TrekMovie joined a virtual group press interview with two of the leads from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in advance of the impending debut of season 2. Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike) and Rebecca Romijn (First Officer Una Chin Riley, aka “Number One”) talked about what’s new for the show and their characters as well as the big Lower Decks crossover episode.
Note: The interview contains some minor spoilers and has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Una and Pike are free to become the mom and dad of the USS Enterprise
Some of the questions focused on what’s different for their individual characters, especially dealing with the fallout from the season 1 finale when Pike met his alternate future self and Una was arrested for hiding her generic engineering past.
Anson, Pike had a specific arc tied into his future visions ending with meeting his alternate future self. Does this change his perspective, and your performance, in season 2?
Anson Mount: That was the question we had to deal with in episode 101. Not to get past it, but to get Pike back on mission and through the existential crisis, for the most part. You don’t want to entirely forget it, because then you’re leaving behind a very important aspect of the character, which I think makes him brave in a different way than we’ve seen every other captain. But you want to get kind of the navel-gazing out of the way [laughs]. So we did that. And then it’s always been an aspect of the character that his challenge continues to be–and I want it to continue to be for a while–reminding himself that the journey is the destination. And not the other way around. And I think that the introduction of the relationship with Captain Batel has been a very important part of that.
Rebecca, was there a particular aspect of your character that you were excited to explore in season 2?
Rebecca Romijn: Having worked on episode 2 and seeing how Una finally frees herself of having lived inauthentically for so many years. I think freeing herself from that and moving forward and letting her crew and everyone know who she really is feels like it’s a great metamorphosis for the character. It’s going to be fun moving on from that.
How do you feel that leaders like Una and Pike use their weaknesses and vulnerabilities to build and support their crew?
Anson Mount: We were just talking earlier about how our sense of our relationship, the corners you kind of write in yourself as an actor, and we’ve been friends since the Academy. And I believe that Una has become that friend and confidant for Pike that actually is able to show him those things that I’m always self-critical about that are swirling around my head that I think are my weaknesses. When you turn those around, you can actually see those actually can be seen as strengths, as well. But you can’t dwell on it, you got to be active. And that’s why she’s so important to his being a captain.
Rebecca Romijn: I think the level of family there also bleeds down into the crew. I think that we’ve developed this family dynamic and I guess we’re the mom and dad, in a way. I think that there’s been a deep support and level of trust within their relationship that bleeds into the rest of the crew.
With less pressure in season 2 has that allowed you to explore different aspects of how you play your character and take more risks?
Rebecca Romijn: I’ll speak for myself. I think after Episode 2, Una really gets freed up and is no longer hiding, is no longer sort of living in shame with this shameful secret that she’s been hiding all these years. So I think moving forward, that’s going to be very different for her.
Anson Mount: There is this really great thing that happens around season 2 of a TV show when you’re working with smart writers like we are, which is that you’ll find them starting to come to you a bit. Because there is a sense of the character you have from the inside that they’re trying to get to from the outside. Conversations about arcs often leads to really fruitful ideas. And they have been very proactive about doing that with us.
Anson Mount as Pike in season 2 of Strange New Worlds
Going big in season 2… especially episode 9
The pair also talked about some of the new elements of season 2, picking up on recent comments about expanding the genres, and more.
How much pressure was off for you guys in season 2?
Rebecca Romijn: Sometimes it’s a little more pressure. We’ve seen shows where the second season doesn’t compare to the first season. So we really wanted to make season 2 bigger and better than season 1. And we took some real chances, took some big swings genre-wise and tried a lot of things. We’re excited to share it with everyone.
Anson Mount: Yeah, we really had the benefit of a network that had learned to trust our showrunners when they want to take big swings. And also their investment, like we continue to build out this ship. So there’s just tremendous support from the network.
What do you think viewers will be most surprised about in season 2?
Rebecca Romijn: We’ve taken some very big swings genre-wise in season 2. We have a few episodes coming up [in the second half of the season] that are really out there. So we’re very proud of them. We’re very excited. Anson mentioned earlier that sometimes when you get to episode 9, which is almost at the end of the season, everyone’s kind of tired. Everyone’s sort of almost ready to go home. They brought us this episode that was so out there. It required us to work on weekends. And we were also excited about it, it was like this extra wind behind our sails that we needed at that point in the season.
