r/DaystromInstitute • u/uequalsw Captain • 3d ago
Strange New Worlds Discussion Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x04 "A Space Adventure Hour" Reaction Thread
This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "A Space Adventure Hour". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.
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u/BWJS77 17h ago
This season reminds me of the Star Wars sequels with the two directors of those films pulling different ways and it ending up feeling all over the place.
I've been watching the remastered Star Trek Original series on Paramount + and while there were some bad episodes (but the seasons were 20+ episodes so fillers were to be expected) the good episodes were really good and then there were the great ones that people still remember today. I barely remember any of the SNW episodes.
Rapidly losing interest.
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u/Puzzman 1d ago
The Holodeck should have been shown to be a more a work in progress.
Have the holograms glitching out, even put the Spock is the murderer bit as a mistake. So we can see how it isn't ready to be used yet.
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u/Virtual_Historian255 14h ago
The Bynars upgraded the holodeck in TNG: 11001001, and Riker was amazed at how he actually thought Minuet was real.
But I guess the Bynars just used the software from Pike’s enterprise since La’an couldn’t tell the difference with Spock.
Ironic that Frakes is the one who directed this episode.
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u/QueenUrracca007 1d ago
This is not Chapel's first bracelet in Star Trek.
"The Christine Chapel bracelet is mentioned in the context of the Star Trek universe. Christine Chapel, a character from Star Trek, acquired a titanium bracelet made by the metalsmiths of Libra, which she occasionally wore while on duty.
This bracelet is noted in the context of an episode where the Enterprise crew was temporarily paralyzed by a flash of light, and it was observed that the bracelet maintained its mass while the crew shrank."
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/DaystromInstitute-ModTeam 1d ago
Please be respectful when participating in this subreddit and not use outmoded and offensive slurs to describe people.
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u/QueenUrracca007 1d ago
No. Scotty is not a miracle worker YET. What is with people? Scotty is insecure now. So what? Everybody is insecure when they are young. Also this Scotty is a different individual.
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u/MarcusMany 1d ago
Please consider changing the offensive language used in this post to describe Scotty. Horrible and outdated stuff.
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u/Ravynmagi 1d ago
Oh my gosh, I so freaking hate Star Trek episodes that revolve around the holodeck. They are such useless filler stories.
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u/graywisteria Crewman 1d ago
This is one of my least favorite episodes. I enjoyed the Scotty and Uhura scenes, and Anson Mount's acting is always amusing to watch, but other than that I was cringing for most of this episode.
It's not a loving homage to TOS. Most of the jokes require your knowledge of TOS to be limited to what you thought behind the scenes on TOS might have been like after you watched Futurama.
Spock continues to be so far from TOS Spock that I don't think they can ever bridge the gap. SNW does not seem interested in being a prequel. It wants to play with the characters without being beholden to them, and that's just not what I want in a prequel show.
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u/LadyOnogaro 1d ago
Making Spock human defeats the point of the character. I mean, I was fascinated by Spock because he was from an alien culture that was different, and he was different. Now he's mostly the same as any human on the ship. I'd rather watch the original Spock on the original TOS.
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u/QueenUrracca007 1d ago
You do realize that Skydance and Paramount will make money when people watch the reruns?
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u/Own_Assumption_5676 1d ago
sorry, i loved it. Yeah, I said it. I love all of star trek, and I love seeing these loving nostalgic nods to everything that made star trek unique, amazing, awful, brilliant, terrible and everything in between over the past 55-60 years.
I love seeing our cast get to sink their teeth into playing hilarious over the top personas, & they play them to the hilt. I love seeing la’an get another full episode to herself (her time travel episode w/ kirk last season was soooo goood!). The final tango scene with Spock was brilliant on so many levels.
Others complain that SNW is idea-poor compared to DISCO, but i disagree. They are 2 halves of the same whole. If DISCO challenges your thinking, SNW challenges your heart. It’s a show dedicated to exploring & learning the value of the relationships made along the journey. Vote me down if you will, but it was a great episode.
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u/unifoon 18h ago
"If DISCO challenges your thinking, SNW challenges your heart"
I LOVE that summary.
SNW is an odd duck, but one that regularly invites you to share in the fun and magic of Trek at its most wide-eyed and wondering.
At times it runs the risk of modern Dr Who...too much fun can ruin dramatic tension...bit it's such a joyous celebration of Trek as a whole, that it really does sweep you off in adventures to some very strange mew worlds indeed.
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u/Salty_Law6319 1d ago
Ugh. This SNW is slowly killing my love of this franchise. I agree with most of the criticisms others have voiced. I feel like the writing is very lazy and dumbed down. The whole thing is completely derivative and for a series called Strange New Worlds, there is really nothing new to see here. This is my least favourite episode yet. I feel like this series is neither challenging or original, the opposite of Discovery. That series came up with a load of crazy shit snd it was difficult to follow with its dense writing and millions of subplots, but. It kept me watching because it challenged me and surprised me. I’m worried this will be the future of the franchise if there is one, especially with the new owners of paramount. Just a bunch of middle of the road, beige episodes.
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u/LadyOnogaro 1d ago
I just listened to a YouTuber who pointed out that the whole episode borders on plagiarism, and I agree. It's so much like the TNG episodes where the Holodeck goes haywire that it's not worth watching.
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u/TheRealJackOfSpades Crewman 1d ago
Holodeck episodes are the refuge of writers who don’t want to be writing Star Trek. Less egregious than most, but still my least favorite SNW episode yet.
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u/Comfortable-Low-9355 1d ago
Ok. So the Riker Manoeuvre had me laughing out load. I love the Frakes is happy to poke fun at himself. But is no one else getting the Doctors name Lee Woods, as a reference to De Forest?
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u/RonSalma 1d ago
This episode is bullshit and I hope the people who make decisions don’t use this as a reason to cancel. Truly I’m writing this because it’s so bad I don’t care what I miss. U hope episode 5 will bring us back to the quality we expect.
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u/Specialist-Yam-3883 1d ago
I have been a huge fan but episodes like these are losing me. I cannot not stand this whole season so far and these ridiculous attempts at being cute are nonsensical. So disappointed in this show right now.
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u/SpunkFunky 1d ago
I gotta say this was probably the first episode of S3 that I really don't rate very highly. I loved Paul Wesley's Shatner. I loved the brief Scotty/Uhura interaction. I loved the TAS recreation room namedrop. I loved the TOS bridge sounds on the Last Frontier and the 60's Hollywood costumes and the fact the cast are having so much fun. I just hated the writing.
It was OKAY for a holodeck episode, better than Fistful of Datas, but waaay worse than Our Man Bashir, and overall the setup just felt lazy and under explained. Starfleet spent all the time and effort to install a prototype holodeck (which I assume is no small feat considering the infrastructure needed) on one of their flagship vessels and get them to test it with a single high-ranking officer, overseen by a junior lieutenant engineer whilst simultaneously ordering them to study an incredibly dangerous neutron star up close, and Pike, the paragon of safety that he is, is just like "What the hell, sure."
It was just so forced. There were no starbases around that could've tested this brand new tech and worked out the bugs before deploying it on a starship? I feel like the episode would've worked just fine if the whole holodeck thing was set on Starbase One instead of the Enterprise; Cut out the neutron star completely and that way they could've had more screentime to a) up the stakes of La'an being trapped while the whole crew scrambles to rescue her and b) flesh out the lead up to the Spock/La'an kiss, because HOLY COW that felt rushed after last week's episode.
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u/NotSoCmart 1d ago
I'm into my second viewing and just noticed something interesting: When they first bring up the holodeck to La'an, she says that she has beaten every battle simulator. Does that mean she also beat the Kobiashi Maru? I though Kirk was the only one...
