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Matt and Sean talk about getting what you wish for (in both story and fanbase) in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’, “Wedding Bell Blues.” Getting to the Q of it all.
Matt and Sean talk about getting what you wish for (in both story and fanbase) in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’, “Wedding Bell Blues.” Getting to the Q of it all.
- (00:00) - - Intro
- (02:46) - - Viewer Feedback
- (08:16) - - Today's Episode
- (10:26) - - This Time in History
- (13:23) - - Episode Discussion
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Creators and Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
In this episode of Trek In Time, we're talking about revisiting some old favorites unexpectedly. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time where we're taking a look at Star Trek in chronological Stardate order. If you've been following along up to this point, you've seen us go through Enterprise, most of Discovery, and a good portion of Strange New Worlds and the original series. But therein lies a problem. Strange New Worlds has come out with a new season. So we've stepped backward in time to incorporate season three of Strange New Worlds, and then we will return to the original series after the season is over and move forward from there.
So today we're talking about. Strange New World's Wedding Bell Blues. This is the 21st episode overall and the second of the third season. Welcome everybody. As you should know, if you're a regular viewer. I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids. With me, as always, is my brother Matt.
He is that Matt from Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And Matt, how are you today? I'm doing really well. And Sean, before we go on, you know, I built a little home theater with a projector and stuff like that. I've been watching this new show in that room.
I bet it's pretty, oh, it's so pretty.
So we will be talking about this episode, but before we get into it, Matt, I had a question for you.
Mm-hmm.
When these episodes drop, they drop two episodes at once. Yeah. And now they're spooling them out once a week. We started with the first episode last week and now we're talking about the second episode, but the second episode dropped at the same time as the first. So I'm wondering from you, do you want, in our next recording, should we tackle two episodes?
To catch up to real time, to catch up in real time, so that from that point on we would be talking about the current episode. I think that that would probably be something that our audience and we would enjoy instead of having a gap. Okay, so after we're done recording, we will discuss the logistics of how we will do that.
But for all of you listening, who've been watching along, get ready next week, two episodes instead of just one in our discussion. So. Something for us all to look forward to. Before we get into our conversation about the most recent episode, we always like to revisit your comments on our previous chat. So Matt, what did you find in the comments for us this week?
Well, from our last episode, which was about Hegemony, part two. The beginning of Strange New World. This new season. Dan Sims wrote in today's news, Paramount canceling the Colbert Late Show, wondering if Trump and his lawsuit was involved. The South Park says, hold my beer. Yes. I don't know if you've been following this.
Oh, I've been gobbling up schadenfreude. It's been like I've been over full on schadenfreude leaning back and just, oh, rubbing my belly and it just tastes so good. Yeah. Yeah. The, the whole thing with the parent network, and it makes it there, I'm sure I'm not alone as a consumer of the Paramount app. It is an era in which it feels like, oh, like do I want to be consuming this in this way?
Mm-hmm. But then in walks, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and they've done this before, they, they walk in very calmly, very quietly, and then they just drop a stink bomb on you, and it's just always so remarkably accurate. They're very good at that. Yeah. If you, I'm also, you enjoying Stephen Colbert's response?
You watched? Yeah. Yeah. Colbert has been every night making jokes about getting canceled. Yes. And. I love his show. Yeah. And it's like Chef's Kiss. You go, Steven, don't stop. Keep doing this until you're off the air in May. Yeah. And then on the flip side, I haven't watched South Park in years and this got me to watch that episode and I forgot how biting they can be.
Yeah. Yeah. And they do not like to be told what to do. Yeah. And if you've seen the documentary Six Days to Air, highly recommend that it shows how they make these episodes and how they are so timely they make a full episode start to finish in six days. Yeah. Six. It's insane. And that's how they're so topical.
Yeah. And it's like, and because they do it this way, the network really doesn't have a chance to review what they're about to put out. Yeah. Because they finish it hot off the presses, shove it out to air and it's out there. Yeah. And uh, God bless 'em. Yeah. That's all say. Well then we also had comments from FR BR radio.
So excited for this Strange New World. I was so pissed at the cliffhanger from season two. It was worse than the one from best of both worlds because at least we got to see Picard as Borg first, although it was satisfying rewatching it with the next season out. But I got that dopamine right away. I have flashbacks Sean, to when that aired.
