“Children of the Comet”

This episode got everything right. Literally everything.

Whoever cast Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura deserves a standing ovation.

This episode shows that not only is Strange New Worlds going to be episodic like classic Trek, it is also going to be ensemble-focused like classic Trek (post-TOS, anyway).

The setup here was straight out of TOS. The Enterprise and her crew feel small in a universe of wondrous things both ancient and far beyond them. Even TNG largely ditched that feeling after season one in favor of the Enterprise-D being the flagship of a bustling interstellar civilization. This felt like pure "we barely know what's out there but let's throw ourselves at it" Star Trek.

And Pike's dealing with the alien Shepherds--the words he chose and his attitude--were also much more TOS-era than TNG. He was diplomatic and friendly, but also no-nonsense and short with their arguments that the comet should be allowed to hit the planet "if that's what it wants to do." He recognized that it would be futile to try to persuade them otherwise (you aren't going to argue them out of their religion in an hour) and didn't waste time trying beyond a perfunctory effort. Instead he immediately went for trying to solve the problem around them rather than through them (either diplomatically or militarily). Personally, I really appreciated this choice. It didn't feel exactly like what Kirk would have done, but it did feel more like what a Kirk-era captain would have done than a Picard-era captain, if that makes sense.

Spock on the away team and his two pep-talks to Uhura were awesome and perfectly in character, especially for where he is supposed to be in his life at this point in time. Shades of The Galileo Seven without retreading the same ground. Plus the actual second speech I thought was downright awesome. I can't help it--I'm floored, because these lines as written sounded EXACTLY like Spock to me.

The art direction continues to astound. The musical score in the episode . . . and I don't just mean the music itself, but how the music was used, like, when it was prominent and when it wasn't . . . felt like an excellent cross between a throwback to an older style of television and a minor one. And the little touches, like hinting at the Star Trek fanfare as they're standing on the transporter to beam down. I just loved every second of that.

We finally get some backstory on Uhura after nearly 60 years. We learn where she's from and something of her family. The writers remember that the real Uhura (sorry, Zoe Saldana) loves music and singing. Everything from her attitude and demeanor to relaxed body language and the way she delivers her lines--the earrings they chose for her--it's all exactly as I would imagine a Uhura who's allowed to do more than say "hailing frequencies open, captain" and be more central to the plots would be portrayed.

Speaking of the dinner party--can you imagine Kirk doing that? No, he would never. The burden of command, and all that. The remove of authority. The only people he can really talk to are the ship's surgeon and Spock, his second in command. Even Picard was the same (of course he loosened up over the years leading to that card game in All Good Things). Not Pike. This was perfectly in keeping with the Pike we know from Discovery, and shows that you can be both friendly and approachable and firmly in command. I love this about his character. Archer tried it, but never pulled it off convincingly, in my opinion. Whether the writing or the actor, it's hard to say in that case.

It's not a four-star episode by the standards of the best of classic Trek. It's better than any episode of Enterprise, though. Seriously. Better than every single episode Enterprise ever put out. I'm mentioning Enterprise because that show tried an approach similar in spirit (not plot) to this in the episodes immediately following its pilot, and utterly failed. Whereas this episode did it completely right.

If you've ever liked Star Trek, you owe it to yourself to watch this episode, or you're cheating yourself out of something you'd certainly enjoy if you can put aside all the baggage and just let yourself.

Oh! I almost forgot. The relief bridge officer at the conn for Number One (who moved around stations all over the bridge), the redhead, he looks suspiciously like Lt. Jose Tyler from The Cage, doesn't he? They didn't name him in the episode, I don't think, but I wonder if he was meant to be him.

One of the interesting things about this show is, we're starting our time with these characters long into their relationships with one another, for some of them. It's 2259 and The Cage was 2254. It's generally believed Pike took command of the Enterprise in 2250, so that's nine years' tenure as captain of the Enterprise already once we join his adventures (give or take one year as captain of Discovery). Number One presumably has been on the ship with him that whole time, and Spock since 2254 (per the Short Trek Q&A). That's a long time for the main trio to have developed a comfortably, friendly working relationship that anticipates what the others will do. I think that's believably being shown on screen. It's also kind of a new setup for a Star Trek show, which generally begin right at the start of the voyage and the crew's association with one another. I like the vibe,

If the supposedly greenlit Kelvin timeline Trek movie doesn't lift off, I could totally see a Star Trek movie with this crew. Anson Mount has incredible screen presence and charisma and seems really comfortable in his role as Pike.

Keeping my fingers crossed that this series will break the mold and be the rare live-action Trek series that has an excellent first season.

Another 3 star nuTrek episode...who knew?

A very enjoyable outing, highlighted by Celia Rose Gooding's performance as Uhura. I appreciated that the writers leaned into what little backstory was available for the character, made her the hero, and ably used music to to construct a fairly unique first contact scenario. The episode was perhaps the most meaningful for the character since The Animated Series' 'The Lorelei Signal.' That's not saying much, but it was great to see Uhura be given such attention. Can only hope, similar to Hoshi Sato in Enterprise, that the writers steadily build on the character over time.

The episodic format was refreshing. And, unlike Discovery, I found that the design choices are facilitating the series' place within canon. Perhaps most notably in this regard, the shuttle craft Spock manned seemed like the perfect modernization of what was seen in The Original Series more than 50 years ago. Nice touch.

Finally, I'm hoping that not every episode addresses Pike's fate. Although it's certainly central to the character, I can see the story thread becoming a bit tedious.

Looking forward to next week's episode, and, even if it's not so great, can leave it behind and look forward to the next one. Good start so far.

Solidly enjoyable and well-constructed on all fronts. Like the pilot, it's not groundbreaking material plot-wise. The tropes we've all seen a million times are present, but they're presented with gusto and a slick production that prevents them from feeling completely worn-out. I do wonder how long that will remain the case.

The heart of any Star Trek episode, though, is the characters, and the episode delivered solidly on every front. Nobody here feels like a bland, placeholder cipher like Disco's bridge crew, or for that matter, ENT or VOY. From Ortegas' cockiness, to La'an's militancy, to Number One's heartfelt concern for Pike, all the supporting players in this story got some nice stuff to work with.

The main players of Uhura, Pike and Spock also got some solid character work in. Anson Mount continues to just knock it out of the park as the seasoned space veteran. Ethan Peck's delivery of Spock's first "pep talk" made me laugh out loud. And Celia Rose Gooding is giving us a wonderful portrayal of someone with the youthful combination of confidence that comes with knowing they've got talent, but uncertainty about their place in the world.

Special mention also needs to go to the VFX sequences, which finally, *finally*, showed us that NuTrek can get it right. The ships in the space battle felt like the large cruisers they are, rather than nimble dogfighters, and the camera work was slow and wide enough that I always felt like I knew where they were and what was happening. Just great stuff all around and I hope it continues through the rest of the series. (I also very much appreciated the phasers being beams rather than bolts, and the TOS sound effects).

It's too early to gush over this show, but so far it's really good. Please keep it up.

Overall I can't really complain. The stuff with Spock's pep talk was funny. The solution to the main problem was very Trekian.
I also like the fact that Pike doesn't feel the need to go on every single away mission.

The only little problem I have is the fact that the Captain's cabin looks like it's the size of a banquet hall and was decorated by someone who read the lifestyle section of a 1970's issue of Playboy. It's got a fireplace, a bar, and a working kitchen. Something tells me Pike's got a water bed in there somewhere.

It’s like the writers dared themselves to put some Star Trek in their Star Trek. And it worked! Really good episode. Not up there with the best of TNG or DS9, but still really solid

Celia Rose Gooding is charming enough. More trauma plot / backstory was a given though, unfortunately. Don't really get why this is necessary. Those darn shuttlecraft accidents, huh?

I find the mention of Kirk already irritating - it yanks me out of it. YMMV.

The story didn't particularly grab me. I would say it was okay. The okay-ness of it is enough to *consider* going to yellow alert if the okay-ness doesn't start picking up and cruising into good. I see the head writer's name was attached to the credits; a bit of a nondescript debut, IMO.

The volume of quippy dialogue is concerning and already a touch off-putting. Light, breezy ... and vacuous? Not what I'd hoped for. I can only hope this stylised approach gives way to something more genuine from the writers' room.

** 1/2 out of ****

NGL, this is definitely an improvement over Picard and Discovery, but JFC, hire a science consultant or sth.

La'an: "what are harmonics, I skipped music"

"Harmonics" is a widely used PHYSICS term. How are you even in Starfleet? What do you think those "phaser HARMONICS" are that you just mentioned eleven minutes ago in the same episode? Sigh.

What a simply lovely episode. It hits so many of the right notes, and is (IMHO) a slight step up from the pilot. I credit this to being primarily written by Henry Alonso Myers rather than Akiva Goldsman. As I've said before, I am a huge fan of The Magicians, which had some of best character writing (and an amazing mixture of humor and pathos) and I looked forward to seeing what he could do in the Trekverse. My anticipation, it turns out, was not without cause. The dialogue here just comes across as more mature, more naturalistic, and...more human...than in the pilot.

Otherwise, the two episodes are pretty similar. We have a stock TOS trope - in this case, investigate a mysterious artifact of an elder race. In a very real way, the core of the plot here is also analogous to Discovery Season 4 (must make first contact with a race with a weird language in order to save millions) though the stakes are much more appropriate to an hour of episodic TV, and everything is edited down to the minimum needed in order to tell the story (I appreciate the lack of plot bloat). I also appreciate that not everything is answered at the end of the episode - one of my favorite elements of TOS which the later series somehow forgot about was the air of mystery - that there was a big galaxy filled with weird and inexplicable events. This felt like a taste of that returning.

Of course, as with the pilot, the plot is secondary, because this is really about character - in this case, Uhura, in her first real focus since TAS's The Loralei Signal. I am grateful they chose to focus on one of the supporting cast rather than doing the obvious thing and following up a Pike pilot with a Spock or Una episode. She has a coherent arc, from someone with deep misgivings about her role in Starfleet - and deep insecurity about her lack of experience as a cadet - into someone much more confident regarding her skills and her future. I love Celia Rose Gooding's portrayal of Uhura - she absolutely nails the TOS character (unlike Zoe Saldana, who honestly just came across as an attractive black woman playing another role). Honestly though this story is a bit heartbreaking considering we know Uhura is going to be stuck in essentially her current role for 34 years (thankfully PIC established she finally gets a captaincy some time after TUC, but still). The story also made use of both Uhura's facility for languages and her love of music (it also helps that Celia Rose Gooding actually had a background in musicals, meaning she's an excellent singer herself).

There are secondary threads through this episode as well, and all of them were well done. We get a little bit of a continuing arc regarding Pike's trauma at the foreknowledge of his death. I like the level of close friendship without any sexual tension between Pike and Una, and I love she's a good enough friend to him to try and convince him to consider other options. The last shot of the episode, with Pike looking at the cadets (currently children) whose lives he will save in 10 years came damn close to making be bawl. Spock acting as Uhura's sounding board gave him the opportunity to give several well-written speeches, of varying levels of effectiveness within the episode, but all of them showcasing Spock's earnestness combined with his own still-growing nature. He got a little bit of an arc when it came to understanding humor, which was...cute. We also get a little introduction to Hemmer in the first act, and Ortegas gets a tiny bit more to do here.

I did have a handful of nits to pick with this episode however. One of them was the use of La'an - or rather the lack of use. Look, she got heavy focus last week - I was not expecting her to be prominent this time around. But she went on the away mission with Spock, Uhura, and Sam Kirk and did...nothing. She did absolutely nothing. She made a couple of technobabble comments, and noted she couldn't sing. They should have just left her on the bridge TBH - three people is enough for an away mission, and I found her hanging staring at them just weirdly distracting. The other issue is that I think the third-act solution that Spock came up with seemed to come out of nowhere, and partially undercut the story's focus on Uhura. I suppose it's not realistic that a cadet would save everyone alone, but I was hoping that there would actually be communication between the comet and the Enterprise. Ahh well.

Still, damn near close to perfect.

Jammer, it's really refreshing to read a review where you're not burdened with trying to come up with positive critique while otherwise restraining yourself on the negative aspects. It's like night and day.

I have to say I would like to give this series a shot. The only downside is I may have to go back and watch DISC S2 for backstory.

Delightful.

All I really want from Star Trek is for it to be a show that's about things. I want a show that dares to ask questions, to make me---the viewer---pause and think "how would I handle this situation?" At the heart of Star Trek is a show unafraid to pose an ethical dilemma, and while the crisis at the heart of this one is hardly the most ponderous (the proper ethical choice is pretty quickly understood), I appreciate that the show still took the time to ask "how do we make the right choice without wrong consequences."

Overall, the episode offered a nice blend of TOS' sci-fi short story writing and TNG's emphasis on the characters. If it keeps that up it'll be a Star Trek show unlike any other. The Berman-produced shows all had a particular feel, even DS9 (the odd duck of the bunch) followed the same plot/character balance as TNG, VOY, and ENT. In those shows, plot and character were usually divided on a 70-30 basis, with extra attention given to the character at the center of the plot. Episodes like Yesterdays Enterprise were rare exceptions. On the other hand, TOS was a completely different production, and it emphasized plot over character in a big way. Episodes like The Galileo Seven were rare exceptions.

SNW seems to be striving for an even 50-50 split. There is a clear and easily-summarized plot at work here, but the episode isn't really about the comet, it's about Uhura and Pike. Both of these characters are the focus, with the former going through an arc where she decides Star Fleet is more than just a place to run away to but is, instead, a place to belong. In the case of Pike, there is more exploration of his inner conflict regarding the foreknowledge of his death. He wrestles with the notion of fate, an idea which comes full circle at the end of the episode when we learn whoever sent the comet possessed some means to know the future and plan accordingly.

And even THAT is set-up in the beginning of the episode with the Aenar-Andorian chief engineer who possesses telepathic and mild precognitive abilities.

This is maybe the tightest, best put-together episode of Star Trek I've seen since the fifth season of Voyager. No wasted moments, most of the humor landed, great special effects, a solid sci-fi story that kept me guessing how it would end, and good development of the characters.

Speaking of: Pike, Una, Spock, La'an, Ortegas, Uhura, Chapel - that's seven members of the senior staff/billed cast that I can name. I might've spelled one or two wrong but I know their names. The chief doctor's name I can't yet recall, and the chief engineer I don't yet know. That's it. I know seven of nine (heh). The point? If you put a gun to my head and asked me to name the Discovery crew...

Michael, Tilly, Stamets, uh...robo lady? I got nothing.

I know this cast and crew. I can describe their personalities. I can anticipate who they would respond to a situation. I know them after just TWO episodes. That used to be expected with Star Trek, and now, finally, it is again.

9/10 - Children of the Comet is a well made hour of science fiction and a darn good episode of Star Trek.Delightful.

All I really want from Star Trek is for it to be a show that's about things. I want a show that dares to ask questions, to make me---the viewer---pause and think "how would I handle this situation?" At the heart of Star Trek is a show unafraid to pose an ethical dilemma, and while the crisis at the heart of this one is hardly the most ponderous (the proper ethical choice is pretty quickly understood), I appreciate that the show still took the time to ask "how do we make the right choice without wrong consequences."

Overall, the episode offered a nice blend of TOS' sci-fi short story writing and TNG's emphasis on the characters. If it keeps that up it'll be a Star Trek show unlike any other. The Berman-produced shows all had a particular feel, even DS9 (the odd duck of the bunch) followed the same plot/character balance as TNG, VOY, and ENT. In those shows, plot and character were usually divided on a 70-30 basis, with extra attention given to the character at the center of the plot. Episodes like Yesterdays Enterprise were rare exceptions. On the other hand, TOS was a completely different production, and it emphasized plot over character in a big way. Episodes like The Galileo Seven were rare exceptions.

SNW seems to be striving for an even 50-50 split. There is a clear and easily-summarized plot at work here, but the episode isn't really about the comet, it's about Uhura and Pike. Both of these characters are the focus, with the former going through an arc where she decides Star Fleet is more than just a place to run away to but is, instead, a place to belong. In the case of Pike, there is more exploration of his inner conflict regarding the foreknowledge of his death. He wrestles with the notion of fate, an idea which comes full circle at the end of the episode when we learn whoever sent the comet possessed some means to know the future and plan accordingly.

And even THAT is set-up in the beginning of the episode with the Aenar-Andorian chief engineer who possesses telepathic and mild precognitive abilities.

This is maybe the tightest, best put-together episode of Star Trek I've seen since the fifth season of Voyager. No wasted moments, most of the humor landed, great special effects, a solid sci-fi story that kept me guessing how it would end, and good development of the characters.

Speaking of: Pike, Una, Spock, La'an, Ortegas, Uhura, Chapel - that's seven members of the senior staff/billed cast that I can name. I might've spelled one or two wrong but I know their names. The chief doctor's name I can't yet recall, and the chief engineer I don't yet know. That's it. I know seven of nine (heh). The point? If you put a gun to my head and asked me to name the Discovery crew...

Michael, Saru, Tilly, Stamets, uh...robo lady? I got nothing.

I know this cast and crew. I can describe their personalities. I can anticipate who they would respond to a situation. I know them after just TWO episodes. That used to be expected with Star Trek, and now, finally, it is again.

9/10 - Children of the Comet is a well-made hour of science fiction and a darn good episode of Star Trek.

sorry about the double post

@Peter G., you absolutely do not have to go back and watch DISC S2. Everything you need to know or have refreshed is explained and shown in the SNW pilot. Really, the only thing that really matters from DISC is that Pike knows his destiny, which you can get from the dialogue itself because they re-explain it.

@Peter G - No you don't. Just watch this. Discovery will depress you in comparison. :-)

What are the odds the producers see the tremendous response to this show and we get an episodic Discovery season 5?

I will say that given Episode 1 focused on Pike and Episode 2 focused on Uhura I do now have an expectation that every single episode will serve as an "introduction" of sorts to the main cast.

Indeed, we know that the press have seen the first five episodes, and have confirmed that episode 5 is a Spock episode, and that there's a Una episode in there as well (I believe it's next week). So I'm hoping we also get episodes for Ortegas/Chapel/M'Benga/La'an/Hemmer.

Certainly with nine main cast members and 10 episodes, they have time to give each character an extended introduction if they so desire. We will see.

Solid point from @StarMan, one I omitted from my own response: there is a lot of childhood / young adult trauma / backstory in Trek. Not just in recent Trek either: Jack Crusher, Ian Andrew Troi, Kestra Troi, Mogh, Betty Riker, Tasha Yar's parents, K'Ehleyr, Jennifer Sisko, Sarah Sisko . . . A crutch for writers, though, in this episode, it did not seem to be needed.

Finally, and not to make too large a point, but I did find the hazing to be a bit out of place. I realize it was very tame and lighthearted, but I suppose I would hope in the idealized future of Star Trek that individuals would have outgrown as much. At least Finnegan isn't a member of the crew.

This was a bit a better story than last week's, so 3.5 out of 4 Jamme Scale.

Uhura was great to watch, going from nervous about whether she even belonged in Starfleet, to confident when she realized she had something in common with the way technology communicated. Also, using music to talk was a very unique alien feel.

Spock was also good fun to watch, and I look forward to seeing if Hemmer continues to channel McCoy.

at last!
a good respectable star trek series true to the original conception of this show. Unlike the absurd mess of discovery which must be cancelled ( and
unfortunately the second season of picard, i really liked the first season and i hope that the 3d will come back to form) thiw is a good show .Ok it's only 2 episodes but it shows great premise

Now this, this is Star Trek.

Cadet Uhura's self doubt mirrors Hoshi Sato's similar insecurities from Enterprise's first season. Spock and Uhura harmonizing almost made me want to yell "ALLAMARAINE!" But shap it: this is solid, entertaining and actually thought provoking. Our heroes aren't automatically right because their names are in the credits. They succeed in spite of themselves, it's wonderful to see.

There's so much to love about the Enterprise design. The ship looks both colorful and appropriately moody, the vessel looks lived in, not as clean, sterile and empty as Discovery so often appears.

Ortega seems destined to deliver the Tom Paris style quips and La'an Noonien-Singh appears to be pretty much invulnerable to pain? No wonder she survived the Gorn. Fascinating to see how this continues. Onward!

Wow, almost 4 stars from Jammer. I've seen lots of people critical of Picard/Disco praising this episode elsewhere as well.

Sorry for the double post.

I always thought the TOS Andorians were extremely creepy:

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/5/5b/Shras.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130219172918&path-prefix=en

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c4/JourneyBabel.jpg/220px-JourneyBabel.jpg

They had a waxy, sickly, sinister quality which I liked, and the shade of blue used on them was almost nauseating.

The promotional material for this episode advertises an Andorian/Aenar redesign:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-zvUZCXMAIDNHD.jpg

I think it works well. The production designers seem to have emphasized that demonic quality seen in TOS.

Excited for Str Trek to be fun again. Leaving aside all other criticisms, neither DSC not PIC were ever anything close to being “fun”.

This is how you do Trek!
A problem
Dilemma
Solutions
Thinking
Tension
Resolution
With an unknown

This is the long-overdue first real episode of Star Trek we've been waiting for since it returned to television in 2017. Bravo.