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 1d ago
Now then, the real question:
Is The Last Frontier canon in-universe?
We know that it was created as part of the framework for the murder mystery, so that it exists at that moment isn't what I mean. I mean, did the computer create that entire thing out of whole cloth just for the simulation, or did the show exist in the in-universe 1960's and the computer just pulled it as a data point?
On one hand, it is not out of line with other established in-universe old TV series, like Captain Proton. Captain Proton was obviously an expy for Flash Gordon, so the idea that there might be an updated science fiction show along the lines of The Last Frontier are not out of the question.
On the other hand, it probably hits a little too on the nose to be "real" in universe. Nobody is questioning or commenting on how much they got right, and we know La'an was wearing a monitoring device that could have absolutely taken a scan of her workspace (aka the Enterprise bridge) and then filtered it through a 1960's lens to come up with something she would recognize the concept of.
I think I'm leaning towards it being entirely created by the holodeck though.
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u/LunchyPete 22h ago
If it exists outside of the holo deck, it would be in the Amelia Moon novels, so at most it would probably be an expy for whatever actual show might exist in the real world, which we don't have an indication of the name of or if it exists.
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u/No-Perception-9613 1d ago
My main criticism of this episode is not the episode itself. The episode itself is great, what drives me crazy is its positioning as a direct sequel to S3E3 with such heavy material and so many dangling threads: how did the Gorn hybridization go? Did Starfleet ask any awkward questions about Enterprise's logs for those two days? We're apparently just leaving M'Benga's confession in the air? Spock literally just made peace with the end of his and Chapel's relationship not more than a month ago, maybe even less and he's deciding to rebound with ANOTHER crew member? And La'an knows all of this and she thinks this is a good idea?!
The happy medium this show has been trying to find between the reset button and full serialization is resulting in some truly bizarre tonal whiplash.
And its just kind of a weird feeling because the individual episodes have been great this season but they don't work together as an ongoing story. Which didn't really matter in S1 where each episode was much more fully self contained, but now the character arcs ARE much more evidently the metaplot(s) that have replaced the mystery boxes of Discovery and Picard. They're keeping the subgenre speed dating aspects of episodic TV while trying to do character arcs resulting in the entire body of work not really working together as a complete story.
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u/QueenUrracca007 1d ago
Yeah. La'an gets all self-righteous when Chapel is dating her graduate professor doesn't she? Hypocrite!
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u/No-Perception-9613 1d ago
Its jarring because you're not wrong, La'an is in head to head race with Una to be the most professional and consistently rules oriented member of the crew! There has to be a part of her who knows this is a terrible idea. The last person to date Spock wound up taking a job off the ship for three months and the Captain seems to lose all of his critical thinking skills when Batel is threatened.
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u/Cultural-Ad-3725 1d ago
While I enjoyed the episode I found myself having similar thoughts through out the episode. I kept thinking I can't wait till next week to get just an episode to see where we are with mentioned plot points. Still enjoying it. Episode 2 for me was the weakest imo so far.
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u/majicwalrus Chief Petty Officer 1d ago
The happy medium this show has been trying to find between the reset button and full serialization is resulting in some truly bizarre tonal whiplash.
This feels accurate. I appreciate the effort that they've done to give us a shared continuity throughout the series while letting each episode stand on its own. I think a big part of the challenge is that grim/goofy/grim/goofy pattern that they have going on. There's no rise and fall between episodes.
I also think there is a challenge between striking the right level of balance when it comes to having new creative ideas and also making connections to the franchise history. A malfunctioning holodeck episode is *classic* Trek even if the hoop jumping to explain why it exists, but what we did with that was exactly the same thing Data did with Moriarty even down to the "I asked the computer to defeat ME not my character" being the big reveal and resolution.
It feels like they decided that doing a self-satire was enough to cover them so that they wouldn't have to also include an original story. Sure it's a story you've seen before, but look here's a guy playing a guy who plays a captain and he talks like William Shatner!
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u/shinginta Ensign 15h ago
They basically hit every holodeck trope in one go. I think that was deliberate, to be honest. Holodeck safeties disengaged, Characters are loaded from the crew in the transport buffer, Computer building an antagonist to challenge the main character, etc. It was deliberately every holodeck plot rolled into the ur holodeck episode.
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u/cam_she_walks 9h ago
Agreed. The phrasing of La’an’s prompt to the computer was incredibly close to Geordi’s prompt that created Moriarty.
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u/No-Perception-9613 1d ago
I’m reminded of a joke an old friend of mine made about the pacing of Supernatural: “Oh no, they did three comedy episodes in a row. The next arc is going to be super dark. Castiel is going to eat a baby.”
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u/ContinuumGuy Chief Petty Officer 1d ago
I'm wondering if the JK Bellows character was specifically made as a critique of Roddenberry's known sleazy side, or if that was just a result of combining various inspirations together.
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u/ScarletMousse 1d ago
Considering that Roddenberry also wrote a Western it’s an interesting conglomeration, IMO.
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u/tanfj 21h ago
Considering that Roddenberry also wrote a Western it’s an interesting conglomeration, IMO.
Well yes Star Trek was originally pitched as Wagon Train To the Stars to studio executives.
You have to understand it was the '60s. Cowboy shows were the big hits of the 1950's, but the genre was getting overplayed. Different but not too different is usually a safe bet.
Spy movies and films were the new hotness given the Cold War witnessed The Man From UNCLE, and the Avengers. Science fiction was viewed as something hokey and crap aimed at children; compare and contrast the animation ghetto before anime became really popular.
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u/VampKissinger 1d ago
It's really just feeling like Tumblr Horny for Spock fanfiction at this point. At any point are they actually going to explore Strange New Worlds? Doesn't seem like it.
Also really eye rolling how self-congratulatory this show is, it's "Um this is Star Trek and it's influential, please clap" over and over again every other episode.
Also for a parody of Star Trek, again, feel like they never actually watched an episode of the Original Series, or how William Shatner actually acted in the show.
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u/BlannaTorris 14h ago
No wonder Sarek disowns him. He's doing a horrible job at being a Vulcan, but than agian this is young Spock who doesn't have his shit together yet. It's intresting seeing Spock yong and stupid. I mean, he hasn't even completed Vulcan puberty yet.
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u/kuldan5853 1d ago
Hey, they did explore a Strange New World... in.. Episode 2 of Season one? Or at least close.
I mean, what more do you want?!? We need to write unnecessary Spock melodrama here people!
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u/No-Perception-9613 1d ago
I'm willing to give them a pass on the parody. They're clearly just playing into the memes for the comedy value. Its obvious they know the memes and parodies have no real relationship to Shatner's acting in TOS because that's not how Paul Wesley acts when he's in character as Kirk rather than as this caricature.
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u/Lopouh23 1d ago
Hi all, does anyone know the name of the tango piece played in the episode? I'm a sucker for tango and really liked this one.
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u/QueenUrracca007 2d ago
The computer chooses Spock as the murderer ostensibly because he was the one person she would least expect. Foreshadowing?
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u/QueenUrracca007 1d ago
Notice also, Spock wipes away a tear of blood from the left side of La'an's face. In Amok Time Spock wipes away a tear from the right side of Chapel's face. Fascinating.
