That was fun. That’s all I’m going to say.

Oh, and I was totally hoping to hear the line, “I’m Erica Ortegas and I fly the shuttle.” 🤣

Thanks again G74. I'm only on the 3rd episode. But slowly catching up.

That was a fantastic episode. Laughing so hard at points. I love this show.

"I don't know... shut up"

I thought we would end up here with Chapel and Spock after last year. I think that’s something that would’ve happened in the Original Series if it was being made in modern times.

Pros:
-Ethan Peck brought the Funny and good acting
-Having quite a bit more Pike and Una was great. It makes the last few eps lack of them stand out.
-Amanda, Spock's Mom...Uhmm Woooow 😍😍😍 She looked so damn good and she was great in this.
-The Aliens fixing Spock and Chapel and telling Starfleet to kick rocks and not call back. 🤣😂🤣😂
-The Aliens run their shit like a company 😂😂😂
-T'Pring calling out Spock (see below)
-Writers giving Spock a "logical" reason for not informing T'Pring(see below)
-Spock acknowledging his Mother. 👍🏿
-The Vulcan costumes were tight as fuck. 👍🏿
-M'Benga NOT having to be a fuckin Starfleet Soldier this ep was awesome. I prefer this Bruthah shine in his STEM role on the show.
-All Woman away team out to save Spock
-Sam Kirk!!! 😂👍🏿

Cons:
- The ole "dont tell those who need to know" sitcom trope. Amamda and T'Pring shoulda been pulled into the situation. Sigh...not this shit again...
-Spock and Chapel. Im sick of these two. Besides, we all know Spock is in love with Kirk. Its the Bromace of all ages.
-Both Spock and Pike be fuckin' up when it comes to women.
-Not seeing Sarek for..."reasons". I still hope they bring him back.

I don’t mind making the threads. 😉

That is an annoying trope, but I can defend Spock and the writers here on two fronts.

One, it's a very human (yeah, I know) thing to withhold things like that from the people we care about in order to protect them. He was hoping that Chapel and M'Benga would be able to whip up a cure in short order, and didn't want to cause any more stress for T'Pring in what was already a stressful situation for her. He probably should have told his mother, though. But she immediately saw something was wrong.

Two, last season when Spock and T'Pring switched bodies, they were not able to keep the deception up for more than a couple of minutes. That's the very definition of being between a rock and a hard place. Does he deceive his fiance? Or does he be truthful with her and blow up an already tense situation?

I love Sarek and the actor who plays him but his absence makes sense. When we get to TOS, Spock and Sarek's relationship is still distant/tense so it makes sense for Sarek to sit this one out.

Loved, loved, loved this episode. I see a number of people in other forums complaining about "changing canon", but I just don't care. This crew, this cast, is amazing and I loved that the writers let them loose here.

If you went back and told my 16 year old self that I'd someday end up being enraptured with the character of Nurse Chapel?

I would've hit you upside the head with my dog-eared copy of The Star Trek Concordance.

Yes. In my "Pros" i gave the Writers credit for coming up with a "logical" reason for this tired trope.

Yes, that was the "reasons" part i mentioned.

Whaaaat!!!! You're not a REAL FAN and you're why NEW TREK SUCKS!!!!

Yeah, I know how that feels.... Fuck those Gatekeeping Cucks

I'm just going to say it. This is the best Star Trek show in their history.

Give this crew a few more seasons, then off to the movies.

I like canon to a point where you build up a mythology that can guide future things. However, I think the writers should have the ability to tell the stories they want.

Watched this again last night... loved it even more the second time.

Let's call them Spock's Council of Ladies

"Canon" works, up to a point.

One thing that often comes up is the design on the Enterprise. Why does the Enterprise in SNW look sleeker and higher tech than the one way saw in "The Cage" and TOS?

The simple answer is that those were filmed in the 1960s, on a 1960s tv budget, with the special effects technology available at the time, based on then-current idea of what far-future technology would look.

Likewise, I am willing to fudge a certain amount of "story canon" by applying the similar rules. TOS was made in the 1960s, and likewise, it's beholden to 1960s characters and 1960s storytelling tropes.

