DJariya

Putting this up a day early. Going to be out of town Thursday through the weekend.

milo bloom

That title looks suspiciously like a Discovery episode title.

Giantrobo

^Uh oh...

Josh-da-man

Next week...

"I Have No Asshole and I Must Shit!"

Cellar Door

Nice to see Lindy Booth this week, one of Rebecca Romijn's costars from The Librarians.

It's too bad

Deftones

After a really good episode last week, a ho hum episode this week. Wasn't very entertaining at all.

Josh-da-man

From the first few minutes, I knew this one was going to take a dark turn.

Goldberg74

At least m’Benga’s story advanced a little bit.

​​​​​​…. and Pike has a place to heal if he can bring himself to do it.

tanman

And now we get to see Pike's Kirk side come out.

Interesting premise both from the perspective of the alien culture itself but also in terms of the future of Mbenga's daughter and Pike's possible future. This was definitely one of the weaker episodes but still a good classic Trek story. Definitely took a right angle for the dark real quick. I didn't like how there was really no resolution or explanation and the episode just seems to end. But that's just my personal preference and I get what they were going for here.

I will say the production values for this show really are top notch. The ships interior looks really stellar and each alien world is well built and thought out and feels like it a real place.

Giantrobo

Welp...at least Pike got his dick wet...

Josh-da-man

We already know how that's going to turn out, though.

Unless

Josh-da-man

After reading the description of the plot, about Pike meeting up with an old flame, I spent most of the episode waiting for it to be revealed that Pike was the kid's father.

Which would have added a whole new layer of fucked up to the episode.

milo bloom

A little bit of a dip from what we've seen so far, but still some good Trek-style exploring of ethics. And Pike didn't dispute that there was still poverty in the Federation, they're making strides but still have places where they haven't fixed everything.
And I'm kinda glad they didn't get into the how and why of the purpose of putting the kid into the kill-o-matic (I'm suddenly reminded of that episode of Venture Bros where Rusty has the machine powered by the souls of orphans), I feel TNG or VOY would have gotten too much into those deep weeds and pulled the focus away from the ethics issue.

And nice tie in with the B-Plot of Uhura doing a rotation on security duty. Funny to see her tormenting a student but actually making the lessons work.

Josh-da-man

Something was bothering me about this episode; the central idea behind this story seemed really familiar. The society that tortures a single child perpetually in order to maintain its utopia. I thought I had read a story that had that exact same premise, but couldn't remember the title, who wrote it, or where I read it.

It had shades of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and Torchwood: Children of Earth, but I knew the story I was thinking of was more specifically similar to this episode than those two.

Did a bit of googling, and found that it was "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin.

I then googled "Omelas" and "Star Trek" and found out I wasn't the only one who made the connection...

Giantrobo

Yep. Im listening to a podcast and they are talking about that short story.

leeta

It reminded me of the role the Caretaker of the Great Machines played on Babylon 5. But in that case, the caretakers were adults with life experiences that knew what they were giving up. And their sacrifice wasn't constant torture.

A depressing episode.

Eric F

Welp, another episode another time the Prime Directive goes out the window.

They’re not a Federation member, Pike couldn’t stop the ascension ceremony even if he wanted to.

Giantrobo

They also said that aspects of that story was the inspiration for season 3 of Discovery

tanman

Are they prewarp though? I think they have warp technology.

The Prime Directive/General order 1 has always been a bit ambiguous. I know if they're prewarp they're really strict about not revealing themselves at all. If they're post warp and after first contact then they can reveal themselves but generally don't involve themselves in internal politics....unless it benefits the federation. But they break these rules all the time and oftentimes without consequences.

Noonan

Why wouldn’t they use a dumb kid rather than a brilliant one?

Cellar Door

^Yeah, at the end I was thinking if anyone would have a chance of figuring out how to run their utopian network without sacrificing a person every generation, it would be this kid. No wonder they haven't solved the problem.

Josh-da-man

Maybe it only works with a smart kid. If they plugged Ralph Wiggum into it instead of Lisa Simpson, it might collapse their society or blow up the machine.

tanman

lol now I want to see a Simpsons parody of the episode.

milo bloom

I’m reminded of The Matrix and the odd plot point about the machines using humans as batteries which doesn’t make sense but in earlier versions of the script they’re using humans for our brain power, like, our ability to makes leaps of logic and such.

This idea fits with using a super smart kid instead of some random street urchin.

leeta

Unrelated to this episode... Chapel timeline very tight (almost impossible) if they are going to sync it with TOS. They can't do that. It wouldn't work with her SNW character.

https://screenrant.com/strange-new-w...e-good-retcon/

"The timeline leaves Star Trek: Strange New Worlds much work to do. "Spock Amok" takes place in 2259, whereas "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" confirms Dr. Korby went missing in 2261. In that narrow gap of two years, Chapel must depart the Enterprise, meet Korby, fall in love with Korby, get engaged to Korby, and lose Korby."