Strange New Worlds season 2 - SPOILERS

[MarkB]

Paramount+ has dropped the next episode of SNW early as a surprise. Watching it now.

Thanks for the heads-up. I was literally just on Youtube thinking "why did that person post their next review five days early?"

 

[Vael]

Thanks for the heads-up. I was literally just on Youtube thinking "why did that person post their next review five days early?"

Apparently it was dropped early because it was shown at San Diego Comic Con.

Spoiler-free: That crossover was delightful

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If we're going to talk about potentially harmful stereotypes used for humor, the gender dynamic between Spock's in-laws is fascinating. T'Pring's mother is a bigoted harridan who uses her husband's family honor to rationalize and reinforce her own prejudices-- simultaneously very Vulcan and very human-- while her father is a good-natured, open-minded, and spineless doormat who capitulates his supposed domestic authority in order to protect the mere illusion of it.

It's a sitcom premise with sci-fi execution, and it's brilliant. Also, if you imagine that T'Pring's father had gotten Pike alone for five minutes-- he would have asked Pike to give Spock those recipes, so that his household staff could truthfully say they got them from a Vulcan.

I'm not a fan of nuTrek style grimdarkness, but I like episodes like this (or Una's court martial) that show that the cultures and the species of the Federation still have foibles and feets of clay... because Roddenberry's utopia shines the brightest when the franchise reminds us that utopia isn't easy, that everything that Star Trek tell us is possible had to be fought for tooth and nail by us and our children, and zealously guarded by their grandchildren's grandchildren.

Everything our heroes in Starfleet have to fight for in their utopian future is a reminder that their ancestors brought them there from a world that was even darker than here.

It was maybe a bit too on the nose sitcom for me (not that I didn't enjoy the episode), but it is still a good reminder that the Federation are not and never were and never will be the Borg. It's member cultures retain their unique cultures and traditions and stay unique, they don't all become enslaved to the "human hive mind" or whatever.

 

[Arilyn]

Apparently it was dropped early because it was shown at San Diego Comic Con.

Spoiler-free: That crossover was delightful

It was! They pulled off a very tricky crossover. It was so much fun.

 

[MarkB]

The only thing I'd have liked to see but didn't was a live-action quality rendering of the Cerritos. The title sequence was adequate compensation for that, though.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The crossover episode is really a heck of a thing. I liked it quite a bit, but I am more astonished than anything else, even being well aware it was coming.

As a Strange New Worlds episode, they pulled off an impressive feat. If there was a weak point it was simply that, even though of all the live action treks this is the one that Lower Decks could crossover into with the least tonal whiplash, there's still a little tonal whiplash. What can you do, landing in this weird period where everyone speaks so slowly and quietly, and doesn't make hyper-specific references all the time?

As a Lower Decks episode, absolutely fantastic.

Something that only occurred to me after finishing the episode is that our cartoon-to-live-action actors did a particularly impressive job of incorporating a suitable but not overwhelming amount of cartoon physicality into their performances, as well as the physicality of those particular characters as presented in the animation, which presumably no part of their Lower Decks work particularly prepared them for.

 

[Ryujin]

I'm normally against cross-overs, because they seem to force you to watch both shows to know where things are going, but I loved this. You don't need to know anything about "Lower Decks" to enjoy it and it's unlikely to come up again, so it can stand on its own.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm normally against cross-overs, because they seem to force you to watch both shows to know where things are going, but I loved this. You don't need to know anything about "Lower Decks" to enjoy it and it's unlikely to come up again, so it can stand on its own.

The other issue with cross-overs that this avoids is the "lack of consequences". They are often neat little stories that ultimately serve no long term plot. But we do have a few key character notes this episode may influence.

• Chapel: This may start to put cracks in her relationship with Spock
• Una: Has recieved some measure of assurance that her path is a right one, and is ultimately glorified in the future. That's a major confidence booster for someone who has had to deal with so much hatred.
• Uhura: Again the confidence booster that she is a "big deal" from a future standpoint. As she outlined, there is also an amazing pressure to that.
• Orions: This was a small step, but an important one, leading to a future where Orions can be more than the pirates they are in this timeline. Its possible we see more of that orion crew at some point.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The other issue with cross-overs that this avoids is the "lack of consequences". They are often neat little stories that ultimately serve no long term plot. But we do have a few key character notes this episode may influence.

• Chapel: This may start to put cracks in her relationship with Spock
• Una: Has recieved some measure of assurance that her path is a right one, and is ultimately glorified in the future. That's a major confidence booster for someone who has had to deal with so much hatred.
• Uhura: Again the confidence booster that she is a "big deal" from a future standpoint. As she outlined, there is also an amazing pressure to that.
• Orions: This was a small step, but an important one, leading to a future where Orions can be more than the pirates they are in this timeline. Its possible we see more of that orion crew at some point.

It also, I believe, establishes the nature of Pike's relationship with his father. While some 90s Trek shows regularly threw out character stuff like that and never thought about it again, that seems unlikely with this one (if it never gets further development it's only because these seasons are so short).

I wouldn't be shocked if this episode gets a call-back in La'an's evolving feelings about her own time travel experience as well. Seeing them seemingly get away with would-be butterfly after would-be butterfly would be a good impetus for being willing to talk to Pelia and/or Kirk. Of course the reason their constant dropping of future knowledge didn't cause any problems is probably that their temporal journey was always part of this timeline.

Perhaps most importantly, I think even beyond the Chapel relationship this episode might be an important step in getting the show to more directly address how Ethan Peck's Spock becomes Leonard Nemoy's Spock.

But yeah, my biggest concern was whether this should have just been an episode of Lower Decks and was being done as an episode of Strange New Worlds for the sake of novelty. And while I think that is a little bit the case in the sense that it would have all flowed more naturally as a Lower Decks episode, they did actually have it do character work for Strange New Worlds, some of which probably will have lasting impacts. Despite being the emphatically episodic of the nu-Treks SNW is not an "and that weird episode happened, let us never speak of it again" show.

 

[Dire Bare]

The only thing I'd have liked to see but didn't was a live-action quality rendering of the Cerritos. The title sequence was adequate compensation for that, though.

I would have liked all four lower-deckers, including Tendi and Rutherford, to time-travel to the non-animated past. I am glad they were in the episode! It opened like a Lower Decks episode, then transitioned into SNW! Fun.