All Things Star Trek

[Valka D'Ur]

@Plotinus: Your post came through to my email, but isn't here...

To clarify, I'm annoyed that we're not allowed to see the feeds. We used to be years ago, but not any more. It's the same with the Survivor Ponderosa material. That used to be freely available on YouTube, but isn't anymore.

 

[Plotinus]

Oh, that’s because I deleted the post after making it, as I thought it was too flippant.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Email notifications are instantaneous.

I'm not offended.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ep.210, "Hegemony"

It's over? Already? [Goshdarn] it. It was a mostly-weekly release, but I feel like I binged it over a long weekend. And what with everything, we might be lucky to get season 3 in the first half of 2025. *Gorn smash*

I think the episode with La'an & Kirk and the episode with the flashbacks to the war were my favorites. It's hard to pick any one favorite character or performer. I liked Jess Bush and Nurse Chapel more than I had before, so she might be Most Improved, although Celia Rose Gooding & Uhura are right there, too. Ethan Peck might have been the MVP for me, even though Spock wasn't the team's top goal-scorer, if you know what I mean. Neither of the newly-introduced characters (Carol Kane/Pelia & Melanie Scrofano/Capt. Batel) ever seemed to break through, for me. I didn't even really understand why Batel had been introduced until the end (see spoiler).

I'll give the season an 8/10, I think.

Spoiler :

I normally don't like it when I'm abruptly introduced to a pre-existing love-interest for an existing character, someone who's supposedly been in that character's life all along. I don't hate the 'in media res' story opening, but in these cases it's usually just a tell that this new character is going to get killed soon, so the character we've gotten to know can have some grief in their story without killing someone else we've gotten to know*. That actually didn't happen right away, and I thought they did a decent job of letting use see Pike & Batel's relationship, even if I would've preferred to see it grow from the beginning. I even wondered if maybe the show wouldn't go the obvious route with Batel. Pike and Batel having to break up because of their careers might be more interesting. But, no, here we are anyway. I guess Batel could still survive, and then they could break up after that, for all the same reasons (maybe moreso, now that Pike has violated orders and risked so many people really just to save her), but at this point, whether Batel does or doesn't survive, I think it sounds unsatisfying either way. [IMG alt=""]https://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/Undecided.gif[/IMG] Whatever the writers decide, they have to spin it in some clever way that I haven't thought of.

I saw an interview with one of the showrunners, who cited "The Best of Both Worlds", the finale of the 3rd season of The Next Generation. That was in fact one of the great endings, I agree, but the resolution of the cliff-hanger at the beginning of the next season was kind of a dud. I hope the writers for SNW season 3 have something better up their sleeves.

I never really thought Christine was in danger of being killed, I guess because we know she's still on the Enterprise when Jim Kirk becomes captain. In fact, I was surprised she was still aboard the saucer section. I just assumed she'd escaped the ship and was down on the planet somewhere.

* And if Pike is the 'target', who could that have been? None of the existing characters fit the bill.

 

[warpus]

CTV Sci-fi (formerly the Space channel) carries Star Trek. They also have some Stargate stuff, though it's on at 4 am or so (in this time zone).

Paramount +... meh. I checked it out last year to see if Canadians are allowed to watch the Big Brother feeds. We're not.

Hm, CTV didn't seem to let me subscribe to their streams, it said I had to basically get cable, which I don't want. Has that changed, to your knowledge?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I have the Essentials package from Telus, which is several dozen more channels than I ever watch, and CTV Sci-fi is an "a la carte" channel I added on top of that, for an extra $5/month. So I guess you'd need some sort of cable package, depending on which company operates in your region (Shaw? Rogers? Bell?).

 

[warpus]

I have the Essentials package from Telus, which is several dozen more channels than I ever watch, and CTV Sci-fi is an "a la carte" channel I added on top of that, for an extra $5/month. So I guess you'd need some sort of cable package, depending on which company operates in your region (Shaw? Rogers? Bell?).

I'm basically retired from cable for life, as far as I'm concerned anyhow. So I will not get cable just so I have access to CTV, if that's the only way. It would be nice if they offered you a way to pay to watch those streams without cable, but I'm not counting on it. I still go on every once in a while, they have free stuff you can watch. I bingewatched the first 7 seasons of dragon's den on there, without cable or any sort of account. You gotta watch ads, but for a free service, I'm willing to do that (to an extent)

Completely unrelated to that, in an effort to remain on-topic, I wanted to mention that I really liked the latest SNW episode, "Hegemony". I didn't realize it was the season finale until the very end somehow. Very good season finale, I thought

 

[Synobun]

The season finale for SNW was serviceable. A few questionable choices, and a cliffhanger is brutal especially now with the strike and with Paramount canceling ST shows. Overall though, pretty strong season. This crew deserves syndication treatment with long, extended seasons/arcs. Won't ever happen, especially in the streaming era. Alas.

