Preview “Lost In Translation” With New Images, Trailer & Clip From ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Episode 206

The second half of the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds arrives this week with episode 6. We have details along with new images and a clip. SPOILERS.

“Lost In Translation”

Episode 6 of Strange New Worlds’ second season is called “Lost In Translation.” It was written by Onitra Johnson & David Reed and directed by Dan Li. It debuts on Paramount+ on Thursday, July 20.

Synopsis:

Uhura seems to be the only one who can hear a strange sound. When the noise triggers terrifying hallucinations, she enlists an unlikely assistant to help her track down the source.

NEW images:

Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura and Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk (Paramount+)

Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk (Paramount+)

Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura (Paramount+)

Carol Kane as Pelia (Paramount+)

Dan Jeannotte as Sam Kirk and Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk (Paramount+)

Carol Kane as Pelia (Paramount+)

Jess Bush as Chapel (Paramount+)

Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura (Paramount+)

UPDATE: Trailer

Clip:

The latest The Ready Room includes a clip of Una and Pelia in conflict over how to deal with some malfunctions (Clip starts at 27:28.)

Bonus Video: Anson and Rebecca answer fan questions

SkyShowtime (where Strange New Worlds streams in parts of Europe) just posted a video featuring stars Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn answering fan questions.

Season 2 episodes drop weekly on Thursdays on Paramount+ in the U.S, the U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Season 2 is also available on SkyShowtime elsewhere in Europe. The second season will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in South Korea, with premiere dates to be announced at a later date.


Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.

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Alright, more Kirk! He’s practically a member of the crew already.

Jokes aside, this looks like another moody tale in the style of TOS. I love it when Trek embraces weird, creepy tales.

Don’t know WHAT the art direction people were thinking. There’s a shot above of Uhura and Kirk, and the wall behind him features plant-ons where the light behind the wall is glowing around the plant-on, like they weren’t placed properly (or maybe some idiot though, ‘ooh, let’s make a pretty glow around where these things go.’)

If that’s some genius’ idea of soft sourceless lighting, it reads to me about as dumb as most other choices they’ve made (giant ceilings, quarters that ought to be called double California Kings because they could hold the better part of a regiment, meaningless deco and nouveau patterns on what I guess are supposed to be functional wallspaces.)

If I looked ahead at the future from, say, TUC, I never would have guessed that Trek art direction would be moving in such a wrong-headed, arbitrary manner. Not just talking the dirty windshield look of windows on the ship, either. They’ve tamped down the worst of JJ’s eyestraining outrageousness, but there’s still plenty of that unnecessary and downright stupid light in the practicals that would distract or cause eyes needing to be peeled at all times to dilate owing to placement.

I’m kind of glad Joe Jennings died before the trek tv rebirth, because he’d probably be disappointed to see that those basic sensible dictums he invoked while involved during the phase 2 through TWOK era clearly haven’t gotten carried forward. One key example: you don’t turn on everything on the set all the time, because then you have no visual pop left in your arsenal when something is really going wrong. These folks must think red light alone is enough. For me, I wouldn’t EVER have all that strip lighting activated unless the ship was in a failed-power/emergency situation, but they’ve got it going constantly.

I’ve interviewed a couple of production designers from these new series, and I really regret not bracing either of them about this, because I really do wonder what the thought is behind it all. My only guess is that the ease and flash of programmable LED lighting has become the new equivalent to xmas tree-style blinkies and the rather coarse look you’d see on those ubiquitous consoles that Trek and KnightRider and Airplane2 rented from Modern Props.

Wow, rough morning? Your outrage aside, there are what, maybe ten others on this planet who would have noticed this? Out of those, maybe two or three of them would be sharing your stroke level rage right now…
Relax, it’s not horrible.

This is like saying tailoring is unimportant because “only ten people on the planet” know about it. Maybe there are only ten lighting experts, and the audience can’t pinpoint the problem, but they sure know when it looks good or awful.

Who said ‘tailoring’ is unimportant? I’m pretty sure we’d all notice if one episode of SNW’ was clothing optional. On the other hand, I’m also sure that if a sharp-eyed tailor noticed one uniform was chain stitched, and the rest were zigzagged stitched, and promptly banged out an aneurism inducing post raging about it, most folks would be thinking that the OP needs to give some consideration to switching to decaf……

Rather coincidentally, someone on Twitter this morning posted a length thread about the impeccable tailoring of suits worn by King Felipe of Spain. Within a few hours it went viral on, yes, political/international relations Twitter. So we actually have an empirical test of this point; I didn’t hear any calls for the sartorial dude to “try decaf.”

This aside, you are, of course, missing my bigger point. A lot of detail work goes on behind making a slick finished product. Experts get hot under the collar about it. The lay audience may not appreciate the details, but they sure know when a final product looks good.

That’s dieworkwear’s entire persona, though. Not a particularly useful comparison.

