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Star Trek: Alpha to Delta Quadrants & Everything In Between

Very poor start to the season IMO. Felt like a mid-level fan fiction story. Things others have not mentioned yet:

Everything past the opening scene with the horses and after the transporter room felt off somehow.
Pike feels moody, less charismatic, less confident and... stupid? I know he is supposed to be in mourning, but the way they are portraying it does not fit anything we know about his character. Everything he did this episode felt like it had been written by someone that knew nothing about the character.

The rivalry between Ortegas and Scotty comes off passive aggressive and dumb.

Going back to prehistoric Earth/Sol and not making one of the species in the story the Voth from Voyager is my biggest gripe of the episode. We know the Voth left Earth long before the dinosaurs were killed off, but it doesn't mean they were not still a presence in the area.

Honestly, the better plot would have been: The Mars species being located on the 5th planet instead, attacking the Enterprise for weapons and supplies to help them in their war against an unknown foe. Pike successfully negotiating with them for medical/benign supplies, making friends and offering to help negotiate peace... meanwhile on Earth, the away team triggers something that alerts the Voth, revealing them as the unknown enemy and really pissing them off. They come warping in, refuse to negotiate with invading mammals, show no mercy and destroy the 5th planet and the Enterprise barely escapes... Same story beats, doesn't require the viewer to have seen Voyager or know who the Voth are, but adds value for long time fans with almost no extra effort...
 
I just watched the latest episode of SNW. Why has it become so difficult to make a decently interesting episode of Star Trek? Classic Trek (TOS -> ENT) banged out 26 episodes per season for 5 series that ran between 3-7 seasons each. I cared about the plot. I cared about the characters. And in many occasions, they posited an interesting moral or ethical dilemma that was applicable to current times. I just don't get it. Why can't modern Trek do the same thing?
 
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You could ask the same of modern Star Wars, Marvel / DC, Doctor Who, etc..
Blame the studios and the show runners they hire.

  • E1: Jurassic Park
  • E2: Event Horizon
  • E3: The Hangover and Dude, Where's My Car?
 
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CWallace said:
You could ask the same of modern Star Wars, Marvel / DC, Doctor Who, etc..
Blame the studios and the show runners they hire.

  • E1: Jurassic Park
  • E2: Event Horizon
  • E3: The Hangover and Dude, Where's My Car?
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Yeah, I kind of noticed the inspiration, but it misses the mark for me. For example, Jurassic park was about the scientific ethics of bringing an extinct species back from the distant past. Other than the fact that episode 1 had a dinosaur, I really didn't see much in common.
 
Mainsail said:
Why has it become so difficult to make a decently interesting episode of Star Trek? Classic Trek (TOS -> ENT) banged out 26 episodes per season for 5 series that ran between 3-7 seasons each. I cared about the plot. I cared about the characters. And in many occasions, they posited an interesting moral or ethical dilemma that was applicable to current times. I just don't get it. Why can't modern Trek do the same thing?
Click to expand...

So Rich Evans asked the same question on the latest Red Letter Media episode and Mike answered it.

1) They did not have nine-figure budgets per episode, most of which is spent on effects and makeup.
2) The older shows had a handful of sets to work with and they had to redress them to show something new.
3) All the aliens generally looked like humans because Michael Westmore did not have three-dozen makeup artists on staff nor did he have a million dollars an episode to spend on cosmetics and prosthetics.

So how did they deal with these constraints? They wrote really strong plots so that you didn't focus on all the short-cuts they were taking in the effects shots, the set dressing and the makeup/costuming.

 
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This is brutal, but it seems the writers of Star Trek has turned to gimmicks

The YTer spends a few minutes in this video talking about how one episode was a clear copy of Casablanca (owning a bar, refugees, trying to out sing the bad guys, etc).

In all honesty I thought the singing episode was bad enough, but you can almost here them saying hold my beer for this season.

I think in the right setting muppets is not a bad idea, but they've used up so much good will and used so many contrived gimmicks it just comes off poorly imo.
 
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Well "gimmicks" was o.k. with the LowerDecks crossover or maybe once in a 24episode season, but they are now halfway through and haven't bothered to tell a single SciFi story. Sure the Jurassic Quark episode had a bit of a time paradox in it but that was just as an afterthought in the last minute.

SNW started o.k. and even managed to be good but now it sits below Acadamy and Discovery maybe even below TAS (but thats not an easy feat).
 
When SNW first came out, I really enjoyed it. Now, not so much. Honestly, I think they are trying to overachieve with special effects and gimmicks. I would be happy if they just revisited some classic Trek plots:

1. Visit a pre-warp culture and have a crew member fall in love with a native
2. Go on a diplomatic mission and find out the planet has some strange new world rituals or beliefs
3. Visit a planet where the native population is extremely advanced, but hides it by living very simple peaceful lives
4. Encounter a culture that has prejudges based on some arbitrary distinction that seems strange to us.....but maybe no stranger than our own culture's bias.

