128: Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 1, episode 7 “The Serene Squall”

In this episode of Trek in Time, we’re going to talk about looking for love in all the wrong Vulcans, looking for love. That’s right. We’re talking about Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 1, Episode 7, The Serene Squall. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time, where we’re watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order.

We’re also taking a look at the What the state of the world was at the time of original broadcast. So we’re currently talking about Strange New Worlds season one, which means we’re talking about 2022, which just recently became further ago than it used to be, that’s right, 2022 used to just be last year, but now it’s two years ago.

What happened? How did that happen? And who are we? Well, I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a published author. I write some sci fi. I write some stuff for kids, including my most recent release, which was The Sinister Secrets of Singe, which came out in June of 2023. And the followup book, The Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings will be coming out in June.

So if you’re interested in middle grade adventure with pirates and robots and all sorts of danger, I hope you’ll be interested in checking that out. With me, as always, is my brother, Matt. He’s that Matt of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you doing this cold, cold day?

Yeah, it is really cold outside. I’m trying to stay warm, but doing well.

How about you? I’m doing okay here in Brooklyn. I have the, uh, Fortune of not having any laundry in my building. So I had to go do the laundry today and the items that I would need to hang to dry, instead of putting into a dryer, froze on the way back from the laundromat to my front door, which is roughly.

A block and a half, so, it’s a tad chilly. That noise you hear in the background, that’s the read alert. That can only mean one thing. It’s time for Matt to buckle up and get ready to tackle the Wikipedia description for this episode. So Matt, why don’t you let us know what the serene squall is all about.

Okay. Starfleet Counselor Aspen travels with the Enterprise. Lose my voice. Let me try that again. Starfleet Counselor Aspen travels with the Enterprise to a far flung colony under attack. From the Serene Squall, a rogue ship of space pirates, Pike and the boarding party transport over to the Serene Squall at the same time as the crew boards the Enterprise.

Pike uses his culinary skills and some manipulative tactics to encourage a mutiny. On the Serene Squall, allowing him and his boarding party to gain control of the ship. Aspen reveals them Okay, I just gotta pause for a second. The way that they’re breaking down the order of this stuff happening in the episode is bizarre.

Yes. Aspen reveals themselves to actually be Angel, the Serene Squall’s captain. They contact T’Pring and give her an ultimatum. Release Angel’s lover, a Vulcan prisoner. that T’Pring is attempting to rehabilitate, or Spock dies. T’Pring chooses to hand the prisoner over, but Spock stops her by pretending to break their engagement by claiming to have an affair with Chappell.

Angel tries to fire on T’Pring’s ship, but Pike and the boarding party use remote access codes to lock Enterprise’s controls. Angel flees. And the Pirates Surrender Spock reassures T’Pring and his love . Sorry, I’m laughing because this is such a, it feels like a third grader’s book

report . It does. Yes.

And if it ends with, and if you wanna know more, you gotta read the book yourself. That means I wrote it in third grade. Yeah.

Spock reassures T’Pring of his love for her and tells Chapell that their friendship is strictly platonic. He also reveals to Chapell that angel’s lover is his half brother.

Sybok. So what’d you think about that summary?

Uh, that was awful. It was just, that was absolutely horrendous.

It’s a little bit of a through the looking glass, sort of right up. Up is down, left is right. It mentions that Pike beams aboard the enemy vessel, doesn’t mention that he’s captured, just says he starts cooking stuff. I love that. Episode number seven, The Serene Squall, directed by Sydney Freeland, written by Beau DeMayo, whose original name apparently was Hold, and Sarah Tarkoff.

This originally broadcast on June 16th, 2022. The usual cast as usual, Anton Mount, Ethan Peck, Christina Chong, Melissa Navia, Rebecca Romijn, Jess Bush, Celia Rose Gooding, who doesn’t actually appear in this episode. So maybe she was a little under the weather or something. Babs Olusanmokun, and I also wanted to call out a couple of the guest stars in this one, who I think are.

Do a great job. Particularly, I wanted to mention Jesse James Keitel, who is the actress playing Angel One, and also I found myself, um, really impressed by the woman who plays the voice of the computer. I’ve been meaning to call her out. She has a, such a Madgel Roddenberry quality. She does such a great job of, of imitating Madgel Roddenberry’s intonations.