So, yes, Christine Chapel in SNW is inconsistent with the way she was portrayed in TOS. It's hard to imagine the meek, needy woman from "Amok Time" and "What Are Little Girls Made Of" going all John Wick on a bunch of Klingons. She was, more or less, a stock character from a 1950s or 1960s television series, reflective of the attitudes and view of women at the time -- even something as forward-thinking as Star Trek. But the portrayal of her in the 1960s would be anachronistic -- not to mention boring -- to modern audiences. Also, see Pike's comment from "The Cage" about not being comfortable with having women on the bridge. That's essentially a nod to the 1960s audience that they were going to be seeing women in positions of power and authority than they were used to.

And, in "Journey to Babel," does it really make sense that Captain Kirk wouldn't know that his close friend and first officer's father was a big shot in the Federation? Again, it's being written to the 1960s prime time audience and not obsessive nerds. It's more interesting to that audience to discover these things about Spock along with Kirk and McCoy. And, going back to "Amok Time," T'Pring was treated as if nobody on the ship knew she existed, but, again, that's the 1960s tv writing showing. Should the writers of modern Trek, when they dip back in the 23rd century pool, be beholden to every word in those scripts, even if they don't make a lot of logical sense?

Ultimately, I think it's more interesting to develop the backstory of Spock, T'Pring, and Chapel than it is to attempt to make all of those pieces fit together with a story that was written five decades ago with the storytelling tropes and devices available at the time.

Likewise, are we seeing too much of the Gorn in SNW to be consistent with "Arena?" Yeah, probably. But, again, these are 1960s stories. A "first contact" story was more exciting to audiences than oh, these guys again, for a previously unseen monster of the week.

And even modern Trek isn't immune to this. How can we reconcile what we learned about the Ferengi in "The Last Outpost," and the Trill in "The Host," with what we later saw in Deep Space Nine? Your really can't, so you just sort of have to ignore the inconsistencies. I'd like to say that, by the 1990s, they would have their shit sorted better, but when "The Host" was written, they probably weren't thinking that those aliens had much potential outside of a gimmick of the week, but when given the opportunity to create a character like Dax, absolute adherence to the letter of canon went out the window. And, even in "The Last Outpost," it's hard to believe that nobody had ever seen a Ferengi what looked like, even though they had been running around explored space for at least a decade, but they were still sort on in 1960s mode in those early seasons of TNG, which also gave us cringey shit like "Code of Honor."

Some things, though, are so deeply established that they should be left in place like nobody in Starfleet and the Federation knowing that the Romulans looked like Vulcans until "Balance of Terror," or the physical appearance of the Klingons. Disco kind blew up the Klingon thing, and Pike already knows what Romulans look like, so they're kind of pushing that.

I know a lot of classic Trek fans (I'm talking to you, Robert Meyer Burnett) hated this episode, but I actually think it's arguably the best one of Strange New Worlds yet. Those obsessed with "canon" just need to see this new Trek as an "alternate timeline" - they'll sleep much better and enjoy these shows a lot more.

I find the whole triangle between Spock, T'Pring, and Chapel to be... fascinating.

There's a tragic element to it, too, because it involves three people that we actually like (and, lord, they've managed to make T'Pring likeable and sympathetic and still not feel inconsistent with the T'Pring we saw in "Amok Time" -- much credit to both the writers and Gia Sandhu) and we know that it's going to end badly for all three.

And I stopped giving a shit about what Robert Meyer Burnett thinks about anything after he started carrying water for assholes like Doomcock and Nerdrotic. (Same goes for Chris Gore.)

Thought this was fun. I definitely laughed a lot of times. Even Pike and T’Pring’s dad going on about the food was funny.

Episodic episodes work so well and give such storytelling latitude. Almost gives me Dr Who vibes in that sense.

I have no idea who Robert Meyer Burnett is, and it sounds like that's a good thing.

“Vulcan bladders are more resilient!”

I want more of the bitchy T’Pril!

As for me, once I realized that the writers and producers of Trek don’t care about canon or continuity, I decided that I didn’t need to either.

I lost it with Spock's air punch / kicks

I need to watch this episode again. 🤣🤣🤣