(looking at my work clock like)
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Can I ask, what is LD?
Gosh, that was a hell of a ride. So Spock is the Gwen Stacy of Star Trek?
To tell you the truth, although I love Capt. Pike beyond reason, this episode also made me respect James Kirk a lot more. He’s wily, he’s cunning, he’s arrogant, but sometimes that’s what you need.
Even though Una’s incarceration is part of the future Pike saw, I’m glad he’s not just going to let that lie. Unintended consequences and all, she doesn’t deserve that fate.
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Star Trek: Lower Decks, the animated comedy Star Trek series featuring the decidedly less-than-important ensigns of a less-than-important Starfleet vessel. Season 2 ended on the cliffhanger of Captain Freeman (Ensign Freeman’s mother and superior officer — don’t ask) arrested and taken away by Starfleet security for allegedly detonating a Veruvian bomb on Pakled Planet. She didn’t, of course, and based on the third season teaser trailer, it looks like the lower deck ensigns are going to copy Captain Kirk and try to steal their space docked, laid up starship to rescue her.
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Thanks. I’ve only watched about 5 minutes of Lower Decks, but that was too Rick-and-Morty ‘isn’t physical abuse hilarious!’ for my taste.
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It certainly can be that and is an acquired taste, but LD also has stunning attention to continuity with frequent callbacks to previous Star Trek series and related inside jokes. It’s clearly written by people who genuinely know and respect Star Trek history and fandom — they’re just not taking it too seriously.
My general advice is to try looking away from the screen and just listening to it at first (though there’s this one episode with cetacean crewmembers, and another with Vulcan and Klingon lower deck crewmembers that use subtitles…).
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I appreciate that, and hey, if that’s your jam, fine with me.
But if I’m looking for something that tickles my funny bone, physical abuse beyond the Abbot and Costello level just hurts my tummy, not in a good way.
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I respect that. I personally don’t care for Rick and Morty, myself, but LD won me over. Just an example:
That is an actual shot from an episode[1] of the Tom Paris Voyager collectible plate owned by one of the LD lead characters. And, yes, the character has a cartoonishly hazardous and hallucinatory time getting Tom Paris[2] to sign it. If that doesn’t scream “meta-comedy,” though, I don’t know what does.
And then it was turned into a real collectible plate. I don’t know whether to be appalled at the blatant cash grab or applaud its meta-meta-commentary.
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The first two episodes can be a bit of a slog, but it gets a lot better as it goes on.
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Oh that is hysterical! I did not know about that.
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That’s why I’m still single…
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WOW.
Just wow.
What a way to wrap up the first season!
I loved that in the future timeline Scotty (though never called Scotty or even Mister Scott is onboard the ship Also nice callback on the admiral’s uniform Future!Pike is wearing. I couldn’t get a good look at his boots to tell if they made him do the silly flares.
As far as I remember the future incident with the Romulans is not taken from any specific TOS episode, correct?
Love the actor choice for Kirk. He captures the essence of Shatner’s take on the character, but still makes it his own. Tough balancing act. If we see more of him in season two, I hope we get more interactions with Spock. It will be nice to see the beginnings of that relationship.
And, yeah, it’s official. I do not like these short streaming seasons. Ten episodes is just not a long enough season to really do a whole lot. Just as you’re getting into the swing of the plots and character arcs, BANG, it’s over.
Bring on season two. Can’t wait!
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Well. Season finale. Not what I was expecting at all. And yet, I should’ve seen it coming. I’m just gonna blur all of this so I don’t have to watch myself. 
A Pike Reboot of “Balance of Terror” was totally out of left field; the second I saw the wedding scene I went “OMG, they’re going there.” The bookends with Future Pike worked as a framing device, then I just settled in to drawing the parallels.
Here’s where I get lazy and start hitting bullet points:
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Was not okay with Ortegas being the racist stand-in.
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The musical cues from TOS made me so, so, so happy.
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Future Pike in the burgundy movie uniform! YASSS!!