Anson Mount: I would say that the brevity that the network has given us now–we had a couple of episodes in that first season that they weren’t too sure about. And both of those episodes are ones that popped for us. And so they gave our showrunners a lot more freedom to play with genre. Akiva [Goldsmith]’s mantra continues to be: “Star Trek can be a lot of things.” So we’re not just playing with the message that can be told, but within the episodic structure we can play with how we get there. And genre has been a fun way of us talking with the writers about what we haven’t done that we would like to do that makes everybody excited to be there, which I think is often an undervalued currency in filmmaking is the excitement level, especially in television.
Ethan Peck as Spock and Rebecca Romijn in season 2 of Strange New Worlds
Why the Lower Decks crossover needed Jonathan Frakes
One of the most talked about elements of the upcoming season is the crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks with two characters crossing over from the animated adult comedy into live-action. The crossover (episode 7) was directed by Jonathan Frakes.
What was it like doing comedy for the crossover episode with Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid?
Rebecca Romijn: Ridiculously fun. Just so fun.
Anson Mount: I don’t think we have seen guest stars come with such ownership of the material before.
Rebecca Romijn: They both have such great backgrounds in improv, and they never did the same thing twice. They did something different. They took it off the page and played with it in every single take. It was so fun. And having Jonathan Frakes there was very important to sort of massage the two worlds so that it was cohesive. They come from this animated show and now they’re on the Enterprise, which is a very, very different tone. It was really important that he was there to meld those tones.
Anson Mount: I don’t think anybody else could have directed the episode. It was so much fun.
Rebecca Romijn: It was just a blast.
Tawny Newsome as Mariner and Jack Quaid as Boimler in season 2 of Strange New Worlds
More to come
We have more interviews from the press junket coming up so stay tuned. Season 2 will premiere Thursday, June 15 on Paramount+ in the U.S, the U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The second season will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in South Korea, with premiere dates to be announced at a later date. Following the premiere, new episodes of the 10-episode season will drop weekly on Thursdays.
Season 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is currently available to stream exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the U.K., Latin America, Australia, South Korea, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave in Canada and on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe.
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We’re lucky in Star Trek fandom to have such thoughtful actors playing our characters. Not just Mount and Romjin, but also Peck and Gooding and Navia and all the rest. Thanks for working so hard to make our favorite place as real as you can.
So, today Twitter is abuzz with an article by Ralph Blumenthal quoting an *incumbent*, albeit unnamed, DoD official as saying that the US, and other nations, have recovered debris from craft of non-human origin.
Is the story true? No idea. Do I hope it is? Well, I loved Stargate, although I hope never to come face-to-face with a Go’auld. :) I’ll leave the speculation to others.
What I will say is this: the modern incarnation of our favorite sci-fi franchise, one that historically gave us profoundly thought-provoking plots, is, in this moment, churning out goofy musicals, fairy-tale episodes, and zany animated characters.
And even if Blumenthal is chasing an untamed ornithoid without cause, there are plenty of other newsworthy events that could inspire truly talented writers.
What an utter lack of imagination. What an utter waste.
Stay away from reruns of the original series then. All that camp might make your head explode.
Yep. Star Trek’s jumped the shark as far back as ”Spock’s Brain”. It all ended well.
LOL, Star Trek literally grew the beard :)
Before that, about 45minutes into THE OMEGA GLORY. Either that or during MUDD’S WOMEN, which is one of the only TOS eps I’ve not rewatched since the 80s.
The whistleblower David Charles Grusch’s name is on many lips this morning Temarc.
However, I have quite an opposite reaction regarding the ethos and tone of SNW. We need Pike’s ‘radical empathy’ and spirit of daring exploration now more than ever.
The ‘ontological shock’ narrative of a ‘vehicle recovery program’ he is painting in interviews is regrettably more like the Area 51 backstory in Independence Day and many other pulp science fiction stories than Star Trek – unless we’re talking about S31’s dubious behaviour, including the horrific reveals in Picard S3.
