Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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Questions about the season finale (spoilers, so proceed at your own risk).
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1. How would writing a letter result in Pike not being promoted off the Enterprise by 2266?

2. If the whole point of the episode is to show Pike how his fate is inescapable (without an equally tragic cost), then it fails. Pike now knows exactly what he will do wrong in dealing with the Romulan incursion, and thus when it occurs again, he can avoid those mistakes, avoid his fate, prevent Spock's injuries, and prevent war. Did this not occur to the writers at all?
 
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Questions about the season finale (spoilers, so proceed at your own risk).
.
.
.
.
.
.

1. How would writing a letter result in Pike not being promoted off the Enterprise by 2266?

2. If the whole point of the episode is to show Pike how his fate is inescapable, then it fails. Pike now knows exactly what he will do wrong in dealing with the Romulan incursion, and thus when it occurs again, he can avoid those mistakes, avoid his fate, prevent Spock's injuries, and prevent war. Did this not occur to the writers at all?

1. Once Pike no longer needs to preserve the future he he turns down his promotion in 2264(?) and stays Captain of the Enterprise

2. Movie Era Pike tells him he saw many other timelines on Boreth and if Pike avoids the chair, Spock dies in all of them. If not in Balance of Terror then somewhere else. Remember, Spock still dies in the prime timeline as well, it's just that he was brought back to life after Kirk disobeys orders.


Anyway, I thought that episode was great. I had feelings when Spock realized Pike was saving him as well.

And the Farragut was a Constitution class ship, should have looked just like the Enterprise.
Citation needed
 
1. Once Pike no longer needs to preserve the future he he turns down his promotion in 2264(?) and stays Captain of the Enterprise

Makes sense. I wouldn't want to leave either.

This is not to poke holes in SNW as it's commonplace in all of Star Trek (e.g. Riker on countless occasions), but in a contemporary military is it even possible to refuse a promotion?

2. Movie Era Pike tells him he saw many other timelines on Boreth and if Pike avoids the chair, Spock dies in all of them. If not in Balance of Terror then somewhere else.

Ah, okay. At least it's addressed in the episode, though that explanation does feel like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" where every choice inevitably results in grim death. Or like the writers wallpapering over objections. Also, wasn't Pike explicitly told in "Through the Valley of Shadows" that by taking the time crystal from Boreth he was sealing his fate? So this is a moot point already.

What this boils down to for me is that letting Pike know his own fate (and in great detail--down to the how, where, when, and in the company of whom) is a dramatic non-starter. We know there's nothing he can do to change it because it's canon, and this seems to be one of the few places where SNW is willing to respect that. But let's say "The Menagerie" was simply never made and Pike's fate was not assured by canon. There are still so many ways Pike could sidestep the accident: he could cancel the inspection tour; assign an engineering crew to replace the defective baffle plate; or evacuate the ship before the plate ruptures. And how could any of those choices conceivably result in Spock's death when he's on the Enterprise light years away? "If you do anything differently, Spock will die" is narrative handwavium.

Ideally, Pike should either not have learned his fate, or it should have been kept so vague that he wouldn't have enough knowledge to try to avoid it.
 
NakedMoleRat said:
And the Farragut was a Constitution class ship, should have looked just like the Enterprise
Citation needed
We’ll, seeing as how you’re quick to call someone out and passively aggressively tell them they’re wrong, without even being bothered to see if your right first…..


Here you go.


 
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Caught the rest at lunch.
Overall, I thought 4 of the 10 episodes were fantastic. 2 of the 10 were abysmal.

Sadly 4 out of 10 is only a 40% grade, equaling a D-

Star Trek: ‘Meh’ New Worlds.
 
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NakedMoleRat said:
And the Farragut was a Constitution class ship, should have looked just like the Enterprise

We’ll, seeing as how you’re quick to call someone out and passively aggressively tell them they’re wrong, without even being bothered to see if your right first…..


Here you go.




Canon sources only, please. The origin of the Farragut as Constitution Class is the Starship list in The Making of Star Trek, a list that omits the Defiant, I might add. And as behind the scenes material, it is non-canon.
 
Canon sources only, please. The origin of the Farragut as Constitution Class is the Starship list in The Making of Star Trek, a list that omits the Defiant, I might add. And as behind the scenes material, it is non-canon.
Then watch TOS. All will be revealed. Not to mention, it’s a great show.
 
Although the existence of behind the scenes material corroborating what Farragut was intended by the show runners to be gives much more credence to it being a Constitution class than if such material didn't exist, I'll have to concede to Lightning that Farragut's class was never specified on screen in TOS. I scoured a transcript of "Obsession" to make sure.
 
Then watch TOS. All will be revealed. Not to mention, it’s a great show.

