Yeah... it's a federation shuttle at a distance, it was question by Batel because she probably wasn't aware of any other ships in the area. That didn't deserve a down when it's a perfectly reasonable question.
@@Darkpara1 Not to mention that she is the Captain if there would be any shuttles flying from her ship she would know it. Its totally natural of her being surprised to see a shuttle when she most likely knew none of her ships shuttles were even flying at the time.
4:07 “Is that one of ours?” Is a valid question. The comment wasn’t whether it was a federation shuttle, that was obvious. He was asking whether that was one of Cayuga’s shuttle. That line was essentially foreshadowing Scotty’s appearance. That should NOT be a down.
Please accept an objection to the Trilithium Down assigned to the lack of screen time for Ortegas. Ms. Navia’s partner died about 2 months before the show began filming Season 2. He died 4 days from the date of diagnosis of his rare form of leukemia. His death occurred during the Christmas season. I very much believe that the show runners lightened her workload because of the rawness of her grief & because of the physiological stress on her associated with her fresh grief. I really wanted much, much more Ortegas this season. But, remembering my experience with the expected death of my husband 15 years ago, I respect SNW’s protecting & supporting Ms Navia by cutting back on her screen time. Sean, thanks for your consideration.
Kirk had to cook up on the fly since he DIDN'T HAVE any weapons. He found the raw materials to make gunpowder and a fuse. It's a good thing he's fond of the age of sail and knew how to make gunpowder. If they had any weapons that could kill a Gorn it would have been stored in the armory. It's fortunate that most of Pike had Erica Ortega on his ship and she knew so much about the Gorn. I would love to see the look on Admiral April's face when he reports two vessels destroyed. a starship captain is extremely critical and has requested to be ethnized as she represents a threat to the safety to the crew of the enterprise. I suppose they could use M'Bega's trick with the transporter pattern buffer. At least two members of the Enterprise crew and the survivors of a Starfleet ship.
A down from me is the fact that the only survivor of the U.S.S. Cayuga is Nurse Chapel. No one even bothered to check to see if anyone was still alive. Chapel's plot armor is impeccable.
Tbh, I do feel others survived, i just think she didn't bother checking. Which is my main problem, even when watching I noticed that she wasn't checking on anyone who was on the ground.
Agreed... Also. Is it me or wouldn't a Captain in Star fleet be more devastated by losing their ship and crew a la decker in the doomsday machine. You'd think a Captain would take that blow a little harder than she did... In fact she seemed more worried about her current situation than the loss of her command
It was implied by her jiggering the life support that she was almost out of air. We don't know how much time she had, how much happened between her setting it up and spock showing up... and then of course, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. There was no time to look for ANYONE. CHapel was only saved because she made it to the Bridge and Spock showed up there.
I'm a little surprised by Sean not picking up on that. Maybe it's just me coming from that 70s generation where continuity between episodes mostly happened on soap operas. Everything else was geared towards a general "reset" so they could re-run in random order. The few TOS references to past episodes are like scattered gems, and this was a brief "that really happened and it's so messed up to think about!"
Had to chime in on this. Spock wasn't the only one who could do an EVA. He was the only one who could align the rockets precisely enough to crash the saucer with pinpoint accuracy.
Exactly! I was going to contest that down before I saw your objection. It sounded to me when the scene was run through that that was Spock's point, and it makes sense. I also think that scene was an almost shout out to the scene in 'Voyage home' where McCoy comments that J. Kirk would go with a best guess from Spock rather than somebody else's cold fact/calculation. Could have been another up or a mention in Cetacean observations, methinks.
My wife was confused by this as well, and it was also my interpretation that only he could do the necessary calculations to correctly place the rockets. But it was not clearly explained in the scene so I agree with the down rating.
When Spock tried to apologize to Chappell in transporter room, the micro expressions of vulcan elation was wonderful. Ethan Peck did a great job there as well.
I think the acting in SNW sets it apart from DSC and even PIC. Not saying that the other live shows lack anything in that space, but the cast of SNW really do a great acting job.
Perfect work by Mount in doing what the director told him to do, but *shameful* work by the director and/or writers. He was a deer in the headlights, as no captain of the flagship would ever be. Uhura and Ortegas are wunderkind who can handle anything, but the guy with the most experience panics? That's a bunch of crap.
Yes, if it was a border, it would be quite silly for it to go through the middle of a star system. To the point that a planet is on one side and its moon on the other.
@@magical_catgirl Exactly, that does not make sense at all. Especially since the relative positions of a moon and its planet or a planet and its sun are quite dynamic. That 'border line' would not have the same effect in, say, 10 hours or two days. That is one of the points I did not like in this episode.
Regarding the missing Ortegas episode, keep in mind Melissa Navia lost her partner between seasons and was struggling with grief throughout filming of second season, something she has been open about sharing. The lack of Ortegas episode may be an accommodation and act of compassion on the part of the showrunners not wanting to overburden her.
@@jgkight1: Sounds like a good theory to me--a true Ortegas episode will be worth waiting for if this is the case. I also believe in the theory that the two previous teases with her this season are the writers trolling Mr. Ferrick and Mr. Shives. At least we got a couple great maniacal smiles from her as she's dropping the shuttle from space at high speed to get us through!
Rumor has it, that they want to make this show go from 10 episodes a year to 20 episodes. I'm here for it because this season went by so fast, and I really want more like Deepspace 9 type seasons. What does everyone think about 20 episodes a year instead of 10?
@@jeffwest4325that would mean a longer lead time for things like writing and effects, not to mention a lot more work for the actors (like 16 hour days). I think the best we could hope for, in all fairness, is maybe 15 episodes.
That was how I took it. Obviously, they recognized it as a Starfleet shuttle; the question was whether (and why) there was a shuttle fleeing from *their* (completely safe & intact, of course) ship.
Outstanding season. My only "down" for this episode is that Christine is apparently the only survivor in the saucer section? I mean, I know she has plot armour but at least a line of dialogue about other possible survivors would have been good. Otherwise, Spock and Chapel sent other possible survivors to their death by crashing the saucer section.
Right. They already had the shuttle trick, and turns out they could just EV over the whole time, why wasn't there any attempt at all to send a team to look for survivors. They had hours apparently while waiting.
If the Gorn Officer didn't send a signal back to its ship it still would've had check in times with its mother ship. No check in, the Gorn ship goes on full alert. Also there were Gorn aboard the saucer. Seriously doubt there were survivors.
The cayuga crew died upon gorn energy lances and what little remained that didn't die were hosts for the gorn or were crushed by several pieces of architecture from the hallway crippling them nurse chapel has plot armour the size of the azure nebula due to her existence in tos same goes for much of the bridge crew.
@@forrestpenrod2294 yeah, I really doubt there were survivors either if there were any number of Gorn aboard, they probably also shot down any escape pods, but my point is that if Chapel survived in the wreckage, maybe others did too, or at least she might think there could be. Other than continuity, there's no reason given for her being the sole survivor. It's a minor thing in a great episode. This was just a loose thread for me, like La'an leaving the fully loaded gun on her ancestor's bedside table.
Yes, that would've been my Trilithium Down for the series. We could've seen Chapel on the Cayuga with a group of survivors playing cat-and-mouse with the Gorn, and maybe a plan to fire the escape pods and make it look like they'd forced the saucer section out of orbit, with some of the escape pods making it back to Enterprise. Instead we had a real credibility-stretcher that Chapel was the only person in the entire saucer to survive just because of dumb luck. Worse, when Spock transports back and says two to beam up, everyone immediately reacts with relief that he's found Chapel without being told it's her, when the odds of that are astronomical. That whole arc of the episode really needed another pass around the writers' room.
I chalked the Gorn dying because of the smashed EV suit helmet up to rapid decompression rather than suffocation. It was established earlier in this very episode that Gorn are not immune to freezing temps due to being cold blooded. If you've ever emptied a can of CO2 while dusting out your computer, you would know first hand just how cold the can and it's contents get as it decompresses. This would also be the case for that poor Gorn. So yes, I find that manner of termination perfectly...logical.
That effect in a can of "air/CO2" is actually due to another chemical (1,1-Difluoroethane) that is put under pressure and has a low boiling point of around -11F. The cold effect is more sciency than I care to type, but you can find videos on it lol. But basically it's because of that chemical in the cans and being within our atmospheric temperatures and pressures that creates the effect.
It's actually rather difficult to lose heat in space, as there is nothing to conduct or radiate it away, outside the air in the suit. Freezing would take a while.
@@JohnAllen1980 Some Earth reptiles like Iguanas & Crocodillians can hold their breath for at least 30-60 minutes. Turtles can hold their breath from 4-7 hours to days.
The Ortegas episode didn't happen because the actress's husband died suddenly, 3 days after being diagnosed with cancer... Knowing that context you definitely can't fault this season for that
Um, he was dead before they ever shot season 2. They were teasing an Ortegas episode after he was dead and after they were filming. While they might have planned an episode beforehand, they knew full well they weren’t going to do it by the time that happened. If he had died midway through filming, that explanation would make sense. I mean, I understand them deciding to scale back Ortegas (if they did) because they were worried about Melissa Navia’s health, but they did not need to tease us or outright lie.
The fact that the crew didn't even think, not even for a moment, that there might be many other survivors on the ship besides Nurse Chapel, before crashing it onto the device, surprised me.
it's interesting, but they have really been lurching between extremes -- the cartoon series, to Klingon war crimes, to the musical episode, to Gorn -- perhaps done as well as they could that, given that it's perhaps not a great way to do it
I would like to give an up to Anson Mount's facial expressions, not just in this episode. I could feel his panic in that last scene. That man can act brilliantly with his face alone.
I really love the inclusion of Sam Kirk, Living in his brother’s shadow and the discussion they had of such earlier in the season… they’ve done a good job writing his character so far!
I get the feeling that more had been planned for Ortegas, but they gave Melissa Navia a break after the passing of her partner. Similar to what they did with Pike when Anson Mount's daughter was born.
You missed a major Cetacean Observation: We were introduced to Lt. Montgomery Scott, who we affectionally call "Scotty". However, in this episode, all the characters (including Scotty) refer to him as Montgomery Scott, Mr. Scott, or Lt. Scott. It was only Pelia who called him Scotty: "Hello Scotty... one of my best students who sadly received some of my worst grades." Was it Pelia who gave him the nickname Scotty???? 😀
I am fairly sure the question, “Is that one of ours?” is supposed to be heard as “is that one of the Cayuga’s shuttles” and the scene is intended to set up introducing Scotty in a way that does not seem entirely “deus ex machine.”
