S01.E09: All Those Who Wander

[starri]

Quote

The USS Enterprise crew comes face-to-face with their demons – and scary monsters too – when their landing party is stranded on a barren planet with a ravenous enemy.

[AnimeMania]

Dan Jeannotte as George Samuel Kirk Jr. (James T. Kirk's older brother)

[cambridgeguy]

Hemmer was absent for a stretch of episodes then gets killed off here?  That couldn't have been the original plan for the character, could it?  If so then that's a waste of an interesting character.  This is also why you don't send so many senior officers on dangerous away missions, captain.  The chief engineer of the flagship is not easily replaceable. 

It also looks like Jim Kirk is lucky the Gorn get really slow when they mature and start walking on two legs, because otherwise he would have been torn to shreds.

[NeenerNeener]

Hey, the Gorns are finally scary! 

[paigow]

Writing out 2 characters in one episode... must be some Dollar Tree James McAvoy on the next Starbase...

Pike [like Jim Kirk will] clearly condones Spock getting bullied / insulted by senior officers

[LydiaMoon1]

I refuse to believe that Hemmer's dead, dammit. The Gorn can't take the cold, be he can. He's used to it and loves it, plus he's an engineer. Next season, they will find him snug and comfy in a shelter he made, wondering why it took so long for the crew to come find him.

That was a very enjoyable episode, even though they didn't even try to hide the fact that it was a blatant rip-off of Aliens. They even had their own version of Newt, although she wasn't at all needed in this episode other than as a vehicle to further La'an’s recovery from trauma.  Considering that La'an was already in therapy, I found faux Newt to be a waste of time. Otherwise, I've loved seeing the progression La'an has made in her trauma recovery. One complaint though. Can we please stop having these stunning and brave heroines show their badassery by roaring their rage into the camera like deranged banshees? It has become cliched to the point that it's becoming a whole trope, not to mention that I find it eyeroll-inducing and effing stupid. Stop it.

OTOH, I didn’t mind Spock’s emotional outburst as much because it felt like actual character development to me. He made a conscious decision to tap into his inner rage monkey because it’s what the mission required. La’an’s outburst struck me as just more Captain Marvel-type ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ pandering.

Loved the continuation of Hemmer and Uhura’s newfound friendship and Hemmer and Spock’s ongoing friendship. I am amazed at how touched I was by Hemmer’s sacrifice. Tears were running down my face. He hasn’t even been in all of the episodes, but he has made quite an impression.

Uhura’s transition from promising, but unsure cadet to confident ensign ready to bond with the crew and boldly go into a Star Fleet career has been pitch perfect. Well done.

Anyway, this season has been great so far. I just wonder why this episode wasn’t used as the season finale? Not sure how they’re going to top this next week. My only suggestion for next season would be to use Una more, because I think she’s been criminally underused this season. Frankly, I want more Una and less Nurse Chapel, but that's just me. Still, what can I say? This show has been a highlight for me almost every week.

Edited June 30, 2022 by LydiaMoon1

[Llywela]

50 minutes ago, LydiaMoon1 said:

One complaint though. Can we please stop having these stunning and brave heroines show their badassery by roaring their rage into the camera like deranged banshees? It has become cliched to the point that it's becoming a whole trope, not to mention that I find it eyeroll-inducing and effing stupid. Stop it.

I think it worked here, though, for the same reason that Spock had to let himself lose control. It was established that the Gorn are hard-wired to respond to aggression, while being too intelligent to fall for an obvious trap. Simply calling them or firing a phaser a few times to get their attention would not work. Spock tried that and got no response. Roaring with genuine rage, though, that's speaking the Gorn's own language, a challenge to battle that they can't refuse. La'an needed that last Gorn to follow her and she needed it to not suspect a trap, so she spoke the Gorn's own language - a battle cry, a challenge for dominance. And it responded. Anything less and she might not have been able to lure it onward.

[LydiaMoon1]

41 minutes ago, Llywela said:

she spoke the Gorn's own language - a battle cry, a challenge for dominance. And it responded. Anything less and she might not have been able to lure it onward.

I mean, Uhura did shoot at them, but they mainly chased her for being warm-blooded while standing in the corridor. Quite frankly, both Spock and La'an could have stood there and said nothing and the Gorn would have come after them. It's what they do.  I'm glad you enjoyed it, but all those histrionics just get on my nerves.