Maybe before COVID, not so much anymore.

kmart makes a number of spot-on observations as it pertains to lighting and production design. Star Trek fans notice these kinds of things. They always have.

Take it easy. It’s just a show.

By the way, I like the dirty windshield look. Adds verisimilitude.

A few centuries out from self-cleaning ovens and the forcefields protecting against micrometeor impacts don’t keep the glass from getting dusty, yeah, right. It’s indicative of a mindset that isn’t looking at things from a ‘reality’ basis or a trek/sf one, or even one straddling those perspectives.

It’s Futuretown, Jake….

But let me interject my 2¢.

Agreed – the overuse of LED strip lights in every available surface on the bridge makes things visually confusing, and reflective floors don’t help. And the need to depict space as full and busy – there’s always a nebula, or a comet, or asteroids, or some sort of thing in the background – can make the visual storytelling more difficult. You do always want some separation of foreground and background.

But IMHO, the set design and art direction overall on SNW has been really good. They have taken the mid-century-modern cues from TOS and turned that into a coherent design language that doesn’t look dated or trying to be retro-futuristic.

To me, it looks like they took Matt Jeffries’ work and turbocharged it via Syd Mead.

Huge quarters? Well – yeah! Why not? It’s the 23rd century, and these are ships intended to go on long-duration missions. Crew comfort is a vital necessity. Culture, art, poetry – these are hallmarks of what the Federation’s about, so why wouldn’t it be part of the ship? While Starfleet is quasi-military, it is not really a fair comparison to say “well in my Navy days we all had to live in a metal broom closet so this doesn’t make sense.”

We’re presuming they’re in a post-scarcity, nearly limitless energy future, too, so it’s not like they have to scrimp on every kilogram like our current rocket era.

There’s some stuff I agree with you on in there and some I don’t, but my main takeaway is going to be thinking on the ‘Jeffries turbocharged via Mead’ notion.

There are definitely some aspects that do reflect that … though I’m kinda amazed that stuff I found wonderful in Mead illustrations comes off so wrongheaded with the bulkheads and arches and ceilings on SNW … but anyway, that statement reminded me of how I used to wonder what TWOK and the other feature followups would have looked like with Ron Cobb designing them. He could certainly have gotten Meyer that longed-for NOSTROMO look, plus there’s the ‘practical engineering filtered through a scifi mindset’ he brough to nearly everything.

The post-scarcity aspect is something I just don’t buy into at all and have always thought that when TNG was looking for an environmental episode, they should have done ‘replication is destroying the fabric of space’ and banned them, thus putting everybody back on a relatable level in terms of exhaustible supplies, because without that, you are in an environment so far removed from ours that there is very little basis for understanding.

Well, wrongheaded is sort of a subjective term, isn’t it?

There are a lot of design lenses one can choose to interpret things through.

The dynamic, almost graphic-designed bulkheads with their strong diagonals remind me of architectural X-bracing for earthquake resistance, a reminder that the ship has to endure unimaginable stresses.

The combination of angles and curves reminds me of the NASA ‘Worm’ logo as well as Mark Simonson’s typeface Changeling Neo – itself an update of the old sci-fi typeface China – which was used on the displays on the Kelvin Enterprise.

Mid-century modern made strong use of rational, mathematical structures – tessellated hexagons like R. Buckminster Fuller’s domes (as seen at Expo 67), tensegrity structures (like the German pavilion at Expo and their 1972 Olympic stadium), cantilevers and expressed beams etc. To me, that seems all of a piece with the set designs I’ve seen.

I get where you’re going with Ron Cobb, sure! I mean, it’s a fine line between “future tech so advanced we don’t recognize it as such” and “let’s use a brewery for the engine room”… still, I’d love to see what that would look like.

If I were to redesign the “look” of Star Trek TOS-era technology, keeping it timeless but still rooted in midcentury modern, I’d probably use Dieter Rams’ work as a starting point – he was the chief designer for Braun for decades, and he influenced everyone who came after. Minimal color palettes, clear operation, things are systematic, with beautiful proportions. Once you see it, you say “of course, how could it be designed any other way?”

Post-scarcity – sure, I see your point. To clarify: the warp drive wraps the ship in a bubble of space which can move faster than light compared to surrounding space, making it virtually massless, so there doesn’t need to be the mass-energy constraint of having to carry, and then burn rocket fuel to accelerate that mass.

I don’t know if the size / mass of the ship is a constraint re: the required warp field size, nacelles etc, but I presume the equation tilts in a positive direction for the benefit of storytelling :)

I thank you for your feelings and your input. Every bit of discourse adds to the discussion and provides others the opportunity to learn.

