I am very much looking forward to this show, despite the fact that it spun off from my least favorite show of the franchise (DIS I mean, not TOS). When DIS premiered, I was prepared to accept enhanced special effects and redesigned sets, but I was not prepared to accept the blatant violations of canon for which the series became known (the "spore drive," the Klingons, the backstory and the tech in general), yet the show runners continue to insist that DIS is set in classic continuity rather than a rebooted continuity of its own. [I don't understand; no one insists that the 2004 Battlestar Galactica is part of the same continuity as the 1978 original (which it just as obviously is not), and everyone is fine with it.] My plan is to approach SNW with the same optimism I had for DIS and hope it doesn't reference its mother show too much.
Season One:
- Strange New Worlds - p1
- Children of the Comet - p1
- Ghosts of Illyria - p1
- Memento Mori - p1
- Spock Amok - p2
- Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach - p2
- The Serene Squall - p2
- The High Country
- The Elysian Kingdom - p2
- All Those Who Wander - p2
- A Quality of Mercy - p2
Season Two:
- The Broken Circle - p3
- Ad Astra Per Aspera - p3
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - p4
- Among the Lotus Eaters - p4
- Charades - p4
- Lost in Translation - p5
- Those Old Scientists - p6
- Under the Cloak of War - p6
- Subspace Rhapsody - p7
- Hegemony - p7
Season Three:
- Hegemony II - p8
- Wedding Bell Blues - p9
- Shuttle to Kenfori - p9
- A Space Adventure Hour - p9
- Through the Lens of Time - p9
- The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail - p9
- What Is Starfleet? - p11
- Four-and-a-Half Vulcans - p11
- Terrarium - p11
- New Life and New Civilizations - p12
Season Four:
- Valles Marineris - p12
- The Griffin Incident - p12
- Human Best Friend - p13
- A Case of Chiaroscuro - p13
- Level-Five Transporter Accident - p13
- Off Hour - p15
- Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass - p16
- Orders of Magnitude - p17
- Once La'An a Time - p18
- Tomorrow's Enterprise - p18
Season Five:
Replies
From an online review:
"It's the halfway point of season 4, and the gimmickry continues relentlessly. It's time for the Muppet episode. The idea was teased a year ago, and not everyone welcomed it, to put it mildly. Most reactions openly ridiculed the decision to do something with Muppets. While I tried to keep an open mind, I was with the critics insofar as this is clearly yet another instance of putting style before substance. Before even seeing it, we could tell for sure that 'Level-Five Transporter Accident' is made to show the crew as Muppets in the first place and then try to build some kind of story around that theme.
"The idea of turning everyone but Spock into a puppet is grotesque in the first place, and the way it actually happens in the episode and the way the story unfolds makes it even more absurd. There are additional cues that it all isn't true, which I initially interpreted as ordinary continuity errors, such as April's statement that the closest ship is not 30,000km but two days away or that the puppets are suddenly in Pike's quarters after previously retreating to the ready room. Anyway, the writing ultimately solves the issue by revealing that it was all just a dream. I'm relieved I don't have to care about anything that happens because none of it is real. Still, it's a lazy cop-out. There is no takeaway, except that we don't have the burden to understand or to explain what we have just watched."
It had a few amusing moments, but I cannot disagree with anything in that review.
The show has had some good episodes. I wish they were more respectful of continuity (while accepting certain changes that reflect the eras in which these shows were made). Increasingly, I feel like someone in the 1990s buying a comic for the gimmicky cover, only to realize that the gimmicky cover was the best thing about it, and I would have preferred a subpar cover with good stories and art within.
I could do an entire rant about the missed potential of the expanded Star Trek universe (the essays about the missed potential of TOS already exist, written by people closer to the source), but I'll put it aside for now. Strange New Worlds is now in a familiar epic star-battle: Good Episodes vs Missed Potential. Which will we have more of by the time the series ends?
It's time to clear the buffer
It's time to beam the team
It's time to watch the patterns drift into a fluffy stream
It's time to put on Spock ears
It's time to comb Pike's hair
It's time to place the Muppet right in the captain's chair
Why do we always come here?
I guess we'll never know
It's like a kind of torture
To have to watch the show
So now let's get things started
Why don't you get things started?
It's time to get things started
On the most navigational, computational, gravitational, Federational
This is what we call the Season Four!
Ha, nice!!
Credit Bernd Schneider of Ex Astris Scientia.
I'm looking forward to watching that series myself.
OFF-HOUR: I called for a serious episode but forgot the saying about being careful what one wishes for. This episode is much too convoluted [for me] to summarize here, so I'm just going to assume that everyone reading this post has seen it. If not, suffice it to say that the ship is in danger and the crew are separated. It's pretty gory, too: M'Benga is cut nearly in half, Una suffers a very nasty compound fracture, Spock and La'an suffer severe radiation burns, and Chapel loses a finger. I continually have to remind myself that this show is not canon (in this episode, specifically, the portrayal of Dr. Boyce. Speaking of which, I have my own ideas concerning the Boyce/Piper/McCoy transition, always contradicted in EU Trek.) The business with the jettisoning the ion pod comes right out of "Court Martial." Wait a minute... an episode filmed in black and white, a dream episode, an episode with a timer runnning across the bottom the screen. I'm beginning to think that the writers of this show are getting their ideas from M*A*S*H rather than TOS. What's next? A documentary epsiode?
This was better, with some actual character development, but I agree, it falls into the "what should the concept/genre premise be" rather than "what should the dramatic or SF premise be?" approach. I like your reference to MASH; we though more, Star Trek via a 70s Disaster Movie and 24. The solution flew Warp Factor 77 into:
Say, what is your Boyce/Piper/McCoy transition chronology?
Nothing all that earth-shattering. Pretty much exactly what we saw on TV...
I speculate that Dr. Piper took over from Dr. Boyce at some point under Captain Pike, and continued to serve under Captain Kirk until a new CMO could be found for Kirk's first five-year mission. Many of the ST books and comics I have read (possible due to differences in production date vs. air date), say that McCoy was at a medical conference or somesuch during "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and that Dr. Piper was his temporary replacement. For example, here is how James Blish addressed it...
"Life Sciences ready, sir," Dr. Piper's voice reported. He was temporary--McCoy was on a special study leave--and rather an elderly man for Starfleet service, but he seemed to be a competent enough physician. "
Vonda McIntyre's Enterprise: The First Adventure has most of Kirk's senior staff (Uhura, Scott, Sulu, etc.) already in place under Pike when Kirk assumed command IIRC, but I prefer to think that the change in command also signaled a significant change of crew, including Lee Kelso and Gary Mitchell. (Spock, of course, was promoted to first officer at that time.) I see "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as something of a "shakedown cruise" before the "five-year mission" officially begins (this theory is supported by the fact that the second pilot has no opening voiceover).
Yeah, that holds up.
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