So it’s really kind of a seamless use of what should be an older voice. That’s Alex Kapp as the computer voice. There’s also a little bit of. A connective tissue, uh, in the way that they’ve done it previously, where we’ve seen Jim Kirk’s brother as a regular crew member on this. And we, of course, in the future, in the original series, we’ll see that character pass away and we’ll see Jim Kirk have to respond to the death of his brother and the near death of his nephew.

In this episode, there’s another. Couple of moments that harken back to things we see in the original series or beyond, which includes Roderick McNeil playing Stonn and Stonn is the love interest from Amock time in the original series, who is basically T’Prings. Alternate to Spock when her relationship with Spock becomes too much to bear at a distance, Stonn is the person that she has chosen to take as a mate.

And what was the world like at the time of original broadcast on June 16th, 2022? Well, Matt, I know you were excited to see a return of Wait For You. Featuring Drake and Thames returned to the number one spot on the streaming services. I know you were heartbroken to see it disappear for a week and it does come back again and again, it kind of alternates number one.

So you’re going to have some heartache, but some, some joyous moments in the future as we go forward in time. And number one at the box office, Top Gun Maverick was replaced by another monster at the box office, Jurassic World Dominion, which got 145 million in its first week at the box office. It will stay at the number one spot next week as well.

And on television. We’ve been looking at the top streaming shows, and as I’ve mentioned before, it’s basically Netflix all the way down. We have so far looked at shows like Stranger Things, Ozark, and Wednesday, Cobra Kai, Bridgerton, Virgin River, and this week, the number seven. Most pop, most popular streaming program also from Netflix is Dahmer.

With 13. 4 billion minutes viewed. This is an Emmy winning program for the lead and was a challenging watch for a lot of people, given the context of what Jeffrey Dahmer was capable of doing. And in the news from the New York times, a number of different articles relating to different things, including the attempt by the federal reserve to.

Combat inflation by raising interest rates the largest such increase since 1994. The FDA also released a recommendation reme recommending Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for younger children and Trump’s lawyer was cited and a heated fight among justices over election suits. And the US and allies pledged additional arms for Ukraine but cave.

Once more, the fight against Russia continued and the stalemate, which continues to this day with some sad news from the Ukraine just recently, and that they are losing a bit of their ability to fight back continues. So on now to our discussion about this most recent episode, this would be the Serene Squall.

Which, if you were paying attention to the summary that Matt read, you might not have a clue as to what happened in the episode. It’s a good description. Let us, let us kind of wrap it up. We have a case of, um, somebody surreptitiously Masquerading as somebody else to convince the Enterprise to go on a rescue mission, to find some colony ships that might be in danger from pirates.

When the Enterprise gets to the location where these colony ships are supposed to be, it is in fact captured. It is boarded, and while the captain and an away team have boarded what they think is a colony ship, but actually turns out to be the pirate’s ship, some pirates have boarded the Enterprise and attempt to take over the Enterprise.

It turns out that the person who has led them there is, in fact, the captain of the pirate ship. And she has done this not just for the ship, but mainly for Spock. Because her lover, who is a Vulcan, who has given up on the path of logic, is being held in a rehabilitation facility, which is where T’Pring works.

That is T’Pring’s job, to help rehabilitate those who have gone wayward from the Vulcan path. Angel One demands The Return of Her Lover. Spock susses out who she is referring to. We’ll talk about that later. But Spock and everybody are able to save the day by basically pulling a maneuver right out of Star Trek 2.

It is the use the codes to get control of the ship through the back door, shut everything down, and Angel. Skedaddles on her private ship, leaving her crew to be captured by the Enterprise. We have a bunch of moments in here which are between Nurse Chapel and Spock. We have the Masquerading pirate and her relationship to Spock and the things that she says before revealing who she is and post revealing who she is about what Vulcans are like and what she thinks about Spock and his choices.