For example, I didn’t know that someone could get angry about lights on a wall, but I learned today that not only is it rage-inducing, but indeed, it was so infuriating that it required a comment demonizing set designers… for putting lights on a set. But now I know that

Thank you for your opinion and your candor. Keeping with your Xmas comment, I hope that after you steal your village’s gifts this Christmas, and they sing instead of wallow, your heart grows to accept a slightly different asthetic in Star Trek

I have accepted many different visual aesthetics for Trek, and actually welcomed some of those that built on or improved, while simply being tolerant of others, like many of Meyer’s retro-calls. But, like the questionable storytelling choices, visual aesthetic calls that dumb things down for no perceptible gain are losses, plain and simple.

Lemme guess, you also think it’s “just a plane,” think Singapore Airlines is crazy for having tailored flight crew uniforms, and happily schlep across the Pacific on American Airlines instead?

Really, really, veins bulging on their neck angry, apparently…..

I guess you’ve been a Trekkie for 10 minutes then. Learn the ropes.

C’mon, man. Really unnecessary.

Imagine being so angry at a Star Trek promo screenshot.

I cannot.

Well, at least it’s an angry letter on a public forum, and not hulking up in a green rage and rampaging through NY angry.

The night is young.

Right?

I almost miss the guy who keeps raging about the doors on the G bridge not being where he’d like them. I left for six months and came back and he was still off on the doors.

I’m kind of glad Joe Jennings died before the trek tv rebirth, because he’d probably be disappointed to see that those basic sensible dictums he invoked while involved during the phase 2 through TWOK era clearly haven’t gotten carried forward.

For some reason, I doubt he would have been that invested in it. After all, different production designers can have different ideas. I mean, during the TOS movie era, the appearance and lighting scheme of the bridge set changed with every film, even films that took place literally days apart (II-III and IV to V). In fact, as others have pointed out, the ship of Theseus paradox is a real thing with the TOS movie Enterprise.

Oh, yeah. Ship of Theseus with that baby, all the way. I love the TMP Enterprise, but compare its orthogonal views to the TOS version and absolutely nothing whatsoever lines up. It is, for all intents and purposes, literally a different ship.

(I wonder how you say “Ship of Theseus” in Klingon, btw? Because Kahless only knows how the BOP bridge managed to change so drastically between TSFS and TVH.)

Has anybody seen drawings showing how the TSFS BoP’s bridge is supposed to fit into the exterior, like from ST-THE MAG or someplace like that? I find nearly all of the art direction on that film to be godawful (the EXC bridge is like something out of season 2 BUCK ROGERS, practically flat like it was shot in somebody’s garage), and there’s a paucity of interviews with designers from that film (I think Tom Lay, a designer at paramount who worked on the first three films supplying various designs, is the only person who did much in the way of interviews, and than was mainly about a klingon sickbay table shaped like a cobra that was too expensive to build.)

For whatever reason, that film looks pretty cheap. And not just in retrospect. I saw it during it’s original release and it looked cheap even then. And you’re right: that Excelsior bridge is as bad a set as ever appeared in ST.

Yeah, I went too far there. I mean, if seeing the Abrams 09 didn’t kill him (assuming he saw it), then nothing from the new series would have bothered him.

From the first I’ve had a completely schizo reaction to much of SNW’s production design. I’m pretty okay with the lines of Pike’s Enterprise (and would have vastly preferred it to what we got in the Kelvin films), but hate the CGI model’s texturing and lighting, which make it look like it was constructed out of pig iron. In terms of evoking a modern TOS aesthetic and aside from the strip lighting, I’d call the bridge a clear win; likewise for Sickbay, the transporter room, and officer’s quarters. I wish that they’d kept the retro touches of the briefing room they’d built for “Discovery” before Control’s missile blew it to Kingdom Come, and find the scale of Pike’s quarters and Virtual Engineering to be utterly preposterous. My question to you, though, is why would you use the PD of TUC as the baseline of what you would expect to see in a TV series filmed a quarter-century later? Because, in truth, Nick Meyer’s vision of the Enterprise as a cramped, visually unappealing naval vessel with its bunkrooms and acres of gray painted walls is no closer to TOS than the excesses of SNW.

 why would you use the PD of TUC as the baseline of what you would expect to see in a TV series filmed a quarter-century later?

Why not. it’s a good a baseline as anything else. And remember, TOS production design was dictated by NBC, which at the time was owned by RCA which had just beaten CBS in the color TV standards wars and wanted to make all their shows really colorful to drive sales or RCA color television sets. Grace Lee Whitney once said that she kind of thought the whole point of TOS was to sell RCA color TVs.

Indeed, you can use whatever baseline you like, including that of TUC. My point was that such a choice is completely arbitrary, not that it was wrong. Yes, I’m very familiar with the story of how RCA pushed for more color at NBC, and choose to take it at face value (as opposed to it being possibly apocryphal). But whatever the reasons behind such choices, TOS was what it was, and I think you could make a pretty good argument that the bright color scheme was one of the first subliminal cues to the audience that this was an optimistic take on the future. Nick Meyer was within his rights to interpret the look of the ship however he saw fit, but it’s no less an interpretation (arguably more, imo) than what the producers have done with SNW.