If it’s true that there’s been 80 years of hidden multi country competition to retrieve, analyse and reverse engineer objects of unknown origin, including some that can only be explained as extraterrestrial, we will need every iota of Trek aspirational values to get through this.
There is enough dystopian and grimdark distrust in other franchises. If SNW can paint another vision, it’s for the best.
This! All of this.
This post absolutely comes across as someone who’s watched modern Trek but only read about pre-Discovery stuff. Brb, gonna go f*ck a candle.
Tsunkatse! Tsunkatse! Tsunkatse!
Should’ve known you would use a Combs example!
I must disagree completely. I loved eight of SNW’s ten episodes, and the two I disliked were not the one that many fans panned.
SNW’s uplifting stories, headed by a leader who CARES, are making Trek great again. All IMHO, of course.
I’ll admit to a bit of curiosity as to which ones you didn’t like. There were two I didn’t care for, but only one I actively didn’t like/left no impression on me, and it turns out that one’s kind of popular.
I didn’t care for the pirate episode (“The Serene Squall”) or the homage to the movie Alien (“All Those Who Wander.”) I loved the fairy tale episode that some fans disliked (“The Elaysian Kingdom”), since I do believe that stories have power. After all, we spend quite a lot of time discussing Star Trek’s stories here. :-)
And you? Which were your exceptions?
I just genuinely liked Elysian Kingdom. Not just for the DS9 reference but also because I love the kind of stories that they were acting out. If a story has knights and archers (or knights that are archers, how I miss LEGO Nexo Knights) then sign me up, I’m so there for it. It also could have set up an interesting plot thread with Hemmer and Spock, I would have loved to see them work together when their telepathy is needed.
I thought the whole thing was just really FUN, in the same way (though of course not with the same tone) that “Mirror, Mirror” was fun. Did it all make perfect sense? Well, perhaps not, but seeing all of the characters behave very differently from their usual selves, watching Hemmer use “the power of Science,” the wonderful costumes, and the notion that even non-corporeal entities want company. It was so cool!!
It was! It was really fun and cool!
I didn’t care for The Elysian Kingdom, but I thought it was the best example of that sort of thing that’s been done in Star Trek (and I will admit the…payoff was extremely well done/earned,) and I was left very cold by “Lift Us Where…” which I was a bit surprised to learn people liked.
LIFT US is the only total runaway winner of the season for me, though I enjoyed the pirate show and parts of the Gorn thing and the last few minutes of the first ep. BALANCE OF TERROR REDUX was okay in parts, but left a bad taste in my mouth, especially when I tried a rewatch to give ‘Kirk’ another chance to register (he still didn’t pass muster, or get anywhere close.)
I haven’t rewatched it yet (most of my off time’s taken up by my one year old,) but I’ll give it another pass before the new season.
The guy who played the Romulan commander was really bad, too, especially when compared to the excellent performance that Mark Lenard gave in the original.
You’ve obviously never seen The Original Series. Gangsters, Nazi’s and Space Ghosts, oh my!!
Exactly! Plus the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde episode, the trial episode, an episode that features Alice in Wonderland and the White Rabbit, the Halloween episode, the “Greek gods were real” episode, the Space Romans episode, the murder mystery episode, the Moby Dick episode, the Old West episode, the body swap episode … the original series had a TON of weird episodes, and I adore most of them. :-)
Spectre of the Gun was one of my favourite episodes of all.
I’m up for any episode where Spock saves the day with badass Vulcan mental discipline and THREE mind melds. :-) But I also loved their slowly figuring out the nature of the reality they were in, the weird, half-there sets, and lots more.
TOS had some of the goofiest episodes in the franchise. That’s why when you get certain fans who pretend TOS is a hard sci fi show because they follow some real science but seem to ignore the more ‘imaginative’ episodes like facing the Greek God Apollo, meeting a clone Abraham Lincoln in space, exposing Jack the Ripper who has been secretly hyjacking bodies for centuries to murder women on multiple planets or running into a dozen Earth resembled planets.