So "Oh, on the Starship Enterprise" wasn't their first musical collaboration. Fascinating.

Jeffrey's Tube:

"What are the odds the producers see the tremendous response to this show and we get an episodic Discovery season 5? "

That would be as redundant as if TNG and VOY had run concurrently.

Wow, just as good as last week! What a wonderful show :)

@Peter G., you absolutely can watch this without watching any Discovery, as @Jammer says.

Don’t miss it - SNW is the Trek we’ve been waiting 20 years to see!

Like most others, and for all the reasons given upthread, I loved this episode. I am in the process of re-watching Season 2 of Discovery, just to watch Pike again. No need to re-hash how toe-curlingly cringeworthy much of Disco is, but I am holding my nose and getting through it, just to see Anson Mount's performances. I thought I was the only one who thought he was the best Star Trek captain to come down the pike (haha) in a long time. Fortunately, many others thought so, too!

I still think Saru would make a far better captain than (erggggg) Michael Burnham, but that's for another discussion.

@ Jaxon

Oh, I dunno. The setting is different enough. Disco is a magic ship that can jump anywhere, maybe even another galaxy (sure, they said the mycelial network is only galactic, but they can handwave that like they do tons of other stuff). I do see your point in that even if they do, it would be the same sorts of stories being told on the whole, just in a different locale. But might the setting being different make the stories different enough? Plus, a 13-episode Disco season + a 10-episode SNW season = 23 episodes, or still less than a TNG/VOY season of 26 episodes.

I feel like the episodes of Disco season 4 we responded to the best were closest to being self-contained. I also feel like the "big" serialized arcs of the last two seasons (the Burn, the DMA) ultimately slightly disappointed in the payoff department. I'm not so sure trying a different approach for one season would be a bad thing. I also think the added dimension it would be sure to provide the characters would help us care all the more about any high-stakes serialized story they tried to tell afterward.

If you want to collapse floors on a building for high-stakes dramatic effect, you have to make sure you build floors on a building first in between collapsing them, or all you have is a pile of rubble sitting where a foundation is supposed to be. Or something. I don't know, that's a bad metaphor and I can't be bothered to make it better. But you get what I mean anyway. DS9's serialization was so effective because it took time to breathe and make us give a damn about the people going through the story. Disco could take some time to tell some stories about its characters in episodes like this episode of SNW before the next evil universe that wants to eat our universe shows up, or whatever. That way we actually care a bit before Michael Burnham eventually leads every sentient being in our universe in giving a massive hug to the evil universe, causing it to see the error of its ways and break off to eat something else, you know?

Jeffrey's Tube said:

" DS9's serialization was so effective because it took time to breathe and make us give a damn about the people going through the story."

This is why I miss the era where a seasosn was 20-26 episodes instead of 8-13.

DS9 could do a "One Little Ship" or a "Chimera" detour in the middle of the Dominion War because there were spare episodes to play with.

I should preface by saying I liked this episode. As Jammer says, this is retreading familiar ground, but it is finally done well. I can't quite believe it but I am looking forward to next week's Star Trek episode.

That being said, it has become very apparent that, even in good episodes, NuTrek writers neither understand nor like the Prime Directive. In this installment we see a contradiction with how this directive is interpreted in TNG. The real big issue, though, has to do with the first episode. It feels like the writers sourced their understanding of the PD from popular culture rather than actual Star Trek, and fall into the popular trope of believing it is an order that applies to "prewarp societies" only.

In fact, the PD broadly seeks to enshrine maximum respect for national (in this case, planetary) self-determination in order to reign in the colonialist and imperialist tendencies that follow from exploration. Its application to prewarp societies is particularly stringent because it is accepted practice that avoiding contact is the only possible way to respect these societies' natural development, but the PD is binding in all other scenarios as well. There are countless examples of this, such as the Federation's inability to interfere in the Klingon Civil War in "Redemption." This isn't about pesky continuity issues (which bother me only relatively) but goes to the heart of the matter: What Pike does in "Strange New Worlds," which is interfere in a foreign political matter by saying "I have the bigger gun" simply runs counter to everything that the Federation is supposed to represent. Meddling into foreign affairs with "our politics" is just as bad as revealing to a prewarp society that aliens exist. And yes, I know Pike gets away with it by finding a loophole, but these writers don't seem to understand that the actions he takes in that episode run counter to what people who have sworn to protect the PD would consider ethical.

Part of the reason they don't understand it, I think, is because they find the ideology behind the Roddemberrian Prime Directive repulsive. I believe we are very unlikely to see any NuTrek episodes in which the PD is upheld or seriously considered, rather than bypassed or reinterpreted (or applied in cases in which there is no moral ambiguity, such as bad aliens threatening peaceful aliens). This reflects how Western liberal sensibilities have shifted since the 60s, likely due to neoliberalism and greter distance from the decolonization processes: Today's liberals find the idea of NOT imposing their progressive values on others (say, uncontacted nations who are sexist homophobes) despicable. Which is an issue when you are writing within the inherited Star Trek universe.

I wonder what nuTrek sensibilities would think if it stumbled upon Angel One.

Wold they find it repugnant in a reverse sense, or would they find it as karma for Earth history.

Quick review from Jammer!

Good, solid episode of Star Trek. Three stars (I'm very mildly the opposite of jammer in that I rated the previous episode 3.5 stars). I love the episodic format, with a slight tinge of serialization being threaded through it.

Jammer wrote: "The captain's dinner is a great venue for the series to break the ice among all the characters, including chief engineer Hemmer (Bruce Horak), a blind Aenar who appears to have a chip on his shoulder the size of 'Melora,' but which may be a joke."

Jammer, your writing is usually so clean, clear, and precise (which I love) but I wonder if you left a word out here or something? I don't understand what you mean, or even the grammar of this sentence. What exactly may be a joke?

One little complaint. As on FOR ALL MANKIND, I do wish they would make some attempt to actually portray the lower gravity on the comet when they are walking around. Instead they just lampshaded it.

@ Dreubarik

It never made much moral sense that the Federation would let an entire species of sentient beings go extinct in "Homeward" rather than negatively impact their civilization through assisting them. The complete extinction of a species is, of course, an "absolute" case rather than a relative one ("is it any better morally to only let half the species go extinct?"), which the Prime Directive is clear we must avoid no matter what as a somewhat cold, impersonal way of letting things take their natural course in service to the bigger picture.

But even then, TNG is 100 years in the future. Case law and philosophical thought evolved during that time. What is the prevailing opinion in the TNG era--what is the law--is not necessarily what is the law in Kirk's era. I'm reminded of the TOS episode where an asteroid is going to hit a planet full of Native American-like beings. There is no discussion of the Prime Directive and if Kirk is going to activate the machine that diverts the asteroid and stops them from going extinct. He is going to.

Pike's actions and solution in last week's episode is functionally no different from Kirk's solution in A Piece of the Action. Contamination has already occurred. The only way to minimize the disruption and upheaval is to double down. It isn't the first approach Pike tried to fix things, after all, and nor was it Kirk's.

Back to TNG, in Homeward the planet of the species was actually dying. In this episode a comet was about to hit the planet. In TNG they couldn't stop the planet from dying, even if they revealed themselves to the inhabitants, so maybe they thought the only morally "right" thing to do was to let it and take the inhabitants with it. In this episode, and in the TOS episode, Starfleet has the ability to divert the comet/asteroid and the inhabitants will never even know. I'm not agreeing with the TNG point of view, and maybe it's a difference without a distinction. But it seems to me there might be some distinction in that difference, at least enough to be worth talking out.

I think Pike did the right thing last week, because that society had already been severely impacted by Starfleet. Walking away like nothing had happened and as if they weren't responsible was the wrong call. His solution wasn't perfect--even he knows that--but it was better. I also think he did the right thing this week, and that his actions are in line with what TOS-era thought was concerning the Prime Directive (or General Order One, heh), which is different from how it eventually evolves into TNG-era thought.

. . .

This isn't Kirk showing the Enterprise to a pre-warp society because he doesn't want Spock to die in a volcano in the shitty Abrams movies. Your same criticisms can be fairly leveled at that, I feel.

. . .

Lastly, in the previous episode, Pike didn't say "I have the bigger stick so both sides in this conflict, you'd better put down your sticks or I will smack you with mine." Pike said, "You think you have a big stick, but I have a much bigger stick, so let me tell you all about having big sticks. And let me tell you what happens when you use them. And let me show you, by example, that you don't actually have to use them." Never did he threaten violence against that society if they didn't stop their war and dismantled the warp bomb. That's not imposing the Federation's will or cultural values on them, imperialistically. That's only showing them and letting them decide what to do with the information all on their own.

. . .

On a side note: it's Federation policy not to meddle in the affairs of other civilizations like with the Klingon Civil War in Redemption. But I don't recall them ever saying that policy falls under the Prime Directive. Did they?

"And yes, I know Pike gets away with it by finding a loophole, but these writers don't seem to understand that the actions he takes in that episode run counter to what people who have sworn to protect the PD would consider ethical."

Pike did what Kirk would have done. They are people of a different era. The Next Gen era folks interpret the PD a bit more strictly because experience (presumably) has taught them the folly of not doing so. As Janeway said, the people of Kirk's era would be brought up on charges (she said something about them being hauled away in irons) in her day.

Also Starfleet had already contacted them during Una's mission. They did have warp, after all, regardless how they got it. If things had gone according to plan, Una's mission surely would have included some cultural exchange, no? True enough, Starfleet didn't know the true situation on the planet at the time, and this is more of a "letter of the law" defense rather than a moral argument for what Pike did. But it feels like an oversight not to mention anything about it.

It was good better than last week with an ACTUAL STRANGE NEW ALIEN LIFE FORM AND PHENOMENON but wasn't ANYNE ELSE DISAPPOINTED WE LEARNED NOTHING ABOUT THE SHEPHERDS or the aliens on Persephone..about their nature or physiology or culture or customs..we didn't EXPLORE the new aliens on the new world..didnt anyone else want that and was disappointed we didn't get that??

However the idea of a LIVING MUSICAL COMET that is Semi sentient and seeds a planet is VERY ORIGINAL AND CREATIVE SCI FI wouldn't youbsay Jammer? So isn't it fair to say this episode is much more original sci fi in that respect and not just classic Trek retold? What does everyone think

And WHERE ARE THE PREVIEWS FOR NEXT WEEKS EPISODE..WHYBDID PARAMOUNT REMOVE THOSE IM PISSED

genuinely refreshing to have a comments section that debates the actual sci-fi issues in the episode's plot. haven't watched this one yet but that really says so much.

[[That being said, it has become very apparent that, even in good episodes, NuTrek writers neither understand nor like the Prime Directive. In this installment we see a contradiction with how this directive is interpreted in TNG. The real big issue, though, has to do with the first episode. It feels like the writers sourced their understanding of the PD from popular culture rather than actual Star Trek, and fall into the popular trope of believing it is an order that applies to "prewarp societies" only.]]

A reminder the Prime Directive was created not as a actual good idea but, like the transporters, as a conceit of television. It was created by Gene Roddenberry and the writers to provide Captain Kirk something that he had to push back on and angst over breaking.

I was very surprised by the episode. It was very good. and I was very pleased after the mess that was Picard. I hope it continues on this path.

My only complaint with the series is the Singh character. She is coming off TOO much like the Drummer character from The Expanse. Hell, she even looks like her.

@ C.T. Phipps

True enough, on one level. But I would say, whatever they establish the rules of the transporter as, they should follow those rules. Same with the Prime Directive.

On another level, the Prime Directive as a philosophical concept has grown to take on an importance far beyond that. It's known outside of Star Trek and debated for its merits. It's the subject of many of Star Trek's most important and memorable episodes. An episode of a show calling itself "Star Trek" should treat it with the importance it has acquired, and should be able to tell stories that engage with the concept "in good faith," however exactly one cares to define that.

Which I, personally, judge this show has done. But it's certainly open for debate.

Pretty good. Creative premise/concept with the comet. Great production values. I liked the dinner in Pike's quarters.
This show needs to make sure it doesn't get too Disco sappy though. This ep has me worried on that front, even though I thought it was as good as last week's.

The Prime Directive was absolutely homicidal in TNG - Pen Pals and Homeward being the standout examples. I like that Pike didn't even have to think twice about initially rushing to save the planet from the comet impact. The TNG crew's "what if we're playing god, we'd better let everyone die" stuff from Pen Pals was always absolutely demented. A comet's en route to a planet, millions will die if we don't act, let's move the comet without the people of the planet ever knowing any different. Don't even have to think about it.

Of course, then we get into the situation with the Shepherds, who treat the comet as a religious entity. This obviously makes things a little more complex on the Prime Directive front, but all Pike's actions were justified IMO:
- They didn't forbid him from remaining nearby while the away team were trapped on the comet. The Enterprise was allowed to remain where it was and attempt to contact the away team. The Shepherds didn't care, for they were certain the away team would die. So, Pike's done nothing wrong at this stage.

- The Shepherds initiated hostilities after Uhura managed to shut down the forcefields (which she was obviously justified in doing). In the interests of preserving peace, Pike fled without even returning fire (I think?), even though they'd presumably have been allowed, by every Starfleet protocol we know of, to retaliate with non-lethal defensive fire. The Prime Directive is being obeyed at this stage.

- Flying the Enterprise in front of the comet was a reasonable way to save their lives and force a ceasefire with the Shepherds. At this point, he surrendered. No PD breach yet. However, the comet is still on course with the planet.

- After this point, obeying the PD any further (by leaving the area or simply surrendering to the Shepherds without any deception) would have led to the lives of an entire species being violently lost. So Pike has a decision - surrender and abandon millions to their fate, or attempt a deception that has a good chance of peacefully resolving the Enterprise's dispute with the Shepherds and also saving the planet.

Is he unjustified in choosing the latter? What are the consequences if the plan goes wrong? Presumably, the Shepherds destroy or capture the Enterprise - a small price to pay for the chance of saving millions on the planet - and end up in a tense diplomatic situation with the Federation (who's only interests will be in maintaining peace).

The TOS (and early TNG) Prime Directive is presented a guideline, not a dogma. The crew aren't mandated to sit there and watch as firey explosions consume a planet full of people. And so we get the Spock shuttle plan, which is the only point at which Pike directly ignored the wishes of the Shepherds. But as he said, they didn't *touch* the comet, as promised...

(And of course, ultimately the comet itself requested the plan, although nobody knew that at the time. Which is a bit of good luck, because if the Shepherds ever did suspect any tampering after the fact, that evidence would surely put Starfleet in the clear.)

I think you can definitely debate Pike's "screw general order one" stuff in the previous episode, and his rather extreme decision to reveal himself and the Enterprise, which is one hell of a gambit and an outright breach of the PD (the kind of which, let's remember, Kirk was well-known for). But in this episode? I really don't see Pike breaching the PD, either in the spirit of the law or the letter of the law.

Yes. This is what I want to see

I agree with Jammer: the best Trek since 2017

I think part of the reason this series is working where Discovery has not is because Discovery is pretty steadfast in not only having SMG as the lead, but virtually every episode written and shot as if Michael is the focus character. Other characters get scenes with real character now, but the episodes are almost never told from their frame of reference. It's notable that when standout episodes do occur it's often those rare situations where Burnham takes a back seat. Imagine how much more limiting DS9 would have been if we had nothing but Sisko episodes. I'm grateful it seems everyone will get their place in the sun on SNW.

If Discovery were a different (better?) show, Burnham and co. showing up in the 32nd century and saying "Wait, the Prime Directive means WHAT to you now, are you even serious?!" is the kind of thing that could have made for very entertaining television. Exploring differences like that, in little or big ways, I mean. Instead, they've pretty much entirely glossed over any cultural shifts or changes or need to readjust one's mindset in order to integrate into a modern Starfleet. Very little sense of alienation experienced by the crew, either . . . although, they're future humans and they're Starfleet, so I would expect them to be handle that a bit better psychologically than a present-day human thrust 1000 years into the future would cope with the strange society they would find.

Like what if in the 32nd century Klingons look like butterflies and are all pacifists and it's a major cultural faux pas and insult to mention that they ever had forehead ridges and were a warrior species? Obviously that's a ridiculous scenario, but still. The writers haven't even seemed to consider doing anything like this, and cultural changes that would seem thoroughly strange or preposterous to the crew of Discovery would surely have happened over A THOUSAND YEARS of intervening time. We haven't come across a single one, I don't think. The closest we've come is the crew discovering Romulans are a Vulcan subspecies and Romulan reunification with Vulcan actually happened.

Holey moley. What an episode. I wager 400 Quatloos on the newcomer.

Probably this has been pointed out in the 50+ comments above, but:

-Rock-solid episode. I'm actually kinda stunned at how much they packed into it.

-Basic (beloved) Trekian tropes: weird alien civ on a comet, a pre-Warp planet in jeopardy, the landing party getting into trouble even as the ship has to deal with complications of its own... noice.

-Cadet Uhura gets to shine -- intro, backstory, but it ties into Pike's own ongoing dilemma about his own future, which was a clever touch.

-The musical enigma on the comet, which involves everyone trying to pitch in (pun intended). A well executed bit, with some great set work. I bet the TOS production crew wished they had that kind of FX/expertise and budget.

-Great scenes in space above, with Pike trying to reason with the Sheperds, but being able to work around it and improvise as needed. Not to repeat myself, but yeah, I bet the TOS production crew wished they had that kind of FX/expertise and budget.

-The Spock/Uhura scenes; being a hardcore TOS fan, I worried about how they might handle canonical characters, but I'm enjoying everything I see so far. Makes sense, fits, works.

-Pike, giving Ortegas a little bit of a nudge... "time to step up" as they need to get closer to the comet... nice. That's what great captains do -- get the best out of their crew. Maybe all it takes to be a great captain (beyond, you know, knowing how to do everything) is acing the pep talk test. Interesting (if very brief) echo to the Spock/Uhura scene.

-Liking how this crew is gelling together so far. Pike, Number One, Spock, Uhura, Ortegas... even the genetic Superwoman (though she didn't get to shine as much). It's coming along nicely.

And an interesting/enigmatic ending, which brings us back to Pike's future, and the uncertainty (?) behind it. I felt that the fact he remembers the name of the cadets whose lives he saves was an especially touching element.

Unlike Jammer, I generally like PICARD and DISCO with most of the episodes being about 3 stars for me and a couple of four stars (and a few terrible ones). I absolutely LOVE Lower Decks and think it might be my favorite Star Trek thing ever. Generally, I'm okay with this series and am very happy with it.

I also agree the biggest issue with DISCO is the fact that it seems desperate for us to want to love Michael. It's kind of ridciulous too because I actually LIKE Michael but she works best as part of an ensemble. I watched the show for Tilly and Saru primarily and felt Michael was a great charcter when playing off someone.

But the show wants us to LOVE Michael and I'm not sure why. STRANGE NEW WORLDS has a much better grasp on the use of the other characters as an ensemble and giving the protagonist(s) realistic flaws. This is also an episode already devoted to a side character that I felt Disco could have benefited from.

It feels good both enjoying modern Trek and seeing you feel the same, Jammer.

I've liked Discovery somewhat more than you overall and liked Picard a fair bit more (by virtue of liking it with 18 asterisks, mind you). But I'm right there with you on Strange New Worlds. I really hope it doesn't hit that weird thing that's happened to both seasons of Picard. You know the one. We'll find out next week. :P

St. M'hanit Brings Gifts to the Children of Persephone III, but the crew of the Enterprise fears he'll tumble down the chimney and burn the house down, while they tussle with Rudolf.

Two observations to get out of the way, right away: 1. M'hanit, Mahomet. 2. The Shepherd captain had a cross on his face. And once you see it, you can't un-see it. Not too subtle there.

Anyway, this was an enjoyable episode. Three stars.

One of the things I liked best about it was that the species native to Persephone III was depicted from a god's-eye POV. The crew of the Enterprise never saw them, as we did, and the Shepherds simply weren't interested in them, beyond what happened as a result of the comet doing it's thing. We, the audience, however get to see them, see their tribal culture, family relations, and their wonder (or fear) regarding the comet. Their make-up was beautiful, especially their textured hands.

I, like Leif, would have liked to know more about the Shepherds. How did they come to know about this "arbiters"? How did they come to decide that they were the guardians of these comets? How did their religion form? Alas, the episode was 52 minutes long.

Re: The Prime Directive — Both the Federation and the Shepherds here have the same Prime Directive, non-interference. The Federation, at this point in its development, has a Prime Directive that doesn't allow it to involve itself in the progress of alien societies (particularly pre-warp civilizations), while the Shepherds do not allow others to interfere in the progress of M'hanit and its kin.

Outstanding!!! This is what Star Trek is all about!

Again SNW feels like classic Trek and especially its ethos feels different from PIC, DSC in that it comes across as benevolent (for lack of a better word) instead of brutal or dark or woke. I think this was a good Trekkian tale that used a lot of familiar elements although they didn't feel like the usual Trekkian cliches. The ending is heart-warming with the rain falling on the natives and the whole aspect of a comet creating life. I liked the slower pacing and giving time to absorb the new characters, their differences as well as some of the excellent visuals.