You were exceptionally harsh on this episode while giving the cartoon episode a record amount of ups! The first down, especially, since it clearly turned out to Scotty's shuttle plummeting down over the planet. Although that shuttle was clearly Federation, it would have been from the Stardiver, not the Cayuga and that's why the Cayuga Ensign questioned it. It was actually a brilliant bit of foreshadowing! Kindly, give yourself a down. This was an excellent episode and perhaps the best of the season. Although the experimental episodes were quite entertaining, this felt like a proper Star Trek episode & as a bonus, it had me at the edge of my seat! A personal up for me was after Scotty nervously pointed out "That's a lot of Lieutenants", Ortegas quick evenly toned snarky response: There'll be a quiz".🤣
Chapel's plot armor was _incredibly_ thick in this episode. Like, boy is it a good thing she's part of the main cast so that complete random chance spared her life with literally every single other person on the ship died, even those who also happened by random chance to be in the one area of the ship which still has air. I'm talking, get the Pitch Meeting guy in for this one.
I loved the part where Spock & Chapel made sure to thoroughly search the remainder of the saucer section for other survivors before they sent it hurtling toward the planet, killing anyone they may have missed if they hadn't taken the time to do that . . .
1) Sensors didn't work, right? I thought that was the whole point of ramming the saucer into the tower. 2) If the Gorn Officer didn't send a signal back to its ship it still would've had check in times with its mother ship. No check in, the Gorn ship goes on full alert. They didn't have time to search the saucer by eyeball. Those officers volunteered to enter perilous situations, the colonists on the planets did not, civilian rescue takes priority.
@@forrestpenrod2294 In any other Star Trek episode or movie, the response (before even sending Spock over) would have been, "Okay, we need a better plan," not, "Let's throw a large section of one of our ships-which may or may not have survivors on board-at an alien device on a planet-which itself may or may not have survivors-in order to get sensors and transporters back so we can see if there are any survivors." The problem with the writing runs deeper than that one scene, but it was the easiest one to point out. (Overall I enjoyed the episode, though.)
My thought too. Time wasn’t on their side, but it’s like when Picard rammed the Enterprise E in to the Scimitars, without evacuating anyone in the saucer bow.
@@Eyblinkin They KNEW there were survivors on the planet's surface they had to evac but they could only do so if they took out the tower. Spock and Chapel are literally exploring the saucer and there's nobody else moving around. Nobody else has reported to bridge or tried to signal Enterprise like Chapel did. There are Gorn running amok though and like I said encountering the one.Thats the reason they're showing Chapel so much, there isn't anyone else. You're also kinda infantilizing the crew of the Cayuga. There would be protocols of what to do, where to go, how to signal friendlies if you're stuck on a derelict. Let me ask you this, why do you think there are other survivors? Half the saucer is gone, the rest barring medical is vacuum. What possibly makes you think there are others? I have my quibbles with the episode but this isn't a writing problem, you're projecting something that isn't there.
I must admit, I was really surprised you didn't draw attention to how contrived the plot armour Chapel surviving on the Cayuga was. She didn't check for other survivors, the Enterprise didn't check for survivors. It was very un-Starfleet. She saw Spock and forgot her duty as a medic.
Ya it really bothered me she was the ONLY survivor. Plot armor. I understand. But they could’ve left her on the planet or had like 2 other survivors and they get killed by the gorn on the ship in the battle at the end. It was just lazy writing making her the only survivor.
@@DMSProduktions Where did you find that implication? They said there could be survivors, they showed the saucer still had power (visible from the outside), we know the computer was still functioning; a few lines of dialogue is all it would have taken to confirm (even in a contrived way) that there was nowhere else left for anyone to be alive & that any surviving crew should know to find a suit and abandon ship, just like they took the time to tell us that any survivors should be finding ways to signal for help.
The Down concerning the "Is that one of ours" shuttle craft is foreshadowing that it's Scotty's shuttle (i.e. Not one of theirs). The Gorn in space bothered me too; however, earlier in the episode they made a reference to Gorn not being able to handle cold.... This is how my head accepted the Gorn's death.
The 'gorn can survive in space' vs 'gorn dies when suit breached' actually works for me. Why? Because a rapid pressure drop is still damaging for a gorn whereas a slow pressure change would cause slower bodily changes.
Biggest down of the season to me is that Chapel doesn't bother to investigate if anyone else is still alive on Cayuga, and no one on Enterprise even considers whether we should try to search the wreckage before sending it to burn up in the atmosphere. And later when they detect two to beam up in EV suits, everyone on the bridge just assumes it is Chapel instead of one of the many who were on Cayuga! How did you miss this?
I think you missed an up. When Pike sees Chapel and immediately runs over to hug her, both that action and the shocked look on Chapel's face was a great moment in the episode.
My bigger down was that the Enterprise crew gave up pretty quickly on the crew of the Cayuga given that they just found someone alive. They sacrificed anyone else that might be alive on that ship and smiled about it.
@@zcolescott not really disagreeing with you, but I do think that they’re assumption that it was their friend and crew mate probably felt like a huge win after presuming her dead.
I love how they state how the colonists chose to replicate a 20th century American town. Translation: we're at the end of the season, we've spent the budget, lets get in front of this and make it a wink to the audience. Excellent!
It also explains why the Federation may be willing to let this go: Human colony, in the wrong place might not be supported by, for example, Andorrans, Tellurites or Vulcans where the potential exists to start a war with an implacably aggressive species.
I remember the Three Stooges being legendary for reusing Columbia's sets while they were filming other movies and shows. Good thing they didn't spend any money to make the town look like Mayberry!
@@CantankerousDave ...possibly funny story I'm not well versed on Canadian Geography... But I remember watching SG1 via reruns on Syfy so I'd see clusters together in enough order to enjoy them; but I'd get distracted and miss 3 or 4 or there's be a marathon and the reruns would start from the beginning... I say that, to say this I saw one of the Clip Shows/meta episodes where they cite the Lampshade Trope (as "Hang a lantern" and then it circled back to the Episodes with Jonas, as substitute Daniel while Shanks was off doing what ever ) and Jonas' Planet was called Kelowna and I just accepted it... some time later I watched another Canadian Production (actually set in Canada) and they cited Kelowna... and it gave me a "wait what?" moment...
I wonder if we didn’t get an Erica episode for kind reasons. She lost her partner and is grieving. Maybe the show runners realized the best thing they could do for both the character and actor was to give her time to come back to herself after her loss. I would love to see more Ortegas, but want Melissa Navia to be comfortable exploring additional emotions.
A push back about Spock saying “he is the only one that can do it,”as the only Vulcan on Enterprise he has the capability to compute the exact position to place the portable thrusters in his head on the fly to achieve the necessary trajectory to crash the Cayuga saucer section accurately.
If the Gorn are not affected by the vacuum of space, then the down isn't Spock breaking the GOrn's space suit. Rather it is the existence of a Gorn space suit in the first place.
That is the best point on this. I personally believe that it's a juvenile/elder thing in that the elders have reached the next stage of life which (amongst other things) significantly slows them down (presumably as a function of metabolism). Since we've already seen that the juvenile can move a lot quicker, it stands to reason that it must be through a quicker metabolism and as such I'd expect that if the previously established invulnerabilty to the effects of the vacuum was actually more "we can stay out for a really long time" then it could logically follow that you'd have less endurance for a juvenile. This is clutching at straws but the two next best arguments are 1) it's not a space suit it's a environment suit and puncturing it lowers the internal temperature to the point that you cease mobility in that form of the Gorn (are they still cold blooded?) or 2) since Gorn are now apparently at least partially mutants based on their host's DNA, that whatever spawned that juvenile was not compatible with the resistance trait (or maybe more that the canonically established one had been hatched from something that was invulnerable, eg Species 8472)
What I didn’t get is that the Gorn don’t like cold …see Hemmer. So space is cold how is it attacking the ruined Cayaga , also called it Batel infected let hope Chapel figures out
Or, Batel becomes party to a 'prisoner' exchange, the humans on the Gorn ship for the young'ins that Batel is carrying inside her... unfortunately, it'll be a package deal, as there's probably no way to separate the gornlings from the host at this point - so she has to choose the sacrifice to get everyone else back. With the Cayuga gone now and we as the audience know that they ultimately don't stay together, at some point she's going to have to depart the picture.
One major "down" for me - at one point, Spock (desperately clinging to hope) says that there are several pockets of air on the Cayuga saucer and Chapel may be still alive, and we see that's just what happened. Unfortunately, there's no evidence that he checked for any other survivors before dropping the ship onto the surface.
I noticed this too. If they had just added a line that they had some *something* to confirm that there were no other survivors, I would have felt much better about it.
I noticed they didn’t check for more survivors but heartless as it is they had no sensors to scan most of the ship was exposed to space and those spacesuits have limited oxygen and what would they do if they found someone but no a spare Eva suit.
Chapel could have asked the computer if anyone else is using oxygen. It would have been 10 seconds extra and could have clarified whether anyone bothered to check for other survivors. Major down for me.
I'm always obsessed with these videos and agree with them every time.. until now. I think that someone did indeed piss in our illustrious host's cornflakes this morning. This episode should have had 30 ups and maybe two downs. It was a phenomenal episode to cap off a phenomenal season.
I loved the part of this episode where the person looks up at the shuttle and says, "Is that one of ours?". That's what people do in everyday life, yesterday, today and tomorrow. It was a very human thing to say.
The real down should be that the seasons are only 10 episodes. As such it's frustrating they don't have enough time to give each character enough development. Season 2 was amazing; loved it!
Yes, and I HATE CLIFFHANGERS! They had better have at least secured a third season. Yes, there are shows I like that have been canceled and some of them ended with Cliffhangers that will never be resolved. Making a Cliffhanger finale does not guarantee they won't cancel you!
@@EmeraldEyesEsotericyes a third season has already been greenlit 🤗 To think I used to have a hard time waiting for a resolution in the old days of Next Generation's cliffhangers.... They would be resolved in about 3 or 4 months if I remember correctly. This one is probably going to take at least 1.5 years...... 😭
It’s a small thing but something I really appreciated in this episode was when Pike said “I’m not bursting into song every 10 minutes”. It’s so nice when a series remembers (and acknowledges) events or consequences from previous episodes.
I maintain that when the Gorn captured La'an, Ortegas, and M'Benga, they signed their own death warrants--whenever we get season 3, I expect to see a glorious action episode of those three badasses taking the Gorn ship while Sam keeps the settlers calm, and shouts helpful science tidbits over his shoulder.
We open with a shot of the interior of the Gorn ship. The walls are spattered with copious amounts of blood, much like the colony below. It's Gorn blood. They beamed up the *wrong* away team!
M'Benga appeared in TOS, so he should have some decent plot armor. But something to note is during TOS McCoy is chief medical officer, and M'Benga is still there...
@@tjs114 M'Benga probably left for further education, with Dr. Piper (TOS: Where No Man Has Gone Before) taking over, then Piper retires, with McCoy taking over from him, then M'Benga comes back, but has to take a lower position since McCoy's already there as CMO
The Gorn didn't necessarily die from the vacuum it could also be the Bernoulli effect as all that air was escaping its helmet induced rapid chilling and as we do know the Gorn are very much averse to sudden changes in temperature and cold environments so it could have effectively killed him by freezing.
I think you missed a subtext: the colony was not in Gorn space. They wouldn't have done that. The colony was in NEUTRAL space. The Gorn showed up, attacked it, and then AFTERWARDS sent a message to the Federation basically moving the border after the fact. It was a territory grab.
