Logline
A transporter malfunction turns most of the crew into puppets while Spock fights to reclaim the ship.
Written by: Henry Alonso Myers & Dana Horgan
Directed by: Jordan Canning
Highly enjoyable episode. I laughed. My partner face-palmed. We both especially appreciated Pelia’s puppet design.
The character development on T’Pring was top notch. I love that she’s embraced chaos so much that, by the end, she’s pranking Spock by making him believe he dreamed the whole incident. A nice quirk that long term fans know will escalate to the truly epic prank she’ll eventually play on him in TOS Amok Time.
I just worry the writers were too subtle about this. I’m already noticing some more gullible viewers think that the bulk of the episode was actually meant to be a dream. True fans know that SNW’s writers are brave enough not to pull that, though!
I think you’re giving them too much credit for that ending lol.
Why did the subtitles always spell it as “high jinks” instead of hijinks? Is that some dialectal variant I was unaware of?
29k km didn’t seem that far in terms of “more than two days away” space travel.
I liked Pelia’s noodle hair. I also guess I never particularly noticed her bare feet before, now that Starfleet Academy started emphasizing it as a Lanthanite trait or quirk. Or was it not a thing before and they made it a thing for this season?
When Scotty got free from the weight, I thought the answer would have been Looney Tunes style cartoon physics. Like they can win, but so long as it’s a gag / funny. Maybe they tried doing that and it didn’t quite land.
I liked the insight into Orion culture, and the way the second in command acted. Sometimes I too just want to be told what to do. Like a vacation for my brain.
The “it was all a dream” felt like a betrayal. Just kind of wasting my time. At least Spock was developing a little bit.
“high jinks” might be intentional, and meant to be the vulcan’s way of being dismissive of the human’s nonsense by deliberately pronouncing it as two words.
I thought the answer would have been Looney Tunes style cartoon physics. Like they can win, but so long as it’s a gag / funny. Maybe they tried doing that and it didn’t quite land.
Yeah, I think there was a degree of that in the final solution, with La’An running across the walls and making a perfect three-point landing and the like, but they didn’t quite commit to it.
I also guess I never particularly noticed her bare feet before, now that Starfleet Academy started emphasizing it as a Lanthanite trait or quirk. Or was it not a thing before and they made it a thing for this season?
Puppet Pelia threw her shoes at one of the Orions early on.
Hahah loved it. And the cinematography for this episode was possibly the best it’s been for all of modern trek.
Honestly had a good laugh from this. I really needed that kind of absurdity lately, it just fits so well these days. But yeah I get how you others might hate this episode. It was an experimental and dare I say a “strange new world” to explore here. Either way will be likely hated but honestly I liked it better than Subspace Rhapsody, because I can’t STAND musicals! Giving this an 8/10. Not perfect, not bad, but absurd in many ways that amused me.
I’m sorry but no. Of all the “and it didn’t happen/gets reset at the end” episodes of Star Trek – possibly of all of television – that was the biggest waste of time I’ve ever subjected myself to.
I went into this episode blind, but the moment Scotty mentioned the puppet was going to be the transporter payload I knew we were in for a tuvix situation. I did not realise it would be quite on this scale. I don’t hate the premise of the episode. It reminded me a lot of the TNG episode where they all get turned into children, and this is a universe where Tom Paris got turned into a lizard after all. I do absolutely hate the cop-out at the end where it turns out it was all a dream. It means that spock was the only character that had opportunity for development and growth, and no-one else gets to share in that. Either go all in on the zany adventures, or dont, but never waste the audience’s time like this.
But hey, you want puppets, I’ll judge you on the puppets. I think they were generally well designed. While the “body language” was expressive, I don’t think the faces were as good as they could have been - There were only a handful of times where changes in eyes and eyebrows really stood out. I also feel that the writing and voice acting for the puppet character’s dialogue was not great, but that gets hand-waved away at the end where we realise as puppets they’re not quite the same people The endpoint of letting go and embracing the madness was a nice resolution to the absurd situation, however I did not feel like the cartoon physics played through.
The orion plot was OK, used as the necessary antagonists to drive the plot. But other than some moments from Joe Lo Truglio, who was a perfect choice for an empathetic male orion, the invaders could have been any invading alien species and nothing really specific to orions was needed. I’m also confused by the huge orion vessel, unless I’ve misread the scale, there should be hundreds at least but at no point did anyone think to help out the 3 or 4 orions actually invading the enterprise. But maybe none of this matters, because hey, it was all a dream.
With some of the other gimmicky episodes, I’ve instantly wanted to re-watch them once I finished. Here, once was enough, which is not a great indicator for the episode overall.
It means that spock was the only character that had opportunity for development and growth, and no-one else gets to share in that.
This is true. I do think they did a fair amount with it in that respect, though, and he’s now pretty firmly on the trajectory he needs to be on to line up with his TOS characterization. And I’ll give full credit to Ethan Peck for selling his barely-restrained panic attacks (full-blown meltdowns by Vulcan standards, I’m sure).
Best episode of the season so far, pretty easily. One of the best episodes of the series.
My biggest problem with this episode isn’t the puppetry, or even the fact that it turned out to be all a dream. As people have pointed out, this hoary old plot has been used in Trek before.
In fact, I suspect that it originally wasn’t supposed to be a dream, but they had to pull that one out because the plot itself had holes that couldn’t be papered over without using that trope, not least of which was how Pike could get back into the ship after being spaced or why Ch’Rol was so nonchalant and literally immobile as the puppets were storming the bridge and beating up on her crew.
My biggest problem is that it just wasn’t even funny. It elicited a few chuckles but most of it produced crickets in my household. I’d have forgiven it if it were otherwise. I’m not sure it’s the absolute worst SNW ever, but I’m hard pressed to think of another one worse. As an example of SNW taking the big swings, this one was a miss.
Yeah, since it’s a dream, I really wish they had gone all in on the cartoon gags. That’s my only complaint.
I can excuse the premise and even the cop out, it’s all a dream, but they really need to just go all in on the concept. Like maybe some Kermit tilting his head back while his arms flail around or crumple his face with the puppeteer’s fist like when he’s mad. Like literally the lowest hanging fruit is using puppet hair whip to the face. Or maybe some cecoling, fourth wall breaking, a Pigs in Space reference which is a parody of Star Trek. Like, just go ape shit with the concept.
I dreaded the musical episode and I was wrong, it was fantastic. I dreaded the Lower Decks crossover episode and I was wrong, it was fantastic. I dreaded this episode and unfortunately, this time it was even worse than I feared.
I’ll admit, it was well made, the technical and performance sides of the puppets were outstanding and I genuinely laughed out loud on several occasions, but holy hell was it cringe from start to finish. Is this what anyone wants from ST??
I was so relieved that
Tap for spoiler
it was at least ‘excused’ from canon by being a dream
but ffs, did we really need to waste what precious time is left with this series on… this??
The biggest weakness of Kurtzman’s era was that he granted way too much freedom to people’s ideas. Exploration and growth are of course necessary if Star Trek is going to survive (Even the 90’s shows got flak: DS9 stayed in one place and didn’t explore like the Enterprise, Voyager was going the “wrong direction” by coming home instead of going outward), but any artist will tell you that self-imposed restraint is what makes any work really spark. Some ideas should be rejected because they just don’t fit somehow and I’m shocked that no one realized it enough to put their foot down in this instance.
I realize that this was this season’s obligatory hijinks episode (the previous entries of which I generally liked and in the case of Spock Amok loved), but for me this one didn’t just cross the line, it jumped the shark.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk. 😅
Annotations for 4x05 up at: https://startrek.website/post/43631682
