John Potts

Did anyone else wonder if Lois' cancer treatment might incorporate Kryptonite? Since Kryptonite can essentially do anything, having it cure Lois' cancer would be far from the strangest thing it has ever done. If so, it seems unlikely it could be a deliberate ploy on Mannheim's part (they're unlikely to have a villain uncover that Clark = Superman, unless he's killed straight afterward) but it would provide some dramatic tension as Clark endangers his own health to protect his wife. Lana's in the wrong line of work if she wants everyone to like her! I guess Chrissie and Kyle aren't keeping their relationship secret any more? Annoyingly, it wasn't even (plot) necessary. Have Supes Eye-jaculate on the computer when it's at 20% and have Mannheim's tech guy say they didn't get everything but they got the data they needed. Of course, that still requires Intergang to be way more competent than the US Army, but that's par for the course. As for Supes, I guess we have to go with "he was distracted by his wife's condition". It didn't help that I think he said, "We haven't been friends for decades". Sure, teens exaggerate (like all the time!) but it really made him seem his actual rather than character age.

Why did Pa Laine think it was a good idea to give Jordan a haircut? He might not like his grandson's bouffant style, but it's hardly unique. In fact, Superboy changing his hairstyle would be more of a tell since it would happen at the same time as Jordan's change. The suit makes a lot more sense. Then again, we are in a world where a pair of glasses provide an impenetrable disguise, so who knows!? It was so in character for Clark to Super-Snoop on his wife - and for Lois to be pissed that he did. And was it my imagination or did Clark look more stubbly than usual? Shaving is exactly the sort of thing you might neglect when you're concerned about somebody else. Loved Lois admitting that inviting Jonathan's girlfriend to stay with them was a terrible idea! (Given the "Conservation of Characters", I expect she'll end up staying with John Henry and Natalie - or, like Sarah's little sister, in that sort of Quantum state when she only exists when she's actually onscreen).

Was not expecting James to be back in Darrowby so quickly. Obviously, people aren't watching ACGaS for its depiction of the Second World War, but it seems odd to have taken such pains to put James in the RAF only to bring him back home (particularly given we've been Tristan-less for a whole season). I don't know how the Books depicted it (and maybe James did spend only a couple of months in actual service), but I would have thought we'd see more of James on service. Did like his commanding officer - obviously James wasn't a fan, but he certainly had a point that he couldn't risk sending out a pilot who might pass out at any moment. And of course, the RAF took some fearsome losses (particularly early on) and colleagues would sometimes just not come back. Glad Carmody is being portrayed as gaining confidence in his abilities, even if he screws up on occasion. Liked that it was he who realised why the cat kept passing out (in a manner that reminded me of my family pet growing up). And good on Mrs Hall for insisting she was quite capable of being a Warden. I wonder if we'll be seeing Land Army Girls turning up in Darrowby as the war goes on?

So unlike any Superman show for him to start with a nightmare - feels more like a Batman thing (which doesn't make it bad, just unusual). OK, for once I’m with Chrissy here – never mind her own health, Lois is wasting Doctors’ time. Though denial is pretty natural, particularly for somebody like Lois who isn't one to sit around. Unfortunately, Clark can't punch this one for you. Was that Luthor in the tank? It’s bound to get possessed by some evil AI* at some point, isn’t it? They seem pretty connected and I'm sure the DoD and Lex Luthor both have samples - there are probably others. * Is there any other kind?

At first I wondered why Future!Pike wasn’t in his chair, but of course, that was the point of changing his fate. Did the Klingons allow Pike to use the time crystals (again) because in the new timeline, Spock was not there to open peace talks with the Klingons and so their Empire collapsed (a la Star Trek VI)? Why did the Romulans blow up their own ship? Sure, execute the Captain for being insufficiently belligerent, but given his second in command reported him to central command, why not hand command over to him? Seems a needless waste of a ship. Hey, just talk to the Mariposans about cloning his body and he'll be right as rain. But it's more extreme at this time. Bashir didn’t lose his job and certainly wasn’t arrested (though his father went to prison for doing the alteration), whereas Una was arrested just for being genetically engineered. You don’t get court-martialled for making the wrong call. Being promoted to post "where you can do less damage" has been known to happen IRL - and given the quality of most of the Admirals we've seen on Trek, seems entirely plausible is widely practiced in Starfleet! There's always option 3: this is Pike where he knows something he did caused disaster, so he's continually second guessing himself - which is what causes the situation to turn catastrophic.

