[Review starts at 20:51]
Tony and Laurie start off discussing the SAG-AFTRA strike and how that can impact Star Trek production and promotion, including the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con and the 57-Year Mission convention in Las Vegas. They then round up the latest news on awards, which include an Emmy snub for Picard, and Strange New Worlds making it into the streaming top 10. There’s also a new book offering some clues about Lower Decks season 4. Finally, the podcasters talk about Enterprise executive producer Manny Coto, who died earlier this month of pancreatic cancer.
For Strange New Worlds, the podcast first looks over Tony’s exclusive interviews and play a clip of Jess Bush (Christine Chapel) talking about Roger Korby. Tony and Laurie then turn to the week’s main topic: reviewing “Charades.” They mostly agree, but had different takes on this “big swing” towards another rom-com style episode.
They wrap things up with a special Treksperts podcast about Manny Coto and a unique moment between William Shatner and Picard production designer Dave Blass at the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga.
Links:
SAG-AFTRA Calls History-Making Strike as Talks With Studios Collapse [THR]
‘Star Trek: Picard’ Nominated For 2 Emmys
‘Star Trek: Picard’ And ‘Lower Decks’ Nominated For 8 Hollywood Critics Association Awards
3 Star Trek Novels Nominated For Scribe Awards
‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Warps Into Streaming Top 10 Chart
First Look At The ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks – Crew Handbook’ May Offer Season 4 Clues
Robicelli’s a Love Story, with Cupcakes: With 50 Decidedly Grown-Up Recipes [Amazon]
‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ Executive Producer Manny Coto Has Died
Interview: Gia Sandhu Talks T’Pring’s Love For Spock In ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’
Bits:
Laurie: Dave Blass shows new Enterprise dedication plaque to William Shatner on the TOS bridge
Tony: Inglorious Treksperts: Remembering Manny Coto podcast special
Let us know what you think of the episode in the comments, and should you be so inclined, please review us on Apple.
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I didn’t take the end of this episode as breaking canon. Whether spicy things happen between Spock and Chapel or not, there are still years left before we have the scene in The Naked Time where Chapel (in a drunken haze) confesses to Spock that she’s in love with him. And we still have time before What Little Girls Are Made Of. They could both have a full relationship prior to The Naked Time, and it still would fit. Most of the crew will be re-assigned when Kirk takes command. So, McCoy would know nothing of their fling/relationship. Kirk wouldn’t know anything about it. Neither would SCotty, Sulu, or Chekov. The only thing SNW has messed with so far is Uhura’s introduction to T’Pring in Amok Time.
I will need to rewatch but I’m not sure I remember Uhura meeting T’Pring. She was maybe on the bridge when Spock and Chapel did some tongue twisters. But 7 years is a long time to forget someone’s face you’ve only seen once.
But yeah I dont see any canon violations at all just addition and enhancement.
My point as far as Uhura goes is that by serving on the Enterprise, she has at least heard of Spock’s girlfriend/fiancee. And the way this crew gossips like teenagers in SNW, I can’t imagine that it’s not at least mentioned, even on the shuttle trip into the time vortex, that Spock is having the equivalent of an engagement party. That alone would make her aware that he has a significant other. In Amok Time, when she sees T’Pring on the view screen, she’s surprised Spock has a significant other.
I think it’s clear that it’s “Amok Time” that violates canon. Think of “The Original Series” as, like “The First Draft” series.
Stop mocking Amok Time.
Let’s be honest, if they said TOS was no longer canon, oddly enough all their problems would go away tomorrow.
I may not remember correctly but didnt Uhura just ask who T’Pring was something like ‘she’s beautiful who is she’ which would be about recognising her as an individual and not being all like I never knew you did the horizontal monster mash. I could be wrong on that one but we wave away the Relics and Generations thing so that line of dialogue is pretty easily dismissed too.
As for Chapel, Spock chooses T’Pring, she meets Korby. She gives the impression she’s moved on more than she really has because Spock chose to embrace his Vulcan side and largely turn his back on Human shenanigans. But then her true feelings about loving him as a Human and a Vulcan later come out. This makes that all less out of nowhere.
As I said I see no canon breaking personally, maybe a little bending but that’s nothing new. And TOS is probably among the worst for internal consistency anyway.
Everything about Spock and Chapel in SNW breaks canon lol. It’s not even a question. They were never together. Spock spent most of his time calling her ‘nurse’ in TOS because it was strictly a professional relationship on his part and not the horny CW teenage affair we see them having on SNW.