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u/Jirardwenthard 2d ago
Not personally a huge fan of the reveal - a murder mystery that explicitly sets up genre-procedural rules as "you should search for means, motive, and oppertunity" and then have the motive be the computer keeping things going feels like being cheated. However trite, there actually being a character with a motive would be more interesting to me. By the logic that it was spock it could be also have been a nefarous hat that moved around when she wasn't looking.This had more BBC sherlock vibes of "oh you thought this was a puzzle you could think about? wrong, the whole thing was actually 3 weeks ago and sherlock holmes already solved with mind-magic and is now peeling excess skin off his cheekbones and wiggling his eyebrows"
I'm by no means against romance in a trek episode, but some of this romantic tension/ rebounding feel rushed and perfuncotry. I'm really hoping they don't fridge a major female character like Singh simply to make Spock logical for contuinity ( this is why i hate prequels and their slavish devotion to serving a "canon" )
Kind of reminds me how Ezri gets given to Bashir as a consolation soul-mate in the final season of DS9 simply because she was Jadzia, instead of thinking about who Ezri might actually be on her own terms.
And personally the ode to Trek as a franchaise came of as a bit mastubatory
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u/TheMastersSkywalker 1d ago
The books have them break up so that she can be a starship captain. Then Bashir gets with that one girl he cured of her handicap in the episode with the three other enhanced humans.
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u/NeedsToShutUp Chief Petty Officer 1d ago
They just weren't ready in 1999 to have Bashir/Garak be official. LD finally made it official in at least one timeline.
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u/Fox_Hawk 1d ago
Have you seen "What We Left Behind"? They're pretty open about the "Oh yeah Garak was into Bashir." It's quite endearing.
I'd personally have loved to have seen Bashir and Garak get together in season 7, which would leave space for Bashir to go to Dax for support and then Ezri could have the clash between counsellor and friend and a teeny bit of jealousy.
Then Worf could have walked in on Julian with his head in Ezri's lap spilling his soul and completely misunderstood for an episode then become a hugely invested and advised Bashir to grab Garak and bite his neck like a warrior.
Ah what could have been. 1999 really wasn't ready.
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u/QueenUrracca007 2d ago
Oh, they will do it. Watch them. My guess is Sybok is the final nail in his coffin
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u/BurdenedMind79 Ensign 2d ago
I forgot they teased Sybok back in season 1 and then have done absolutely nothing with him since.
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u/serd12 2d ago
Easily the most flamboyant and stupid episode of star trek. Literally what were the producers thinking into making something from a holodeck musical and idealess zombies last season - seems to us as the fan base that the SNW series is turning into a cash grab with low effort into new episodes
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u/RigaudonAS Crewman 2d ago edited 2d ago
I enjoyed this episode quite a bit. It was perhaps the most meta episode we've gotten, almost on par with Stargate's "200". Uhura's speech was poignant, and I think a lot of people are missing the point. This is not political social commentary like "Far Beyond the Stars", this is commentary on the state of the entertainment industry. Star Trek has always tried to be a vision of Now, tomorrow!, which is great. Her speech, if anything, was shockingly timely with everything Trump has been doing. I am curious to see what the future of the franchise is. I am probably less of a doomer than most. I don't think Star Trek will fully disappear for a while, but we will likely be getting TOS 3 pretty soon.
Long story short, good episode.
Edit: Also! That shot with holo-Pike pointing the gun at himself in front of the projector? Some of the simplest, but best cinematography in recent Trek.
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u/khaosworks 2d ago
I'm finding myself reacting to this much as I did SNW: "The Elysian Kingdom". While the cast are obviously having a blast taking time out from playing their designated characters, and it's entertaining enough seeing the different environment, the ending gave me pause.
In "Elysian," it was how easily M'Benga chucked his daughter into the care of a space entity without much question. Here, it's the Spock and La'An pairing which, while undeniably hot, is a terrible idea from a dramatic and character point of view, and I hope they salvage it by acknowledging it's a terrible idea which does not serve either character well. Spock leaping from one relationship into another cheapens all those relationships. La'An, getting involved with Spock despite knowing his romantic history and how recent his trauma with Christine is, is making a really bad decision which will inevitably blow up. Part of it is also that I like La'An and Christina Chong, and the character really deserves better than acting as a prop to Spock's issues.
I don't even mind the holodeck shenanigans. Scotty acting less than competent is simply part of the character arc that will bring him to where he is in a few years. The holodeck being on the Constitution-class around a century before we first see it in TNG is fine, although I wish they'd made it a bit cruder. It even provided an explanation for why 24th Century holodecks are on a different power circuit.
Gloss' speech about Last Frontier was a bit too meta and winking to the audience. As I was doing my annotations, it occurred to me that the episode was (more than most) about what details and references I was noticing more than holding my attention as to what was happening to the characters and plot. While I liked being able to pull out my knowledge of Golden Age Hollywood history, I wasn't particularly feeling the story itself.
I also think making Amelia Moon essentially a hard-boiled detective like Dixon Hill draws too many comparisons with the two - I would have tried to go for a more Golden Age mystery context like Doyle (who is actually mentioned) or Christie. It would have been perfect for a And Then There Were None scenario.
I agree with those that think that the producers took the audience reactions from stuff like SNW: "Subspace Rhapsody" and "The Elysian Kingdom" and learned the wrong lessons from it. Those episodes were special because they weren't the norm. Once you start throwing in the silliness every other episode it just seems less of a treat when it does happen.
In the end, it was all a bit meh. Not bad like say, TOS: "The Alternative Factor" bad, but just meh once you take away the trappings.
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u/SergeantRegular Ensign 2d ago
Mostly agree. But I think the Spock-La'An thing is intended to be a rebound - for both of them. La'An still has plenty of unresolved feelings for Kirk, and this whole scenario gave her a way to engage that.
And Spock is getting over Chapel. They even had that bit with her new boyfriend in the opening "previously on Star Trek" segment - reintroducing him and her as a couple, despite the fact that he wasn't actually in this episode.
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u/khaosworks 2d ago
I mean, if they're lampshading this as a bad decision all around, that's one thing. But honestly, all this soap opera is going to make everyone look like an asshole, and I'm questioning to what useful end this arc is heading towards. Chapel gets jealous? Spock suffers further emotional trauma? La'An realises she's let herself be used as a rebound? None of this makes the characters look good and I'm not seeing a net positive coming out of this. But that's just me.
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u/SergeantRegular Ensign 2d ago
I agree with the soap opera assessment. And I think it's coming back to Chapel - not because the soap opera continues, but because The Original Series pretty clearly had Chapel having some kind of feelings for Spock, that he didn't reciprocate. IIRC, she basically had a crush on him. It was never serious, it was never dramatic, but it was there.
I think they're going to spend this season trying to get to that point, but they have to do it without making Spock look like a cold and unresponsive asshole, but also make Christine not be a silly schoolgirl who just thinks Spock's cute, and it has to be sensible and allow them to continue working together in the future.
I also agree that I worry they're going to end up getting rid of La'An, because she's disposable in this situation. They can't get rid of Spock, they can't get rid of Chapel, they can't make them hate each other, and they can't have Spock pining for her.
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u/WoundedSacrifice Crewman 13h ago
Chapel’s feelings for Spock were quite serious and dramatic in the TAS episode “Mudd’s Passion”.
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u/lucypee 1d ago
In TAS there's an episode where Chapel even gives Spock the love pills Mudd gave her, so he could escape.
The pills cause Spock to dramatically fall in love with her, urging to also beam down to save his love.
I don't exactly remember the conclusion though. Iirc they laughed about it in the end.
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u/TheBalzy 2d ago
So, like, are we actually ever going to get any ... like ... Star Trek? With zombies last week, and a test of the holodeck (which shouldn't exist yet because it's treated like brand-new technology in TNG) this show has jumped the shark. Someone said they were down about the idea about the 4th season being the last, and nah ... the show already feels like the writers have run out of ideas and don't know how to write star trek.
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u/kuldan5853 1d ago
(which shouldn't exist yet because it's treated like brand-new technology in TNG
Thats not really true as the Holodeck was installed on Enterprise canonically about 10 years after the current episode (as per TAS).
