My partner and I really liked this one.

We both think it’s in the top rank of Star Trek episodes. In my view it may be the best of SNW to date.

It definitely should be the ‘For Your Consideration’ episode of this season.

The direction was excellent. This was one of the best dramatic performances from Mount as Pike since season two of Discovery.

My sense is that some viewers were mistaking the C-plot about the warring groups, for the A-plot about the Enterprise officers response to the ethical choice between orders and the free will of a sentient being or the B-plot about the making of the documentary.

I can’t agree that the episode was too short. The best Trek episodes are tightly rendered and leave lots of room for thought after.

It depends on the populations.

Steppe populations from modern Ukraine easy through to the Urals lived mainly on meat and dairy 5000 years ago (even if they didn’t yet have the lactose tolerance adaptation).

More Prodigy erasure…

🤦🏼‍♀️

I can agree that they’re doing a brilliant job of what they’re doing.

For those of us who’ve been wondering about Pike since The Cage was first put back together and released in the 1980s, it’s been a bit disappointing.

Too much Spock, Uhura, M’Benga and Chapel, not to mention Kirk, too soon rather than a focus on Pike, Number One and the ensemble that preceded Kirk.

I didn’t expect the graphic novel to be able to so accurately capture the voice, tone and humour of the show.

It’s exceptionally good right down to the fine print footnotes on the bottom of several pages.

I had wanted a Pike and Number One focused show but the showrunners and Paramount seem determined to make this show about laying the backstory for TOS.

While I still love the show, I agree that it’s still frustrating that the opportunity to focus more on the unexplored characters.

President of the Federation by all accounts, or past President.

Bakula is pitching a series Star Trek United. It seems everyone’s personal project to revive a character or run a show or movie is coming out of the woodwork.

https://trekmovie.com/2025/08/12/scott-bakula-talks-star-trek-united-producer-reveals-more-details-on-proposed-series/

There’s a discussion thread on this article from a week ago.

I’ve got a rewatch upcoming with my spouse so I’ll take another look at if from that angle.

Perhaps that can help sort out whether the episode might have been handled better by another director.

Interestingly, I find it’s the Trek actors turned directors that manage mixed and shifting tones well. Frakes in directing First Contact, Dawson in directing The Andorian Incident, Robert Duncan McNeill directing Body and Soul are examples.

Yes, I’m not saying she’s not a capable director, but she doesn’t seem to have been the right choice for this episode.

Looking across the distribution of directors used for SNW, as well as Discovery and Picard, there definitely seems to be particular ones that are consistently asked back for specific tones.

Maja Vrvilo directed the season 2 finale Hegemony Pt I and the season 3 one New Life and New Civilizations. In season 1, she directed Children of the Comet.

Jordan Canning directed Charades last season. This season she was given Wedding Bell Blues and Four and a Half Vulcans.

I wasn’t positively impressed by the direction from Valerie Weiss in this episode.

Others have remarked about the tone being all over the map in this episode.

That’s a fair assessment in my view but it’s not a fault in the writing per se. Comic levity in the midst of intense drama goes back to Shakespeare and even Greek theatre, and certainly isn’t uncommon in episodic Trek.

But somehow it felt like the great pieces of the episode just didn’t quite come together. It doesn’t feel like the fault was in the editing or writing.

Paul Wesley’s portrayal of Kirk was excellent but at this point, I’m going to give the actor the credit over the director.

This is just the second episode directed by Weiss. The previous one was Ad Aspra Per Aspera which was a very different challenge for a director. What they needed was a director like Frakes who can do both the comic and the serious.

Discovery became increasingly hopeful and positive as it went on.

Worth watching through season two at least if you haven’t already done so.

I liked seasons three and five a lot.

Season four has a really great classic Trek premise but the constraints of the COVID protocols led to some dialogue that’s over drawn out (Picard season two suffers the same).

I don’t agree at all that it’s implied that these people never came across other humans.

It’s fairly clear, from the tales of the Destroyer/scavengers that Uhura and the others recount, that these humans do not care who they are attacking or killing to gain resources and technology.

They are known to attack and raid colonies and destroy entire planets. While some were populated by alien species, others were human colonies based on the reports.

They surely knew from previous seizures of ships that some were human crewed, by the bodies if not through language.

They had become a voracious pirate culture.

It’s not obvious that communication could have turned them away from destroying the populated planet that they were on course for.

The outcome of Kirk’s decision is that the Federation didn’t get the opportunity to try to communicate with them before destroying them as a last resort.

At least Ellison senior is giving is kids ‘loose change’ to cut their teeth on managing businesses before they need to take over.

As bizarre as that sounds, it’s better for the employees and investors than the alternatives.

Sumner Redstone fought to keep control until he was incapacitated, severely damaged the value of his legacy instead of letting his daughter learn to manage it.

Ellison seemed to be making an effort to reassure many of their longtime creative partners that they want them to stay with them.

He definitely isn’t looking to cannibalize and raise cash the way the Redstones were doing since the remerger. He’s determined to hang on to BET which I read as a significant signal.

One has to wonder what role Redstone’s desire to sell off pieces played in reintegration and failure to find synergies.

It also seems that Ellison has a personal vision of what he wants to do with legacy media that goes beyond just treating IPs as cash cows. I don’t think we’ve seen everything he intends and it sounds as though he’ll be very hands on in making sure the vision is realized. It will be interesting to watch.

Many of us used to say the same about TNG, DS9 and Voyager bringing fans to TOS, TAS and the TOS movies.

But others of us just tried to give each show a chance to become favourites on their own merits.

In terms of the GenZs in our household, who had seen all the classic series by the end of middle school, the new shows have superceded their old favourites. One’s really into animated Trek, another loves Discovery. Star Trek Online has also played a role in retaining interest in the franchise.

I’d rather talk about reactions to a show that’s actually happening — even if they are based only on a trailer and pre promotional interviews — than endless hyping, speculation and claims of groundswells of fan enthusiasm about projects that aren’t happening.

Now that it’s no longer the officially sanctioned con, STLV’s panels seem to be set up to encourage producers and actors to hype projects that never even got to the development he’ll’ stage let alone any consideration for being greenlit. These include Tarantino’s bat-sh*t movie idea, Captain Worf, Legacy and the recently revealed Unity proposal.

‘Fans’ fundraised to pay for full page advertisements in major US newspapers as a campaign to persuade NBC not to broadcast TAS even after its season one production was almost complete.

I’m still frustrated that none of the Canadian cast got good development.

Almost all of them have significant awards within Canada. Most have other shows, films or are producing themselves.

While many of them took these roles for steady work, it was clear that they weren’t intended by the executives be more than regular wallpaper. It’s unfortunate.

I feel the same about Mitchell in SNW.

However, he has made Skydance profitable unlike another famous billionaire by inheritance who repeatedly went bankrupt.

It seems that his father’s approach is to let his heirs learn to run companies on their own with injections of capital that are staggering for others but just a couple years earnings on the family’s wealth.

It’s confirmed but after a second read, I think that’s clear.

Interesting that Skydance Studios television, which was a prestigious brand, will sublimate under the Paramount Television Studios name. It does show a certain commitment to the merger on David Ellison’s part.