That’s a very reasonable question. I have seized on TUC as an anchor point for Trek design largely because it seems to have been the basis for a lot of starship bridge interiors throughout the 90s in aired Trek as well as EXCELSIOR and the E-B, which I find very easy on the eye. (I guess you could make the argument that since TUC is a redress of the new TFF bridge, that would be the anchor, but the ‘Architectural Digest’ coloration in TFF is at odds with most of what followed.)

I also think that latter-movie redesign eliminates a lot of goofy aspects that they had been saddled with since phase 2 through TVH, like the oval monitors and all the dead space between and around consoles (the former due to Lee Cole, the latter I guess attributable to Mike Minor, and one could probably blame Jennings too, even though Cole had begun things well before Joe hired onto p2.)

It’s easy to laugh at the TFF/TUC bridge as looking like a TV showroom, but for some reason that never bothered me, though I’d’ve preferred seeing some of those Proton monitors set on their sides or otherwise masked to hide the 4:3 dimensions.

I hate the TUC quarters as well as the bunk beds, and even find the narrowization of TNG corridors to be pretty rough, since the actors can’t even maneuver through them (which may be Meyer’s point, but if he was really going full-on military, wouldn’t a lot of these folks be moving single-file, with others shouting ‘making a hole’ when ranking personnel are coming through? Nautical bells and ‘left full rudders’ aside, this is just one of the hole you can fall into once you start messing with the established stuff.) I tend to discount all the rest of TUC designs on this basis, but since most of the movie is the bridge and indeed, most of Trek is the bridge, I again go back to that for its look, regardless of the stupidities added, like the audio mixing board plopped into the helm panel.) There’s color and contrast, so I’d say there is snap that appeals.

Also, TUC represents a time that is just over half a lifetime ago for me, so it is a kind of pivot point for that reason too. I haven’t liked much Trek since outside of DS9 (and to show I’m not picking on Trek, I can say the same for Bond, the last one I loved was 89’s LICENCE TO KILL, even though it doesn’t look much like a Bond film and whoever was responsible for Dalton’s hair should have been left to rot in Churubusco’s ‘dead dog dump.’)

One last thought: it might be that I figured designers looking back for inspiration as well as what to avoid would look to a film that seems to have had more mainstream appeal than diehard fan appeal, and while TUC’s boxoffice was in no way exceptional, it did right the ship relative to TFF’s non-performance (pause while I weep over the latter, no sarcasm, I love the KSM stuff.)

The oval monitors… Yeah, not a fan and not at all practical. Apparently, those monitors were specifically requested by Gene Roddenberry, who did not want them to be square or rectangular.

As for tight corridors and quarters, that’s a reflection of real world design as it relates to military vessels today (even cruise ships, really). You have to maximize every last inch of space on a vessel which will be at sea for months.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

That is really crude.

While I don’t agree, I do want to mention that it wasn’t my intention to offend ya.

Buddha Loves

Pierce. Morehouse. Patchett.

This reeks of you desperately trying to find *something* to complain about and you’ve settled on sniping about something nobody else would ever notice.

Naw, it’s just the first thing I saw after checking email and before doing taking some exercise. It actually reminded me of some cobbled-together stuff I saw in a kid’s scifi film from a PBS short film contest back in the 70s.

If it is any consolation, I also have been known to harp on how people keep repeating the ‘TUC klingon blood color being done for ratings purposes’ howler, one that Meyer actually perpetuated decades later, though is actually first attributed in a trek mag to Rick Berman — somebody who was decidedly NOT in the know on TUC’s production.

Am very glad I gave up on VOYAGER before they got to the Tom Paris ‘no lefty or righty in warp’ nonsense, given that doing a ‘pivot at warp 2’ was canonical, both in dialog and visually, as far back as TOS. There are a lot of rabbit- and wormholes you can fall down (or up, or sideways) into with Trek.

Honestly the most insufferable meaningless bellyaching from a Star Trek fan I’ve ever seen! Congrats!

Ain’t it just, though? LOL

While I don’t really agree with him, I’m going to go in the other direction and say that it’s just about the first interesting complaint I have ever seen on this site.

Next time I am remodeling my house, I am calling you.

Honestly, I am not sure I even know the paint color in my parents and sisters houses, that is how little this stuff I would barely notice bothers me. But I love your passion, and it’s good we have somebody qualified here to comment on this stuff.

Yup, and that’s really half the fun of being a Star Trek fan. Well said.

I’m sure Joe Jennings would of been more happy to be still alive and be a little disappointed in a tv show then be dead.

Hmm. Doesn’t really bother me because they suggest to me they’re covers for internal workings which glow to indicate they are functioning properly underneath.

