IMDB hasn’t updated the episode listing to include “The Engineer," but based on his extensive voiceover work I believe this is the Matthew Wolf in question:
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Spock has always been the center of the Trek Universe and I’m totally okay with that. He’s such a great character and we’ve been lucky to have some great performers play him. Sometimes a person really is that important. 
And far better to lean into a beloved character rather than try to convince me that I must care about a totally new character I have nothing invested in. This was a major problem for me with Picard season 1. I couldn’t have given less of a hoot about Soji. I was actually more invested in her twin Dahj!
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SNW “A Quality of Mercy” Spoilers
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When they dropped Pike into the wedding I was like "Holy crap! They’re doing “Balance of Terror,” " and my wife was like “Ugh. I shouldn’t have to have seen a TOS episode to get what’s going on. I’m under 40. I never watched it.”
Also she’s a big fan of Ortegas and was, let’s say, extremely displeased that that character was selected to be the space racist. Much better decision in the original to have a one off character fulfill that role.
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There are lots of places, and probably will continue to be, where a knowledge of TOS enriches the SNW experience.
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Out of all the Trek series, TOS really is the most important, for obvious reasons. SNW draws very heavily on it and it looks like they’re going to work really hard to weave the two series together.
And I freaking love Ortegas too. My favorite “new” character by a LONG shot.
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Agreed. But my wife is not particularly tolerant of the 60s special effects, rubber monsters (e.g. gorn and horta) / space probes dangling from a string (Nomad), and all the classically trained stage-style ACTING! so I can’t get her to watch them. Star Trek firmly begins with TNG for her. (Yes, Patrick Stewart is not immune from stagey ACTING but she gives him a pass.)
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I mean, fair enough. I’m a fan of a lot of '60s shows, and it was a different time and style (though IMHO, TOS wasn’t as bad as some), so not everyone’s bag. I really, really hope she decides to give it another go sometime. And the reissued episodes have updated special effects; “The Doomsday Machine” looks particularly AH-mazing.
I’m currently re-watching TNG for the first time in almost 20 years and I giggle to myself every time Stewart drops into his “Shakespeare Mode.” 
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Special effects are nice, but I don’t care enough about them for them to be a determinant. What matters are the stories and philosophy.
There aren’t many things that touch me on such a deep level as Trek does (LOTR, not much else).
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That absolutely matters to her. She says TNG was her “secular humanist Sunday school” growing up.
TOS could just be a bit more heavy handed. (hello planet where some people are half black on the left and white on the right, and others are the opposite and they’re racist of each other!)
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Yeah, well, that’s not the worst episode of season 3, alas.
I think, if you weren’t living through those times, it’s hard to realize just how groundbreaking TOS was. And what they accomplished on such a tiny, tiny budget. It’s pretty amazing that it holds up as well as it does.
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I don’t disagree. However, given that:
- The events in the episode took place seven years from “now” in the alternate timeline
- Ortegas has not previously demonstrated such behavior
- Alt!Spock was also oddly formal towards Pike on the bridge at first, prior to their mind meld.
There is conceivably some event or events that may take place in the interim that have the potential to affect Ortegas’ opinions. We also don’t know all that much canonically about Ortegas; no previous episodes have focused on her that much. I daresay she’s the character we know the least about at this point in the series — and that’s including Hemmer.
It would be nice if the showrunners and writers were to file these things away as something to be addressed in future episodes and not simply dismiss them.
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Completely agree! I enjoy flashy special effects but if the story is stupid, I don’t enjoy it.
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Alt!Spock was Leonard Nimoy - seven years older than CurrentSpock and parallel with TOS. Nimoy’s Spock was a lot more ‘logical’ than Peck’s ‘still figuring it out’ Spock, and that’s what Peck was going for.
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I’m sad that tomorrow is Thursday and for the first time in weeks I won’t be driving LadyStarblade completely bananas.
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Somebody did a nice side-by-side shot comparison of TOS “Balance of Terror” and SNW “A Quality of Mercy.” The latter was really trying to stick as closely as possible to the former given the other elements in play.
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I would much rather be being driven bananas… I miss SNW so much already.
Though I guess I really need to get caught up on Discovery and Lower Decks and Picard.
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