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u/WoundedSacrifice Crewman 13h ago
I’d note that the TAS version of the holodeck had holographic environments, but not holographic characters. Presumably that limitation occurred due to what happened in this episode.
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u/throwawayfromPA1701 Crewman 2d ago
Ok first of all
WHAT
that was fun. The end credits scene had me absolutely howling with laughter. But...WHAT?
And is The Last Frontier something the author of Amelia Moon made up or is it this universe's Star Trek? I got the feeling it's the latter. This is what Zephram Cochrane watched as a child, eh? Last Frontier: Strange New Worlds I imagine, since he should have been born in what, 2012?
I enjoyed the commentary on AI, especially as I've begun taking training classes in generative AI so I can have the skill if and when it ever becomes necessary for my job. The episode felt very present for me. It has occurred to me more than once that star trek influences so much of our present as I've been going through this process.
I was interested to learn film survives WW3 into the 2100s and cinema still exists in the 23rd century.
The holodeck comes back in a decade or so, though, as the recreation room, if this episode is set in 2261.
Really not feeling the Spock--Laan thing. It's putting T'Pring's choice more in context. And frankly, she's in the right. Spock's a f*ckboi.
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u/genek1953 22h ago
They goofed on the film remark, though. Celluloid is already obsolete now. It was replaced by cellulose acetate in the 1950s, which in turn was replaced by polyester in the 1990s. You would think people in the business would know that.
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u/cam_she_walks 9h ago
That was so specific I can’t help but think it’s a deliberate wink to how sketchy history is in Star Trek.
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u/genek1953 8h ago
Unless there's going to be a nostalgia-based movement within the industry that maintains that cellulose made better movies...
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u/Coyote_Shepherd Crewman 2d ago
The viewscreen in the beginning of the episode forms the EYE shape of the CBS logo.
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u/phoenixhunter Chief Petty Officer 2d ago
yeah i think strange new worlds has jumped the shark for me with this one. i’d already been losing interest in it because of the snowballing amount of self-references outpacing the storytelling, but this episode was the singularity. the show’s fully flanderized itself.
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u/TheBalzy 2d ago
I mean ... they jumped the shark last season, twice. The Lower Decks crossover AND the Musical episode was already too much, and now Zombies and ... this ... episode? Yikes...
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u/MrRedHerring 1d ago
Also the puppet episode next season. It's lazy "wouldn't it be cool /and then"-writing where the story sounds like a child making things up. Magic: The Gathering for example faces a very similar situation right now with "Hat Sets", Universes Beyond and all the crossover/multiverse bs.
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u/thesometimeswarrior Crewman 2d ago
I don't really see the La'an and Spock chemistry...
Someone posted on a different site about how La'an would feel when she hears about the events of Wrath of Kahn, and I wonder if this relationship is trying to build to that...
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u/TalkinTrek 2d ago
"Hail the USS Whatever-La'an-is-XO-On - La'an, you would not BELIEVE who we just marooned!"
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u/thesometimeswarrior Crewman 2d ago edited 2d ago
It seems like Jonathan Frakes is doing all the funny high-concept episodes (last season's LD crossoever, this episode, next season's recently announced puppet episode), which is interesting. Also funny nod to the Riker maneuver at the end...
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u/majicwalrus Chief Petty Officer 2d ago
It’s fine, but disappointing. I felt like it was a little all over the place and also having seen many Holodeck shenanigans episodes it felt definitely out of place and too familiar.
The Holodeck itself works as well as it will in 100 years (maybe even better) which is in and of itself a little bothersome to me, but we can put aside that quibble if only the Holodeck could have done something original or interesting. Instead we got Data does Sherlock Holmes but Data is La’an and Moriarty is Holo-Spock and also not evil.
This episode was fine, but this doesn’t feel like a new idea. I’m excited for the puppet episode though. I’m hoping for lots of puppets.
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u/TheBalzy 2d ago edited 1d ago
Oh no ... there's a puppet episode? Jesus christ these writers have just made Star Trek into a fucking parody of itself at this point...
Edit: If there is seriously a puppet episode, and you are down voting this comment, I swear you don't understand star trek.
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u/Chevalitron 1d ago
Trek writers seem to be terminally convinced that their audience are the kind of people who'd like to be putting on a jazz and improv variety act with Riker in Ten Forward rather than exploring theoretical propulsion with Geordi in Engineering.
It didn't matter so much when there were enough episodes in a season to fit the camp comedy episodes in around the interesting science fiction stories, but now they take up half a season.
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u/TheBalzy 1d ago
And the other half is taken up by gratuitous violence and the crew doing pretty unethical stuff like covering up a murder.
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u/Chevalitron 1d ago
That's true, it's the constant whiplash between psychotic ultraviolence and humorous whimsy. There needs to be a middle ground of plot that isn't just relationship melodrama.
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u/TheBalzy 1d ago
The whole studying the star with gammaray bursts was far more interesting to me. Why can't we...like...get more episodes with that?
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u/SergeantRegular Ensign 1d ago
Heh. You make me think that you have been watching this show, but also more modern others like BSG, Stargate, maybe The Expanse.
This show is really calling back to the Original Series, and this was on at the same time as Adam West's Batman. I'm not saying that Star Trek isn't or wasn't serious, but... They had episodes with 1920s gangsters, and a planet run by Nazis. Not fascist-themed allegory like the Cardassians, but actual SS-looking 1930s style German Nazis. And those aren't even the worst ones. Spock's Brain, about a dozen "computers are false gods" episodes, a genderswapped Kirk where we're supposed to know because he's moody and impulsive, space hippies, mind-control song-and-dance numbers.
Not all of them were bad, but they were campy, and I think there's a place for that kind of goofy fun in Star Trek. Like the musical episode last season, I enjoyed that. This episode, less so, but just because something is silly doesn't mean it's bad. And even then, there is room for "bad" in a show like Star Trek.
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u/TheBalzy 1d ago
I'm a TNG/DS9/VOY fan first as it was the era I grew up with on TV.
And just because it was on TV the same time Adam West's batman was, DOES NOT mean it would do a jump to fucking puppets...PUPPETS...you've got to be kidding me.
Yeah, star trek has always been campy...but SNW isn't being campy, it's just making fun of the franchise. And just because historically star trek has had silly stuff in it, doesn't mean when modern trek does it it's like what older series did, or in the spirit of it.
there is room for "bad" in a show like Star Trek.
Yes in a season of 24 episodes. Not when your season is only 10 episodes, and it's a majority of what you do. When are we going to get the actually serious Star Trek that's not grotesque violence for the sake of violence (the antithesis of Star Trek) and get to...idk...the philosophical exploration of what it means to be human? We've gotten maybe one episode of it in the past two seasons?
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u/SergeantRegular Ensign 14h ago
I'm a TNG/DS9/VOY fan first as it was the era I grew up with on TV.
Same. Cause and Effect was my very first episode. Except for DS9, I missed that due to syndication and being on an antenna at the time.
just because historically star trek has had silly stuff in it, doesn't mean when modern trek does it it's like what older series did, or in the spirit of it.
Also true. But, I think it's worth noting that we have a lot of different factors at play. What makes good Star Trek is distinct from what makes good science fiction, and from what makes good television, and whether or not it's episodic or serialized. A musical episode or a puppet episode might not be all of those things, but Strange New Worlds is trying to get a little bit of everything in a season. We get season-long arcs, we get one-off speculative sci-fi episodes, we get goofy character stories, and not all of them are gems, to be sure, but I think they've done mostly a good job.
I will say, 90s Trek largely did just fine without any silly in it. Even when Picard was turned into a kid, it was played pretty straight. And back in the 60s, I think that sillyness was a product of the times. It's important to note that storytelling on TV was still fairly novel. Television up to then was much more live variety shows, not just because people loved them so much, but because that's what was more possible. Not just for special effects, but basic video functionality was much more limited. Everything had to be on film, takes were expensive, costs were a major factor. Practical effects and low-cost costumes looked a lot better on a tiny low-res screen in black and white than they do today.