We also have story elements aboard the pirate ship, which for better or worse are largely just. Comedy. It’s just comedy filler on that side to just kind of balance out the main thrust of the episode is aboard the Enterprise with Spock and Chapel and Angel in this whirling game of trying to outdo each other while on

the pirate ship, you get the sense that Pike is never scared, despite the fact he’s getting the snot kicked out of him. So Matt, I invite you to pick the first path that we talk about of those multiple threads that we just talked about. What was the thing here that caught your eye the most and made you say, Oh, I get what they’re doing with this episode?

Um,

uh, that’s kind of a loaded question. I think it would be the, it’s the Spock angel kind of relationship. Uh, throughout the course of the episode that to me feels like what the show is trying to hang its hat on. Cause it’s that, it’s the way she’s basically saying, Oh, I know Vulcans. And then later she reveals that her lover, her husband, or who she claims died was a Vulcan.

Um, and she basically is challenging him. For his war between his human side and his Vulcan side and saying that’s the wrong choice. It’s not about being Vulcan or being human. You’re something else and you have to figure out what that is. Um, that was clearly to me the theme of the episode and I don’t know if I’m gonna be going too far out on a limb here, but New Trek definitely has, uh, is trying to voice a point of view around like the Uh, LGBTQ community around non binary, around The others and basically trying to make it feel very inclusive and this episode struck me as one of the better approaches to that topic without like punching you in the face because on Discovery, they were constantly punching you in the face with that.

And in this, it felt subtle and it was nice because it was basically her. She looks, she looked very. non binary in the entire episode. She looked kind of man ish, but kind of woman ish, and she was kind of like neither. And then when she’s saying to Spock about, you have to discover who you are for yourself, don’t, don’t be something that other people expect.

You have to discover who you are on your own terms. Um, That’s a very, you know, self discovery kind of message without, like, hammering it home over your head. So, I think that was kind of the linchpin of the entire episode.

Without getting too deep into making this episode about Jesse James Keitel, I just wanted to share a little bit of the bio of Jesse James Keitel.

She is an actress, writer, and artist from Eastern Long Island. She’s been an advocate. And moving the needle for the LGBTQ plus community for representation. She’s been honored with equality awards and the human rights from the human rights campaign in 2022. And she was cast in David E. Kelly’s Big Sky, which made history with her being the first openly transgender series regular in a.

Television program without putting too much of a focus on her as being cast in this role. I think you’re right about the nuance of what they’re trying to do. I think they’re doing it in the best way that Star Trek has. Done it where in talking about the subject, not hitting you in the face, it stands up there with the best of Star Trek from the original series through Next Generation, Deep Space Nine.

When you have those episodes where you both understand what they’re going for, but don’t feel like they’ve been smothering you with it is when it operates at a really, really high level. We also have episodes where, I mean, there’s, there’s a. Famous episode with Frank Gorshin where he’s going to be white face, black face, and his opponent is black face, white face, which is racial metaphor, literally slapping you across the face.

And I think that this episode and the best of Trek always stand. Up as the best of what sci fi can do, give us an opportunity to use the artifice of time and space and distance to really reexamine ourselves and take a look at ourselves. And I agree with what you said about this taking an opportunity and they had, I wonder about the order of the episodes because this episode felt like it could have taken place at a different point in time.

And I say that because there’s a speech that Spock gave, Ethan Peck gave as Spock in a previous episode in which he says to the captain, I appreciate the fact you’ve always let me be just Spock. That speech to me feels like it could have followed this episode because in this episode he still is referring to wrestling with his dual nature.

And the conversations here would impact him in the form of whether Dr. Amber or, uh, Dr. Aspen is the original name that she gives, Dr. Aspen or Angel, either one, either one of those Uh, voices from this character saying to him, why are you pitting yourself against yourself? Why are you facing a dual nature instead of viewing yourself as what you are at a core and simply planting your flag there?

That to me feels like the conversations that have happened previously in this very series feel like this episode might at one point have been an earlier. In the season, but for whatever reason, got pushed, pushed back. Um, I really agree with you. I appreciated the way that this was handled so deftly. I liked also the storyline with Spock pulls from a lot of original series lore.

In a really neat way, you of course have T’Pring, we know who T’Pring is going to be in the original series. And at this point, we’re seeing her far more fully fleshed out than we do in the original series. The original series, it was really kind of a surprise, bah bah bah, with, what do you mean Spock is betrothed?

