Star Trek Social Club

The more I think about this episode the more impressed I get. There's so many small moments where they could have taken the easy, obvious choice and it would have been fine, and instead they were just a little more thoughtful and a little more creative and it shows.

They could have just had Pelia push a secret button to reveal her stash of alien tech, and that probably would have been fine. Instead they show her as this woman who's very smart and obviously immortal but otherwise...just a person living through history, which is so much better. Imagining the 250 years between the present and when she's one of the most famous engineers in the fleet is fun.

They could have had the Romulan agent just be a cold, ruthless assassin from the future who's here to get the job done, and that would have been fine. Instead she's this slightly unhinged woman, trapped out of time, stuck undercover on an alien world for thirty years on a mission that she's not sure exists anymore and I love the way she starts losing it at the end, that she just wants to kill this kid and be done with it.

They could have cast Khan as a hot 20 something available in the Toronto area and had him to a Ricardo Montalbán impression and give us a tense standoff, and I would have been annoyed at that, but it probably would have been fine. Instead they show us an actual child, and remind is that Khan was a horrifying monster, but he was created by a world with monsters of its own, monsters who built a child in a laboratory and raised him in a basement, and suddenly its a piece of implied context made explicit that I didn't even know I wanted.

And of course they could have just had Kirk agree to fix the timeline because its the right thing to do, or because he loves La`an, or because...honestly, because the plot has to happen, this is something that so many stories would just gloss over to keep the story moving. And instead we get one line, "Sam's alive?" and my heart jumped to my throat a little bit and immediately we understand why he's willing to go through with this.

I'm really really impressed with the writers on this episode.

Random thoughts as I watch (cross-posted from the old place):

• Wow, first that outburst, and then Spock jams too much. Truly in his wild child phase.

• BTW, was that a Denobulan?

• Pelia totally worried that this whole utopia thing just a passing trend. And hilariously having to prove (?) she isn't a thief.

• They really are taking advantage of Babs O's Jiu-Jitsu training this year, aren't they?

• Captain James T. Kirk, the greatest menace of Temporal Investigations!

• Oh boy, alternate timeline where the Federation doesn't exist time!

• "Maple leaves, politeness, poutine."

• Clever distraction.

• I wonder if 3D chess is a thing in the United Earth Fleet timeline, because Kirk is good at the 2D in it.

• Okay, I guess they do have 3D Chess.

• I generally try not to be like this... but goddamn I'd like to thank them for having Christina Chong in various states of tight clothing and undress.

• Good thing the time travel guy went to the ship Sam Kirk was on.

• Oh man, I was looking forward to driving across Lake Ontario to Toronto (presumably from Rochester or Buffalo or something, right?), which totally would be a logical economic and engineering choice, I'm sure!

• Mildly annoyed that Kirk doesn't drive to Beastie Boys.

• James Discreet Kirk

• Soongs gonna break in even to the timelines and series they aren't in.

• Jim Discretion Kirk

• OH FUCK ROMULANS

• We have gone (zero) days without Romulans trying to screw up the timeline.

• Probably the first time that DuckDuckGo has been mentioned in Star Trek.

• Yeah, Pythagoras is the worst, Pelia.

• Oh, so this is a predestination paradox where they make her become an engineer and as a result she is there to inspire La'An to go look for her later.

• KHAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN! KHAAAAANNNNNNNNN! (Or at least the institute for him)

• To be fair, this is like the third face that Captain Kirk has had.

• We have gone (ZERO) days without a time-travelling Romulan that had to ditch the ears.

• We have gone (ZERO) days without (a) Captain Kirk dying. We're three-for-three on Kirk actor deaths, folks!

• KHAAAAAAAAAANNNN! KHAAAAAAANNNN! KHAAAAAAANNNNNN!

• THEY CAME UP WITH AN EXPLANATION WHY THE EUGENICS WARS DIDN'T HAPPEN IN THE 90'S! THE MAD LADS DID IT!

• Face to face with great-great-great-great grandpa Baby Genetics-Hitler.

• Oh, great, temporal investigations. No wonder they hate Kirk so much, even his alternate versions screw stuff around.

• Good ep. Way better than it sounded when I first heard about it.

[Copying my post from the original thread and adding something to the bottom]

Christina Chong absolutely killed it, especially in that final scene. Imagine finding someone you can connect to for the first time in your life, and immediately lose them. It even makes someone who is usually very unemotional crack.

Also, Pelia is such a delightful character. Great addition to the show.