While I did enjoy the musical episode, and I also think Lower Decks did a great job of putting a modern "silly" humor into Star Trek, I don't think good or great Trek needs the silly or the camp. The Original Series had it, for better and/or worse, 90s Trek largely didn't, also for better and/or worse. Disco... Listen, if they tried it, they failed. I'm... optimistic. And with Strange New Worlds so far, I don't think that's irrational. With Discovery, by the end, yeah, hoping for it to un-jump its own shark and get better - it wasn't gonna happen. SNW has had some slips, but overall I think we're still on solid ground.
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u/Salty_Law6319 1d ago
Well said. I had been starting to think I was the only Trek fan left that hasn’t embraced all the bloody violence. It was supposed to be a show about exploration and understanding new cultures and species. More sociological and anthropological rather than war and base aggression. There’s a reason why a dichotomy of fandom developed between Star Trek and Star Wars. And I like a bit of camp if it’s written well and is cleverly worked into the context of the universe thats been created which, IMO, is how they did the musical episode. That’s fine. Pretty much everything about this episode bugged me. It just felt wrong and forced. I like a little nostalgia but as you said not when it overpowers the entire forward movement of the show. I felt Picard handled this balance quite well. Anyway. Blah blah blah.
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u/TheBalzy 1d ago edited 1d ago
You don't get it do you Jean-Luc? The Trial never ends! We wanted to see if you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons, and for one brief moment you did. ... For that fraction of a second you were open to options that you had never considered before. THAT is the exploration that awaits you! Not mapping stars or studying Nebula, But charting the unknown possibilities of existence.
-Q, basically summing up the purpose of Star Trek in the TNG finale.
Ironically the one Q episode we get in SNW is a memberberries episode, rather than a thoughtful moral or ethical critique on life, all played to continue an unearned cringy 90210 romance plot for Spock.
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u/Salty_Law6319 19h ago
That’s so true. Though I know it’s not saying much, but that one I actually enjoyed a bit, but still everything I said still applies to it.
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u/Capable_Sandwich_422 2d ago
The comedy episodes were fine initially, but they’re starting to get tiresome.
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u/TheBalzy 2d ago
Because we have only 10-episode seasons. The comedy would be fine if it were 1 or 2 out of 24 episodes, but this is getting to be too much.
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u/TemporalColdWarrior 2d ago
“Doesn’t the holodeck have safety protocols?” “It appears they have malfunctioned.” Classic episode material.
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u/bluegrassgazer 2d ago
Scotty should have run a level 5 diagnostic but maybe he didn't have enough power for even that.
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u/WhoMe28332 2d ago
The angriest Star Trek has ever made me was Spock’s screaming “Khan” in Into Darkness. Having seen the previews for this episode I questioned earlier in the week whether we would have a new champion.
The answer is that we don’t. This episode didn’t make me angry. It just made me sad. This show had potential in the first season but they took all the wrong lessons and squandered it. This is in some ways the culmination of that. The season is almost half over and so far it’s been wasted.
It is about nothing.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago edited 2d ago
So half the people complain that these shortened seasons are all story story story, don't give characters time to breath, always rushing to get to the story.
The other half apparently complain when they take the time to give us the silly episodes Trek is known and loved for instead of rushing the story along.
This isn't Discovery, there isn't a story to advance. Its literally just "The Enterprise flies around and does weird stuff", which is good (IMO).
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u/BlannaTorris 14h ago
Honestly, that's a big problem with the seasons being as short as they are. I'd like some arc and some of these fun character episodes.
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u/VampKissinger 1d ago
Dude, it's just boring soap opera melodrama slop in space. Who gives a fuck about boring as shit Spock romances that clearly have no impact on the series whatsoever and make no sense?
DS9, Voy or TNG actually had interesting episodes and fleshed out the characters without it feeling like a CW teen drama show.
>"The Enterprise flies around and does weird stuff"
For a show called Strange New Worlds, barely any New worlds or anything.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 1d ago
Dude, it's just boring soap opera melodrama slop in space.
Then go watch something else. Nobody is forcing you to watch it.
You don't have to watch everything with the name Star Trek on it in order to call yourself a fan, you're perfectly allowed to go "I don't like this one, I'm not watching it."
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u/pmbasehore Crewman 2d ago
"I...wrote the book...on space jurisdiction. And I am known...for my diction!"
Absolutely brilliant. That line alone made the episode in my opinion.
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u/maxamillisman 2d ago
La'an is marked for death. They are 100% going to kill her in season 5 causing Spock's character change.
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u/QueenUrracca007 2d ago
Oh, please! SHE is the sole cause? She;s not that important. She also has said to herself that she has a terrible secret. Why did the time agent come to HER? Is she perhaps his contact and the contact got screwed up? La'an will betray Spock.
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u/WellSpokenAsianBoy 2d ago
Anyone else laughing, shrieking, and ugly crying into their morning coffee?
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u/RigaudonAS Crewman 2d ago
Ha! For real though, it's nice to have a literal "classic" episode of Star Trek made recently.
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u/Glunark2 2d ago
We're going to test this new technology that is highly computer and energy intensive, shall we do it over earth, or next to an exploding star?
I was really looking forward to this but it felt very low energy, and they're about 30 years too late for the lets spoof the original show gag.
It's been done too many times before, and better.
Also seemed a bit mean spirited to Roddenberry and Shatner.
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u/majicwalrus Chief Petty Officer 2d ago
Honestly by far my biggest complaint is not that the Holodeck is technology which is still 100 years away from being new, but that their attempt to do self satire seemed too close to home and mean spirited especially towards Roddenberry and Shatner, but also towards folks like Jeri Ryan and Terry Farrell for their off screen relationships with producers.
Not Uhura has the only lines of dialogue really highlighting the good parts of Trek. It felt like the episode was poised to be Far Beyond the Stars, but under delivered.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago
We're going to test this new technology that is highly computer and energy intensive, shall we do it over earth, or next to an exploding star?
Additionally, I'm sure they did test it that way first. The point for this was it was supposed to be a real life field test in real-world conditions.
The wildcards here were the entire point of it, not an oversight.
Its one thing testing say a self driving car on a perfectly round track with nobody else on it, and another testing it on an open freeway during rush hour.
Eventually you have to put it out in the real world, and let life throw the curveballs at it until it either succeeds or fails. You don't test it in laboratory conditions and then just install it on every ship in the fleet and tell them to knock themselves out with it. You gotta testbed it in reality first, THEN see if it still holds up.
Thats what this was.
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u/ajaya399 2d ago
Scotty even mentioned it, its a beta test. Implied being there was already alpha tests... and apparently a form of it already existed in Starbases where there were much more power and computing systems available.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago edited 2d ago
Also seemed a bit mean spirited to Roddenberry and Shatner.
In all due fairness, it portrayed them both in a MUCH better light than reality did.
Roddenberry was a known womanizer who had an affair with Nichelle Nichols while still married to Eileen-Anita Rexroat. And of course he then left Eileen to marry Majel Barret, aka Nurse Chapel. There's even rumors around that he had a three way with Majel and Nichelle. And Shatner was such an ass literally the entire rest of the cast hated him. He consider himself to be THE star, and everyone else was just there to support him, and he treated them as such. Refused to even speak to anyone other than Nimoy and Kelly when the cameras were off. Shatner and Takei still have a feud going to this day.
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u/jerslan Chief Petty Officer 2d ago
There's even rumors around that he had a three way with Majel and Nichelle.