The episode for Uhura is very much like ENT's "Fight of Flight" for Hoshi -- both are a bit uncertain of the Star Fleet careers and we get some nice backstory for Uhura. They both have to deliver on their language skills and Uhura eventually does -- the way it happens feels reasonable. Communicating with the comet brought some good sci-fi and it really reminded me of DSC S4 communicating with Species 10-C.

Spock had some good comments for Uhura, sort of taking her under his wing on the away mission -- the unique perspective gained from the confrontation with one's morality pep talk and Uhura also helps him to understand the human condition (laughing when things go so bad).

If I have one minor complaint, it's that the dialog for the junior officers (Uhura, Chapel, Ortegas) can be too colloquial and as if it's 21st century speak ("screwed", "pissed off"). But at least these 2ndary characters are already way ahead of where they would be on DSC and, more importantly, they seem to have their own personalities -- they're not all emotional wrecks.

One other thing that I had to wonder about is why Sam Kirk had to act like such an idiot on the comet and then getting zapped. He seemed to be saying sensible things to Uhura, albeit from a perspective of greater seniority/superiority.

There's some plot mechanics, a bit of subterfuge, etc. which wasn't anything spectacular. These shepherds were pretty much hard-headed aliens of the week, until the end. Their mission is interesting as was the comet's -- which also made me think of "For the World Is Hollow..." Got some scenes with the shuttlecraft and ship flying through asteroids -- that did nothing for me.

There's the ongoing theme of Pike's future and No. 1 now trying to see if he can change it. Looks like this will be revisited every episode, but not sure what more they can keep saying about it -- guess we'll see.

3 stars for "Children of the Comet" -- competently executed good Trek story that covered a lot of ground and that didn't have some of the holes that the 1st episode did. It's rare to get decent sci-fi on Trek anymore but we got some here, even if it felt like what DSC S4 spend more time building up. Good character episode for Uhura especially, which is nice to see so early in the series' run. SNW is off to a great start.

If DISCO fees like a kid who’s gone off their meds and cornered you at a party with a wildly inappropriate emotional overshare,

And PIC is your poor beloved granddad doing his best to tell you a story that only barely makes sense,

Then SNW feels like an adult in full command of their faculties with plenty of interesting things to say.

@ Rahul

George Samuel Kirk isn't in Starfleet when he dies in TOS's Operation: Annihilate! He's a civilian scientist. So either he voluntarily resigned . . . or he washed out because he couldn't cut it. And even if he resigns, maybe it's because he can't cut it. I wasn't surprised by how he performed on the away team in this mission, because from the moment he was introduced last episode and knowing his fate, I figured they might go this route with him. We'll see.

@Jeffrey's Tube
"Whoever cast Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura deserves a standing ovation."

Yes! It's downright amazing how perfect she is for the part. I've never felt like this about any recast in any film or TV show. It's like some kind of sorcery.

*chef's kiss* Magnificato!

The whole stupid Sam decision scene on the comet seems like a shout out to the amazing Prometheus. The alien egg, the dark and foreboding setting, the line about there being a breathable atmosphere in that setting, and a supposedly smart scientist making a silly decision all hearken back to that film.

Preventing a comet from destroying a planet is different from interfering a warp capable species

Edit: Preventing a comet from destroying a planet is different from interfering a NON warp capable species

"God works in mysterious ways" is not an excuse for doing nothing. Because YOU may be the mysterious way God works in.

What an awesome, subtle and engaging story to weave around such an amazing core concept.

@DDG: "Their make-up was beautiful, especially their textured hands."

Yeah. I also liked their costuming.

@Rahul: "If I have one minor complaint, it's that the dialog for the junior officers (Uhura, Chapel, Ortegas) can be too colloquial and as if it's 21st century speak ('screwed', 'pissed off')."

My fanwank is that we are essentially getting a universal translator version of dialogue, even in English (for that matter, why would we assume English is standard anyway?). Instead of giving us futuristic argot that might be hard to parse (like in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), we just get today's equivalent.

I hope you're wrong that we're going to hear about Pike's fate on every episode.

@GWtW: Love your analogy with kid/grandpa/adult!

@Lodged Torpedo: I too thought of PROMETHEUS. A criminally underrated film, IMO: in fact, I'd call it the only really good one in that franchise other than the first ALIEN.

I am still having to get used to all this positive energy about a modern Trek creation!

Great episode. It looks like each character will get an episode to flesh them out more. It took Discovery until SEASON 4 to even get us to remember the bridge crews names without looking them up FFS, and here we are already knowing and caring about several of the crew.

I also like the lighter tone than Discovery having everyone in mind crushing trauma and needing to share their feelings with a trauma team in order to feel valued and loved. There is a little more "suck it up buttercup" here and I like that. There is a balance between some old school football coach telling a puking concussed player to get back on the field versus the most minor of jokes sending someone into a 20 year long spiral of trauma. It seems they will find that a balance here whereas Disc was seriously overcompensating on the loving inclusive let's talk about our trauma dynamics.

Its also nice to see our long time friend Jammer giving good ratings two shows in a row as it must be really enjoyable for him to be able to do that!

I also am getting a feeling Sam Kirk will annoy the viewers with a continued history of doing obviously stupid things like TOUCH AN ALIEN OBJECT , BEFORE ANY SERIOUS ANALYSIS, THAT CLEARLY HAS SIGNIFICANT POWER.

Mmm... delicious ribs cooking in pike's cabin. Wish I were invited too. But why so many veggies?

Fake Kirk dead already and we just met him. Heart no good but maybe they can still save the mustache

Aliens have best job ever, they just escort sacred comets around the galaxy and tell people they better not mess their comets cuz they are sacred. That is the life.

Great space battles finally. Has never looked better. Alien ship looks big and scary but no reason to fear if it has no shields and enterprise shields never quit

Everyone talks like you just add water and great things happen. Not much water in Africa but does it not have "societal development" and also hyenas? Maybe this episode just too smart for dumb animals

Why comet need to tell Spock that it knew what he had to do if it was going to happen anyway even if he did not get the memo in time? Maybe some comets are really proud: "You may have saved the day Spock, but it was my idea first."

Uhura proves that she is best. Smartest secretary ever.

Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!
(3 whoops out of 4)


Hmm... I wonder what causality loops taste like

"Children of the Comet" might be the purest, truest episodic Star Trek experience since CBS/Paramount started rolling out new Trek series in 2017."
Agreed

The debate on the merits of the Prime Directive isn't simple, but the point is that this is the philosophy embraced by Star Trek's Federation and it shouldn't be constantly dismissed as it is in NuTrek. The pushback against the PD in this very forum, I believe, proves my point that modern liberal sensibilities are far less enthused by the concept of self determination.

Now, I also think that "Pen Pals" and "Homeward" take it to the extreme. And it is obvious that TOS played fast and loose with the PD, in great part because the Star Trek universe was still in the process of being defined by its own creators (Kirk also calls the Federation the "United Earth Probe Agency" but we've swept that under the rug now that the fictional universe is well defined). Yet this episode could have made some acknowledgment of how the philosophies referring to the application of the PD are evolving and debatable (as, by the way, "Pen Pals" and "Homeward" do). It just doesn't really want to engage with it.

As I mention it, this doesn't bother me too much when it comes to covertly saving a planet from an asteroid impact. It is simply confirmation of a pattern. The first episode went far beyond this, with Pike outright dictating the politics of a prewarp planet based on the fact that some trumpists broke into the U.S. Capitol in 2021 on Earth, and this being presented as an unquestioningly good thing. The writers didn't allow for any debate on the matter. The notion that it is better to let other societies solve their problems on their own is just not something that NuTrek writers believe in.

@Jeffrey's Tube

"This episode got everything right. Literally everything.

Whoever cast Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura deserves a standing ovation."

Bingo on both counts. I wasn't familiar with CRG until now, but she is awesome. Beautiful voice as well.

Great review Jammer.

It's so enjoyable watching new Trek that doesn't seemingly go out of it's way to piss me off.

While waiting a week didn't really seem to matter to me for most of Discovery and Picard, I REALLY look forward to getting home from work on Thursdays so I can sit down and be inspired by some Star Trek. It's so refreshing.

2 for 2, and Jammer - I think the new car smell is going to last for a while and when it wears off we are going to like the smell of our new car.

4 stars from me.

It did have that Alien quality and then it shifted to a Eurovision vibe. I was waiting for the egg to transform into an Israeli drag queen and hit some high Cs.
Thought Uhura was a lil smug but that might be part of her sass. Spock did correct her when she was discussing Chapel but thought he could have been more stern in keeping her focused. I thought maybe Uhurus family was torn apart by gorillas in a zoo enclosure but no… shuttle accident.
La’an was good. Someone mentioned she was under used but I think we’ll see her best come about.
Good episode. Basic message. Enjoyed it.
The bad news is when we find out the comet rain was acidic and destroys all life on Persephone. Hakuna matata motherf@$&ers!

Samuel Kirk is giving of that serious Guy Fleegman vibe from Galaxy Quest. ‘I’m just some glorified extra Chris’.
Fuck off COVID. I want my body back.

it seems nobody else mentioned it yet, but don‘t you find the way those ships (enterprise and the shuttle) move a bit unnatural? It looked like in a video game, with erratic/sudden changes of direction. I appreciate that the ships are more „dynamic“ than in e.g. TNG but these are still massive objects and should not move like a toy.

I have watched this episode twice now. I have NEVER watched an episode of Picard or Discovery twice. I think I might watch it again.

Also, the fact that Spock knows Pike knows his fate all this time makes his actions for his former captain all the more poignant.

RE: Prime Directive and the first episode. Arguably the Prime Directive was null and void when the non-warp race detected the warp signatures and the battle debris and used it to create the weapon. The contamination already had happened; Starfleet didn't know it yet.

@Heiko

I’m not an astrophysicist, but isn’t that how moving in space works? There’s no friction whatsoever, so as long as you have the necessary propulsion, you can do what ever insane acrobatic barrel rolls you want, no matter if you’re the size of a flea or a starship

@Alienatbar said:
" I thought maybe Uhurus family was torn apart by gorillas in a zoo enclosure but no… shuttle accident."

What the fuck is wrong with you?

@Dreubarik
The PD from Pen Pals onwards changes markedly from earlier on - not just from TOS, but from the first season of TNG. In "Angel One"* we get this:

"RIKER: It's not our position to interfere in the domestic affairs of other societies.
BEATA: But you can interact.
RIKER: Of course. Otherwise, how can we learn?"

I'm with you on Pike's conduct in the first episode being over-the-top, but at the same time, he didn't dictate anything or remove the planet's ability to resolve their own conflict. His major PD breach was in ordering the Enterprise to show itself in order to convince the government to release him, which was unquestionably a complete violation of the PD.

His subsequent speech isn't really a PD issue though. He didn't say "join or die", he didn't use threat of force to force them to submit, or anything like that. He had a discussion with them in which he warned them of Earth's history and showed them what may lie in their future. This isn't a violation of their right to self-determination, it's an open discussion between equals. If they'd just told him to leave and that they had no desire to know anything more about the Federation or ever see one of its representatives again, he would have done so.

*interestingly, Angel One also says that the PD doesn't apply to civilians, a topic that every other PD episode has refused to address. So even if Pike hadn't done his speech, you or I as hypothetical Federation citizens could have come along right afterwards, beamed down without Starfleet legally being able to do anything to stop us, and revealed ourselves as aliens. We could then join in with anti-government/anti-rebel protests, or argue with the local government, without breaking Federation law. You could argue that Pike was wrong to make his speech because he's a government representative and therefore his words are backed with authority, whereas a civilian doing the same thing would be genuinely just changing ideas with no cloud of potential imperialism hanging over them, but this is idealistic fiction so we as the audience are presumably meant to trust that Pike has no expansionist intent.

@gorn with the wind: I am no expert either and yes, you might be right. But the Enterprise moves in SNW as if there is unlimited power for acceleration. It just feels off to me, size doesn‘t matter anymore (i.e. huge ships move like small objects). In old trek i had a „feeling“ about ships capabilities. For example the Defiant had a very powerful engine and could do quick evasive maneuvers. While a Galaxy class ship was more sluggish.

@Karl Zimmerman noted, "the use of La'an - or rather the lack of use. Look, she got heavy focus last week - I was not expecting her to be prominent this time around. But she went on the away mission with Spock, Uhura, and Sam Kirk and did…nothing.”

It is an interesting point.

La’an is a security chief, and this was her away mission. But in the end, she is only a Lieutenant, and there were two other Lieutenants on the away mission - Spock and Kirk. And at least one of those two has more experience and is also a bridge officer and department head - Spock. Tasha was also a Lieutenant and security chief and bridge officer, but I can’t imagine she’d be calling the shots on any away mission. Same with Odo. Same with Malcolm Reed.

The only exception is Tuvok, and let’s face it, he was superstar, and he had a Lieutenant Commander rank, same as Data.

So I imagine once La’an had secured the perimeter, and determined that there was no one else on the Comet, she really didn’t have anything else to do. When Kirk was hit, initially Spock took the lead to stabilize him, but once that was done, Spock turned to supervising Uhura, so La’an would have been in charge of keeping Kirk secure - and alive. That’s a pretty quiet job.

La’an may have been in command of the away mission, but it is the mark of a good leader to know when to get out of the away and let the specialists do their thing. Remember O’Brien teaching Worf this lesson?

@nacho Picard said, "This is maybe the tightest, best put-together episode of Star Trek I've seen since the fifth season of Voyager. No wasted moments, most of the humor landed, great special effects, a solid sci-fi story that kept me guessing how it would end, and good development of the characters.”

I totally agree. I’ve now seen the episode twice, and it is amazing how tight it is for 52 minutes.

@Karl Zimmerman said, "I'm hoping we also get episodes for Ortegas/Chapel/M'Benga/La'an/Hemmer”

I think the first episode counts as a La’an episode.

I don’t think we’ll get an M’Benga like Voyager Doctor episodes, and both Beverly and Julien episodes often fell flat. I think Enterprise is really the only show that managed to carry a good doctor episode (?!?). But it’ll be interesting to see.

If they skip anyone, I think it’ll be Ortegas. Paris didn’t get too many solo episodes till B'Elanna ("30 Days" was a good exception). And god knows they really dropped the ball on Mayweather.

I expect when they do a Chapel episode, it’ll be a hoot. And for sure we’ll see at least one for Number One, probably a lot more.

Man, this really is a fleshed out crew!

@Dreubarik, you make an interesting point: "the PD… application to prewarp societies is particularly stringent because it is accepted practice that avoiding contact is the only possible way to respect these societies' natural development, but the PD is binding in all other scenarios as well. There are countless examples of this, such as the Federation's inability to interfere in the Klingon Civil War in "Redemption.” “

@Dreubarik, I would have thought that those are two different rules. I would have thought that the Prime Directive applies to pre-warp civilizations. And the Federation then has a non-interference policy with respect to warp-capable civilizations. But you may be right. Here is “The Circle,”

SISKO: Admiral, we've just obtained evidence that the Circle's been receiving weapons from the Cardassians. If we withdraw, we'll be giving Bajor and the wormhole back to them.
CHEKOTE: Damn. That's a hell of a turn. How can these Bajorans get in bed with the Cardassians?
SISKO: They don't even know the Cardassians are involved.
CHEKOTE: Then you're saying it's a genuine political revolution internal to Bajor.
SISKO: Supported by the Cardassians.
CHEKOTE: But internal to Bajor. The Cardassians might involve themselves in other people's civil wars, but we don't. The Prime Directive applies, Ben.

So against my initial intuition, @Dreubarik, you make a very good point.

@Dreubarik said, "What Pike does in "Strange New Worlds," which is interfere in a foreign political matter by saying "I have the bigger gun" simply runs counter to everything that the Federation is supposed to represent.”

I don’t think it’s as clear as you make it out to be.

One faction of the aliens in the SNW pilot got a warp bomb because of the actions of StarFleet. That faction figured that now that they had the bigger stick, they don’t have tolerate the other faction any more. That’s what the leader tells Pike. Since that big stick - and the resultant misconceptions - is a direct result of StarFleet’s actions, it is on StarFleet to fix it.

Colin Powell used to have a corollary to the Prime Directive he called the Pottery Barn rule: you break it, you buy it.

You write that this episode is "a contradiction with how this directive is interpreted in TNG.” But I actually think the closest analogy to the SNW pilot is TNG’s "Who Watches The Watchers.” Here is the key part,

PICARD: Recommendations?
BARRON: The Mintakans wish to please the Overseer, but they can only guess what he wants. They need a sign.
PICARD: Are you suggesting?
BARRON: You must go down to Mintaka Three.
RIKER: Masquerading as a god?
PICARD: Absolutely out of the question. The Prime Directive
BARRON: Has already been violated. The damage is done. All we can do now is minimise it.
PICARD: By sanctioning their false beliefs?
BARRON: By giving them guidelines. Letting them know what the Overseer expects of them.
PICARD: Doctor Barron, I cannot, I will not, impose a set of commandments on these people. To do so violates the very essence of the Prime Directive.
BARRON: Like it or not, we have rekindled the Mintakans' belief in the Overseer.
RIKER: And are you saying that this belief will eventually become a religion?
BARRON: It's inevitable. And without guidance, that religion could degenerate into inquisitions, holy wars, chaos.
PICARD: Horrifying. Doctor Barron, your report describes how rational these people are. Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the Dark Ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? No! We will find some way to undo the damage we've caused. Number One, tell me about this group's leader.
RIKER: Nuria. Exceptionally clear-minded, sensible. The Mintakans trust her judgment. If we can convince her that you are not a god
PICARD: She might be able to persuade the others.
BARRON: And how do you propose to convince her?
PICARD: She believes the Picard is a magical figure. I'm going to show her how the magic works. I'm going to bring her aboard.

Even the uber PD aficionado Picard understood that if you are the reason a society has gone off the rails, PD or no PD, you have an obligation to fix it.

That’s what Picard did with the Mintakans. That’s what Pike did in the SNW pilot.

That’s obviously not the only possible answer - we see that people in Picard’s time strongly disagree with his interpretation of the PD - but it is a very fair interpretation of what is not even known as the PD in the SNW - it is still General Order 1.

@Jeffrey's Tube said, "I'm reminded of the TOS episode where an asteroid is going to hit a planet full of Native American-like beings. There is no discussion of the Prime Directive.”

Great point!

Which is why I really hope @Peter G. watches Strange New Worlds.

@Peter G. has a very useful way of analyzing the Prime Directive in a Babylon 5-Lumati versus Plox-Star Trek framework. You can find that discussed here,

https://www.jammersreviews.com/st-tng/s5/masterpiece.php#comment-83617

@Jaxon asked, "I wonder what nuTrek sensibilities would think if it stumbled upon Angel One.”

I think Number One’s onlyFans is called Angel One. So I expect the episode to play out exactly the same ;)

@SlackerInc asked, “ 'a blind Aenar who appears to have a chip on his shoulder the size of 'Melora,' but which may be a joke.' Jammer, your writing is usually so clean, clear, and precise (which I love) but I wonder if you left a word out here or something? I don't understand what you mean.”

Melora is dead serious about how much she is annoyed by people trying to treat her specially. Hemmer, the blind Aenar, is just fucking with Uhura, cause it is hilarious to fuck with good samaritans. The joke is on Uhura.

@SlackerInc said, “ 'can be too colloquial and as if it's 21st century speak ('screwed', 'pissed off’).' My fanwank is that we are essentially getting a universal translator version of dialogue, even in English”

I think it is fair that cadets like Uhura have pretty relaxed language. They aren’t officers yet. Plus, as we saw in The First Duty and Journey’s End, even a cadet brought up on a Star Fleet vessel has some pretty informal language.

Also, a staff will adopt the habits of a boss. Picard was very formal. Data, the second officer was basically robotic (lol). Worf was reserved because of Childhood Trauma (can we TM that now?!). So of course that crew needed an empath - they are the only crew we’ve ever seen that needed one.

Pike is a very different man from Picard. His crew will reflect that.

Kirk was a very different man from Picard. Scotty and Gary Mitchell had pretty casual attitudes with Kirk compared to similar people on TNG. Here is what I wrote in my review of "Where no Man has Gone Before,"

“Kirk runs a really chill ship in this one. A few key scenes flesh that out. When Gary Mitchell, Spock and Kirk are riding the turbo lift up to the bridge, Spock moves between them to the door, and is the first out of the lift - before the Captain. Then Gary shoulders Kirk out of the way, and also manages to get out of the lift before Kirk. Kirk is the Captain and he is still the last to make it out. Not very typical. It is subtle, but telling.

A few minutes later, when Kirk is taking readiness updates from all department heads, Scotty says almost sarcastically:

SCOTT: Engineering division ready, as always.

And Kirk smiles again. A really, really chill ship."

https://www.jammersreviews.com/st-tos/s1/noman.php#comment-77783

Which is a long way of saying I have no problem with the ways in which these kids (and there are many kids on SNW) talk.

On the other hand if Number One starts to be that lax while on duty, I would have a problem with it. As approachable as Riker was in 10-forward, he was still button-down when on duty. That’s what we expect of the best and the brightest.

And the Enterprise crew - TOS or TNG or SNW - are the best and the brightest.

