Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Pike Series)

[Mobbd]

Fuck this.

Poor Alien rip off and then

Spoiler alert

killing off Hemmer. Maybe he could survive the cold of the planet and eat dead humans and Gorn's for a bit but he's not surviving that fall.

Been a shit day and had a proper cry  over that. That's bullshit. Him and La'An the best two in it and they've killed one and sent one of until next year.

[close]

Yeah, I'm gutted mate. I don't think we'll see him again. That just isn't the design. Maybe fan outcry will bring him back like Wilson Cruz in DIS? But even then the damage is done I think. What a disgraceful move. And all wrapped up in multiple things they surely know we hate. It's like it was designed to piss off the type of fan SNW was supposed to be winning back. I'm tempted to say "I'm done" but there's only one episode of the season left I suppose.

[Chairman Yang]

Yeah it's shamelessly Alien, made all the worse considering it ditches any sort of Star Trek in favour of squandering one of the actual better characters in the show.

I truly don't understand what they were thinking, it just reads as extremely petulant: 'Oh you're enjoying this old-school Star Trek are you, you pricks?'

Couldn't give a fuck about La'an, maybe she'll take this whole Gorn bollocks with her.

[Lemming]

Glad to see other people were sour on episode nine, the initial fan reaction in the hours immediately after it aired seemed very positive so I thought it was just me being a grouchy downer, but as more reviews have poured in the consensus seems to be that it was crap.

The pieces seem to be moving into place for something to happen, but I have no idea what. La'an and Uhura are going away and Kirk (James, not Sam) is set to appear either next week or in early season two. I can't figure out what they're actually going to do here. La'an ends up meeting Jim Kirk on her mission to help Newt find a home, and somehow that leads her back to the Enterprise? Maybe they'll just go all out and timeskip ahead ten years and just start filling in blanks in Kirk's five year mission or something wild like that.

Can't say I'm too panicked about the state of the show in general - it's had the scent of NuTrek on it all the way through, in the way people act and speak and the constant callbacks to TOS and cliche-laden plots. It's part and parcel. We've gotten two fantastic episodes and a handful of good ones, which I still consider a big win considering the sorry situation we've been in since 2017 (or since the end of ENT, if you like). "Children of the Comet" was like a monsoon sweeping through a parched desert. Even if that's highest peak the show ever reaches, I'm glad it happened.

[Mobbd]

We've gotten two fantastic episodes and a handful of good ones, which I still consider a big win considering the sorry situation we've been in since 2017 (or since the end of ENT, if you like). "Children of the Comet" was like a monsoon sweeping through a parched desert. Even if that's highest peak the show ever reaches, I'm glad it happened.

I think that's the right attitude to have, Lemming. You're right of course.

[13 schoolyards]

I've been enjoying this more than any other Trek this century, and I didn't even mind episode 9, as -

Spoiler alert

a likable character getting a moving death is a perfectly reasonable move for a drama to make in my book, even if I'm a bit pissed off it happened in a fairly average Alien knock-off

[close]

- but it's always seemed unlikely it was going to continue being good (as in, being stand alone episodes with a range of tones and a likeable cast of characters).

No doubt either this season's end or the start of the next will reveal some boring-as-fuck ongoing grimdark storyline because that's how SFF TV currently works. All the retro stuff that seemed enjoyable in its own right will go in the bin in favour of some kind of dull "shock" twist designed to give the show "real stakes", and so on.

Still, yeah, this season's been fun overall. Which is a lot more than I expected from Trek these days.

[Dex Sawash]

Uhura

Spoiler alert

beams hemmer back aboard straining the gorn bits out by IDing the gorn language before he hits the ground

[close]

I, for one, have no problem with the substitution/update of cgi menacing non-humanoid for man in lizar suit.

[Mobbd]

I, for one, have no problem with the substitution/update of cgi menacing non-humanoid for man in lizar suit.

I know it shouldn't matter. It's the kind of thing I can ignore if it's in service of something good or if I'm already having a good time. As it stands, it's just an insult because the entire SNW project is supposed to be "one for the old-school fans" and making amends for things like the Klingon redesign. But they know what they did with Episode 9. They know what they did.

I'm starting to think it's okay (albeit a shame) for people like me to just give up on New Trek now. I've accepted that it's a reboot and not for me and I'm okay with that now. Star Trek is an inherently 20th-century thing and it's over. And that's okay. There's about 800 episodes for me to enjoy like my grandad enjoyed his Laurel and Hardy tapes, and the new viewers can enjoy their reboot.