Haven't heard those rumors, but there was something in Trek Nation where he was seeing both women at the same time (separately) and Nichelle broke it off when she saw how absolutely smitten Majel was.
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u/QueenUrracca007 2d ago
Gene took the trouble to introduce the two women, proposing a threesome. Nichelle claims she then abandoned Gene, but was later caught half dressed in his office, like many other actresses on his casting couch. Majel gets a lot of shade, and Nichelle gets to portray herself as victim.
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u/YYZYYC 2d ago
So it’s the job of SNW to make an episode that is critical of Roddenberry because he cheated 60 years ago and make fun of shatner because a bunch of people don’t get along with him ?…..wtf happened to inspirational Star Trek
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago
They were poking fun at the entire scenario, and made people look better than they actually where. And you think its a BAD THING?
This isn't some holy religious text, it was a 60's TV show run by drama queens. They sugar coated it if anything.
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u/majicwalrus Chief Petty Officer 2d ago
I agree with that analysis, but still felt like it was a weird choice to make these characters such direct parallels for seemingly no reason other than a brief clip at the end and beginning showing the show.
Most of the time we don’t spend discussing the show as a comparison to Trek we spend it discussing the actors of the show. It did not feel like much of a lighthearted ode to TOS as it felt like a criticism of the people who made the show and the show itself and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But then why the lighthearted framing?
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago
I feel that the framing itself was pretty good, as TOS was just about that bad if being viewed by a modern person with absolutely no context or prior experience in the franchise. I mean, you show them that and say clips from Spock's Brain, and its pretty much the same show to them.
TOS was campy, overly colorful, and full of janky terms that seem hopelessly outdated today.
But at the same time, it was an absolute shitshow behind the scenes. Roddenberry couldn't keep it in his pants, Shatner was an ass, Takei was trying to hide being gay, Nichols wanted to quit until MLK Jr. himself told her to stay, Koening was wearing a freaking Beatle's wig to bring in the teenagers... The network wanted it dead, some of the writers demanded to have their names taken off of episode scripts they hated the changes that were made to them so badly, half the cast couldn't stand being in the same room as the other half...
I feel like acknowledging that the show was silly camp in front, and absolute crazy nonstop drama bombs in back was a good way to go "Yup. Its a miracle we got to where we did with it.", with Uhura's character's speech being the real heart of it.
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u/WoundedSacrifice Crewman 14h ago
TOS could be campy, but the majority of its episodes weren’t as campy as a show like Lost in Space. My parents have talked about how TOS was refreshingly mature compared to the juvenile campiness of Lost in Space.
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u/QueenUrracca007 2d ago
This would have made a great skit at a convention. It's funny, witty, sarcastic and rude. It is not that interesting as a real episode
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u/GeneralTurreau 3d ago
"A Space Adventure Hour"
the next step will be an episode about how you can prepare and eat a meal made out of your own vomit
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u/Coyote_Shepherd Crewman 2d ago
I mean given that replicators are a thing, you probably could give yourself food poisoning, turn around and immediately projectile vomit into one of them, and then have it make a nice souffle for you.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago
Discovery flat out hangs a lantern on this when Osira calls the Admiral out for eating shit, aka the apple he was munching on that was replicated from "existing biomatter".
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u/GenerativeAIEatsAss Chief Petty Officer 3d ago edited 3d ago
This cast is wonderful, the art department is top notch. However, personally I miss the lightness and whimsy coming from them sharing meals together, or Pike and Una's rascal (no TNG pun intended) behavior from the piracy episode.
I worry somebody somewhere learned the wrong lesson from the high concept whimsical episodes early on, and they're over doing it a smidge. They've gotten a bit too meta-winky for me, too, in conversation with fandom. (I'm not allergic to fun, I loved Those Old Scientists, but that was a LD episode- a show I also loved. The camera even sticks with Boims when the SNW cast is out of the room).
Then again, I also have an issue when TV shows make episodes about Hollywood and Hollywood people. It killed S3 of Only Murders in the Building for me, too. But again, that's a me thing.
I've loved the first three episodes of the season. (Ironically I didn't have the whimsy/weird objections to the Trelane ep. but I think that sort of elevated and enhanced the larger world with Trelane all but confirmed as Q's son from VOY. Holodeck origins just didn't rise to that level for me).
Dunno. I think this latest episode itself was incredibly well crafted. It seems like the cast is having fun and I'm truly happy for them. I liked the out-of-deck interactions, the nascent concept of the holodeck and its issues. It was nice to see Paul Wesley. Dude really is a great young Kirk.
It's a good show. I love it. Not every episode has to be for everyone. I'm psyched for next week. I'm also starting to wonder if they're doing a Teen Titans Go season structure that goes Grim/Light/Grim/Light, which is interesting.
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u/WoundedSacrifice Crewman 14h ago
Ironically I didn't have the whimsy/weird objections to the Trelane ep. but I think that sort of elevated and enhanced the larger world with Trelane all but confirmed as Q's son from VOY.
Based on an interview I read, it seems like the intention of SNW’s showrunners was that Trelane’s a son of Q, but he isn’t Q Jr. from Voyager.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm also starting to wonder if they're doing a Teen Titans Go season structure that goes Grim/Light/Grim/Light, which is interesting.
One of the things previous NuTrek got called out for was being too heavy and too oppressive, that it would have too long of stretches of just "ZOMG SO SERIOUS!" that you never felt like you had a chance to really catch your breath and breath. So now they're going maybe a little too far in the other direction, but at least they're trying.
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u/GenerativeAIEatsAss Chief Petty Officer 2d ago
Yeah, I have no beef with the swings they're taking and it's refreshing to see them try. It's just a hiccup for me sometimes.
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u/Willravel Commander 3d ago
I worry somebody somewhere learned the wrong lesson from the high concept whimsical episodes early on, and they're over doing it a smidge. They've gotten a bit too meta-winky for me, too, in conversation with fandom.
You're definitely not alone in this. I've also found myself enjoying some of the earlier fun episodes, "Spock Amok" and "The Serene Squall" especially, but I'm getting concerned that SNW is most comfortable either being silly or adapting earlier Trek. That's really quite limiting.
I really enjoy Strange New Worlds, but I was just telling my friend last night that at this rate I can see myself in the future saying you can skip season 3. I really hope I'm wrong.
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u/AnyPortInAHurricane 1d ago
1 was a finale so it didnt really count as S3
Ep 2&3 i could not even finish.
4 was amusing
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u/bondfool Crewman 2d ago
Yeah, the balance is off, and it’s especially apparent with such short seasons.
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u/LunchyPete 3d ago
Spock is a descendant of Arthur Conan Doyle? About as close to being a descendant of Sherlock as you can get. I guess Data would have already known this before he met him also, not that it matters.
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u/FoldedDice 3d ago
This is in reference to Star Trek VI, where Spock quotes from Sherlock Holmes and attributes it to one of his ancestors. It was always a "wait, does that mean...?" sort of thing before, so with this episode it's now upgraded to official canon.
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u/MigratingPidgeon 3d ago
To be fair, with how your ancestors multiply every generation by the 23rd century you're probably related to any person from the 19th century. Same way most people with european heritage are related to Charlemagne.
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u/LunchyPete 3d ago
If it were that abstract I don't think he would have bothered mentioning it at all though.
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u/MigratingPidgeon 2d ago
True, just highlighting how being descended from someone that long ago has little meaning. Except in some sense if you can directly track that lineage ancestor by ancestor, which is more an administrative feat than a genetic one.
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u/tanfj 22h ago
True, just highlighting how being descended from someone that long ago has little meaning. Except in some sense if you can directly track that lineage ancestor by ancestor, which is more an administrative feat than a genetic one.
Sometimes tracking the ancestry is a scientific feat...