This is, this is old news here. And not only is it T’Pring, like I mentioned before, we see, we see Stonn. We see that T’Pring works with the man she eventually will choose to replace Spock as her mate. So we see Stonn, we get reference to his half brother, which, for me, as soon as Angel referred to, she wanted Xaverius to be returned to her, and Spock begins to like, his ears kind of perk up.

It’s like, oh, he’s talked about you quite a bit. As soon as She said that I was like, they’re laying groundwork and they’re laying groundwork in a way that I really kind of appreciated. Almost like they were just like, let’s just make Star Trek five make sense. It felt like they were just like, let’s just like, let’s like make an apology for some of the.

Other stuff that we know fans are just like, wait a minute, what? And it really kind of feels like this soap opera around Spock as a character that here’s this character who like, what do you mean he had a sister who was an adopted human? What do you mean he had a half brother? Uh, just getting all that out of the way, just like throwing it all out there.

Um, how did you feel about the Spock centric nature of, of a lot of the elements in this one?

Oh, I loved it. It’s like, he’s, Sean, come on. It’s, come on. It’s Spock. It’s like, give me, give me all the Spock. I’m totally fine with it focusing on him. I thought it was great, um, how, to see this character that we already know, see these kind of threads that.

Our bridging gaps that we’ve always had in our knowledge about him and how they’re fleshing it out, I think is fantastic. So there’s a lot of nice fan service, but there’s still a lot of originality to it. So it’s like, I don’t feel like it’s just fan service for the sake of it. It feels like it has a purpose, which is nice.

And then also the nurse chapel stuff, that’s part of this. I thought it’s really nice to see her basically totally she’s in love with him And you’re starting to see that and she’s got that, you know, puppy dog. Moment at the end where it’s kind of like she’s saying, you know, I know that I think it’ll be between us, but she absolutely loves them.

And Spock, not completely seeming to pick up on that completely. Cause he’s he’s he’s Vulcan.

Yeah, they keep referring to the Kolinahr in this. And, and he’s looking forward to his Kolinahr. That of course is something that happens before Star Trek, The Motion Picture. Where that is the pilgrimage he is on.

He’s attempting to go through with that. And yeah, this moment with Nurse Chapel where it’s, is he really that dense or is he just letting the Vulcan logical side of him? He goes to talk to her and I would argue this, he is letting her say what he knows is not legitimately true because that is what he had gone to talk to her about in the first place.

Right. He’d gone there to say, nothing can happen between us. And for her to say, I know what you were doing. Nothing is going to happen between us. And he gets the signals, but is willing to say, yeah, she is, she understands and she gets me. And she is even giving me what I need in this moment, which is she is trying to save me from her having a stronger emotional reaction.

And that is a good friend. So the moment when they both say to each other, you’re a good friend to me is. I think a nice genuine moment between the two of them. And then you have the revelation of her saying like, you mentioned, you thought you knew who it was. And he says, yes, Sarak had a out of wedlock child.

And that half brother of mine for went off the path of logic and has become a criminal. And that is all I know about the introduction of this character. I’m interested to know whether or not, it feels very. Um, Space Seed, the way that they handled Angel, the way they handled T’Pring, all of those elements felt like they were planting a seed for future episodes.

So I’m interested to see what happens with that. Because I mentioned to you before, we’re now in new territory for me. I have not seen these episodes coming forward. So I’m I have to be careful what I say too. Yeah. So, uh, it’s, it’s fascinating for me to, to see those elements. To back up a bit. Then to the Action side of it, this episode has more going on, action wise, than we’ve seen in a lot of episodes.

We’ve seen various starships get attacked and boarded, and we’ve seen the crew get locked away in multiple forms in all the series. This is arguably the first time we see that happening. Aboard this Enterprise with Captain Pike, we see number one quickly lock down the ship. We see a battle for the bridge.

Lots of good action. How did you feel about the action aspects of this episode? This

is actually one of my favorite parts of the episode. It’s like it had some genuinely good fight scenes and choreography and filmmaking in there that was like, Oh yeah. Like, like the nurse chapel stuff in the hallway. It was like, it was awesome to see her take down two pirates with just having a syringe.

