Yeah, if they’re sending Uhura forward in time as the trailers have suggested, it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce them without actually introducing them.

I think I got a stomach bug or food poisoning

I feel you. I’ve been going through it this weekend, myself. Flu season came early.

In Picard, she becomes a vigilante and ultimately kills Bjayzl out of revenge even after Picard explicitly challenges that choice.

And you believe the show was endorsing the fact that she did it? Portrayal of an act is not an endorsement of that act. Seven did plenty of shady stuff on Voyager, from trying to take over the ship to disobeying orders and waking up the Vaadwaur.

That distinction matters to me: not “nobody ever does wrong”, but the narrative still knows that the means require moral scrutiny.

You seem very determined to make the case that the new shows don’t provide that, but I simply don’t agree.

Doesn’t NuTrek glorify Section 31, which is basically just that?

Arguably in the movie, though they didn’t do anything particularly immoral in it.

Beyond that, not even a little bit. They’re still the bad guys.

NuTrek would probably use it to 9/11 Romulus’s sun’s core and wipe their home world out just to stir up drama.

If you have to conjure examples out of thin air, it’s possible your argument isn’t as strong as you think it is.

And even then…they got there in the end. It was rather the point of the arc.

Do you have any particular examples of the “the ends justify the means” attitude you seem to think is so prevalent now?

I wouldn’t mind if it was solved through introspection and realization

I think that’s what happened, at the end of the day. Princess Thalia is fictional, but she’s representative of personality traits La’An has suppressed since she was a child.

I don’t remember a cogent explanation for the planet, either - it didn’t bug me, but it is an omission for sure.

Well, their past wasn’t changed, and that’s the only past Starfleet is really concerned about - that’s the problem with predestination paradoxes.

I understand your reaction to the episode, but I also think you’re hitting on exactly the thing that makes it interesting.

When you get right down to it, that’s the essence of the temporal prime directive, is it not?

Okay, I guess it’s time for some actual thoughts. It was all right.

I’m not really big on Jungian psychology, but writers love it, since it’s so steeped in metaphor. It’s been many, many years since I studied it, so I’m just going to defer to Wikipedia.

In analytical psychology, the shadow (also known as ego-dystonic complex, repressed id, shadow aspect, or shadow archetype) is an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow, creating conflict with it.

In analytical psychology, the struggle for the superego is to retain awareness of the shadow, but not to become it or be controlled by it. “Non-identification demands considerable moral effort [which] prevents a descent into that darkness”; and though “the conscious mind is liable to be submerged at any moment in the unconscious…understanding acts like a life-saver. It integrates the unconscious.” This reincorporates the shadow into the personality, producing a stronger, wider consciousness than before. “Assimilation of the shadow gives a man body, so to speak,” thereby providing a launchpad for further individuation.

So sure, this is all fine and good. Taking stuff like this and making it literal has a long tradition in sci-fi generally, and Star Trek specifically. I’m glad they addressed La’An’s inner conflict without confirming her fears of her genetic heritage controlling her destiny. I hope they’re finally putting the subplot to bed - it’s hard to see where else they could go with it.

Seeing Hemmer in the previouslys primed me to expect to see Caster show up, but nope.

They had some fun with Carol Kane’s “Princess Bride” connection - too much fun, perhaps, but whatever.

It’s a little disappointing that Ortegas in particular didn’t clock the imposter Pike and Spock immediately - the others I can forgive due to the ongoing crisis, but it would have been nice to see Erica had simply decided to go along with it for a while.

Find yourself someone who looks at you the way Melissa Navia looks at Rebecca Romijn.

Sounds like they’re going to a world that’s both strange and new. I expect everyone will love it.

Yeah, it seems like they’re being very selective for some reason.

Hoo boy. Wait until they hear about the rubber ducky…

…Do I even want to ask?

I’d have to double-check, but it IIRC it was the same map we typically see. But maybe that’s the “problem” 🙄.

That’s a good question. There have been two attempts at targeting younger viewers in recent years, and neither seems to have made enough of an impact to stick around.

And I don’t think it’s a question of quality - Prodigy and Academy were both quite enjoyable.

I think an important difference is the characters’ motivations, though - for Reeger, it’s personal, while Ramsey in “Crimson Tide” is merely hawkish and reckless.

It also lays a foundation for his actions to (arguably) come back to bite him in the ass in “Balance of Terror,” when (presumably) the same Romulan ship reappears and starts wiping out colonies. I’ll leave it up for debate whether this is a good thing.

I’m guessing this episode drawing from old war films, in particular I am getting flavours of submarine hunts, chasing after wakes, and handling big questions of WMDs, the sanity of the chain of command.

Maybe it’s just because the writers of the (alleged) next Trek film have been talking about it, but I did think of “Crimson Tide” several times during this one.

A’Sha leaving is fine, I guess, she didn’t feel very present throughout the season anyway.

I can’t help but think there’s still more to come with her - they haven’t dropped her off yet, after all. Something about it seems unfinished, somehow.

A pretty good episode that got a lot more interesting in the final act.

For the most part, it came off as a story that we’ve seen before, albeit a well-told one. But the reveal that Kirk drugged Reeger in order to make him unfit for commend is a genuinely compelling idea, as is the idea that M’Benga just torpedoed his career to cover it up.

The B-plot was decent, too - it was good to see Uhura do some ass-kicking.

They sure do like to talk about the Klingon War as if it’s ancient history when it only ended about five years ago, though.

Until next year.