Star Trek Social Club

Well here we go. Let’s try this out

Not bad, but felt very Discovery in tone and aesthetic. I'm hoping future episodes match season 1's vibe.

I think this got things off to a reasonable start, but it doesn't feel like the strongest episode out of the gate. Maybe it's because the show deliberately chooses not take on the cliffhanger of the last season in the first episode. Starting the season with only part of the cast undertaking the mission I think also makes the episode feel a bit slight.

It's also a bit of a darker episode than the last season, but I'm not sure if engaging with the Klingon civil war aftermath is actually necessary in this episode. In fact, leaving out the Klingon stuff here would make it a bit less stodgy to me. I guess there is some curiosity as to what SNW characters were doing during the war, but it really feels like here, the only reason they framed this entire episode around the war was so that M'Benga and Chapel could juice themselves up with a substance that they never quite introduce before using it and Die Hard Klingons for a chunk of the episode. There's maybe some M'Benga trauma, but giving the character another trauma moment where some (particularly Ortegas) remain comparatively lightly characterized feels...meh.

It's probably all the Discovery elements, both in plot and in set design on screen, that make me feel this way, but I was hoping that Discovery would learn the best lessons from Strange New Worlds. This episode has me slightly worried that instead of that, Strange New Worlds may be learning some bad lessons from Discovery. That said I'm hoping things get better across the season. I thought this was good but just not quite what I wanted from the season opener.

For me that was surprisingly good, by the end I thoroughly enjoyed it.

If my memory is correct, this episode contained more than half of the scenes from the trailers, most of which were theorized to be from different episodes.

That leaves two possibilities:

• this episode is the most interesting episode, which would be unfortunate but not unheardof for Paramount

• the best is yet to come, and we have no idea what's coming.

I choose to believe the second, for now, and I'm excited.

What a way to start the season! I love that they're leaning hard into the TOS vibe.

There's a lot to pick apart if you really wanted to, but frankly it's hard for me to get hung up on minutae when the characters and universe are so spot on. Some good starship porn in there too. What an adventure! Gene would be more than happy with this one I think.

If they had super-soldier drugs the whole time why didn't they use them against the gorn or any other combat that occurred in season 1?

That space jump sequence was the best part of the episode. I felt that.

Perhaps M’Benga has a stash of the serum Bones will later give Kirk so he can survive his fight with Spock in TOS Amok Time.