She basically drugged them both and it was a great little fight scene because she’s not a fighter. And on the flip side, Spock going full on Vulcan on the bridge was like, hell yeah. It’s like, he’s neck pinching a bunch of guys. He’s dodging like the guy holds the gun up and as he shoots it, he just. Like, Matrix style dodges out of the way.

Awesome stuff. I thought it was a lot of fun to see these characters. It’s one of those, a lot of times in Star Trek, you have Pretty bad choreography, like, think about the original series, like, that’s not even William Shatner, and they’re not pretending, it’s like, you know what I mean, like, the high up shot where people are just basically like wrestling, it’s all just like wrestling.

Or just doing

somersaults. It’s great.

And then you get to the next generation era and everybody does the the closed palm punch up to people’s faces and then people go flying backwards. That was their big punch and like this was like genuine like movie style full on fighting explosions. Really well done.

I thought it was a lot of fun.

Yeah, it was. And it hearkened back to any number of episodes in the original series. Whenever Spock would, for whatever reason, be like, I gotta take over the ship. And he would fight all the other crewmen off and throw people across the room. Like, it hearkened right back to that for me, where he takes that one guy and gets this look on his face and just like shoves the guy toward the Captain seat and the guy flies.

Six feet. And I was like, yeah, super Spock. That’s, that’s what I want to see. It’s like whenever data

fought, like data on the next generation, it was the same thing. It was like, Oh, here comes the Android. He’s about to kick some ass. He’s just tossing people around. It’s like, it’s, it’s a lot of fun to see

that.

Yeah, it’s a good time. So we see the captain leading the away team, thinking he’s going potentially on a rescue mission, and they discover right away that this has all been a ruse, that there are no hostages, and that they’re in enemy territory, and they are captured rather quickly. The captain is then being interrogated, beaten up by the first mate of, uh, Angel, who, at this point, they don’t realize that Michael Hugh, playing Remy, who looks like an Orion male.

They don’t know that he’s not the captain. He is presenting himself as in charge. Everybody is assuming he’s the captain. And it is pretty quick that, uh, Captain Pike surmises, I’m not afraid of this guy. I’m not afraid of him. I’m not afraid of his crew. So he kind of takes on that classic Star Trek. Kirk like persona of, I’m just going to make jokes, I’m going to laugh at you through the blood in my teeth, and I’ve already got a plan on what I’m going to do.

And for the most part, everything that happens aboard the pirate ship is played for laughs. From his snarky, like you call this food? Like if you, my people need food and water. If you get me the ingredients, I’ll make you a meal that’s worth eating. And the crew around the pirate captain kind of look at each other like, yeah, we haven’t had good food in a while.

From the moment he’s put back in with his crew and gives them the old. Yeah. Alpha Braga, Tango, which the word Braga in the code that they’re going to do is clearly Brandon Braga. It’s a tip of the hat to Brandon Braga, producer of The Next Generation, DS9, and Voyager all the way through Enterprise. What were your thoughts about how the tone shift between on the one hand, we’ve got Spock being presented with some heavy dilemmas around.

Trying to rescue the ship, trying to wrestle with his own nature, trying to understand the motivations of a woman who knows so much about him in a way that is unsettling to him before he realizes that she knows his half brother, and then the tone shift back To the pirate ship where Pike goes into the cage and they have a scene where it is full blown.

Everybody in the crew is just masquerading as, Oh yeah, you could really do better than your current captain, couldn’t you? And everybody in the pirate crew is clearly thinking, yeah, we could do better than this pirate captain. So what were your thoughts about the tone shift back and forth? I don’t know how you felt about it.

I loved it. I thought the tone shift was needed. Like, think about some of the best popcorn summer blockbusters that you see. It’s like, you have incredible action, maybe some dramatic moments, and then you always have that moment of levity that kind of just brightens it up. It’s like a nice palate cleanser.

That’s how they use this. It was like the palate cleanser between all the kind of more weighty stuff that’s happening on the Enterprise and with Spock. You have these wonderful, just lighthearted moments. I loved it. I also really, really enjoyed how they worked not only us as viewers into the fact that why is Pike being so like casual?

