TV Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3

Intense action, flawed characters, nostalgia, and just enough humor as Strange New Worlds enters its third season.
 

Fast pacing, jump scares, messy emotions, wry witty humor, questionable choices from beautifully flawed characters, and likeable new members of the ensemble cast. All of this composes the opening four episodes of Season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Historically, the third season of a Star Trek series is often when the show leans into bold awesomeness after an uncertain, exploratory start in the first season and a second season of settling into the characters and storytelling. However, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds benefitted from being a spin-off of another strong Star Trek show, Discovery. As a result, Strange New Worlds began in comfortable awesomeness from season one, telling the story of the earlier crew of the legendary starship Enterprise, and reimagining iconic characters (Spock, Uhura, Chapel, and even James Kirk) and presenting new (La’an, Ortegas) or underused pre-existing (Pike, Una, M’Benga) characters, who are all shown in their early, uncertain, but much more fully explored selves. Season 2 added a range of clever quirky storytelling devices, including a hilarious partial animation crossover (with Star Trek: Lower Decks) and song-filled musical episode. However, the second season ended on a more serious note in “Hegemony I,” with a return of the Gorn, the human eating, monster-like enemy race that hunted them in the first season. As several beloved characters are trapped in a Gorn invaded non-Federation world, Pike (Anson Mount) is forbidden by Starfleet from interfering due to the risk of triggering a war with the old enemy.

Hegemony, Part II

When the Enterprise is attacked and outgunned, with close friends still captive, Captain Pike must make a critical and potentially devastating decision. Season 2 of Strange New Worlds left us with an old-school cliff-hanger finale that is immediately picked up in the opening moments of season 3 and launches us straight back into the action. The transitional moment between the two seasons is a nice call back to The Next Generation’s “The Best of Both Worlds” part I and II. That jaw dropping moment when Riker responds with unexpected confidence when faced with an impossible choice involving his own captain is contrasted with Pike, in a similarly impossible situation, having a true internal decision paralysis crisis. This is one of the storytelling elements and character explorations that makes Strange New Worlds so intriguing: optimism, compassion, and boldness are balanced with the characters’ frailty, imperfection, and sometimes flawed judgment.

Wedding Bell Blues

The theme of Season 3 seems to be nostalgia and “Wedding Bell Blues” gives us another call back to a classic Trek episode, “The Squire of Gothos,” in addition to an overt nod to a particularly creepy episode of the original Twilight Zone: “It’s a Good Life.” A broken-hearted Spock (Ethan Peck) finds himself in an unexpectedly positive situation but has to grapple with what is real and what is not. Altered reality stories are one of the most entertaining ways Star Trek plays with our minds with a twisted, waking dream scenario. “Wedding Bell Blues” leans into the strangeness with humor and a nostalgic twist at the end.

Shuttle to Kenfori

After the relatively light, although mind-twisting, adventure of “Wedding Bell Blues,” the narrative returns to monsters and violence in “Shuttle to Kenfori.” Pike and Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) go on an unsanctioned away mission to find a rare but potentially life saving drug and, in the process, encounter a formidable old enemy as well as unexpected terrors when they land. This episode leans into the usual horror adventure narrative with plenty of jump scares and moderate gore. But, in true Star Trek form, the story uses the setting to show Pike processing troubling revelations about two people for whom he cares deeply, even as he comes to terms with what it means for someone to become a monster physically and psychologically.

A Space Adventure Hour

The often parodied style of original Star Trek television series (in everything from Saturday Night Live to Black Mirror) has become so iconic that the cold-opening moments of “A Space Adventure Hour” let you know we are in for a humorous, nostalgia filled treat. In this episode, directed by Star Trek icon, Jonathan Frakes, La’an (Christina Chong) and Lt. Scott (Martin Quinn) are drafted into test driving a new concept called a holodeck. Running a program of such stunning magnitude puts the ship's engines at risk so Scott is assigned to make it happen without blowing up the ship and La’an is assigned to do a walkthrough of a sample strategy based program. In a multi-level metaphysical piece of storytelling, La’an decides to create a murder mystery inspired by Amelia Moon, a beloved storybook detective from her childhood. However, instead of landing in an isolated mansion or on a luxury train, she ends up in 1960’s Hollywood near the set of “Space Adventure Hour,” a hilarious take on the original Star Trek. This episode is fun on so many levels for long time Trekkies. We get to see the holodeck in its infancy, unapologetically wreaking havoc with the ship’s safety. Viewers also have a fun foreshadowing of Captain Picard’s frequent Sherlock Holmes adventures on the holodeck in The Next Generation. To set up the look of the players, Scotty uses the transporter patterns of the most recent travelers. So, most of the show’s lead actors get a chance to play completely different characters in this comedic take on 1960’s Hollywood, including Strange New Worlds’s James Kirk (Paul Wesley) doing a very funny and very meta imitation of William Shatner’s James Kirk from the original series. And, we get to see a young version of Scotty in all of his stressed out engineering persona as the holodeck mystery takes on dangerous implications for the safety of the crew. But, most of all, we get a hilarious and poignant celebration of why Star Trek is beloved and iconic. In the character of a Hollywood agent, Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) gives a timely monologue on why Star Trek remains an indelible, and still relevant, part of our real life culture.