I forgot to say in my original post about how scarily effective and very unnerving the clicking of the baby Gorn was. That was a nice callback to the little girl in Memento Mori.

Edited June 30, 2022 by LydiaMoon1

[paigow]

Gorn reproductive methods are confusing. They lay eggs AND spit embryos that implant into humanoid hosts. Within hours of birth, the Alpha kills its siblings and procreates... To kill them?

[Affogato]

20 minutes ago, paigow said:

Gorn reproductive methods are confusing. They lay eggs AND spit embryos that implant into humanoid hosts. Within hours of birth, the Alpha kills its siblings and procreates... To kill them?

Were ‘t the spanking new ones cute?  Yah survival of the fittest at its finest. Those Gorn!

If this show continues it is good to know things have consequences. Very unusual. The doctor loses Rukiya forever. Hemmer dies. Consequences. 

[Hawk]

Hemmer was a very compelling character, I hate that they killed him.

[rtms77]

Well that sucks, I was really warming up to Hemmer. His friendship/mentoring of Uhura was touching. I’m guessing we get a certain scot to take his place. 
 

Wow this ep went to each plot point quickly and telegraphed the out come . The triage cadet and Davis? we’re goners the moment you found out who they were and a big occasion happened for them just before. 
Hemmer was a surprise though, but the moment the Gorn spit on him I figured it was how they spread.

Kudoos to Star Trek for remaking the Gorn into a serious threat! This is a remake I can get behind and enjoy. Their abilities seem almost based on Predators. I m curious though how the Gorn grow an empire, all they seem to do is kill each other and then everyone else.

Sigh this show insists on pushing Spock and Chapel together even though he’s practically a married man. Considering we have  at least 6 yrs before TPring finally dumps him I’m thinking they may just retcon that as well. And what is with the blatant racism against him from Sam Kirk? That was a cheap shot.

I guess we now know why the captains quarters and the crews are so huge. The two ships are virtually the same , so that means just over 100 crew. 

Edited June 30, 2022 by rtms77

[Colorado David]

noooooooooooooooooo...i liked Hemmer dammit.  Off the newer people, not a developing character. Especially for not a significant point, what a waste.

Spock demonstrating rage, I'm not there on how he got there....what was the rage for? It doesn't seem like the episode warranted that transition in his character.

Ok, the gorns are predator-like. i'm still mulling this over...it could be interesting, or we can wander into goofy predator-movie episodes. the old gorn had intelligence, is the new gorn strictly animalistic or what exactly? if they have intelligence i'm on board, if it's just predator-animals, hard pass.

[marinw]

Station K7! I saw what they did there.

[Lokiberry]

The girl who played Ariana is the sister of the boy who got sacrificed a couple of episodes ago. The were both in the final season of The Expanse. I didn't recognize her at  first under all the dirt. 

Boo on killing Hemmer so quickly. He was barely in any episodes.   Unless the actor wanted to quit because the makeup was an issue or something like that, this is a bad look for the show.

[MissLucas]

1 hour ago, Lokiberry said:

The girl who played Ariana is the sister of the boy who got sacrificed a couple of episodes ago. The were both in the final season of The Expanse. I didn't recognize her at  first under all the dirt. 

Those Expanse kids sure do get around!

Well that was stressful. How stressful you ask? Pike's hair got bent out of shape, looking limp and sad in one scene!

All kidding aside - it was a strong episode. Losing Hemmer sucks but it reminds me of a discussion a couple of weeks ago that there's no real risk and suspense in this show since we know all the main characters will survive. Well, there you have it. And the Enterprise needs a new chief engineer.

It's been ages since I watched TOS and I forgot everything about nurse Chapel or Spock's love life. So I'm just enjoying the ride/ship. Also Spock should probably try and acknowledge his human heritage a bit more - it could save him from surprises like in this episode. 

[historylover820]

Star Trek does Alien....

Actually, my first thought when I saw the chestburster was from Spaceballs and the alien starting to sing "Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal." I need to see Spaceballs again. I saw Alien not too long ago. A couple weeks?

Anyway....

I liked it. Until they killed Hemmer. I called Cadet Have-we-ever-seen-her-before's death the moment they were celebrating her and Uhura. I said "There's another Cadet on Enterprise? Dead!" And of course the Ensign promoted to Lieutenant. I don't care if you're wearing a gold shirt. I've never seen you before, so you're dead.