It also led to one of my big downs of the episode: it is not *impossible,* but stretched credulity, that the Federation would let an act like that stand. The loss of the friendly but unaffiliated colony? Maybe. The deliberate destruction of a Constitution-class ship, and the murder of nearly its entire crew complement? Never. That would absolutely be an act of war. You can't avoid a shooting war at that point; the Gorn already started it.
I agree. But also first of all from the diagram, it seems that the colony was in orbit around the sun, and how would a border be set up so that planets would sometimes be in one territory or the other, especially if it is a feeding ground. Crazy to build a colony there. The TOS Gorn attack also questioned a border incursion, which in TOS is initially considered a Gorn territory grab, too. If it is something the Gorn become known to do in SNW times, then I would think in Kirk’s Enterprise time they should have known better than to have considered that it may have been the Federation’s error and given them a pass on destroying the outpost. I would think the whole system would be on one side of the border or the other. It is definitely being considered by the SNW Enterprise as not being in Gorn space.
@@crookedwookie8782 Agreed; the Gorn had already attacked both the colony and two Federation ships. There's trying to be diplomatic to not start a conflict, and then there's responding to a conflict that someone else started.
@@terryt.1643 I'm glad I wasn't the only one bothered by that map. Maybe the Gorn are thinking, "You get it most of the year, then we'll harvest it again next time it comes back around. That's fair, right?"
‘Down’; the fact that writers put boarders/embarkation/political zone lines between objects ‘inside’ stellar systems, like a straight line between a moon and its parent. Those things move. The line will need to change constantly to keep those two bodies on different sides, which makes them useless as hardline ‘political’ treaty points.
I noted that in a lengthy comment, too. The planet's orbit would take it back to the Federation side in a matter of days, and the planet's rotation would carry the town into Federation space even before the whole planet was back inside. My biggest pet peeve is writers on sci-fi shows who fundamentally don't understand basic astronomical concepts.
@@Sagitarria That's what I thought too, but for what purpose? The Enterprise was the only federation ship that was there. A long term territorial divide is the only thing that makes sense to me, and in this context he's right. It becomes meaningless due to their movement.
The metal spike also penetrated the Gorn's skull, compromising its ability to survive in zero pressure. The Gorn dies because part of his brain get's pulled out from the pressure.
The reason for Ortegas's lack of screen time is that her actress (Melissa Navia) Partner died just before the start of filming of Season 2. I suspect that's why we didn't get the full episode for her. I suspect it will be pushed to Season 3.
It's not a dig at her at all, it's more I wish the marketing guys and/or production staff that kept saying we were gonna get an Ortegas episode this season would've clarified things so we weren't teased & waiting the entire season.
That cliff hanger! And a writer's strike? Anson Mount is going to be as bald at Patrick Stewart by the time the next season shows up. (No shade to the writers, the studios are greedy twats)
The episode held my attention, and I loved the introduction of Scotty but you don't want to think too hard about it...especially the fact that there might have been other survivors in that saucer section. But the season? Overall, one of the strongest in Trek history, dare I say. I would say there are at least three, maybe four classic episodes and for a ten episode season that is extraordinary.
A couple downs, 1. Chapel only survivor, convenient. 2. Did TOS have site-to-site transport? 3. Pike was understandably distressed about what to do after the order to pull back was given at the end, but I am not used to Captains looking so distressed over a decision. Riker just says Fire against Locutus, Picard scowls and decides quickly, Sisko sits down, holds the Baseball, and decides, Janeway threatens and decides and Kirk just does it. No need to see our captains unsure what to do. Just a thought or two.
I think the "Is that one of ours" was less about it being a federation shuttle, and more about if it was from the Cayuga, since they didn't seem to have any shuttles deployed at the time.
Engadget reported that Anson Mount had taken paternity leave during much of filming which is why we saw less of him this season. That's my only major disappointment of an otherwise brilliant season.
Same for Ortegas, she had someone close to her died before the season filming and they gave her a break by having her presence being light this season.
Thank you for sharing this! I was wondering where he was! I was like if he’s one of the greatest Captains in history, show him Captain. It makes much more sense now.
So sad that the season is over.. it came and went like warp 9... Strange New Worlds is my favorite modern Star Trek series.. always enjoy your ups and downs after each episode..
Regarding Ortegas, my wife pointed out that the actress lost her boyfriend shortly before the season started. She said on Ready Room that she's been struggling all season but the rest of the crew have been very supportive. Perhaps they rejiggered the season to not have an episode rest on her. No idea if it's true, but it seems like the sort of thing this generation of producers might do.
@@ewarrior9776 Ah, she just said "partner" in the interview which is fairly nondescript. Point remains, though, they may have decided to give her space to work through it and pushed an Ortegas episode for later. If that's the case, mad respect and worthy of removing a down.
It's not the vacuum of space that kills the gorn, it's the extreme low temperature of space, they set up earlier in the episode that cold blooded creatures, like the gorn, cannot survive temperatures like that.
Space has no temperature. It's not cold. Eventually you would freeze, but that would take at least 12 hours for a human body to freeze. And that's from radiating the heat away which is an extremely slow process compared to conduction and convection which is what we experience when touching an object or in an atmosphere like air or water. The most efficient way to transfer heat energy is through molecule to molecule contact, and space is notoriously void of molecules due to not being an atmosphere.
@@mgscheue No. That's not how it works. With no convection or conduction to transfer heat away from a naked body in space (never mind one in a suit) it would take hours to radiate away enough heat to freeze, even in intergalactic space far away from any stars. Radiation of energy at 310 kelvin is a very slow process. In addition to that, if you're in the habitable zone of a star you'll actually bake in space when exposed to sunlight, not freeze. At Earth's distance from our sun, your skin will warm up to close to 100C due to the fact that you're being exposed to a NEARBY UNSHIELDED FUSION REACTOR without an atmosphere or other shielding to protect you. That's why during the Apollo missions to Luna (which all took place during the lunar day), the astronauts needed a lot of cooling in their space suits. So you won't freeze while in orbit of any habitable planet. By definition any Earth-like planet has to be situated at a distance where it's receiving about the same amount of sunlight as Earth, or it wouldn't be in the habitable zone of its star. If you think differently, it's because movie after movie after TV show has lied to you, because the people with humanities degrees who work as writers on these projects don't know anything about even the most basic of scientific facts.
@@jasonwalker9471 It would be interesting to calculate the power radiated via the Stefan-Boltzman law, and then the time from the heat content and specific heat capacity. Yes, obviously any heat loss would have to be via radiation.
I was taken aback when Pike had his "oh shit, now what do we do?" moment at the ep end. Until this time, he always seemed self-assured through the series--even when he asked his senior staff for opinions. Maybe this moment will be brief for our beloved Capt. Pike, but it was poignant nonetheless. It had a true air of reality. That was an "up" for me!
The Gorn were designed & performed by the team that designed the lizard aliens in Zathura - the "Zorgons". That team do a *GREAT* job of AMAZING lizard aliens by using a combo of suits, puppetry & CGI.
re: your first down. When he says "is that one of ours" I think he's asking if its a Cayuga shuttle. And, unless I'm mistaken, it isn't. It's Scotty's shuttle.
One _big_ point - the Gorn have attacked a federation starship and only after that said its in their territory, MASSIVE difference from attacking a federation starship in their territory when the federation know its their territory. Plus the map is rubbish - its a line separating the planet and the moon, minor fact moons orbit planets, planets orbit suns - you don't claim part of a solar system, you have to claim the whole system or its meaningless.
The shuttle line makes sense to me. There was only one ship in orbit and it was not conducting shuttle operations. I can see why he would ask the captain if it was one of theirs, as in a Cayuga shuttle.
I hate cliffhanger ending off a season. It's brilliant for an episode if we get the follow-up next week. But, with how shows are produced and canceled now a days, it would be a tragedy if SNW got canceled before we got a resolution. I don't mind the suspens, it's just the uncertainty of the TV landscape.
1. It's not that Spock has EVA training. He clearly said that he was the only one with the physical strength to haul the rockets and the scientific precision to aim them. He said it out loud. He might not be the only one on the ship with that combination, but he was the only one in that room. 2. When the Ensign asks "Is that one of ours?" he is not asking "Is that a Federation shuttle?", he meant "Is that one of the Cayuga's?", which it was not. It was Scotty's shuttle, from the Sundiver, coming in hot.
@@nel1962 BOBW Part 1 was aired June 16, 1990. Part 2 was aired September 22, 1990. A 3-month wait is at least tolerable. But when part 2 of Hegemony could be 12 to 18 months out??? That is more than infuriating to me.
In the same way that it makes sense for Gorn to have tails despite them not having tails in TOS, I think it makes sense to re-present them as vulnerable to vacuum. I view this episode as correcting a mistake, not committing a crime against canon.
I read Spock saying "I'm the only one who can do it" as obvious bs that the other two completely saw through, and that everyone in the room knew he just wanted to go so he could see if he could find Chapel. Unfortunately the fact that he doesn't seem to be looking for her when he gets there kinda throws that out the window.
@@Vipre-hopefully all off-screen. :) Reminds me in S01 E01, Una left the USS Archer abandoned while on the surface. First command when arriving Pike should have told La'An to go secure the ship. It's like they need real naval officers as consultants for the nuances.
I thought it would have had to do with the setting of the rockets. Without knowing the full extent of the damage, it would have taken a brain like Spock's to come up with the secure positioning and angle of the rockets on the fly to ensure they could both move the saucer and have it change direction upon crashing. That would have made complete sense why he had to go. But they didn't explain it very well.
@20:20 Where was it shown that Gorn can survive the vacuum of space without a suit. (In that _Enterprise_ episode the Gorn, Mirror Archer and the rest were all in an enclosed pressurized environment).
It's subjective, I know, and Sean et al. take the time to do the videos, and do a great job too on the whole, but to give so many Downs to this very engaging atypically solid Trek episode, whilst giving the Lower Decks crossover a beyond perfect episode score, well... it just annoys me more that the other one did so subjectively well.
I never understood why borders in space shows involve going THROUGH the middle of a solar system 'cause every few weeks you'll be in the enemy territory.
I see it more of the Gorn telling the Federation that there is a line and there will be no problems as long as they stay on their side. You could also see it like this that to the Gorn their borders could not be totally set but they fluctuate because events. Like the system might not be normally inside their borders but because they got stimulated by the solar activity in the other system it now became part of their area to hunt for food and reproduce.
This second season of Strange New Worlds was outstanding! My only disappointment is that it was only ten episodes. I don't think I've been this excited(almost pon farish) about Star Trek since the early 1990s when the original movies were still being made and we had The Next Generation.
Watching "Ready Room" for this episode they visit the FX house that did the work for this episode, and I believe the head person they were interviewing mentions that they worked early in their career with the person who was the head of FX for Aliens (Stan Winston) among many other awesome movies. I'm very sure that they were pulling inspiration from their time working with him.
