“Children of the Comet,” episode two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, debuts on Thursday. And now there are a couple of new clips to get you started.
Uhura jokes with Spock
In “Children of the Comet” Spock and Uhura are part of a landing party who find an ancient alien relic buried on a comet. And as they investigate Uhura tries out a joke. Check out the new clip (via Collider)…
Uhura meets Hemmer
Episode 2 also introduces the Aenar chief engineer Hemmer, played by Bruce Horak. Nerdist has an interview with the actor, along with this clip…
“Children of the Comet” debuts on Paramount+ on Thursday, May 12.
Previously released clip:
Last week’s episode of The Ready Room includes a clip from the episode featuring Uhura meeting Hemmer [at 29:15]. [Also available internationally at startrek.com]
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debut on Thursdays exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., Latin America, Australia and the Nordics. The series airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave in Canada. In New Zealand, it is available on TVNZ, and in India on Voot Select. Strange New Worlds will arrive via Paramount+ in select countries in Europe when the service launches later this year, starting with the UK and Ireland in June.
So far so good, I am excited for a new episode.
I became more excited about this show when they revealed an Aenar would be part of the cast. They were so interesting on Enterprise in the short time they were there, but I didn’t think we would ever seem them again. So can’t wait to learn more about them. Hemmer seems like he will be a lot of fun to watch.
They really fleshed out the Andorians in Enterprise. I’d love to see more of that and perhaps an updated return to their home world.
I am wondering if Shran is still alive. Would love to see him appear in SNW in some way.
Yes, I would love to see Shran.
More, given that there are less than 1000 Aenar alive at this point, and that Shran married into the Aenar community, it would be a stretch for the two not to know one another.
This is one callback that makes more sense than not.
Bruce Horik has said that he really hopes to meet Jeffrey Combs at some point, and studied his portrayal of Shran when prepping for his own portrayal of Hemmer.
“In ‘Children of the Comet’ Spock and Uhura are part of a landing party who find an ancient alien relic buried on a comet. And as they investigate Uhura tries out a joke.”
Uhura to Spock: “If this were an alternate timeline, you and I could be lovers.”
I love that clip with Hemmer, not just because Hemmer’s bringing the Odo-like gruffness I enjoy, but also because of its feel. The crew’s just chillin’ in Pike’s quarters, making food. Pike’s basting a rack of ribs, Hemmer’s cutting veggies, everyone’s socializing…it feels homey, comfortable and inviting.
I actually think it’s Shran-like gruffness. There’s some in the intonation Bruce Horik is using that is resonant of Jeffrey Combs as Shran.
I’m not sure which article this post should go with, so I’ll randomly place it here. Maybe this has been discussed already.
I didn’t watch season 2 of Disco, so I don’t know all the details of Control and why Discovery traveled to the future. I do know that no one was supposed to know that they did; the “official” story was that the ship was destroyed. A few people — Sarek and Amanda, and I think Pike, Spock, and Number One — did know, and were sworn to secrecy. In TNG, Sarek mind-melded with Picard. Does a mind-meld necessarily mean that both participants know everything the other one knows, meaning that Picard knows that Discovery wasn’t destroyed but went to the future?
Probably not. Vulcans are good at hiding things.
That knowledge might be somewhere in Picard’s brain, but he probably isn’t consciously aware of it.
Thanks for the replies. It might also be relevant that Picard was assimilated by the Borg *after* he mind-melded with Sarek. So it seems likely that to whatever degree Picard knows everything Sarek knows* (which has not been established), the Borg know it too. Again, I don’t know much about the Control business and “the sphere,” but it seems like stuff the Borg might be interested in.
*Which ideally would not include memories of his wedding night with Amanda.
TNG sucks, best forgotten except for the time Picard ended up with the collective and destroyed half the TNG Starfleet at Wolf 359 before they then proceeded to detooth the Borg that they too sucked.
Another possibility is that the Discovery crew mucks around with timelines while in the future or jumping around in time and erases themselves from existence so that everybody forgets about them. We know at some point the Discovery is sitting abandoned in space and everybody has disappeared from it.
Another thought: TNG time is about 100–125 years after Disco time. Who in TNG time cares if Discovery went to the future? Didn’t that Israeli admiral tell Saru and Burnham, when he doubted their bona fides, that according to history, Discovery *did* blow up? So if Picard knew the truth, maybe he never told anyone.