Hemmer hurt.

But, like Alien, I like the intense atmosphere, the horror movie going on here. And I enjoyed it. Far cry from the ones before though! Talk about mood whiplash!

(And LydiaMoon1, I'm with you. I thought of La'an's screaming was less of a battle cry and more of histrionics. And Spock's as well.)

[QuantumMechanic]

5 hours ago, rtms77 said:

And what is with the blatant racism against him from Sam Kirk? That was a cheap shot.

Nothing we haven't seen before from McCoy.  Heck, he was practically channeling one of McCoy's rants from times when Spock implacably stood there after someone got killed.

Edited July 1, 2022 by QuantumMechanic

[AnimeMania]

From what I saw of the Gorn, I find it hard to believe that they would even wear clothes, let alone build spaceships and travel the Galaxy. How can they do that when they don't have any passed down knowledge and two of them can never be in the same room together without killing each other?

[QuantumMechanic]

13 minutes ago, AnimeMania said:

From what I saw of the Gorn, I find it hard to believe that they would even wear clothes, let alone build spaceships and travel the Galaxy. How can they do that when they don't have any passed down knowledge and two of them can never be in the same room together without killing each other?

Making this the Gorn is just stupid.  They easily could have just it been some other species we've never heard of.

I mean come on.  How can Spock and Uhura show complete ignorance after this episode.  Or Kirk.  Surely he reviewed the logs of the ship he was taking over.

METRON [OC]: We have prepared a planet with a suitable atmosphere. You will be taken there, as will the Captain of the Gorn ship which you have been pursuing. There you will settle your dispute.
KIRK: I don't understand.
METRON [OC]:You will be provided with a recording-translating device, in hopes that a chronicle of this contest will serve to dissuade others of your kind from entering our system, but you will not be permitted to communicate with your ship. You will each be totally alone.
KIRK: What makes you think you can interfere with
METRON [OC]: It is you who are interfering. We are simply putting a stop to it. The place we have prepared for you contains sufficient elements for either of you to construct weapons lethal enough to destroy the other, which seems to be your intention. The winner of the contest will be permitted to go his way unharmed. The loser, along with his ship, shall be destroyed in the interests of peace. The contest will be one of ingenuity against ingenuity, brute strength against brute strength. The results will be final.
KIRK: Just a minute
METRON [OC]: There will be no discussion. It is done.
(Kirk vanishes, and Uhura screams)
SULU: He's gone.

[Planet surface]

(A dinosaur- like being with multifaceted eyes and a multicoloured tunic greets us with a roar. Kirk is now wearing a belt with the recorder/translator on it)
KIRK [OC]: The Enterprise is dead in space, stopped cold during her pursuit of an alien raider by mysterious forces, and I have been somehow whisked off the bridge and placed on the surface of an asteroid, facing the Captain of the alien ship. Weaponless, I face the creature the Metrons called a Gorn. Large, reptilian. Like most humans, I seem to have an instinctive revulsion to reptiles. I must fight to remember that this is an intelligent, highly advanced individual, the Captain of a starship, like myself, undoubtedly a dangerously clever opponent.

Edited July 1, 2022 by QuantumMechanic

[historylover820]

How can the Gorn be a Captain of a ship, presumably with a crew, if they kill each other if they're in the same room as each other? Or did I miss something?

Probably should have called SNW's big bad something other than the Gorn. 

(I still liked the tension and suspense in this episode though).

[statsgirl]

After a run of good episodes, this one I think is the worst of the season. Partly because they killed off my favourite character, Hemmer, partly because Nurse Chapel did the tired old trope  of telling Spock to let out his emotions and he would feel better (true when TOS was written, now disproved) and Sam Kirk's speciesism. But mostly

10 hours ago, paigow said:

Gorn reproductive methods are confusing. They lay eggs AND spit embryos that implant into humanoid hosts. Within hours of birth, the Alpha kills its siblings and procreates... To kill them?

Biologically the Gorn made no sense at all.  Parasites eat their host, they don't just out in some Alien re-make. They can't grow that fast because there is physically nothing to grow with. Most reproduce sexually so they can't spit and suddenly eggs grow.  But coming out of the host and immediately attack and kill the other littermates doesn't make sense in terms of evolutionary fitness. Intelligent parasitic organisms would not be that mindlessly aggressive. And the idea that they can cloak themselves completely from both sensors and telepathy doesn't make any sense. There must be respiration and blood-equivalent that the sensors could be modified to pick up.