Oh my. I felt you can't even believe. Like No, it was just like you kidding me? Ended on a cliffhanger. I was stunned and very upset. I was, I was angry. I was angry. I was sitting in a dorm room and I was like, what?
Yeah. And then we had OldTrekkie timing in, I have issues with Strange New Worlds, particularly in depiction of the Enterprise. However, the characters and their writing are excellent, which I enjoy. Some awkward interactions, maybe due to the show's limited 10 episode season, preventing a thorough explanation of its themes.
I call this comment out specifically 'cause I, there's an element to this criticism. I agree with that. I do feel like there is some, not to the extent of Discovery, fast forwarding things. Yeah. But there is a little bit of a, it feels like you've got 10 episodes. Be precious with what you want to tell. Yeah.
And in today's discussion I kind of had that feeling of like, this is how you wanted to spend one of your precious episodes.
Yeah.
So it relates directly to my feelings on the episode we're about to talk about. Mm-hmm. And then finally, we had Mark Loveless chiming in with a wrong answers only about the today's episode.
I have not read this. This will be the first time reading this, Sean. So hold on. We will hold on. Yes. Plot of Wedding Bell Blues. Scotty meets up with an old flame, coincidentally named Deanna Ortega, no relation to Erica Ortega, while on shore leave and they decide to get married. The day before the wedding, his bride to be is coming to, is going to come up with something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.
She has everything except the blue thing and asks Scotty for help. He suggests several different items, none of which are blue. In fact, all of them are green. It seems scotty has color issues with his eyes. Erica Ortega had been picked by Deanna to be her bridesmaid. Tells Deanna about Scotty's color blindness thing, and Deanna freaks out.
She picks up a green kerchief Scotty picked out, yells at her, Erica and Scotty that she could never marry a man that can't see blue and screams it's green. She storms out and the wedding is off. Scotty is brokenhearted, but later on the whole it's green saying, becomes a running personal joke for Scotty.
He even starts seeking out the occasional green alcoholic drink. And then he commented on his own comment, see what I did there? Tied in future episodes from the original series. Oh my God, I'm so clever. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Very good. Thank you, mark. Good job, mark. And also, I mean, again, timely. We'll come to this.
It connects to the episode that we're about to talk to.
It does?
Yeah. Strange days. Well, that noise you hear, those lights you see flashing? Yes. It's the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the IMDB description. Matt, take a very deep breath to get through this one. Okay.
At a federation celebration, an uninvited guest disrupts Spock and the crews reflections. That's, that's it. That's it. That's it.
What I like about this description, oh, Sean, is, yes, you can use the word reflections in that way, but there are better words. Mm-hmm. Ruminations. Yeah. Assessments. Yep. Considerations, disrupting Spock and the crews reflections. Sounds like mirrors are involved in some way. Yes, it does. It's a strange choice of words.
This is Wedding Bell Blues directed by Jordan Canning, written by Kirsten Bear and David Reed, and it was originally dropped on the Paramount streaming app on July 17th, 2025. The series is of course, created by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumette. Based on Star Trek, by Gene Roddenberry starring Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, Rebecca Romijn, and Martin Quinn.
Now we have been talking about these episodes, incorporating today's date. Regular viewers and listeners will know that what we try to do is contextualize the show by talking about things that were going on at the time of original broadcast. That means that for the original series, we've been talking about the late sixties for Discovery.
We were talking about the early 2000 and teens and for Enterprise, we were talking about way back in the
year 2000.
But here we are talking about shows that are being broadcast now. So we're talking about now. And according to my show notes, now is July 26th, 2025. Matt, you'll remember from last week we were talking about one of your favorite songs, Ordinary by Alex Warren.
Well, guess what? You get to sing it again. That's right. It's still the most popular streaming song, or is it? No, it's not. No, it's not. It's actually Justin Bieber. Ordinary is at number two today. Which means you have to sing Justin Bieber, which I know you don't enjoy half as much as you enjoy Ordinary. So here he is with Daisies by Justin Bieber, my brother Matt.
Take it away. Great. And in the movies, it is anticipated that the number one film this weekend will be the Fantastic four film, which, First Steps is projected to earn 25 million. This was written about its July 25th debut, so it was anticipated that the entire weekend would be somewhere between 115 and 135 million, which puts it in the same ballpark as Superman.