In trek, everyone can see your homage… (All the first 3 Alien movies got a shout out, in fact). At least it did make the Gorn scary rather than goofy, even if it didn’t look much like it did in Arena (or In a Mirror, Darkly). Maybe it goes through a number of metamorphoses in its life cycle? They really are trying to portray Sam Kirk as completely useless, aren’t they? I guess it’s to make us not care as much when he dies. Hemmer Down! That would break with Starfleet policy! At least they had an excuse that they had to divide their attentions between the two missions. In a galaxy of shapeshifting aliens made of protoplasmic goop and sentient Nebulae, that’s positively mundane. My first thought was “Wow, there are other members of the crew!” - if not for long.

I feel it’s a little early to change the characters when I’m yet to get a solid fix on who everyone is. And even for a fairy story, it seemed a little static – too many scenes of everyone standing around while the Doctor/King spoke to somebody. I suppose in a Kingdom everyone defers to the King so if he spouts gibberish, they’re honour bound to play along, but if we’re talking a fairy story then there should be more action. And if we’re talking a fairy story, wouldn’t Pike be the Evil King who stops the heroic Prince (Dr M’Benga) from seeing his daughter – Celia Rose Gooding was great as the Evil Queen, but she seems an unlikely choice for the Doctor’s daughter (Rukiya?) to put into that role. Also (other than wanting to avoid having to deal with child actors), why did the energy beings age up Rukiya? If they’re non-corporeal, wouldn’t they keep her the same age? Was it Rukiya’s choice? Disappointing that the Doctor didn’t use the Enterprise’s technical abilities to “solve the plot”. Other than Hemmer teleporting the “Crimson Guard” away, they never tried storming the Evil Queen’s Palace by just stunning everyone with phaser fire? Or finding a way to flood the decks with sedative gas? “Real World” tech seemed to work in the fairytale Kingdom (presumably, you dress it up as some sort of magic), so it should have worked. Kirk in “Spectre of the Gun” tried a scientific solution (it didn’t work), but it should have worked here. In fact, where was everyone else? Are there really only ten people in the crew? The Cage gave the crew complement as 203 so it should be somewhere around that.

Way to start on a major downer. Pretty sure Lois will survive (she's in the title!) but she doesn't know that and her distress seemed genuine. Liked that Clark saw that something was wrong but gave her some space to tell him in her own time. “This party is insane!” Really? I’ve never been a party animal, but it looked extremely tame to me. Maybe that’s because I’m from the big city and not Smallville? Huge place, though. OK, that has to be the least subtle political pressure ever. The judge was calling short the interview anyway, you can kill her once everyone else is out of the room if necessary. Tipping off the journalists just makes your strong-arming more obvious. What mother stays out for dinner when her daughter is off in the big city!? Again, not my scene, but isn't the point you drink if you miss your shot? They're known to be close in most continuities, I assume that's true here. We only have to handwave how Superman "just happened" to be in the area. I've heard it as Metropolis is New York by day and Gotham NY by night (but any such parallels are never canon).

Since we’re ripping off Die Hard (again*), I was expecting Spock to say “I was unsure of your loyalties, so the phaser I gave you is non-functional” when Angel turned on them. Still, nice that we have a (presumably) reoccurring villain now. Still puzzled by the T’Pring/Spock relationship. If we’re heading toward Amok Time, we should be seeing greater strain in their relationship, not renewed hook ups. Sybok! Now that’s a name I haven’t heard since… [Sorry, wrong franchise!] I do wish the writers would remember that the Enterprise has sensors that (presumably) can detect in a complete sphere around it. When that ship (which I assume is the vessel Angel escaped in) lit its engines, it should have been immediately spotted, even if it managed to escape before the Enterprise could react. Even for the ever-incompetent Starfleet Security, that seemed poor. Maybe have them spotted but not before they take over Engineering (which would make it more Under Siege than Die Hard) and it's more a battle for control of the ship. "Captain, surely even the most cursory examination of the body would reveal whether the victim had been strangled, stabbed or bludgeoned to death?" Or 50 Shades of Grey! (Not that I've read any of those) * At least in Starship Mine, there was a reason the takeover was so easy for the bad guys - the crew had been evacuated so they could perform the Technobabble sweep