If the Gorn are supposed to be the Big Bad of the show, I wish that they had put more thought into them. Please respect my intelligence and science courses.

Why couldn't they put Hemmer in either suspended animation or in the transporter buffer until they could figure out a way to save him?

ETA: if Hemmer absolutely felt that he had to sacrifice himself because he had been infected, why could they keep him in a locked room with cameras until the Gorm hatched and then Starfleet could study the Gorm and help build a defense against them?

Edited July 1, 2022 by statsgirl

[thuganomics85]

Episode went full-blown "Aliens" on this joint, I see.  Some solid creepy moments here and it at least shows how physically threatening the Gorn can be since these were mere infants that were putting the best of the Federation to the test.  Confused by the hierarchy and how this civilization works though.  Automatically killing your siblings to be the lone "alpha" doesn't give me a feeling that the Gorn have much of a structure here.

I felt bad, but as soon as I saw these other two ensigns that were supposedly training with Uhura this entire time, I was like "Whelp, they ain't making it to the end credits!"  At least the show avoided giving them red shirts...

Surprised that this might already be it for Hemmer.  He was an intriguing character and I liked how he played off everyone (especially Uhura), so him leaving like this seems random.  I guess there is an outside chance the cold will somehow kill the embryos before they hatch or something and he'll survive in the cold, but that seems like a stretch (especially after that long of a fall.)  I wonder if this was always the plan or something changed with the character/actor?

It also looks like La'an might also be gone for a bit, but at least the door is open for a return.  Considering how much focus she has gotten throughout this season, I have to imagine she will be back.  Especially since Christina Chong has been such a highlight here.

I thought Oriana looked familiar!  They really are all about dipping into the casting pool for The Expanse.

More tension between Spock and Chapel.  Not sure how much they can milk this unless they're going to go in a different direction compared to the TOS canon.

I do wonder if Hemmer's replacement is going to be a certain fellow with a very distinctive Scottish accent!

Definitely feel like Sam is cut out for this particular crew.  Maybe he has a brother that would fit in better?

This almost felt like a season finale in a lot of ways, so I'm curious to see what the actual season finale is going to be about.

[PurpleTentacle]

So the Gorn are basically magic now. Scanners can't detect abnormal masses in sombeody, because magic. The gorn can change their genetics into other species, like humans, without becomeing that other species, because magic. The transporter biofilters of the transporter don't detect them, because magic. They grow remarkably fast without any sufficient sustenance, seemingly conjuring matter out of thin air, because magic.

What isn't quite magic, but come on: A gorn child spraying eggs. A higher species seemingly not needing sex to reproduce (that would lead to deseases killing off the population real fast). A higher species killing each other for dominance. (how exactly did they ever develop space travel with a social structure like that?).

Man am I happy that this is the best live action current trek show out there. The bar is so low, it is set in hell.

[starri]

The "Gorn can't be seen on the scanners" was previously established in Enterprise's "In A Mirror, Darkly," so at least that part has precedent.

[MissLucas]

5 hours ago, statsgirl said:

ETA: if Hemmer absolutely felt that he had to sacrifice himself because he had been infected, why could they keep him in a locked room with cameras until the Gorm hatched and then Starfleet could study the Gorm and help build a defense against them?

There's a difference between choosing your own end in a (what looked like) quick death on your own terms and being turned into a gruesome science experiment that ends in a painful death with no guarantee that said plan would work and not end in more deaths among your friends.

[Affogato]

8 hours ago, historylover820 said:

How can the Gorn be a Captain of a ship, presumably with a crew, if they kill each other if they're in the same room as each other? Or did I miss something?

Probably should have called SNW's big bad something other than the Gorn. 

(I still liked the tension and suspense in this episode though).

The ones (gorn) that survive are the ones that muster self control and cunning. They can captain and crew a star ship.  

Edited July 1, 2022 by Affogato

[sugarbaker design]

13 hours ago, Colorado David said:

not a developing character. Especially for not a significant point, what a waste.

Sacrificing oneself for one's family is quite a significant point.  Killing off a regular sends a message to the audience...and the actors.

12 hours ago, Lokiberry said:

Boo on killing Hemmer so quickly. He was barely in any episodes.   Unless the actor wanted to quit because the makeup was an issue or something like that, this is a bad look for the show.

