Written by: Dana Horgan & Kathryn Lyn
Directed by: Jonathan Frakes
I enjoyed this episode much more than the previous one. It was quite fun. Sure, holodeck episodes aren’t the most original idea in Star Trek, but they’re almost always good, and I think this episode was worth the slight fudging of canon.
Also, seeing the “Last Frontier” bits and how well they captured the TOS feel makes me think, “Why do they need to make modern Trek so fancy? Why can’t we have cheap-looking sets again?” Also, I think this is one of the better Paul Wesley performances in this show.
I was relieved to find they didn’t go to far with the meta this episode. So many of the clips and dialogues of this episode I saw in the initial trailers made me worry this season was going to do a multiverse plot or venture a bit too far beyond the fourth wall.
The only thing is the Spock/La’an romance is driving me nuts. Neither is emotionally ready, and Spock STILL has a fiance. It’s painful to watch it knowing that it’s almost certainly doomed. I don’t necessarily mind them acknowledging that they have feelings to each other, but I would have thought there would be a mutual desire to keep it platonic. In the end though, at least dancing isn’t Vulcan neuropressure - as I get further into Enterprise, I kind of wonder how Rick Berman has evaded the trunk of my car for so long.
The “Riker Maneuver” blooper absolutely killed me.
Directed by Frakes too!
I wasn’t expecting another “fun” episode. I enjoyed it. The campy awfulness of the old TV set design and costumes was spot on.
Spock-La’an works well, I want to see more of it. It’s difficult to find a lot of plot progress in comedy eps, but pushing their relationship forward a bit is nice. I really hope it goes somewhere meaningful, but this being a prequel, I guess just how far it could go is limited, unless they’re willing to diverge off canon.
Hollywood AR walls don’t hold anything against a holodeck, but we’re getting there. It’s cases like this that make me think I wouldn’t enjoy one for real though, I’d just spend all my time getting paranoid. And did La’an get permission from everyone to use their patterns?
This earlier holodeck is lacking in any kind of true failsafe and is relying on the simulation program alone to not hurt people. Later on the enterprise, they never really figured that out. Scotty should have wrote his notes on safety much bigger than footnotes.
The writing staff must have been using this episode to vent their frustrations of the TV industry. When they were writing it, I wonder if they knew yet they had a confirmed 5 seasons, or if this was written during a hiatus.
I guess the takeaway message from this episode is “you can always rely on those around you”. Except when they’re holographic murder simulations, then all bets are off.
The TNG references with the chair gag and wearing jeans BTS really got me.
Uhura speech it was very meta and was really emotional, it was a speech straight from a ST fan, nice writing and performing there Edit: bloopers were hilarious, and with Frakes directing the blooper of “Kirk” doing the Riker manouver was so funny
It’s a classic Star Trek storyline but it still checks out. Also love seeing La’an leading the episode
Edit: on further reflection, whilst I enjoyed the episode (all the call backs to TOS vibes were great), I think this shows the weakness of having shorter seasons, in that there’s less space (pun intended) for “frivolous” capers like this.
I do love that the staff, be they actors, wardrobe, production, etc don’t have an insane routine like the old days but maintain that at least 12-15 episodes per season is a nice compromise
I think this is why we need more animated Star Trek. While no recent animated Trek show has really managed to get past the equivalent total runtime to a ~5 season, 10 50-minute episode Trek series, I think animation could be a medium to get past some of the budgetary and labor limitations of a live action show in order to return to something closer to a TNG-style season. Not only that, but you could have the cast doing and interacting with things that would simply be impossible to do with any quality in a live-action show.
Although truth be told, I think half my opinion is just fueled by sourness over the end of Lower Decks and Prodigy. I really think though that animation could be the medium for a serious mainline Star Trek series that isn’t (originally intended as) an excursion into a genre. Unfortunately, we sort of live in an animation dark age because of executive and general stupidity.
I’ve thought about having a more serious animated series in the franchise, and I think it could work. There would of course be a group of people that wouldn’t watch because it’s not live action, but depending on how they do it the costs could be a fair amount less too.
Now I feel like a really awesome thing would be something like Star Trek: Excelsior as an animated series that focuses on Captain Sulu after Generations.
I mean, Patrick Stewart did Picard in his 80s, and Takei’s only 3 years older than Stewart. However, Takei would probably be well into his 90s by the time this hypothetical series went into production; you’d also probably have to audition an understudy from the start in case Takei kicked the bucket.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot while I’ve been rewatching DS9 while listening to The Delta Flyers.
They do have the odd one-off “fun” episode in DS9 - this past week was “Our Man Bashir” which is also a fun holdeck episode, and shares a lot with this episode. But the one off fun shows aren’t really needed for DS9 to be funny. What makes DS9 work so well is that they have more episodes to develop character relationships. Once you have that built up, DS9 is able to pack in a lot more humour without even needing one-off comedy episodes, just from the characters riffing off each other.
When you have a limited episode count, like in SNW, that’s much harder to do. There is a bit of genial poking at spock’s vulcan nature, and some character based humour between the engineering staff, but that’s about the extent of it at the moment.
And so as nice as these fun episodes are, it does feel like there’s missing opportunities. There is a random line about giving Ortegas the bridge when we know there was character development from the last episode that still needs to be dealt with. And one of the main characters in this episode wasn’t even really there, so that’s a whole lot more time unspent, and whatever development Spock and La’ans relationship has may end up happening offscreen.
that is my only concern as well, in a 10 episode season if already 2 has been on the “frivolous side” there’s not much left for actual scifi-exploration stuff.
In the other tv series you had 24 episodes each season, you can go around on 2 or 3 episodes each season with silly stuff that was welcome to change the tone from the more serious episodes, here I’m worried. I liked the episode thou, so I’m complaining, but I liked it.
That was a pretty fun bit of silliness - low-calorie, but it looked like the cast had a good time.
The La’an/Spock storyline is unexpected, but damned if Ethan Peck and Christina Chong don’t have chemistry.
Damn. 🥵🔥
EDIT: Did someone turn the heater on. Um… it’s a bit steamy here.
yeah, the ending was too hot, and it’s not even August yet :P
Not to mention I get to see THOSE TWO in a week at STLV.
Same here but my AC is actually broken
I have no hope for this series but Frakes is still directing. What’s a fan to do.
Obviously continue to watch something you dislike, despite there being many other things you can do with your life.
But there are four lights!!!
I’ve entered the mourning phase for Star Trek and have finally stopped watching. Similar to what happened with Doctor Who. Instead of telling good sci fi stories, it’s morphed into “How whacky can we be?” It’s all singing all dancing puppet show hour now.
It doesn’t help that it’s on the “we fire people to please Trump” network.
Annotations for 3x04 up at: https://startrek.website/post/26871550
