Logline
A distress call from Lt. Noonien-Singh compels Spock to disobey orders and take the USS Enterprise and its crew into disputed space, risking renewed hostilities with the Klingons in a bid to aid their shipmate.
Written by Henry Alonso Myers & Akiva Goldsman
Directed by Chris Fisher
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Right now, the plan is to post the /c/startrek discussion when the episode drops on Thursdays. Once the global community has had some time to watch and digest what they’ve seen, the /c/daystrominstitute discussion will go live on Sundays for a more in-depth analysis. This is subject to change as we evaluate what works best for the community as a whole.
Overall, a pretty good episode! I am slightly conflicted - I really like the character development of this Spock, but it’s also less and less feeling like the Spock we’ll eventually see in TOS. As the Klingon captain said, ‘the least Vulcan like Vulcan ever’ - whereas Spock in TOS is trying to suppress his human side and it takes him till like Star Trek VI to actually act on a hunch. But I am also conflicted as I really like this character too.
The stealing the Enterprise scene, I think Search for Spock is laughing… The CGI of the Enterprise manuvering away from space dock and escaping to warp was amazing though - one of the best uses of 3D space in Star Trek ever but pausing for like 5 minutes whilst stealing a ship to decide what his ‘line’ is going to be… I wish the new series would stop their pre-ocupation with this, it’s kind of famous because Picard uses Engage and Make It So enough to be memeable, but most of the time people from Kirk to Janeway to Sisko also use Engage. (Kirk also frequently uses warp speed Mr sulu, and ahead warp factor 1, take her out, first star to the left and straight on till morning.) And so every captain doesn’t have their thing. Pike’s ‘hit it’ is ok, but ‘Let’s Fly’ is kinda dumb and ‘I want to go, now’ is out of character and just a really unnecessary part of the story. It’s also not going to be memeable when it’s forced.
I really didn’t like the scene where M’Benga and Chapel use some kind of drug to give them super strength to fight off a whole ship of Klingons and then the torture scene? Star Trek should be cleverer than that and made me lose respect for both of the characters. At least the Klingons look like Klingons again.
I like the new chief engineer a lot more than I thought I was going too though!
Star Trek has always been kind of lax when officers disobeying orders save the day, but I thought the admiral should have been angrier and I really hope there’s a scene in episode 2 where Pike and Spock talk about it.
Stopping to discuss his departure line in the middle of stealing the ship was so cringy and immersion breaking for me. “I want to go” also seems very illogical for a Vulcan to use as a command. Wants are irrelevant, what are your orders? Wants don’t always align with needs.
Drugs turning a doctor and nurse into super fighters that can easily take out masses of Klingons seems a bit over the top and not like a great message to send. Sometimes fights are unavoidable, but the best self preservation is to find ways to sneak around and gain an advantage in numbers and location (pluck one person off away from the group or set up a bottleneck, incapacitate with environment controls or drugs), not hope you can overpower a dozen or more larger enemies in hand to hand combat when you’ve only got two people. More contact means more risk of injuries, surely there’s no such thing as an immunity serum that prevents all injury.
I am curious to see if they touch more on the war trauma because that is an interesting story itself. It was shoehorned in awkwardly here, but I’d like to see it explored more.
I’m not loving the new engineer, her personality is a bit grating for me and I don’t see why you’d be allowed to transfer from a teaching position to working on the ship you just helped steal. It’s one thing to not want to replace an entire ship’s crew after an incident, it’s another to reward non-crew for misbehavior with a choice assignment to the ship. She also has such a weird way of introducing herself to her friend’s son. I don’t get it.