@KDalton_69 No, that is precisely my point: the notion that the PD is "void" because a society comes in contact with warp technology is unambiguously not what the PD is. The PD always applies as a principle (note that at least SNW doesn't upfront denies this, and instead relies on the odd idea that Pike could have gotten away with anything because the Discovery is "classified"). Minimum interference with other societies' development is the guiding principle. Even if this could somehow compel Pike to undo the damage caused by the introduction of warp technology, this isn't what we see in the first episode: From what we are told, these factions were already warring before due to ill-defined reasons. Pike then interferes with their politics assuming they should "all get along" with little knowledge of what drives these people just because of what happened on Earth centuries ago, and as far as we know they are left still in possession of warp weapons. This is simply not what someone who believes in any interpretation of the PD would do.

@Descent Ah yes, the classic "if you told us to leave we would". Unfortunately, not really a defense against imperialism, since there are many forms of foreign control that aren't based on deployment of troops. Pike knowingly or unknowingly threatens these people with the knowledge that aliens possess superior weaponry and then proceeds to insert himself in domestic politics (we are even given a hint of the Enterprise inspiring religions).

The ultimate point here is that it isn't a given that illuminating other societies with our values leads to better outcomes. Just as it can be argued that Pike's vision of peace will lead to a better world for the aliens, so it could be said that it will serve to subjugate a secessionist minority that had just motives, or that warp-based mass destruction weaponry would have done less damage on its own than knowledge of advanced alien species (after all, the MAD doctrine hasn't yet led to the destruction of Earth, but perhaps reduced large wars). This is all debatable, but the point is that Star Trek used to debate this with a bias towards non-interference, and I don't think we will see this again. An episode like "Cogenitor" would be denounced as hateful in today's political climate.

@Dreubarik

I think I agree with most of what you're saying here. There's definitely a potential power imbalance introduced when Pike reveals the Enterprise, which is the stupidest thing he did in the whole episode, and stands out to me as the clear PD breach.

But I think there's a broader question of whether or not Federation law*, at least in the 23rd century, forbids Pike's subsequent actions in theory - that is to say, introducing himself and speaking to people as equals. TOS and early TNG seemed to think that it shouldn't, while later TNG explicitly thought that it should.

I put that massive "in theory" qualifier there because of course it's much, much more complex than that when you're doing this while simultaneously making interplanetary first contact, are a government representative rather than a private citizen, and have just demonstrated technological and military superiority. He may have already destroyed the chance to speak to them as equals with his ridiculous "i've got the bigger stick" routine when calling down the Enterprise. I absolutely agree that Pike's definitely on very shaky ground, to say the least.

*or just Starfleet law, given that we're told it doesn't apply to civilians

"The ultimate point here is that it isn't a given that illuminating other societies with our values leads to better outcomes. Just as it can be argued that Pike's vision of peace will lead to a better world for the aliens, so it could be said that it will serve to subjugate a secessionist minority that had just motives, or that warp-based mass destruction weaponry would have done less damage on its own than knowledge of advanced alien species (after all, the MAD doctrine hasn't yet led to the destruction of Earth, but perhaps reduced large wars)."

It might be argued that whatever happens in response to Pike's speech is a result of the planet's self-determination. Whether they embrace him, ignore him, half of them embrace him and half ignore him and they fight a massive war over it, or whatever else, that's the result of their collective decisions. This was the attitude taken by TOS quite a few times, the most obvious that I can think of being "A Taste of Armageddon" where Kirk introduces the potential for cataclysmic war to two planets by destroying their existing social model - literally destroying it, with a phaser. At the end he gives his reason as "they were already in a bad situation, a real war couldn't have made it any worse". This strikes me as a vastly more intense form of interference than just giving a speech and then bidding them farewell. There's plenty of evidence in TOS to suggest that the 23rd century PD was much more loose and far less restrictive than the latter-era TNG one, and that even something like Pike's actions in the first episode would be considered within the limits of the Prime Directive if his decision as a captain was that it was the best course of action available.

My thoughts on the Prime Directive is that it's typically meant as a precautionary principle and not as an absolute moral principle that must override all other considerations. Therefore, preventing a pre-warp planet from being destroyed is not a FU to the Prime Directive. But maybe this celebratory attitude of the planet being "better off" because it was radically altered from a unique desert habitat to a world that is more typically M-class is contrary to the whole spirit behind the Prime Directive. Granted, they didn't change the nature of the planet deliberately and it wasn't really Pike's "fault" anyway, but it's still nothing to get excited about since it would have been a clear violation of the PD if they had been deliberate about those changes. The PD would apply in that hypothetical scenario precisely for the reason that it's not up to them to judge that a unique desert world is inferior to lusher worlds. Especially if it is inhabited by intelligent life who owe their distinctiveness to that particular biome.

@ Dreubarik

"This is simply not what someone who believes in any interpretation of the PD would do."

You're in the chair instead of Pike. What would you do?

What is the point of non-interference if the species ultimately dies? It matters where interference - or perhaps interaction alone - alters the trajectory of a species that has no immediate, discernible threat of annihilation. That's why interference to halt a genocide by one faction of another, one race of another, etc. is the most interesting. The species will persist regardless of the outcome. But can Starfleet really stand by and let it happen? Maybe it can, but it's a very tough call.

@Alienatbar said:
" I thought maybe Uhurus family was torn apart by gorillas in a zoo enclosure but no… shuttle accident."

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Just a nod to Team America and tragic back stories.

Gary - ‘We were all out at the zoo one day, I was doing some acting, walking on the railing of the gorilla exhibit. I fell in. Everyone screamed and Tommy jumped in after me, forgetting that he had blueberries in his front pocket. The gorillas just went wild. They jumped all over his body and threw him around like a rag doll to get to those blueberries. One gorilla would throw him to another gorilla who tossed him to another. Everyone panicked and cried out for somebody to help but it was too late. The gorillas beat him to death before the zookeepers could gas them all’.

I would’ve assumed with the selection process well into the thousands that , at least, No 1 would be aware of the history of their new recruits and would have briefed the Cap on something so sensitive.

I’ll need to re-watch but I did think the decision to change the comets path came about rather quickly and without much discussion on interference. We could have had a strong Kira like point of view from the likes of La’an (think she’s going to be good) around the PD and then on the religious connotations. Would have been good to see some debate. Maybe I’m just missing the Major.

Also, the Shepherds ship was pretty huge. Almost big enough to see from the surface especially shooting torpedoes. Do they have a PD? Did some of those torpedoes make it to the surface?

@Ilsat @Bryan I also find the TNG application of the PD extreme, but my main explanation of it has always been the impact that one civilization can eventually have on others once they become spacefaring. If you save a planet from a natural disaster, you may be condemning a neighbor (especially since you won't defend them from a military invasion). As I said, I wouldn't personally take it to that extreme, but it is at least a valid argument for a Federation forced to see issues in terms of galactic scale.

@Jeffrey's Tube Mostly, I'd like the episode to ponder this very issue. It's hard to put myself in Pike's shoes because the episode doesn't provide the necessary information (for example, do these factions already possess nuclear weapons? If so, maybe a warp bomb isn't enough of a game changer to justify interference). I certainly wouldn't meddle in their politics as overtly or imply they should fear my ship's guns.

@Descent There is no argument that "A Taste of Armageddon" (my favorite TOS episode) blatantly disregards the PD, but as I said the Star Trek universe is far more defined now than it was then, even if chronologically SNW comes first. If the PD is applied differently in this era we as an audience are owed an explanation and a debate around it.

One can of course always argue that self determination is guaranteed in any scenario in which you aren't literally killing the other guy, but the basis for something like the PD to exist is precisely taking the opposite side of this argument and pointing out that, where power imbalances exist, there are many other forms of subjugation (trade being an obvious one).

Again, I don't mind SNW depicting a different interpretation of the PD than in later eras, I just want it to be made explicit and part of the core of the show when appropriate. The fact it isn't suggests to me that the writers simply can't comprehend the philosophy behind it, but don't seek to disavow it either because they have inherited this well-defined universe from other creators

The "Prime Suggestion" means whatever the needs of a given plot dictate, much like how quickly/slowly warp drive (or the turbolift) can get someplace. Still it must be a good episode (and it was) to have sparked an actual Trekkian discussion as opposed to mean-spirited socio-political rants and writer-directed invective (however much they often deserve it). Does the PS apply to pre-warp civilizations only? Does it allow for "act of God" extinction events to be averted? Pick a side, pick an episode.

I didn't see anyone bring up TNG "First Contact" (the episode, not the film), with regard to last week's show either in that forum or this one. That strikes me as a closer analog to what happened last week than other episodes cited. Contact mission went pear-shaped, missing/captured personnel, warp-capable but sociologically immature society with riots, and where Krola (SP) is implied to represent a significant anti-space exploration minority. The Federation made another first contact mess (these missions seem to be the "shuttle crash" of diplomacy), and the crew has to fix it. Picard makes the decision to show himself to the natives (like Pike only admittedly not as dramatic). Was that a PS violation?

Picard tells the President something like "We're here to guide you into a new era." What would that have entailed, had the planet's president not told him to get lost? I'm guessing what we saw at the end of "Strange New Worlds": education and social development provided by the Federation (kids drawing warp nacelles, learning about Federation species, etc.). Probably gradually introducing tech (check out the replicator, yall!) Is that imperialism? Soft power? Both?

JAMMER! Can you please expand on why you say this episode is very good or great but yet not amazkng..what's the difference between great and amazing? And isntthe comet like lifeforms and the Sbepherds worthy of being called more than "pretty solid " sci fi and maybe amazing and original sci fi?

@ Dreubarik

"Mostly, I'd like the episode to ponder this very issue. It's hard to put myself in Pike's shoes because the episode doesn't provide the necessary information (for example, do these factions already possess nuclear weapons? If so, maybe a warp bomb isn't enough of a game changer to justify interference)."

This is fair enough. You don't need to have a better answer to argue that the answer given isn't correct. I was just wondering if maybe you had one in mind.

"I certainly wouldn't meddle in their politics as overtly or imply they should fear my ship's guns."

We seem to have very different interpretations of what those scenes mean for what Pike did. It's the same for when you said earlier that "we are even given a hint of the Enterprise inspiring religions." I didn't take those scenes to be hinting at that at all. Not even in the slightest.

This has been an interesting exchange of perspectives. If you as a viewer interpret what Pike did this way, certainly a percentage of the people on the alien planet would see it that way as well. I personally don't think it would be mainstream, but it only has to be of a certain prevalence to cause new issues and fresh instabilities in their society.

. . .

The fact remains . . . unless Starfleet wants to sneak around the galaxy cloaked and never talking to anyone, everything they do is going to have some kind of impact on another society, their internal matters and culture, and their development. I feel like some of the points we've discussed (not just you and me, I mean the entire discussion) veer close to being nonsensical as far as what Starfleet should and shouldn't do. If anything, I think it's the depiction of the Prime Directive in The Circle that is wrong, not the depiction of it in these two episodes, for example.

We also shouldn't act like the writers have always been consistent with what the PD is and isn't and has always gotten it right in the past just because those episodes are older.

I don't see any evidence in these episodes that the writers "don't agree with" or "don't really care about" the Prime Directive and are only paying it lip service because it's a) too complex for their ability to write stories about, b) they're uninterested in it as a concept, or c) actively dislike it because they would rather tell interventionist stories that push some kind of "righthink" agenda, as some others have alleged.

Couple tid bits...

Could they have used the tractor beam to change the course of the "comet"?

I thought Spock's laugh at the end was pretty cheesy.

That is all.

@ Cynic

I didn't take those scenes at the end of last week's episode to mean the Federation is showing up and establishing a presence on that world, providing education, social development, and technology (i.e. exercising "soft power). I think it was pretty clear that the society wasn't ready for any of that yet and the Federation was leaving them and not coming back.

Pike's message was "We're out there. You can be too. We've shown you what's possible and what we overcame to do it. Come find us."

The scenes we then see is the society trying to do just that. Investing in science and education and social reform inspired by the Enterprise and what they were shown. Inspired to turn that warp bomb into a warp engine (through their own efforts), join interstellar society, and come say hello.

@JS

"Harmonics" is a widely used PHYSICS term. How are you even in Starfleet? What do you think those "phaser HARMONICS" are that you just mentioned eleven minutes ago in the same episode? Sigh."

As a professional musician, I feel compelled to point out that harmonics are a musical concept as well, and most, if not all of the dialogue regarding the frequency of musical notes was accurate. Look up the harmonic series (or "overtone series"). I'm usually the first to nitpick poor musical content in a show but this was pretty spot on.

For a vulcan or half vulcan, the laugh should have been "cheesy".

@Jeffrey's Tube

I don't know about that. Maybe it was to be metaphorical, but Pike explicitly invites them to "Join our Federation of Planets," like now, not 10, 20 years from now ... I took the last few scenes on Kiley (obviously time-shifted, regardless of how you or I interpret them) to mean that they were granted membership, or at least junior membership, and were being brought "up to speed" at some point in their not-distant future. Open to interpretation, but you'd have to assume the Federation does that kind of thing. Think about that species from the beginning of "Insurrection" (TNG era admittedly), whose leader Picard was supposed to dance with, who had gotten warp drive only a year before and were already joining the Federation. "We need all the members we can get these days," Picard says, but one hopes not just for cannon fodder in the Dominion War at the time.

The fact that the solution was singing major chords, with Spock discussing music theory...this was a better Star Trek episode than anything CBS has put out since 2017. Keep it coming.

That was the best episode of Star Trek I have seen in a long, long, long time. Wow, what a difference compared to Discovery and Picard.

Jammer seems to evaluate all the recent Star Trek series based on nostalgia, in comparison to the older ones: He likes the ones that feel like classic TOS and TNG-era Trek. That seems to lead him to give wildly exaggerated ratings to episodes this this routine, dull affair. Yes it’s more logical than the plots of Discovery and Picard; no it’s not very good or fresh.

I have a completely different standard for reviewing Star Trek: originality. This series so far has nothing we haven’t seen before; it’s all retread.

I suspect many Star Trek fans fall in love with the first series they see; their favorite is the first one they saw. That’s why TOS will always be my favorite, even though DS9 is probably the best. But others who saw Voyager or Discovery first may prefer them because the elements of the Trek universe were fresh to them. Etc.

That aside, I don’t come to Trek looking for comfortable familiarity: I come looking for new and thoughtful material. This episode wants to build the easy cast chemistry of TOS, but situates it in a formulaic plot. I’m sorry, but there’s no way in hell this is 3 1/2 stars. It’s 2 for me, just like the pilot.

Trek Fan, when you're used to eating shit for dinner, a hanger steak tastes like A5 wagyu

@GWtW: "I’m not an astrophysicist, but isn’t that how moving in space works? There’s no friction whatsoever, so as long as you have the necessary propulsion, you can do what ever insane acrobatic barrel rolls you want, no matter if you’re the size of a flea or a starship"

No friction, but you still have to account for mass, inertia, acceleration, momentum. This has been one of my issues with most of the Spider-Man movies, except for ASM. The others had him move like a weightless cartoon, but that one used stuntmen actually swinging on cables so there was real weight to it.

This will date me, but even as a kid I appreciated that the early video game Space War (a precursor to Asteroids) accounted for this as well. When you rotated the ship and started thrusting in a different direction, you didn't just immediately start going in that direction in a straight line. The momentum you had built up from going the other way still carried over, so you kind of swerved around in an arc.

@Mal: I love the forthright atheism in that TNG passage you quoted. I believe there was something like that in The Orville as well.

@Ilsat: "What is the point of non-interference if the species ultimately dies?"

I took that stance myself while watching the episode and early on in this debate here. But I always like to play devil's advocate wherever possible, so how about this. Imagine 65 million years ago a starship was flying by our solar system and saw that an asteroid was going to hit the Yucatán Peninsula and kill a whole lot of species, including most of the dinosaurs (some evolved to become birds). If they had nudged that asteroid away, I think it's safe to say we would not be here now talking about Star Trek. Maybe some other intelligent life form would be talking about some other show, but I think all of us prefer that it worked out this way.

@IIsat
"What is the point of non-interference if the species ultimately dies?"
All species ultimately die. It's not a question of if but when and maybe why.

@JS

"NGL, this is definitely an improvement over Picard and Discovery, but JFC, hire a science consultant or sth.

La'an: "what are harmonics, I skipped music"

"Harmonics" is a widely used PHYSICS term. How are you even in Starfleet? What do you think those "phaser HARMONICS" are that you just mentioned eleven minutes ago in the same episode? Sigh."

-----

@TerakRall

"As a professional musician, I feel compelled to point out that harmonics are a musical concept as well, and most, if not all of the dialogue regarding the frequency of musical notes was accurate. Look up the harmonic series (or "overtone series"). I'm usually the first to nitpick poor musical content in a show but this was pretty spot on."

-----

As someone who has studied mathematics, physics and music theory, I loved the discussion of harmonics in the episode. It's clear to me that they *did* get a science consultant or a music consultant or something, since everything that Spock said about harmonics was completely scientifically accurate.

Having said that, JS makes an excellent point. Harmonics in music are really just one manifestation of the concept of harmonics in physics, i.e. the modes of vibration of an oscillating system, the individual standing waves of different frequencies which oscillations are made up of. They're pretty ubiquitous in physics, showing up anywhere you're dealing with waves, such as in acoustics, mechanical dynamical systems, electrical dynamical systems, quantum mechanics, etc. There is *no way* you could be in Starfleet and not know what harmonics are. Hell, I first learnt about harmonics in *high school*. You might not know how they actually correspond to musical notes, i.e. that the 3rd harmonic corresponds to a perfect fifth in music and that the 5th harmonic corresponds to a major third in music, but you would definitely have an understanding of what harmonics *physically* are in terms of waves.

So yeah, I don't buy that La'an would be like "harmonics? lol I didn't do music" rather than "oh right, this is just the harmonics of sound waves. I don't actually know what they would sound like but I get the physics of what's going on". Like JS said, Star Trek literally talks about phaser harmonics and deflector harmonics and stuff all the time.

Yes, I agree La'an's line was a lazy "the audience is dumb and we need to explain this to them" writer's crutch. It's actually one of my TV pet peeves. Like anytime the hero's "tech guy" has to do something, even though they've worked together for like a decade or whatever, the hero has to be all "explain it to me in English." Even though the hero would clearly understand that they need to insert the USB drive into the computer to take down the firewall without needing it explained, because they've done it like twenty different times in twenty different episodes already. Also because inserting a USB drive into a computer is really fucking routine and not complicated. The writers just think the audience is dumb so the hero has to ask a dumb question to tee up the tech guy's explanation.

Harmonics is not quantum entanglement or string theory. Jeez. Even if a person cannot define it precisely, they're familiar with the concept enough just from everyday life to follow what's going on.

I admit I cringed at that line. It's beneath Star Trek. And worth calling out. But I'd really hope no one let it ruin the episode for them.

Vince Gilligan refers to this kind of expository dialogue between characters who would never actually need the explanation, purely for the viewers' benefit: "So, how long have we been brothers?" 😆

But in this case it didn't bother me.

In the Nitpicker's Guides, Phil Farrand used "cabbagehead" to describe when a character is suddenly implausibly stupid just to allow expository dialogue to explain something to the audience. A notorious example is "Disaster," where Troi doesn't know what a core breach is. Here La'an gets to be a cabbagehead.

I think that there’s a plausible, if pedestrian, explanation for what La'an said about harmonics: even if *we* know that harmonics in physics and harmonics in music are more or less the same thing, *she* might not. She knows only what they mean in physics, and doesn’t know that they mean the same thing in music, because she doesn’t know much about music.

Trek fan wrote:
"I suspect many Star Trek fans fall in love with the first series they see; their favorite is the first one they saw. That’s why TOS will always be my favorite, even though DS9 is probably the best. But others who saw Voyager or Discovery first may prefer them because the elements of the Trek universe were fresh to them. Etc.

That aside, I don’t come to Trek looking for comfortable familiarity: I come looking for new and thoughtful material. This episode wants to build the easy cast chemistry of TOS, but situates it in a formulaic plot. I’m sorry, but there’s no way in hell this is 3 1/2 stars. It’s 2 for me, just like the pilot."

Yeah, I'm in the same camp. I don't think any of this was bad or anything, and I am really glad people here enjoy it. But none of it strikes me as thought-provoking. You watch the episode, it has a simple message, you forget it the next day.

Picard wasn't very popular here, but one thing to its credit is that it tries to tackle complex issues and really challenge the viewer. Yes, it falls on its face many times, but somehow I still appreciate the effort in this direction. Star Trek is about going into new frontiers *boldly*, right?

"Star Trek is about going into new frontiers *boldly*, right?"

I think Star Trek is about the writers *telling* us something bold, rather than doing something arbitrarily messy in terms of story structure and calling that bold. TOS was bold because it repudiated the U.S. and the USSR both in the Cold War setting, suggested that people thought of as enemies will live in harmony one day, and that risk will be undertaken one day not for personal gain but for the betterment of our knowledge. TNG was bold because it said that this program will actually work and things will be ok one day. VOY was bold because it said that we can retain what we have gained even if we get lost at some point.