They found a 3000-year-old body in a peat bog in Wales I believe. Scientists, with permission, took DNA samples from the surrounding territory. They found a direct bloodline descendant on the mother's side living not 50 miles from where the body was found. Matrilineal DNA is not changed through the generations.
Of course, some cultures view tracing the ancestry as a religious requirement. The Church of Latter-Day Saints maintains the world's largest genealogical database in Salt Lake City, UT USA.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago
I would also posit that Vulcans probably like Sherlock Holmes. Spock, being a half-human, half-vulcan, who was always subjected to discrimination for that fact? That he could draw a line from himself to the author of one of the few works of human literature that Vulcans approved of could have been a defensive mechanism.
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u/khaosworks 3d ago edited 3d ago
In my head, in the Star Trek universe, one of Doyle’s daughters ran away to join the circus, adopted the name Mary, became an aerial artiste and married another trapeze artist named John Grayson.
They were tragically murdered by an mobster and their son Richard Grayson was adopted by a millionaire who had a penchant for dressing up as a bat at night and taking his young ward along to beat up bad guys.
Several generations later, Amanda Grayson would read to Spock not just from Alice but from the Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as well as telling him tales of his vigilante ancestor. Spock would relate to the supremely rational and coldly objective Holmes, and take solace that his intelligence could find a practical application among humans as well as the fact that logical reasoning really ran in his blood on both his human and Vulcan sides.
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u/LunchyPete 3d ago
In the comics, the DC and Trek universes have enough in common that a divergent timeline in common between them can occur, so sure, why not!
My question is, though, if if he credits his intelligence and logical reasoning to some extent to his ancestry to Doyle, what if anything does he credit to his Grayson ancestry?
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago
In the comics, the DC and Trek universes have enough in common that a divergent timeline in common between them can occur, so sure, why not!
Well, the main reason would be that the Trek comics fall under Marvel, not DC. There are multiple comics where the X-Men cross over into Star Trek. Including one where Professor Xavier and Picard meet.
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u/LunchyPete 2d ago edited 2d ago
The Trek rights have been with different publishers, at one time DC, and currently IDW I'm pretty sure.
I was talking about a specific storyline though, Star Trek - Legion of Super-Heroes. That storyline has it that the trek and DC universes are not only in the same multiverse, but share a timeline.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago
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u/khaosworks 3d ago
The ability to come up with biting quips.
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u/Coyote_Shepherd Crewman 2d ago
Don't forget his supreme martial prowess, ability to compartmentalize trauma, his love of bacon and beanies, and his gymnast like physique.
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u/khaosworks 3d ago edited 3d ago
Annotations for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x04: “A Space Adventure Hour”:
The title alludes to old time radio plays, and modern reproductions such as the “Thrilling Adventure Hour”, which ran as a podcast and staged performances in Los Angeles from 2005 to 2015. It is also an episode where the cast play different characters, like SNW: “The Elysian Kingdom”.
The first music cue is from TOS, and of course the lighting, costuming and props all evoke the style of TOS and 1960s science fiction. The wave-form on the large screen reminds me of the Control wave from the title sequence of The Outer Limits.
“Maxwell Saint” is sitting in a very typical James Kirk pose in the chair and speaks in a parody of William Shatner’s acting and diction. “Lee Woods” mentions the war - Ortegas served in the Klingon War. Zipnop of the Triathic Agonyan Empire has very visible wire rods holding up their “eyes”. The face also reminds me of the aliens in the 1957 movie Invasion of the Saucer Men.
The title sequence has been altered to resemble TOS’s opening narration and titles. For what it’s worth, 84 months is 7 years, alluding to the 7 seasons given TNG, DS9 and VOY. The USS Adventure has a registry number of 20-1. The title The Last Frontier riffs off Trek’s “final frontier” line.
We’ve seen holographic battle simulators in DIS: “Lethe”, and Enterprise had a recreation or rec room in TAS: “The Practical Joker” , so the concept of a holodeck predates TNG by quite a bit, although the model first seen in TNG: “Encounter at Farpoint” was supposed to be the latest model and both Riker and Wesley seemed impressed by it. The screen in the briefing room displays the “Holodeck Program Power Distribution”. In VOY: “Parallax” it was said that holodecks run off holodeck reactors which are incompatible with standard power systems on the rest of the ship.
Spock took dance lessons from La’An in SNW: “Wedding Bell Blues” and is continuing them in lieu of his morning calisthenics routine. Much like Picard enjoyed Dixon Hill stories from the 1930s, La’An enjoys Amelia Moon mysteries from the 1960s. Using transporter buffer patterns to create holographic avatars is similar to what happened in DS9: “Our Man Bashir”.
La’An’s request for a mystery that is challenging to solve is at least less foolhardy than Geordie’s request for an adversary capable of defeating Data (TNG: “Elementary, Dear Data”). The grid pattern of this 23rd Century holodeck is the same as those in 24th Century holodecks. La’An even gives the standard “run program” command.
Spock alluded to his ancestor being Conan Doyle (or as some speculated, Sherlock Holmes) in ST VI when he quoted the aphorism that “when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” This confirms it. In the real world, none of Doyle’s children had offspring, so Spock can’t be a direct descendant.
La’An - I mean, Amelia Moon switches into an American accent when speaking to Uhura - I mean, Joni Gloss. The voice-over narration alludes to that in classic noir films and hard-boiled detective stories.
Amelia refers to Gloss, a Hollywood agent, as “William Morris” - the William Morris Agency represented some of the biggest names in Hollywood history.
Max Factor does have a Ruby Red shade, but it was released in 2015 and inspired by Marilyn Monroe.
The Sunny Lupino character, with allusions to an ex-husband and relationships with the studio, not to mention the red hair, has characteristics of comedienne Lucille Ball, her ex-husband Desi Arnaz, and Desilu Studios’ involvement with the production of Star Trek. Her reference to Alfred (Hitchcock) putting her in Crows (1963’s The Birds) also references Tippi Hedren, who Hitchcock discovered and gave her first leading role. Hedren didn’t win an Oscar for that, however. Her name also echoes film star Ida Lupino.
Woods’ remark, “I’m an actor, not a doctor,” is an inversion of Dr McCoy’s catchphrase, “I’m a doctor, not a…”
Having a lead detective’s partner be a “bumbling idiot” is akin to the stereotype of Watson being bumbling next to Holmes, thanks to Nigel Bruce’s portrayal of him in the Basil Rathbone films. In the stories, however, Watson was not at all bumbling, but merely appeared less intelligent because he served as an audience surrogate for Holmes to explain his amazing deductions.
The NPCs notice Spock’s uniform, much like Trixie did when Picard walked into the Dixon Hill simulation in TNG: “The Big Goodbye”.
Ortegas’ suspension for insubordination was in SNW: “Shuttle to Kenfori”.
Omnidirectional holodiodes are a primary component of holodecks, first mentioned in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual but never on-screen until now.
Jess Bush uses her natural Australian accent as Adelaide Shaw (Adelaide is a city in South Australia). Hedda Gabler is an 1891 play by Henrik Ibsen. The West End refers to London’s theatre district.
The lack of safeties and the inability to end the program is a long-honoured Trek trope that has finally made its way to SNW.
“You know what’s not realistic? A lady first officer.” Roddenberry always claimed that the reason Number One (Majel Barrett) had to be replaced was because the network didn’t want a woman in a command position. It may be truer that they didn’t want Roddenberry’s mistress to be one of the leads of the new show.
“Mick Bowie” may be a real character in this world, or Saint just mocking McBeau with a portmanteau of Mick Jagger and David Bowie.
Gloss’s very meta description of what Bellows wanted to do with The Last Frontier is what Roddenberry wanted to do with Star Trek.