The interior of the Enterprise looks like a new Caribbean Cruises ship. Not that it’s ugly, but it’s over-designed and therefore impractical. I’m letting these discrepancies go, but for me it’s the engineering floor that literally mirrors 100% of the set. With the set being dark, it makes everything very difficult to make out. Same goes for the bridge. As Kirk said to Saavik in TWOK “You have to know why things work on a starship” well this doesn’t work and makes no sense. What ever happened to good ‘ol diamond plating?

That’s a lot of anger towards the decor from one photo

Shop Smart. Shop S-Mart.

Repeat to yourself, “It’s just a show, I should really just relax.”

MST 3K. I dig it.

I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, these new ships make perfect sense. Now, pardon me while I catch the Discovery turbolift and whiz through an internal cavern with tubing approximately 14 times the size of the Discovery saucer section.

Do we really need another appearance by James Kirk? This show was supposed to be about PIKE’s Enterprise.

This show was always going to be about the transition from Pike’s tenure to Kirk’s. And this is technically only the first time the Prime Kirk has serious interaction with the crew.

That isn’t what they sold us at all. We were told it was going to be planet of the week, standalone, adventures under Pike. No one signed up for alternate kirks, love triangles, and a neutered Spock/Pike.

Exactly. It was sold as a Pike show. No one even knew Kirk was showing up until it was accidentally leaked. I just don’t care about having Kirk on the show at all and haven’t warmed up to the new actor either. He was OK in the last episode we saw him in but still more of a distraction to me.

I wish they would’ve kept him out of the show until the final season.

Let’s be very clear here. You of course are absolutely free to have your own wants and wishes for the show and they hold value to you and frankly likely to you alone. Even if someone else shares some to many of your wants and wishes, its unlikely that they are an utter 100% match to every single element that is part of the production.

But on public boards once the very first casting announcement was made for Star Trek Strange New Worlds, there were people both asking and dreading when Kirk (let alone other cast members of TOS) would make their appearances. There were many fans who were excited to dismayed by the use of Chapel, Uhura and M’Benga for what they assumed was going to lead to more interactions with classic TOS characters. (again with fans both clamoring for more to those who didn’t want even those that were announced from the first official casting).

And I was also excited for a lot of TOS characters to show up and had no issues with Uhura, Chapel or M’Benga being there. But Kirk is a different issue because canon wise alone I just don’t think he should even be around this early but of course people can argue it differently. But it feels like they are shoehorning the character in in a way I don’t feel that for Uhura and the others.

But I predicted Kirk was going to show up in season 2 before the show even started filming, so I’m not surprised at all, but still think they should’ve waited a little longer. It is what it is though. I just wish I at least liked the actor portraying him more and hoping to like him more.

Really, rationally it isn’t very wise to speak for everyone. You can’t rationally know what speaks for each and every individual.

True, I’ll give you that. So I will rephrase it. Who asked for stupid dialogue, boring relationships, and a captain who does nothing but cook?

While I often disagree with you about SNW in general, I do have a little Kirk fatigue myself.

Yup, too much, too soon.

My answer to you, No we don’t. Pike’s Enterprise, with no Pike in sight. I don’t think JTK should be in the show at all, at least at this point. And I still find the casting way off.

Shouldn’t that response be “No I don’t”? You can reasonable speak for yourself. Others is probably not the wisest choice to make.

The OP’s question was, Do We really need…” I was simply answering in the phrasing in which it was presented. But if it makes you feel better, I don’t think we need more Kirk appearances. There you go.

Sure, why not?

I loved the Uhura focus episode from Season 1 — “Children of the Comet” — so I hope this one is good, too! I’m always glad to see Uhura.

But why can’t Uhura investigate with PIKE? Why do we have to drag KIRK in, half a decade before he’s supposed to be on this ship? (No insult to Paul Wesley intended; I just don’t want Captain Pike to be overshadowed by another famous captain on his own damned show!)

100% agree.

Totally agree! I am glad to see Sam Kirk again though. Uhura and Sam had a few good moments in Children of the Comet. Let’s hope it continues in this episode.

Sam Kirk. Is he the same guy that gets kill along with his family by flying pancakes?

Yep! Well Sam and his wife definitely. I think at least 1 kid survives. But at least there is some room left to explore for his character. I like Spock, La’An etc. as much as the rest of you but it’s nice to get some stories for some other characters too!

Thanks. I need to start watching the show again.

Yes, this increasing inclusion of Kirk is unnecessary and premature. An Uhura-Pike team-up would have been so much better.
I’m starting to get the impression that the showrunners don’t recognize the clear popularity that Anson’s Pike has among fans. They also seem to be fixated on the notion that this series will only succeed by constantly referencing TOS, rather than actually exploring Strange New Worlds. Hope I am wrong, and time will tell.
That said, there is much that I am really enjoying about this show.