My take on Spock needing to be the one to go wasn't about being able to EVA but about calculating the exact points on the hull to give them the needed push to adjust the course of the saucer. Just like years later how he calculates the speed and trajectory needed to slingshout around the sun and time travel. No one else on board has the grey matter to do the job.
While the crashing shuttle was Starfleet, it wasn't from the USS Cayuga, so that may be where the confusion lay. That was Scotty's shuttle that had travelled from an adjoining star system. There is a big debate on whether TOS shuttlecraft have warp-drives, and ultimately the warp-capable shuttle in "The Menagerie" was an illusion, as were its occupants.
And in Firefly, whose movie Serenity gets a bit of a nod in this episode, their savant pilot/toy dinosaur collector Wash holds the ship's control yoke upside-down in the pilot episode.
One big down for me (that I haven't seen mentioned) was the Gorn border, for two reasons: 1) So, apparently the Federation will just accept what they say is the border? Borders don't get to move - and be recognized by other powers - "just because". 2) The border goes thru, not only a star system, but cuts across the a planetary system, so that the moon is "Neutral" but the planet is "Gorn"? How many hours until the planet would have moved enough in its orbit to be on the Neutral side again? Hell, who would accept a border that cuts thru a system? It just makes no *redacted* sense, except for plot contrivance purposes.
A big down for me was when they discovered the smashed saucer section they said there was the possibility of some of the crew surviving. However, they still planned to crash the saucer into the planet without checking first for survivors. Also very convenient that Nurse Chapel was the "only" survivor from the saucer. But hey ho, I enjoyed the episode, even if it did all feel a little too easy.
Something I didn't catch in my comment(s) about it that I saw someone else point out: The saucer section appears to be on the Federation side of the line! Probably. The map isn't labelled well, but the main demarcation line runs across the image, and the Gorn side is shaded red. There's an identical dotted line circling the planet, and the saucer is inside of that circle, but that area isn't shaded red. My best conjecture is that since the unshaded circle goes around the planet but isn't centered on it is that it shows the area of the interference field & is not directly related to the demarcation line, meaning a) they *should* have been sending teams over to search and b) the Gorn on board were in violation of their own proposed border (though, they may have intended it to only apply to the Federation, not to themselves). If being on the inside of the circle but not on the Gorn side of the main line *doesn't* mean it was on the Federation side, it was right on the edge, so they should have pulled it out with the tractor beam, then searched it (not crossing the line & not firing weapons, so they wouldn't be doing anything they were ordered not to). Under *no* circumstance should they have jumped directly from having evidence that there could be survivors to deciding to toss it at the planet (where they did *not* have any recent evidence of survivors aside from their own volunteers who had just landed there against orders)! It was a fun episode, but the writing had some big issues that could have been easily addressed. The script could have been ready with one final pass.
My big down for the episode was the "The Gorn are jamming sensors, communications, and transporters." line where in the SAME DAMN SCENE we have them pick up a Gorn ship warping in and they get a message FROM STARFLEET about the new border. I'm fine with magic space technobable but you have to have it be consistent in the same episode LET ALONE THE SAME SCENE!
A couple of downs from me: First, we know Scotty's a good guy, but no one there knows him and his story is very suspicious, yet they have no trouble trusting him. Had he been some no-name LT. we definitely would have thought he somehow had led the Gorn there. Second, the zero G fight with Spock, Chapel, and the Gorn: movement is space is not slow! This is an old misunderstanding because astronauts are trained to move slowly so they don't thrash around wildly, but things getting knocked around and people jumping, etc. would actually happen much faster than in air/gravity. The tension doesn't work when it doesn't make sense. They should be trained in zero G combat, and could have actually shown off some fancy moves that couldn't be done in gravity.
All sci fi shows take some liberties. There's no sound in space either. Do you want all space scenes to be mute? Things are adapted to get some middle ground between what looks cool and what is real. If you are going to be this picky you might as well throw every space sci fi show that has ever been in the trash. And ST has never been about being the most realistic one. If you're after that go watch something like The Expanse.
Christine Chapel is a awesome character. In TOS, she had only adored Spock and talked to McCoy from time to time. It was only in one episode that she was really cool when she found her missing fiancé again. That was really scary and sad. I'm glad she got another chance to shine in this series. Jess Bush is doing an excellent job. I hope it stays with the series.🖖
“Is that one of ours” doesn’t deserve a down. It was foreshadowing. He must’ve recognized that it didn’t quite look like one of Cayuga’s shuttles.
Yeah... it's a federation shuttle at a distance, it was question by Batel because she probably wasn't aware of any other ships in the area. That didn't deserve a down when it's a perfectly reasonable question.
Came to say that very thing. Glad I'm not the only one...
@@Darkpara1 Not to mention that she is the Captain if there would be any shuttles flying from her ship she would know it. Its totally natural of her being surprised to see a shuttle when she most likely knew none of her ships shuttles were even flying at the time.
Yeah. "One of ours" clearly meant "One of the Cayuga's" which we know it was not.
Glad to see so many of us came here to correct Sean on this undeserved down LOL
4:07 “Is that one of ours?” Is a valid question. The comment wasn’t whether it was a federation shuttle, that was obvious. He was asking whether that was one of Cayuga’s shuttle. That line was essentially foreshadowing Scotty’s appearance. That should NOT be a down.
THIS
That was the way I took it too
Please accept an objection to the Trilithium Down assigned to the lack of screen time for Ortegas. Ms. Navia’s partner died about 2 months before the show began filming Season 2. He died 4 days from the date of diagnosis of his rare form of leukemia. His death occurred during the Christmas season. I very much believe that the show runners lightened her workload because of the rawness of her grief & because of the physiological stress on her associated with her fresh grief. I really wanted much, much more Ortegas this season. But, remembering my experience with the expected death of my husband 15 years ago, I respect SNW’s protecting & supporting Ms Navia by cutting back on her screen time. Sean, thanks for your consideration.
❤❤ 1000%
Well said
Thank you for this background. I had no idea of that tragedy. I am amazed she was able to do such a fabulous job in her role.
@sparky955 well said and very sorry for your loss
@@adamherne2348. You’re very kind. Thank you.
I must admit, when they opened the box with the weapon which could stop the Gorn, I expected to see a hollow log filled with gunpowder and diamonds.
That becomes standard issue about ten years later😂
Kirk had to cook up on the fly since he DIDN'T HAVE any weapons. He found the raw materials to make gunpowder and a fuse. It's a good thing he's fond of the age of sail and knew how to make gunpowder. If they had any weapons that could kill a Gorn it would have been stored in the armory. It's fortunate that most of Pike had Erica Ortega on his ship and she knew so much about the Gorn. I would love to see the look on Admiral April's face when he reports two vessels destroyed. a starship captain is extremely critical and has requested to be ethnized as she represents a threat to the safety to the crew of the enterprise. I suppose they could use M'Bega's trick with the transporter pattern buffer. At least two members of the Enterprise crew and the survivors of a Starfleet ship.
its just a cast mold of Kirks fists.
Actually, I dispute your first down! I legitimately don't think that crashing shuttle is from the Cayuga. It's Scotty's shuttle.
💯 % right. That was Scott's shuttle. And he was from a different ship
Exactly, he wasn’t asking if it was a starfleet shuttle. He was asking if it was one of theirs, that is from the Cayuga.
Oh my gosh! I totally missed that. You're absolutely right.
A down from me is the fact that the only survivor of the U.S.S. Cayuga is Nurse Chapel. No one even bothered to check to see if anyone was still alive. Chapel's plot armor is impeccable.
Yeah, that would be my trilithium down of the season.
Tbh, I do feel others survived, i just think she didn't bother checking. Which is my main problem, even when watching I noticed that she wasn't checking on anyone who was on the ground.
Agreed... Also. Is it me or wouldn't a Captain in Star fleet be more devastated by losing their ship and crew a la decker in the doomsday machine. You'd think a Captain would take that blow a little harder than she did... In fact she seemed more worried about her current situation than the loss of her command
It was implied by her jiggering the life support that she was almost out of air. We don't know how much time she had, how much happened between her setting it up and spock showing up... and then of course, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. There was no time to look for ANYONE. CHapel was only saved because she made it to the Bridge and Spock showed up there.
I did have an issue with Chapel is the only survivor on the saucer? Didn’t even check life signs? Not a line to say “no other survivors”.
I love the line where Pike says "At least we're not singing anymore..."
I loved that too@ 😊
I'm a little surprised by Sean not picking up on that. Maybe it's just me coming from that 70s generation where continuity between episodes mostly happened on soap operas. Everything else was geared towards a general "reset" so they could re-run in random order. The few TOS references to past episodes are like scattered gems, and this was a brief "that really happened and it's so messed up to think about!"
@@Mad-BassistSeán did mention it, in Cetatean observations. The line was he didn't break down in song every 10 minutes or something 😅
@@Theratron: Ah, that's right. Oh well, it was an "up" for me.
Had to chime in on this. Spock wasn't the only one who could do an EVA. He was the only one who could align the rockets precisely enough to crash the saucer with pinpoint accuracy.
Exactly! I was going to contest that down before I saw your objection. It sounded to me when the scene was run through that that was Spock's point, and it makes sense. I also think that scene was an almost shout out to the scene in 'Voyage home' where McCoy comments that J. Kirk would go with a best guess from Spock rather than somebody else's cold fact/calculation. Could have been another up or a mention in Cetacean observations, methinks.
My wife was confused by this as well, and it was also my interpretation that only he could do the necessary calculations to correctly place the rockets. But it was not clearly explained in the scene so I agree with the down rating.
@@dr.gordontaub1702 It would have taken only a single sentence, rather than relying on the audience to paper over the hole.
@@jgray5921 What alignment. He used no instruments. Just slapped on the rockets perfectly without referencing instruments, stars or the planet.
Why was he the only one who could align the boosters?
Pike’s facial expressions when he sees the Cayuga , he’s scared, worried, angry. Perfect work by Mount
When Spock tried to apologize to Chappell in transporter room, the micro expressions of vulcan elation was wonderful.
Ethan Peck did a great job there as well.
I think the acting in SNW sets it apart from DSC and even PIC. Not saying that the other live shows lack anything in that space, but the cast of SNW really do a great acting job.
if you watch pike's face, when the gorn didn't attack batel....he knew immediately what was up.
anson mount: great face actor
Perfect work by Mount in doing what the director told him to do, but *shameful* work by the director and/or writers. He was a deer in the headlights, as no captain of the flagship would ever be. Uhura and Ortegas are wunderkind who can handle anything, but the guy with the most experience panics? That's a bunch of crap.
The planet is not in Gorn space. It's in unclaimed space. The Gorn attack, then propose an armistice line.
Yes, if it was a border, it would be quite silly for it to go through the middle of a star system. To the point that a planet is on one side and its moon on the other.
@@magical_catgirl Exactly, that does not make sense at all. Especially since the relative positions of a moon and its planet or a planet and its sun are quite dynamic. That 'border line' would not have the same effect in, say, 10 hours or two days. That is one of the points I did not like in this episode.