With intense action, twisty mind games, and unapologetic, self-aware humor, the opening episodes of Season 3 feel like a nostalgic letter to long time Star Trek fans. The jump scares, plot twists, and character angst, are balanced with the strong ensemble chemistry of flawed but relatable characters. And, as always, we have the series’ enduring moral core to guide us (hopefully) as we all continue to explore what lies ahead.

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Highlights:

• Action and jump scares balanced with humor and nostalgia
• Character angst and dysfunction
• Perfect ensemble chemistry

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

We Rank 'Em: Star Trek TV Series

It goes without saying that Star Trek is one of, if not the, most influential franchises of all time. In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the first episode, the team here at Nerds of a Feather put our heads together to determine the all time best Star Trek TV series. Naturally, no one person rated the series the same, so we resorted to our trusted group rating system, where we each rank to our liking and then take the group average.

6. Enterprise

Enterprise is no one's #1

- This is not Star Trek. There is no better world offered here, just a hodgepodge of the worst of the previous Treks: arrogant and paternal white dude captain, thin moralizing of us vs. them total war, confusing time travel bullshit, and a twist ending that...did not work in the slightest. This was the wound that killed Star Trek as I knew it. (Charles)

- Deeply flawed but finally found a soul in the fourth season, just in time to get canceled. I can't recall much of the series, but I'll never forget that it started the fourth season with alien nazis and that's when it started to get really good. It had the absolute worst opening theme. (Brian)

- Overall: 0/10. This is one of the worst shows ever. Bonuses: None. Penalties: ALL THE PENALTIES. IT IS THE PREQUELS OF STAR TREK. (Dean)






5. The Animated Series

TAS is no one's #1

- I know that limited animation (cost- and time-saving shortcuts, familiar from shows like Scooby-Doo: Where Are You?) isn't for everybody. But the original cast in stories that are at least as solid as an average TOS episode makes me tremendously happy. And the flashes back to Spock's youth in the episode "Yesteryear" I think formed the basis for a lot of the flashbacks in the 2009 STAR TREK reboot and at least one lyrical reference in a Weezer song, so consider me a fan. (Vance)

- I wish I had a cartoon like this growing up. It has not aged well at all, but the crew is all there (plus some interesting additions) and the adventures are pulled directly from the Original Series. While it doesn't stand well on its own, it has some big names attached to it and it certainly keeps the spirit of the Original burning bright. (Charles)

4. Voyager

Voyager is Dean's #1

- Overall: 7/10. I love Voyager because it is basically a pure adventure with great characters. Bonus: +1 for Janeway. (Dean)

- In the nature of Star Trek, Voyager embraces diversity in its cast. What stands out most to me are the female characters in more traditional male roles, like Janeway the captain and B'Ellana the chief engineer. I recently re-watched an episode the dealt with pregnancy and childbirth. Relatability is important in genre TV, and Voyager's diverse cast and overall premise - feeling trapped and lost but not giving up hope - is relatable to many. (Tia)

- This show took a complex political situation and then shot it to a remote corner of the galaxy, surrounded by deadly enemies. The hook was brilliant, and yet some of the complexity Trek was known for fell away in favor of looking at what these people would do to survive and to get back home. (Charles)

3. The Original Series

TOS is Vance's, The G's, and English Scribbler's #1

- There is some cognitive dissonance for me here because I don't think TOS is the best Star Trek show, but it is my favorite. I remember seeing WRATH OF KHAN in the theater, and I was only four years old when that came out, so Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the original crew simply are Star Trek to me. The hits on this show are some of my favorite sci-fi stories ever, even though the lows are just terrible. But "City on the Edge of Forever" more than makes up for "Spock's Brain" and "The Way to Eden." (Vance)