He’s getting the crap kicked out of him. He seems almost to be enjoying himself. And it felt a little off. And then you start to get a sense of, Oh, he’s up to something. And then you see him bringing the crew in. Like when he goes into the, they dump him back in and he like almost falls over and he, everything he’s saying to them, like his entire crew is kind of like, Are you okay?

Does he have a

concussion is the main concern. And then the whole like, this is not Alpha Braga 4 again. Oh, it’s Alpha Braga 4. And so it’s like, not only were they bringing the crew in, they were bringing us the viewer in to the joke. Yeah. Um, so it kind of worked really well how they kind of just like stepped it up over the course of the episode.

So it wasn’t just like a laugh riot in the beginning. Yeah. It was just a slow roll. It’s like, um, An extreme case would be like the movie that you and I both love, What’s Up Doc? Yeah. Which is classic comedy where it starts slightly absurd, but by the end it is banana pants, full on Warner Brothers cartoon.

This is completely ludicrous, but because you’ve stepped your way through it, it all makes sense. That’s what this felt like to me. It’s like, it was silly by the end, but because of the way they stepped you into it, you just totally ate it up as it was going

along. Yeah, for listeners of yous who aren’t familiar with What’s Up Doc, it’s one of my and one of Matt’s favorite movies and highly, highly recommend it, if nothing more for this.

It’s a movie that includes in the first 10 15 minutes, lots of shots of people arriving at a hotel and setting up who these people are and how there’s a bit of, um, there’s going to be some confusion regarding luggage. That’s the setup is like, you see people that are arriving, they’re talking to each other.

There’s some funny lines given, but largely it’s just, you’re seeing people arrive and there’s a bunch of pieces of luggage that are identical. The end of the movie includes lines like Oh, there’s not much to see, really. We’re just inside a Chinese dragon. So the movie, like Matt says, goes from like, these are establishing moments and we’re getting a sense of where we are in the world and who these people are.

And it ends with, as Matt said, it’s a Warner Brothers cartoon straight up. So

think about in this episode, the last shots we have of them aboard the pirate ship, they come in. You know, at the end to rescue the Enterprise. And then it’s like, Hey, we won. And then suddenly the pike is out of this bridge. You got to get us out of here.

And in the background, you have people like looking like they’re scaling walls. It’s just silhouettes of people scaling walls behind them, complete and utter chaos. It’s just, it’s so silly, but it’s fun. And you’ve, you’ve gone along for the ride. So

it all makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And you’re given the kind of, um, mustache twirling villain escaping in there.

Private ship moment as well. So there’s like, that’s kind of dark and sinister. You’re given the back shot of Sybok who, as Spock’s naming him, you see him in almost A quarter profile from behind, which is evocative of what he looked like in Star Trek Five. So it’s like, we’re given the, like, this is a sinister guy right now.

He’s going to be, he’s going to be a nemesis in the future. There is going to be a turning point between these two people. So you’re given those dark moments and then, like you said, the cartoonishness of what’s going on on the bridge of the pirate ship. One of the standouts for me in this episode is Melissa Navia as.

Erica Ortegas, who there are two scenes where she gets to say some lines that really just like spun like a top for me, where at the end, the, one of the lines that stood out was, Pike says, shoot the enterprises impulse engines, but do it gently. And she shoots and he says, I said gently. And she’s like, what does gentle fire anyway?

Like what would that be? And it’s a funny moment. But earlier in the episode, let me just share my other moment, which for me was. Arguably, my favorite moment in the episode is after she has said, well, how closely do you want me to fly? Do you want me to do a first date or a third date? And he says, blind date, Pike says blind date.

And then the callback is later on where she is piloting and he says, you know, you are a pilot. Piloting without any star charts. And I know how difficult and nerve wracking that can be. We can replace you briefly if you need a rest. And she says, no, it’s like, I’m in a conversation, deep, deep conversation with the enterprise, you know, third date.

And behind her, Pike laughs, he gets this smirk, and he’s just like, huh, and she beams from ear to ear. So this moment, she made him laugh, and it’s this moment that stood out for me of like, at this point in Discovery, we still only knew about four characters. But here, we have a sense of who, of this. As a like found family set up and you have the pilot of the ship, not only loving her job and being excellent at it and piloting this ship so well, but the way she’s proud of the fact that she made her captain laugh because she looks up to him.

