Logline
Uhura seems to be the only one who can hear a strange sound. When the noise triggers terrifying hallucinations, she enlists an unlikely assistant to help her track down the source.
Written by Onitra Johnson & David Reed
Directed by Dan Liu
An okay episode.
Finally Una got to do something instead of being completely on the sidelines. The whole ensemble got something to do, except Ortegas who slowly turns into SNW’s Travis Mayweather: that one cast member that is just there physically but doesn’t get anything to do.
My personal highlight was the scene were Spock and Chapel play chess, and he passive-aggressively pushes her to play faster. Very Vulcan.
What irked me: everyone and their mother immediately started calling the First Officer of another Starfleet ship by his first name. That was weird.
Another weird thing was Pike’s promotion to Fleet Captain. We’ve never seen this in Star Trek, particularly not when it’s just two ships on a mission. So I checked the transcript of The Menagerie were Kirk speaks about the one time he met Captain Pike. And there it is:
MENDEZ: You ever met Chris Pike?
KIRK: When he was promoted to Fleet Captain.SNW’s producers were sneaky with that one. I’m both annoyed and impressed.
My personal highlight was the scene were Spock and Chapel play chess, and he passive-aggressively pushes her to play faster. Very Vulcan.
My favourite scene too. I am glad they only got one scene together this episode to avoid it veering too hard into the soapy relationshipy aspects after last week. But damn those are two well-written, well-acted characters with insane chemistry - they gave them one scene together, playing chess no less, and it stole the whole episode.
The whole ensemble got something to do, except Ortegas who slowly turns into SNW’s Travis Mayweather: that one cast member that is just there physically but doesn’t get anything to do.
I get the feeling the writers don’t really know what to do with Ortegas beyond that she “flies the ship”.
She also delivers the many one-line commentaries on dire situations. It’s funny at first, but it does get old pretty quickly.
“I fly the ship”
Nurse Chapel fiddling with a butt plug while playing with Spock. I will show myself out.
Zombie Hemmer was freaky! Nicely done, wardrobe/makeup.
This clearly took a lot from TNG’s Night Terrors right? A bit of Firefly’s Bushwhacked in there too.
I liked it overall, but my favourite Star Trek episodes are when the crew gets to use their extreme competency to overcome a difficult challenge. This episode, the crew was… not so competent.
- Una’s team can’t identify that there’s been sabotage even though it’s just like, phaser blasts from a half-deranged man
- The dude easily escapes from sick bay and blows up a nacelle (had the stun setting not been invented yet? What about locked doors?)
- There’s no way the medical team could keep Uhura around and try to do some tests when she’s having an episode, they can only put on the brain scan screensaver
- They can’t shut down the dang refinery! The lever’s stuck and they’re out of WD-40!
- Pike blows up the quadrillion dollar infrastructure project immediately, not even just targeted laser blasts to the parts that are doing the murder. The whole thing has to blow up.
I guess this is just trek being trek and I shouldn’t take it so seriously. Emotionally, the crew was at the top of their game: intuitive, perceptive, empathetic, trusting. good stuff.
But yeah, I feel like I would have enjoyed this more had the problem been made more difficult instead of the crew less capable.
They can’t shut down the dang refinery! The lever’s stuck and they’re out of WD-40!
I actually had the least problem with that. It’s entirely plausible that huge machines can’t just turned off in an instant. Even real life nuclear reactors need something like +12 hours even for an emergency shutdown. A city-sized space-refinery probably has so much momentum in it’s spinning parts that it is faster to just shoot that thing.
Pike once again demonstrates his faith in the crew without second guessing Uhuras decisions. What a boss.
I don’t know if it was intentional as to be a call back to TOS, but I loved the absolutely senseless way nobody secures potentially dangerous actors that are in sick bay.
It was a good episode, but there are a few things I didn’t like:
- Blowing up a space refinery on a whim.
- Too much romance/interpersonal stuff, still.
- Pike needs to grow a spine and be more assertive.
I give it a 6/10; not bad, not great. I’m looking forward to the new episode.
Alright, one of the weaker episodes.
Not a fan of this Kirk, he reminds me more of Carrey than Shatner. Neither he, nor the Farragut needed to be in this episode.
Overall a solid episode, a little different but ultimate felt very core Star Trek TOS with strange alien life and coming to a resolution.
Paul Wesley continues to impress me in the role of James T Kirk but his character did not need to be in this episode, they need to be careful with how they use him going forward.
SNW is such a good show with strong cast and characters and storylines. They totally can stand on their own without trying to bring back legacy characters or storylines. I am not sure why the producers seem to be hell bent on trying to weave these characters back in.
Agreed, I didn’t mind Kirk being in A Quality of Mercy or Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. However, him being in this episode just felt he was in it for the sake of it.
This /r/Daystrom thread from last year is kinda funny, the OP correctly predicts how Pike and Kirk meet, but then he and most of the commenters dismiss it as “unlikely”.
This leads us to three possibilities
- Pike was promoted to Fleet Captain and Kirk took over Command from him as a result, which is where they met. Traditionally, especially in many of the novels, thats when the met before.