I’m mostly adoring Strange New Worlds! And it’s partly because I’m loving the job that Anson Mount is doing as Captain Pike that I don’t want Kirk to steal his thunder.

I’m sure it’s hard to start a streaming service, though. How do you get people to pay for YOUR service, when there are all these other streaming services out there, and when people are used to the idea that TV is free? James T. Kirk is a famous name, and I imagine the Paramount Plus business people think that having him included will help them sell the service. They may even be right.

I just wish it were possible to have a Pike-focused show for half a dozen years and THEN bring in Jim Kirk. But I’m not any kind of business person, so I’m sure there are a ton of things about starting a streaming service that I don’t understand. :-)

Factually in error. We don’t have a single shred of knowledge on when Kirk first is on the Enterprise. Period. We know a tiny bit of the circumstance of when Kirk first meets Pike (when Pike is promoted). But nothing else about that circumstance. We don’t know if it’s on the Enterprise or on a starbase, hell we don’t know if its on a different ship. Hell technically we don’t even know if it’s already happened. Dialogue from the Menagerie indicates its when Pike is promoted to Fleet Captain. But in the same episode Pike’s rank is listed stated as Captain. Does that mean he was demoted at some point? If so we have no idea when that occurs. If it doesn’t mean that and people still casually refer to that Fleet Captain rank as Captain, then it still means we have no idea when it occurs.

We also know that he took over the Enterprise from him. But again people assume its when he is promoted. But it’s not stated as one sentence. So we can’t take that as fact. Even if that is fact. It doesn’t mean Kirk was never on the ship previously.

Kirk says in “The Menagerie” that he first met Pike when Pike was promoted to fleet captain, and Kirk took over the Enterprise from him. For Kirk to be on the Enterprise while Pike is her captain, he’d have to somehow miss seeing the captain of the ship.

Occam’s Razor says Kirk wasn’t on the ship until Pike was promoted to fleet captain.

Another Enterprise communications officer who hallucinates (Hoshi in Vanishing Point being the first). What are the odds?

Kirk’s probably a figment of her imagination.

So, I’m conflicted. I’m still looking forward to this, because I’m really enjoying SNW, but I’m not thrilled to see more Kirk.

Now, this isn’t about the actor, I think he’s doing a perfectly fine job. It’s a tough role, particularly as it’s supposed to be the same Kirk we know from TOS, just younger.

I am tired, though, of seeing SNW stories lean as hard as they are on preexisting major characters. Feels a little Star Wars-y, where everything has to tie to the Skywalkers in some way.

I recognize it’s a prequel, and it’s going to intersect. It’s more that, when exploring a character (in this example, Uhura), we’re not getting that unless there’s heavy involvement of another legacy character. Did the sidekick have to be Kirk? Why not Ortegas? Or La’an? Or M’Benga (I know he’s TOS, but I’m not counting his 2 appearances).

Again, I’m still excited to watch, but I wish they’d trust the characters they’ve created more.

It’s a commercial decision. The producers want to reach the largest audience they can, and that would have to include casual fans and even non fans, whose knowledge of ST is high-level and only reaches to the well-known, “legacy” characters.

Roddenberry very wisely took the opposite “commercial decision” back in the days of TNG, where, except for McCoy’s cameo in the pilot, we saw no TOS legacy characters for three years, and no TOS regulars for five years, and even then it was on an exceptional basis.

Kirk has now appeared in 20% of SNW episodes, to say nothing of his brother.

If they wanted to remake TOS, that’s what they should have done.

Roddenberry also wanted something that was entirely his own after losing control of the film franchise. TNG was a reboot of sorts for him. That meant limited references to TOS and the 23rd Century, Vulcan’s as background characters, etc. It was until after he passed away that TNG embraced a bit more of Star Trek’s legacy.

still – it worked out well regardless of motive

Yeah, I understand that. I figure that in a season or so they might have enough built up to let their creations stand on their own, but they’ve gotta keep general interest high enough.

It’s a shame that art at this scale has to be produced with a bottom line in mind. If only there was some system that took the profit motive out of things…

I would argue that “art at this scale” must be produced with the bottom line in mind. Reminds me of something Robert Altman said about his movie MASH. He said 20th Century Fox pretty much left him and his low budget film alone, because they were more interested in the much more expensive Patton.

I definitely get that it’s got to be produced with bottom line in mind. I run a little theatre company outside of my 9-5 and being able to not go under is always on my mind.

Basically I’m just fantasizing about living in a society that isn’t driven by capital, where we get well made planet of the week adventures

Star Trek always seemed to be at its best when working with limited resources when the focus was primarily on the story and writing. TOS, Star Trek VI and the final of season of Enterprise come to mind.

Cross-overs abound. Now Ted Lasso is on the Enterprise?

Seriously though, Sam’s casting highlights just how OLD Paul Wesley looks. Sam is supposed to be Kirk’s older brother but there looks to be a 10 years age gap and it’s not in the right direction

Agreed!