I’m just curious but do they eat meat in the future, or not? I thought TNG claimed meat eating was a thing of the past, so are those real ribs that Pike is basting, or fake ribs? I know the answer isn’t of much consequence, but as I said, I’m just curious!
Like so much of Star Trek, it probably just depends on the writers. ;)
And to be fair, this was a century before TNG, so it IS the past from that POV. You can argue they stopped eating real meat sometime in the 23rd century or maybe when replicators became a common feature on Earth.
But they had replicators on TOS Enterprise.
I have always had people tell me those weren’t replicators, just machines making the food in the back or something. But yeah, I always thought they were too, but no one just ever said it explicitly.
Now you’ve created some uncertainty in my memory…lol.
OK, just verified, you are right — they had food synethsizers…so that food was likely not as high quality as replicated food.
This make the Captain’s BBQ scene more acceptable to me now, as long as they used grown meat/ribs.
That makes sense too. And I always assumed replicators became more common for everyone by the 24th century but it probably was invented earlier.
It would make sense that humans in Star Trek would eat meat only if it was replicated/synthesised. It’s obviously much more humane (removes the need to raise and kill millions of animals), and much better for the environment too. Given the recent significant real-life increase in veganism in the West, you can interpret dietary attitudes of Trek’s future humans as a realistic extrapolation of that. Presumably replicated meat in particular could also be made healthier and more nutritious than the real thing, since it’s artificial and you can fine-tune the ingredients.
Klingons may be a different matter ;) But since they’re more carnivourous than humans, access to plenty of meat via replicators without having to carry frozen meat supplies on warships or engage in empire-wide livestock farming would obviously make life a lot easier for them too.
PS. Thank you very much for your detailed reply to my 15 points about PIC Season 2 on the other thread. Much appreciated. Apart from a couple of brief comments I’d mostly stayed away from posting anything on Trekmovie for a few months, because I intended to binge-watch Season 2 once the whole thing was available and I wanted to avoid spoilers here.
A quick note about the “off-topic” conversations we’ve been having: Congress is going to have a public hearing about UAPs/UFOs etc next Tuesday, the first such event in decades. Two top Pentagon officials are going to give testimony, and senior Congress figures like Adam Schiff are involved too. Should be worth checking out if you can.
“I have always had people tell me those weren’t replicators, just machines making the food in the back or something.”
Yeah, maybe it was like the Automat.
Food synthesizers. Not nearly as sophisticated, more like 3-D printing.
Did you see the Amazon Prime series “Upload,” which takes place in 2033? They were “3-D printing” food.
Spock ate meat when he was in Sarpeidon’s ice age with Mariette Hartley. I had the impression he specifically avoided eating meat in the 23d century, which could suggest that meat was available to be eaten.
I think it’s more likely that the ribs are grown directly, not from butchered animals.
Still, this trend in Trek series’ now of having a lot of real cooking and dismissing the replicators as subpar food I’m just not down with. First of all, in TOS, two huge points that were covered in The Making of Star Trek were:
1. The starship would not have to store huge supplies of frozen or other foods because of the replicator technology.
2. The replicator can produce identical copies of food produced by the finest chefs; it’s not “lesser quality” food like you would get from a vending machine or pre-made in the 711 cold food section today.
If you have ever been in an institution – a school, a military service, etc – where you ‘have’ to eat provided food, The food could be great but it’s not the way MOM made it. It’s not the same as home or that really nice restaurant where you chose what you wanted. This usually engenders complaints about the quality of the food. Our cooks on the ship I was on were great, the food was actually pretty good, but there was also enough of the – ‘I want something else’ – to make for “I will fly if you will buy” to get a free meal from McDonald’s or the Pizza place any night you really wanted it. Because handmade food is just ‘better’
I wonder if, as Riker said, the food you get from the replicator is exactly the same each time you eat it. Get a bowl of clam chowder, it has the same number of clams in it each time, and the same seasonings. Get food cooked by hand and there is some element of variety.
Unless you specifically programmed the replicator to add some variation the food would probably always be exactly the same.
Also, even if following a recipe, everybody will end up with a dish that tastes, looks and feels slightly different. It’s not just the amounts of ingredients, it’s also the way of preparation. And let’s not forget “secret family recipes”. There are good reasons why people may enjoy their own cooking from time to time. Also, the individual ingredients may still be replicated.