I'm tired of feeling sad about Star Trek like a fucking loser and I'm tired of trying to like it and giving lame things a pass in the name of that trying. I'm done, baby! I'm going to start watching For All Mankind over on Apple instead.

[Mobbd]

Here's a trailer for the finale. "billions of lives are at stake" / "this is end-of-the-world stuff." Urgh. Oh well. It was fun (ish) while it lasted.

[Lemming]

I, for one, have no problem with the substitution/update of cgi menacing non-humanoid for man in lizar suit.

I don't mind the redesign itself (though I think the design of the original is great if you can overlook the obvious rubberiness of the suit) but the way the Gorn's behaviour is portrayed is the big mistake. "Arena" was a story about how the Gorn are another spacefaring empire like the Federation. They have a different worldview (ie they're crazy bastards who blow up civilian settlements and then shoot at medics who come to help the scant few survivors), but they're still analagous to the Federation in terms of being an intelligent spacefaring race who can ultimately be reasoned with. It's tough to connect that with the new Xenogorns who burst out of people's chests and drag people away into dark corridors to snack on them!

The Gorn were well-portrayed earlier in SNW in the episode where they chase the Enterprise into a black hole, but after the way they're portrayed in the latest episode it's almost impossible to figure out how Kirk can open diplomatic relations with them. Or survive a hand-to-hand encounter with one, given that he's an out-of-shape man in a toupee and the Gorn are, apparently, xenomorphs with Predator vision and super-strength now).

Here's a trailer for the finale. "billions of lives are at stake" / "this is end-of-the-world stuff." Urgh. Oh well. It was fun (ish) while it lasted.

Desperately hoping that those are just some melodramatic lines chosen for the trailer, and the stakes aren't higher than, say, "Errand of Mercy" or "Balance of Terror".

"End of the world stuff" is definitely alarmingly Discovery-esque, though. We'd better prepare for a 13-episode arc where Pike uses the Enterprise's jump leads to kickstart the second big bang in order to save the entire multiverse from the new upgraded SuperBorg.

Hopefully the writers and showrunners are keeping track of people's reactions online and have seen that people responded really well to the first half of the season, and know to keep things on that kind of track in the future. Though they've already started filming season two, I think...

[Wentworth Smith]

I know it shouldn't matter. It's the kind of thing I can ignore if it's in service of something good or if I'm already having a good time. As it stands, it's just an insult because the entire SNW project is supposed to be "one for the old-school fans" and making amends for things like the Klingon redesign. But they know what they did with Episode 9. They know what they did.

I'm not going to stand up for SNW world as at its best its serviceable Trek (which is an upgrade on Disco and Picard) but this kind of stuff makes me want old school fans (and I'm one of them) to be ignored or trolled by the programme makers: I hope they keep the Disco Klingon design but make the faces even harder to act through so all we can hear is an angry mumble.

'They know what they did'... strangle a puppy? Sacrifice their first born? Go round to your house and spit in your face? Do a dodgy CGI update of a rubbish looking old school alien?

And no TV  big budget series is going to be made to 'make amends' or be 'one for old school fans', if it was no-one would watch and it would end up being trash stories explaining why the Klingons didn't have ridges in the original series.

[Mobbd]

Pike uses the Enterprise's jump leads to kickstart the second big bang in order to

Love you Lemming!

'They know what they did'... strangle a puppy? Sacrifice their first born? Go round to your house and spit in your face? Do a dodgy CGI update of a rubbish looking old school alien?

Maybe I'm taking it too personally but it does feel like a direct and quite complicated act of trolling, a planned fuck-you to old-school fans for moaning and complaining since New Trek began.

As to the nuts and bolts of "what they did" I'm referring to what I said in this post. (To be clear, I'm saying that Hemmer was not "written out," which would be a perfectly normal thing to do in TV including Star Trek, albeit an arguably premature one in this case, but that he was written in to specifically appeal to a certain kind of fan and then die: a statement of intent and a willful act of trolling, remote bullying even.)

Does it matter? Not in the grand scheme of things, no. But to a lot of old squares like me Star Trek has a special place in life, a sort of retreat from a hostile world that we struggle to read and to navigate, something dependable and "ours" for decades, something to believe in and think about while everyone else is playing the sports or whatever it is. I know that's lame and exactly the kind of thing nerds get a kicking for but it's true. It's also a cultural property that has been well-maintained across multiple productions and casts and crews for almost 60 years, that is now being fucked with deliberately in addition to incompetently. (To my mind, all of this is actually far worse than the puppy strangling and face spitting examples you cite as unequivocally bad things!)