The whole shuttle covered in debris to sneak through to the planet gave me real Serenity flying past the Reavers to Miranda vibes.
Yes, that's the first thing I thought of
and technically the reavers are cannibalistic zombies...
I just needed Ortegas to say "I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar" ......and not catch a spear through the chest :)
@@redsolocup007 I think that would have broke me.
I said “REAVERS!”
Regarding the missing Ortegas episode, keep in mind Melissa Navia lost her partner between seasons and was struggling with grief throughout filming of second season, something she has been open about sharing. The lack of Ortegas episode may be an accommodation and act of compassion on the part of the showrunners not wanting to overburden her.
I disagree with that down too
My thoughts exactly.
@@mayhemmusingsAnd Sean brought that very fact a few videos ago.
I agree. Probably was plans for an Ortegas episode, but the writers may have decided to push it back to next season.
@@jgkight1: Sounds like a good theory to me--a true Ortegas episode will be worth waiting for if this is the case. I also believe in the theory that the two previous teases with her this season are the writers trolling Mr. Ferrick and Mr. Shives. At least we got a couple great maniacal smiles from her as she's dropping the shuttle from space at high speed to get us through!
Covering the shuttle with scrap is absolutely 1000% like Firefly avoiding Reavers with camouflage too.
And Han solo.
That is exactly what I was thinking.
It's a common trope done in many, many stories.
@@dentoncrimescene primarily Han Solo yes lol
And how big was that bloody shuttle craft?!
I will miss SNW. Hoping the strike gets solved. What a cliffhanger. One of the best seasons of all the Trek shows in the franchise.
Really?
@@christymclaughlin618really really.
Season 3 is already confirmed.
Apart from the embarrassing 'Rhapsody' episode...the 'Spock's Brain' of SNW....
@@Neil070it isn't spock's brain at all. Also I thought it was a fun Episode.
Rumor has it, that they want to make this show go from 10 episodes a year to 20 episodes. I'm here for it because this season went by so fast, and I really want more like Deepspace 9 type seasons. What does everyone think about 20 episodes a year instead of 10?
when you have a series with a season long arc, it makes a lot of room for filler episodes. this show doesnt have that problem, so it could work.
@@someguy4331IMO seasons don’t need an average arc. This show is good enough (finally great Star Trek) to do 30 episodes like Original Series.
@@jeffwest4325 ya that's what I'm saying. it wouldnt need filler episodes which is where some series falter.
@@jeffwest4325that would mean a longer lead time for things like writing and effects, not to mention a lot more work for the actors (like 16 hour days). I think the best we could hope for, in all fairness, is maybe 15 episodes.
When Batel says, "Is that one of ours", I thought she meant, "Is that from the Cayuga?" as opposed to a shuttle from another starship.
That was how I took it. Obviously, they recognized it as a Starfleet shuttle; the question was whether (and why) there was a shuttle fleeing from *their* (completely safe & intact, of course) ship.
I did agree with that down
That's how I interpreted it, too.
This is how I took it as well, given there was no other ship about at this time
Which we know was not one of theirs, but rather one from the Stardiver.
Outstanding season.
My only "down" for this episode is that Christine is apparently the only survivor in the saucer section? I mean, I know she has plot armour but at least a line of dialogue about other possible survivors would have been good. Otherwise, Spock and Chapel sent other possible survivors to their death by crashing the saucer section.
Right. They already had the shuttle trick, and turns out they could just EV over the whole time, why wasn't there any attempt at all to send a team to look for survivors. They had hours apparently while waiting.
If the Gorn Officer didn't send a signal back to its ship it still would've had check in times with its mother ship. No check in, the Gorn ship goes on full alert.
Also there were Gorn aboard the saucer.
Seriously doubt there were survivors.
The cayuga crew died upon gorn energy lances and what little remained that didn't die were hosts for the gorn or were crushed by several pieces of architecture from the hallway crippling them nurse chapel has plot armour the size of the azure nebula due to her existence in tos same goes for much of the bridge crew.
@@forrestpenrod2294 yeah, I really doubt there were survivors either if there were any number of Gorn aboard, they probably also shot down any escape pods, but my point is that if Chapel survived in the wreckage, maybe others did too, or at least she might think there could be. Other than continuity, there's no reason given for her being the sole survivor.
It's a minor thing in a great episode. This was just a loose thread for me, like La'an leaving the fully loaded gun on her ancestor's bedside table.
Yes, that would've been my Trilithium Down for the series. We could've seen Chapel on the Cayuga with a group of survivors playing cat-and-mouse with the Gorn, and maybe a plan to fire the escape pods and make it look like they'd forced the saucer section out of orbit, with some of the escape pods making it back to Enterprise. Instead we had a real credibility-stretcher that Chapel was the only person in the entire saucer to survive just because of dumb luck. Worse, when Spock transports back and says two to beam up, everyone immediately reacts with relief that he's found Chapel without being told it's her, when the odds of that are astronomical. That whole arc of the episode really needed another pass around the writers' room.
I chalked the Gorn dying because of the smashed EV suit helmet up to rapid decompression rather than suffocation. It was established earlier in this very episode that Gorn are not immune to freezing temps due to being cold blooded. If you've ever emptied a can of CO2 while dusting out your computer, you would know first hand just how cold the can and it's contents get as it decompresses. This would also be the case for that poor Gorn. So yes, I find that manner of termination perfectly...logical.
That effect in a can of "air/CO2" is actually due to another chemical (1,1-Difluoroethane) that is put under pressure and has a low boiling point of around -11F. The cold effect is more sciency than I care to type, but you can find videos on it lol. But basically it's because of that chemical in the cans and being within our atmospheric temperatures and pressures that creates the effect.
It's actually rather difficult to lose heat in space, as there is nothing to conduct or radiate it away, outside the air in the suit. Freezing would take a while.
@@JohnAllen1980 Some Earth reptiles like Iguanas & Crocodillians can hold their breath for at least 30-60 minutes.
Turtles can hold their breath from 4-7 hours to days.
The Ortegas episode didn't happen because the actress's husband died suddenly, 3 days after being diagnosed with cancer... Knowing that context you definitely can't fault this season for that
I don’t mind that we didn’t get one, as while I like almost all the characters, I absolutely despise Ortega and her unprofessional the character is.
@@johnpatz8395 more professional then Chekhov
My auntie had a cancer diagnosis like that when I was a kid. I can't image that kind of loss of a partner.
Um, he was dead before they ever shot season 2. They were teasing an Ortegas episode after he was dead and after they were filming. While they might have planned an episode beforehand, they knew full well they weren’t going to do it by the time that happened. If he had died midway through filming, that explanation would make sense. I mean, I understand them deciding to scale back Ortegas (if they did) because they were worried about Melissa Navia’s health, but they did not need to tease us or outright lie.
@@johnpatz8395She isn’t any more unprofessional than any of the other characters. You’re fine not to like her, but not for a spurious reason.
The fact that the crew didn't even think, not even for a moment, that there might be many other survivors on the ship besides Nurse Chapel, before crashing it onto the device, surprised me.
I absolutely love how they're so willing to drastically change the tenor of each episode while staying true to the characters. Great season.
And the "special episodes" (musical, crossover) still participate in the character development.
Not just the tenor, also the soprano, the bass, the . . . oh, that's not what you meant, was it?
it's interesting, but they have really been lurching between extremes -- the cartoon series, to Klingon war crimes, to the musical episode, to Gorn -- perhaps done as well as they could that, given that it's perhaps not a great way to do it
I love it too. It's like they embraced each word of "Strange New Worlds" with gusto.
Can’t be character development when it goes from 1 extreme to another- that’s not a development -it’s a a quantum leap
For me... The encounter between Scotty and Pelia made me so happy... the small exchange gave me so much comedy for next season.
I think it works great because he's her best student but got bad grades... makes me think he gave alot of wrong answers but was actually correct lol
But will she bust him for building a still?
@MultiButtsy no she'll help him improve it lol
I would like to give an up to Anson Mount's facial expressions, not just in this episode. I could feel his panic in that last scene. That man can act brilliantly with his face alone.
He learned a lot from Inhumans 😂
And his hair has great expressions too.
@@billkerns9258Boimler concurs.
@@billkerns9258 Haha yeah, but I believe his hair has gotten an up already
@@freelancer42 The Enterprise is in a hairy situation indeed.
Martin Quinn is a fabulous casting and he’s actually Scottish
but they should have made his hair more black to match
Yes. ❤❤
He's really Scottish?!!
@@Valokaari
Oh wow! It's cool to be Scottish. 😎
@@Valokaari
As it should be.
I really love the inclusion of Sam Kirk, Living in his brother’s shadow and the discussion they had of such earlier in the season… they’ve done a good job writing his character so far!
Agreed! I was so chuffed when he volunteered for the rescue mission. More Sam thanks.
I get the feeling that more had been planned for Ortegas, but they gave Melissa Navia a break after the passing of her partner. Similar to what they did with Pike when Anson Mount's daughter was born.
You missed a major Cetacean Observation:
We were introduced to Lt. Montgomery Scott, who we affectionally call "Scotty". However, in this episode, all the characters (including Scotty) refer to him as Montgomery Scott, Mr. Scott, or Lt. Scott. It was only Pelia who called him Scotty: "Hello Scotty... one of my best students who sadly received some of my worst grades." Was it Pelia who gave him the nickname Scotty???? 😀
That would be a cool lore drop.
I did hear she was indeed the one who gave him the nickname "Scotty."
I keep wondering if we're gonna find out what's going to happen with Scotty's finger.
@@GothamCliveI'm not sure Scotty missing a finger is canon.... James Doohan always did his best to hide that, right? 😅
@@Theratron
What if we saw a bunch of near-misses throughout the next season, like with Nick Fury's eye in Captain Marvel? 😂
I am fairly sure the question, “Is that one of ours?” is supposed to be heard as “is that one of the Cayuga’s shuttles” and the scene is intended to set up introducing Scotty in a way that does not seem entirely “deus ex machine.”
Hadn't occurred to me at all that it might've been Scotty's shuttle, nice catch.
You were exceptionally harsh on this episode while giving the cartoon episode a record amount of ups! The first down, especially, since it clearly turned out to Scotty's shuttle plummeting down over the planet. Although that shuttle was clearly Federation, it would have been from the Stardiver, not the Cayuga and that's why the Cayuga Ensign questioned it. It was actually a brilliant bit of foreshadowing! Kindly, give yourself a down. This was an excellent episode and perhaps the best of the season. Although the experimental episodes were quite entertaining, this felt like a proper Star Trek episode & as a bonus, it had me at the edge of my seat! A personal up for me was after Scotty nervously pointed out "That's a lot of Lieutenants", Ortegas quick evenly toned snarky response: There'll be a quiz".🤣
Chapel's plot armor was _incredibly_ thick in this episode. Like, boy is it a good thing she's part of the main cast so that complete random chance spared her life with literally every single other person on the ship died, even those who also happened by random chance to be in the one area of the ship which still has air. I'm talking, get the Pitch Meeting guy in for this one.
