Mixed bag of an episode.

I liked that we got some proper character development - Spock and Kirk coming closer together, an origin point for their friendship is good to see, and the hallucination was a useful way to explain why spock would be willing to open up to such a friendship in the first place. Ortegas and Scotty similarly got some satisfying growth, and the quite unprofessional arguing between them didn’t end drag on for too long.

I did not like the first couple of acts. I know this is meant to be a comedy episode, but none of the jokes really landed for me, it was just kind of a slog to get through. I’m not a big fan of “stoner / drunk” humour in other shows, and it’s not a whole lot better here. I am not sure if the alien host was meant to be funny or charming, but they just came across as mildly annoying. If I compare this to pleasure-planet episodes we’ve seen in other trek shows, I don’t feel the pleasure planet really added a whole lot. CG sequences aside, they were in a fancy hotel more than an actual planet.

Something that really bugged me is that despite repeated references to alternate shifts, at no point did any of the “alphas” think that maybe it might be worth handing off the negotiations or asking for help with the bomb. It speaks to a kind of arrogance that doesn’t really play well given the whole point of the episode is learning to rely on others.

The final act is again mixed. The idea of a pressure bomb, the sci fi equivalent of a landmine, is a great way of building tension, brings ortegas and scotty together fully. But that it then also provides the solution for the diplomatic problems make no sense. The aliens say that particular type of bomb is part of a peace ritual that hasn’t been seen in generations, but then why would a separatist use that for their sabotage?

Overall it was alright, but not amazing.

I don’t disagree with that… I guess limited character growth is one of the disappointing outcomes for any prequel media.

This was a very creepy episode, and as a standalone sci fi fantasy horror piece it works well. But it doesn’t feel trek. Here’s my conspiracy: With the dramatic different in tone, direction, the repeated references to section 12, this is a Poorly Disguised Pilot that the producers were using to test the waters for an x-files like section 12 spinoff.

Overall, I did not enjoy it. I don’t seek out this kind of film normally, and I might have enjoyed it if it had led to anything interesting happening, but ultimately it has not left them with any further progress. All the dramatic moments between the away team and the “others” they hallucinated were basically “then they woke up and it was all a dream”, so no relationship progress there. And within themselves, aside from more unresolved trauma, Spock seems no closer to aligning his human and vulcan selves, La’an hasn’t really learned anything new about her violent tendencies she didn’t already know from the last episode, and Kirk never even got to have the chat with his family because the network apparently cut out.

Vulcans can be arrogant, but they also have some personality to balance it out. I think part of the problem is we haven’t seen much, other than a sliver of backstory at the end of the episode

I do think the away team section needed another pass, either on the writing or the direction. It had some action moments, but at the same time it didn’t feel like anything the away team actually did carried any impact,and never that they were in any real danger. The only bit that actually felt it had real energy was the archeopteryx getting punched in the face.

I have mixed feelings about this episode.

The A story, with the diplomacy, philosophising about how to encounter and deal with new species, I enjoyed a lot. The ending of the time loop was rather inevitable, it being a time loop set in the past, but it worked. It was a difficult choice and it had to be made. “Pike must suffer” I guess. The translation system leaking information through subtle differences in grammar is a nice idea, it felt a bit underused as a concept though, would have been a good topic for Uhura to explore. This kind of political, philosophical, with a hint of sci-fi, story is exactly what I want from Star Trek. More of this please.

The B story, down on the planet, with the dinosaurs, didn’t grab me. First off, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just fly the shuttle right to the wreck, why did they need to deal with the Rex? Other than getting the drive, this entire section could have been cut and the episode would not have lost anything. I get the feeling the VFX artists had a lot of fun with that section though.

Overall, it was an okay opener. Extra remarks:

• Our new vulcan is a flanderisation of vulcans, and not in a good way. “I am familiar with all earth dialects”. Really? All 7000+ of them? I hope they get their comeuppance at some point soon.
• Pelia’s voice seems much raspier this season. She makes another DW reference. Didn’t work for me, it felt a bit too obvious and in your face. If they’re going to keep making these, something more subtle might have worked, particularly for this episode given DW has had a few dinosaur episodes.
• I am really enjoying the Scotty vs Ortegas game. Looking forward to more of this
• La’An’s business looks interesting, though I hope wherever this goes is distinct from the stuff we’ve already covered with Bashir, Una, and Khan.