Maybe it's all a bit much for me to react this way, probably man-babyish. I'm just trying to explain in good faith why I'm pissed.

[Lemming]

And no TV  big budget series is going to be made to 'make amends' or be 'one for old school fans', if it was no-one would watch and it would end up being trash stories explaining why the Klingons didn't have ridges in the original series.

It is a bit odd that they constantly plunder existing concepts and ideas while also making decisions likely to annoy people who are most familiar with those ideas. I'm saying this as someone who doesn't really care about continuity or "canon" to any great extent. I like their reimagining of Pike better than the boring moody one in "The Cage", ditto for their versions of Uhura and Chapel, who are much more interesting characters than they were in TOS now. I love the redesign of the ship and I'm relieved they made it look modern and convincing rather than a misguided attempt to recreate the original, like in Enterprise. I also don't mind them rewriting Spock's backstory and interfering with the plot of "Amok Time" to add more T'Pring, because their T'Pring is great and her relationship with Spock is fun to watch. I like Sam Kirk too, even if his presence doesn't make a great deal of sense. In these cases, they've managed to use existing material to write something better than the original, so while it'll piss off the most hardcore fans, it's generally a good move.

The Gorn are a weird one though. They don't even appear to be the same species as they originally were, and they're changed in a way that simply makes the plot of "Arena" make no sense. This wouldn't be a problem if "Arena" was naff and they managed to repurpose the Gorn to tell a more effective story, but it's the opposite, at least in my view - "Arena" is a classic Star Trek story about rejecting violence, while the newest SNW episode is a dodgy remake of Alien where the Gorn are hideous monsters.

On a wider note, I do wonder why they go for such obscure shit like Sam Kirk. Who even remembers Sam Kirk, other than people who are well into Star Trek? I get bringing Spock and Uhura back, because both of them have huge cultural impact and I can imagine people who don't usually watch Star Trek going "ooh, spock" and tuning in. But what casual viewer or non-Trek fan is excitedly saying "holy fuck, Sam Kirk is in this!" and rushing to watch as a result? The writers give themselves unnecessary headaches by bringing in obscure things that will only be remembered by dedicated fans (the same people notorious for being heavily invested in the setting and ultra-meticulous about every detail) and then using them in ways that are likely to annoy those exact people. All pain no gain from the writer's perspective.

The Gorn are the worst example of it. I doubt most non-Trek fans know what the Gorn is or remember anything about "Arena", and wider pop culture's main interaction with it is laughing at the dodgy rubber suit and Kirk's silly slap-fight with it. The Gorn are invoked here in a way that doesn't even play on that. Like, if the Gorn looked crap and marched very slowly towards Pike going "GRRR" and took a really slow swing at him, it'd be shit, but I'd also get the intent behind it - the writers playing into the public's impression of Star Trek and playing on a trope that people are aware of. But anyone who doesn't remember the name of the Gorn in "Arena" would just think the Xenogorns are an all-new species, and the only people who do remember "Arena" clearly will also be thinking "what the fuck are they doing to the Gorn here"? Odd choices all round.

Love you Lemming!

Love you too! <3

[Old Nehamkin]

I always thought the Discovery Klingon design looked fine and have always been a bit nonplussed at what a recurring bone of contention it seems to be for people. Seemed like the showrunners were just taking natural advantage of the massive leaps in prosthetic technology over the last couple of decades and trying to come up with something that looks a bit more believably non-humanoid, and that's an ok thing to do I think - just like it was ok for Rodenberry to overhaul the Klingons from their "guys who are sort of spray-tanned" design in the original series.

I've had plenty of problems with the writing, style and overall direction of the recent Star Trek shows - I think Discovery started out with a bit of promise before descending into overwraught melodramatic tedium, and Picard is simply single dumbest and most creatively bankrupt thing to ever have the Star Trek name on it. But I think that some of the "old-school" fanbase have become a bit too fundamentalist about the franchise needing to slavishly recreate the aesthetics of the TNG/DS9/Voyager era.

[Lemming]

It's tricky with the Klingons because they had a really defined look and were so frequently on-screen during the TNG era. It's a strong design and, beyond making the prosthetics blend with actor's own faces a bit better, I'm not sure there's any huge improvements that could be made. The Discovery Klingons were a bit too much of a departure and didn't feel like a natural evolution of the same design to me, plus they just looked naff on their own merits. Combined with the awkward way they wrote the Klingons that didn't really feel close to either TOS or TNG Klingons, and it just felt like a different race entirely.