You will find none of that on The Expanse. Star Trek deals in fantasy sci fi as much as it deals in hard sci fi, but they just try very hard to couch the fantasy stuff with a lot of technobabble to at least feel like there is a science component there. But a lot of is fantasy hokum.
I’ve said this many times, I obviously love Star Trek but I don’t take it that seriously either. I don’t watch it because I see it as some realistic vision of the future or pretend any of it has any baring of what life will look like for humans on a technological or societal basis in the 23rd or 24th century although I would love to see a lot of those elements come true. I watch it because I think it’s a (mostly) well written, fun, thoughtful and IMAGINATIVE science fiction show that shows off all the possibilities of what could be. But I never forget the ‘fiction’ part when describing the show.
But they did 26 shows a season, so a few episodes like that don’t define the series. Besides, TOS was in the business of parables.
OMG METAMORPHOSIS PREQUEL CONFIRMED!!!!
Where are you seeing that mentioned?
Also, how would that work exactly? Weren’t Zefram Cochrane and the energy being sitting alone and marooned on their desert island planet during the Strange New Worlds time period?
ha the way they seem to “bend” canon who even knows. Maybe they took a vacation to Risa :)
I think the problem with season 2 is that they’re not taking any big swings. ;)
My preference is for showrunners to be good singles hitters, rather than swing for the fences everytime. That way their collaborators can do team stuff to stretch the hit into a double or triple. You swing for the fences a few times a season during sweeps, but if you’re doing it all the time you’re going to amass a ton of strikeout along the way.
To push the analogy to football, it is like the way it was with my favorite quarterback, Daryle Lamonica, known as ‘the mad bomber.’ He was just so damned committed to throwing long all the time that he piled up nearly as many interceptions as TD passes … but man, for a couple or three years there, he was pretty fantastic throwing to Biletnikoff and Welles and Chester and Branch. Never could stand Stabler, pretty much gave up on watching pro football when Lamonica got benched.
I was joking. I think it’s funny how “big swings” is peppered through every actor, writer, producer interview about season 2. I’m sure the PR team is saying “push the ‘big swings’.”
“Big Swings” is getting old. They all seem to have been coached to use that term and I don’t completely understand why. Seems like there’s a dozen other ways to say it, but “big swings” is almost becoming a programmed word into our subconscious. Is there a deeper meaning here? LOL!
But I’m also on-board with kmart here. There’s really only so many “big swings” a show can take before you push the limits of the audience. I agree that sweeps used to play into that mentality, but there are NO SWEEPS in streaming. And with only 10 episodes, I would think if you even considered the sweeps analogy, that would mean you should only be pushing the limits with one episode per season. From the way these interviews go, I’m thinking it will be more like 5 episodes, and that just may be a bridge too far.
‘Big Swings’ is this year’s version of the supremely-played-out ‘gamechanger’ — an expression that felt overused around the time of AVATAR, so every time I read it I find myself grinding teeth (sincerely!)
I’m going to throw out there that (with the big swing in ep 9 being the musical episode) Una’s singing skills somehow get transferred to the crew through something involving her Illyrian physiology — like maybe she and M’Benga are trying to reverse some of her mods so she better “complies” with regulation (as a condition of her parole or whatever), and her personality “infects” the crew — or she’s hallucinating because of some sort of Illyrian tumor. I hope it’s the former instead of the latter because it’s better if it actually happens as opposed to a hallucination.
Yeah we’re going to get the F’ing musical episode. I wish it was combined with the crossover episode so they can get all the dumbass stuff out of the way in one ep.
+1
I’m going to have to agree with that wholeheartedly. I even turn off musical commercials when I happen upon them.
I do that too. Musical commercials or commercials that are trying to be clever and cute but just end up being stupid and wasting my time. Get to the effing point and spare me the attempt at being memorable so I remember your product.
Exactly. And I’m sure I’ve missed a number of great stories over the years because of that, but I just can’t stomach it.