Having it where it isn’t free food from your magical free energy device is fantastic and a step in the right direction where we are back to humanity exploring the stars with danger and conflict as opposed to playing holodeck all day. Bring on the galleys and meat eating!
Let’s remember Kirk was upset in Charlie X that there would be no Turkey’s on thanksgiving, just meatloaf back from when when space exploration wasn’t a flying a horrid looking want to be five star hotel.
“Humans no longer enslave animals for food purposes.” -Riker, Lonely Among Us, Season 1, TNG
That’s sucky TNG, not TOS. Leave the meatless preachy perfect humans for Time Trek the Technobabble Generation where they belong crashed on Veridian III after fighting a century old BOP.
This is TOS where the Captain hopes for Turkey over meatloaf while exploring the final frontier far from home.
Captain Kirk tries to eat a chicken sandwich before a tribble gets into the replicator and ruins it, so they eat some form of meat.
Although vegans might cry “fowl”, Kirk has chicken salad in TOS episode Trouble with Tribbles,
“Although vegans might cry ‘fowl,’ Kirk has chicken salad in TOS episode Trouble with Tribbles.”
Are natives of Delta Vega called Vegans?
I read that Patrick Stewart repeatedly lobbied the producers to remove the lionfish from Picard’s ready room, on the theory that in the future one sentient species would not keep another sentient species in captivity. (Stewart is apparently a known animal advocate.) But it’s not like the fish could freely roam the ship, as Spot could.
By coincidence, just yesterday I saw in the store some jerky that was made from plants, so I bought some. It wasn’t very good.
I’m kind of digging Peck’s portrayal of Spock so far. He seems to bring some nice gravitas to it. I just hope the writers come through on proper dialogue for the character. As someone said on another thread though, in TOS Spock was truly ‘alien’ to most if not all members of the crew. Here he seems very comfortable and even sociable. The two iterations appear to be at odds as far as that’s concerned, imo.
The issue is that Spock is no longer the only alien in Starfleet like he was suppose to be on TOS. I think they can still keep with the idea he’s seen more of an outcast on Vulcan itself being a mixed species but yeah it’s kind of harder to believe he’s not fully accepted in Starfleet if you have other aliens all over the ship and everyone is pretty open and friendly.
And I guess I’m going to say something ‘controversial’ but it never made sense Spock would have a hard time on the Enterprise in TOS when their mission was literally to seek out and become friends with other alien cultures. They run into new aliens every week and Spock had been on that ship for over a decade already. It seems like he would be among the most opened minded humans you can ever find. Vulcans were also the first race they met and were allies for a century at least. So what’s the problem?? I just never understood that issue but I get it was a way to give the character more depth. And of course I can still understand how difficult it would be for Spock not have anyone around like him; so that make sense.
Can you provide reference for Spock being the only alien to join Starfleet? That does not sound right. And we know that Starfleet has at least one ship with an all Vulcan crew, were they Starfleet or did the Vulcans need to borrow a starship?
I guess maybe there were suppose to be other aliens but we never saw any BUT Spock lol. Even on other Starfleet ships or starbases, they were all human. Every Starfleet commanding officer or scientist who stepped aboard the Enterprise, etc.Same for all the Federation colonies too. We saw aliens in other places but never in any Starfleet capacity for some reason. My only point is even if Spock wasn’t suppose to be the only one, they were a tiny minority. But you’re right, they did have the one ship with Vulcans on it.
But it’s a very different situation today. Aliens are everywhere in the 23rd century Starfleet and Spock shouldn’t feel as alienated. And it was an odd argument to make even in TOS he felt so distant from others because he was best friends with both Captains of the Enterprise, Kirk and Pike. I’m not sure if he’s suppose to have as close of a relationship with Pike as he did Kirk but it certainly seems that way so far.
Roddenberry started the much needed correction to this piss-poor “can’t see any aliens in Starfleet besides Spock” with TAS, which introduced M’Ress and Arex as alien crewmembers on the Enterprise during the original five-year mission.
In fairness TOS, they were leading the revolution to get minorities on TV back then, so I get why more aliens wasn’t a priority…in addition to the tight budget versus the makeup staff and time needed every week for additional alien characters.
Yeah I can understand all of that. But if you just turned on the show as another viewer, I think you would jump to the reasonable conclusion aliens weren’t really part of Starfleet. The show had 80 episodes when you include the Cage and you didn’t see even one in the background wearing a Starfleet uniform on somewhere. But yes that was changed after TAS and of course the films.
