S01.E10: A Quality Of Mercy

[Quickbeam]

This episode made me miss Mark Lenard all over again. I liked Paul Wesley as Kirk. I enjoyed it but only as a one off. If they go to TOS too many times it won’t feel like the new series they want it to be.

[supposebly]

So, this endeth my binging all the new Star Trek shows in the last few weeks while recovering. I have mixed feelings. I don't have a strong attachment to Trek but I like the updating of the original characters. Which helps with Pike and Nurse Chapel in particular. I only watched the original show a few years ago, so I can't imagine anyone wanting these terrible characterizations again.

I actually think the new Pike is more Kirk than Paul Wesley. TOS Kirk wasn't entirely a daring-do rule-breaking maverick until later, so, that made this Pike feel even more like TOS Kirk to me. Must be the hair. 😉

I like the episodic writing with the line-through of Pike trying to come to terms with his fate. I have to say, I like Discovery a lot, especially season 1, 3, and 4, but this is nice too. I really like new Spock and T'Prin. I don't remember what happened to his marriage (don't tell me!), so I'm looking forward to the next season. I hope Chapel gets over Spock soon. Pining best friends are annoying in any genre and with any gender. I don't care about that kind of continuity.

[Sandman]

On 8/6/2022 at 10:26 PM, Ottis said:

The only thing I didn’t like was the casting of Jim Kirk, who was more like Jim Carrey playing Kirk than Shatner. They needed a shorter, beefier guy. 

I didn’t think of Jim Carrey — that’s a good call. But I kept wondering why Paul Wesley looked more like Rod Serling than Jim Kirk. (Is there another 60s-era show revival on the way, and Wesley showed up at the wrong casting call?) They needed a fairer-coloured, less pissed-off looking guy. I guess Wesley did an okay job embodying a young James T., but I found the lack of physical resemblance distracting. 

Edited June 21, 2023 by Sandman

[Raja]

On 7/7/2022 at 8:39 PM, Frozendiva said:

I was confused at the ship being a bird of prey. I always got the warbird mixed up between the Klingons and Romulans. If no one had seen the Romulans, how would they know what their ships are called?

Watching this version of Balance of Terror in a lot of ways was like watching a cut up for modern syndication version.  With the odd LT Ortegas standing in for Kirk's LT Stiles we lost the explanation that you will know that they were the Romulans because they painted a bird of prey on their warships during their war, so that is the name that stuck among the Earth Space Service that fought the previous war with Romulus turned Federation Starfleet officers who had a particular historical interest in that war.

Later the smaller Klingon ship class also picked up the name Bird of Prey to distinguish them from the cruisers  that dominate Trek combat.  I can't remember if it from the Star Trek III and IV or TNG that the use of name Bird of Prey as a Klingon class of ship started. By DS9 most Klingons followed in the story preferred serving the smaller Bird of Prey along with the Federation's "escort ship" the Defiant  as they were utilized more like 20th century torpedo boats and destroyers, rather than the heavy cruiser flagship like Enterprise.

On 4/7/2023 at 8:52 PM, Prevailing Wind said:

I watched this again and then immediately watched TOS: Balance of Terror. There's something in BoT that bugs the crap out of me - not only in BoT but a lot of space shows... They act as though the spaceships are on a road.  "OH!  The Romulans are throwing a giant plasma bomb at us - reverse!!!"  And they keep backing up until the plasma bomb runs out of steam. Well, duh. Go DOWN or UP. You don't have just right, left, backwards, forwards.  There are two other directions you can go in that the plasma bomb can't follow. It's like 21st century shows where a vehicle is bearing down on a person and they keep trying to run in front of it, instead of jumping off to the side.

Well at least Kirk and Spock learned from the encounter, Khan despite his augmented intellect I guess studied war no more.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Raja

[Raja]

On 7/9/2022 at 9:58 AM, Tyro49 said:

Has anyone watched TOS Balance of Terror for yhe first time after watching this finale? If so, what did you think?

I would also suggest the Robert Mitchum WWII US Navy destroyer escort versus German U-boat movie The Enemy Below (137 minutes) which The Balance of Terror episode followed very closely

[Raja]

On 7/11/2022 at 7:20 PM, kay1864 said:

It seems really odd to me that in SNW they’ve banned the augments themselves, rather than say, banning the practice of genetic engineering. Can anyone explain this somewhat twisted logic?

It does seem wrong for the good guys to punish the resultant children for the sin of the parents. But I guess without the draconian punishment of the innocent victim many parents will gladly accept punishment to give their progeny a step up by augmentation.  Without the Borg being introduced yet it does also seem to apply to mechanical and not just genetic augmentation  until TNG and Geordi's technological enhanced vision entered the story

[Raja]

Reading through the thread a second time makes it clearer what my problem with the episode and series is. Like Enterprise ended with TNG's Riker telling a story, we got  instead of exploring Captain Pike they are afraid to go to far away from the Kirk/Spock stories. 

It was really evident when Erika turned antagonistic towards Mr. Spock just like Stiles did in the prime timeline show on this incident. As her future attitude literally came out of nowhere

[John Potts]

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.

On 7/8/2022 at 1:16 AM, cambridgeguy said:

Sure, because the only other thing required is a body that's been reborn via the Genesis device or the equivalent.  Piece of cake!

Hey, just talk to the Mariposans about cloning his body and he'll be right as rain.

On 7/8/2022 at 8:31 AM, Llywela said:

we know from DS9 that the ban on genetic alteration remains in place long after this.

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.

On 8/31/2022 at 6:05 AM, wrlord said:

There is no way Pike would have been promoted to admiral after that fiasco.  He more likely would have been court-martialed (or, at best, given a desk job in some backwater).

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!

On 3/30/2023 at 1:56 AM, dovegrey said:

I feel like either I don't have a good enough sense of Pike as a captain*, or they dumbed down Pike to make him so ineffective in this situation, or they wrote for convenience

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.