- Kirk met him on two distinct occasions, firstly when Pike became Fleet Captain and secondly, when he took over Command (its possible that the order was reversed).
- Kirk met him on at least two notable occasions, which he mentions.
With James T being confirmed for Season 2 and Sam being on the ship and friendly with Pike, enough to call him “Chris”, no 3 seems to be the most likely answer
It’s a fun thread to scroll through now that we know this episode.
The whole season is very, very good. Really loved this episode and the characters development in it. Mayby the overall story of this episode wasn’t the best, but who cares it is real classic trek 🖖
I like that they did the Kirk/Spock meet as an almost throwaway thing, rather than trying to make it a big deal. We already know it’s a big deal, so any attempt to increase the drama would’ve made it cheesy, IMO. Plus, we’ve had lots of media about their friendship, already: we know it inside out. Instead, we got to focus on Kirk’s relationship with a different legacy character, one that hasn’t already been explored to anywhere near the same extent.
Although, on that note… was anyone else hoping the ‘doctor on the Farragut’ Kirk referred to was going to lead to a cameo from Bones? I don’t remember if they served together pre-Enterprise, so it might not have been strictly canon!
I’m starting to get DS9 vibes among the crew. I’m liking that things are complicated. This season doesn’t feature Pike much, does it? DS9 of course handled politics and religion well and I suspect SNW is steering clear. I knew that (blank) would return but I didn’t expect him to be a decomposing corpse.
Ramon froze pretty quickly out there in space. Wasn’t it only a couple of weeks ago this show was trying to convince us people could survive in space without a suit for two whole minutes?
Yeah star trek right now really can’t seem to decide whether “space is cold” or not.
Of course, that’s because the truth has just alittle bit of nuance to it, and nuance is hard for writers.
Space can be cold, depending on where you are, but its also barely even there. No atmosphere means no convection, and that means you’re gonna be losing heat much too slowly for it to be your number one problem if you’ve just been spaced without a suit.Maybe because they’re in the stellar nursery. The deuterium was like having an atmosphere.
Convective heat transfer in a cold dense gaseous nebula would be a lot faster than radiative heat transfer in empty space.
Enjoyable episode, down a bit from the last few but at least we’re staying well ahead of ep1 in terms of quality. I am getting a bit of Kirk fatigue though, they have him technically meeting people for the first time in this episode but it feels like there’s no impact because we’ve seen them together in alternate timelines already.
Also, did I miss something or did they gather no proof whatsoever of the nebula aliens? I’m fine with Pike taking Uhura’s word for it in the climax but it just felt like there was a bit missing in between “taking the hallucinating person’s word for it” and “we now all accept that this was definitely happening and are writing scientific papers on it”.
Anyway now for my truly controversial opinion: I don’t like Pelia. The character is a great idea, but the execution is terrible.
I was excited at first, Carol Kane is great, but she just doesn’t work here imo. She’s hard to understand, every line seems to be delivered exactly the same, I don’t know she just seems like a joke character but without many jokes. It’s a little uncomfortable to watch.
Fully accept I am the only one who thinks this, though!
I agree with you on multiple accounts. Seems like the writing was lacking. In addition to not securing the hallucinating guy, they also made no formal announcement to security or to warn others about his dangerous presence. You would think with such a huge crew complement that there would be more people walking the halls in the scenes when they were trying to apprehend him. Or at least folks trying to figure out why it is dark, etc.
Also agree with the lack of direction on Carol Kane’s character. In fact, the way they included Hemmer as a hallucination, in the pre-recorded video, as well as in commentary by Una and Pelia, it almost seemed as if they were apologizing to the audience for getting rid of the Hemmer character. I am unsure of the reasoning behind it, but I thought he was a great character and wish they hadn’t killed him off.
So far this is the first episode that kind of disappointed me in the new series. It almost felt like it was filler to create the establishment of relationships between Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise crew.
@TeaHands @ValueSubtracted you’re not the only one, the way Pelia delivers her lines irks me quite a bit.
Plus, I was shocked at Pike giving Uhura so much liberty with something that he said was so important for the federation, especially since she didn’t have any proof. 🤷♀️
I’m with the others that say it’s a really good episode, until you start picking apart some of the decisions. Pike taking the word of a person who has been suffering hallucinations, with no evidence, then preceding to destroy a massive infrastructure project with no real hesitation…it didn’t feel earned. I know he trust her, and Kirk, but damn that was an extreme leap of faith.
They could have fixed that by analyzing the signals in her brain in such a way that they could actually show to Pike.
@deweydecibel @ValueSubtracted
That’s frankly what caught my attention, even as I was watching the episode. The decision turns out to have been right, but on thin-to-nonexistent justification.
I think what justifies it is the second case that they encounter. The other guy provides them with scientific evidence that Uhura was experiencing something that wasn’t unique to just her.
It was definitely a leap of faith for Pike, but his decision was bolstered by someone (Kirk) that he knows can make the right decisions too.
i was just thrown by the fact that nobody considered the possibility that it was a plot by Romulans or Gorn to get the Federation to self-sabotage. they stated they were at the edge of known space, so i thought a much more cautious attitude was required