Other than that I’m not really sold on the episode. It’s over an hour long and it did feel (too) slow and meandering at times. And I feel as if it just existed to shove in Kirk once again (and once again in an alternate timeline scenario to stick to the Trek canon) and explain the postponement of the Eugenics Wars by some Temporal Cold War shenenigans.

Final nitpick: how can Spock exist in the alternate timeline if humans and Vulcans are enemies?

Others wrote about how it was interesting that La'an had to choose to keep baby tyrant Khan alive for the greater good (of the future paradise Earth). And I agree that it's an interesting conundrum – but that was given so little space in the episode that it fell entirely flat for me. La'an found out early on that Kirk didn't know Noonien-Singh but that plot point was dropped for 30 minutes and only brought up again in the final minutes. In that aspect it reminded my of "The Elysian Kingdom" last season where nothing happens for 45 minutes and the interesting stuff comes out of the left field at the very end of the episode.

Maybe I'm being too harsh (I'll rewatch the episode in a couple of days together with a friend) but for now I'd say this was one of the weaker episodes of the series.

I didn’t expect to like this episode as much as I did.

Wesley’s Kirk is growing on me, and I give the EPs credit for using the alternate timeline Kirk’s to let his performance coalesce. I also like the deft weaving of the crazy car driving, heartbreaker Kirk with the think five steps ahead genius that he also had to be.

The acknowledgement in-universe that the timeline and humanity’s development has been interfered with is entirely credible given the accretion of temporal incidents across every era of the franchise.

I’m not sure how I feel about it giving comfort to those who feel so strongly that this isn’t the same timeline as the original TOS one. (I see some chortling on this point elsewhere.) Likely the temporal physics of this is best left for a deep dive /c/Daystrom Institute discussion, but I prefer hold to a view that this is absolutely still the same Prime timeline but that the timeline itself has been perturbed repeatedly even if the key events have kept their integrity. In fact, the Romulan temporal agent, while not a reliable narrator, gave credence to the idea that the Prime timeline had proven unexpectedly robust against major intervention by humanity’s enemies.

I was delighted to see DTI show up and be named. It seems all of a piece of DTI’s rigidity that they would leave La’an alone to deal with the trauma. It does however mirror Pike’s own experience in sealing his future with the time crystal. One senses that there must be some kind of intersection or mutual revelation to come, leaving aside the Chekhov’s gun of the temporally dislocated watch.

Knowing that Anson Mount had to relocate to Toronto with his wife and newborn explains why episodes featuring others in the ensemble were front loaded for this season. He’d said before he committed to the show that creative conversations would be needed as he wasn’t wishing to repeat the production experience he had in Discovery season two. A creative conversation with the EPs that limits a principal character’s presence is fairly extraordinary, but Mount seems to have done it in a way that’s generous to the rest of the ensemble.

With an ensemble so strong, and as we didn’t see as much of Chapel or Una as we would have liked last season, I’m fine with waiting to see more Pike later in the season. It sounds as though we have a Spock focused and an Ortegas to come before some big ensemble pieces in the back half.

Also it feels kind of significant that they finally dropped the word socialist on screen to describe the Federation? They've always danced around it before, but I'm glad they finally made it explicit, even in an off hand way. It helps make the Federation feel less "magical" and more like something that people who existed in history, connected to both the past and the future, had to actually build

Did she leave that gun with that little boy?

Did anyone else catch what looked like an unspoken, knowing look from Pelia when La'an appeared on the bridge after returning? Does Pelia somehow remember their prior encounter on Earth? Is it explicit, or more like the way Guinan would have an intuition, or a subliminal feeling? Or did I imagine that?

Wait what's this? Star Trek writers can still create a time travel story that wraps up in an episode (or two) instead of lasting a whole 10 episodes of nothing?!

And they can weave in minor plot points from previous episodes to give it continuity without feeling forced?

How can this be?

Okay there was a lot that worked for me in that episode. The amazing decision to have Pelia knowing nothing about engineering to being a veteran warp core engineer in 200 years. Going for child Khan and really leaning into the fucked up reality that these children were science experiments kept locked in basements for the first time in the franchise? The reminder that Toronto is actually pretty damn photogenic when it's not shot on a CW budget.

And you know what? Paul Wesley doesn't have Kirks voice, and the script still doesn't quite sound right, but he's got the Kirk delivery really nailed. He doesn't sound like Shatner, but he sounds like Kirk

I love that Kirk had to die saving his own worst enemy so that the Federation could exist.

I thought this episode was fantastic.

The pacing was good, the interactions between Kirk and La'an were fun, and the closing acts were a real gut wrench. Being forced through such a traumatic situation and completely unable to talk with anyone about it is a piece of the time travel/Prime Directive secrecy that Star Trek hasn't really dug it's teeth into before, and there's clearly something very powerful to work with here.