Just by way of contrast, it's not bold to offer a message that is at the forefront of the current popular culture and which is already crammed into lots of media. Bold would be opposing the current popular culture, or perhaps offering a different message altogether. I'm not talking about SNW since I haven't watched it yet (I will). But I think PIC's message is far from bold if we're counting bold as being something that opposes or offers an alternative to the current zeitgeist. It's more like a cafeteria offering up cheap versions of normal food.

"I think PIC's message is far from bold if we're counting bold as being something that opposes or offers an alternative to the current zeitgeist. It's more like a cafeteria offering up cheap versions of normal food."

Well, now here's where we disagree. Just from the last season, I thought the material about understanding mental illness was daring and not often attempted in media. It's not attempted because people would rather forget that mental illness exists rather than television try to educate us on it.

Bringing it back to SNW and Trek Fan's point, I think about it as a simple metric. Would I rather spend an hour watching a classic episode of TOS/TNG or this show attempting to tell the same stories? The more I think about it, the more I lean towards the former. Something I often hear writers saying is that you should never try to remake a story when a perfectly good version exists. That thought keeps nagging at me as I watch this.

But that said, I do encourage you to watch this on your own and form your own opinion. And my own opinion isn't finalized either. :-)

Booming - "All species ultimately die. It's not a question of if but when and maybe why."

Not arguing with that. The point I'm making is that the PD is based on the assumption that ST interference is a net negative to certain species, particularly those who lack the technological and social development to deal with spacefaring civilizations and everything that comes with them.

In this context, the term "interference" is understood in a broader sense. Not just the literal interfering with their affairs but more subtle concerns: shifting the longer term balance of power, altering beliefs and mythologies, accelerating tech capability, and so on.

But these concerns presuppose a species that survives to experience these apparent pitfalls. Often, it also means some awareness of the source of the higher tech or underlying mythology. They realize something is "out there" even if they don't understand it.

Where ST interferes to prevent the total annihilation of a species, the question then becomes "is the interference a NET negative considering the alternative?" In scenarios where the species persists, the answer is likely yes. If it won't, I would argue it is not. In fact, in some cases they may not know any interference occurred. Or have some vague notion that something happened without really knowing what. So, I think it's clear you save them if you can.

There are residual existential questions re non-interference. Don't play God, the natural order requires the extinction of the species, and so on. But we "play God" any time we bring our tech to bear to alter the natural course of anything. And, if there is a God, why give us the means to save someone and the empathy to feel impelled to, if you want us minding our own business.

So, yeah, I have no problem saving a pre warp species from annihilation. I don't think a PD, at least not any thought out sane one, would either.

Robust episode that provided distinctly Trekkian ideas, themes and solutions.

Uhura was really excellent here - I agree that the casting was well done. Pike and Number One continue to be utterly rock-solid and captivating, and Ethan Peck actually did well as Spock too - his performance seemed better this week.

Visually it was top-notch of course, with some impressive effects, and I too particularly liked the makeup on the aliens on the planet.

I did laugh that Ortegas' supposed evasive manoeuvres actually led to the ship getting hit even more.

Two good episodes so far for SNW.

@IIsat
"In this context, the term "interference" is understood in a broader sense. Not just the literal interfering with their affairs but more subtle concerns: shifting the longer term balance of power, altering beliefs and mythologies, accelerating tech capability, and so on."
Yes, I would maybe add that we cannot predict the future and therefore any interference could lead to disaster. That is the in universe reason but there is also another that is more closely connected to our times. It is non interference thought to the end. Empires always use nobles reasons to justify interference. The Russians fight Nazis in Ukraine, the US wanted to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Saying that you never on principle interfere sets a hard lock on any argument slowly watering down non interference until the Federation would becomes like any other expanding empire.

I'm an atheist, so god doesn't factor into my views on the matter.

Personally, I'm a very empathetic person and would probably argue for helping/saving that species. As Sisko's father said:"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." So pass the stones please. :)

"Where ST interferes to prevent the total annihilation of a species, the question then becomes "is the interference a NET negative considering the alternative?" In scenarios where the species persists, the answer is likely yes. If it won't, I would argue it is not. In fact, in some cases they may not know any interference occurred. Or have some vague notion that something happened without really knowing what. So, I think it's clear you save them if you can."

What you are missing is that the Prime Directive isn't just about protecting less advanced races but also protecting the Federation and its citizens. Picard explained this in TNG Pen Pals. The PD exists to protect more advanced societies from a *moral danger* inherent to any situation where one group possesses (relatively) god like powers over another group. No matter how benign or laudable one's intentions, the situation is perilous.

In TOS we saw numerous examples of Federation citizens becoming corrupted by the absolute power coming from interacting with less advanced races. This occurred in episodes like The Omega Glory and Bread and Circuses. And also this theme plays out in episodes like Where no Man has Gone Before and Charlie X with super beings living among regular humans.

The idea being that absolute power corrupts absolutely and that where a society with phasers and starships interacts with a society that lives in straw huts the power differential is inherently dangerous and doomed to corrupt the more advanced group.

Remember these episodes were also written in the context of the 1960s and the Vietnam war and other events where big advanced powers exploited weaker less advanced societies claiming to do so for the good of those societies, but always with the specter of secondary motives.

So to summarize, one of the most important reasons the Federation doesn't interact with less advanced societies, even to save them from natural disasters is because such interaction is inherently dangerous (morally) to the Federation and its citizens. And yes, it also involves making decisions with ramifications that one cannot possibly predict or truly take responsibility for.

Just realized Booming addressed the point I made in her earlier post.

Well said, Booming. I'm a non-interference type person overall as well. People should read Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. The issue is more complex than empires subjugating other peoples. It's about the loss of the unique cultural voices and points of view. Of what it feels like to be Igbo, or a Berber, or a Chippewa before there was this western order and thought process imposed on them. Progress often means a loss of more primitive ways of being. But, that doesn't mean we need to strip the human species of some very unique ways of being.

Frankly, we may save our species of we redefine success, achievement and worth in terms more conducive to conservation, reclamation and balance with nature. I know of a few "backward" cultures that could help us do this. If we're willing to listen.

Not sure if this has been mentioned but perhaps Pike’s decision making in the last 2 eps is down to the personal crisis he is facing and he has adopted a devil may care attitude regardless of the PD. The fact the Shepherds had a more superior armed and faster ship and with an Enterprise team on the surface of the comet, I assumed Pike would weigh the risk, apologise for the intrusion and note the team on the surface first, get the team back and try further diplomacy from there. Instead he immediately labelled them zealots and the craziness ensued. The risk to the whole crew seemed quite high. We might see this subside now he sees he has a function to save those other lives?
Then there was the risk with Spock and the comet. I mean he could have had a shuttle accident! You know, that shit happens!

Jason R. - "So to summarize, one of the most important reasons the Federation doesn't interact with less advanced societies, even to save them from natural disasters is because such interaction is inherently dangerous (morally) to the Federation and its citizens. And yes, it also involves making decisions with ramifications that one cannot possibly predict or truly take responsibility for."

I understand where you're coming from. Let's be more precise. Saving a species from some exterior force of annihilation is very different from stopping a species from destroying itself. You cited a "natural disaster" which is likely an external factor, though it could be the by-product of a speces' activities. E.g., fracking taken to the Nth degree. Regardless, the term natural disaster is notoriously vague, and it doesn't usually refer to a truly species-ending event. So, it doesn't fit with my point re an annihilationevent. It falls into the much more difficult and situation-dependent category.

Which gets us to the issue of moral ramifications on the intervening society. Yes, halting the annihilation of another species impacts the psychology of the Federation. But consider the alternative. Consider NOT taking action and watching whole intelligent species die out. What sort of message does that send children re the Federation's principles? Is deontological thinking two-tiered, especially if we exclude pre warp civilizations? If not, do we watch a lesser Federation (warp capable) species die because we don't want to exert our incremental superiority and risk gaining some vaguely-defined god-complex?

Now, if a species is hell bent on destroying itself, the situation is much more difficult. Non-interference is probably the right move. How do we know their wars and genocides will kill them off completely? We don't. It's also difficult to assess whether the species can properly advance without learning some hard lessons. Yet, there is a level of atrocity and butchery where we, as a reasonably moral and empathetic society, might feel obligated to intervene. It's a tough, tough call. The PD seems to extract that thoughtful, deliberative exercise from its leaders. "Don't do it, period. " That gives tremendous power to those who made the PD and prevents successive leaders and ST personnel from sitting in judgment of the very tradeoffs the PD creators were allowed to consider. Which is why the PD is periodically ignored by ST captains. And it seems those who do it repeatedly but with real thoughtfulness to the implications, like Picard, are well respected amongst the majority of their peers.

"Get rid of them, Jammer :)"

And to more heavy-handed moderation, I say nay!

Not because I enjoy the offending discussion or am particularly keen on its continued existence -- I just skip over it, as you all can -- but because I believe in the principles of intellectual honesty, transparency and free speech. I don't know if everyone realizes how fortunate we are to have a place on the internet where we don't have to constantly second-guess ourselves about whether what we want to say falls within the arbitrary "community guidelines", partisan approval, or whims of the mods. In any case, when it comes to moderation a line must be drawn somewhere and it is often a blurry one. Not so when it comes to Jammer and his simple "no personal attacks" rule.

It has always been that many discussions that begin firmly rooted in Trek veer off into the Trek-tangential, which will inevitably have both its adherents and detractors who disagree on whether the posts should continue or cease. It is easy to be a detractor for all things that are not Trek enough until the day comes that they find themselves having to defend their premise or provide more evidence for their point and lo and behold, they are deep into one of those very tangents that they purport to stand against!

The current comments on interference/non-interference is exactly what we missed in this episode. There doesn’t seem to be a character (a Kira) who could have elevated the episode by noting the principles that Booming and IIsat have noted. With La’an slowly cooking away I thought it might be her but she stayed regimented. Let’s hope we get some pricklier episodes soon.
Maybe that’s where the half star went to Jammer?

Bryan - "I don't know if everyone realizes how fortunate we are to have a place on the internet where we don't have to constantly second-guess ourselves about whether what we want to say falls within the arbitrary "community guidelines", partisan approval, or whims of the mod."

That is simultaneously heartening and really fucking depressing.

@IIsat
Ok, so we are saving the one species and many more on that planet from a comet. Fine. Do we stop there? What about a comet that hits a planet in 500 years, or what about a sun going supernova in a 1000 years? How about a comet really far away that we had to sent a ship on a decade long mission? Do we rescue the people there? If we start rescuing primitive civilizations, do we not immediately make it our responsibility to save as many as possible. How about a gigantic natural disaster likely wiping out 98% of the species. Do we rescue those 98%? Or do we only interfere if all die? Where is the line then? 90%? 50%? 5%?

I get the allure of absolute principles. Otherwise you are walking into a swamp. On the other hand, I couldn't let them die. I would always help. I guess I'm not starfleet material. :D

And those are the easier cases. How about there is a far less developed warp capable civilization that controls a region in which a comet will soon wipe out a planet full of pre warp species, the warp civ can't do anything but still forbids us to enter their territory. Do we force our way in or let it happen?

Fantastic episode. Agree, it's a not a classic. It's just a very well told, interesting story with great characters and actors playing them.

Two for two and I am well invested for more.

I know, view the complete episode before you make the judgement. I wont, 21 minutes watched so far. wow!

Booming, your points reinforce why an absolute and rigid rule is dangerous. This is precisely the dialogue we should have.

It's also important to consider that Star Trek itself makes a number of assumptions not currently born out in the real world. For example, the sheer improbability of running into a sentient species with an evolutionary status within even a few thousand years of our own is astonishingly remote. That's a ST conceit that is frankly nonsense. Just to find ANY sentient species anywhere near us would be a spectacular event. Our galaxy is billions of years old so the time tables just don't support ST logic.

Also, warp drive, transporters and so forth are pretty far fetched. That humanity could just swoop in and avert a disaster is pretty silly.

Why bring this up? Because the frequency of species saving decisions, and the manner in which we do it (if we do it), are relevant to the discussion of a PD.

It would be exceptionally rare to face the scenarios you propose in the real world. We just happen to run across some civilization requiring help only we can provide, we have a feasible way of providing help in the timeframe warranted, the nature of our help is deemed to interfere with more than the species' ability to survive -- good luck with this scenario.

If we plant ourselves in the Trek universe, your hypotheticals become interesting because they might happen with enough frequency to warrant the introspection you and Jason raise. But to do so means to make judgments about those people, not ours. To dwell in the fantasy long enough to deliberate on it. I agree it wouldn't be easy, but norms, ethical frameworks, and ways of reasoning would be fundamentally different from our own. Because the variables driving the evolution of those essential things would be different.

So, a serious discussion of the PD moves me only as an academic exercise. Real world intervention is about the U.S. averting genocide one place while extracting resources from another. It's a single planet with a single species, so very different from the reality in which the PD exists. Each nation's actions have ripple effects for every other nation on Earth. It's rare now to find any isolated tribe. If we went back in time, would we alter our colonizing ways, knowing what we know now? I'd like to think we would, but who knows.

If we assume that the number of stars is around 250 billion and the Federation seems to control around 20% of the galaxy one could assume that they control around 50 billion star systems. Estimates of earth like planets are around 6 billion so that's maybe 1.2 billion earth like planets under Federation control. Let's say 1 in 1000 would be home to intelligent life. I would say many variations of my scenarios are quite likely to become a reality. That begs another question. How intelligent does a species have to be to deserve saving? Close to us?

Still wow, very good and entertaining. A reall star trek episode.

Almost all good things has already been said.

But am I the only one who smiled when seeing Uhuras uniform at the end of the episode. Just great. They really managed that as well.

@Ilsat: I understand your argument, but I don't agree with this whole idea of not interfering with indigenous cultures. It strikes me as very patronizing. If I were living in a hunter-gatherer village deep in the Amazon and half my kids were dying from various bacterial infections, I would definitely want someone from the outside industrialized world to come in and give us penicillin. For that matter, I would not want to be "protected" from the corrupting influence of being able to watch Star Trek. 😉

BTW, Steven Pinker has shown that these supposedly "harmonious" hunter-gatherer societies engage in murder, warfare, and other violence at a rate that far outstrips the modern Western world, even during the two world wars.

Booming, I like you but your math is way off. It doesn't account for about a thousand requirements, each of which must occur for a billion year evolutionary path to produce sentient life. You are also assuming Earth-like means inhabitable by sentient life at the present. It just doesn't. An astronomically small percentage of Earth like planets could sustain intelligent, developed life. The term is meant for the masses but has little in common with scientific reality.

Honestly, if we find 1 or 2 civilizations in our galaxy I would be impressed. The science just doesn't support Trek.

SlackerInc, that example exists in a vacuum. Better question, would you rather the Native Americans were left alone or that they suffered 500 years of death, exploitation, dislocation and the obliteration of most of their original way of life. But they do get the penicillin. Because that's what's on the table when you consider humanity on this planet.

In an idealized future, maybe species level contact with a pre warp civilization could occur with less collateral damage. But that involves assumptions and variables not present in your hypothetical

@ Booming

"And those are the easier cases. How about there is a far less developed warp capable civilization that controls a region in which a comet will soon wipe out a planet full of pre warp species, the warp civ can't do anything but still forbids us to enter their territory. Do we force our way in or let it happen?"

That would be a great episode.

@IIsat
I think you estimates are completely based on speculation. :)
In the end what do we really know about how common life is, how often it develops and under what circumstances? A tiny bit more than nothing and only about life on this planet. We know next to nothing about planets outside our solar system. There are billions of planets out there, earth-like and others. Maybe there are 2 or 3 inhabited planets in the galaxy, maybe there are 20 or 30 million. Maybe more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMjQ3hA9mEA
;)

@Jeffrey's Tube
I'm ready to be hired but only if I can funnel half of my income to the vietcong? Are they still around??

I really hate to be the piss in the proverbial tea, but I give this one a 2.5 /4, and much of that 2.5 was earned in the third act.

So let me start there to be positive. It was a really nice way to wrap things up, where everyone on the team has a role to play, even momentarily. And it even addresses one of my criticisms indirectly - something actually REQUIRED them to work together, it had gravitas and it was a threat. A thrill to see Pike’s poker-playing skills with the Shepherds, as I was beginning to think he was just the proverbial good-lookin white guy who sits in the center and points at everyone in sequence, saying “what do YOU think?”, “and what about THAT, you over there?”, “and I haven’t forgotten YOU, you rascally little cherub over there - what would YOUUUU do ?”. Ugh.

Also points given to the scenario. It was creative, and borrowed less from existing sci fi than it could have.

But the rest? Dreck. Utter, inescapable dreck. This crew seems to have nothing better to do than sit around and out-quip each other. The beginning party reminded me of the vapid “pretty people socializing” segment at the start of Age of Ultron, replete with “hey, lets reveal known things about characters using quips!” writing. The attention on Uhura at the party seemed very odd, especially in the otherwise lighter tone that social occasions are supposed to create.

About Uhura… actress is doing a fine job, but didn’t like the awkward shift from ensemble social event to the POV of an overwhelmed newbie. Heck, a slow-mo walkout Avengers style would have fit the mood better. I found Uhura and Spock playing Name that Tune with an alien egg to be profoundly silly, but accepted it for story development. The entire sequence lost its lustre, however, when Uhura literally SMILED when the egg opened. A strange alien object of unknown intent moves in response to your singing, and your reaction is a smile?! The proper reaction is a trained eye (and perhaps muzzle) on the alien object, wary and ready for anything. Say it with me: BE SERIOUS. You are an adult.

I’m already in love-hate or hate-love with the British twanged Drummer clone. She has this disgusted look on her face at all times, as if it to say “dear Lord why am I on this crew of vapid navel-gazers?”. I’m with you, kid. I’m with you. Someone needs to kick over a barrel of napalm on this crew to get them all serioused-up. :)

If I could tweak some of the tone knobs in the dialogue, I’d obvious put the quips way lower and the seriousness much higher. Also, I differ from many in that I want to see the Pike backstory re: his own death be more developed each week. It provides an anchor character (without going all Burnham on us), and can easily tie into events with the crew. Though I do agree it shouldn’t be repetitive, and setting it aside is preferable to him seeing a burned face every week.

Despite all this, I share the enthusiasm that many of you do. After all, the writing staff that put together this and ep #1 clearly found some elements for all to enjoy, so hopefully they can combine more of them in the future. But as with all things, people differ.

Booming, I'm with you that life is probably fairly prevalent. Intelligent life, though, takes a very long time to evolve. Hundreds of millions of years from simple life. There's no shortcut to this. And an incredible number of variables need to play out just the right way so intelligence does actually evolve.

Even if it does, the odds that we run into this life during that incredibly short corridor where it's evolved to a point of civilization, capacity to communicate, etc. is also incredibly small. Thousands of years maybe? Tens of thousands? Out of a galaxy many billions of years old.

Even if thousands of advanced civilizations did exist in our galaxy, we probably wouldn't be alive when they were (or will be). The math just doesn't work in our favor.

Fermi has a point. It's pretty quiet out there so far. I'm hopeful we eventually find someone. But I'm not holding my breath for the Trek future.

I read an article once, a while ago, that made the following argument: since complex life forms take billions of years to evolve in an iterative process, that necessarily must mean certain conditions on a planet must endure for billions of years for life to progress to that stage. Those conditions include a magnetic field that prevents the atmosphere being stripped away by solar shear (and the bombardment of the surface by solar radiation) and a geologically active core to generate that magnetic field and spur a geologically active surface, which is also necessary for the evolution of life into complex organisms. The article argues that most planets that would have been suitable for the development of life while young lose the geologic core activity and correspondingly the magnetic field and surface activity necessary for life long before any life that might have evolved can reach the complex organism stage.

The reason it hasn't on Earth is that Earth was hit by a dense nickel and iron asteroid (the impact that created the moon), re-energizing its core so that it is still going long enough for life to both evolve and evolve into complex organisms, an "unnatural" event in the lifecycle of a planet. And an occurrence that would certainly be so rare as to be next to impossible to find repeated anywhere else, let alone nearby, even given the massive scale of numbers of planets and stars in the galaxy let alone the universe.

So if that impact by that asteroid of that composition is the only reason geological conditions on Earth favorable to life have persisted long enough for life to evolve to the point that it has complex sentient beings walking around its surface, whereas "the natural lifecycle of planets" otherwise makes that impossible, then yeah, Earth is a rare case indeed, and one we shouldn't expect to find repeated elsewhere.

I'm not a scientist. (Like many other commenters here, I'm a lawyer.) This may be bunk science and full of holes. Also, who says there's only one kind of "life," right? Vastly different kinds of life might be able to evolve under vastly different conditions, even if "Earth-like" organic life can only evolve under these next-to-impossible-to-find conditions. Everything about the article might have been complete trash vis-a-vis current scientific thought and research and with only a layman's understanding I wouldn't really know. But, at any rate, I found the suggestion very interesting.

Let me follow-up my criticisms of the tone and quips with a recent example where I thought it was done surprisingly well: the Narissa character in Picard Season 1. Near the end, she descended into formulaic snarl, but I found the character a joy to watch for most of the season, especially because Peyton List appeared to be having a ball with it, keeping the character grounded enough to be a threat, yet flirting with camp when possible.