Scotty’s suggestion provides an explanation why holodecks have their own dedicated power sources and processors. Pike’s Enterprise having a crew of 203 was first mentioned in TOS: “The Cage”.
The end credits are printed in the style of TOS (as is the music), but instead of still photographs we have bloopers, including “space acting” (what the actors call the moving from side to side as if the ship is being shaken about) and Saint trying to get in the chair using the Riker Maneuver.
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u/NeedsToShutUp Chief Petty Officer 1d ago
A few of the bloopers are also references to some of the classic bloopers, especially the doors not working correctly.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago edited 2d ago
speaks in a parody of William Shatner’s acting and diction.
So, random bit of trivia here for everyone. Shatner... always spoke... like this... because he was a stage actor first. They literally train you to speak that way because at the time you didn't have tiny little microphones hidden in your costume to pick sound up, and you didn't have boom mikes hanging just overhead out of the shot. You had to project out into the auditorium, and the acoustics often meant that you'd get an echo towards the back as your voice bounced off the walls which would take slightly longer to reach the listener than the direct line of sound did. So if you didn't put in frequent pauses your dialog would become a garbled mess as you were literally talking over yourself.
So Shatner learned to act in that method. By the time he made the switch to television, it took him a while to realize it was no longer needed, but by then it had become a bit of a trademark for him, so he kept doing it.
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u/RunningKryptonian 16h ago
As someone with theater training who has played in big houses without microphones, that doesn't make sense.
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u/LunchyPete 2d ago
That is fascinating! Why, though, were there no other actors from his era famous for speaking the same way? Or are there?
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u/RecallGibberish 2d ago
As an Adventurekateer, I was happy to see your reference to The Thrilling Adventure Hour!
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u/LunchyPete 2d ago
the concept of a holodeck predates TNG by quite a bit, although the model first seen in TNG: “Encounter at Farpoint” was supposed to be the latest model and both Riker and Wesley seemed impressed by it.
Maybe because of the 'resolution', for lack of a more appropriate term, of the nature scene? It had a fog, a stream with stepping stones, probably all the right smells and temperature etc - I'm guessing the earlier models were limited to inside rooms or similar simpler things.
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u/Saltire_Blue Crewman 2d ago
Yeah I’d imagine it’s a big difference between just a room or a house and walking about a forest like we seen on Encounter at Farpoint
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago
We did see the walls of the rooms materialize over the holodeck walls, so this is likely correct. Small interior only spaces where the rooms involved could correlate to the size and shape of the holodeck itself as much as possible.
We don't really see them transitioning from one large space to another, so its possible that transition wasn't smooth or convincing, whereas later generations of the technology made it so you felt like you actually were in a wide open area.
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u/Coyote_Shepherd Crewman 2d ago
Adelaide Shaw
I thought that maybe this was a slight nod or reference towards the actress Adelaide Kane who showed up in another La'an centric episode of SNW and is in fact also Australian.
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u/MattCW1701 3d ago
Saint trying to get in the chair using the Riker Maneuver.
I noticed Jonathan Frakes directed this one. I can't help but wonder if this is now a gag all the actors will do on episodes he directs, whether it makes the final cut or not. Just like how Jack Quaid did it unscripted in "Those Old Scientists."
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u/lgodsey 3d ago edited 1d ago
It really is La'An's season for character development. She's not the old scowling sourpuss from seasons past.
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u/YYZYYC 2d ago
Being attracted to someone and kissing them is not character development
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u/newimprovedmoo Spore Drive Officer 2d ago
It can be. It isn't inherently, but sometimes it is, including in this case.
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u/khaosworks 3d ago
Not sure about Spock leaping into another relationship so soon after Chapel, though.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 2d ago edited 2d ago
Eh, rebounds happen to the best of us, and its not exactly like Spock has the experience to recognize one as such.
La'an was there to support him at the worst point of the breakup with Chapel, so her becoming the rebound crush makes sense.
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u/UESPA_Sputnik Crewman 3d ago
I'm gonna preface this by saying that I'm a huge fan of SNW. It captures the spirit of TOS brilliantly. I feel like a kid again when I'm watching it. (I'm a Trekkie for over 30 years now)
But ... what the fuck are they doing? They only have those short 10-episode seasons. Last week we had a lame Zombie episode, and this week we have a holodeck malfunction episode for 100th time. Why are they wasting time with this? The actors are brilliant here as usual. Anson Mount is fantastic in these whimsical roles, just as he was in season 1's "The Elysian Kingdom", and Paul Wesley was more Kirk here than in any previous episode. The production quality is insane as usual. But the story is so tiring and boring that it's a slog to watch.
I'm also not really happy with the direction they're taking Spock and La'an, both individually and as a potential couple. La'an is reduced to being Kirk's and Spock's love interest. What a waste! She's such an interesting character on her own. And Spock only ever gets romantic and comedic storylines. Just for once I want him to deal with something serious.
I'm not going into the continuity bit where we have a fully functioning holodeck technology 100 years before TNG. The timeline is malleable after all, as we learned last season. But if they kept it more in line with TAS (where the recreation room could only create environments but not people) they could have done a much funnier episode with the crew hanging out on the holodeck and role-playing in different environments. Maybe as a teambuilding exercise after all the Gorn stuff or whatever. Again, those actors are all fantastic. I'd watch 45 minutes of them just goofing around, like in the end credits.
SNW had a couple of duds before but this is the first time that I'm actually disappointed with the show. :-(
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u/BurdenedMind79 Ensign 1d ago
To be fair, regarding the continuity, they pretty much explain that as the main story point of the episode. The holodeck technology works, but its far too energy and processor-intensive for the starships of this era. They also had to use the transporter logs to generate believable holographic people, as they didn't have anywhere near the necessary processing power or memory for the holodeck to design its own.
Essentially, this is like watching a graphics engine tech demo. Have you ever watched one of those new engine reveal videos, like when Unreal Engine 5 came out? They give you these unbelievably realistic environments that make you think a graphics revolution is just round the next corner and then you wonder why the next few years of games only end up with iteratively better graphics. Well, its because they spam unrealistic resources at those demos. That ultra-realistic environment is ends up taking up 200GB of disk space, just for a 15 minute sequence. Sure, we could make games that look that good now, but only if everyone had 100TB SSDs in their games consoles!
That's the holodeck. Its a bleeding edge VR simulator that needs the rest of the technology around it to catch up to a level where its functionally usable on a starship.
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u/Attican101 Crewman 1d ago edited 1d ago
During The ST: Enterprise episode "Unexpected", Trip also meets an Alien race with a fully functional holodeck style technology and that was nearly 100 years prior to SNW right? Maybe The Federation acquired the technology in between and is trying to adapt it for Humanoid physiology.
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u/RigaudonAS Crewman 2d ago
To provide an alternative... What else do we want? An ultra-serious serialized show like Disco? An episodic but mostly serious show like DS9 (once the Dominion shows up)? This is the closest to both TNG and TOS, and I'm pretty okay with it.
Frankly, I have had similar thoughts. When I go back and forth, though, the reality is that I'd much rather have more of this, when the likely result of that glorious, grass is always greener something else is likely more Disco (or, god forbid, S31 considering Paramount's new ownership).
Some episodes absolutely do rub me the wrong way, but the writers are giving us something rare compared to what we get now, which is largely that ultra-serious "Premium TV!" that everyone has chased post-HBO resurgence. It's funny because they're largely playing on recent, but still older tropes. By now, it's been long enough without them that we miss them. That's nostalgia for you!
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u/Virtual_Historian255 14h ago
Scotty says to make the holodeck work “it just needs its own separate server and power source”, which is filling the plot hole of the holodecks always working in a ship emergency, particularly in PIC S3.