Nice morality play (did it give Ursula le Guin a story credit?), though it’s hard to unravel the Doctor’s motivations here. If he always wanted to save his son, why not tell Doctor M’Benga straight away? Was he worried Dr M’Benga would shop him to Captain Pike (who was possibly compromised)? And just when is the Chosen One chosen? I’d’ve thought you’d keep them completely isolated so there’s no risk of attachment among those close to him – and definitely not allow his father to act as his doctor if they’re going to sacrifice him. I suppose they earn some credit for at least acknowledging that they deliberately make one child suffer when logically you’d keep it a secret, though in that case, how did the Chosen one not know? He was a bright kid and had to realise that no Ascended one ever returned. Wouldn't an intelligent kid want to talk with the previous chosen ones - and be unlikely to accept "Err, sorry, they're all... busy"? Accepted protocol in Trek, as Janeway elaborates to Harry Kim in Voyager ("Ma'am" and "Captain" are also acceptable), particularly in a Federation where not all aliens have two genders. He’s the Captain. If he overrules his Security Chief, there’s not a lot they can do except look smug afterwards. Remember when Saavik quoted the regs on raising shields when Khan approached in the Reliant (in Wrath of Khan)? Saavik was right, but Kirk overruled her, with disastrous results - at least he had the decency to tell her she was right afterwards ("You go right on quoting regulations, Mr Saavik"). Yes, because deliberately turning a blind eye to suffering you don't see is completely unbelievable. I mean, if the machine really does do what they claim (which seems ludicrous) tinkering with it could bring the Apocalypse. Maybe there is some better solution (everyone takes a day wired up to the machine, say), but they prefer not to risk their complete destruction by chancing it - which is completely believable to me. He was probably a bit suspicious (rightly or wrongly) of how friendly Pike was with Alora. Never mind Pulaski, Picard beamed himself into space as a pure energy pattern in Lonely Among Us and they managed to reconstitute him an hour later!

Loads of callbacks here – the Lirpa, the Vulcan bell-harp (I’m sure it has a name) the entire concept of bodyswapping (it probably predates Turnabout Intruder, but that’s the first time I’m aware of its onscreen depiction) – even the way Spock and T’Pring were lying in sickbay were reminiscent of the bodyswap from that episode. A little disappointed we didn’t get the sash-with-a-weight-on-the-end that Spock throttles Kirk with, but we can’t have everything. Though if this is leading to “Amok Time”, it seemed T’Pring was actually closer to Spock as a result of this whole deal, so I’m wondering how that all breaks down again Pike’s dealing with the diplomacy showed what a good Captain he is (I got the mirroring, but Pike saw beyond that – nice to know that there are Empaths who do more than “Sense something strange”). Not so sure about Una (I guess she really IS called Number One, at least in Latin) and La’an goofing around – surely it can’t be a revelation to either that they’re sticklers for duty. Never saw Nurse Chapel as quite so sexually aggressive – I wonder if that was inspired by Majel Barrett’s portrayal of Lwaxanna Troi rather than Nurse Chapel (who was admittedly a much more minor character). T’Pring in Amok Time was pretty awful – she forced Spock to fight his one true love best friend to the death. Don't know if giving her a more understandably personal (human, even) motivation makes that better Thank you! I knew I’d seen it before somewhere