- The original boasted a delightful dynamic between Kirk, Spock, and Bones, with some episodes and a vision of the future that were revolutionary at the time. To say that the series has aged well, though...some episodes have, and some have most certainly not. (Charles)

- Watching TOS is like reading classic literature. At times the plot doesn't hold up well but hearing "to boldly go.." is like reading "wherefore with thee came not all hell broke loose." The dramatic acting is my favorite part of the show. It has the passion and feel of an old time movie and surprisingly deep themes and dialogue. And okay, I'll say it: Kirk is dreamy. But those pants. I just can't handle the pants. (Tia)

- It's the groundbreaking start of the franchise. The highs are very high, but the lows are real low. It's not the most even series, but it's still a classic. (Brian)

- Overall: 6/10. Bonuses; +1 maybe hindisght, but for doing what it did for SciFi. Penalties: -1 for only being OK when you really watch it. (Dean)

(It's worth noting that the difference in ranking averages between DS9 and TOS was one tenth of a point.)

2. Deep Space Nine

DS9 is Tia's and Charles' #1

- This show, more than any of the others, pushed the boundaries of how Star Trek could be told, spinning vast mythologies and character arcs that paid off in tremendous ways while weaving episodic mysteries and series-spanning storylines. It stripped away the pearly veneer of the Federation and yet still made it something worth fighting for, something worth dying for, in ways that I never felt the earlier shows managed to capture. Still my favorite show of all time. (Charles)

- I love DS9 so much because it feels different than the other Star Trek Series while still feeling like Star Trek. I really like the space station dynamic which gets us off the bridge and into the lives of civilians, but we still get the traditional upper level Star Fleet characters too. Bonuses: +1 for POC captain, +1 for Dax. (Tia)

- It broke the mold by focusing not on a ship, but a space station and the incredibly diverse group inhabiting it. It also escaped the episodic nature of all other series. (Brian)

- Overall: 6/10. Babylon 5 is the best show ever, and I love DS9 because it feels a lot like Babylon 5. That doesn't sound like the praise I quite mean it as, the trade and politics of the show are great. Bonuses: +1 for being brave enough to depart the standard formula. Penalties: -1 for just kind of being there sometimes, -1 for the cast not always being strong. (Dean)

- If I needed to recommend this show to anybody, I would simply have to tell them about the episode "Trials and Tribble-ations," and I think the show's greatness would be self-evident. (Vance)

1. The Next Generation

TNG is Brian's, Shana's, and Jemmy's #1

- Best crew, best stories, best ship. This is my generation's Star Trek for a very good reason. I rewatch it yearly. (Brian)

- Aptly named, this show took much of the promise of the original and offered more characters, more complexity, and a more vibrant and connected universe (and it lasted for more than three seasons). So much was established in this series, and yet it often suffered because of its strictly episodic structure and its unwillingness to question certain key problems with the Federation. (Charles)

- This was the series I grew up with on TV, and I readily admit it's a better show than the original. The crew is fantastic, the inclusion of Worf on the Enterprise speaks to the welcome optimism of the Star Trek universe, and I have never not wanted a holodeck. (Vance)

- Where TNG wins for me is when the cast are experiencing things that are foreign to them but normal to us. Right now I'm thinking of them being trapped in a Casino and them eating scrambled eggs. Other times I find this show kind of boring (gasp, I know) and can't really bond with the characters. Bonuses: +1 for Worf, Penalties: -1 for the ugliest Enterprise interior ever. (Tia)

- Overall: 7/10. Real talk: This is the best crew. Every single character is fantastic- I could go on, but you know it as well as I do. Bonus: +1 for Picard being the best Captain. -1 for every stupid episode where they get stuck in the bloody holodeck in some 20th century setting gaaaaah stop. (Dean)

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Compiled by: Tia  inspiring couch potato and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2014

CYBERPUNK REVISITED: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Dossier: Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash (Bantam, 1992)