There have been 1000 Star Trek episodes. Some of the plots were just plain outstanding. I would be ok if they revisited some of these with a new wrinkle and some imagination. They only have to produce 10 episodes per season....let half of them be throw-backs. That seems a lot better than trying to come up with all of these gimmicky episodes.

BTW - It is perfectly plausible that some of the Star Trek stories would have similarities and overlaps. There is a reason Star Fleet has a procedures, manuals, and training. Many challenges, conflicts, and problems are reoccurring.
 
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5. (easy mode) make 1st contact with the Cardassians ,enough content for the rest of the season and maybe even a bonus season for Kirk's 1st year as captain
 
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Mainsail said:
When SNW first came out, I really enjoyed it. Now, not so much. Honestly, I think they are trying to overachieve with special effects and gimmicks. I would be happy if they just revisited some classic Trek plots:

1. Visit a pre-warp culture and have a crew member fall in love with a native
Click to expand...
Violation of the Prime Directive. Just making yourself known to them can cause all kinds of mayhem. Just ask "The Picard" in TNG: Who Watches the Watcher. Data befriended an alien girl in TNG: Pen Pal. The crew of the Enterprise use the skills to coverup the incident from Star Fleet.
Mainsail said:
3. Visit a planet where the native population is extremely advanced, but hides it by living very simple peaceful lives
Click to expand...
images
 
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Mousse said:
Violation of the Prime Directive. Just making yourself known to them can cause all kinds of mayhem. Just ask "The Picard" in TNG: Who Watches the Watcher. Data befriended an alien girl in TNG: Pen Pal. The crew of the Enterprise use the skills to coverup the incident from Star Fleet.

images
Click to expand...
I said fall in love...maybe fool around a little bit.....the usual Kirk, Riker stuff. I didn't say they had to contaminate the culture by introducing phasers and warp drives.
 
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Mainsail said:
I said fall in love...maybe fool around a little bit.....the usual Kirk, Riker stuff. I didn't say they had to contaminate the culture by introducing phasers and warp drives.
Click to expand...
I don't think Kirk ever loved any of the female aliens. Lusted after, yeah. in the Star Trek universe, a lot of the female aliens are muy caliente, especially the Orion women. Hubba hubba, my name is Bubba.😍

I wouldn't put it past James Tiberius Kirk to beam up a female alien from a pre-warp culture to slake his need to boldly go where no man has gone before.😉 That would explain some alien abduction stories on Earth. People being probed.😳
 
Mainsail said:
When SNW first came out, I really enjoyed it. Now, not so much. Honestly, I think they are trying to overachieve with special effects and gimmicks.
Click to expand...

They definitely are. But that is due to modern 18-35 audiences, who just cannot be dragged away from their phones while watching television (the "second screen"). And since 18-35 is the most coveted demographic for advertisers, you have to cater to them to get a show green-lit.

In the broadcast television days, shows often touched on the plot again after an ad break because they figured some people were channel surfing and just dropped in. They continue to do this in the streaming era because they figure a fair bit of the audience was on Tik Tok and wasn't paying attention. 🙄
 
I didn't think the puppet episode was offensive, but it was pretty bad. I thought it was pretty cringeworthy and I think the only time I laughed was when T'Pring slapped Spock. Angel's Smile Time this was not.
 
Just finished it myself and it was not good.

On the one hand, I want to see something that hasn't been done before. After all, we have so much pre-existing Trek, I personally don't see a reason to re-make something we already have seen, just with better special effects.

On the other hand, I do wish the writer's room was stronger when they do try and push the envelope. For example, Robbie Thompson's "The Griffin Incident" properly frightened me. But here, they had what was essentially a pitch for a five-minute SNL sketch and so often it showed that they didn't really give any thought to the structure needed to turn said pitch into a ~50-minute episode.

I see that co-Show Runner Henry Alonso Myers wrote this episode. They also co-wrote "Four and a Half-Vulcans", which I found to also found comedically cringe, as well. But they also wrote the "Hegemony" two-parter, which was fantastic. So maybe comedy is not their strong suit?


It was clear from the start that everything that happened to Spock and the Muppets was not real since there was another ship 30,000km away when they did the beam and April notes that the closest Fleet vessel was two days away.
 
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No6:

Now this could have been a TNG episode (which is a high praise these days).
Not a top of the line Klingon-Civil-War one, but still better than anything season 1 (still referring to TNG).

There might be some hope still.
 
Disagree. I thought it was one of the better episodes of the season. *shrug*

Yes, the plot was surface-level ridiculous, but it was a Trelane episode and Trelane is a character who acts in ridiculous ways, so it fit him. And I believe his interest in humanity helps tie into why, a hundred-plus years later, Q would be so interested in humanity.
And yes, the soap opera melodrama went on too long. It should not have been more than half the episode because towards the end it became tedious and boring.
However, when they did finally move to the actual drama, I found the ending very moving and really enjoyed Anson Mount's acting the entire episode.
 
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