Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x06 "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail"
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"Federation Standard" is definitely just English - the people of New Eden spoke it, despite being moved to that planet during WWIII, well before the Federation was formed.
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ijon_the_human@lemmy.world the whole forgotten spaceship idea was worth at least a multi episode arc, but I don't think we'll get much, which is too bad because there's quite a bit to explore. Not even some old log entries to listen to.
Double edged sword that is the episodic show.
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I don’t agree at all that it’s implied that these people never came across other humans.
It’s fairly clear, from the tales of the Destroyer/scavengers that Uhura and the others recount, that these humans do not care who they are attacking or killing to gain resources and technology.
They are known to attack and raid colonies and destroy entire planets. While some were populated by alien species, others were human colonies based on the reports.
They surely knew from previous seizures of ships that some were human crewed, by the bodies if not through language.
They had become a voracious pirate culture.
It’s not obvious that communication could have turned them away from destroying the populated planet that they were on course for.
The outcome of Kirk’s decision is that the Federation didn’t get the opportunity to try to communicate with them before destroying them as a last resort.
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Is anybody else curious about the fact that you can manually engage port or starboard thrusters via a conveniently located joystick in the hallway?
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I can't be the only one with goosebumps when they say to Kirk that now he was now the captain? He looked at the chair with a little fear. That was good
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Writers' Room: "We need a name for a mineral these scavengers could be looking for."
"Uh… (glances at Italian takeout) aldentium!"
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The fuel source with just a bit of bite!
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I enjoyed this one, though I feel it could have been better. The metaphor in the title and used in the episode is a perfect one for the situation.
I was convinced up until the reveal that the "alien" was a sort of scavenging species 0 of the Borg, with the robotic look and the ability to adapt to phaser fire. I'm not sure how I feel about the writers going in a different direction. It fits with the theme OK, but the ending scene where they're all reminiscing about this forgotten crew of humans past didn't go down well for me. It's a generational ship, none of the original "good guys" were still on it, and it is very tempting to do the maths that for the 7000 on that ship, many thousands more have probably died and would die on the planets they've killed.
The ultimate lesson, of needing to have empathy even for your enemies is a very important one. Seeing how that is used to help Kirk grow is nice, and from what I remember, it is something he embodies quite a lot in his captaining. However, I am very confused why everyone is so bothered by the fact that they were humans. Surely they didn't need to be humans for this lesson to be learnt. They're all part of a federation of different species, and Kirk's captain literally is not a human.
The phone setup is a hilarious, and really clever solution to a problem, but plot-wise it fails to achieve anything because when the Enterprise crew actually need to use the phones, the alien ship and the comms jamming has already been disabled. But they use the phones anyway. I question whether a closed airlock decompressing would have quite enough inertia to balance out a chemical thruster, and if it was, why did they need the chemical thrusters at all in the first place. I felt like what was going on on the Enterprise was much less interesting than what we saw in the Farragut. I wonder how the episode might have turned out if it was shot entirely from the Farragut's perspective, with no hints of what happened on the enterprise.
Random other thoughts:
- Getting to see more of Scotty is really nice, especially his acerbic dialogue.
- Doctor M'benga, head medical officer, warzone survivor, having little screentime other than running phone cables and joysticks around is funny.
- Ortegas getting a light scolding for being a wee bit suicidal is all we got for her ongoing sub-plot.
- La'an has shown a previous liking for Kirk, but we didn't really have a chance to explore what her new thing with Spock means for that.
- I hope the transporter buffer wasn't affected by all this now that it's holding a literal horror from beyond in it
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Also maneuvering a space vessel with two thrusters which are facing in opposite directions may be impossible...
Adding a single airlock replacing one of these thrusters (which therefore must be incredibly weak) makes it even more of a mess...
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The moment the planet exploded during the opening act I was certain that Kirk was daydreaming up some action since he was literally just complaining about how bored he was.
As the episode went on I was no less convinced, but began to wonder if maybe there was some alien interference that was transforming his desire for action into either a shared dream or some simulated experience for both crews.
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It's like they didn't consult the daystrom institute at all! Haha
Although tbf I think the port and starboard thrusters are aft facing.
Spot on about the airlock though.