 

[warpus]

Yeah, it's too bad. But overall I think it's some of the best Trek we've had since the 90s

 

[EgonSpengler]

Completely unrelated to that, in an effort to remain on-topic, I wanted to mention that I really liked the latest SNW episode, "Hegemony". I didn't realize it was the season finale until the very end somehow. Very good season finale, I thought

Yeah, it caught me off-guard too.

The season finale for SNW was serviceable. A few questionable choices, and a cliffhanger is brutal especially now with the strike and with Paramount canceling ST shows. Overall though, pretty strong season. This crew deserves syndication treatment with long, extended seasons/arcs. Won't ever happen, especially in the streaming era. Alas.

I thought it was more than serviceable, but I agree that it's an unfortunate moment for a cliff-hanger. The showrunner who cited The Best of Both Worlds noted that Trek doesn't do cliff-hangers very often, and boy, did he choose a bad time to drop one on us. Oh, well. If it never comes back, we can all decide what we want to happen to Batel.

Yeah, it's too bad. But overall I think it's some of the best Trek we've had since the 90s

Definitely. I haven't gone back to rewatch TNG-DS9-VOY basically since they aired, but I would definitely put SNW in that tier, even with only 20 episodes. And if we rate its first 20 episodes against the first, full seasons of all those shows, it might be off to the best start of any of them.

 

[warpus]

I heard rumours that they might be thinking of including more episodes per season for SNW.. but.. I don't want to get anyone too excited in case it's just a silly rumour

 

[Synobun]

I thought it was more than serviceable, but I agree that it's an unfortunate moment for a cliff-hanger. The showrunner who cited The Best of Both Worlds noted that Trek doesn't do cliff-hangers very often, and boy, did he choose a bad time to drop one on us. Oh, well. If it never comes back, we can all decide what we want to happen to Batel.

The reason I call it serviceable is that the whole saucer-section plot is... questionable. No thought is given to survivors. No thought is given to why Chapel is the only survivor. No thought is given to why Spock is putting a rocket inside the bridge beyond getting all three of them in the same spot for a fight. They crash the saucer section into the planet but somehow they can float out of the ship, perfectly fine, suggesting their attitude adjusters are strong enough to counteract the acceleration and velocity of all the rockets Spock just used. And again, no thought given to survivors. They just go, "Huh, it's blown apart. Let's yeet it into the planet." without a second thought. Even after Spock sees Chapel, alive, an obvious survivor!

Okay, rant over.

There's more, but that's the big one.

 

[EgonSpengler]

"Twin Flames" (2023) by Christina Chong

Ehhhh... Not disastrous. A little boring? Competently done, but I kept waiting for it to jump off and do something exciting. Well, at least it's short. I guess it's hard enough to be good at one thing, so I can't very well expect her to be the next Sia Furler, too. (And, hey, Sia tried her hand at making a movie and by all accounts it was a fiery trainwreck... )

 

[EgonSpengler]

Another 3 points in the league table for Strange New Worlds: In the 2nd season finale, the Gorn were mostly practical fx. They were puppets. CGI was used to erase the puppeteers and wires and whatnot. I was thinking specifically about the moment the tail swings down from the ceiling (which had to be a shoutout to the scene in Alien with Harry Dean Stanton).

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Here's a video I just ran across. I have no clue who "Paul" and "Storm" are, but Wil Wheaton relates what happened the time that he met William Shatner. The TNG set and the STV set were next door, so Wheaton took the opportunity to meet Shatner. This is how it went (sans musical accompaniment, I'm sure! ):

(language warning for the "f-word")

 

[Perfection]

I heard rumours that they might be thinking of including more episodes per season for SNW.. but.. I don't want to get anyone too excited in case it's just a silly rumour

Like Im cool with it staying at 10 a season if it allows them to pull out the stops on some episodes

Like Imma watch that musical episode 47 more times

 

[Ajidica]

God I need to get caught up on my Trek.
Or I can watch crap on youtube again.....
Shaka, when the walls fell.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Happy Star Trek Day! (September 8, 1966 was the premier of Star Trek, with the episode "The Map Trap.")

Star Trek: Star Trek Day 2023

On September 8, 1966, Star Trek debuted for the first time on television with “The Man Trap,” the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. On that day, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry introduced audiences to a world that championed diversity, inclusion, acceptance, and hope...

www.startrek.com

"Raumschiff Enterprise" The Man Trap (TV Episode 1966) ⭐ 7.2 | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

50m | 12

www.imdb.com

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Star Trek premiered two days earlier in Canada, on September 6, 1966.

Anyway, I was browsing around and found this fan art mashup. Introducing a little-known ship of the Federation, I present the U.S.S. Camelot:

How many Merlin characters can you identify? (it's annoying that the Round Table Knights aren't included in this).

 

[Ajidica]

Fully caught up on SNW and Lower Decks.
The Koala is smiling because it is now canon in multiple shows.

Spoiler Lower Decks :

SNW

Skip to 1:40