Those other services are not great but they are at the very least not actively promoting AI-generated child abuse imagery. It’s an incredibly low bar, but they do pass it.

I don’t mind injected podcast ads so much, especially for smaller podcasts that need some financial support. What I tend to do is use a VPN, that way the podcast is in my local language, but the ads are in another that I don’t understand. I get my podcast, podcasters get paid, and I avoid tracking and brainwashing. win-win-win

This is one of the points that a French MEP brought up during the meeting. If this is pursued it could as a side effect open up space for digital “orphaned works” which would be fantastic.

her avian intelligence was a parrot. pepper and carrot » cepper and parrot

The height of the london eye? Is this a UK citizenship test or a london citizenship test?

It may be waiting to enshittify, but as it is still DRM free, that’s not a huge deal breaker (as long as they don’t change this policy). Plus, they’re still doing Bandcamp fridays, so it’s still the best way to financially support a musician at the moment.

Thankfully no microsoft, but I do have to use google workspace.

at least i can sandbox it to a web browser? small wins…

The drivers run OK, but because they were not built for my distribution with the right flag, when I sleep and resume my system, I need to log out and back in to the desktop or else it bugs out.

Is this the drivers fault for not having that be a default flag? The maintainers fault for not using the correct flags? Waylands fault for not interfacing with the driver right on resume? My fault for having the audacity to want to use the sleep function?

I have no clue, but it doesn’t happen with the open source nouevau drivers, so I’m inclined to place a fair bit of the blame with nvidia.

It’ll be cancelled before it even launches

This is Goth Witch, from his side series.

I first read this as MPEG and thought they were talking about the video encoding.

I wish they were talking about the video encoding.

Yes, if the government was sane and allowed a physical card as an alternative/backup, but the UK gov wants to make it digital only.

Some important context here is that Switzerland already has a national ID card system, this is an extension allowing people to use a digital version if they prefer.

I’m not saying that isn’t going to be without its privacy concerns, but them narrowly voting that in is a far cry from, oh I don’t know, the UK government forcing an entirely new scheme on people without a referendum.

Pike got his “that’s rough buddy” moment.

I am very glad we got to revisit this storyline. There was a lot left to explain in that dimensional prison, and using it as a finale to neatly wrap a lot of different plot threads was great. I was really interested in that guardian figure from the earlier episode, knowing now that it ended up being Batel in a kind of asymptotic time loop is pretty crazy, but it is a very poetic ending. She can’t really live a life with Pike, and this is an ending that gives her meaning.

When Batel’s hands started glowing for a moment I genuinely thought she was going to regenerate à la time lord. And in the end I guess she kind of did! I half expected her to start babbling about some cosmic koala when she had stars in her eyes, I’m glad she didn’t. The ending took a serious tone, and that worked very well.

This episode uses what is effectively a dream sequence and those you have to be careful with. It works well here because the concept of time, cause, and effect have already been established as in play here so even if it never turned out as the actual in-universe outcome, it still feels like it has meaning. I note that the show giving us Pike’s alternate future had he not (will he have had not? tenses are hard with time travel) got in the accident for me cements the fact that he really is going to end up as his future vision told him. There’s no avoiding it now.

I am not sure I really followed a lot of the treknobabble in this one. I don’t get how the entity managed to reconstruct itself, nor why there was a whole debate about phasers being complementary instead of additive. But as a plot device to get things moving it was serviceable. Also, just a note, if you’re firing a stream of ANTI protons into the atmosphere, one would expect the antimatter to annihilate on impact with the upper atmosphere. I did find it hilarious that there’s two massive red lasers with the same power as a star beaming in through the balcony and none of the natives there were bothered by it enough to get out of their seats!

The planet design was really cool, the big floating churchey architecture was giving me Halo vibes. It’s interesting that the planet has no warp travel but still makes contact with alien races. I wonder if then the Feds would bother to help them out in the aftermath, or if they just left them to it. They kind of should take responsibility, given it was them that unleashed the evil in the first place. Even if it’s just to loan them that eye regeneration thing for a few hours.

Overall, this was a nice finale, and given it didn’t end on a pointless cliffhanger, and wrapped up most of the threads well, one of the better ones as TV dramas go.