I've seen TOS, big fan. The Farragut is said to have a crew of 400ish (if 200 dead is half the crew). That's all we know about it. It's crew compliment is consistent with TOS era Enterprise, but that doesn't make it the same class. It's double the crew compliment of the Enterprise of that period (which was 203), so maybe it's not such a good assumption they are the same class. (Of course that means we also have to accept 400 people on a ship without a secondary hull).

Also, if we go back to the original internal memos, we need to distinguish between "starships" and "Starship Class" which are not the same thing, and not well distinguished in the memos. That sort of confusion is probably why the class got its name changed in universe to Constitution.
 
Although the existence of behind the scenes material corroborating what Farragut was intended by the show runners to be gives much more credence to it being a Constitution class than if such material didn't exist, I'll have to concede to Lightning that Farragut's class was never specified on screen in TOS. I scoured a transcript of "Obsession" to make sure.

It should be noted that ships labeled "U.S.S." in TOS tend to signify Starships--as in "Starship Class", later codified as "Constitution Class". The idea was that ships with the Enterprise design were STARships, while the rest were SPACEships (cargo ships, science ships, etc.).

The Farragut is specifically called "U.S.S. Farragut" in "Obsession", much like the Republic, Constellation, and Defiant are in other episodes (with the latter two actually appearing onscreen, thus confirming their design). Other non-Starship ships tend to be labeled as "S.S.", as in, "S.S. Beagle" ("Bread and Circuses") and "S.S. Deirdre" ("Friday's Child").

However, the U.S.S. Carolina, mentioned in "Friday's Child", is an outlier, since it doesn't appear onscreen and isn't on the TMOST list of Enterprise-type ships.


TOS arguably began nerd culture's obsession with fine details and deep world-building in genre TV shows. While TOS has any number of inconsistencies or changed premises, they were blazing new trails.

There's really no excuse for the sheer laziness on display in the Kurtzmanverse. Some of it can be attributed to deliberate retcons, but a high percentage reeks of sheer incompetence.
 
However, the U.S.S. Carolina, mentioned in "Friday's Child", is an outlier, since it doesn't appear onscreen and isn't on the TMOST list of Enterprise-type ships.

But isn't that because the Klingons made that ship up in order to lure the Enterprise out of the system? In other words, it never really existed.
 
But isn't that because the Klingons made that ship up in order to lure the Enterprise out of the system? In other words, it never really existed.

This exchange shows that it's a real ship, although the distress call is indeed fake.


UHURA: Mister Scott, another distress call from the USS Carolina.
SCOTT: Ignore it.
UHURA: The Carolina is registered in this sector.
 
This exchange shows that it's a real ship, although the distress call is indeed fake.


UHURA: Mister Scott, another distress call from the USS Carolina.
SCOTT: Ignore it.
UHURA: The Carolina is registered in this sector.

Ah, I'd forgotten that exchange. Good catch!

Didn't one edition of the Trek Encyclopedia (a resource I much prefer to Memory Alpha) list the Carolina as a Daedalus class?
 
Meh. Far better-written episode than the entire rest of the season combined, but they did it by lifting entire scenes plus the A story from a far better iteration of Star Trek. Sorry, no credit for copying and pasting.

Here’s an idea—how about some new ones? Ideas, I mean. I suppose a Dickens’ Christmas Carol/Back to the Future mashup might’ve seemed like an amazing idea over bong hits and whiskey in the writer’s room, but at some point they have to have sobered up and had the opportunity to realize they’d screwed it up again.

Yes, the season cliffhanger was predictable. No, I don’t give a rat’s arse what happens to Commander Set Dressing. Funny enough, it’s exactly the same season cliffhanger they did in Lower Dorks. Supporting character gets arrested, tune in next year for the arrraignment!

No thanks, don’t care.

Star Trek is officially just as dead as the MCU and SW. Hopefully we can still hope for some great fan films.
 
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My thoughts on the season finale…

The “My Good Buddy Chris, The Ship’s Chef” schtick is getting tiresome. I realize that they have to make use of the gigantic Colorado Ski Lodge Set they use as Pike’s quarters but does he have to cook and wash dishes in nearly every show? I guess it’s become the substitute of what used to be the setting for conversations in the Captain’s Ready Room but it’s the casual sitcom kitchen schtick that is growing old…

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….eventually, Flo is going to show up to Pike’s Diner and demand that the officers “kiss my grits!”

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The actor playing Kirk is HORRIBLY miscast. This guy has none of the physicality and charisma of William Shatner. The appropriate actor chosen to play Kirk, at a minimum, should be a match for Anson Mount’s Pike.

This guy would be a more appropriate recast of Wesley Crusher, or Lt. Kevin Riley, but certainly NOT James T Kirk.

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But—something tells me that it was intentional not to make Kirk an equal to Pike.
 
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