Absolutely. Thanks for this, whether it breaks canon or not shouldn’t even be in question. Of course it does. On a number of levels.
It’s mind boggling people are trying to excuse the obvious. None of this stuff was in or remotely implied in TOS. They have basically just ignored canon on an extreme level like pretending Spock and Chapel had a physical relationship on that show. What’s even more funny about that is people excused the Spock and Uhura relationship in the Kelvin movies because they noted there was some flirtation going on with Spock and Uhura on TOS. That was at least a little true and of course that’s all it was. But I would buy them together a 100 times over Spock and Chapel.
And no one knew who T’Pring was until she appeared on the screen in Amok Time. You can head canon your way through anything these days, that still doesn’t make it reality either.
This is why while I like SNW, I really really wish they just avoided prequels completely if you’re not going to even try to stick to canon.
I don’t think you can go from Christine actually being with Spock romantically to the Christine who is distant from him and wishes she could be closer. That’s why I had to just accept that this part of the story won’t match up with TOS and that’s that. I get why they want more to work with there, from a storytelling perspective that’s a lot more fun than trying to back into a crush that was often (but not always) played for laughs. But it’s not the same Christine Chapel that Majel played. And of course, everyone knowing Spock was engaged, everyone knowing he had a human mom… this is all “breaking” canon to some degree, but lots of it is needed to make this show work.
So, they couldn’t break things off for (insert reason) but still desire each other? There’s always the old, I think we’re better just as friends thing. Or, Spock could see T’Pring come back into his life. And because he longs for a truly Vulcan existence, he must be with T’Pring, and therefore Chapel is shoved to the side, which ultimately leads to her understanding why he is doing what he is doing but she’ll always have feelings for him.
I completely agree with your point about Chapel not being the same Chapel and the breaks with knowing Spock’s family. But as far as relationship continuity might go, it’s entirely possible for two people to be romantic and not have anything come from it, but one still desire the other over time. And due to the “I’ve got it.. the disease…” making those hidden/buried feelings come out.
Well, they (Majel and Leonard) didn’t play it that way… they played it as unrequited and without a romantic history together. It’s a very different vibe. I’m not saying they should change SNW for that, but I am saying it’s definitely and clearly very different. In TOS, Kirk tells Chapel he knows she gave up a career in bio-research to sign aboard a starship, to find Roger Korby, which implies she has not served on one before. It’s breaking canon for sure, but it’s fine.
I’m curious because I legitimately don’t know. Did Leonard and Majel say that? I’m a behind-the-scenes documentary junkie. So, I’d love to know where I could find that to learn more.
And as far as whether or not that is played out in canon from an interpersonal standpoint, I’d guess that’s a bit subjective to the viewer.
And yes, completely agree. Kirk’s line and others throw the “whole ball… of… wax” out of orbit. My only and last reply would be that maybe Chapel didn’t tell Kirk everything. But at face value and from what is legitimately stated on screen, you are 100% right. It totally breaks canon there. lol.
Oh, I don’t mean in an interview. I just mean from watching the show, they weren’t playing it as if they had already had a relationship.
You shouldn’t present your opinion/interpretation as fact.
Oh come on. This is absurd. The plain read of The Original Series was that Chapel pined for Spock and his Vulcan logic blinded him to it. She was an audience surrogate character for the woman interested in the distant man. Spock has been such a popular character with women because of that distance. There’s an entirely different meaning if they’re exes or had a fling. Just because Akiva jams his “body” into canon for funsies doesn’t mean someone whose been a fan of the the franchise for most of their lives is suddenly wrong.
Interpretation just does not equal fact. That is an immutable reality. More entries into franchises will often shatter longheld perceptions. So when new things are added to franchises be they prequels, sequels or inbetweenquels yes people may find themselves suddenly wrong if what is presented contradicts a longheld belief. To say your interpretation of something is a fact and official content that challenges that is what is at fault is simply nonsense.
Part one: An actor’s portrayal of a character is based on their interpretation of a script. They are acting to convey that interpretation to an audience. What is a fact of art? A fact of a visual medium? As much as an actor, a character, a location, a line of dialogue? A portrayal.
Part two: When official content challenges official content you get everyone being right and everyone being wrong. Factually, the show producers have said they’re going to “body English” canon. That’s not saying there might be contradictions, it’s saying there will be contradictions.
Part three: Even though you’re wrong about the co-host of her own podcast “presenting her own opinion as fact,” why shouldn’t she? Why can’t she? It’s her show. She can do whatever she wants.