And Superman has reached a point at this point in its third week where it is on pace to be DC's best showing since the Joker. So. They're anticipating a very good long run from Superman. And in television the most streamed show continues to be Untamed, starring Eric Bana. This is on Netflix, and when you look at the streaming services, the it, it's all speculative numbers.
So because they don't put out actual raw data, but there are companies that take a look at anticipated viewing and speculate about overall viewership numbers. Untamed is doing quite a bit more than any of the number one programs on the other streaming services. The next closest was a show on Hulu that was doing roughly about a quarter as much viewing as Untamed.
And in the news, we've touched on this briefly before and I'm sure we'll touch on it briefly again. The ongoing news in the US according to the New York Times, continues to be the Epstein files, and Donald Trump's attempts to distance himself from rumors that he is in fact inside the files. More recently, he has been pulling up all sorts of competing theories, conspiracy theories around what actually happened, including most recently claiming that Barack Obama committed treason slow head shake from Matt on that one. Yeah, strange days. On now to our conversation about this episode. Matt, you hinted at some thoughts, so mm-hmm.
Can I propose a different way of talking about this one?
You can.
All right. Let's talk about it in, not about the plot as a plot, but moments. High level. High level from moments from favorite working our way down. Okay, so like a favorite moment and then I'll share a favorite moment and we'll go that way and work our way down the ladder toward the things that we aren't super crazy about for this one.
So, do you wanna start us off? What was a moment for you that you watched and you were just like, like that? That's good. Gimme more of that. You seem to be taking a long time. Yeah. No, it's, yeah. Why don't you go, why don't you go first? Okay. Okay. I will say of this episode, I don't know that it earned it, and I don't know that it needed to exist in order to do this, but I did by the end of it, I was like, oh, they are fully embracing and endorsing the is the Squire of Gothos about a baby Q and I liked it. I liked the ending of this episode very much. I thought it was, and let me clarify, I didn't like the fact it completely bit off of the Squire of Gothos. What I liked was them simply having said, yeah, okay, he was a Baby Q.
I appreciated that it was a John de Lancie cameo as the voice of the parental figure showing up. Yeah, I appreciated the depiction of the wedding planner, so I want to call out Rhys Darby in particular, who I feel like really captures the performance of the original actor in the Squire of Gothos. This felt like, like right off the bat you're like, oh, I know who I'm watching.
This is that character, so, mm-hmm. Right down to the mutton chops, like all the layers of, of playfulness in him. And Rhys Darby is that kind of actor. If you haven't watched Flight of the Concordes, if you haven't watched, our Flag means death. Yeah. If you haven't seen his live shows, I was lucky enough he came to Brooklyn and he performed at the theater near where I live, and I saw him live and he does a, his work is fairly improv.
It's kind of a manic Robin Williams style. Let him go and hold on as he does his thing. And it's an impressive show to watch. So I enjoyed this moment at the end of, yeah, we're putting a stamp of approval on the fan theory that that character is in fact a Baby Q and the use of John de Lancie, I think introduces some fun if befuddling questions around, uh, what are you saying about the Q. When this Q seems to be reprimanding, but if it's John de Lancie's Q, Hmm, what does that mean about him with Picard and what does it mean about the Q in general and yada, yada, yada. Anyway, I was on board for it. I'm like, okay, I get it.
I like it. It's funny you bring this scene up, that highlight. 'cause that to me was the highlight for my myself, which was watching him in the moment where he's like, I'm not getting my way. You're not playing the game. And he basically just starts walking around the room yelling. Yeah, you're dead. You're dead.
Yeah. I, I kind of like you. He's like, he's going through and picking who's gonna, it's hysterical. It's funny. It is genuinely funny and horrifying all at the same time. Yeah. It's like, yeah. It's, it seems to be where that's where they let the let him go. Kind of like to his Improvy. Yeah, naturalistic. 'cause it felt like some of that probably was not scripted.
It was probably just him. Mm-hmm. Being him. And it was very natural and very funny. That to me was the highlight. I loved the tie into Q. I loved John de Lancie being the voice. And yes, it raises questions. I was like, this is a younger Q, maybe. Yeah. So maybe he's not completely bored out of his mind yet when he's, but they're not locked, but they are not locked into I know time in the same way and No, but they are not, I mean, the entire thing about like, yeah, if this, let's just say it is the same Q and he's showing up in this moment as kind of the parental figures saying, you've been misbehaving. This is not appropriate. You shouldn't be doing this. He seems to be doing it from a perspective of why are you bothering with these lesser light forms? That's what I'm getting at. And then at some point, yeah, and then at some point he himself is just like, well, what was my son doing over there with these things?
