I feel like Spock’s interest in plants in this episode is both a call back to The Cage (the way Spock grips the office plant before melding with it felt very similar to the way he gripped the signing plants in that episode) and possibly a call forward to TAS The Infinite Vulcan, where we learn that Spock’s ultimate fate is to live among a planet of sentient plants in a giant cloned body.

(It’s interesting to consider that a copy of his consciousness was returned to his original, diminutive body at the end of that episode. I wonder what adventures that small version of Spock might have had? We may never know…)

I knew I’d have a good time with this one. I’d heard we were getting a horror themed episode directed by someone who worked on The Haunting of Hill House, which is one of my favourite horror projects from the past decade. (Checking Google now, and I see it was actually Bly Manor. Close enough.)

You can certainly see the same approach at play, and I thought it was very fun to see in Trek. I also loved the nods to other sci-fi horror, including that one scene in TNG Night Terrors that really hit hard when I was 7.

I feel like a bit more backstory on the Griffen might have been nice. She was the last ship built in the Pyris shipyards, which mined its ore from an ancient alien graveyard, and all ships built there met a bad end. Or something better than that. But I see those in this thread unhappy that it wasn’t all explained with the sci-fi equivalent of a gas leak, so maybe the simple mystery approach is a good compromise.

Apart from the horror of it all, some nice character work, with Kirk being the stand out. Nice to see his early relationship with Carol. Or lack thereof. I wonder if they’ll ever have occasion to cast her or if she’ll be forever offscreen.

The Martians have a bit of a Vulcan look to them, and it’s referenced that their genetics can be found in a number of races known to the Federation. Is this a hint that Spock might in fact be descended from Martians, in reference to his original conception as a Martian science officer?

Might be supported by Spock’s mention in TOS Return to Tomorrow that being descended from an alien race is consistent with some Vulcan prehistory.

Or I’m reading too much into a basic makeup choice.

Oh, you mean Nicholas Thomas Locarno-Paris?

Of those, I was only around for Enterprise’s cancellation and, given I had pretty low esteem for it and for Nemesis, that one hurt a lot less. It felt like death by natural causes, the sad result of a gradual decline. This time around it doesn’t feel natural at all, particularly right on the heels of SFA’s very strong first season. Extremely frustrating.

Not gay enough. We need to go back to this.

Trek is known for allegory, but routinely abandons it for time travel stories. Star Trek IV and Deep Space Nine’s “Past Tense” and “Far Beyond the Stars” all examples that tackle societal issues very directly, and they’re all highly thought of.

To be clear, I think Picard features possibly the worst writing in modern Trek, so I’m not setting out to defend it on all fronts. But the idea that addressing societal issues head on isn’t a valid approach for Star Trek doesn’t add up for me.

Just a prior relationship, I think. Not sure how much prior… could be quite a bit given Vulcan lifespans.

Discovery implied that Sybok was out of the picture before Michael came onto the scene, meaning they might even be secrets from each other! Would it be too much for both each sibling to echo fan kvetching that Spock wasn’t more forthcoming about the other?

I’ve been hoping for them to bring Sybok into the mix like they teased in season 2. Imagine if they did both at once, and we got a full dysfunctional family reunion?

Oops, thanks for the fix

I’ve shared this here before. It’s the most extensive analysis of stardates I’ve encountered: atavachron.wikidot.com

Edit: fixed that link

That’s a fair point. And I might be holding on too much to it as a perfect ending when it really was never going to be. Those characters will always be too big not to come back, whether it’s another reboot, a recast, or a terrible AI homunculus.

Well, it’s a different ship, different crew, 80 years later. It may carry on from TOS thematically in a lot of ways, but they also did a lot narratively to keep them in their own respective sandboxes. And I think that was for the best.

I’ll compare it to the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Those films are very concerned with showing us what happened to Han, Luke, and Leia, and with replicating the backdrop and villains of the original films, and I think it’s largely to the detriment of really establishing the new characters as the stars of their own films. I think the TNG approach, keeping its distance to a much larger extent, was healthier.

Glad you do! I do actually think it’s decent TNG outing, and the 1701-D never looked better, but as something that supercede’s TUC’s very satisfying farewell to Shatner’s Kirk? It’s barely enough screen time to justify putting him on the poster, and no real new character development – TWoK already hammered home that a quiet life doesn’t suit him. I’d have preferred they let the TNG films stand on their own.

TIL Anson Mount is a doughy woman. Or are we referring to Rebecca Romijn? She’s not waifish enough for your taste?

Picard also dropped some French on occasion (memorably, “merde”), so the UT has definitely always had some mechanism to allow some flavour through.

Goldsman’s biggest regret was not being able to bring William Shatner back to play a version of Kirk who decided to stay in Depression-era New York with Edith Keeler (Joan Collins), a soup kitchen operator he fell in love with in the episode “The City on the Edge of Forever.”

I do think Star Trek needs to be less backwards looking, but giving Shatner one last farewell that isn’t a disappointment like Generations was wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world.