This is just silly. We watch shows and movies, the actors play the characters a certain way… sometimes there are interpretations, sometimes it’s obvious. This one was obvious.
Exactly. Until this show came along, no one remotely assumed, EVER, that Spock and Chapel had a relationship. It was what we saw on the show itself, she liked him but he had no interest in her. To be honest, I wouldn’t even call them friends on TOS. It strictly felt like a professional relationship.
But this was the same issue with STID. Suddenly people were saying maybe Khan really wasn’t Indian after all. And the guy who played him was Mexican, etc. No, the character was Indian. Leonard Nimoy wasn’t really Vulcan either, his character was. But then you had people trying to excuse British Khan and now you have the same thing being done here.
And of course Star Trek is infamous for retcons and head canon, but the show made it very clear, there was no romance of any kind. When Spock and T’Pring broke up after Amok Time, nothing else happened with Chapel. I can’t remember if they even revisited Chapel’s feelings much after that episode but the fact it wasn’t brought up again says it all.
They should kept it as an unrequited love story. Maybe played around with it more but not a full on romance. All this did was ruin canon more IMO.
She still liked him in “A Private Little War” for sure! She got flustered when M’Benga caught her holding Spock’s hand while he was recovering.
OK forgot about that episode, but my point still stands.
I agree with that — it’s sort of a plausible Deniability canon stretch that you can’t fully rule out though. It’s relatively minor though. Right up there with having starships travel at Warp 15 and in TOS, but then find out in TNG that there is a Warp 10 physical limit.
As always, it’s worth mentioning that nobody held a gun to these people’s heads and forced them to revisit The Original Series, especially with so many Original Series fans still alive and Pike, Spock, Uhura,& the Enterprise already portrayed in a newly rebooted movie franchise.
Well the Kurtzman era show that was the most unique was the one that so many fans incessantly bitched out (and I wasn’t part of that cabal, so don’t blame me).
Whether they admit it or not, most fans want recycled TOS and recycled TNG, but then many of the same fans whine about the shows not being original enough, and also whine about the recycled shows marginally changing some minor shit around (like I could really give a flying F about the small little plot pieces of like, “OMG where is Roger Korby – canon is broken”…lol). So I think the fans are largely getting what they deserve given the mixed messages they send. And many fans also have an unrealistic level of awe factor about how supposedly well written TOS and TNG shows were…there was a crapload of bad writing on those shows, and sentimentality now shrouds most of that behind a veneer of fan worship.
When the new franchise started 6 years back, I wanted a complete, reimagined, reboot of Star Trek. But that ship has long since sailed.
Yes, as a fan, I know firsthand that fans suck and are the worst part about Star Trek.
I never thought that through that directly and harshly, but yeah, you’re right.
SNW will probably end with Roger Korby giving Chapel a personality transplant or something like that so that she synchs up with TOS Chapel.
I’m guessing that the Gorn will similarly get reset so that it matches up.
Or maybe not. At some point I guess we all have to make up our own canon to meet our personal tastes.
They’ve established that the Prime timeline is altered by the delay to the Eugenics wars.
Anything can happen now.
yeah – there was only a plausible deniability canon stretc at the end for the reasons you mention.
Bottom line, I don’t include the TOS version of Chapel/Spock in my head when I watch SNW. They would be totally hamstrung if they had to stick with it. I do think Jess Bush incorporates little nods to Majel’s Chapel, who was often doing something sort of funny or interesting even in the background of scenes. Watch her in “Wink of an Eye” when Kirk asks McCoy if he’s going crazy. She’s totally hanging out in the background listening but pretending not to. I see Jess Bush’s version as a mostly different character, and therefore can enjoy her scenes and her work.
Yeah, Laurie, I’m with you on that, especially given TOS version of the Chapel character was hamstrung by the sexist TV tropes of that time period.
Yeeeeeah ok
Spock is like an overly hormonal adolescent – GET IT????
The writers feel they have to explain to us his emotional state. And then they ask Peck to play up that for laughs. Seems like they could have trusted the audience more and I think the humor could have been more natural or at least less repetitive..
Spock is like an overly hormonal adolescent – GET IT???? The writers feel they have to explain to us his emotional state.
Watch The Cage — Spock in emotionally immature and prone to bouts of emotion. So yeah, since I do understand the source material about what Spock was like during this period of this life — SINCE I HAVE WATCHED THE CAGE PROBABLY 15+ TIMES — I have, in fact, been waiting for over 50 years for a Trek writing team to finally explain his behavior in The Cage to me.