There are some people who are very invested in the aesthetics of the older shows but I think most fans are quite flexible - the new uniforms in Strange New Worlds don't seem to get many complaints, for example, or the light-touch redesign of the Enterprise because both look good and are recognisable reinterpretations of the originals. The phasers look like cool updates of the old ones too (though the blaster fire can FUCK OFF). The Tellarite redesign in Enterprise is one of the ultimate triumphs of reinterpretation, I think, and should be used as a guideline - it looks a thousand times better and more realistic than the crappy pig mask from "Journey to Babel" but clearly uses the original as a base to work from, as opposed to whatever they're playing at with the new Gorn.

They can get around all these potential issues by just coming up with new concepts and species with all-new designs, but that's not the Kurtzman way. The animatronic puppets they've used for the Shepherds in ep2 and the guy who gets chestbursted to death in ep9 were fantastic, if only they'd write new species every week with fresh original designs like that.

[Wentworth Smith]

Love you Lemming!

Maybe I'm taking it too personally but it does feel like a direct and quite complicated act of trolling, a planned fuck-you to old-school fans who have been moaning and complaining since New Trek began.

As to the nuts and bolts of "what they did" I'm referring to what I said in this post. (To be clear, I'm saying that Hemmer was not "written out," which would be a perfectly normal thing to do in TV including Star Trek, but that he was written in to specifically appeal to a certain kind of fan and then die: a statement of intent and a willful act of trolling, remote bullying even.)

Does it matter? Not in the grand scheme of things, no. But to a lot of old squares like me Star Trek has a special place in life, a sort of retreat from a hostile world that we struggle to read and to navigate, something dependable and "ours" for decades, something to believe in and think about while everyone else is playing the sports or whatever it is. I know that's lame and exactly the kind of thing nerds get a kicking for but it's true. It's also a cultural property that has been well-maintained across multiple productions and casts and crews almost 60 years, that is now being fucked with deliberately in addition to incompetently. (To my mind, all of this is actually far worse than the puppy killing and face spitting examples you cite as unequivocally bad things!)

It's a bit much for me to react this way, I suppose, perfectly man-babyish. But I'm just trying to explain in good faith why I'm pissed.

Characters are written in to be killed off in television all the time, to describe it as 'remote bullying' is, and how do I put this carefully, FUCKING INSANE. For the creators of this show to add a character that a 'certain kind of fan' would like just to kill them off and annoy those fans credits them with more imagination than they have ever shown as writers. And cold loving alien on ice world, no body seen: he might not even be dead!

I think this version you have in your head that was well maintained and your retreat has only sporadically existed. If you watch the episodes of TNG where the villians are space jews, or where there is a planet of stereotypical black tribesmen, and think the writers are really showing great respect to the franchise and your intelligence then I worry for your mental state.

[Mobbd]

The Gorn redesign is singularly bizarre. I really can't get my head around it. It doesn't even make consistent sense within SNW before we even get onto the topic of Arena and canon (which I really am willing to try to ignore, preferring to see New Trek as a reboot.)

They were right to hide the Gorn from us to begin with, keeping them mysterious. When I heard that the Gorn would be shown, I thought "fuck it, yes! show the Gorn!" because I figured they'd do some sort of retro-looking re-imagining like they've done with the uniforms and the bridge etc. I could have lived with that. I imagined a semi-concealed-in-gloom space captain on the viewscreen, a sinister dinosaur-looking puppet augmented with CGI to look less silly.

But this? Sweet Jesus.

[Mobbd]

Characters are written in to be killed off in television all the time, to describe it as 'remote bullying' is, and how do I put this carefully, FUCKING INSANE.

I don't want to argue. I really am just trying to explain my take on this. This is what I see.

he might not even be dead!

You might be right! But if he comes back, it'll be similar to how Dr. Culber came back after fan outcry. The original decision was to fridge.

I think this version you have in your head that was well maintained and your retreat has only sporadically existed. If you watch the episodes of TNG where the villians are space jews, or where there is a planet of stereotypical black tribesmen, and think the writers are really showing great respect to the franchise and your intelligence then I worry for your mental state.

