Some of the special effects for the gorn babies were one plate of curry away from being right at home in 1980s Red Dwarf. Oh how I cringed!
But a great episode.
I thought they looked like high-budget Scarrans
The landing party moving through the attacked town positioning themselves around crates and fighting the youngling was like a glimpse of an XCOM adaptation to a tee (with fewer OP melee weapons and grenades).
I really enjoyed this episode, while I do agree that it's strange only Chapel survived (she should have remained on planet).
That to be continued hurt with the way the strike is, so I guess we'll have to see if we will actually get a follow up.
And I love the Gorn, this episode finally hinted at their intelligence. And the solar flare thing while a bit weird could be an interesting way of using biology to influence how a civilization develops. I know Arena exists but I really don't mind retconning this. Having recently looked at the Enterprise depiction of Gorn, I feel like this remains in the same vein but looks more lizardy.
SNW is still my favourite Trek, maybe its because I never actually watched TOS but I feel like even if I did I wouldn't dislike it.
Pelia knowing Scott doesn't surprise me considering she seems to be the Boothsby of the Engineers.
Scotty being introduced made me really happy ^^
As a prequel I think this still works, some people say its not the Pike show they expected but I don't get why, yes we have seen some TOS characters like Kirk and Scotty, hopefully Kirk will get less time next season, probably considering the ships has less to do together.
I get its corpo decisions but I will trust the creative team to not drop the ball with overusing fanservice characters, having scotty as a member of the Enterprise crew is also imo not a problem. If anything I hope we get to keep Pelia and have him as a underling for next season and maybe build up to him being promoted head of engineering later on.
Hopefully Paramount will dare to make a new series about an entirely new crew set post VOY or maybe even some time in the early 2300s around the time the Enterprise D was around as we haven't seen a lot of that time. But I would prefer a firmly 2400s series.
Scotty!
Playing it kinda like Simon pegg, Which is honestly great. Looking forward to seeing more tos characters introduced next season.
A lot to unpack here. Definite 'Best Of Both Worlds' vibes. Great end of season episode. Hopefully this time they have the resolution to the cliffhanger written.
I figured Batel would suffer the fate she did, even before the episode started. It was lazy writing that she should end up in the situation she did and so it happened. The writing team can and should do better than this.
Scotty appearing was a nice touch, and was well played by the actor. Given that Chapel is probably going to be rotated out for a while I think pairing him with Pelia for season 3 might be fun.
The Gorn were also well done, although the Aliens homages are getting tiresome and unless they are going completely retcon 'Arena' then there isn't a huge amount more than can be done with them. Thankfully so far they seem to using them sparingly. Hopefully they will move onto other TOS races in season 3. The Tholians, for example, have a unique feel and less alpha continuity to worry about.
Just watched this and my biggest gripe with Star Trek will always be that the federation ships are just way too weak. Yes they aren't supposed to be a battle force, but any moderately powerful enemy and they are toast...at least they had that special crate of better weapons, but why not just make that the norm? Finally, what good are the force fields if everything inside of the ship is getting wrecked with each hit? And send more friggin ships...
You do realize that without shields, they’d have been blown out of the sky in one shot rather than being able to survive in a firefight, right? It’s like saying what’s the point of a kevlar vest if I’m going to get a broken rib from a body shot? If I can live, I’ll take that vest and broken rib, thanks.
Power is relative. There’ve been times we’ve seen weapons from less advanced species than the Federation bounce uselessly off shields or are seen as no threat. We’ve also seen Starfleet ships get carved up like a prize turkey. The Gorn are powerful, that’s just it. That doesn’t mean Starfleet aren’t heavy hitters - at this point it’s just that there’s a stronger kid in the playground.
I though everyone and everything getting wrecked was a throwback to TOS.
The enterprise Dansd E are pretty strong
For the number of ships, by TOS there are only 12 Constitution class ships, so there might not be more ships to send. We're a year or so out from the Klingon war, and it doesn't seem like the Federation is in a position to quickly replace ships. They already lost the Cayuga. Also the admiralty obviously isn't interested in a Gorn war at all, and certainly not over this planet or the potential survivors.
I will say it's been shown that Pike is just not a fighting captain. He's not the person you want in a combat situation. It does make me wonder why he's a Captain but idk. They really should send the Enterprise back on a deep space mission of exploration and have someone (who is not an evil mirror universe person) more like Lorca or Kirk running these border conflicts or something.
Imagine being trapped like Chapel in the Wolf 351 wreckage. 😱
Soooo good. Big Best of Both Worlds feels from that cliffhanger.
My captions! I can't hear without my captions!
Edit: Now they're working. Weird.
As to how they'll resolve the cliffhanger, it's probably going to be Scotty's Gorn transponder that will confuse the Gorn ships long enough for Enterprise to get in close and somehow beam the abductees back.
This one was a bit disappointing to be honest. The darker/space-war episodes are rarely my favourite anyway but this one really suffered from impenetrable plot armour on most of the main cast. Gosh, will Spock and Chapel survive this time?! Of course they will; because it’s Mr. Spock and Nurse Chapel :-/.
And the federation apparently willing to just let it slide that an entire starship and crew were destroyed.
Chapel meeting Spock was a stretch. Proceeding to launch the rest of the ship into the planet after that was unconscionable.
Are the Gorn supposed to be dumb reptiles confused by flashing lights or technologically advanced space fairing antagonists? It’s too much of a stretch to leave unexplained at this point. Maybe part two will clear that up… in a couple of years :-/
And just the general bloodlust among the crew when prepping to go fight. These established affable and charming young scientists and nerds but suddenly it’s season final time and it’s all “the only good bug is a dead bug 😡”.
Some incredible best-of-show set pieces and special effects but a pretty dour end to a fun season of Trek. I’m not against more serious episodes at all, just this one has too many loose ends and inconsistencies.
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