Totally disagree.  Excellent look.  No one is safe, except of course for Spock, Uhura, Chapel...

16 hours ago, Affogato said:

If this show continues it is good to know things have consequences. Very unusual. The doctor loses Rukiya forever. Hemmer dies. Consequences. 

Yes, consequences that matter.  How refreshing!

[PurpleTentacle]

1 hour ago, starri said:

The "Gorn can't be seen on the scanners" was previously established in Enterprise's "In A Mirror, Darkly," so at least that part has precedent.

At least adult ones might have some cloaking tech. How are eggs and embryos in a host going to cloak themselves?

If Enterprise also dealt with magic Gorn embryos, I'm calling bullshit on that show as well.

3 minutes ago, sugarbaker design said:

Totally disagree.  Excellent look.  No one is safe, except of course for Spock, Uhura, Chapel...

and Pike and Una.

Edited July 1, 2022 by PurpleTentacle

[Affogato]

If the cloaking is a natural chameleon like arrangement which has, in the adults, been augmented with technology…well I wonder if their tails regenerate? These might be, like the Aliens, very GMO beasts. 
 

the Gorn learning curve is echoed in Spock’s rage and his issues tamping it down. 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Affogato

[marinw]

8 hours ago, statsgirl said:

ETA: if Hemmer absolutely felt that he had to sacrifice himself because he had been infected, why could they keep him in a locked room with cameras until the Gorm hatched and then Starfleet could study the Gorm and help build a defense against them?

I don't think Hemmer would find that idea appealing! But I'm sad to see him go, Hemmer was an interesting character with a lot of dignity.

12 hours ago, MissLucas said:

Those Expanse kids sure do get around!

Good catch! I thiought that the part with the kids was the weakest part of Season Six of The Expanse, but YMMV.

[Zaffy]

Alien + Predator = Gorn!
Hurray...

Well, I wasn't shocked by Hemmer's end, I mean Scotty, right?
The rest of this episode was simply an uninspired copy of various Alien films.
SNW's writers are not the most original minds in the industry, right? 

 

[Starchild]

5 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

and Pike and Una.

And Sam Kirk

[Starchild]

1 hour ago, Zaffy said:

SNW's writers are not the most original minds in the industry, right? 

With most modern Trek series, it pays to give the first season a pass on inconsistent quality, as it typically improves. And this one is already starting pretty strong, based on the characters and production design.

Like Janeway with her crew, Pike is serving as a strong parental role model, setting this (along with Voyager) as a "family" series, apart from other Trek series that are more like "workplace" series.

I think that's another reason people are responding very positively to SNW. Last I heard, VOY was the most popular Trek series on streaming services, and the "family" aspect is its unique differentiator among Trek series. Until now.

[marinw]

How did Sam Kirk ever make it through the Academy? 

Edited July 1, 2022 by marinw

[cambridgeguy]

5 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

and Pike and Una.

Aside from technically being the third member of the show's power trio, why is Una safe?  She's never been mentioned in TOS outside of the Cage footage.

[Frozendiva]

Where does all that food come from? Replicators? Catering containers stored at Starbases, ready to thaw? The Captain certainly knows how to put out a good spread.

I too had issues with the vicious parasite Gorn developing language, social structures, the ability to build spaceships, progress to space travel, etc.    No real sign of the newborn hatchling getting past its need for food and basic survival. Are there Grandma and Grandpa Gorns reining in the kiddies?

Surprised that Hemmer was killed off so quickly. He was intriguing and had a bit more mileage left as a character. A good influence on inside cadets looking for meaning in their lives.

At least this version of the show actually does deal with trauma and death and loss.

[tennisgurl]

I have really mixed feelings about this episode, more so than any other episode of this show. On the one hand, I can respect that they killed off a main character so quickly and showed what can happen in these sorts of situations, its not just the red shirts that are in danger. On the other, killing Hemmer, who has already been underused, seems like a real waste of a good character. He was a really interesting and unique character, so killing him off now seems like a wasted opportunity to really use him. Even though he wasn't around much, he was one of my favorite characters, he gave us some great snark and had a very quiet dignity to him and I appreciated commitment to pacifism. 