Well, it's. That's precisely my point is like when I say time has passed, it's not like our time has passed. His time has passed. Yeah. So it's like it could have been a millennia between this moment and the Picard moment and he is bored out of his gourd and just wants to have some fun. Right. By the time he gets to Picard, where at this, he's still kind of a semi responsible Q, kind of keeping tabs and things.
And so I kind of like that. It's like, oh, we get a little like super prequel on John de Lancie's Q. That's kind of fun. Um, I thought that was really kind of clever and cute. Yeah. So I would agree with you that this was one of the highlights for me Yeah of the, of the show. Another moment that stood out for me as part of the fun was, uh, Scotty, oh no, I don't really drink.
Yes, we had just, we had just had a wrong answers only with it's green. We had just dealt with the episode where that was introduced into Star Trek's mythology as Scotty does a drinking competition to drink a omnipotent being under the table by introducing him to something green, and it is. The discussion around that episode of the original series revolved largely around, is this a cry for help from Scotty with people saying, no, no, no, no.
He's just hiding his, his booze from other people on the crew who would steal it. It's not that he squirreled things away like an alcoholic would. Well, we're here, we have the introduction of like, I don't really drink, but then he apparently eats something and you see him grabbing a beverage as quickly as possible because what he has just eaten is apparently very spicy. So I, I mean, they came this close. Did you feel like they came this close to him having something green? Because I thought, yes, there was gonna be like, yes, I thought there was gonna be a bottle of something. It was gonna be like a green thing and you were gonna hear him say, what is that? Then it would cut before an answer was given.
So I enjoyed that exchange. I'm enjoying the introduction of young Scotty. Where do you land on your next introduction of a moment you liked? Doesn't have to be the same moment I just described obviously. There's a moment. Okay. I'm not gonna say this is a good moment, but I enjoyed this moment. The other thing I liked was the bartender at the end, which is the three arm bartender, which is the character from the animated series, I was like, oh my God, they're making a animated character kind of cannon now because they could do it and it didn't hit. Part of the reason I like this was when it was happening, I didn't realize it wasn't gonna be connecting. I was like, why are they spending so much time showing this bartender doing?
Why are they spending, oh, why are they just doing this? 'cause it's like, cool. And then the conversation started. Yeah. And I went, oh, oh, oh my God. This has gotta be the animated series. And when one of them said, you're like, too good for this kind of a thing. Yeah. I was like, oh my God. They're, they're bringing, they're gonna, are they gonna bring this character onto the ship?
Yeah. Either, either they're bringing a character and who will eventually play around with being that character, which, yeah. May be a stretch, but at the very least introducing that species directly into the series Yes is really, really cool. And they've done that before from the animated series. They introduced, uh, the salot from the planet Vulcan, where Spock had a pet of that type.
And then we had an episode of Discovery where they went to Vulcan and those were roaming in the wilderness and introduced very clearly in that way. So yeah, I like that moment too. And I had the same question. I was like, why are we showing this bartender so much? Like, like it's space cocktail. Uh, and then, yeah, and it, and I'll admit it didn't click for me until you described it just now that that's what that species is.
So, yeah. Well done Matt. Uh, little bit further down on the enjoyment scale. I found this episode is rooted specifically in Spocks interpretation of events and. I found the focus on his perspective of his relationship with Christine to be good material for the episode, although I didn't necessarily like how they handled it quite so much.
So this was a moment for me where, oh, the things we've been talking about in the past where you get the. The moments in Strange New Worlds that inform the original series in interesting new ways. And we had the episode of the original series that we talked about where Spock and Chapel shared a consciousness for a period of time.
And you and I both reflected on the moment, like, that's really interesting given their deeper history. Here's another link in that chain. And there is the very obvious dynamic around Nurse Chapel is going off to study with Corby and will become engaged to him. We know that from what little girls are made of from the original series, and here we're given those moments and as soon as I saw that's what was coming, I thought they were right out of the gate handling it in an almost romantic comedy tone.
I didn't quite get why they landed there. It felt like they landed in a tone for this episode. That was a little confusing for me because you get moments that felt like they were built up for punchline moments around Spock's awkwardness or the like. The practicing of the dancing felt reminiscent of Data.
