradict this and say "Good thing that regulation got repealed, eh?"! And he immediately violates it so why even...?
Ok so now I checked and they had TWO writers on this, Onitra Johnson and Bill Wolkoff. They've written 14 and 5 episodes of SNW respectively! I guarantee you in one of those episode Onitra was on, the captain asked after the health of a crew member, and didn't get told to shove it. And I'm very sure one of the Wolkoff episodes also specifically featured such a subplot! Yet they both thought "This line makes sense!". This presumably survived multiple script-reads!
What's really silly is they could have done have the exact same thing but made it a matter of rank and situation and that would have been - "Captain, you know a captain cannot ask about the treatment or condition of another captain outside of an emergency", or equally that she wasn't technically in his crew so he couldn't ask (it would make sense to not be able to ask about civilians etc. if they didn't threaten the crew) but no, we get this HIPAA privacy-style "u cant ask that" nonsense. Which again, not only obviously unworkable, but the opposite has happened countless times on Star Trek. It's a common subplot!
Anyway it doesn't matter so long as they equally forget this crazy line ever happened next time it's an issue, which hopefully they will.
And it makes EXTRA NO SENSE for this to be a possible rule in an episode when Number One is being talking a lot about "insubordination" and "chain-of-command". So they know this is a military vessel and under military rules! You can't have the captain unable ask about crew member health on a military vessel (or wessel)!
Pedantry break ends!
But the episode overall is decent, if again very Mass Effect-y - the concept of hybridization as a solution is very Star Trek-y, there's a classic and rarely-seen phaser overload, there's a lot of Dr M'Benga (always a good thing imo), disruptors do some actual disrupting, and both the Captain and M'Benga's positions make sense. An A, B and C plots as well, which is rarely seen. Also "I walked right into that one" had me absolutely cackling, practically Archer-style humour lol (certainly very Lower Decks-esque). Also "You're keeping score?!" - again, Archer-coded. Classic Star Trek "battle cruiser at 100km" - visuals clearly show that is like, at most low single-digit km away (that's fine it's always been like that, artistic licence!).
Ortegas and Dr M'Benga remain my favourite characters. Bad boys/girls of Star Fleet represent!
(Also very clear why Number One never made captain, Illyrian-ness wasn't it, she's not good at understanding the crew.)
Next up S3E4 and I can read the rest of the thread!
* I mean, come on, intentionally having set up a new colony outside of Federation space (oh wait it's exactly Mass Effect 2 again!), so presumably intentionally not being part of the deeply communitarian and avowedly anti-capitalist Federation, and worse mimicking (at least aesthetically, but LARPers gonna LARP) a somewhat ghastly ultra-capitalist society (the societal ills of which were... formidable) is asking for massive trouble. Nay demanding it! Seriously like dressing up and acting like "Small Town" 1950s America in like 2260 is the direct equivalent of having a town acting out being a town or city (I mean, 5000 people is a small city in 1700s terms) from the Ottoman Empire or maybe Imperial France or Imperial Russia in the 1710s would be now. So I suspect those people had some fairly scary ideas! Did that mean they deserved to be eaten by space monsters? Perhaps not but this was definitely a "Im built different" situation.
Last edited:
Omand
Hero
In "The Cage" the original pilot the crew was just over 200 as well. And a number around that has shown up in several other episodes as throw-away blink and you miss it dialogue.
It appears they are following "The Cage" for crew numbers and that at some point we will either see a crew increase to TOS territory, or it can be assumed as part of a retro-fit change between Pike's time in command and Kirk's.
Cheers
Omand
Hero
@Ruin Explorer you had a lot packed into your post.
One note. The colonists were not lost. They were all beamed out of the Gorn ship using the information that La'an managed to pull into that data crystal thing near the end of the episode. There was dialogue about the colonists being treated in the secondary or overflow sickbay while the primary sickbay was under quarantine due to the threat of Gorn hatchlings bursting out.
There are several comments about that part of the plot earlier in this thread due to others being unsure around exact details, plus the general lack of extras on-screen for much of Hegemony Part II, leaving the Enterprise seeming quite empty.
Cheers
She did have a thing for Kirk, but then found out he had a pregnant girlfriend - and backed right off.
I'll agree that the Spock romance is a bit weird.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
I always felt Mass Effect “borrowed” a lot more from Babylon 5 than from Trek. Aside from the obvious similarity of B5 and the Citidel, we have a properly military organisation, jump gates/mass relays for FTL, cosmic horror antagonists, experiments on humans to give them psionics/biotic powers that aliens have as standard, mysterious alien ruins discovered on Mars, covert human-supremacist organisations…
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