Logline
Uhura seems to be the only one who can hear a strange sound. When the noise triggers terrifying hallucinations, she enlists an unlikely assistant to help her track down the source.
Written by Onitra Johnson & David Reed
Directed by Dan Liu
An okay episode.
Finally Una got to do something instead of being completely on the sidelines. The whole ensemble got something to do, except Ortegas who slowly turns into SNW’s Travis Mayweather: that one cast member that is just there physically but doesn’t get anything to do.
My personal highlight was the scene were Spock and Chapel play chess, and he passive-aggressively pushes her to play faster. Very Vulcan.
What irked me: everyone and their mother immediately started calling the First Officer of another Starfleet ship by his first name. That was weird.
Another weird thing was Pike’s promotion to Fleet Captain. We’ve never seen this in Star Trek, particularly not when it’s just two ships on a mission. So I checked the transcript of The Menagerie were Kirk speaks about the one time he met Captain Pike. And there it is:
MENDEZ: You ever met Chris Pike?
KIRK: When he was promoted to Fleet Captain.SNW’s producers were sneaky with that one. I’m both annoyed and impressed.
The whole ensemble got something to do, except Ortegas who slowly turns into SNW’s Travis Mayweather: that one cast member that is just there physically but doesn’t get anything to do.
I get the feeling the writers don’t really know what to do with Ortegas beyond that she “flies the ship”.
“I fly the ship”
My personal highlight was the scene were Spock and Chapel play chess, and he passive-aggressively pushes her to play faster. Very Vulcan.
My favourite scene too. I am glad they only got one scene together this episode to avoid it veering too hard into the soapy relationshipy aspects after last week. But damn those are two well-written, well-acted characters with insane chemistry - they gave them one scene together, playing chess no less, and it stole the whole episode.
Zombie Hemmer was freaky! Nicely done, wardrobe/makeup.
This clearly took a lot from TNG’s Night Terrors right? A bit of Firefly’s Bushwhacked in there too.
I liked it overall, but my favourite Star Trek episodes are when the crew gets to use their extreme competency to overcome a difficult challenge. This episode, the crew was… not so competent.
- Una’s team can’t identify that there’s been sabotage even though it’s just like, phaser blasts from a half-deranged man
- The dude easily escapes from sick bay and blows up a nacelle (had the stun setting not been invented yet? What about locked doors?)
- There’s no way the medical team could keep Uhura around and try to do some tests when she’s having an episode, they can only put on the brain scan screensaver
- They can’t shut down the dang refinery! The lever’s stuck and they’re out of WD-40!
- Pike blows up the quadrillion dollar infrastructure project immediately, not even just targeted laser blasts to the parts that are doing the murder. The whole thing has to blow up.
I guess this is just trek being trek and I shouldn’t take it so seriously. Emotionally, the crew was at the top of their game: intuitive, perceptive, empathetic, trusting. good stuff.
But yeah, I feel like I would have enjoyed this more had the problem been made more difficult instead of the crew less capable.
They can’t shut down the dang refinery! The lever’s stuck and they’re out of WD-40!
I actually had the least problem with that. It’s entirely plausible that huge machines can’t just turned off in an instant. Even real life nuclear reactors need something like +12 hours even for an emergency shutdown. A city-sized space-refinery probably has so much momentum in it’s spinning parts that it is faster to just shoot that thing.
I like that they did the Kirk/Spock meet as an almost throwaway thing, rather than trying to make it a big deal. We already know it’s a big deal, so any attempt to increase the drama would’ve made it cheesy, IMO. Plus, we’ve had lots of media about their friendship, already: we know it inside out. Instead, we got to focus on Kirk’s relationship with a different legacy character, one that hasn’t already been explored to anywhere near the same extent.
Although, on that note… was anyone else hoping the ‘doctor on the Farragut’ Kirk referred to was going to lead to a cameo from Bones? I don’t remember if they served together pre-Enterprise, so it might not have been strictly canon!
Great episode with serious and feel good moments.
Watching Kirk and Spock meet was fun.
This was the weakest episode of the season so far, and I still loved it. I couldn’t get over the fact Uhura wasn’t confined to sickbay or quarters by mid episode, but the rest of it showcases why SNW is quickly becoming my favorite Trek series.