As opposed to Spock, the showing up with a gift for Christine in the form of a book felt appropriate for Spock and reminiscent of Spock, giving Kirk a gift in the Wrath of Khan, where the idea that Spock likes to give books as gifts is now like now it's got a through line. And that's an interesting, I like that as a dynamic.
I found myself though thinking they've spent so much time in this episode with setting up the two timelines, showing how things have changed and playing with the kind of holding back on who is the figure doing all of this in a way that felt like withholding from an audience that already knew the answer.
While making it confusing for those who don't. So I felt like I got why this was a subject of an episode and I'm, I'm doing a lot of talking to basically say, I understand why this is an episode, but I don't know why this became the episode that they did. So I'm, I felt this episode landed squarely at a midpoint for me between, I don't like this and I like this.
This landed right at a five of
hmm,
yeah, I get it, but this is how you're gonna handle it. It felt like it was undercutting, undercutting itself in ways, and as a result, it didn't feel. There were moments where I was like, this doesn't feel quite like Star Trek. Where it doesn't feel like these characters to me, if that makes more sense.
So yeah, I'll leave it at that. My feelings are pretty much mirrored to that, Sean. That was why. The two things I just listed as like maybe my high points, that's where my high points stop because at this point it's like mediocre town to me. I don't think this episode was bad. Not even close. I thought it was well written, well acted.
The, some of the character moments felt true. Um, I did enjoy the romantic comedy aspect of what they were doing, but it felt off from the show as a whole. Yeah, and that's kind of where I was alluding to in the very beginning when we started talking, which was you're doing 10 episodes and you chose to do this for 10% of your season.
I don't, I don't understand it because I'm a hardcore fan, and so I was picking up on all the fan service stuff. I watched it with my wife who really enjoys Star Trek, but she wasn't picking up on any of the fan service stuff. She did not remember. Really hasn't probably watched much of the original series.
Didn't know the whole Corby backstory, so she didn't know that everything they we're showing has already been established in the original series. She thought it was new. And the whole thing with, um, the Squire of Gothos, she didn't remember any of that. So she didn't make that connection. She enjoyed it, but it definitely came across from her as kind of like, well, that was fun, but eh, yeah.
Kind of attitude. And that's my feeling towards it. It just felt like a wasted opportunity and. It reminded me a lot of Next Generation, every time Troy's mother was on the ship. Yeah. I got the same attitude of like, oh God, here we go.
Yeah.
Like I never, I've never liked those episodes. I, I, I don't dislike the character of the mother.
It just, it just like, okay, we're gonna be in a sitcom. Yeah. 45 minutes here. And that was not what I was expecting or wanting, but here we go. Yeah. So it's like, that's kinda how I felt about this when it kicked off and it was like, oh, we're doing a romantic comedy. Really? Okay. Yeah. And guess we'll just go, okay, this is entertaining.
I'm being entertained. At the end, I was entertained, but it felt like a wasted opportunity, especially like halfway through the episode. I was thinking whenever they have Q on with Picard. Or even on Deep Space Nine, it has that sitcom. Is there a Jean Luck Pickard here? It's like it's, they, they have the humor, but the, I dunno if this is the right phrase, but tete like the, like the, the sparring between Picard and Q is what makes it entertaining.
Yeah. And Q being this omnipotent creature thing that can do whatever he wants and Picard standing up to him knowing. I can't stop him. I, I physically cannot if Yeah, stop him. But he always finds a way to outwit him or to turn his own logic against him to make him do what he wants him to do. That's what makes it entertaining.
And it wasn't until halfway through this episode that that even started to happen. Yeah. And that's where I was like, okay, you've set up this omnipotent guy from the very beginning. It takes halfway through for Corby to really kind of go to like in Spock to team up. Up until that point, Corby has been the only one going, something's here.
Something's weird. Something's weird. Yeah. And then it was like, Spock discovers something's weird. And then the two of them team up and it's like the show is almost over at that point. Yeah. And it was like, why are you using that character, the Q, as the jumping off point for just doing a romantic comedy between two characters that have really nothing to do with what this omnipotent alien is doing.
Yeah. It felt completely divorced. It felt, it made it feel like it was tacked on. Re romantic comedy first, and then tack on the Q on top and where it's like as, but you're doing all the fan service stuff is like, well if you're talking to the fans, we care more about the Q than we do what you're doing right now with the romantic comedy stuff. So it, it felt like they just kinda like inverted things where if they had just flipped it a little bit, they could have kept the romantic comedy, they could have kept the wedding, they could have kept all that stuff, but just put a little more focus on the Q aspect of it.