Jeffrey, it's a really fascinating area. I hope we find civilizations as much as the next person. It's also possible some asshole Hitler Borg species with orange haired tentacles emerges and wipes every other competitor out. Sometimes I think we should keep SETI on inactive mode until we get ourselves a Dyson Sphere powered Death Star with inter-dimensional mustard gas.

I always thought that metallic planetary cores were the norm rather than some special exception.

Anyway, I just read an article supposing that the reason intelligent aliens apparently haven't found us yet is because they all went extinct -- that there's only a brief window between technological advancement and annihilation or self-annihilation. But surely there's a more obvious possibility. Humanity hasn't existed for very long, at least not to significant enough of a technological capacity to leave a footprint in the universe. Wouldn't it take a really long time for information about us to reach distant aliens? Especially if they happen to live in another galaxy.

I guess I’ll see myself out. LOL

I’ve been thinking about this episode a lot since I watched it, usually DSC or Picard episodes don’t really occupy my thoughts afterwards but this one did. I think it comes down to a simple word; purity. It has a singular focus on a key idea that resonates to everything from decision making, plot developments to characters emotions - everything revolves around it, like the orbit of a planet. Too often recent Star Trek has got bogged down in attempting to tackle big ideas, then falling flat, or A and B plots that never mesh or characters acting against their personality. This episode captured what is great about Star Trek. It’s never the most ground breaking or in-depth science fiction out there - but it has this purity and simplicity to it that builds and expands on a pre existing world. This episode is as a close to Star Trek has come to what The Mandalorian did to the Star Wars. Keeping that focus narrow enough to tell a coherent story but being respectful to the wider universe. And best yet - no “big bad” season long arc to muddy the waters just yet.

Well well. SNW has come out swinging with a one-two combo of a season opener. None too soon either. Of all things how do you screw up having Patrick Freakin' Stewart as the lead of a show? I'm still sore about that, and this is a good salve on those wounds.

Now I want some more where that came from...

Man, there really seem to be quite a few lawyers here. Are there other scientists beside myself here? I have noticed over the years that people who didn't have a long scientific training have a hard time saying I don't know and really mean it.

Every time I read discussions about this I notice several problems.
- We don't know how life came into existence on this planet, which means we no basically nothing about how life comes or could come into existence.
- We only know how life developed on this planet and even that only to a degree. In general there is the problem of inductive reasoning. We only know cases of intelligent life on this planet and therefore think we know how intelligent life should develop. Maybe the timeframe in which intelligent life developed on this planet is the usual way, maybe it isn't.
- Why haven't we picked up signals from other species? As others pointed out time is one of the problems here, in numerous way. But there is also technology. Is using carrier waves like radio the only way to communicate over long distances? Do other species communicate in a way we would pick up on? If species use carrier waves, are they living in a way so that these waves actually leave the atmosphere. Radio waves cannot pass through water or metals.

To summarize, all the thinking about this has a gigantic inductive reasoning problem. You have one case of how intelligent life develops, with the important part of how it came into existence missing, and based on that make assumptions on how intelligent life has to develop. That might be fun, but it is not science. We just don't know enough to make any probabilistic estimation, in other words all this is the shakiest of inference. Furthermore, any hypothesis we make about life outside our solar system is not falsifiable.

But hey, let me be clear. It's fun to speculate. :)
We will probably not live long enough to get the answer to "how much life is out there" which means that any of you can just decide what is true, nobody can prove you wrong. I like the idea that there are many intelligent species out there and an even greater number was out there and even more than that will come into existence. Somewhere in this endless universe an intelligent species might come into existence right now. Isn't that wonderful. :)

@Bryan
"Wouldn't it take a really long time for information about us to reach distant aliens? Especially if they happen to live in another galaxy."
Most of our galaxy spans around 100.000 light years (30 kpc), but there is debate that it could actually be up to 200.000 light years, and we are using carrier waves for around a 100 years, meaning the earliest waves have traveled 100 light years.

The Pegasus galaxy, the other even bigger galaxy in our local cluster, is more than 3 million light years away. There are some dwarf galaxies that are close. The closest other galaxy is the Canis Major dwarf galaxy that is around 42.000 light years from the galactic core but it is slowly ripped apart by our galaxy while it circles the core and leaves behind stars and gas aka the Monoceros ring, even though that is also debated.

//You watch the episode, it has a simple message, you forget it the next day.//

Not really. No

I'm remarkably surprised by the quality of these first two episodes.

I have found Discovery to be earnest, but mixed quality at best, and I felt Picard was, sadly, generally awful. So my expectations were not high for Strange New Worlds.

Yet, two episodes in, I'm really quite blown away by what I've seen.

Perhaps this new era of Trek has finally nailed down the balance between melding new sensibilities and styles of the time with what made Trek so great in the first place?

TNG, as we all know took 2-3 years to find its identity, blending the late 80s/90s attitudes against the qualities of TOS, a style that was then finalised with DS9, VOY, and to some extent, ENT.

Perhaps something similar has happened here with the first few seasons of DISC and Picard leading to Strange New Worlds hopefully being a great success.

Booming, they say space is cold yet it contains the hottest blood of all.

Loving SNW so far.

Another 3 star episode for me. Maybe 3.5.

Really good sci-fi story. Nothing amazingly original but definitely decent sci-fi.

Only a few little jarring moments for me (a few too many people talking like they're from 2022 and I'm never keen on they crew being super unprofessional when they're supposed to be military).

Uhura was great. We didn't get much of her in ep1 but she was simlpy great in this.

I'm really liking this version of Spock. Number 1 was good with limited stuff to work with.

Angry girl is lame so far. A discount Drummer.

It's amazing it's taken them all this time to realise all they had to do was use the formula that had already worked so well since 1969 and just tell good interesting sci-fi stories.

I doubt many people watch sci-fi to have some "message" shoved down their throat or people crying.

For me this is Star Trek how it's supposed to be.

Homo Sapiens has been around for about 500.000 years and let’s say 15.000 generations we four generations ago cars and light bulbs appeared. It not enough to find a habitual planet we must also match he time. What if the asteroid had hit us 60 million years ago instead of 66 million years ago?
Earth has a quite large moon that has always stirred the organic soup. Does it have an impact on how fast life develops on a planet?

We must be very synchronised in time with another intelligent species in order to detect it or be detected.

Now back to second episode of strange new worlds. After reflecting a little bit more. It is amazing that so many of us consider a quite average episode to be very good and fantastic. Indeed, it was a quite classic Star Trek episode and really not something special, except that we waited for this since long.

I also enjoyed this and the previous one immensely, but I have a question: was it really established that the Prime Directive allows Starfleet to actually prevent pre-warp civilizations from being destroyed naturally? How isn’t that intervening in the development of a less advanced civilization? I can understand why Pike did it in the pilot (they had already inadvertently intervened by accidentally giving them warp tech) and I would also understand if they decided to move the comet after they discovered it had tech inside, but I don’t understand why they set to move the comet before that.

@Jeffrey's Tube: Super interesting hypothesis! I have always had a hunch that we might be the only intelligent life in the universe, or at least the galaxy, and what you describe only bolsters it.

@Maq: "After reflecting a little bit more. It is amazing that so many of us consider a quite average episode to be very good and fantastic. Indeed, it was a quite classic Star Trek episode and really not something special, except that we waited for this since long."

Yeah, I pretty much agree, hence my three star rating. But I will be more than satisfied if they just consistently churn out three star episodes, one after another.

@Morumtri Hexa: I agree that on some level it's certainly interference, but I think they mean something more like cultural contamination.

"Man, there really seem to be quite a few lawyers here. Are there other scientists beside myself here?"

You claimed in a previous thread that lawyers were scientists.

William B is in physics, not sure if I can name anyone else offhand. Omicron, didn't you mention at one point you're in a STEM field?

@Jeffrey's Tube
I must say that I find that article you describe about how long life needs to develop and magnetic cores needing to be "reactivated" by a giant meteorite hitting planets to make life possible very unscientific. That's even more speculation than speculating how much life there is in the galaxy. That article is essentially speculating that life is rare (we don't know that) and then make up another unproven hypothesis (life needs an active core) and then comes up with a scenario that uses elements of the giant impact hypothesis (aka a small planet hitting earth and forming the moon) and that the composition of that small planet has somehow "activated" earth's core or kept it going long enough. That basing an unproven hypothesis on several more layers of unproven hypothesis. It's pure speculation based on even more pure speculation.

@Jason
"You claimed in a previous thread that lawyers were scientists."
Some are, most aren't. Comparative legal scholars for example could be called scientists and there are law departments who do social science but just studying the law itself is not a scientific education because it is normative. Lawyers have to accumulate some knowledge of social science or psychology but they are not learning a version of the scientific method aka empiricism.

Here a far better explanation from researchgate
"Law is not a science. The process of lawmaking, interpretation of legal rules, and so on, has nothing in common with science. The first one deals with normative sphere ('obligation') and the second one with descriptive sphere ('truth"). Law in this sense is a social practice."

So nice to have the comments section full of people talking about the episode and science/sci-fi stuff rather than some dull American politics or gender thing.

SNW must be doing something right (so far)

Oh and one more thing. Pinker was mentioned and his book "better angels". That book has been picked apart/proven to deeply flawed, especially by statisticians but also anthropologists and archeologists. His understanding of the democratic peace is also flawed. The praise it got came mostly from elite magazines and neo realist political scientists. Some like to call him the "scientist of the elites". I always wonder why people like Pinker, who did some good work in psychology ( I heard), start to wander into other areas and essentially start to write elevated pop science books. I also think that evolutionary psychology, for which he is a strong advocate, is a nonsense field because all it's hypothesis are impossible to test.

Kipping's Bayesian analysis of the probability of life / intelligent life on Earth is interesting. 9:1 ratio in favor of life considering its early emergence. About 1:1 for intelligent life considering its very late emergence.

Bear in mind this is a probability distribution based on the precise factors on Earth. But it means that if we were to "rewind" Earth's history, there is a good chance intelligent life would not emerge. And his analysis ignores the issue of evolutionary transition events, many of which involve chance occurrences as a trigger. This further reduces the likelihood of intelligent life developing here.

This is Earth mind you. Now imagine this plotted to an exoplanet. You need to find some planet with dozens of conditions fine tuned to something like Earth's, so that intelligent life even has a chance.

-- Protection from cosmic radiation
-- No runaway greenhouse
-- Atmosphere with some ratio of elements conducive to life
-- Stable orbit
-- Gas giants as gravity wells to pull the majority of asteroids and comets away from you
-- Stable star
-- Goldilocks location
-- Proper albedo
-- Presence of water
-- Probably need a moon for tidal requirements affecting the seas

There are many more but you get the idea.

Combine the above with Kipping's research and the chances of intelligent life are extremely rare. Based on the current science.

@IIsat
"9:1 ratio in favor of life considering its early emergence. About 1:1 for intelligent life considering its very late emergence."
The numbers you are quoting are based on the four hypothesis in the study. Meaning they find it very likely that life is common (9:1) and a slightly higher chance (3:2) that intelligent life is rare vs intelligence is common. I don't know where you got the 1:1. it's not in the study as far as I can see.

Have your read the actual study? My statistical knowledge goes in a different direction so I cannot judge the math but here are a few quotes from the study.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1921655117

"Despite having no observational data concerning nonterrestrial life, we are in possession of stronger constraints when it comes to life on Earth. Until this situation changes, inferences concerning the existence of life elsewhere in the Universe must unfortunately rely heavily on this single data point (13)."

"It is tempting to apply these numbers to potentially habitable exoplanets being discovered. However, we caution that our analysis purely concerns the Earth, treating abiogenesis as a stochastic process against a backdrop of events and conditions which might be plausibly unique to Earth."

"For intelligence evolution, it is found that a rare-intelligence scenario is slightly favored at 3:2 betting odds. Thus, if we reran Earth’s clock, one should statistically favor life to frequently reemerge, but intelligence may not be as inevitable."

"Overall, our work supports an optimistic outlook for future searches for biosignatures (4–7)."

As far as I can see the study argue that life is probably common in the universe and intelligent life might not happen all the time (3:2) but should overall still be something that happens quite frequently. It also points out the problems I named aka we only have one data point and inference based on one data point is always questionable. Still he argue that it's almost 50 to 50 that intelligent life is common. Well, this associate professor certainly knows how to get his name in the papers.

About the other points you name, again you are making the same mistake. You look at life on this planet (one specific data point) and based on that start to define conditions that need to exist to let life come into existence how it developed here but there is no reason to believe that the way life developed here is the only way. As an example there is a fungus living inside the Chernobyl reactor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus

One could argue that higher exposure to radiation could actually speed up the development of life because it makes mutations more likely. There is bacteria that can survive 5000 grays, Humans for example cannot survive 10 grays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans

There are life forms in the Mariana trench where pressure is about 15750psi.

Life could exist that goes beyond anything we could imagine. But hey, if you want to believe that you are part of the most special species in the universe, be my guest. That believe has a long tradition, especially in religion. As I said we really don't know. Maybe the Milky Way is full of life, maybe we are alone. Maybe the Pegasus Galaxy is the opposite of our galaxy, maybe not.

Booming, the study in no way concludes that intelligent life is or should be frequent. You're missing the point. Obviously the study itself is limited to Earth; that's the point of a Bayesian analysis.

The other factors I mentioned are key to life - any life - emerging. Just what sort of proteins are going to produce life with cosmic radiation constantly bombarding them? What sort of life will persist with giant asteroids ramming into the planet? How is any life going to persist with 300 degree temperature deltas?

These are not speculative. These are integral to life existing, evolving over millions of years.

Cosmic radiation is not going to speed up life. It's going to break it down and kill it.

I thought this episode was awful, and I had high hopes after episode 1. Why does Uhura need a tragic backstory? They already have a security officer whose whole family was murdered by Gorn. Why does Uhura have to doubt her ability to succeed? Just like Renee Picard in Picard season 2…can’t we just have confident and competent young women? Why did Spock have to do a secret plan to heat up the ice when this was an Uhura centric episode? Why couldn’t she have just used her communication skills to talk with the comet? Here’s a trek way to do this episode: Uhura talks to the comet and discovers it has no special purpose and is just a probe sent by an ancient race. She is now able to control it and they turn it to miss the planet. The crew debates if they should tell the shepherds their god is a lie. Pike, because they established he was a man of faith in Discovery, ultimately makes a speech about the value of belief. Everyone goes on their way.

"Yes, Shepherds, there is a Comet Claus."

@Booming, your vagueposting about Pinker's getting "refuted" by the usual suspects (those whose ox has been gored) isn't going to cut it. Pinker provides footnoted references for everything in his books, so let's see your citations. I'm predicting that if you provide links, these supposed refutations will in their own right turn out to be vague, petulant whining.

@IIsat
"Booming, the study in no way concludes that intelligent life is or should be frequent."
The entire study is about that question.

"The other factors I mentioned are key to life - any life - emerging."
I'm repeating myself but you are looking at life and how it exists here and based on that declare that this is the only way life could develop. It's a classical inductive fallacy. Karl Popper is not amused.
I have read estimates that there are at least 300 million potentially habitable planets and possibly up to 2 billion in our galaxy. Using the numbers from the study you provided that would mean around 40% probability of intelligent life. Even if we assume that of those 300m - 2 billion planets only 1 in 10 million is actually habitable that would mean between 12.000 and 80.000 intelligent life forms at some point in this galaxy and that would still ignore the possibility that life could develop in completely different ways than it developed here.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/06/1011784/half-milky-way-sun-like-stars-home-earth-like-planets-kepler-gaia-habitable-life/

The discussion has started to circle. You believe it is extremely rare, I believe we don't have enough information to make any kind of reliable estimate. If you want to restate your point, please do. Otherwise, let's leave it at that.

@SlackerInc
Here a few peer reviewed studies:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2876315

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022343319896843

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5834001/

https://www.academia.edu/3816994/Pinkers_List_Exaggerating_Prehistoric_War_Mortality

Sorry,just a quick search, have to work.

@Marge: I liked the episode as is, but I actually agree that your notes would make it better.

Sometimes the guy with the most footnotes is the most shameless cherry-picker.

WOW, look at that! A captain that doesn't have all the answers, doesn't go to all the away missions and doesn't save the universe by themselves in every episode. What a refreshing concept! :D

@grey cat
since this was a musical comet, I was worried "discount Drummer" would break into an old navy song or something :D

@IIsat
Sorry, I completely miscalculated the numbers. I'm dieting and feel a little woozy. It would actually be 180 to 800 planets with intelligent life if it was 1 in 10 million (which is my random choice)

Ok, still wrong...
Let's just say that I wrote 1 in 10.000, then the math checks out. :D

@Marge

Very adequate and clever objetions, thank you.
But as SlackerInc I also liked the episode.

I will now try defend the view of not letting Uhura shine to much.
She should not become a Tilly or Wesley or Adira.

I very much liked the part just before the beamed away to the comet. Uhura really came over as a newbee. The short pause in the corridore when she sort of put herself together. It was really beatuiful.

To let her do the A to Z would perhaps have been to much. She did still get a moment at the end to shine again.

@Booming your links:

1. Says Pinker could be right; does not address hunter-gatherers but rather historical wars.
2. Same: only addresses wars between 1816-2007.
3. Same: 1823-2003.
4. Better, but still mainly about civilizational conflict. I was talking about the violence between small and very primitive villages of hunter-gatherers. That it lessens when you move to larger and more complex social organizations is kind of the point of civilization.

@SlackerInc
Oh, I thought you wanted studies that outline Pinker's shaky math. His hypothesis that there is less violence since 1800 is one side of the argument in the book aka hunter gatherers are more violent than modern societies. I can look for studies that deal with Hunter gatherers specifically later.

Great episode , I agree with Jammer it felt as if they took different concepts from previous trek episodes as a base line and then the story took off from there .

It also felt like a mulligan episode on xeno linguistics after that dreadful STD season 4 finale that was basically a rip off from Arrival .

Loved the back and forth between Spock and Uhrura , maybe it's the legacy character nostalgia kicking in, once again Anson Mount just has this charismatic gravitas as captain Pike.

@Booming
Compelled to interject.
I can't think of a single study which represents hunter gatherers as being more "violent" than more complex societies.

Civilization made some amazing contributions but the widespread onset of peace was not one of them.

Can't see Pinker's thesis. :)
1800....oh yes peaceful...until June 14, when a mere 7000 people died or were maimed violently at Marengo. The 19th century was not peaceful and I feel that excluding the Napoleonic Wars is disingenuous on his part. Moreover, by 1821 the Greek War of Independence had broken out. Much of the eastern Mediterranean was affected by it. Massacre anyone?

@SlackerInc
First of all. The very first link in my earlier post offers this sentence:"
This article is organized as follows. First we present the problems associated with historical analyses of violence. Second, we discuss the quantitative approaches since Richardson(1948) and present the statistical flaws and methodological errors in the widely held theories such as those in Pinker (2011)."

There are far less reactions from people who study hunter gatherer violence because there are far less people who do that than studying modern warfare and violence. All studies who look at Pinker's methodology and statistical analysis see it as flawed, sometimes deeply so. Sure maybe only his numbers for medieval and 1800 onward are completely off but it certainly looks bad. It looks like Pinker had a conclusion in mind an then produced data that confirmed it.

Apart from that do I not have any energy today.
Here is what i could find.
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.336.6083.829?casa_token=usTz-Roej9UAAAAA:wHpWgkmVN0y0Vk4DLjlttAPj4iKhUVvl1-UlcbMlE6sj4pxqpoph1MkYE1iVPjlJnh_gddhVzn0dSA

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JACPR-06-2014-0127/full/pdf?title=myths-about-hunter-gatherers-redux-nomadic-forager-war-and-peace

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-019-09340-w#Sec5

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041448

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02105.x (For this you probably need university access) Here a few quotes:
"he Better Angels of our Nature is a typical Pinker book. It is a clever student thesis writ very, very large. A typical Pinker book is framed around a big claim that is at once both attractive and counterintuitive – in this case, that our history exhibits overall moral progress, in that we are becoming a less violent species, at least with regard to violence towards fellow humans."

https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/historical-reflections/44/1/hrrh440112.xml

It critiques his usage of medieval numbers:" Pinker’s depiction of violence in medieval Europe, however, includes serious misrepresentations of the historical reality of this period; his handling of the scholarship on medieval Europe raises doubts about his treatment of other periods."
That's pretty rough for a scientific review. That a scientists way of calling somebody either incompetent or dishonest.

Personally, I always saw Pinker, at least for the last 15 years more like a public debater and less like a serious scientist. He is in showbiz now.

@Sigh2000
"I can't think of a single study which represents hunter gatherers as being more "violent" than more complex societies."
My impression, and I'm certainly no expert, is that a pretty significant majority sees hunter gatherer as more peaceful. Even though there are spikes of violence.

" Can't see Pinker's thesis. :)"
It has very little significance in science and his numbers about modern times and medieval times are highly questionable which is probably the reason that in all my years I have never actually read one of his studies in a scientific context. Bill Gates called better angels one of the most important books he ever read. Do with that information what you want. :D

It was okay, nothing more. The tone is too flippant and the crew behaves like brats rather than starfleet officers, so the shallow, immature writing is stil present here. The story has some interesting aspects to it like the precognitive ability of the comet but the whole thing with the music was non-sensical.