Not a musical guy either but I have liked some of them. It’s a big reason why I haven’t watched Hamilton yet and I know that’s suppose to be amazing, it just doesn’t really appeal to me personally.
But I will remain cautiously optimistic about this one. I’m hoping it proves all of us wrong and we end up loving it. But you will either probably love it or hate it. I really don’t see a middle ground.
Daveed Diggs is the best part of it and you can hear him in PRO anyway.
My daughter has been trying to get me to watch Hamilton for years, but I just can’t do it. Musicals are like nails on a chalkboard to me. I’ll try the SNW episode, because…Trek! But not excited about it.
Ha yeah totally! I don’t mind them trying weird stuff like this but when we only have such short seasons I wish we should just stick to the tried and true stuff. After seeing how good the lower decks crew look in live action I’m not so bothered by that ep anymore but I HATE musicals!
+1
Yep, I think it could be stretched out over multiple episodes with “big swings” that might just drive the Trek faithful to put SNW through the wringer. If they just did one episode and called it good, I MIGHT be able to accept that. But 10 episodes is so little to work with to go over the top and just hope the audience likes it.
To that point, one thing I didn’t really love reading in this interview is how the actors pretty much stated that the inmates are running the asylum – that the actors are pitching ideas and getting to “stretch” themselves in ways they haven’t done before. We’ll have to see how this all pans out, but I just don’t know if using Star Trek as an experimental playground with such limited content is the way to do it.
Bruh. Actors have always gotten to suggest ideas to the writers. You don’t have to look very hard to see it in old Trek. If the writers truly didn’t want to write something the actors suggested then they wouldn’t have.
Actors have also always helped develop their own characters. Avery Brooks with Sisko. Patrick Stewart with Picard. Jeffrey Combs with Weyoun to an extent as well.
I think the “big swings” thing is just overstated nonsense. This is just tech bro talk. They think they’re “disrupting” Star Trek but they’re just reinventing the taxi. Trek has always been a genre playground. The experimentation / “big swings” talk will become their shield against legitimate critiques/insights into dumb-bad storytelling. I don’t mean bad concepts, I mean poor drama.
I’m open to whatever they do but I like both of your ideas. And while I agree having an hallucination may feel like a cop out, it may go down easier for people who are skeptical over the whole thing.
Or they just start signing and dancing for no reason but it all turns out to be a dream at the end. Someone has been mixing Romulan Ale with their Jack Daniel’s.
…which I may have to do before sitting down in front of this one.
Q & A Short Treks is worth a look before season 2. And please, no bitching about the turbolifts.
Those turbolifts were stupid. They deserve to be criticized. Otherwise, that was a nice little Strange New Worlds pilot.
And if a scene that length was incorporated into one of the episodes with just that much singing and then “back to our show…”, I’d be fine with that. But an entire musical episode is unecessary.
Im curious to see what these big swings are. I keep hearing it. But, big swings for me would be not exploring genres but telling stories that haven’t been done yet. Or taking chances on some big sci-fi ideas. I hope we do get some cool science fiction. It’s why I watch Star Trek.
Looking forward to seeing what they got.
Since science fiction has largely gone to multi book sagas, especially the hard science fiction, television writers just don’t have the cornucopia of recent stories to draw in the same way…
I like what Love, Death and Robots has attempted but sharp and nifty new sci-fi thought experiments seem to have been thin on the ground since the 80s when epics took hold.
Sadly true. I hope that just means there are a lot of SHORT science fictional ideas going unused, ideas they can put into SNW…
People may disagree with me, but out of all the shows, new and old, DS9 took the biggest swings out of all of them and why that show is my favorite today. It really tried to do so many big and interesting things from the first show to be serialized and tie into a big war arc (which no way I ever saw happening on TOS or TNG at the time) to just a lot of really fun, serious, kooky and introspective episodes from stories like Far Beyond the Stars and Past Tense to Trials and Tribble-ations and Badda-Bing Badda-Bang.
DS9 just did so many things other Trek shows were afraid to do at the time (although ENT did follow the serialized arc and war theme, but that was mostly due to 911 and serial shows becoming more common then) but yeah it told so many great, unique and fun sci fi stories but also in various tones and genres. It’s why I love it and Star Trek so much.