There was probably a bunch of survivors. But no one bothered to look.
I loved the part where Spock & Chapel made sure to thoroughly search the remainder of the saucer section for other survivors before they sent it hurtling toward the planet, killing anyone they may have missed if they hadn't taken the time to do that . . .
1) Sensors didn't work, right? I thought that was the whole point of ramming the saucer into the tower.
2) If the Gorn Officer didn't send a signal back to its ship it still would've had check in times with its mother ship. No check in, the Gorn ship goes on full alert.
They didn't have time to search the saucer by eyeball. Those officers volunteered to enter perilous situations, the colonists on the planets did not, civilian rescue takes priority.
@@forrestpenrod2294 In any other Star Trek episode or movie, the response (before even sending Spock over) would have been, "Okay, we need a better plan," not, "Let's throw a large section of one of our ships-which may or may not have survivors on board-at an alien device on a planet-which itself may or may not have survivors-in order to get sensors and transporters back so we can see if there are any survivors."
The problem with the writing runs deeper than that one scene, but it was the easiest one to point out.
(Overall I enjoyed the episode, though.)
My thought too. Time wasn’t on their side, but it’s like when Picard rammed the Enterprise E in to the Scimitars, without evacuating anyone in the saucer bow.
@@Eyblinkin They KNEW there were survivors on the planet's surface they had to evac but they could only do so if they took out the tower.
Spock and Chapel are literally exploring the saucer and there's nobody else moving around. Nobody else has reported to bridge or tried to signal Enterprise like Chapel did. There are Gorn running amok though and like I said encountering the one.Thats the reason they're showing Chapel so much, there isn't anyone else.
You're also kinda infantilizing the crew of the Cayuga. There would be protocols of what to do, where to go, how to signal friendlies if you're stuck on a derelict.
Let me ask you this, why do you think there are other survivors? Half the saucer is gone, the rest barring medical is vacuum. What possibly makes you think there are others?
I have my quibbles with the episode but this isn't a writing problem, you're projecting something that isn't there.
As long as one of those ‘other survivors’ wasn’t Nurse Chapel, it’s all good…
The ending is basically a kobayashi Maru test. A captain stuck between a rock and a hard place
I must admit, I was really surprised you didn't draw attention to how contrived the plot armour Chapel surviving on the Cayuga was. She didn't check for other survivors, the Enterprise didn't check for survivors. It was very un-Starfleet. She saw Spock and forgot her duty as a medic.
Implied they had, & found nothing!
Ya it really bothered me she was the ONLY survivor. Plot armor. I understand. But they could’ve left her on the planet or had like 2 other survivors and they get killed by the gorn on the ship in the battle at the end. It was just lazy writing making her the only survivor.
The Enterprise couldn't scan for survivors as the Gorn device was jamming sensors, communications, and transporters.
@@HighSierra1500A good point, but even she didn’t appear to even THINK about other survivors. Which, for a nurse, seems really improbable.
@@DMSProduktions Where did you find that implication? They said there could be survivors, they showed the saucer still had power (visible from the outside), we know the computer was still functioning; a few lines of dialogue is all it would have taken to confirm (even in a contrived way) that there was nowhere else left for anyone to be alive & that any surviving crew should know to find a suit and abandon ship, just like they took the time to tell us that any survivors should be finding ways to signal for help.
The Down concerning the "Is that one of ours" shuttle craft is foreshadowing that it's Scotty's shuttle (i.e. Not one of theirs). The Gorn in space bothered me too; however, earlier in the episode they made a reference to Gorn not being able to handle cold.... This is how my head accepted the Gorn's death.
The 'gorn can survive in space' vs 'gorn dies when suit breached' actually works for me. Why? Because a rapid pressure drop is still damaging for a gorn whereas a slow pressure change would cause slower bodily changes.
Biggest down of the season to me is that Chapel doesn't bother to investigate if anyone else is still alive on Cayuga, and no one on Enterprise even considers whether we should try to search the wreckage before sending it to burn up in the atmosphere. And later when they detect two to beam up in EV suits, everyone on the bridge just assumes it is Chapel instead of one of the many who were on Cayuga! How did you miss this?
I think you missed an up. When Pike sees Chapel and immediately runs over to hug her, both that action and the shocked look on Chapel's face was a great moment in the episode.
Chappel being the only survivor out of 250ish crew
And her finding 1 EVA suit
2 huge downs
Well, that we saw. There may be people in escape pods and EV Suits waiting to be recovered.
And when spock said two to beam over why did they assume it was Chapel?
@@Raitan2008 they were hoping it was I think
My bigger down was that the Enterprise crew gave up pretty quickly on the crew of the Cayuga given that they just found someone alive. They sacrificed anyone else that might be alive on that ship and smiled about it.
@@zcolescott not really disagreeing with you, but I do think that they’re assumption that it was their friend and crew mate probably felt like a huge win after presuming her dead.
I love how they state how the colonists chose to replicate a 20th century American town. Translation: we're at the end of the season, we've spent the budget, lets get in front of this and make it a wink to the audience. Excellent!
That line made me smile. It was so very TOS!
It also explains why the Federation may be willing to let this go: Human colony, in the wrong place might not be supported by, for example, Andorrans, Tellurites or Vulcans where the potential exists to start a war with an implacably aggressive species.
I remember the Three Stooges being legendary for reusing Columbia's sets while they were filming other movies and shows. Good thing they didn't spend any money to make the town look like Mayberry!
At least it wasn’t a hundredth Planet Vancouver.
@@CantankerousDave ...possibly funny story
I'm not well versed on Canadian Geography... But I remember watching SG1 via reruns on Syfy so I'd see clusters together in enough order to enjoy them; but I'd get distracted and miss 3 or 4 or there's be a marathon and the reruns would start from the beginning... I say that, to say this
I saw one of the Clip Shows/meta episodes where they cite the Lampshade Trope (as "Hang a lantern" and then it circled back to the Episodes with Jonas, as substitute Daniel while Shanks was off doing what ever ) and Jonas' Planet was called Kelowna and I just accepted it... some time later I watched another Canadian Production (actually set in Canada) and they cited Kelowna... and it gave me a "wait what?" moment...
I wonder if we didn’t get an Erica episode for kind reasons. She lost her partner and is grieving. Maybe the show runners realized the best thing they could do for both the character and actor was to give her time to come back to herself after her loss. I would love to see more Ortegas, but want Melissa Navia to be comfortable exploring additional emotions.
You mean Melissa is not a very good actress yet? Sorry but true and probs why she doesn't go on away missions
@@joso7228 That's a remarkably stupid conclusion.
That was my assumption. And that might be why we didn't see more Pike too (Mount had a baby with his partner).
He has even said so@@jasonwalker9471
@@joso7228No, not at all. She was grieving during filming.
A push back about Spock saying “he is the only one that can do it,”as the only Vulcan on Enterprise he has the capability to compute the exact position to place the portable thrusters in his head on the fly to achieve the necessary trajectory to crash the Cayuga saucer section accurately.
If the Gorn are not affected by the vacuum of space, then the down isn't Spock breaking the GOrn's space suit. Rather it is the existence of a Gorn space suit in the first place.
That is the best point on this. I personally believe that it's a juvenile/elder thing in that the elders have reached the next stage of life which (amongst other things) significantly slows them down (presumably as a function of metabolism). Since we've already seen that the juvenile can move a lot quicker, it stands to reason that it must be through a quicker metabolism and as such I'd expect that if the previously established invulnerabilty to the effects of the vacuum was actually more "we can stay out for a really long time" then it could logically follow that you'd have less endurance for a juvenile. This is clutching at straws but the two next best arguments are 1) it's not a space suit it's a environment suit and puncturing it lowers the internal temperature to the point that you cease mobility in that form of the Gorn (are they still cold blooded?) or 2) since Gorn are now apparently at least partially mutants based on their host's DNA, that whatever spawned that juvenile was not compatible with the resistance trait (or maybe more that the canonically established one had been hatched from something that was invulnerable, eg Species 8472)
Mirror universe space is obviously easier to breathe in!
I believe there's meant to be different types of gorn as well if I'm not mistaken and maybe not all of them can survive the vacuum of space
What I didn’t get is that the Gorn don’t like cold …see Hemmer. So space is cold how is it attacking the ruined Cayaga , also called it Batel infected let hope Chapel figures out
Or, Batel becomes party to a 'prisoner' exchange, the humans on the Gorn ship for the young'ins that Batel is carrying inside her... unfortunately, it'll be a package deal, as there's probably no way to separate the gornlings from the host at this point - so she has to choose the sacrifice to get everyone else back. With the Cayuga gone now and we as the audience know that they ultimately don't stay together, at some point she's going to have to depart the picture.
One major "down" for me - at one point, Spock (desperately clinging to hope) says that there are several pockets of air on the Cayuga saucer and Chapel may be still alive, and we see that's just what happened. Unfortunately, there's no evidence that he checked for any other survivors before dropping the ship onto the surface.
I was looking for that, too. I will need to rewatch the episode.
I noticed this too. If they had just added a line that they had some *something* to confirm that there were no other survivors, I would have felt much better about it.
I noticed they didn’t check for more survivors but heartless as it is they had no sensors to scan most of the ship was exposed to space and those spacesuits have limited oxygen and what would they do if they found someone but no a spare Eva suit.
When Una asked the computer to enlarge the saucer section, they exclaimed,” sickbay is gone”.
Chapel could have asked the computer if anyone else is using oxygen. It would have been 10 seconds extra and could have clarified whether anyone bothered to check for other survivors. Major down for me.
That first down, he was asking if it came from their ship. Scotty was not on their ship, so that wasn't one of their shuttlecrafts.
One of the things I love most about this channel, is the seamless transitions. 1:44
Wouldn't even know.
I'm always obsessed with these videos and agree with them every time.. until now. I think that someone did indeed piss in our illustrious host's cornflakes this morning.
This episode should have had 30 ups and maybe two downs. It was a phenomenal episode to cap off a phenomenal season.
For someone who analyses episodes FOR A LIVING he's surprisingly bad at it some times...
I liked the exchange when they meet Scotty. After introductions, Scotty is obviously shown overwhelmed when he says "that's a lot of lieutenants."
I thought about it, and said to myself "Yeah… if this wasn't personal, they probably would've brought more ensigns"
I loved the part of this episode where the person looks up at the shuttle and says, "Is that one of ours?". That's what people do in everyday life, yesterday, today and tomorrow. It was a very human thing to say.
And it was said by a very junior ensign, whose knowledge of shuttle types might be rather limited.
@davidanderson2357 Also, it wasn't one of theirs. It was Scotty, so that shuttle didn't come from the Cayuga.
The real down should be that the seasons are only 10 episodes. As such it's frustrating they don't have enough time to give each character enough development. Season 2 was amazing; loved it!
At least, 13 episodes, but maybe, there are budget constraints.
Plus they wasted nearly 1/3 of the season with gimmick episodes.