An ok episode with some trekkian motifs, still better than its sister shows.

Another good episode? Two in a row? In Alex Kurtzman nuTrek? Am I losing my mind?

And Pike has a wood fireplace, full chef's kitchen and party lounge in his quarters? Well damn.

Well I like it. This feels very more like the Trek I grew up with in the 80s and 90s.

Perhaps a little bit too flippant at times but it's early days so it's work in progress. But a good foundation!

@Booming: You are focused on a book (Better Angels) I have not read. I have however read The Blank Slate twice, including the second time very recently, and I ride or die for that book. It is from there that I got his information about a hunter-gatherer violence. I don't believe he talks about medieval or 19th century violence in the book.

@Sigh2000: Most people believe as you do, that traditional hunter-gatherer societies were peaceful and idyllic. It is what my mother, a professor emeritus of sociology, and my father, a Stanford-trained professor of anthropology before he died, have always staunchly believed. I believe, as Pinker does, that it is a "noble savage" myth.

@SlackerInc
Ok before this turn into the Pinker discussion thread. Let me just say that the blank slate was nominated for a Pulitzer and Aventis Prize. The Aventis Prize has this description:" The Royal Society Science Books Prize is an annual £25,000 prize awarded by the Royal Society to celebrate outstanding popular science books from around the world." In other words, it is not a serious scientific work. Plus, always keep in mind that his usage of statistics in this book was also criticized and finally that he argues against a position "tabula rasa" which is fairly rare now. I'm not sure that I have ever met anybody who has a 100% nurture vs 0% nature view. Maybe that view was more widespread 20 years ago or still is in the USA. It is kind of amusing though that Pinker himself writes about this book not necessarily being used for right wing purposes. Aka the poor are poor because there is something wrong with them that is inborn. :)
Oh and I already said what I think about evolutionary psychology. Especially it's testability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology

There's a reason some dismiss evolutionary psychology as evolutionary storytelling.

Yeah, I'm not saying that there are no inborn psychological traits developed over human history, just that it's impossible to test. We cannot go back to the point where traits came into existence.

This quote from the criticism page (which amusingly seems to be mostly pro evo psych; maybe set up by evo psychs?) summarizes it quite nicely
"In general, the views that Pinker derives from 'the new sciences of human nature' are mainstream Clinton-era view"
Blank Slate and the like seems to be the Clinton democrat version of what the Bell Curve is for conservatives. While the Bell Curve argues that we shouldn't do anything about poverty and lock up anybody who becomes a criminal, Blank slate and by extension evo psych argues that sadly we have to lock up criminals and really cannot do that much for the poor. In other words, society is pretty much perfect as it is. Elites of the world, relax. You have done enough and deserve to be elite. Thanks Stephen. :)
Well, the Bell Curve is complete nonsense, while Pinker at least puts some effort into blank slate.

Captain Pike: “Ok people you know your jobs, we’ve got a planet to save by breakfast time, lets get to work!”

Captain Pike: (sotto voce, breaks fourth wall) “I love this job”

… You know that one bit of goofery is more funny than any quippy, sarcastic bit of flippant understatement, babbly rapid fire dorkiness, or eye-rolling dismissal of the seriousness of the situation or references to crazy events that happened off screen, that Discovery seems so fond of. It really seems to come from Pike as a person (to Number One), and Anson Mount as a person, to us, at the same time, and it got an honest laugh out of me.

It’s also extremely quick and it doesn’t take a lot of mental somersaults to understand the joke.

…like what I’m seeing here

@SlackerInc

"@Sigh2000: Most people believe as you do, that traditional hunter-gatherer societies were peaceful and idyllic. It is what my mother, a professor emeritus of sociology, and my father, a Stanford-trained professor of anthropology before he died, have always staunchly believed. I believe, as Pinker does, that it is a "noble savage" myth."


Never said "peaceful and idyllic" in my post. I do not ascribe to "noble savage" beliefs in my understanding of the lifeways of hunter gatherers.

I do however know a lot about warfare through time. And I have known violence, so I am aware of what our species is capable of. I am happy that Steven Pinker has been able to live a peaceful and idyllic life and survive to publish unimpeded what he wants to believe is true. I just don't agree with all of his viewpoints.

Never said "peaceful and idyllic" in my post. I do not *subscribe*to "noble savage" beliefs in my understanding of the lifeways of hunter gatherers.

Even if Pinker's general thesis is correct (which isn't exactly an Earth shattering insight), it's mainly dealing with physical brutality. I'm more interested in how modern civilization, especially going forward, will impact our psychology. I'm also interested in more philosophical ideas of violence -- e.g. how excessive rule-making, governance and normative-based restrictions do violence to human freedom or diminish the more subjective aspects, quirks or creative impulses of our nature. Homogenization of the human condition to fit the ever growing and consolidating state apparatus.

@Booming,

"Man, there really seem to be quite a few lawyers here. Are there other scientists beside myself here? I have noticed over the years that people who didn't have a long scientific training have a hard time saying I don't know and really mean it."

I note that some natural scientists tend to believe social science isn't 'real' science, and would display a condescending attitude towards social scientists. Given proportions of scientists among Trek fans, it's a surprise you haven't met this attitude.

Anyhow, see anything by Azar Gat for a contrasting perspective that sees hunter-gatherers as rather violent and criticizes Fry severely (e.g.[1]).

As for chances of life, it turns out the simple inference "there are a lot of stars, so there must be another intelligence" is false. Even if we use the (badly defined) Drake equation with the poor estimates from the single data point we have, a correct statistical approach would still have a decent chance of being alone in the galaxy[2]. Of course, this cannot be falsified or proven, since our data is junk. However, the apparent lack of large scale 'noisy' galactic works should in my opinion be a significant data point.

[1]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/evan.21446

[2]
https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

"Blank Slate and the like seems to be the Clinton democrat version of what the Bell Curve is for conservatives. While the Bell Curve argues that we shouldn't do anything about poverty and lock up anybody who becomes a criminal, Blank slate and by extension evo psych argues that sadly we have to lock up criminals and really cannot do that much for the poor."

These ideas never left us. The modern 'crime as the result of lead poisoning' theory silently argues in a similar direction regarding crime - since we can't reverse neural development damage (as far as I know), all that's left is 'lock them up'.

@Yair
"I note that some natural scientists tend to believe social science isn't 'real' science, and would display a condescending attitude towards social scientists."
There are parts of social science where I role my eyes. These people do philosophy in a different dress, not empirical science aka validity and reliability. But there has been a huge push over the last 30 years to bring social science closer to natural science. Apart from that, hey, these people can have whatever opinion they like. We social scientists work under certain restrictions, we cannot put a Human in the large hadron collider and see what happens, because that would be "wrong" :).

"These ideas never left us."
Yes, especially the Bell Curve is actually about Eugenics. Making the smart breed more to create smarter offspring, social programs being mostly aimed at the elite. Getting rid of the troublemakers and so on. The Bell Curve used many sources that were financed by the Pioneer fund, a non profit pro eugenics org. It's pretty disturbing apart from being bad science.

About the second link. Again, I'm not saying that there is a lot of life or none. I'm saying we don't know. I'm open to all possibilities.

Yair, I'm glad the Fermi article examines the evolutionary transition events using logarithmic based math. It's nice to see scientists look at probability distribution this way. It doesn't draw a definitive conclusion re intelligent life in our galaxy, but plausibly calculates that the extreme rarity of intelligent life is much more supported, statistically, than claims to a plethora of such life.

The problem I have is when people make bland pronouncements re these issues. Obviously, no one knows with certainty whether there is intelligent life besides our own. But, that doesn't mean we just throw our arms up and say, "No theory is better than another" and declare the debate over.

Something like 15-20 years after I first found this site and read Jammer's reviews of all of the 90s series two or three times over, I am so glad to see that he is still reviewing. I'm also glad to see the "Hard-Headed Aliens of the Week" trademark has not lapsed.

One of the reasons I loved reading Jammer's reviews was that I tended to either already share his opinion, or otherwise be convinced by his well-written positions to lean his way - not every time. I certainly have disagreed with a handful of his reviews, but not many.

I'll say that I disagree with this one - at least slightly.

I'd say that as an episode of Trek, I'd normally rank this at a 2.5 - maybe a 3, personally.

I feel like the dearth of quality TV Trek in decades - the issues with serialized Discovery and Picard - militates towards giving SNW some extra acknowledgement and credit, and the character work, acting and tone alone might be enough to push it to 3 stars for me. I can't entirely ignore that the series walks in with a big leg up thanks to decades of history we all have with the ship, the theme, many of the characters, plus a whole season of Mount and Peck learning Pike and Spock developing those before we've got to the start of SNW. Discovery didn't have that leg up - though Picard certainly had some of it.

SNW shows great promise and as an episode 2 of a new series, I guess I should give it a bit of extra credit as well - usually the first few episodes of a Trek series are pretty bad compared to the later stuff.

That said, I respectfully disagree with some of your points, and in particular "As sci-fi goes, this is pretty solid."

I found three major issues with the PLOT portion of the episode that kept it just shy of "great" for me.

1. Derivative - I know we've had hundreds of hours of Trek, and original ideas are hard to come by, but I found the episode derivative of more than one Trek episode.

a) "Let's decode the music - it's a message! It's communicating!" is not a terribly fresh plot. In fact, Discovery's latest finale literally just did "Let's decode the light patters - It's a message! It's communicating!".

b) The whole "we were always destined to interfere and the comet knew that we would" revelation was mildly reminiscent of the way Picard came back to the future in IT'S latest finale and it seemed like all of the changes were also preordained and 'always happened that way' (admittedly this is a light similarity, but it's the second similarity to the latest season finale of a series, so I feel obliged to mention it.

c) Rookie communications officer Uhura, a visible minority woman with amazing linguistic skill, isn't even sure she wants to be on the Enterprise. I sure hope this revelation doesn't immediately result in the ship requiring a linguistic expert to save it - oh look! Okay, that's a bit clichéd. But that's not why I bring it up. I bring it up because if you cross out "Uhura" and replace it with "Hoshi", it's basically the same 'backstory.

2. The second issue for me was the plot itself. It's a fortune telling comet that communicates in music? I guess it's as plausible as a few other TOS episodes, and although TOS is SNW's closest cousin, I guess I was hoping for Trek with a TOS feel, but with less of the TOS unexplained supernaturalism/paranormalism/magic, and more of the sophistication, gravitas and scientific plausibility/explanation of later Trek like TNG. The character stuff made it watchable, but the actual plot was a bit of an eyeroll for me.

3. The third issue was the structure, which ultimately you touched on, but excused. For me though, I can't quite give it a pass on "Hard-Headed Alien of the Week syndrome", and the structure feeling abundantly like an episode of Voyager or Enterprise and much further from TNG.

The aliens may have a stated motivation, but we still have an alien with zero willingness or capability of listening or negotiating or explaining things calmly or seeing anything differently than their own views. If this is the one episode of this type of alien in SNW, that's perfectly fine. But I pray we don't have another Voyager on our hands where every week, there's some character moment that is interrupted by some unrelated ship threat or hard headed alien or whatever that threatens to destroy the ship, and that has to be solved with some technobabble or handwavy solution.

Okay, maybe I'm being a little harsh - compared to Discovery, this was abundantly better. If it stays like this, I will tolerate and even enjoy it as I did Voyager - but it will keep it from 'greatness' if it is the same stuff every week. My fingers are crossed. Voyager survived on the character stuff, but I hope the writers of SNW can give this cast some compelling plots they deserve.

My favourite "Trek" episode plot in a while isn't even official Trek - it's the Orville episode where Bortus and his mate debate having gender-reassignment of their infant. The episode is entirely based on character decision and a moral/ethical discussion and decision. I hope SNW can come up with some novel issues to explore or parable too.

@ TH

"The second issue for me was the plot itself. It's a fortune telling comet that communicates in music? I guess it's as plausible as a few other TOS episodes, and although TOS is SNW's closest cousin, I guess I was hoping for Trek with a TOS feel, but with less of the TOS unexplained supernaturalism/paranormalism/magic, and more of the sophistication, gravitas and scientific plausibility/explanation of later Trek like TNG. The character stuff made it watchable, but the actual plot was a bit of an eyeroll for me."

I, on the other hand, really appreciated this choice. If I have one criticism of TNG it's that the universe in that show often felt too "known." Especially in the later seasons. The more I learn about our world, the more I've come to realize how astonishingly weird, strange, and unlikely things in it can be. I'm sure it's the same for a universe like a Star Trek universe, only even more so. The scale, right? So, I think Star Trek benefits from episodes that remain with a sense of mystery and the implausibly explained at the denouement. Episodes where the crew is like "well, all these things happened . . . and we have no idea why! It sure was strange! I guess we'll never know!" It makes the universe they inhabit more alien and exciting, and what they're doing out there in the unknown--flinging themselves at it--more exciting.

The unlikeliness of encountering a fortunetelling comet that communicates with music and actually is on an altruistic mission around the galaxy engenders the Enterprise's mission with a sense of the wondrous.

Of course I don't *only* want episodes like that. But I think they're important. I do. Especially in an episode 2 of a series, I think it was a smart choice to do something a bit "magical."

T-minus 90 minutes to episode 3!

@TH: I think you and I are pretty well aligned on this episode (I gave it three stars, which is at the upper end of your range for it). Your points are well stated. I do think it gets a little grade inflation by being compared to Discovery and Picard.

@Booming: "I'm not sure that I have ever met anybody who has a 100% nurture vs 0% nature view. Maybe that view was more widespread 20 years ago or still is in the USA."

[I'm going to tie this into Trek, I promise--bear with me.]

If you really press your average progressive on this, they will see that to go 100% is untenable, so they will give lip service to the idea that it's a mix. But they act shocked and offended in practice when traits are assumed to be inborn rather than learned, and they constantly make very dubious assumptions about the arrow of causation in various social science research findings.

A great example was on NPR a couple years back, when an "expert" came on to talk about the strong correlation between Black boys getting suspended from public school and then being much more likely to end up in prison by the time they hit their mid-twenties. This academic was sure this was ironclad proof that if schools simply stopped suspending Black teens, they could prevent their going to prison later on. Poof, voila! Hopefully the scientific-minded reading this will see the obvious problem that neither she nor the NPR host noticed. Isn't it much more likely that the kind of people whose personalities are oriented toward misbehaving in school (and therefore getting suspended) are also the kind of people who will "misbehave" (commit crimes) as adults and get prosecuted for them? Yet again and again, these alternate (and much more logical) possibilities are not seen by progressive social scientists and people in the media because their tacit default is the Blank Slate.

Furthermore, there is no such thing as a person with a 100% nature view and never has been. No scientist has ever believed that if, for instance, Americans adopt a Chinese baby at birth it will grow up speaking Chinese and practicing Chinese cultural customs. The "nature" side has always been the moderates, seeing roughly a 50/50 split for nature and nurture. But as Pinker points out, this means mathematically that as you eliminate more and more culturally based forms of discrimination, the 50% that is "nature" (in the genes) becomes more and more important in distinguishing which individuals will rise to prominence based on their inborn talents.

So in the 23rd century Federation, for instance, it ought to be a lot more important to have good genes than it is now. In some other 23rd century scenario, that might not be the case because "Gattaca" style genetic engineering will have leveled that playing field. But we know that canonically in Trek, genetic engineering was long ago banned (although there are a few of them around in DS9), so it should be people's naturally inherited traits that dominate.

@Ilsat: "I'm also interested in more philosophical ideas of violence -- e.g. how excessive rule-making, governance and normative-based restrictions do violence to human freedom or diminish the more subjective aspects, quirks or creative impulses of our nature."

You sound like a libertarian. A theoretically coherent ideology that would be unlikely to work in practice, and if it did I would find it morally abhorrent. I'm glad the Federation did not go that way.

@Yair: I liked your 8:37 post, not so much the one you posted four minutes later.

@Booming: "But there has been a huge push over the last 30 years to bring social science closer to natural science."

The replicability crisis suggests that hasn't worked out so well.

Personally, I'd rather see sociologists at least move away from "quant" efforts, that they tend to do poorly (they're just not--sorry--wired that way, or they'd be in STEM), and go back to the more observational/philosophical texts like those of Erving Goffman. His writings on "role distance" and "front/back stage behavior" are absolutely brilliant, with no data cited other than his own interpersonal observations.

@SlackerInc
I really cannot argue with your biased opinions about a certain social group or what you took away from a several year old radio interview.

". Isn't it much more likely that the kind of people whose personalities are oriented toward misbehaving in school (and therefore getting suspended) are also the kind of people who will "misbehave" (commit crimes) as adults and get prosecuted for them? Yet again and again, these alternate (and much more logical) possibilities are not seen by progressive social scientists and people in the media because their tacit default is the Blank Slate."
First of all, psychopath exist and in Germany at least we screen for them. They often become dropouts because many psychopath cannot really function in a society created by non psychopath.

To your actual point about blacks. Your monocausal explanation could be true for a few but probably not for the majority. First, one would have to compare the numbers with other ethnic groups. Then for environmental factors (School quality, poverty, parental and so on). Second, one would have to find out reasons why people actually do get suspended aka what specific behavior leads to suspension and what are the reasons the individual gives for misbehaving.
You argue that people who are suspended become criminals later on because they are born criminals/misbehavers. I guess it is obvious that this can lead a society down some pretty dark alleys, in fact it already did.

"But as Pinker points out, this means mathematically that as you eliminate more and more culturally based forms of discrimination, the 50% that is "nature" (in the genes) becomes more and more important in distinguishing which individuals will rise to prominence based on their inborn talents."
50% is obviously an arbitrary number but alright, whatever number it might be, what should be the consequences when it comes to policy in your opinion?

"Personally, I'd rather see sociologists at least move away from "quant" efforts, that they tend to do poorly (they're just not--sorry--wired that way, or they'd be in STEM), and go back to the more observational/philosophical texts like those of Erving Goffman."
Sorry sweetheart, I know that sounds condescending and it is your opinion but you don't know what you are talking about. Demographics, crime statistics, housing statistics, predictive modelling of health care needs, market analysis and a million more things are so fundamental for the functioning of a modern society that everything would stop working almost instantly. Goffman is good, though and to paraphrase Churchill. Goffman is not the end, not even the beginning of the end but he might be the end of the beginning (in framing analysis for example).

@SlackerInc
I looked up replication crisis because I didn't know what it was. Here a quote from wiki"A 2016 survey by Nature on 1,576 researchers who took a brief online questionnaire on reproducibility found that more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiment results (including 87% of chemists, 77% of biologists, 69% of physicists and engineers, 67% of medical researchers, 64% of earth and environmental scientists, and 62% of all others), and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. "
A brief online questionnaire is a little worrying but still it seems to be a problem that affects other scientific areas at least as much as social sciences. In social science it is very common trying to replicate results and discuss differences because society, the economy and so on always change and panel studies are common like the American Trend Panel. So I'm not sure how much this crisis applies to the social sciences.

You never heard of the replication crisis? Wow. Surprised you would admit that.

"You never heard of the replication crisis? Wow. Surprised you would admit that. "
Why does that surprise you?

@Jeffrey's Tube

I appreciate your point of view. And if it happens once in a while, I'm okay with it. I don't know if my "favourite" episode will ever be one with a magical unexplained basis, but I don't mind it once in a while. It is therefore hard to give the episode a standalone rating without seeing more of the series for context. Historically, Jammer has gone at times and re-rated episodes once a season is over. I could see this being the type of episode that bears re-rating for me once I see it in a bit more context.

I personally have less issue over something the crew 'can't explain' or the show doesn't bother to explain like a superhuman powerful life form that we don't know where their power comes from than something that seems to be explicitly in conflict with existing real or Trek science. That said, I guess TNG did have things like "Q" that really should have flown in the face of science or plausibility, but for some reason (perhaps only because I was so young then?) I never took issue with the science or plausibility of "Q".

I do think a lot of fans, myself included, are excited about the gloss and sparkle of a new episodic series featuring Pike and Spock and Number One, and once we get over that and into judging the actual episodes based more on what actually happens in each one compared to the others, we'll have a better sense of which ones are "good" and which ones are less so.

One thing I didn't mention in my first post is an example of how the creators are benefitting from the existing goodwill of the existing characters. My gut feeling is that if any other new character on a Trek show started humming around while they worked, it would come off as campy and unprofessional (in a 2022 series), that it was extremely coincidental that the first mission the crew goes on turns on the crewperson's musical knowledge, and that the crewmember having everyone start harmonizing including Spock would be an eye-roller. In my estimation, the only reason this came off as acceptable was our existing knowledge of Uhura and like of her character, and that it harkens back to her TOS days. Our existing like of the characters avoids their having to actually work as hard to actually make us get to know and like these people.

That said, I will always give a fair shot to both sides - the few brand new crew that have been focused on - La'an and Ortega - I think we've already seem real personalities there and I feel like we know them better in two episodes than we do some of the Discovery bridge crew maybe even now after four years.