Filetype: Book

File Under: Postcyberpunk

Executive Summary: Hiro Protagonist loses his job as a delivery driver working for the Mafia-controlled Uncle Enzo's Pizza, and nearly loses more than that as punishment for delivering a pizza late, but 15-year-old skateboard Kourier Y.T. takes pity on him and gets the delivery there on time. This begins the unlikely partnership in an alt-future Los Angeles dominated by corporate city-states and "burbclaves" between Hiro and Y.T. Hiro is a world-class programmer and was one of the architects of the Metaverse, a networked, virtual reality simulation that millions around the world log into daily, but now he's a freelance hacker and intelligence stringer for the Feds, who are still on the scene but only just. He also happens to be the world's greatest swordsman -- both within the Metaverse and without. Y.T. lives in a burbclave with her mother, who works for the Feds and, Y.T. thinks, is in the dark about Y.T.'s job as a Kourier. When Hiro's other (and materially more successful) Metaverse co-creator Da5id succumbs to a computer virus called Snow Crash that not only destroys the operator's system but also the operator's brain, Hiro begins investigating inside the Metaverse with the help of his ex-lover and Da5id's ex-wife Juanita, and enlists Y.T. to help out in the real world. Juanita clues Hiro into a connection between ancient Sumerian linguistics, the Tower of Babel, and a bizarre religious sect backed by mega-industrialist L. Bob Rife that lives on a sprawling offshore colony called The Raft. A gigantic Aleutian hitman named Raven fits in somehow with both Snow Crash and The Raft, and if Hiro can't figure out how, then he, Y.T., and Juanita will all wind up dead, and human technological culture blasted back to the stone age.

High-Tech: While there are some cool future-tech devices in Snow Crash, like the magnetic harpoons the Kouriers use, and the rat-things that act as security in all Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong franchulates, the chief piece of technology that defines the book is the Metaverse. Think a planet-sized VR Sunset Strip where you have to pay real money for virtual real estate, and if you can afford them, virtual Googlebots called Librarians will dig up any information you can desire just by speaking. Until the Snow Crash drug comes along, the Metaverse and the real world are separate, and dying in the Metaverse is a minor inconvenience. After? Well...

Low-Life: Hiro lives in a U-Stor-It storage unit with a roommate, a noise-rocker named Vitaly Chernobyl. Real estate has become so expensive in LA that families with 'roided-up teenage sons and regular jobs live in burbclaves in the Valley, the rich, as ever, live where they please, and the rest -- like Hiro -- scrape by where they can and carefully step around used syringes and the like when exiting their front doors. Along with the disaffected youth and would-be scenesters that circle Vitaly's band, Hiro has an easy relationship with drug dealers and others who dominate an environment where crime is more of a nebulous concept, depending on what kind of franchise you happen to find yourself in.

Dark Times: Snow Crash chiefly concerns itself with a small cast of characters who are plugged in and savvy to at least the potential of something nefarious going down behind the curtain. The majority of humanity beyond, though, are left largely uncommented-upon. Places outside of the franchulates have become lawless warzones, as witnessed through Y.T.'s trip to Compton, but for most middle-class people, life is probably pretty great. They're all self-medicating, driving big cars, living in cookie-cutter neighborhoods and following the paths expected of them. Hiro, et al., though, are onto the fact that there is a dark undercurrent beneath it all, mostly stemming from L. Bob Rife's having franchised out religion to The Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates, which is helping to funnel people to The Raft, and potentially doing much worse.

Legacy: There are some influential books, and then there are influential cultural events. Snow Crash is the latter. Where Neuromancer radically re-defined the books that came after it and started a trend that grew larger, that movement reached something of an apotheosis in Snow Crash, a book that literally defined aspects of the culture itself. Ever wonder why icons that represent you on the internet are called "avatars"? While not the first person to use the word in that context, Snow Crash is why it stuck. Stephenson's envisioning of the Metaverse came to shape gaming, with Michael Abrash, the creator of the game Quake, and others freely admitting the debt they owe the book in how they came to think of networked 3D computing. Google Earth? That's pretty much how Hiro's Librarian shows him around. Like Neuromancer, Stephenson's book landed on Time's list of the 100 greatest English-language novels of the 20th century, alongside authors like Fitzgerald, Nabokov, and Pynchon, and genre luminaries like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Gibson, and Philip K. Dick. Nice company.

In Retrospect: Neal Stephenson writes virtuosic prose. Humor, attitude, clarion insights, and all around verve leap off the pages of Snow Crash, making it a tremendous amount of fun to read. Hiro and Y.T. are both intelligent and resourceful, and enjoyable people to spend a book with. It is also refreshing, even today, to read a science fiction novel where female characters give as good as they get, and -- while they may be regarded as sexual objects by other characters in the book -- are not treated like sexual objects by the book, itself. Hiro and Juanita, for instance, despite a past relationship never hit the sheets in the course of the book.