I’ve seen the episode, and I have to say the scene with the Kirk Bros. chasing Gorn through the pipes on the Enterprise was a bit much. I know one of them has a mustache, but come on.

😂😂😂😂😂😂

Outstanding

At the point we’ve seen more of Una this season than Pike!

Obviously, Anson Mount reduced his availability to spend time with his newborn.

Anson Mount has also said that he hates spending 14 hour days on soundstages. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of that is also baked into his availability this season. Definitely fewer “full crew” episodes so far.

Why did he sign up to be the lead in a Star Trek series, then?

Me who just rewatched DS9 Waltz last night: another hallucinations episode? Alright cool. I hope she hallucinates Hemmer. Or Weyoun. I’d hallucinate Weyoun.

Or Agimus, or Boimler, or Agimus and Boimler.

You know me so well.

I feel like we haven’t had much Pike this season… I’m all for ensemble cast…but why do we need more Kirk? I love that phaser… why don’t I have one yet?

We don’t need Kirk at all. It just feels like shoehorning a character just so they can say Kirk is on the show basically.

Agreed. This was intended to fill in the gaps of the Pike years.

Anson Mount had his second child shortly before shooting on Season 2 began. Scripts were made to allow him paternity leave.

Sounds fun. Hallucinations are another long and popular Star Trek story element every classic show did at least one minus Enterprise IIRC. But I could be wrong on Enterprise.

That said, it is a bit disappointing we’re now halfway through the season and hasn’t visited a single strange new world yet. Have they even left Federation space once this season? Next week will be the LDS episode Those Old Scientists and I guess its possible it will be exploration based but doesn’t sound like it.

Not complaining too much, just funny how there has been practically no real exploration in this season at all so far but generally enjoying it.

Lastly will this be the first time we’re finally getting the real Kirk or this just an hallucination of him? ;)

Well there’s that mining planet with the fake Crossfield from the season premiere and Rigel VII?

But neither were ‘strange’ nor ‘new’. They obviously been to Rigel VII before and they were literally told not to even go to the mining planet. There has been zero exploration in this season so far versus the first season where the first three episodes had some of that at least. That’s why I liked it so much from the start.

Agreed! Rigel VII isn’t new and the mining planet was new but not strange. Neither fits the criteria of SNW. It’s only S2, but they have jettisoned their own premise for these weird “what-if” scenarios and “rom-coms” situations that add nothing to the canon.

Yeah, its just a bit frustrating. And this has been said, if there were more episodes in general then it wouldn’t matter as much. DS9 took place on a space station but the irony is because they had so many episodes to fill every season, they had plenty of stories where they still went to new or strange planets at least a few times every season.It’s also such a huge reason why Prodigy was my favorite show because they actually went to a lot of new planets and practically everything in that show was new to the characters themselves. And because they had 20 episodes it was easy to balance the stories.

But this show has had 5 episodes so far and we been to Earth twice (past and present), Rigel VII and orbited Vulcan. Not really seeking out a lot of new life and civilizations so far outside of the Kerkhovians who were just part of the B story and mainly used as a plot device in the last episode.

Really TOS didn’t often got to a new planet. Sure they were all new to us the viewers, but most of the time it’s been to worlds that had previously been visited in the past.

Believe me, I know that all too well. In fact, the irony about TOS is it’s one of the shows that has the least amount of exploration than most of the other shows. I can even give you the number of times they show either visited a new planet or met a new alien. Out of 79 episodes, they only found new life or civilizations 13 times lol. That’s pretty low when compared the other older shows but it has a lower episode count from the others as well.

But of course I’m talking about Star Trek as a whole, not just TOS and SNW so far has done little with its exploration angle compared to other shows, especially shows like VOY and ENT which has the biggest records in all of Trek. Even Lower Decks has done more by this point in season 2. And when you title your show strange new worlds, it’s going to bring out more expectations there would be a bigger emphasis on exploration.

It’s just a bit surprising not one episode so far this season has been focused on exploring. There is a poster here who likes to use the wagon train to the stars moniker as a reminder what these shows should be about and oddly enough SNW seems to park its wagon train a lot closer to home than I think some of us predicted. But I’m hoping we get to one new planet by the time the season is over.

It doesn’t seem like most Star Trek fans think about it in quite this way or very hard about the episodes at all. If they did an hour-long farting contest I think it’d be viewed as another classic hijinks episode. Seriously, though, I think producers will say that all of the “Strange New Worlds” this season have been “within”: characters exploring their inner lives, Starfleet officers inspecting the Strange inner reality of their “jobs” as space chefs, collateral damage of Federation law, etc; but even then, Strange New Worlds is supposed to bring in *new* fans, so every retread, callback, fan service, remix, etc. is new to *them.* Why they still decided to have Pike say, “Well, we’ve already been here before, blah blah blah” is a question we’ll never have an answer to, but I think what the people making the show will say is that the goal this season was to explore the strange new worlds within each character and we get to experience them making those discoveries.