If this is the kind of stuff SNW is attempting next season, I very much welcome it.
You nailed what I like best about DS9. That they could do a quirky comedy story about a Willie Mays baseball card before dialing the war up to warp 11 was just insane — but it worked!
Exactly! And BTW, I watched In The Cards before I watched the Lower Decks crossover episode because it seem to fit the tone of a usual LDS story. And yes, that was the episode before war was officially declared between the Dominion and the Federation in Call to Arms.
That’s why DS9 is easily my favorite. They have done some of the goofiest episodes in the franchise along side some of the most serious and heartbreaking ones as well. That show took big swings and most of time hit too (although episodes like Quark being in a dress unfortunately proved it did strike out sometimes too). But if SNW is trying to follow a similar path (although I feel at least based on the trailers this season will probably be a lighter season overall with a few serious episodes interspersed through it) then I think we are in for a major treat!
Excellent Points! Im definitely on board.
Good Point! I didn’t think of it that way. DS9 is my favorite too and they were the most experimental.
Yep! And not only that, I feel if Berman wanted to do a musical episode when he was running the franchise, DS9 probably would’ve been the leading contender because it did so many wild things back then. And Avery Brooks has an amazing voice. ;)
I was having the same thoughts every time I saw people whining about the “big swings” thing. It’s like oh yeah? Like DS9 did? I know people whine about the Elysian Kingdom but a friend said to me that it reminded her of The Visitor but less depressing. Also tbh a parent having to choose between letting their child be lonely and miserable and being in their lives versus never seeing them again but they’d be happy and will survive is absolutely something you’d find in old Trek.
Also you know I would have loved a DS9 musical episode. One thing I would have absolutely wanted from it is Weyoun singing.
Actually thinking about it. Elysian Kingdom is very much a DS9-esque episode. The book coming to life is something straight out of If Wishes Were Horses. The true heart of the episode, M’Benga’s choice, is also something that you’d see Ben Sisko or Miles O’Brien having to consider. And I think the episode itself acknowledges that since the book that came to life was written by Benny Russell who was, after all, Ben Sisko.
Elysian Kingdom was apparently the episode that convinced executives they could do more fantasy episodes like the musical one will probably be. While it wasn’t my favorite episode I did like it. I’m the guy who always wants more weird trippy Star Trek so I’m always game for more stories like this and we’ll probably get a few next season.
And I think Weyoun would’ve killed it if he got a song and dance segment. ;D
I’m also always down for episodes like that. Since they always tend to be my favorites of the season/series. So I’m honestly looking forward to whatever SNW S2 has in store for us.
He sure would have! He would have stolen the show! I don’t mean to make you bear the Brunt of my gay thoughts, but at least if Lower Decks does a musical episode then I might could still get a number with Jeffrey Combs in it. Like they say, where there’s a will, there’s a Weyoun.
Don’t forget Vic Fontaine! Vic, Julien, Miles, and Sisko going nuts in one of their spy programs and go nuts!
Yep.
They also developed non-main characters so well…they just…man, that show…
I agree that DS9 took a lot of “big swings” and also had a lot of success with it. But most of those swings were still in line with the characters, the storyline, the concept of DS9, and Star Trek in general. But there was also no prior canon to deal with regarding any of those characters other than O’Brien, and they pretty much hit the reset button on him as soon as he beamed off the Enterprise. I don’t feel the same way with SNW because they are dealing with established canon in a part of the timeline that we have at least some idea of what was going on, and going too far outside of that could lead to some major conflicts between SNW and TOS.
I think story telling and “exploring genres” are two different things. DS9 usually told a good story within the confines of the framework of the show. SNW literally explored not only another genre but an existing sci-fi franchise (“All Those Who Wander” a.k.a “Alien”) using a copycat story and that was in my list of top two worst episodes last year. I’m also not a fan of “Elysian Kingdom” which also played on the fantasy genre with a weak story and has been quoted by several actors as the episode that inspired some of the “big swings” for season 2 – mainly because the actors were allowed to go beyond the limits of their characters – but we don’t even fully know their characters yet!