The writers get it. Many fans don’t, because, unlike the writers, they don’t care to take the time to understand the source material. And this is a general comment — I am NOT singling you out.
Thank you Henry and Akiva — this fan gets it and commends both of you!
The behavior in “The Cage” is that it was a pilot and they hadn’t figured out the show or the characters yet.
If that’s an excuse, I could just as easily say that let’s ignore character stuff in the first half of Season 1 of TOS (which was covered in the 50 Year History), because they were still working through the characters, or, hey, let’s ignore all of TOS Season 3 because Coon was not there and Rodenberry has basically stepped away, and Freiberger didn’t understand the characters and mucked things up (which was the case, actually) — and so, because of these excuses, we can ignore character behavior and interactions for Eps 1-12 and Eps 54-79 due to production and creative misfires.
No, that’s Spock in The Cage, and that shows his level of maturity and emotional state then. And we even have in The Menagerie, the more mature TOS Spock freaking watching his immature version at his Court Martial with Kirk and other crew seeing that immature Spock — that’s not the pilot, that’s a TOS regular season ep — care to try to explain that away?
“The Cage” is a failed pilot that didn’t air as part of the regular series. That its footage was incorporated into “The Menagerie” is irrelevant because in that one the visuals are a memory record recreated by the Talosians. I don’t understand how that’s “”””an excuse.”””” The very next pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before” introduces a Spock a lot more consistent with the rest of the series. But there’s a real world explanation for why Spock is different in “The Cage” that should, to a reasonable person, be not just sufficient but have precedent.
So, not only do I not understand the label of “excuse,” I’m confused about something else. Character behavior is canon now? Uhura **behaves** as though she didn’t know T’Pring in “Amok Time.” She doesn’t **know** her in Strange New Worlds (as in, hasn’t had a scene with her yet), but there’s no way the smartest person on the ship **doesn’t** know about that relationship. Nobody in TOS **reacts** to the reveal of Khan as though they knew someone with that last name. All the Korby stuff seems to betray his shock at hearing her voice when she’s on the Enterprise in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”
I think it’s just easier to TOSs Star Trek in the garbage (stories, concepts, characters) and let Discovery and Strange New Worlds be the new and only canon. We all sound some version of very stupid or very silly when we talk about it or try to make it make sense (and, make no mistake, the people making this show take a lot of pleasure remixing canon when they know it will create confusion and conflict). Nobody actually likes The Original Series, and anyone who does is irrelevant for the financial prospects of the IP’s present and future.
See though, the Menagerie DOUBLES-DOWN on the immature version of the Spock that we saw in The Cage. That’s where your reasoning (a better word choice than “excuse” – fair point) of “let’s rule out the pilot” falls apart.
So OK, if it was just The Cage pilot only, then you would have at least a point that might be considered. But when then, it’s codifed as canon in the regular season TOS ep, The Menagerie, where the older Spock, Kirk and the regular TOS crew all see the younger Spock’s immaturity, your point has no leg left to stand on.
The Menagerie DOUBLED-DOWN on the immature version of Spock from The Cage, so that’s it — no room for debate. Like it or not, that was what the Pike-era version of Spock was like, and Henry and Akiva are going with that version of Spock for SNW, as they should.
But I hear your major point — when Kurtzman and the new franchise was first announced, I was hoping for a reimagined reboot of all Star Trek. Yeah, I would have preferred that too.
That’s not what “double down” means. Recycling footage to meet a production deadline doesn’t prove intentionality; too, your comment at BH23 is trying to generalize their specific thoughts on “Charades.” Sure, maybe Spock has “always” been this way, but BH23 wasn’t saying that Spock was too emotional, just that the way he was written *in this episode* was just designed to hang a lantern on “LOOK AT SPOCK HE’S BEING EMOTIONAL.” They wanted to some subtlety on the show they’d just seen and instead they got bolded and italicized at.
I’m imagining all of the “production” reasons I could use to rule out stuff that is inconvenient for me to accept as Trek canon.
How about this one. Mike McMahon is a cartoon comedy sitcom guy doesn’t understand (in my opinion) how to do Star Trek, and so therefore I can dismiss any crossover footage that shows up on SNW this season since I personally find it inconvenient for me to accept that LDS is canon — because Kurtzman early on made a rash production decision to greenlight LDS?