Yeah, I, I agree with all of that and it feels a little bit, one of the things that you seem to edge up against was when Q would appear, Picard felt like Picard as an antagonist to Q. Yeah. And in this Spock didn't feel like Spock. No. As an antagonist to this Q and Spock didn't feel like Spock as a antagonist to Corby.
And so I'm like, I'm, I found myself like, this doesn't feel like Spock. This doesn't feel like the character. And I, and I wanna make very, very clear, I just had a conversation with my son about fandom and fan service and people who complain like, oh, that ninth movie, it didn't feel like Luke Skywalker and like that kind of thing.
I'm not saying this doesn't feel like Leonard Nemoy Spock. This didn't feel like Ethan Peck's Spock to me. Yes. Yep. And this didn't feel like. Christina Chong's La'an to me. Mm-hmm. The introduction of dancing and the explanation of like, well, she always wanted to be a ballerina. Like, like what? Outta left field.
Like it comes outta left field and it felt like. The kind of in you mentioned Next Generation. In the later run of Next Generation, it was obvious they were pulling in personal interest to the actors in order to keep the interest of those actors going. So suddenly, Riker is a jazz musician. And the doctor is a tap dancer.
And it's like a way of subtly shoehorning things like these actors have these talents. You know, for Brent Spiner it was, well, he's gonna play a myriad of different characters because he likes to experiment. And you know, playing an emotionless character is maybe getting boring for him. So let's let him be his own father and his own brother and we'll have an episode in which he plays a myriad of archetypes in a dream sequence, like that kind of thing. This felt like that to me. And I'm like, they're only in the third season. Why are they already saying like, oh, we gotta keep, keep Christina interested. We're gonna let her dance. Beautiful dancer, clearly like, this is a talent she has. Doesn't mean it needs to appear in this way.
It's like it felt weird. And yet I wanted there to be that relationship between the two of them because I like the idea of them becoming friends, of him having a confidant who also is human, but feels like she's on the outside looking in and she's figuring out ways to get deeper into the circle. And I like the idea of her being a kind of human, he can lean on.
Without it being the Pike relationship because the Pike relationship is more paternal and I like there being a kind of sibling relationship at play with him and La'an. I thought this is really neat. I wish they weren't dancing. This is really neat. I wish they weren't dancing and like the idea that she'd be the one that he would turn to and that she'd be the one who can tease him.
In that way, you're supposed to flow not to measure your shoulders, and then he reflects that back to her at the end. I liked. And I've said this before, one of the things I like about Spock's character arc is there is a moment in the original series where it is all like you're just a computer Spock. But we haven't even seen how far that will go because it's not until the motion picture.
That Spock is trying to wipe all emotion from him. This earlier version of Spock has gone the other direction. He started as a very rigid and held back character when he was introduced into Discovery and it's played around with. He has effectively struggled with anxiety and depression his entire life, and as a result, locked himself down into I have to be super Vulcan at all times.
It breaks, and we've been introduced now to a Spock at this stage in his career where he's leaning more into his human side and experimenting a little more, and we get subtle performance moments from Ethan Peck in this, where little smiles, little jokes, he's doing things that are different. When I say this didn't feel like Spock, I'm not referring to those moments.
I like those moments. The problem for me is things like the dancing. Like this, like Data danced and painted and played instruments because he was literally an Android. That was like, I am, I have a list, probably alphabetical of human activities and I'm gonna run through all of them and see how they make me respond.
That's not who Spock is. So this moment it felt like you could have had the sibling relationship moments play out with the two of them doing. I don't know, three dimensional chess, experimentation in his lab around like new security measures she's thinking about trying to put in place and she needs his help with developing something.
Like there could have been something that could have shown them developing that relationship in a way that wouldn't have been this. And then for the thing you said about Q Spock should have been sparring with Q more than he should have been riffing with Corby. Yes, a hundred percent. And the riffing, the sparring with Q.
And here's one of the things that that made, you know, me grind my teeth a little bit. There is, this is one of those episodes where nobody changes from start to finish. There's no movement of character other than Spock. You get. And that movement in Spock feels like it's largely told to us as opposed to feeling like it's rendered.
