Gasp! I should have looked up if Earl Boen was still with us.

I’ll add my comment from the other post here too.

Naveen Andrews is doing a great job with Khan sounding very charismatic.

Not to throw shade at Andrews, but I do kind of wish maybe they got Earl Boen who can do a very good sound alike to Ricardo Montalban. Boen filled in for Montalban as Señor Senior Sr. in Kim Possible, and sounded really spot on.

But if we ever see Khan on screen again, I think Andrews would be great casting.

I also did the unthinkable, I’m listening to this podcast at 1x speed. Because I wanted to really be immersed in the story telling. I usually listen to podcasts at 1.5x or 2x, whichever allows me to consume the content quicker while understanding it.

It’ll be intersting to see what hell comes from this that will inform Khan’s revenge for Kirk in Wrath of Khan.

Naveen Andrews is doing a great job with Khan sounding very charismatic.

Not to throw shade at Andrews, but I do kind of wish maybe they got Earl Boen who can do a very good sound alike to Ricardo Montalban. Boen filled in for Montalban as Señor Senior Sr. in Kim Possible, and sounded really spot on.

But if we ever see Khan on screen again, I think Andrews would be great casting.

I think we should. Any reason to talk more about Star Trek lore is great in my book.

I personally am looking forward to the inevitable crossover episode with Strange New Worlds.

That’s going to be so dope. Probably very pricy too, since license Lego products are expensive and the tariffs I’ve heard have even effect Lego prices.

2. Yeah. They waste at least 2 days trying to get Ortega back when maybe they should have just accepted the calculated loss. They even risked the Enterprise in a very dangerous maneuver to force open the wormhole. All around it is a bad call from Pike, but it’s pretty on brand for Starfleet Captains to put an individual over the needs of the many. It’s why Vulcan captains probably suck.

1. I think this can easily be handwaved away since the scenario is artificial in the first place.
2. Odds are it’ll take a few days or possible weeks of travel to rondevu with the Constellation.

To be fair, if you look at her quarters, she does tinker with things a lot. So it’s not exactly out of left field that she might have the mechanical knowledge to tinker up some jury rigged devices.

A Darmok, The Enemy and Arena episode is not what I was expacting but I was pleasantly surprised.

I don’t mind retreading old stories, after all recycling plots is a Star Trek tradition.

I’d have been happier without the reveal of the Metrons. I get it, as a callout/foreshadowing of Arena, but I kind of feel that is took away from the emotional beat of the Gorn being killed by the security team. Then to also have it handwaved away with a memory wipe, so that it is only meant for us, the viewers. I don’t know man… I kind of like the deepcut, but it’s also distracting.

I guess it was also a bit necessary for us to understand the Gorn a bit more to have the all seeing eye narrate to us that the Gorn pilot was lonely and is the reason Ortega was spared.

Anyway, I loved this episode. We got a whole episode for Ortega. Addressed her PTSD that had been sitting in the backseat for this entire season. And I love these kind of survival episodes. Like I really enjoyed ENT’s Shuttlepod One for the same reason. Just seeing characters fighting for their lives and also accepting their death in a cold and uncaring Universe. It’s good compelling Star Trek.

The only thing I wish is that SNW’s best episodes didn’t feel like the best of TOS.

Why wouldn’t doctor m’benga challenge their decision to remain Vulcan without checking, testing, verifying their capacity?

I totally thought that too. Clearly, their judgement has been impaired and what they want is irrelevant. But you know…sometimes you just need stuff to happen to get the plot moving.

Does that imply that Romulans augmented themselves? And that’s what distinguishes them physiologically from Vulcans, and is what makes them kinda evil?

I guess it makes some sense. They never got the teachings of Surak. So to control their emotions maybe they looked in to genetic augmentation, and it turns out, they turned evil. Which to be fair, a very common theme in Star Trek (exect when it’s not).

I didn’t appreciate that despite the extra long (and extra long feeling) runtime of this one they had three of the Vulcans return to human off screen.

I feel like Pike and Uhura already had external character growth on screen to explain why it wouldn’t take much convincing for them to go back. I kind of wish they showed what convinced Chapel.

But I think it makes sense to also emphasis La’an because they’re trying ti build up the relationship with Spock, so they do kind of need more screen time.

Great episode. Extremely cringe but it works for me.

God, the amount of bullying Spock must have put up with as a kid. It’s no wonder he joined Starfleet. We even see it in one of the movies where he kicked the shit out of another Vulcan kid.

And incase someone needs a reminder on how Pike and La’An knew what Romulans are. La’An ran in to one in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. And Pike runs into them in A Quality of Mercy. Both dealing with wacky time displacement nonsense and conanically Romulans aren’t revealed until TOS’s Balance of Terror (which A Quality of Mercy is a remake of).

La’An is a terrible Romulan. She should have kept her plotting closer to the chest. Also funny how Pike saw through her behavior but didn’t do anything about it. Does show Vulcan’s are inherently bias towards other Vulcans. Which we even saw brought up when Batel calls out Pasalk.

This was a very fun episode, and does show off the complete bullshit logical fallacies that make up Vulcan society without having to deal with Vulcan society.

I agree, the documentary was simply a framing device. I think it was an interesting decision as well. The moral quandaries are not taking a backseat just because the framing device is so front and center.

I think an entire series framed like this could be very interesting with an embedded reporter creating a documentary on the on goings of a Starfleet ship.

Honestly, as an audiance we are a bit spoiled with the all seeing eye, but that’s not necessarily how the average citizen in the Federation sees it.

If this is FTL but Star Trek Voyager, I’m going to be in heaven.

You might be right. I just took a look at the sales, and last year did see a 12% drop. Apple’s Vision Pro is over priced and lacks software, and the Meta Quest 3 saw high initial sales but has dropped a lot since then.

It is definitely a very niche product with a high price point that prevents it from making broader market appeal.

But oddly, Meta is reporting increase in VR game revenue, so I guess games are still selling on its platform at the least.

Survival horror and Star Trek is not something that instantly seem like it goes together to me. But this does look interesting. Being able to Vulcan death grip and mind meld with people in VR looks interesting and sounds like cool mechanic combined with Star Trek lore.

This looks pretty fun for some reason, and I do own a Valve Index, so happy to see this not locked behind the Meta store, like so many other VR games.

I don’t like the implications that there is a device that can absorb phaser fire.

I also find it weird that the “intruders” who I assume know English, are not able to pick up on Federation Standard, I assume it is still not that different from English, considering Starfleet did start in North America. You think when you see on the hall of a ship, “U.S.S. Enterprise” or when you enter and take a look around and see the service panels that, they might think for a second that this ship might have hailed from Earth.

Also a bit weird how they haven’t encountered Federation ships with humans with their couple of hundred year space travels. But I assume maybe they went through the same wormhole as V’ger or something. And who knows what kind of trauma they have to live through.

Despite these logical inconsistencies, I think I still enjoyed this mess of an episode.

The spectacle was over the top. I like seeing the TOS crew interacting with each other. And I enjoyed the Enterprise crew coming up with a solution to save themselves, though their escape and timing with the Farragut’s attack did seem awfully convenient. Would have felt a little less contrived if they had coordinated with each other a bit sooner to match up the plans, but we don’t always have so much screen time to explain things and the plot sometimes needs to get moving, so I can forgive it.

I also like the Pike to Kirk talk talking about empathizing with your enemy. Feelsl ike foreshadowing to Arena.

Anyway, I currently like this episode.

I literally thought this might be a prequel to that. I was disappointed.