This sounds awesome to me, but no, I would not do that because I see what a slippery slope that sort of reasoning leads to. All that juvenile, loudmouth BS stuff that I see on that show I have to accept as canon, even though it kills me to have to do so.
I am OK with updating the timeline to be consistent with today’s world, and the small stuff like “but this dude didn’t meet that dude until 2256” I don’t get all worked up about, but I do get upset when a character behaves inconsistently with what we know to be the original character.
And in this case, I have been waiting for years to see this early Spock from The Cage, and I knew that it would be an immature and more emotionally unstable version of TOS Spock, because of the way we saw him behave, starting with The Cage, and then reinforced again in The Menagerie. So this latest ep is the sort of Spock I was expecting to see in SNW, because I know the source material so well on what Spock is suppose to be like in the Pike-era.
It’s all good, man. Stop overthinking it. :-)
Fascinating.
:-)
Yes, thanks.
Fully agreed.
I think we need to stop worrying about this fitting canonically with TOS. Season 2 Episode 3 established that Khan and the Eugenics Wars were pushed back to the 2020s due to interference from the Temporal Cold War. Since TOS depicts that as having been in the 1990s, that confirms that Discovery and Strange New Worlds are set in an alternate post-Temporal Cold War timeline which doesn’t have to line up with TOS. Just like the Kelvin Timeline, which is an off-shoot of this timeline, not the original TOS timeline.
Agreed. And if people could just stop watching the older shows entirely so that the studio can stop paying out residuals, that’d be great, too.
That’s taking it a bit extreme, but I do agree with your overall point here about not sweating the canon small stuff.
Nobody agrees on what the “small stuff” is, though, so better to just be a goldfish.
Dude, I was agreeing with you?
Yeah exactly. Everyone has their own definition of a big deal and what is not. I don’t think the Gorn stuff is a big deal but clearly others do. And I agree with them it’s breaking canon, but no not a big deal at all to me. At the same time I think giving Spock a sibling out of nowhere 50 years later is a huge deal and others don’t. In fact me and ML31 have the completely opposite view on both of these. So it’s all completely subjective obviously.
Yes, indeed. Let’s be honest, the amount of people who actually grew up with TOS (and saw it on the first run) is getting smaller and smaller. I agree canon is important, but we also have to be fair about it. All of that was written AGES ago, and to me (who grew up with TNG) it’s just not so much of a big deal.
Most things the reviewers take issue with, I didn’t even pick up, because I didn’t know them. This probably also explains why this episode is the 2nd best rated episode of the season (on IMDB). It was just a fun episode, period.
That’s what I do. Ep. 3 established that this was an alternate timeline. You can’t move the Eugenics War down the line and think Kirk is going to encounter it by Space Seed. No longer worrying about canon allowed me to laugh and love this episode. I can live with Papa Pike or Emo Spock and it won’t change the prime universe, the versions that I love.
You can’t move the Eugenics War down the line and think Kirk is going to encounter the Botany Bay at the same time and place. He may not encounter it all now.
Sorry, the original sentence didn’t make sense.
Tony/Laurie,
I didn’t think I would like it, but I enjoyed it. Ethan was hilarious. I found myself laughing the whole time. Ethan and Mia sold me on this episode.
I enjoyed the Spock-Amanda scenes. They were very moving. I didn’t like the Spock-Chapel relationship in Ep.1, however, I felt the writers did it in a way this time that was genuine and fresh for Spock. I loved how they connected his epiphany with his mom to how Chapel views him and the difficulty of loving someone who cannot return the affection but will do anything for them. I felt it worked.
But, the writers need to wrap up the Spock-Chapel relationship quickly, get it out of their system, and move on to more interesting storylines. It will get dull quickly and become too soapy for other episodes, since they won’t have the rom com tone.
I buy-in to this light hearted episode this time. But it is time for the Enterprise to return to the final frontier. No more rom-coms. It is time to get the E back to boldly going.
Canon isn’t an issue because this is not the prime universe. So, that allows me to just let the writers experiment and do whatever. It won’t affect Nimoy Spock, Shatner Kirk, or Hunter’s Pike.
Oh, isn’t food synthesized on the ship made from recycled materials? Wouldn’t that mean the bacon isn’t from an animal?
If T’Pring learns of Spock’s infidelity, can he say, “we were on a break!”
LLAP!
This IS the prime universe. Nothing from the producers has indicated it isn’t.