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Not sure I buy Paul Wesley as Jim Kirk yet. He has some of the mannerisms, but he doesn’t read as Kirk to me. I’ll give him time; Chris Pine didn’t click with me until Beyond, so I’m sure Wesley will get there.
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SCOTTY!! (Voice only, but still. Please tell me that was Chris Doohan doing the voiceover!)
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I thought the big “thing that destroys the future” was going to be that Jim Kirk got killed in the skirmish. But no. The reveal that if Pike avoids his fate, Spock will suffer the consequences was a nice twist.
Which leads me to my Line of the Week:
I know I feel like I give it to Spock every week, and I was primed to give it to Anson Mount, as this wasn’t really Spock’s biggest episode, but when Pike and Spock were having that last talk after Pike came back to the current time, Ethan Peck’s hesitation and delivery of “Is that why you are glad to see me?” was absolutely PERFECT. (Though the tea/coffee conversation was a close second.)
And it all leads beautifully into coming TOS canon. Now, I completely understand why Spock was willing to sacrifice everything…Kirk’s career, his own career, his LIFE…to get Pike to Talos IV in “The Menagerie.” It fits perfectly and enriches that already amazing episode even more. Brilliant.
I am provisionally slotting SNW into my second spot of favorite Trek shows behind TOS. It has made me so happy, and I wish we had the 20+ episode seasons of old, because I need more. All they can give me. Season 2 just wrapped, so I hope we’re getting more sooner rather than later.
Star Trek is my happy place, and SNW has taken me to a new level. Live long and prosper indeed!
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You know, I’m really starting to think we’re Temporal Echoes of each other or something. Lots of JINX!-es in there.
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We do seem to think with one brain. (It’s my turn to have it by the way!)
Also, the “engineer” was Matthew Wolf.
If they do eventually cast Scotty, I’m not sure who I’d want in the role.
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Darn it! Okay…I need it back by Saturday night, please and thank you!
And cool! looks up actor Hmm, doesn’t look much like the character, but why not let them have a go? Wonder if they’ll replace Hemmer with Scotty or insert a character in between? I’d go for another alien engineer; we need another non-human in the cast.
Oh, and just felt the need to say, if I were in trouble, Captain Christopher Pike is definitely high on my list of rescuers. The man would be unstoppable!
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“Balance of Terror,” reimagined for a different timeline. With Pike remaining in command of Enterprise, the result is far, far grimmer. Think of Edith Keeler; for some ideals, there is a time and place when their application is actually counterproductive.
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I went and rewatched ‘Balance of Terror’ and in the original, Scotty was on the Bridge.
I’m wondering how they’re going to deal with Una’s situation. In Pike’s vision of the future, she’s in prison. This is yet another situation that seems to be fated - but! But! But! Can’t wait to see how they resolve that.
They seem to have skimmed over that fact that if Pike doesn’t change the future, then children will die. It’s similar to the situation in ‘Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach’, only with even starker consequences. Pike’s in a terrible position having to decide who suffers and who is saved.
But I’m glad the showrunners realize that Spock is the center of the universe and needs to be saved at any cost.
I want more episodes, too, but man! They’ve given us so much to chew on and so much character development in the short amount of time they had, I’m absolutely amazed.
I think this show is actually better than TOS, but it’s a ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ situation. They already had established characters and situations to work with, they’ve just embellished it beautifully.
I’m going to have to try that pasta mama recipe at some point. Bring on the Capt. Pike cooking show!
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That will be interesting, and I actually hope they don’t resolve it in just one episode next season for all that SNW is trying to stay episodic in nature. That Pike in the alternate timeline wasn’t able to resolve it in seven years is either an indication of the forces aligned against him and Una, the number of butterflies that events in the alternate timeline disrupted, or a combination of both.
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As the mostly white descendent of black people who managed to ‘pass’, I find her situation more compelling than a lot folks would. My gg-grandfather was in a white unit during the Civil War, and I ponder what that would have been like for him.
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