Yep!
Other than Spock and the Vulcan crew, I can confirm that “we never saw” other aliens in Starfleet in TOS, but we did get a couple in TAS (please see my other post on that).
My headcanon is that Starfleet tries to make crews of environmentally compatible races. Vulcans would generally find a human ship uncomfortably cold. Humans would find working on a ship full of Vulcans too warm and the air a little thin for them. So Vulcans (and perhaps some other compatible species) get one ship, and humans (again with other compatible species) get another ship.
That’s a good idea! Considering the Aernar and the Andorrans live in colder temps I wonder if that will be included in future shows?
“Intrepid” doesn’t sound like a name Vulcans would use for a starship. I’m guessing it was a Starfleet ship. But why would Starfleet want to crew a ship with only Vulcans? Were there even that many Vulcans in the fleet?
“The issue is that Spock is no longer the only alien in Starfleet like he was suppose to be on TOS.”
Where did you get that idea? That was never case, nor was it even implied. Heck, the entire crew of the USS Intrepid were non-human, according to “Immunity Syndrome.”
Dude, I already discussed this above with several other posters.
Kirk : “That’s what you get for missing staff meetings, Doctor.” lol
I don’t necessarily think that Spock’s biggest problem in TOS was him being the “only” alien in Starfleet but more of the clash of his human and vulcan sides. His issues of acceptance came from this conflict, whether he can be accepted as a full vulcan or whether his human side will take over.
I like the dialogue for Uhura already. It’s like they took all of the lessons learned on Tilly in DIS, and made a more palatable, less frantic, inexperienced junior crewmember much more likeable.
Last weeks episode was a bit flat. Hopefully this’ll change.
My all day question: Will I stay up late and watch it when it drops or will I watch it Thursday evening? Decisions decisions.
I ask this very same question to myself every week, but the answer always ends up being the latter 😂💤
Can’t go wrong with Andorians!!!! Back when aliens could be aliens and not want to be perfect enlightened humans and could still be in a Federation of Planets.
Also Uhura rocks, loving it!!!!!!
I really like Ethan Peck, but I can feel the tension he is having while delivering his dialogue and he’s tripping on his tongue in the process. I don’t hear Spock at all tbh, but he’s still playing a Vulcan with that unique gravitas. I’m hoping he relaxes into that smooth Spock tone a bit more as we go on. Same with Uhura, I don’t recognize her as Uhura at all, especially since she is playing the roll of the audience which isn’t how most of us really envision Uhura. Uhura is somebody more otherworldly and extraordinary with incredible grace, style, and confidence. Most of the actors are playing these characters in name only, which is probably not what they had in mind when they conceptualized this show, but I think it’s working anyway.
Everyone hears what they want to hear. To me his voice is spot on and he’s a better Spock than Quinto because of it.
Really?
To each his own.
You have to remember the fact that this is an earlier Uhura. She still can grow into those character traits you mention as the show goes on. Everyone is a little weird, flaky during their inexperienced, rookie days.
Exactly.
I already adore Gooding in the role of Uhura. Saldana is fun, but Gooding seems much more like Nichols than Saldana ever did. And Hemmer is fantastic.
Celia Rose Gooding is just as slender, graceful and beautiful as Nichelle Nichols. Just saying……
Here here!
Celia’s GREAT! I am really enjoying Uhura’s Journey of Self Discovery and,Adventure.
One of the criticisms that I heard about SNW is that it represents Trek going back instead of forward I look at it a little differently.
On one hand, this show is introducing classic characters(and, a couple of new ones,) to a younger generation of Trek fans, while at the same time,
showing the veteran fans among us, some of our favorite characters in a different light.
It’s the first prequel I don’t mind going backwards for. It’s telling stories on the original Enterprise, giving us Pike which we seen very little of and yes capturing the type of stories we got in TOS/TNG/VOY etc. It feels almost old fashioned and familiar but also different from what the current live action shows have been doing. So I think most will be happy with it, even the people who want to see Trek going forward covering new ground.
There’s also 60 more years’ worth of real-world history that they can incorporate into these stories.
Only issue I have so far is there is such a limited sense of peril because we know what happens to so many of the characters. I know this was always the case with most of the traditional Trek shows that major characters virtually never died but in this one it’s literally pre-written that they won’t (e.g. Sam Kirk must survive this landing party mission to die a decade or so later).
…the curse of the prequel.