They didn't even try to disguise that this was basically "Star Trek Does Alien" which was probably for the best. When you want to do a homage to one of the most famous science fiction movies ever, you want to really go for it. There were some really creepy scares, they used the darkness in the ship to create a really tense atmosphere, and really went for it with some of the body horror. Losing Hemmer continues to really suck, but I would still consider this a strong, creepy episode. I hope that La'an isn't gone for too long, I don't want to start losing cast members left and right. Her dealing with her trauma, sometimes by screaming and beating things up and other times through therapy, has been a nice character thread for the season. 

My other complaint about this episode is I am not liking how the Gorn are being portrayed so much as we learn more about them. Its not consistent with what we saw in TOS when they were introduced, where they were brutish but were also very much a warp capable civilization. These Gorn hardly even seem sentient, let alone able to build starships, and the society they talked about makes no sense. How do you keep a species going if every nest kills its siblings? How are they structed as a society? How do they function? This sounds like one of those times where Trek comes up with a new species (or tells us more about an older one) but they only think of weird quirks or how it can fit into that weeks plot, they never think about how those aliens would actually work, biologically or socially. 

[Zaffy]

4 hours ago, Starchild said:

With most modern Trek series, it pays to give the first season a pass on inconsistent quality, as it typically improves. And this one is already starting pretty strong, based on the characters and production design.

Like Janeway with her crew, Pike is serving as a strong parental role model, setting this (along with Voyager) as a "family" series, apart from other Trek series that are more like "workplace" series.

I think that's another reason people are responding very positively to SNW. Last I heard, VOY was the most popular Trek series on streaming services, and the "family" aspect is its unique differentiator among Trek series. Until now.

I can't find any of the so called New Trek to show originality. They are  prequels, soft reboots or based on already established characters (Picard) and their inspiration to show something different is to change the canon, modify how aliens look and discover new relatives for Spock.

Yes SNW is better than Disco, but what it has showed us so far? it is heavily based on TOS and  borrows elements from other successful sci-fi (La'an is a version of Expanse's Drummer) and now just copies famous sci-fi movies. 
The (mostly) really good cast saves this show so far. For example the actor who plays Pike is like if he was born for the role. I doubt that without him they would even think to make this show.
But just because for many of us Disco failed miserably and Picard was so and so, that doesn't mean SNW is something exceptional. The rest  2 lowered down the competition level.

I am trying to stay optimistic and hope the 2nd season will work better, which was the exact same thing I once wrote for Disco...

Edited July 1, 2022 by Zaffy

[historylover820]

5 hours ago, cambridgeguy said:

Aside from technically being the third member of the show's power trio, why is Una safe?  She's never been mentioned in TOS outside of the Cage footage.

I was just about ready to post this. I never had the channels that DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise were on while they were airing, so I never watched them. But, as far as TOS goes, Una was never mentioned. And, seeing that she would probably be someone, like Spock, who would bust Pike out of the hospital in order to get him to Talos IV and risk court martial, I'm going to assume that she died between SNW and TOS.

[kay1864]

7 hours ago, Frozendiva said:

Where does all that food come from? Replicators? Catering containers stored at Starbases, ready to thaw? The Captain certainly knows how to put out a good spread.

Too bad Starfleet lost any sort of dishwasher technology along the way. 

Edited July 2, 2022 by kay1864

[kay1864]

1. The Gorn in Engineering was not moving that fast. Uhura could have shot it easily. Phasers literally disintegrate matter at the highest setting. What am I missing here?
2. There’s no assistant chief engineer in Engineering? Why didn’t we hear from him/her at Hemmer’s wake? (At least they had a couple of other crew there) Oh wait, it was established two episodes ago there’s only 15 to 20 people total on board, who are easily overcome by pirates 😊

On 6/30/2022 at 6:31 AM, cambridgeguy said:

It also looks like Jim Kirk is lucky the Gorn get really slow when they mature and start walking on two legs, because otherwise he would have been torn to shreds.

As C-3PO would say, “Thank the maker!”

Edited July 2, 2022 by kay1864

[kay1864]

15 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

So the Gorn are basically magic now. Scanners can't detect abnormal masses in sombeody, because magic. The gorn can change their genetics into other species, like humans, without becomeing that other species, because magic. The transporter biofilters of the transporter don't detect them, because magic. They grow remarkably fast without any sufficient sustenance, seemingly conjuring matter out of thin air, because magic.

[PurpleTentacle]

9 hours ago, Starchild said:

With most modern Trek series, it pays to give the first season a pass on inconsistent quality, as it typically improves.