DS9 has episodes that were a master class in making Star Trek. I don’t feel that way about SNW just yet because I don’t think they’ve earned it. And I’m afraid that this could go off the rails before they get the chance.
“I don’t feel the same way with SNW because they are dealing with established canon in a part of the timeline that we have at least some idea of what was going on, and going too far outside of that could lead to some major conflicts between SNW and TOS.”
Reason #47 why I’m not super big on prequels and why I prefer to go forward and not backwards in the timeline. I don’t disagree with this at all, but we have to trust they won’t go too far off the ravine so to speak. And I didn’t love Elysium Kingdom but liked the idea of it very much but yeah the execution could’ve been stronger for sure. But I do like those type of stories and similar stuff like Shore Leave, Q-Pid, If Wishes Were Horses and yes even Move Along Home lol.
So I’m looking forward to what could come but yes cautious too because of the issues you raised.
Every time I think about doing the musical episode I imagine Pike belting A Friend Like Me. I saw the live action remake of Aladdin a few weeks ago and I can’t get this image out of my head now lol.
As someone who truly enjoyed Picard last season, I’m really looking forward to SNW and LDS so much now because I want something a little more fun, lighthearted and being about exploration again and I know both shows won’t let me down in that regard (and of course their big crossover meet up). I’m so excited to be back on the Enterprise and catching up with our crew that hopefully involve a lot of weird, trippy and fun episodes.
Since SNW and LDS are doing a cross over I kinda wish it was a two parter of sorts (not one with a cliff hanger mind you) where SNW will show up on LDS kinda.
I completely agree! I would love to see the crossover start in SNW and wrapped up in LDS. That’s obviously not happening but season 5 of LDS could do another crossover.
Really looking forward to the new season. I would love to see them at least acknowledge that Pike in “The Cage” was a sexist, condescending, unfeeling a-hole. I know they won’t, but they should, just like they’ve acknowledged Spock’s emotionalism. Also, it’s time for us to learn what happened to Boyce, Tyler, and Colt.
Also, what I’m really looking forward to is SNW eventually explaining how M’Benga ended up demoted and working for McCoy. My guess is that it’ll somehow involve his daughter.
Agree with all of this as well Lorna Dune. :)
Actually I’d rather have Boyce or Tyler or Colt show up somehow!
Nothing he said discounts that possibility. We could learn what happened to them by seeing them again too just like how we learned what happened to Ro in Picard S3.
I guess M’Benga could have become Pike’s personal doctor after the accident. Then when Pike left for Talos IV he went back to the Enterprise.
That sounds plausible.
It would be great for them to connect the dots with PIke. Perhaps if they were to do so the best way for them to do it would be through a conversation with Captain Batel where they talk about perhaps Pike once had a tortured past relationship that skewed his views or something and thats why he stepped back from Starfleet to get his act together.
Given that Babs Olusanmokun is a decade or so older than the Booker Bradshaw was in his two TOS appearances, I could make the argument that the TOS M’Benga is a different person with the same last name, perhaps (but not necessarily) a relative.
As for what happened to Boyce, Tyler and Colt, I’m not sure that’s worth pursuing to all but the most diligent fan. I mean, I’ve been watching ST since TOS was on NBC, and I have very little interest in that.
“Given that Babs Olusanmokun is a decade or so older than the Booker Bradshaw was in his two TOS appearances”
This floored me.
THat pic of Pike in the big chair, it’s so cool to know he got the arm position idea from Shatner in TOS!!!
Gotta look out for that generic engineering! (Seriously, do writers not use actual human copy editors anymore to check their prose for typos and grammar?)
They killed Data for real this time in Picard S1. Then brought him back for S3.
They killed Q in a big emotional scene in Picard S2. Then brought him back for S3.
The Borg Queen was dealt with in Picard S2 for real this time. Then brought her back for S3.
They killed Hemmer in S1 for real. He’ll be back for S2.
Nobody’s truly dead in Star Trek.
They killed Pike in Season 1 of TOS and they… showed he was still alive in Discovery Season 5!