So what ends up happening for me in this episode is what a missed opportunity for Spock to be going toe to toe with. I'm gonna refer to him as the Squire, just because I feel like I can't get that out of my head. Going toe to toe with the squire. In a way that would end up in a place where Spock would realize because of the Squire, something about himself, maybe that he has wishes that he doesn't know how to manifest or contain.
Yeah. Spock having a moment of, I did not realize that that was within me, the desire for a, a hope that could be manifested through an omniscient, omnipotent being was a stunning realization for me. I didn't think I was that kind of person. Yep. And I wish that their riffing and sparring with each other had included Spock, pushing the squire in a way that would've been something along the lines of Spock saying.
I have found myself in a position where I have had to become a student of humanity in order to understand how to interpret them. Because what you're doing is misinterpreting a wish as something that should be, and for the squire to say, ah, a student of humanity, how interesting. Maybe I should take a longer look at them before I figure out how to interact with them.
And then what you've done is you've planted the seeds of the Squire of Gothos. Yep. You don't get that. You get a, it's literally a repeat. It's, they just recreate the scene of the parent showing up, and I felt like this is what you do with it. Like, there was so many little nuggets. It was very fan servicey.
It was very fancy, very fan servicey, but fan servicey in a way that felt like they don't think the fans need anything more than just a, like a poster on the wall. And sometimes you need more than the poster on the wall. And I say that having, I dunno if you've seen it yet. I just watched the teaser trailer for Star Fleet Academy.
Have you watched that yet? Yes, I have. It's nothing but fan service.
Mm-hmm. And
I loved it. But it's a teaser trailer, correct. It's not the show. That's where that kind of one dimensional fan service belongs. Teaser trailers. Not in, as you've pointed out, one 10th of your season. Yes. I want to end on a good note.
So I want to end on Ortegas planting a really interesting storyline around PTSD. I think that there's going to be some interesting stuff to come out of that, and I like her as the character they're doing it with because in the past she has been. Largely bravado and attitude in a fun way, but dealing with a challenge in this way where she is clearly haunted by the experiences with the gorn, I think is promising ground for that character.
Wow. You and I are polar opposite in this. Mm-hmm. I'm very excited that they're doing this with the character. Full stop. Great. Yeah, that's gonna be cool. The execution of this episode I thought was horrendous with her. Absolutely horrible. It was like almost nonexistent, the PTSD, because the show was humorous and lighthearted and all of that stuff.
So they were, it was very like, not even skin deep with her stress from what had just happened. They, they said, I'm recovering, and the fight scene and stuff like that where she's training, but they didn't really show her struggling at all. And then it's the last shot of the entire episode where she's in the room and looks in the window and there's the reflection of the gorn and they go, I was like, really?
Really? That's how you're handling her PTSD. I thought it was horrendous. Absolutely. The worst part of this episode for me, I want, it was just, I want be, I want to be very clear when I say I like that. I meant the introduction of it as a character element. Yes, I did not. I like it as a character of it either.
Like, I just wanna make that very clear. Yeah. If, for me also, I completely agree. I felt like they were trying to toy with it in the earlier boxing scene and I was like, I see where trying to get kept too light, but you're getting there in the wrong way. Like they were, they were doing it too light. They were, they, it was like it, it was like there was a rule of we can't have anything kind of dark in this episode because it's a light-hearted comedy, romantic comedy.
So we can't have anything kind of like overtly dark. They should have. Yeah, they should have shown her in that fight scene. Maybe like sh her, her brother got a hit on her that he shouldn't have.
And then, and she takes it out on him. Yeah.
And yeah. And then later in one of the like scenes, maybe some lights are flashing and she kinda like, ha goes, I have to leave and walks out of the room.
So it's not like you have to do big things, but just like drop little seeds that get worse. And then maybe in the wedding scene she's off on the side and after La'an on. Talks to Spock and helps Spock out. You see her look across and see Ortega looking like sweaty and walking out of the thing, and then a closeup of La'an of like, uh oh.
Yeah. Like she's recognizing what's happening. And then you have the scene where she's sparring and sees the gorn and the reflection. So it's like. They could have done little things that would just made it more meaningful. Yeah. It just felt like a record scratch the way they did it. It was like, oh my God, tonal shift.
Whoa. What is happening? Yeah. It would've been for me. I, I, I had the same response where I felt like, okay, you've got the boxing match. Have her brother land a hit that she doesn't feel like you should have, and then she takes it out on him in an aggressive, non smiling way. Yes. And then I would've changed all the scenes where.