In Spock-adjacent news, in a New York Times interview with Pom Klementieff about her role in the new Mission Impossible movie it said that her character Paris is based on the Leonard Nimoy Paris character from the television show.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/movies/pom-klementieff-mission-impossible.html?searchResultPosition=1
A big swing and they knocked it out of the park.
It’s interesting to think about our internal sense of what does and doesn’t violate our “canon” conception of a character.
For me, the Chapel/Spock romance feels less off than, say, Worf being rebooted as a monosyllabic Section 31 agent instead of a diplomat who had learned to open up to people after his relationship with Jadzia.
I get how the prequel aspect makes that an imperfect comparison, but for me the timeline stuff is trumped by how much more “Star Trekky” these episodes are in structure and tone, even if they occasionally make some counter-intuitive choices.
I agree with you that fluffier episodes fit more comfortably in a longer season, but I would rather have a sitcom A plot and first contact B plot than another crazed villain out for vegeance, or a yet another apocalyptic threat to Earth/Starfleet/the Federation.
The stereotypical nature of T’Pring’s parents worked for me because they’re Vulcans…they think they’ve evolved beyond human issues, but they’re more like us than they realize.
I enjoyed the pod, as always–no episode feels complete until I hear what Laurie and Tony have to say. :)
On a Spock-adjacent side note, supposedly the character Paris played by Pom Klementieff in the new Mission Impossible movie is based on Leonard Nimoy’s Paris character from the Mission Impossible series. This is mentioned in the recent New York Times feature on Pom Klementieff.
Thanks to both of you for clarifying the nagging feeling I had while watching this: yeah, I don’t care about Spock, I don’t care about T’Pring, I don’t care about Chapel, and I don’t care about the Spock-T’Pring-Chapel triangle, so yeah, this one had nothing for an audience person like me
I don’t care about the romance stuff either but I still really enjoyed this one.
Interesting… I don’t care about the triangle so much and I don’t care about stuffy wedding dinners, but when Chapel first started liking Spock on SNW, I was invested in her emotions about it. We’ll see how it goes now that they’re a thing (if they are), but I can always find connection and compassion in an unrequited love story! What I didn’t like about the episode was the sitcom trope-y stuff and the cavalier way Spock’s transformation was treated, the way the alien story was just a side note, things like that. The comedy didn’t always work for me.
This episode was a disappointment. I just didn´t think it was funny? The big difference between this episode and Spock Amok is that in this one the root of it all was something very serious, in Spock Amok the root was in itself funny.
I can´t help compare it to the Voyager episode Faces where B´Elannas gets split in to; her Klingon and human halves. Just like with Spock, we saw what B´Elanna might have been like if she´d been fully human (except all the annoying teenagery stuff). This episode doesn´t hold a candle to Faces.
The idea that these very advanced ancient aliens thought that Spock was somehow wrong because he had, as they said, “mixed instructions” his human and vulcan halves so they…fixed him. That doesn´t sit well with me. But then again they make it clear that Chapel recognizes that this isn´t the Spock that she loves even though this Spock would be “easier” for her.
Laurie is right!
These writers have 10 episodes to tell a story. They sold us that this show is a return to episodic planet of the week Star Trek with character arcs. In a 26 episode run, it is ok to have some fluffy episodes. But, they only have 10. These ten episodes should be tightly written with their best ideas put forward. It should be cutting edge science fiction with big ideas and new twists for the characters.
Instead, we have gotten CW style drama that is light on the science and juvenile dialogue.
If they want a younger audience, the first thing they need to do is stop assuming that younger audiences are not sophisticated.
Just going to say I don’t mind low-stake episodes. The galaxy can’t be on the brink of destruction every week, because that too gets tedious. The only groaner for me in “Charades” was when Pike actually suggested they play Charades. Otherwise this was a fun story.
What is peculiar to me is how Pike’s crew knows Spock so intimately, whereas he was more of a cipher to Kirk and McCoy, supposedly his best friends.
I like this podcast. But lori gets on my nerves as she is soooo negative about everything. She also wants a line of dialouge for every minor thing that may or may not conflict with cannon. I used to be this way with star trek voyager where i would “hate watch” it. Enjoy the episode not everything has to be explained. And some things can conflict. Spock can like bacon and then be a vegitarian 7-10 years later.
Not saying u cant like something butaybe come up for air and be the positive one on occasion.
Great hijinks episode! Loving the writing and acting. The holy f___ moment especially made me chuckle and set the stage for the episode
doesn’t sound like you like this podcast
Oh, I think it’s just me that is unliked. Ha!