Stephenson also allows us to have fun inside the world he's created, apart from the main narrative of the book. Brief chapters will introduce a new character, follow him, her, or it through an adventure that somehow touches on the main action, and opens a wider window onto the world of the story. Mafia head Uncle Enzo's unexpected interactions with Y.T. are particularly fun, and walking around inside the mind of a Rat Thing is unexpectedly rewarding and touching. The ways in which elements of the world that at first appear structural -- such as the abundance of Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchises -- but eventually become central to the plot are examples of first-rate literary craftsmanship.

The only place where the book falls down a little bit is in the massive info-dump regarding ancient Sumerian and the idea of a language as ones-and-zeros for human beings. The long stretches of the Librarian filling Hiro in on Sumerian mythology are tremendously evocative of, say, the section of the Mythology text book your teacher skipped over or the liner notes to a Morbid Angel album, so while interesting, they slow down the book's momentum. It feels like Stephenson understood this, however, and there's a lot of pinging back-and-forth between Hiro's conversations with the Librarian and Y.T.'s real-life escapades, which become increasingly perilous. And as Zhaoyun remarked in his review of Stephenson's The Diamond Age, this book also ends rather perfunctorily, with almost literally zero "falling action." That is to say, it happens real quick.

Nevertheless, this is a book that lives up to the hype. And for a 20-plus-year-old book concerning network technology to still make a modern reader think "Wow, it'd be cool if we could do that," that's a helluva neat trick to pull.

Analytics

For its time: 5/5
Read today: 4/5
Cybercoefficient: 9/10

Posted by Vance K — who once roomed with a guy who thought Snow Crash was the best book ever written, and, on a separate occasion, boxed that roommate in the backyard while nerds of a feather comics & board game correspondent Mikey kept the ring clock. True story.

Greatest Sci-Fi Movie of All Time Tournament (Round of 16)

VOTING ON THIS ROUND IS NOW CLOSED. TO VOTE IN THE NEXT ROUND, CLICK HERE.

Folks, I have to admit I'm surprised.

A bunch of my picks bit the dust in the Round of 32, and we had one MAJOR upset: the 8-seeded Brazil knocked off 1-seed Frankenstein. Frankenstein, people! But where you really twisted the knife is in the Gort Region, where Donnie Darko knocked off The Day the Earth Stood Still...and not the Keanu Reeves one. That I could understand, but...man. Here's where I make some crack about young whippersnappers and getting off my lawn.

Here's where we stand:

Click for a larger view.

My guess is the only 1-seed that makes it to the Round of 8 is Empire Strikes Back. And if Brazil is the little engine that could, then we may have to say goodbye to Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubrick, both. But that's for you to decide.

On to the voting!

Gort Region

HAL Region

Robbie Region

R2 Region

Polls will remain open until next Thursday night (Pacific), and the next round will open for voting on Friday.

Posted by Vance K — who knows where a life-sized Gort can be found if needed, and co-editor of Nerds of a Feather since 2012.

Greatest Sci-Fi Movie of All Time Tournament (Round of 32)

VOTING ON THIS ROUND IS NOW CONCLUDED. VOTE ON THE ROUND OF 16 HERE.

Last year it was sci-fi TV shows, and thousands of people weighed in, crowning — a little surprisingly to me — Firefly the winner of the Best Sci-Fi TV Show of All Time Tournament. This year to coincide with the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament that has offices all around the country flouting local gambling laws, we present our second annual tournament: The Greatest Sci-Fi Movie of All Time.

Behold!

Click the bracket for an expanded view you can also print out.

Here's how the films were selected and seeded. First, I took the top 100 films from the IMDb "Highest Rated Sci-Fi Feature Films" List, and eliminated any films with fewer than 50,000 user votes. In what is essentially a popularity contest, films that few people have seen would skew the results and be easy marks for upsets. Then, to correct for the pronounced "recency bias" IMDb user ratings famously show, I made the following adjustments:

• I revised the user rating of any films released in the last 2 years downward by ten percent
• Any films released in the ten-year period before that, I revised downward by five percent
• For films released between 1960 and 1975, I revised their rating upward by five percent, and
• For any films released before 1960, I revised their user rating upward by ten percent

This is no doubt not a perfect system, and neither are the IMDb rankings themselves perfect (how Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan isn't on that list, I can't imagine). But I think it's a good system that gave us a solid distribution of films from every decade (except the 1940s?) since the silent era of film. But enough about math! To the voting!

Gort Region

HAL Region

Robbie Region

R2 Region

Results and the next round of voting will be posted each Friday until we crown a winner. Happy voting!

Posted by Vance K — Co-editor and resident cult film reviewer of Nerds of a Feather since 2012