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Strange New Worlds season 2

I think Pelia gave her a nod at the end as well when La'an suggested to Pike and Number One that they let this one go. So. You could interpret it that way too without having to say anything outright.
 
The Pelia talk has made me think of Guinan not remembering Time's Arrow in Picard season 2 and urgh don't make me think about Picard season 2.
 
CaptainWacky said:
The Pelia talk has made me think of Guinan not remembering Time's Arrow in Picard season 2 and urgh don't make me think about Picard season 2.
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Or the Picard writers not remembering the episode Yesterday's Enterprise, where the whole fucking resolution of the episode hinges on the fact that Guinan possesses an awareness of other timelines. Even if she never met Picard in the 1800s in that timeline, she would know that she should have met him in the 1800s.
 
I have mixed feelings on this one. When it comes to the somewhat overused trope of time travel in Star Trek, this one was a rather middling and, dare I say it, disappointing affair for me. It's not Season 2 Picard bad or anything close to that, but it definitely didn't push the envelope of the time travel story in Trek and didn't really stick the landing with the emotional beats it was going for despite an excellent showing from Christina Chong, who really has some acting chops.

Paul Wesley as Kirk. I have nothing against the actor. I thought he had pretty good chemistry with Chong and was perfectly fine when I briefly forgot that he was portraying James T. Kirk. He's miscast in the role. Nobody wants to see someone do a Jim Carey doing a William Shatner impression, but you need to bring something more than Wesley does here. Chris Pine, no matter your thoughts on the JJ films, channels the energy and persona of Kirk really well without ever delving into a hokey Shatner impression, so it's quite possible. Paul Wesley just doesn't have it. It's not Kirk.

Again, the actor is fine, just not for that role. When we saw Pike in Discovery, the charisma was all there, and you bought into the idea that they could build a series around him. Does anyone really get that from Paul Wesley?

Also keep in mind that I've never been completely at ease with recasting legacy characters (which this show kind of hinges on), so I'm slightly biased.

He didn't ruin the episode or anything, but it is distracting when I'm trying to buy into the fact that this is meant to be Kirk. I know, timey wimey, alternative wibble wobbles. Whatever.

OK, enough with trashing the poor guy.

The setup to get back to the present day felt rushed, but I'm not going to hold that against the episode. If you look at one of my favourite time travel Star Trek episodes in Past Tense 1 and 2, the excuse for getting the characters back in time is beyond hilariously weak. You want to get that stuff out of the way as fast as possible so you can tell the story, and crafting an interesting way to get them back every time isn't always possible, so yeah, it was pretty bad, but nothing that matters too much. At least the Temporal War got a namecheck, which was cool.

The chess hustling scene was cringeworthy (WHERE WERE THE CLOCKS) and the car chase scene was bland and unexciting. Stop with stuff like this. You don't need it; it feels like complete fluff. During the short car chase, all I could think of was how many procedural cop shows you could plonk this scene into without ever noticing a thing. STOP IT. Commit to making it interesting, or don't bother. On the other hand, when La'an and Kirk were getting to know each other and coming to terms with the situation, I thought it was pretty good; their interactions were the best part of the episode, and NO, that's not a contradiction to my problem with his portrayal as Kirk.

Even though it strained credulity, I enjoyed the Pelia scenes (Carol Kane is a really welcome addition to the show) and again, props to Christina Chong, who is compelling to watch and does actually bounce off of Paul Wesley quite well (just not as Kirk)

Would walking around Toronto waiting for a watch hand to glow really be a viable option? No, It wouldn't.

Anyway, yeah, I didn't feel this one. It is an amalgamation of stuff Star Trek has done before but much better, although with that said, I did appreciate some of the more subtle nods, like that timelines Kirk having to die, which mirrored Edith Keeler's death in City on the Edge of Forever. The Romulan twist was fine, I guess, but the big emotional payoff scene, which was basically "would you kill baby Hitler?" just fell flat in the end.

It sounds like I hated it. I didn't. I just don't think it did enough to be particularly memorable either.
 
*shrug* I actually like him. Better than Chris Pine. He doesn't look at all like Shatner Kirk and doesn't do any of the mannerisms, but somehow he really projects the essence of Kirk. I think it's good writing combined with good acting. On a related note, I've advocated for rebooting Indy with Chris Pratt as Indy--although I also think he'd be a better Kirk than Chris Pine. Then I realized Harrison Ford has blue eyes. So I'm wondering if Chris Pine could pull off Indy and Chris Pratt could be Kirk. Time to fire up the multiverse portal and find the universe this happened in.
 
Episode 4 - Pretty standard "weird planet" Star Trek episode. It was good but there's not a whole lot to say. Probably the closest we'll get to an Ortegas-centric episode and she had the most satisfying moments (though really it was more a Pike episode.)
 
I should also like to point out that the writers committed a pretty major plot fuckup:

The landing party are taken into the castle. It's inside the castle that they're completely incapacitated by the... "amnesia radiation."
In the third act, however, Pike regains his memory because he's inside the castle and shielded from the radiation.
So, um... was the radiation-shielding property of the castle having a fuckin' smoke break in the first case?!

Granted, the episode is more or less entertaining enough that it's not something you think about as you're watching, but... yeah, it's a pretty fucking glaring plot hole as soon as you think back on what you watched.
 
Amnisia radiation can be blocked by a helmet, but not by the sheilds and decks of the enterprise, that fly through space radiation every day.
 
I have tinnitus and my mum had Alzheimer's so the episode was a bit triggering for me.

The idea of waking up and not knowing who anyone is hits a bit too real.
 
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