Highly enjoyable episode. I laughed. My partner face-palmed. We both especially appreciated Pelia’s puppet design.

The character development on T’Pring was top notch. I love that she’s embraced chaos so much that, by the end, she’s pranking Spock by making him believe he dreamed the whole incident. A nice quirk that long term fans know will escalate to the truly epic prank she’ll eventually play on him in TOS Amok Time.

I just worry the writers were too subtle about this. I’m already noticing some more gullible viewers think that the bulk of the episode was actually meant to be a dream. True fans know that SNW’s writers are brave enough not to pull that, though!

Ratings are irrelevant, they’re already cancelled. Not sure exactly when they learned that, but definitely by season 5 we’ll be seeing what happens when they have nothing to lose.

I like muppets, but the musical will be hard to beat. I’ll be happy if it’s as good as the fairy tale episode.

Honestly don’t know why they bothered with an “explanation” at all. It’s a filming style that suited their story. No more need to explain it here than there is in Spider Noir.

I feel like Spock’s interest in plants in this episode is both a call back to The Cage (the way Spock grips the office plant before melding with it felt very similar to the way he gripped the signing plants in that episode) and possibly a call forward to TAS The Infinite Vulcan, where we learn that Spock’s ultimate fate is to live among a planet of sentient plants in a giant cloned body.

(It’s interesting to consider that a copy of his consciousness was returned to his original, diminutive body at the end of that episode. I wonder what adventures that small version of Spock might have had? We may never know…)

I knew I’d have a good time with this one. I’d heard we were getting a horror themed episode directed by someone who worked on The Haunting of Hill House, which is one of my favourite horror projects from the past decade. (Checking Google now, and I see it was actually Bly Manor. Close enough.)

You can certainly see the same approach at play, and I thought it was very fun to see in Trek. I also loved the nods to other sci-fi horror, including that one scene in TNG Night Terrors that really hit hard when I was 7.

I feel like a bit more backstory on the Griffen might have been nice. She was the last ship built in the Pyris shipyards, which mined its ore from an ancient alien graveyard, and all ships built there met a bad end. Or something better than that. But I see those in this thread unhappy that it wasn’t all explained with the sci-fi equivalent of a gas leak, so maybe the simple mystery approach is a good compromise.

Apart from the horror of it all, some nice character work, with Kirk being the stand out. Nice to see his early relationship with Carol. Or lack thereof. I wonder if they’ll ever have occasion to cast her or if she’ll be forever offscreen.

Of those, I was only around for Enterprise’s cancellation and, given I had pretty low esteem for it and for Nemesis, that one hurt a lot less. It felt like death by natural causes, the sad result of a gradual decline. This time around it doesn’t feel natural at all, particularly right on the heels of SFA’s very strong first season. Extremely frustrating.

Not gay enough. We need to go back to this.

Just a prior relationship, I think. Not sure how much prior… could be quite a bit given Vulcan lifespans.

Discovery implied that Sybok was out of the picture before Michael came onto the scene, meaning they might even be secrets from each other! Would it be too much for both each sibling to echo fan kvetching that Spock wasn’t more forthcoming about the other?

I’ve been hoping for them to bring Sybok into the mix like they teased in season 2. Imagine if they did both at once, and we got a full dysfunctional family reunion?

I agree, I felt like the trial should have gone harder on the Federation’s inability to handle the burn. I like that backstory of failure. It means the SFA generation has to feel a greater weight of responsibility to be build something better.

Like, okay, humanitarian triage was needed, but why? Surely every planetary system should be minimally self-sufficient, not relying on a disruptable interstellar supply chain. Even if it never intentionally violated its core principles, I’d like it reinforced that the Federation was complacent before the burn, and holds responsibility for that.

I understand the drama of the scene meant it had to circle around Ake’s decisions regarding Caleb, but I thought the balance could have been pulled off slightly better.

de-weaponizing the minefield (which one would think has long-term implications, if they’ve truly found a way to permanently stabilize Omega)

I had the impression that it was only an option because of the composition of this synthetic type of Omega. Could be wrong, I’d need to rewatch the scene.

Well, I have a much rosier view of new Trek than yours, but I feel the need to thank you for listing some genuinely good modern sci-fi as alternatives. So often in these discussions I just see “they should do what The Orville did,” like a TNG Xerox is an interesting or even viable way to propagate the franchise.

Pluribus in particular did a great job interrogating a threat essentially shared with a classic Trek villain from a refreshingly new perspective. Good recommendation.

I don’t think I caught that! I’ll have to keep my eyes out whenever I do a rewatch.

I wish I could say I’d check it out, but my To Be Read pile is a little intimidating… maybe one day.

The Conspiracy aliens. We’ve been waiting… so long……

Or the ones from Schisms.

I’ve been anticipating a twist with her character for the whole season. We never saw the crime she was accused of. We only saw her with her six old son, or playing to the sympathies of the authorities. There’s no reason to be convinced that she was as innocent in the matter as she pretended to be.

I love the hell out of SNW, but I agree that as a TOS prequel it’s limited in its ability to move the franchise forward.

Thankfully, Starfleet Academy has turned out to be really, really good. I just hope it survives and secures a strong enough following.

I don’t think I could guess where this is going even if I had expertise in reading numbers like this. No matter how good SFA’s raw numbers are, it may get cancelled anyway simply because the new ownership wants to take the franchise in a different direction. On the other hand, no matter how bad SFA’s raw numbers are, if the numbers it does have are from desirable new demographics it might be a good enough business case for them to keep it around. 🤷‍♀️

It sounds like we ought to hear if Kurtzman’s contract is renewed or not fairly soon, which seems like it would be a pretty strong indicator one way or the other.