Apart from competent writing.
Data and Q are weird though. Data is software. You can’t ever truly kill software. it’s like saying I deleted something off of the internet so I am safe now lol. As for Q, killing him in the first place was a HUGE mistake that made no sense. He is suipposed to be opnipotent. They never even gave an explanation of WHY he was dying. And one minute he had no powers and then POOF, we need him to have powers again so he does? Having said that, we don’t know which Q showed up in PIC S3. It could have been a past version of Q that showed up that knows about the events of PIC S2. With a being that powerful literally anything is possible.
“They never even gave an explanation of WHY he was dying.”
Why he was dying wasn’t important. That he was dying was.
I agree, IF they had kept him dead. But they didn’t, because the writing on these shows is a total mess.
Whether or not he stayed dead, the cause of his death still wasn’t relevant.
Well it is now that he’s alive again.
Data is KINDA software. TNG (and to some extent the movies) hammer it over the head that the real uniqueness of Data is his positronic brain and network. It was so unique that he was nearly deactivated over it so he could be taken apart and studied by experts (“Measure of a Man”). But Geordi and Dr. Crusher did their own amount of studying and researching him for years and still didn’t know how to fix him all the time – I mean, they couldn’t even give him the emotions he wanted from the series premiere! As B4 originally proved at the end of Nemesis, Data was MUCH MORE than the sum of his parts. So when he “died” sacrificing himself to save the Enterprise, what that really means is that he destroyed the unique combination of software AND hardware that made him Data. Even in Picard season 3, it’s pretty much acknowledged that we aren’t really getting Data back – it’s a combination of him and Lore (and originally others…), so in a way, the original is still dead. Besides, the gollum was a completely different technology than what Noonien Soong created, so it would be unfair to say that Data (the original) was truly brought back.
As for Q, it all really comes down to the question of the impact of Voyager’s “Death Wish” episode where a fellow member of the Q Continuum wants to kill himself. Technically, he’s not a Q when he commits suicide at the end of the episode, but he was removed from a group of entities who are not used to one of their members suddenly not being part of the Continuum anymore. Who knows what sort of impacts that had long-term on Q and his counterparts. We didn’t see him again after Voyager until PIC, so it’s entirely possible that a lot has changed in the Continuum since then. It also could have just been another huge rouse by Q to mess with Picard’s head, but it seems unlikely given the way it all ended in season 2. This is obviously not based in canon, but I think it isn’t a huge extrapolation given the fact that the Continuum seemed to have the ability to grow and change even though it originally seemed pretty limited in concept if you just look at Q as an omnipotent being in an unchangeable dimension (which it really wasn’t).
Hemmer being back would be nice. He was interesting and also cute.
His sacrifice was pretty impactful at the time. Why take away from that? Why would you want yet more evidence of how bad the writing is on these shows that they constantly undo things from the previous year?
Well, writing in a great new character who provides authentic representation and then fridging them as a means to short-cut development of another main character quite simply sucks.
It sucked in Buffy, it sucked when Hugh Culber was fridged in Discovery S1 and it sucked when the first authentically blind actor was cast in a recurring main cast role.
So, it’s worth asking why the EPs keep making this offensive error, but I won’t complain when they find some Trek-tropy way to undo it.
Yes exactly and he was genuinely interesting too. Do I actually think they’d bring him back? No. But if they did, I’m sure not complaining either.
Sorry to reply to myself again but also the only Aenar character that was somewhat important before him was Shran’s wife Jhamel. It would have been really nice to keep him alive and dig more into Andorian and Aenar specifically culture and how things are for them now a century later because that would have been really nice. (I know they have the same culture but tbh I don’t buy it. I don’t think they’d fully have the same culture, there’d still be some differences.)
Modern Star Trek is overflowing with representation. They don’t need to *all* have plot armour. It’s ok if the occasional one suffers the same fate any other character is in danger of. My point was more about the terrible writing on the show that is such a mess that they keep undoing what happened the season before.
It. It is?
This presumes that he’d be coming back in a way that resurrects him, rather than showing him at a point before his death.