Yes, and I HATE CLIFFHANGERS! They had better have at least secured a third season. Yes, there are shows I like that have been canceled and some of them ended with Cliffhangers that will never be resolved. Making a Cliffhanger finale does not guarantee they won't cancel you!
@@EmeraldEyesEsotericyes a third season has already been greenlit 🤗
To think I used to have a hard time waiting for a resolution in the old days of Next Generation's cliffhangers.... They would be resolved in about 3 or 4 months if I remember correctly. This one is probably going to take at least 1.5 years...... 😭
@@Theratronthere are talks that we might possibly get more than 10 episodes, may even go for at least closer to 20
The town set was used in Melanie Scrofano's Wynonna Earp series as the town called Purgatory. Which was a nice callback.
Shut the front door! I thought it was a bit familar but I didn't think there was any way that *Paramount* was hanging out in that cheap area...
And used in S1 of Reacher (a Paramount property)
It’s a small thing but something I really appreciated in this episode was when Pike said “I’m not bursting into song every 10 minutes”. It’s so nice when a series remembers (and acknowledges) events or consequences from previous episodes.
I maintain that when the Gorn captured La'an, Ortegas, and M'Benga, they signed their own death warrants--whenever we get season 3, I expect to see a glorious action episode of those three badasses taking the Gorn ship while Sam keeps the settlers calm, and shouts helpful science tidbits over his shoulder.
We open with a shot of the interior of the Gorn ship. The walls are spattered with copious amounts of blood, much like the colony below. It's Gorn blood. They beamed up the *wrong* away team!
M'Benga appeared in TOS, so he should have some decent plot armor. But something to note is during TOS McCoy is chief medical officer, and M'Benga is still there...
He will be dead in just a few short years. He will have 3 children so he will need to get on that.
@@tjs114 M'Benga probably left for further education, with Dr. Piper (TOS: Where No Man Has Gone Before) taking over, then Piper retires, with McCoy taking over from him, then M'Benga comes back, but has to take a lower position since McCoy's already there as CMO
I don't think that they will all survive.
Damn... What an introduction to Scottie. Love it.
My opinion, way better than future captain Jim Carry.
I reckon, the Red Giant (or whatever it was that the Stardiver was observing) is going to play a part in the resolution of this episode.
The Gorn didn't necessarily die from the vacuum it could also be the Bernoulli effect as all that air was escaping its helmet induced rapid chilling and as we do know the Gorn are very much averse to sudden changes in temperature and cold environments so it could have effectively killed him by freezing.
Loved loved loved that Martin Quinn from Derry Girls is Scotty.
I think you missed a subtext: the colony was not in Gorn space. They wouldn't have done that. The colony was in NEUTRAL space. The Gorn showed up, attacked it, and then AFTERWARDS sent a message to the Federation basically moving the border after the fact. It was a territory grab.
It also led to one of my big downs of the episode: it is not *impossible,* but stretched credulity, that the Federation would let an act like that stand.
The loss of the friendly but unaffiliated colony? Maybe.
The deliberate destruction of a Constitution-class ship, and the murder of nearly its entire crew complement? Never. That would absolutely be an act of war. You can't avoid a shooting war at that point; the Gorn already started it.
Not to mention they also destroyed Scotty's ship.
I agree. But also first of all from the diagram, it seems that the colony was in orbit around the sun, and how would a border be set up so that planets would sometimes be in one territory or the other, especially if it is a feeding ground. Crazy to build a colony there.
The TOS Gorn attack also questioned a border incursion, which in TOS is initially considered a Gorn territory grab, too. If it is something the Gorn become known to do in SNW times, then I would think in Kirk’s Enterprise time they should have known better than to have considered that it may have been the Federation’s error and given them a pass on destroying the outpost.
I would think the whole system would be on one side of the border or the other. It is definitely being considered by the SNW Enterprise as not being in Gorn space.
@@crookedwookie8782 Agreed; the Gorn had already attacked both the colony and two Federation ships. There's trying to be diplomatic to not start a conflict, and then there's responding to a conflict that someone else started.
@@terryt.1643 I'm glad I wasn't the only one bothered by that map. Maybe the Gorn are thinking, "You get it most of the year, then we'll harvest it again next time it comes back around. That's fair, right?"
Point of order: "Is that one of ours?" I think meant "Is that one of the Kayuga's", not "Is that a Federation shuttle?"
‘Down’; the fact that writers put boarders/embarkation/political zone lines between objects ‘inside’ stellar systems, like a straight line between a moon and its parent. Those things move. The line will need to change constantly to keep those two bodies on different sides, which makes them useless as hardline ‘political’ treaty points.
I noted that in a lengthy comment, too. The planet's orbit would take it back to the Federation side in a matter of days, and the planet's rotation would carry the town into Federation space even before the whole planet was back inside.
My biggest pet peeve is writers on sci-fi shows who fundamentally don't understand basic astronomical concepts.
@@CantankerousDave There's so much wrong with "Alpha Quadrant" that I don't even want to start.
It wasn’t a territorial line it was a line of the moment. Line in the sand “Don’t cross here”
And how many other franchises/shows do exactly the same thing🤔
@@Sagitarria That's what I thought too, but for what purpose? The Enterprise was the only federation ship that was there. A long term territorial divide is the only thing that makes sense to me, and in this context he's right. It becomes meaningless due to their movement.
22:03 i kinda called that one a few episodes ago with some discussion about Pelia
The metal spike also penetrated the Gorn's skull, compromising its ability to survive in zero pressure. The Gorn dies because part of his brain get's pulled out from the pressure.
The reason for Ortegas's lack of screen time is that her actress (Melissa Navia) Partner died just before the start of filming of Season 2. I suspect that's why we didn't get the full episode for her. I suspect it will be pushed to Season 3.
That explains why the episode didn't exist, but not why they kept saying it did.
It's not a dig at her at all, it's more I wish the marketing guys and/or production staff that kept saying we were gonna get an Ortegas episode this season would've clarified things so we weren't teased & waiting the entire season.
My condolences!!! 😞
That cliff hanger! And a writer's strike? Anson Mount is going to be as bald at Patrick Stewart by the time the next season shows up. (No shade to the writers, the studios are greedy twats)
Might have to give him shatner a tupay
Production was to start in May, but put on hold due to the strike. So, they are only 3 months behind so far.
The episode held my attention, and I loved the introduction of Scotty but you don't want to think too hard about it...especially the fact that there might have been other survivors in that saucer section. But the season? Overall, one of the strongest in Trek history, dare I say. I would say there are at least three, maybe four classic episodes and for a ten episode season that is extraordinary.
A couple downs, 1. Chapel only survivor, convenient. 2. Did TOS have site-to-site transport? 3. Pike was understandably distressed about what to do after the order to pull back was given at the end, but I am not used to Captains looking so distressed over a decision. Riker just says Fire against Locutus, Picard scowls and decides quickly, Sisko sits down, holds the Baseball, and decides, Janeway threatens and decides and Kirk just does it. No need to see our captains unsure what to do. Just a thought or two.
That was one amazing episode. What a freaking brilliant cast. Everyone shined!
I think the "Is that one of ours" was less about it being a federation shuttle, and more about if it was from the Cayuga, since they didn't seem to have any shuttles deployed at the time.
Engadget reported that Anson Mount had taken paternity leave during much of filming which is why we saw less of him this season. That's my only major disappointment of an otherwise brilliant season.
Pat leave? I love him even more now
Same for Ortegas, she had someone close to her died before the season filming and they gave her a break by having her presence being light this season.
Thank you for sharing this! I was wondering where he was! I was like if he’s one of the greatest Captains in history, show him Captain. It makes much more sense now.
@@cg1704 In Canada, leave is 52 weeks, and the parents can split that up however they want.
Yea before we judge people we need to remember these people have lives, good and bad.
So sad that the season is over.. it came and went like warp 9... Strange New Worlds is my favorite modern Star Trek series.. always enjoy your ups and downs after each episode..
Yeah my favorite too
Regarding Ortegas, my wife pointed out that the actress lost her boyfriend shortly before the season started. She said on Ready Room that she's been struggling all season but the rest of the crew have been very supportive. Perhaps they rejiggered the season to not have an episode rest on her.
No idea if it's true, but it seems like the sort of thing this generation of producers might do.
It was her husband and he also worked on the show.
@@ewarrior9776 Ah, she just said "partner" in the interview which is fairly nondescript. Point remains, though, they may have decided to give her space to work through it and pushed an Ortegas episode for later. If that's the case, mad respect and worthy of removing a down.
It's not the vacuum of space that kills the gorn, it's the extreme low temperature of space, they set up earlier in the episode that cold blooded creatures, like the gorn, cannot survive temperatures like that.
Space has no temperature. It's not cold. Eventually you would freeze, but that would take at least 12 hours for a human body to freeze. And that's from radiating the heat away which is an extremely slow process compared to conduction and convection which is what we experience when touching an object or in an atmosphere like air or water. The most efficient way to transfer heat energy is through molecule to molecule contact, and space is notoriously void of molecules due to not being an atmosphere.
@@Galiant2010 Objects in space, Gorn included, have a temperature. Assuming no direct radiation from a fairly nearby star, it would be quite cold.
@@mgscheue No. That's not how it works. With no convection or conduction to transfer heat away from a naked body in space (never mind one in a suit) it would take hours to radiate away enough heat to freeze, even in intergalactic space far away from any stars. Radiation of energy at 310 kelvin is a very slow process.
In addition to that, if you're in the habitable zone of a star you'll actually bake in space when exposed to sunlight, not freeze. At Earth's distance from our sun, your skin will warm up to close to 100C due to the fact that you're being exposed to a NEARBY UNSHIELDED FUSION REACTOR without an atmosphere or other shielding to protect you. That's why during the Apollo missions to Luna (which all took place during the lunar day), the astronauts needed a lot of cooling in their space suits. So you won't freeze while in orbit of any habitable planet. By definition any Earth-like planet has to be situated at a distance where it's receiving about the same amount of sunlight as Earth, or it wouldn't be in the habitable zone of its star.
If you think differently, it's because movie after movie after TV show has lied to you, because the people with humanities degrees who work as writers on these projects don't know anything about even the most basic of scientific facts.
@@jasonwalker9471 It would be interesting to calculate the power radiated via the Stefan-Boltzman law, and then the time from the heat content and specific heat capacity. Yes, obviously any heat loss would have to be via radiation.
@@mgscheue I'd have to assume a spherical Gorn in a perfect vacuum buuuuutttt.... ;).
Spock didn’t say he never saw a zombie movie. He said he had never seen a zombie.
I was taken aback when Pike had his "oh shit, now what do we do?" moment at the ep end. Until this time, he always seemed self-assured through the series--even when he asked his senior staff for opinions. Maybe this moment will be brief for our beloved Capt. Pike, but it was poignant nonetheless. It had a true air of reality. That was an "up" for me!
If he chooses wrongly, he could start a war that could cost millions of lives.