I can’t disagree with any of this too much but of course the argument is you can simply just do both. The episode Shore Leave was the perfect example. That was definitely a strange new world and still gave us some insight and backstory into Kirk when he was punching out Finnegan over and over again.

I like the season overall but I am bit disappointed with its direction as well. They haven’t spent anytime going anywhere new (four of the episodes was a return to Earth TWICE, Vulcan and Rigel VII) and just too focused on TOS story lines. The only episode that wasn’t based around TOS at all was the second episode being strictly about Una and the plight of augments even if was just people in a room talking for a hour. But we actually managed to learn something about her that’s not there just to tie into TOS in some way. They want ‘exploration’ of inner characters, fine, but it usually just feels like an excuse to reference TOS over and over again like we had in the last episode obviously.

And I know this is suppose to be the big episode where Kirk and Spock meet for the first time (although their alternate versions have met twice already lol) but I would be much interested if they did it on a new planet too. ;)

You are, in fact, wrong about Enterprise. The Hoshi/transporter episode (no, I’m not going to look the title up.)

Yep I definitely was. I saw someone else reference that episode here too.

NuKirk still blows. 🙄

Yeah still not a huge fan myself but liked him a bit more in episode 3. But honestly still think he sucks, sorry.

…I think the actor is doing the best he can, but it was just bad casting. Wesley hardly channels the JTK character at all, imo. So, agreed.

he 100% looks like somebody that would be cast in fan-made unofficial series

Err more Kirk who is too old at this stage. If they wanted a Kirk to be more in it they should have made Sam Kirk a main character.

This continuous icing out both Pike and Una is ridiculous. There is more focus on that bloody love triangle crap.

Is this days of our lives in space?

Ostensibly this is a show about Pike’s Enterprise, and in my opinion some of the regular cast on this show — Una, for example — aren’t given enough to do as it is, yet they keep writing James Kirk guest appearances into the episodes. It’s as if the producers don’t have enough faith in their core characters…

My guess is that the showrunner is getting the audience primed for an eventual TOS remake. I also wouldn’t be very surprised if it will also replace the Kelvin Universe version for the movies.

50 year old Kirk assuming command of the Enterprise with first officer middle aged Spock. Just some insanely cool stuff from the best producers in the biz

50 is the new 32?

Not if you’re a WGA member.

In fairness, it worked perfectly well in STAR TREK CONTINUES.

Given the level of response to my last comment here, should I even ask about the clip? specificaly what space there is in any ship that is big enough to support the vista running in one direction, let alone both directions, from where Una is standing?

mods, if that is too inflammatory, I’m cool with you deleting it. Just puttin’ it out there anyway.

Maybe in one of the nacelles?

Must be, although given the extreme perspective, the nacelles must be more than triple the length of Moffet Field’s blimp hangar, and nearly as tall, which makes those some guppy-esque nacelles.

New tagline for currentrek: objects on your screen may appear larger than they are, or even than they ever could be.

It seems to be a corridor with the same Time Lord technology that the turbolifts have in the Discoveryverse.

Just be you and say what you have to say. Half the board was in a panic going nuts about a simple observation you made. And ironically they were accusing you of having a fit when through your replies you were the most levelheaded there. I can tell you, I don’t have your restraint.

I think people over reacted to your last comment (and some were just outright rude).

As for your question, well, scale just doesn’t seem to be a thing in Discovery or SNW.

Yeah I am also in the camp of being frustrated of the James Kirk appearances at this stage of the show although honestly we haven’t really seen him in a full prime universe context yet. If I was producing the show, what I would have done is that if they really want to have a Kirk on the show, they already have Sam Kirk, I would have developed the Sam Kirk character more so that his death later on in TOS hits a bit more harder that simply “oh look its mustachioed William Shatner lying dead on the floor”. Also agreed about the fact that we need more “exploring strange new worlds” for gods sake its in the title of the show, get to it.

I bet Uhura will be saboteur because hallucinations will force her to do this and Jim Kirk will be some kind of alien being that is manipulating her into that.

I’m enjoying SNW for the most part. I’m disappointed it is not as “cerebral” as TOS. All the actors and new characters are wonderful. I keep hoping we’ll get to see Jose Tyler. Yeoman Colt, and especially Phil Boyce (P K Simmons would be a great choice for Dr. Boyce).

Enough Kirk already

It would a dream come true of they could make the phasers stick to the side of the pants without a holster like in TOS.

Just had a thought – we’re rolling into episode six, wasn’t Bruce Horak supposed to turn up somewhere this season (as a different character)? Or did I miss him?

I’m hoping that she’ll hallucinate Hemmer but maybe he will in one of these last five episodes

NOT KIRK AGAIN!!