Also, hilarious use of their immortal chief engineer. In retrospect, no surprise that someone in that position wouldn't maintain exactly the same hobbies and skills throughout the centuries, and also no real shock that this particular individual got her jollies stealing priceless artwork. And then arguing statute of limitations when she is challenged on it centuries later? Brilliant.

I do not give the slightest of damns about a TOS one-liner placing Kahn in the 1990s. This is a good story which wouldn't work properly otherwise, and that was a poor choice from writers who couldn't have possibly known better. Absolutely do not care, and so much happier for it.

After a fairly meh first episode, SNW S2 has reeled off a pair of real bangers. Looking forward to the next installment.

When the cab pulled up to Pelia's cabin I initially wondered how they got across the border, and then La'an mentions they bribed a border guard. Pretty good save there. You know it would've ended up in someone's plot hole YouTube video, or a clickbait ScreenRant article if they didn't cover that.

This was another solid episode; even though the ending was gut wrenching. Who would have thought that a writer would shoehorn a ship between Kirk and the descendent of his greatest nemesis. I really love this series.

I'm just kinda thrilled to see Canada in the Star Trek universe. Obviously they've been doing a bunch of filming out of Toronto so technically we have seen it, but it's nice for them to sidestep the fact that 99% of the time they get thrown into Earth's past and they end up in California. Kirk "recognizing" the city as New York was a cute touch given how often Toronto doubles for it. Also technically I guess this means that the greatest tyrant in Earth's history technically is canonically Canadian too.

Kirk being a chess hustler was cute too, explaining how he's able to keep up when playing Spock in TOS.

Aside from that, the episode was fine. I like seeing La'an getting some development, and seeing her spar with M'Benga (and getting beaten) was nice since it justifies him being actually kind of a badass, and makes the fight scenes in the first episode of the season more reasonable. Also a bit more behind the curtain of Pelia.

A lot of the episode was just goofy "man out of time" stuff, which is cute in its own right but doesn't really add a ton. But it was entertaining and fun, and worth watching again, so I'm still calling it a winner.

This is the best episode of modern Trek since Magic to Make…

It hit all the right notes and felt so Star Trek. Don’t get me wrong, I love serialized seasons, but Star Trek is at it’s best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously, while also simultaneously dealing with serious plot points.

A little late to the game but I really loved this episode.

Only thing that didn’t quite make sense to me was the romantic connection between La’an and Kirk. It felt forced - and I feel like the episode would’ve been just as strong without it. Just them bonding as friends, who are going through this deeply traumatic time travel experience together - would’ve been more than enough.

I can appreciate that La’an would be more vulnerable as a result Kirk not knowing her family name, but she oggled him in the changing room before that was revealed. Seemed out of character.

Otherwise, I’m really curious to see what kind of timeline implication all of this will have - and if the watch will make way back in the series somehow.

Kirk was superb, I don't think I could have accepted the car scene if it was anyone else. It's Kirk, of course he's going to drive like a nutter. I was genuinely shocked when he got shot. I thought there couldn't possibly be a way for him to make it but they still got me.

La'an has grown on me so much, she was the one I was most dubious about in the early episodes of season one. I felt really sorry for her at the end, losing Kirk and being unable to talk to anyone about what she's experienced. She's gone through some pretty serious trauma already due to her genes and name and now she's had to go through this pure insanity. I wonder what the significance of the watch is.

I enjoyed that episode a lot, although it would have benefitted from its length being tightened up by ten minutes.

What do we think was the nature of the Romulan interference with Earth? And what time period is Sera, the Romulan agent from?

The DTI agent appears to use 29th century tech, which is several hundred years after the Romulan Empire’s supernovae-driven collapse but possibly around the time of the Romulan-Vulcan reunification of Ni’Var. Is she from that same time period?

Sera also shows Kirk a picture of what looks like a TOS-era Bird-of-Prey as part of her alien conspiracy photo deck. It has the round nacelles typical of the 23rd century, rather than those seen in ENT’s 22nd century designs, or some other design representing the 20th/21st century in which these attacks take place.

Is she a time agent from the 23rd century (with the appropriate Romulan ship in orbit)?

Is that her guessing who Kirk is, and planting the evidence he’s most likely to recognize? Or was that really a Romulan design from the 21st century?

Which leads to me wonder if the Romulans started interfering with Earth’s development only due to temporal war shenanigans, or had they been doing flybys for as long as the Vulcans?