It's certainly a dramatic cliffhanger pause. I said "to be continued" 30 seconds before the screen did.
The adult Gorn looked really good, and it was basically all practical.
The Gorn were designed & performed by the team that designed the lizard aliens in Zathura - the "Zorgons".
That team do a *GREAT* job of AMAZING lizard aliens by using a combo of suits, puppetry & CGI.
@@kpl-CA I thought of the aliens from Zathura and that makes sense - smart choice by the showrunners or producers.
I also liked how because of zero gravity, the fight scene w/ the Gorn on the bridge was in slo-mo just like w/ Kirk in TOS 😆
re: your first down. When he says "is that one of ours" I think he's asking if its a Cayuga shuttle. And, unless I'm mistaken, it isn't. It's Scotty's shuttle.
One _big_ point - the Gorn have attacked a federation starship and only after that said its in their territory, MASSIVE difference from attacking a federation starship in their territory when the federation know its their territory. Plus the map is rubbish - its a line separating the planet and the moon, minor fact moons orbit planets, planets orbit suns - you don't claim part of a solar system, you have to claim the whole system or its meaningless.
Are you gonna argue with the Gorn on that point?
Exactly. The line was just the Gorn saying “stay back”
The shuttle line makes sense to me. There was only one ship in orbit and it was not conducting shuttle operations. I can see why he would ask the captain if it was one of theirs, as in a Cayuga shuttle.
This show has reignited my love of Star Trek!
I hate cliffhanger ending off a season. It's brilliant for an episode if we get the follow-up next week. But, with how shows are produced and canceled now a days, it would be a tragedy if SNW got canceled before we got a resolution. I don't mind the suspens, it's just the uncertainty of the TV landscape.
1. It's not that Spock has EVA training. He clearly said that he was the only one with the physical strength to haul the rockets and the scientific precision to aim them. He said it out loud. He might not be the only one on the ship with that combination, but he was the only one in that room. 2. When the Ensign asks "Is that one of ours?" he is not asking "Is that a Federation shuttle?", he meant "Is that one of the Cayuga's?", which it was not. It was Scotty's shuttle, from the Sundiver, coming in hot.
I understand the purpose of cliff hangers but COME ON this was underhandedly brutal
1000% agree. especially with the season potentially being "delayed" with the strikes. but, i can wait if it means no AI scripts and all that nonsense.
Yes, I screamed in agony when the screen just showed “To Be Continued.” I’m sure my neighbors thought some was hurt! It was well done tho! Lol
That's how I felt at end of BOBW. They're always maddening.
Yes my mouth dropped and I said u gotta be kidding me
@@nel1962 BOBW Part 1 was aired June 16, 1990. Part 2 was aired September 22, 1990. A 3-month wait is at least tolerable. But when part 2 of Hegemony could be 12 to 18 months out??? That is more than infuriating to me.
In the same way that it makes sense for Gorn to have tails despite them not having tails in TOS, I think it makes sense to re-present them as vulnerable to vacuum. I view this episode as correcting a mistake, not committing a crime against canon.
I read Spock saying "I'm the only one who can do it" as obvious bs that the other two completely saw through, and that everyone in the room knew he just wanted to go so he could see if he could find Chapel. Unfortunately the fact that he doesn't seem to be looking for her when he gets there kinda throws that out the window.
It's shocking that they made no effort at all to check for survivors. RIP to the 12 crewmembers on deck 4 who were hoping for rescue.
From Una's perspective. I see her thinking to herself, "You want to go fine, I won't have to send a red-shirt out there against their will."
@@Vipre-hopefully all off-screen. :) Reminds me in S01 E01, Una left the USS Archer abandoned while on the surface. First command when arriving Pike should have told La'An to go secure the ship. It's like they need real naval officers as consultants for the nuances.
I thought it would have had to do with the setting of the rockets. Without knowing the full extent of the damage, it would have taken a brain like Spock's to come up with the secure positioning and angle of the rockets on the fly to ensure they could both move the saucer and have it change direction upon crashing. That would have made complete sense why he had to go. But they didn't explain it very well.
@20:20 Where was it shown that Gorn can survive the vacuum of space without a suit. (In that _Enterprise_ episode the Gorn, Mirror Archer and the rest were all in an enclosed pressurized environment).
It's subjective, I know, and Sean et al. take the time to do the videos, and do a great job too on the whole, but to give so many Downs to this very engaging atypically solid Trek episode, whilst giving the Lower Decks crossover a beyond perfect episode score, well... it just annoys me more that the other one did so subjectively well.
I never understood why borders in space shows involve going THROUGH the middle of a solar system 'cause every few weeks you'll be in the enemy territory.
Because plot
I noticed that too.
If the Gorn planned to stay in the planet for a short time, it's acceptable.
I see it more of the Gorn telling the Federation that there is a line and there will be no problems as long as they stay on their side. You could also see it like this that to the Gorn their borders could not be totally set but they fluctuate because events. Like the system might not be normally inside their borders but because they got stimulated by the solar activity in the other system it now became part of their area to hunt for food and reproduce.
Orbital mechanics are secondary to the power of plot!
This second season of Strange New Worlds was outstanding! My only disappointment is that it was only ten episodes. I don't think I've been this excited(almost pon farish) about Star Trek since the early 1990s when the original movies were still being made and we had The Next Generation.
But it wasn't about Strange New Worlds. It was about feelings. Bet you're looking forward to the hugging and crying of Discovery.
@stevkyt2374 haha your a funny person. I tried my hardest to like Discovery but I stopped watching when they pulled the Buck Rogers.
Watching "Ready Room" for this episode they visit the FX house that did the work for this episode, and I believe the head person they were interviewing mentions that they worked early in their career with the person who was the head of FX for Aliens (Stan Winston) among many other awesome movies. I'm very sure that they were pulling inspiration from their time working with him.
My take on Spock needing to be the one to go wasn't about being able to EVA but about calculating the exact points on the hull to give them the needed push to adjust the course of the saucer. Just like years later how he calculates the speed and trajectory needed to slingshout around the sun and time travel. No one else on board has the grey matter to do the job.
While the crashing shuttle was Starfleet, it wasn't from the USS Cayuga, so that may be where the confusion lay. That was Scotty's shuttle that had travelled from an adjoining star system. There is a big debate on whether TOS shuttlecraft have warp-drives, and ultimately the warp-capable shuttle in "The Menagerie" was an illusion, as were its occupants.
In fairness, we saw a lot of people in TOS holding tricorders the way Sam Kirk did.
It could simply be that there's antennae for different sensors in one end or the other of the tricorder.
And in Firefly, whose movie Serenity gets a bit of a nod in this episode, their savant pilot/toy dinosaur collector Wash holds the ship's control yoke upside-down in the pilot episode.
Sean your work this season gets a dilithium up
Season 2 was amazing, I truly enjoyed each episode. Especially watching Pike doing things in the background that were just hilarious.
Anson Mount's comedic timing is great
One big down for me (that I haven't seen mentioned) was the Gorn border, for two reasons:
1) So, apparently the Federation will just accept what they say is the border? Borders don't get to move - and be recognized by other powers - "just because".
2) The border goes thru, not only a star system, but cuts across the a planetary system, so that the moon is "Neutral" but the planet is "Gorn"? How many hours until the planet would have moved enough in its orbit to be on the Neutral side again? Hell, who would accept a border that cuts thru a system?
It just makes no *redacted* sense, except for plot contrivance purposes.
A big down for me was when they discovered the smashed saucer section they said there was the possibility of some of the crew surviving. However, they still planned to crash the saucer into the planet without checking first for survivors. Also very convenient that Nurse Chapel was the "only" survivor from the saucer. But hey ho, I enjoyed the episode, even if it did all feel a little too easy.
Something I didn't catch in my comment(s) about it that I saw someone else point out: The saucer section appears to be on the Federation side of the line! Probably. The map isn't labelled well, but the main demarcation line runs across the image, and the Gorn side is shaded red. There's an identical dotted line circling the planet, and the saucer is inside of that circle, but that area isn't shaded red. My best conjecture is that since the unshaded circle goes around the planet but isn't centered on it is that it shows the area of the interference field & is not directly related to the demarcation line, meaning a) they *should* have been sending teams over to search and b) the Gorn on board were in violation of their own proposed border (though, they may have intended it to only apply to the Federation, not to themselves). If being on the inside of the circle but not on the Gorn side of the main line *doesn't* mean it was on the Federation side, it was right on the edge, so they should have pulled it out with the tractor beam, then searched it (not crossing the line & not firing weapons, so they wouldn't be doing anything they were ordered not to). Under *no* circumstance should they have jumped directly from having evidence that there could be survivors to deciding to toss it at the planet (where they did *not* have any recent evidence of survivors aside from their own volunteers who had just landed there against orders)!
It was a fun episode, but the writing had some big issues that could have been easily addressed. The script could have been ready with one final pass.
Didn't we all notice the gorn's brains get evacuated by spock? It didn't die of exposure.
oh dear spock and brains shudder.
And cold. Just like with hemmer
I just rewatched the scene. You are quite right!
And, if the gorn can survive in space, why do they need the spacesuit at all? This makes no sense.
@@poil8351 Brain, brain, what is brain?!
My big down for the episode was the "The Gorn are jamming sensors, communications, and transporters." line where in the SAME DAMN SCENE we have them pick up a Gorn ship warping in and they get a message FROM STARFLEET about the new border. I'm fine with magic space technobable but you have to have it be consistent in the same episode LET ALONE THE SAME SCENE!
A couple of downs from me: First, we know Scotty's a good guy, but no one there knows him and his story is very suspicious, yet they have no trouble trusting him. Had he been some no-name LT. we definitely would have thought he somehow had led the Gorn there.
Second, the zero G fight with Spock, Chapel, and the Gorn: movement is space is not slow! This is an old misunderstanding because astronauts are trained to move slowly so they don't thrash around wildly, but things getting knocked around and people jumping, etc. would actually happen much faster than in air/gravity. The tension doesn't work when it doesn't make sense. They should be trained in zero G combat, and could have actually shown off some fancy moves that couldn't be done in gravity.
Thank you!!! Yes, I was yelling at the screen "Jeeezus, hire some actual sci-fi writers!!!!!" during that slow-motion fight.
tbf, I thought that, only reason I trusted the guy was his name and its a character I know. Scott was acting shady AF like a Leyland Orser character.
All sci fi shows take some liberties. There's no sound in space either. Do you want all space scenes to be mute?
Things are adapted to get some middle ground between what looks cool and what is real.
If you are going to be this picky you might as well throw every space sci fi show that has ever been in the trash.
And ST has never been about being the most realistic one. If you're after that go watch something like The Expanse.
I thought Pike calling the Gorn monsters was a callback to La'An describing them and his respect for her.
Christine Chapel is a awesome character. In TOS, she had only adored Spock and talked to McCoy from time to time. It was only in one episode that she was really cool when she found her missing fiancé again. That was really scary and sad. I'm glad she got another chance to shine in this series. Jess Bush is doing an excellent job. I hope it stays with the series.🖖