Everybody looks to him as this paragon of virtue. And it’s even made a joke within the episode that he is referred to as a boy scout. He’s like, I’m not really a boy scout. Nobody says that. And. Number one says, it’s actually in your file. So I love that. The writing around all of this, the fun that they had with the writing of these moments really stood out.

That’s the exact line I was going to mention, which was the, how close do you want to get first date or third date has just without missing a beat blind date. It’s like the dialogue. In this entire series, it’s so snappy, well written, it’s funny when it needs to be funny, it’s serious when it needs to be serious, they’ve thought out the entire series run where it felt like Discovery was kind of like finding their way through it, it was kind of sloppy at times.

Not bad, but just sloppy. Where this is a lot more laser focused, and we know these characters. Just from a couple of these, like, zingers they deliver, like the whole thing with the, the Boy Scout thing. Oh, they don’t call me that. And, and somebody just goes, oh, it’s in your file. And his reaction is fantastic.

And then at the end of this episode, like how you talked about, she made him laugh and she’s beaming that she made him laugh. At the end, he leans forward and does that horrible pirate.

Yeah. And

the camera is panning so that you can see the faces of his crew, but he can only see the back of their heads.

So he’s trying to make them laugh and nobody is audibly laughing. And it’s like the first, uh, Una basically says, please don’t, just stop. But she’s smiling, but she’s trying to make it sound like she’s not. And then it goes past, uh, Ortiz. Ortega and she’s sitting there and she is just laughing, but she’s trying to hide it.

So it’s, it’s fun to see the relationship of how this family kinda like prods each other, needles each other, teases each other. So it is that found family that comes through like loud and clear that was completely missing in the previous

show. And as far as. Like the delivery from the actors, the ability to have that charm in their delivery.

I think you can’t get better than Anson Mount. He’s doing a terrific job with the swagger, with the humor. Jess Bush for her timing around her comedic lines is terrific. I love Babs Olusmokun. Dr. M’Benga in this one has a great moment where he’s like, good news, your brain isn’t scrambled and then everybody’s like, he’s talking crazy.

And Dr. M’Benga’s immediate response is like, well, let me scan you again. Like clearly you’re not well, because like you’re saying crazy stuff. Melissa Navia is, is, uh, clearly supposed to be the kind of like. Us on the bridge. It’s this kind of like, we’re having fun. This is an adventure. The balance of what they get out of everybody.

Rebecca Romijn is a. At this point, she’s a veteran actress. She’s very good at, at being this character who in the original series would have was presented by Madgel Roddenberry with very little to go on. And Rebecca Romijn actually seems absolutely of the same cloth. She’s, she’s feels like the same character in this really remarkable way while bringing humor to it in ways that I didn’t anticipate.

So again, again, and again, across the. The cast, there’s comedic chops, there’s great timing, and that comes from the writing and directing as well. All those three things have to work together to create those moments. So this episode for me was a lot of fun. It didn’t. have to be like, I wouldn’t say this is the best episode, but it is so solid and connective of so many threads.

I was really, really impressed. I’ve got, um, when you’re watching a thing and you’re excited by the action and laughing at the humor and. Really compelled by the moral and ethical dilemma. Of what’s presented to Spock and Nurse Chapel and how to save the crew, save the ship and also remain true to who they are while the overriding theme also being deep in questioning like why think of yourself as this or that?

Why not both? Why not neither? Why not somewhere on a spectrum? This is an episode that’s operating on a lot of levels.

Yeah. Before we end our discussion, Matt, was there anything else about this episode you wanted to touch on?

No, basically just what you said is my feeling as well. This is not like my favorite episode of the series, but it is a solid. Fun time. It’s just, for me, it’s just a fun, kind of more lighthearted episode, which is one of those palate cleansers you need along the way.

So I really enjoyed this one.

So next time we will be discussing episode number eight, which is the Elysian Kingdom. And I’m looking forward to discussing that one. Before we get into that, if you would like to support the program, comments help. So jump into the comments and let us know what you thought about this episode or about our comments about it.

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