I have watched those episodes of TNG, along with all the other episodes, about 30 times. I'm very, very familiar with them. But you're describing a different problem now. Those counts of racism are regretable and complex but aren't really about franchise respect. Let's not get into this; it's a different conversation and we've kinda already had it in the TNG thread. You don't have to sympethise with my read on SNW Episode 9; I'm just trying to explain my view of it, which you can take or leave. :)

[Lemming]

a planet of stereotypical black tribesmen

I know this is just a throwaway remark in your post and not relevant to the core point, but it's time to pick my insanely obscure Star Trek hill to die on - they weren't a stereotypical tribe! They were based on ancient China!
Spoilering further thoughts on "Code of Honor" because I doubt anyone cares:

Spoiler alert

The actors were all black because it was a desert world (a cool detail and the only example of this I can think of in Star Trek) but the society was said on-screen to be most akin to elements of China's history, though not directly analogous. They weren't meant to resemble any rural African tribe, historical or present-day, in either behaviour or dress, as far as I can tell.

In the big rewatch thread I gave "Code of Honor" a low rating partially because the rest of the fandom is so down on it to the point where I doubted my own mild enjoyment of it, and the consensus that the depiction of the aliens was racist made me a bit unsure of the whole thing, but it's time to come out of the closet as a Code Of Honor Enjoyer. The main bad guy is a cunning opponent who's aware of the limitations that the Prime Directive places on Picard and bends them to his will, and renders the Enterprise crew helpless, which is a joy to watch. The Enterprise crew could rescue Yar in five seconds flat if they wanted to, and the bad guy knows it and twists them into a position which totally negates their technical advantage, which is ace. The battle with the spiked poison gauntlets is stupid but pure pulpy fun. The finale is a bit too pat and convenient but it's still satisfying to see the patriarchal bad guy outwitted by the woman he sought to control and wind up subservient to her under the rules of his own society - he ended up fucked over by strict adherence his own code in the same way he'd tried to fuck the Enterprise crew over by forcing strict adherence to theirs. Really it's like a 6/10 episode. I think I gave it like 3/10 which was too harsh for something with such a strong antagonist and cool Prime Directive related ideas.

[close]

You're right on the money about Space Jews though, no idea how the fuck they got away with that.

[Malcy]

. Though they've already started filming season two, I think...

Wrapped last week I think.

[Mobbd]

There's a very interesting episode of a podcast called "Black Alert" (hosted by Black Star Trek fans) about Code of Honour. It's worth a listen!

The "Space Jews" element of Trek has been assessed in a very interesting way by young Jewish fans in recent years too. If the Space Jews Wentworth is referring to are the Ferengi, I'd also say that the Vulcans, Klingons and Bajorans could be said to be Space Jews depending on your ideas and experiences of Jewishness. "Star Trek and the Jews" is the podcast and Twitter feed to look at if you want more Talmudic scholarship on this point.

[Malcy]

Watched the trailer and clip for the finale now.

Eh.

Spoiler alert

Looking like Romulans or Klingons.

[close]

All the promises of new stuff and it's been mostly old. Didn't care for the Horn update last week. Just unnecessary. They can be menacing without being Xenomorphs.

[13 schoolyards]

I may have missed something but it seemed like all of the face-to-face Gorn stuff we saw this episode involved their breeding and early life cycle.

It wouldn't surprise me if later on we get told "oh yeah, once they're fully grown the adult Gorn come back to their space murder hives to collect the surviving kids and introduce them into their much more civilised but still nasty and brutal space empire - it's just that the babies are too vicious to have around the house, they eat each other don't you know?"

[Pranet]

Yes that is more or less what I thought.

[Dex Sawash]

They didn't show gorn in the Laan flashbacks, right?
So maybe those were just crawling infants in E9.

[Lemming]

For sure, they could still come up with a series of explanations that wrenches the plot back into a position that makes the events of "Arena" broadly possible, but I just wonder what it was the writers actually wanted to get out of having the Gorn as a recurring antagonist in this new show. It's already a bit of an issue because "Arena" makes it clear that the Gorn have never been met before - either that or Kirk's just a dunce who's never heard of them, but you'd think Uhura and Spock might clue him in, since they've both had face-to-face encounters with the Gorn now.

As with their rewriting of the backstory of "Amok Time", this wouldn't be a huge problem in itself if they were using the existing material well and telling a much richer story. I liked "Memento Mori", where the Gorn are an unseen threat, and I thought that was a good example of how to use the Gorn in a way that told an exciting story on its own and also made "Arena" richer in retrospect.