SlackerInc - "You sound like a libertarian. A theoretically coherent ideology that would be unlikely to work in practice, and if it did I would find it morally abhorrent. I'm glad the Federation did not go that way."

What a load of presumptuous, ignorant horseshit. There's a ton of literature on the overbearing administrative state, the erosion of personal freedoms, the lack of govt responsiveness to the will of the people, the collusion of state and private actors to undercut due process and other protections when it comes to the penal system, mental health incarceration, non-violent offenses, and so forth.

Having a problem with an unjust, overbearing state doesn't make you a libertarian. It makes you a fucking American. What's unjust is some Ayn Randian social Darwinist crap about the survival of the fittest where the idea of equal opportunity is myth perpetrated by the same assholes that you apparently have no problem helping to architect a runaway, money printing, dysfunctional state apparatus dragging us all down.

Your model would produce a top-heavy Federation that dictates how we live, think and ultimately define what is important. My Federation would be a balance of central governance, localized governance and free-thinking, autonomous souls who make their way in the galaxy on their own terms. Seriously, people like you scare the hell out of me.

Also, SlackerInc, you assume that some part of young black delinquency is apparently innate. That is the implication of your argument with Booming. That seems like some racist crap to me.

@Ilsat: If I were in charge, before vaccines were developed anyone who tested positive for Covid would have been quarantined in their home with an ankle bracelet. And after the vaccines were developed, everyone would have been required to get vaccinated, with big guys in white coats holding them down to administer the injections if necessary. You probably find that scary (and yes, you are clearly libertarian) but I find it good public health practice that would have saved us a lot of grief.

Re: your second comment, some significant part of young white delinquency is also innate. Or young Asian delinquency.

The point is, these experts are analyzing data and finding a strong correlation between kids being suspended from school and ending up in prison a few years later. From this they conclude that if schools would just stop suspending kids, they wouldn't end up going to prison. That makes about as much sense as observing that air conditioner sales and deaths from heat stroke are strongly correlated, and deciding the answer is to ban AC.

@SlackerInc
I just want to mention that I didn't do a gotcha racist questioning. Pinker's findings can obviously be misused and they do line up quite nicely with the views of liberal elites aka third way politics.

"with big guys in white coats holding them down to administer the injections if necessary"
How do these big guys look? Are they hot??

"The point is, these experts are analyzing data and finding a strong correlation between kids being suspended from school and ending up in prison a few years later."
Yeah, I don't think that SlackerInc was implying that specifically black kids are born criminals.

"From this they conclude that if schools would just stop suspending kids, they wouldn't end up going to prison. That makes about as much sense as observing that air conditioner sales and deaths from heat stroke are strongly correlated, and deciding the answer is to ban AC."
Well, it makes some sense if these kids become dropouts because of the suspension. The logic being that not having a high school degree will have a higher chance of leading to crime because one cannot get a well paying job. Of course you say that there is some kind of genetic problem that leads these kids being suspended and later to crime. Boys have higher drop out rates than girls, does that mean that Males have more problematic genes than women? Furthermore, in some states like New Mexico the High School graduation rates are far lower than in other states. Does that mean that New Mexican's have far worse genes? And I might add that your AC examples is wrong. Having AC's meaning less heatstroke, compared to the suspension example would mean that the state should give as many people as possible an AC aka doing as much as possible to keep kids in school until the get a degree.
And I repeat, if the problem with lots of criminals would be genetic, what policies would you suggest? What policies beyond that area of society would you see as fitting?

"@Ilsat: If I were in charge, before vaccines were developed anyone who tested positive for Covid would have been quarantined in their home with an ankle bracelet. And after the vaccines were developed, everyone would have been required to get vaccinated, with big guys in white coats holding them down to administer the injections if necessary. You probably find that scary (and yes, you are clearly libertarian) but I find it good public health practice that would have saved us a lot of grief."

Yes the Chinese tried this approach. They have turned Shanghai into a prison fighting COVID while the rest of the world reopens. The virus is laughing at these tinpot authoritarians.

Frankly, I hope they keep at it. Couldn't have happened to a nicer band of fascists.

SlackerInc - You ignored most of the substance of my comment (which is typical). Instead, you went off on some insane tangent about COVID vaccinations. And I think your comment speaks for just how mal-adjusted you are. Your desires are anti-democratic, bordering on Orwellian. At this point, no further comment is necessary. You've shown your true stripes.

Booming, he knows what he said. Now, all of the sudden white supremacy is an innate problem. What a nut job set of beliefs.

Lastly, you don't have vaguest clue what a libertarian is. I support govt programs to help the poor and indigent, banning of hate speech, targeted interventions overseas where either our interest is involved or a genocide is being perpetrated, social programs, a moderate tax rate, federal oversight of some state activities, and so on.

You are some bizarre type of passive-aggressive Marxist unable to cope with the real world and seeking govt control and oversight of just about everything. You have some serious issues.

@Booming: "Well, it makes some sense if these kids become dropouts because of the suspension. The logic being that not having a high school degree will have a higher chance of leading to crime because one cannot get a well paying job."

Funny how you were just accusing evolutionary psychologists of telling "just so" stories...

"Of course you say that there is some kind of genetic problem that leads these kids being suspended and later to crime."

There's certainly some of that, but it doesn't even have to be that for it to be silly to think not suspending them will keep them from going to prison later. Let's say for the sake of argument that it's "nurture" that caused them to misbehave in school. That's still going to lead to their being criminals later. IOW whether it's genetic or not, it's not the suspensions that are causing the later imprisonment. They are both effects of the cause being that this is a person who doesn't follow societal rules for whatever reason.

"Boys have higher drop out rates than girls, does that mean that Males have more problematic genes than women?"

Certainly. Do you think they do not? Why do you think there are vastly more men than women in prison, especially for violent crimes? Even among men, those in prison have higher testosterone on average than non-imprisoned men (and I'd bet the same is true for women, for that matter).

"And I might add that your AC examples is wrong. Having AC's meaning less heatstroke, compared to the suspension example would mean that the state should give as many people as possible an AC aka doing as much as possible to keep kids in school until the get a degree."

You might want to run that through the universal translator one more time. While I can't quite tell what you are saying here, it looks like you also ought to read what I wrote about AC's again. To spell it out a little more: an increase in AC sales and a spike in heatstroke deaths are both effects of hot weather. Neither of them is a cause of the other.

As for policies, I linked you previously to my SDMB posts. Plenty of policy positions there.

@Ilsat: "banning of hate speech"

I take it back, you're not a libertarian. Just someone with terrible ideas. Like John Stuart Mill and the ACLU of the 20th century (the 21st century organization has sadly lost its way), I know better than to think banning "hate speech" is remotely a good idea. I suggest reading the ACLU's brilliant 1978 pamphlet "WHY THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION DEFENDS FREE SPEECH FOR RACISTS AND TOTALITARIANS": https://www.aclu.org/report/1978-aclu-pamphlet-why-american-civil-liberties-union-defends-free-speech-racists-and

Holy shit, this episode alone gave me more background story on Uhura than the totality of 79 episodes of the Original series, and did it without a goofy, campy, and horny captain represented by corny acting.

I have no idea how the rest of the series will turn out but just two episodes into SNW, I have enjoyed this series heaps more than anything TOS had to offer. And I'll wait a season or so before I say anything in comparison to TNG but I'll take this cast over either as of now.

I find it highly implausible that Spock would explain harmonics without including the differences in octave. He's not known for his skill in making his point clear at the expense of accuracy.

Late to the party, but thought I'd leave a comment anyway -

Well, what can I say. Thank you, SNW, for proving that it never was about me not liking nutrek by principle. That it wasnt about "woke" vs "nonwoke", skin color, gender or whatever.

It always was just about good writing, good acting, good editing, just good craftsmanship and the stuff that makes a series a good series.

This is good. Is it sensational? No. Not yet. But it has all the potential. Cast is great (and finally, *finally*, we are back to a true ensemble show, which makes DSC look almost embarrassingly narcissistic in its focus on Burnam). It took Uhura a single episode to become more relatable and feel more human than Burnam managed in 4 seasons. The power of having a good actress. It's no rocket science.

I personally have always preferred long story arcs over episodic storytelling, but a story arc needs to be *good* and worth the time, or else its really awful, as Picard and DSC have so clearly shown. So, you know what, if this is the Nutrek writers room acknowleding that they just ain't J. Straczynski and theyre just not very good at doing long story arcs - give me episodic star trek any day and I will be happy with that.

Bonus nerd critique : spock clearly needs to investigate musical intervals, both in execution as well as in theory (three times the frequency is a third? Errrr, no it isn't 😄)

A fine episode. I personally loved the homage to Harry "Can't Get a Lock" Kim with the addition of Chief "Can't Get a Lock" Kyle.

I think Christopher Pike is a much better captain than Kirk. I bet he won't have you banned from his fan club. Does he have a fan club? Please send details to me please if he does, I would very much love to join.

I am really late to posting this. I gave up on new Star Trek after season 2 of Disco, though I liked the addition of Pike quite a bit.

And I really want to like SNW (and based on the postings I'm in a small minority not to) but the tone just seems so cheeky. This is essentially a naval vessel in space, with a respect for authority and an attendant seriousness that the mission demands--especially pre TOS I thought Starfleet was in even more of a military posture. TOS, TNG, DS9 the crew were serious about doing their job and performing even beyond their abilities Here, it's all guffaws, back slapping, and relaxed hang-out time. Or am I just so scarred by the other recent series that I'm making too big a deal about the tone? Like I say, I seem to be in the minority. I turned this episode off after the Captain's dinner. "Hey guys, just making some chow for my crew so I can really get to bond and understand who you guys are, like, as people man. I don't want to know what you can do; I wanna know how you can be."

I also don't need melodramatic speeches or heartfelt monologues every episode. And if they could stop doing tracking shots where the camera does 90 degree arcs around each character that'd be nice too.

As I type this I feel like such a party pooper, but I dunno--it's better, but it still doesn't feel like Star Trek.

You're not wrong Stern Alarums.. I feel this is just a reflection of the age we live in. It is a very individualistic time and trust in institutions are at an all time low. Younger people all present a perfect version of themselves on social media, the snarkiest and wittiest content rises to the top of the feed, sacrificing your comfort or wealth for an ideal or an organization is not in vogue, mainly because so much corruption within organizations has been exposed. This is reflected in the new Trek. Characters are sarcastic and too-cool-for-school (except one token ditzy female allowed), and lip service is paid to the UFP but it's a bit of a tough sell and the writers may or may not understand it. I think you have to accept it and go with the flow a bit. The societal pendulum has swung far since the 1990s so it would be disingenuous to blindly copy that format.

I wasn't a huge fan of this, preferred the pilot. It felt very hokey to me, the whole musical cave idea and the idea that the meteorite knew what was gonna happen. The cast just about carried it, Anson continues to hold the show together, but I do like all the characters.

@BonesOfMyPeople

I appreciate your thoughtful comment and I think you are exactly right. Overly sarcastic and too-cool-for-school or starfleet nails it. I'll try and accept it and go with the flow; but if I'm too stuck in my ways, that's why God made DS9 reruns.

This sucked, but I do like the idea of an alien race following a comet.

I re-watched this around seven weeks after seeing it for the first time, and loved it just as much. Just a delightful, upbeat Star Trek episode, and one that I think I'll watch again and again--maybe once a year.

Rewatching the entire series again. I watched many episodes more than once as they came out. I just can’t bring myself to enjoy this episode. I find the set of the comet cheesy and hokey.

I will say I love 10/10 SNW and think it’s the best thing possible to reinvigorate the franchise. However, while Uhura’s character has grown on me with rewatched this episode just strikes me as a missed opportunity to discover more of the strange new world that was protected.

I really love the character development occurring here though. I think they do focus a little to much on the show knowing your future thing but that’s ok.

Strange New Worlds has been just what the franchise needs. I just strongly disagree with Jammer in his rating. I think this episode is 2 stars at best.

**

Oh boy, this lasted all of five minutes ... I was really upbeat after the first episode, as I felt like this could be a good show, but it just fell flat right away again. The Captain's dinner was fine, I think. Sure, it's against protocol, but it was downtime, and everybody behaved like it was. But then we get to the actual plot, and everybody still behaves in silly ways. Cracking jokes at inappropriate moments. Expo-dumping stuff they just expo-dumped. (E.g.: Pike: "Let's hope they don't know our away team is on the comet." Aliens: "Your away team desecrates our holy comet." Helmsman: "Whoops, looks like they know our away team is on the comet." Come on. This is just beyond stupid. I get it that attention spans are shrinking, but this was a scene of ten seconds or something ...

Haaaah .... guess this will be another show I won't be watching. I'm sorry, I'm sure there are great stories in here somewhere, but I simply can't stomach another "let's try to be the MCU" humor laden show which treats me like and idiot and features characters who don't behave like characters in their positions and with their backgrounds should. I'm starting to wonder how the same people managed to write the first episode.

Huh, I still thought this one was pretty solid, even if not quite as good as the pilot. It's in the third episode that it gets shaky for me, before righting things pretty well for the fourth through seventh eps. The eighth and ninth episodes were absolute garbage, but then I really dug the season finale.

The music as language stuff is pretty neat. In general, the ideas aren't bad. It's just the execution which brings back memories of the worst Disco and Picard had to offer. Feels like they took the "too grimdark" complaints to heart but went too far in the other direction. It's okay for people to be serious, even in lighthearted shows. It's basically the 101 of writing: know how to strike the correct tone for the scene/story you want to tell. Nothing throws me out of the loop faster than unexplained tonal shifts. Even the Orville knew when to cut back on the (silly to atrocious) humor when appropriate, and that was a comedy show.

I'm probably harping on about this for too long. Apologies again. The first episode gave me hope for the first time in a long time, so it's sad to see some of my pet peeves return immediately after.

Jammer, can you address why you dont think this episode os groundbreaking orat least original.sci-fi? It's not just a comet It's a Minogue life form so thst makes it different enough fro .the DS9 Destony episode and zi can't think of any other Trek episode that deals with music like this or had aliens remotely close to the Shepherds so doesn't thst make this very original and close to groundbreaking sci-fi?

The first one was promising. This was boring and tedious.

Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind

>Incidentally, our first view of the comet here strongly evokes the comet from the DS9 title sequence

Noticed and in hindsight I don't find this a coincidence.

I think it'd be actually quite cool to retroactively add some context to the DS9 comet that it's more than just some random comet.

As commented by nacho Picard:
>If you put a gun to my head and asked me to name the Discovery crew...
>Michael, Tilly, Stamets, uh...robo lady? I got nothing.

Heh, indeed

"Ummm... them two women at the front whose role is to punctuate every bridge scene with looking over at each other, making eye contact and either looking worried or smirking... uhhh.. you know... thingy and wotshername" (I still struggle to recall their names now) - I think most of the bridge crew weren't even named until at least S2?

Obviously with SNW we get a bit of a headstart - anyone who's watched The Cage / The Menagerie is already familiar with Pike and Number One (though I still primarily think of her by this "name"), anyone who's tortured themselves with Discovery also knows Pike, Uhura is known to anyone with any basic Star Trek knowledge and surely anyone over the age of three who hasn't had their head under a rock for their entire lives knows Spock whether they've watched any Star Trek or not. Okay a lot of a headstart.

However 2 episodes in I'm already picking up the other names and more importantly, detecting some personalities and reasons to care that they exist. 2 episodes to achieve something I still struggle with in DSC to this day. Says a lot.

The more I re-think back at this episode the less amazing it is, though, despite having the same initial reaction of awe. It's not THAT exciting - sentient comet reacts to music. A lot of time stood around looking at an egg. I think though after being faced with so many years of absolute trash, it's that effect like... well water doesn't taste very exciting but if you've not drank a thing for 3 days and are dying of thirst it's going to taste AMAZING. That kind of effect. We've been starved to the point that "an hour of actually half decent Trek like we used to know and love" invokes a 3.5 star response.

I do appreciate that it's more of a character show though and it has that excitement to it. Admittedly pretty much every possible story an episodic Star Trek can really do has already been done like 2 or 3 times and even modern issues and politics are not exactly new (climate change has been a worry for as long as I can remember, trans people have always existed and been bullied for it, the pandemic was *hopefully* a once in a lifetime event that in any case gets its analogy in the next episode), so what else can it really do other than shift the balance to be a bit more character based?

I also appreciate that it's making an effort to be... you know... strange new worlds and new life. It gives me some "Encounter at Farpoint" vibes for an alien (I guess? Or an alien-designed craft designed as a comet? The ambiguity is fine) so unusual that you have to communicate with it by singing, and that by the end of the episodes continues to leave a trail... or should I say tail... of mystery.

It's also notably the first series of modern Trek that my parents have actively wanted to watch after I've told them about it and are actually able to follow. Picard and even Discovery invoked that reaction at first but they both spoiled it by being bleak, miserably dark and graphic (especially Picard S1) and very hard to follow. Bouncing back and forth in time with blink-and-you-miss-it "5 years earlier..." subtitles instead of telling things in order is a particular nuisance with those shows as it's quite inaccessible to someone whose brain is no longer operating at the speed of a 20 year old's (myself included, in the middle somewhere), it could be easier if the characters and story were interesting enough to keep your attention but... they're just not. And let's say nothing of how hard it is to follow the dialogue when they insist on subtitled Klingon gutteral noises that pass for their speech in DSC. So both shows failed even more miserably in their eyes than mine. I couldn't even get them to watch the much better S3 of Picard with the lure of the returning full cast - by this point they'd given up on "I think it's better this time, honest! And it's got Worf in it!"

Finally they, and I, have a show that you WANT to watch, rather than one you feel like because you're a Star Trek fan you have to keep giving more chances and sort of muddling through like a chore. So even if it's not brilliant by say TNG standards, it's already at least "something you actually do want to watch" and let's be fair, compared to most "season 1"s, it's brilliant.

Fun episode. Central concept was alien & spooky.

Too bad the Shepherds CGI looked like inflatable rubber.

I hope this question has not been asked already, but I could not read everyone's comments...
What if the life on that planet did not include people?
Isn't it still worth saving even if it only had plants and some simple animals? (like bunnies?)
If life out there is rare, and we did have the power to save it, even if it is microbial life, I would think it would the right thing to do.
Interfering in someone's domestic squabbles is a whole different ball of wax, but the idea put forth in this episode seems simple enough.
Nudge the comet, save the world.

I tend to view episodes involving more advanced (sometimes to the point of omniscient) species as the Trek universe pointing out that even the Federation might not always be the smartest guys in the room, evolved as it is. There’s always a next-level of smarts.

That doesn’t mean “God” (tho we humans tends to frame the unfathomable in god terms); it may just mean higher on the evolutionary chain. Better tech, more powerful brains, clearer and deeper understanding. It seems reasonable that humanoids wouldn’t understand at least half of what’s going on out there, that we fall, at highest, somewhere in the middle. So if another species comes along without (much) aggression toward us (like the comet (way-higher-evolved, to the point of omniscience) or the shepherds (not as high as the comet but definitely smarter than us) or, say, the Wormhole Aliens/Prophets, Douwd, the Traveler) then does the non-interference idea behind the Prince Directive apply there also? Especially if this evolved species (which may appear god-like to us less-evolved humanoids) clearly asks us to bugger off?

I like that this sentient/omniscient comet episode immediately follows the SNW pilot:

In the pilot, the Federation is the more evolved entity; the planet isn’t truly warp-capable, they happened on warp accidentally (due to the Federation’s own screw-up, ironically). Right away in the next episode, we-the-Federation are the less enlightened group, needing to trust the smarter guys. This episode is asking the question: At what point should the Federation stop playing god itself (rerouting the comet to protect life) and trust the “real” gods (who maybe are also merely higher beings on the evolutionary chain, such as the Shepherds, who in turn view the still-higher comet as *their* god)?

It’s not as simple as always trusting the more evolved species, tho. (Which is why it makes sense that sometimes species wouldn’t trust the Federation, benign as it attempts to be. It was pretty lucky the SNW pilot planet people were so quickly persuaded by Pike’s passionate PowerPoint presentation about 21st century Earth.)

Because sometimes the more-evolved species isn’t benign. The Spelliac, in one clear example. (Arguably the Changelings.) Or maybe it thinks it’s benign but casually hurts us, the way humans might hurt ants in a research study; thinking here of Nagilum. (In an interesting twist, humanoids hurt at least one Changeling, Odo, in this ignorant way. And arguably more in Federation labs, tho at some point this crossed into malice.)

And sometimes the more-evolved species doesn’t injure the humanoids out of bad-guy malice (like the Spelliac threatened to, or like the Changelings did to the humanoids afflicted with the Quickening) — but instead out of cavalier enjoyment, like Q.

Star Trek gets us to think about all these ways of interacting with people/beings who are different from us, and whether our “rules” can ever be enough to guide us, with enough contingencies. Even the extremely simple Prime Directive (or, by analogy, our human “Golden Rule”) can’t possibly cover it all. Which may be why black-and-white rules ultimately tend to fail; guiding principles seem to work better.

Sorry, Spelliac should be Sheliak. No idea what the Spelliac are, or why autocorrect prefers them, but now I’m sure curious.