It was her with her brother and Uhura. Mm-hmm. I don't mind the brother character. Okay. You're adding an outsider who's coming in. He's going to be filming a documentary like, okay, that's like fine and you wanna have Uhura and him flirting and romantic interest there, like, fine. I would've rewritten it so that her response to that would've started at neutral and then gone south.
So she would be being bitterly sarcastic and passive aggressive toward Uhura, and basically staking out, like, stay away from my brother in a way that would reflect a disconnect from reality. Her being aggressive and protective as a manifestation of her, like I am not well, and the way that you get those breadcrumbs is gonna be tricky in an episode when, as you mentioned, the tone is so different.
But I feel like you don't have to go far to find a good example. The episode with Picard, dealing with the PTSD of having been turned into Locutus
mm-hmm.
Also includes Guinan telling Worf's parents that he likes Prune Juice. Yep. It's a perfectly written episode. Yep. Everything about that episode. Is, I've got all the specs and diagrams at home being yelled by his father as he's being pushed into the transporter room because Worf is trying to get his parents off the ship.
And the captain meanwhile has just had a fist fight with his brother, yes. In the vineyard and breaking down because he wasn't good enough. And like you can get there, you can have like that from the Picard storyline. It's, it's one of the best they ever tell. And the Worf storyline is also one of the best they ever tell, and they're tonally not like each other at all.
It is one episode and it's beautifully rendered. Felt the pressure relief valve felt us to once one. Yeah. It's the pressure relief valve for the heavy stuff. Yeah. So it's like Picard's heavy. You will have the pressure off for the viewer and then you put the pressure back on again with Picard. Then you swing back and forth.
Yeah. This was like, we can't have pressure on anybody. Yeah.
And at the very end it's just like this melodramatic, whoa. Where did that come from? Yeah. Yeah. I felt like they, it's like they didn't trust themselves or they didn't trust us, and I felt like they could have gotten to that place where it could have been.
Yeah, the tonal shift could have been in there and it could have been fine and it could have worked beautifully and it could have balanced everything in a way. So like overall, like I said, I just landed at a five on this one. I'm like, uh, what a, if this is kind of the, what is a stumble? Yeah. If this is the bottom for the show.
They're in Great. A great place. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I, and I mean, we sound like listeners and viewers who followed us on this journey all the way through. I feel like this is the tone of our conversations around Enterprise. Like we talked about enterprise in these tones quite a bit, which was like, yeah, we did, oh, if they could just get out of their own way.
They are telling good stories. They're just not telling them well, every time. Or the opposite, they're telling a bad story really well. Mm-hmm. The occasional like, oh, they hit the mark in both. Hooray. Like, yeah, this felt to me like, hmm, well, acted, everybody's super talented. Mm-hmm. And this is one of those episodes where you get a little bit of everybody and.
You get just enough of everybody, but what they're doing in the moment, like the, the relationship with Pike and his romantic partner. Yep. One scene nicely done, packs a punch. It gave what it needed to give. There's a challenge there between the two of them, and they're clearly in love and they wanna figure out how to make this work.
We also know Big picture. It's a tragic story because we know his future. So yeah, like there's a lot of interesting tension there. And that scene was one brief moment for those characters in this episode. Like give us more of that. Give each, if you're gonna be bouncing around the characters, really think about who they are.
La'an doesn't need to dance. So says Sean. Yeah, just doesn't need to dance. So listeners, viewers, where do you land on this one? Did you find it like just overall, did you have more fun with it than Matt and I seem to have, or do you agree with us that it felt uneven? The tone didn't strike the right note and just.
Find yourself scratching her head. Jump into the comments. We'd love to hear what you have to say, and we'll be visiting your comments next time. Don't forget, as I mentioned, next time we're gonna be talking about two episodes because we're trying to catch up to Strange New Worlds. So we will be talking about the episodes that are titled here it comes episode three, Shuttle to Kenfori, and episode four, a Space Adventure Hour.
I. Just based on that title.
Yeah,
I'm interested in that one. Don't forget, leave a comment, like, subscribe, share with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for to support the podcast. And if you'd like to support us more directly, you can go to Trek in Time Show, click the Become a Supporter button. It allows you to throw some coins at our heads, and then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of trying to figure out how you flow your shoulders instead of measuring them.
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