For me, this was Starship Down (DS9) with a bit of Disaster (TNG) and a touch of Aliens (I have seen both Balance of Terror and Arena, but it felt far closer to the newer Treks than either of those). Probably wise to keep the Gorn offscreen, because even in their updated look in Enterprise they were still a bit goofy looking - as they often say, what you don't see is scarier than what you do. Most characters have been temp-killed in TNG (Picard in Lonely Among Us, Worf in Ethics, Troi in Man of the People and arguably Data in both Ensigns of Command and Time's Arrow - not to mention everyone in Cause and Effect multiple times!), though only Tasha's death stuck (mostly!). Depending how major you consider him, DS9 perma-killed Eddington (and Gowron) and temp-killed O'Brien in Visionary (he's replaced by his temporarily displaced duplicate) and possibly Sisko in Starship Down (he gets better after Kira prays) as well as Jadzia - not including everyone who dies in the Mirror Universe (which is most of them). My recollection of Voyager isn't so good, but Tom Parris dies in Threshold (before turning into a lizard!) and I think B'Ellana dies in Barge of the Dead (it's kinda vague) - pretty sure Kim dies at least once, but I'm not sure. Dr Culber was murdered in Discovery before he was replaced by his clone(?). I don't remember the exact line (so this may be contradicted in dialogue) but it's possible the loading system was damaged but there was one torpedo left "in the tube". Less plausibly, the the torpedo drives were damaged but the containment unit was left in tact (if I took a hammer to a nuke I probably wouldn't set it off but could damage it sufficiently that it couldn't fly) - though how just one survived is a mystery in that case!

If I was going to copy TNG, I definitely wouldn’t take “The Naked Now” as a template. And it seemed they ran out of time for the conclusion so they discovered the cure offscreen! And I guess Scottie read about M’Benga’s use of the teleporter to store a pattern? And did anyone else think that Number One's failure to report her symptoms was going to be because of the infection was altering her brain some way? I get rather annoyed at Trek’s “no Genetic Meddling!” - because, really? So if somebody devised a retrovirus to cure people with Cystic Fibrosis, Starfleet would be all, "Sorry, sucks to be you!"? For a technologically advanced society, it seems unlikely that the memory of an event that took place centuries previously would keep it outlawed (it would be like the UK still banning the works of Thomas Paine because they inspired the American Revolution!) I don't think he has to, I think he just wants to see his daughter. And the sudden appearance of a child onboard would presumably raise a few questions, even for the famously inept Starfleet Security!

Fun! OK, not sure how Uhura knew what notes to sing and it seems that they have a similar appreciation of the musical scale as we do (Spock was not singing the same notes as Uhura, he was singing an octave lower – yes, mathematically that’s half the frequency and it’s the same letter on the diatonic scale, but it’s not the same note). Did like Pike putting the comet between him and the antagonists because that was smart thinking. Also liked how, while the Enterprise dodged most of the incoming shots, it still took a couple of hits. For all there IDIC* philosophy, members of Starfleet generally seem to think the only choice of career should be to join Starfleet. Most likely between TOS and TNG. Kirk was pretty cavalier about violating the Prime Directive, although Picard got a fair few breeches of his own (according to The Drumhead, Picard had racked up nine PD breaches by the end of Season 4). Ablating/evaporating part of the comet will provide a slight nudge to alter its trajectory. Done early enough, even a tiny nudge will be enough to turn a collision into a miss (this is how astrophysicists suggests we might avert asteroids from hitting Earth IRL). Given how close it was to the planet I doubt it would make enough of a difference, but the physics is inherently sound. *Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

I'm assuming those roaring fires in Pike's (giant) quarters are holograms? How does Pike know it's "easily preventable"? He doesn't know the circumstances of how the accident occurred - presumably the Enterprise was doing something that had the engines going critical (how many other lives did that save?). As Picard put it in Cause and Effect, maybe attempting to avoid the accident is exactly what causes it (which, to quote another Trek example, is exactly what happens in Voyager's Now and Again!). All he knows for sure is that in that situation, he sacrifices his own wellbeing to save five people. Sure, he can keep stay in Montana and ride horses - in which case others will probably die. It's similar to the choice Achilles made - he can have a short but heroic life or an uneventful long one. Presumably Pike is an example of the Starfleet officer who wants to make the Galaxy a better place, so he wouldn't chose to hide under a rock (or in a snowdrift!), but I do like the fact that it is a choice he has to wrestle with.