But now we've got chestbursters and La'an hacking the frozen corpse of a Gorn baby apart. The Gorn are a hugely constraining plot device to have in the first place because the writers can't really develop them in any significant way - we can't learn too much about them because they need to still be mysterious for "Arena", and the SNW crew can't make peace with them because the writers need to leave it so that Kirk is the one to make the first overtures of diplomacy a decade later.

It just seems like a typical NuTrek maneuver to me - regurgitate old content in a way that feels completely thematically separate from the original, makes continuity very awkward to the point of being a retcon, and then use that content to tell much less interesting stories that also paint the writers into a corner.

[Dex Sawash]

What if blinky bulb Pike is the only surviving person from this series and all the logs are lost then we lose all knowledge of the Gorn.











Oh, and maybe Spock and Uhura have hit their heads.

[Mobbd]

What if blinky bulb Pike is the only surviving person from this series and all the logs are lost then we lose all knowledge of the Gorn.











Oh, and maybe Spock and Uhura have hit their heads.

Haha, that was practically what happened in DIS, wasn't it? Everything impossible to reconcile with existing canon was "classified" even if it could save lives or improve life in the galaxy no end. Ludicrous!

Don't forget M'Benga though. He needs a mind wipe too. And Kyle. And Chappers. And probably Kirk soon.

I mean, there's any number of ways (sci-fi or otherwise) they could use to have their cake and eat it but, like, why? In service of what? That's the big mystery of NuTrek.

[Malcy]

Wasn't keen on episode 8. Just couldn't be arsed with it. Not seen this weeks yet.

TrekCore have put a post up saying to avoid any SNW stuff until the finale airs. Even the episode synopsis and promo pics.

Spoiler alert

Probably just Kirk which I think a lot of people would be expecting anyway but I thought the finale was going to be some Sybok shenanigans.

[close]

I've looked at these and it's nothing massively spoilery. The synopsis isn't even that much. And it's even just a little thing that was picked up on by loads of folk from the trailer but I think this could be a great episode.

[Lemming]

Not sure how to feel about the last episode. It's

Spoiler alert

a remix of Balance of Terror.

[close]

Taken in isolation it wasn't bad (though the time crystal stuff seems very bullshitty to me), and it'd be fine if this was like, a mid-season episode later in the show's run, and we had 26 episode seasons. But as it is, it's just them falling back on existing material yet again, to the point of lifting entire sequences of dialogue from the TOS script. We've had ten episodes, and about half of them have relied heavily on existing content from TOS.
Also

Spoiler alert

didn't like Kirk's portrayal - I actually liked the actor's performance and warmed up to it quite a lot, but in terms of writing, Kirk came across as way too bloodthirsty IMO. In the original, he only makes the decision to attack after Spock makes the recommendation, he seems to give serious weight to McCoy's protests, he only fires a lethal shot when the Enterprise has been hit in the face with a nuke and is near-death, and then he tries to get the Romulan commander to beam the survivors over to the Enterprise. He understands the necessity of engaging the Romulans, but doesn't show total disregard for life. In this episode, meanwhile, he's actgually the one who makes the attack suggestion first, and he's later talking about "blowing them out of the sky" after they're already disabled.

I feel like nobody's been able to satisfyingly write Kirk in any Star Trek thing since TOS, possibly because he's not really that well-drawn in TOS itself and is mostly held together by Shatner's performance, but here they play up his "brash" and "rule-bending" nature and make him aggressive as hell. Didn't click for me.

[close]

For the season as a whole, I'd say there's a lot of promise and a lot of typical NuTrek warning signs existing simultaneously. It's the best thing the NuTrek team has made, no question, and an enjoyable show overall, but I was hoping that by the end of the first season, I'd feel certain about the show's quality and future (either in that it's definitely another write-off like the other NuTrek shows, or it's definitely a wonderful return to form). As it stands, I couldn't tell you how season two is going to go. It could build on the successes of the first season and become great, or it could still all go to shit.

Still, we got the fantastic "Children of the Comet", the very good "Memento Mori", and a handful of other solid episodes. They've shown they can do it if they try, so I'm still on board and still optimistic. Let's see what happens.

[Malcy]

My favourite of the series.

Spoiler alert

Kirk came across a bit too Jim Carey like I thought.

[close]

Enjoyed it a lot. Probably one of the best live action Trek episodes we've had since the return.

Lots of Easter eggs and references and even dialogue that were instantly recognisable without being too in your face.

Spoiler alert

Scotty!

[close]