Where? Discovery got worse and Picard stayed just as shitty. I guess Lower Decks got better, but that's one in three.

[dwmarch]

17 minutes ago, kay1864 said:

The Gorn in Engineering was not moving that fast. Uhura could have shot it easily. Phasers literally disintegrate matter at the highest setting. What am I missing here?

It is inadvisable to indiscriminately disintegrate matter in Engineering would be my guess.

14 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

If Enterprise also dealt with magic Gorn embryos, I'm calling bullshit on that show as well.

I'll spoiler code it for anyone who hasn't seen the episode ("In a Mirror Darkly Part II"):

Spoiler

The episode is set in the Mirror Universe. Archer's crew finds a Constitution-class ship (the USS Defiant from "The Tholian Web") but there is a Gorn onboard. As I recall, the Gorn munches a crewman or two but Archer goes hunting for it, pins it to the deck by cranking the artificial gravity up and then shoots the crap out of it while it is pinned. The crew did not mention any concerns about the Gorn having possibly left some babies behind but I am not a hundred percent sure they knew exactly what they were dealing with. According to Memory Alpha, the Gorn was named Slar, was a slave master and negotiated with the crew in addition to doing sneaky stuff like sabotaging engines and leaving bombs behind. So a much less animal-like depiction but this was also taking place in a different universe.

[kay1864]

9 minutes ago, dwmarch said:

It is inadvisable to indiscriminately disintegrate matter in Engineering would be my guess.

In that case, a 5 second scene of Uhura raising her phaser, and Hemmer saying “No, not here” would have been good for us viewers. Instead we’re left with ‘why did they let it get away so easily?’

Not to mention the myriad times aliens or intruders were shot with phasers in TNG Engineering. Starfleet personnel, unlike Cylons and Stormtroopers, are historically pretty good shots. 

Edited July 2, 2022 by kay1864

[Makai]

5 hours ago, Zaffy said:

Yes SNW is better than Disco, but what it has showed us so far?

Entertainment. That’s enough for me. 

[statsgirl]

17 hours ago, MissLucas said:

There's a difference between choosing your own end in a (what looked like) quick death on your own terms and being turned into a gruesome science experiment that ends in a painful death with no guarantee that said plan would work and not end in more deaths among your friends.

Fair enough. But it didn't even come up, he just went outside and jumped down into a crevice. I would have liked the thought to have at least be raised since the Gorn are so dangerous but Starfleet knows nothing about them. The kind of mindless aggression the larva displayed is usually only in lower species as is the asexual reproduction (plants and single cell organisms on Earth).  How did they go from that to being sophisticated enough to have whole planets where they take hostages for breeding? Or be as intelligent as the Gorn Pike found a few episodes ago that sacrificed a ship to find their whereabouts. Discovery has its flaws but it's got better logic than this.

This episode was good horror but bad science.

10 hours ago, cambridgeguy said:

Aside from technically being the third member of the show's power trio, why is Una safe?  She's never been mentioned in TOS outside of the Cage footage.

She fills the Bones/Spock role from TOS who is the Captain's confidante sober second thought.  Spock is too young for the position as is everyone except possibly the doctor.

[Starchild]

2 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

Where? Discovery got worse and Picard stayed just as shitty. I guess Lower Decks got better, but that's one in three.

Ha, that's fair. As someone who was (just barely) old enough to watch the final season of TOS when it aired, I consider everything after TOS and TAS to be modern Trek.

But maybe the post-TOS Trek (TNG, DS9. VOY, ENT) is modern, while those series currently airing (DSC, PIC, LOW, PRD, SNW) are post-modern?

Or perhaps revival (TNG, DS9. VOY, ENT) and modern (DSC, PIC, LOW, PRD, SNW)? 

I love that Trek has been around long enough to have eras!

[paigow]

6 minutes ago, Starchild said:

But maybe the post-TOS Trek (TNG, DS9. VOY, ENT) is modern, while those series currently airing (DSC, PIC, LOW, PRD, SNW) are post-modern?

Or perhaps revival (TNG, DS9. VOY, ENT) and modern (DSC, PIC, LOW, PRD, SNW)? 

The parallel situation is Cinematic Batman - Akiva Goldsman killed the Tim Burton legacy IP [with Clooney / Schumacher] just like he has killed the Roddenberry / Berman legacy IP.