SNW 410: Tomorrow's Enterprise

The finale episode for Strange New Worlds' troubled fourth season dropped today, and if we're grading on a curve, it was pretty decent. That said, I was still yelling at the screen and metaphorically tearing my hair out (to do so literally would just be speeding nature along) at the abominably bad science and the misuse of words and the clunky story structure and the hand-waving away of inconsistencies and all the other frustrating stuff common to an episode of SNW in seasons three and four.

There was fun stuff too, and as usual the performances were good. I just wish, again, that this series (a) had bothered with a science adviser and (b) had someone in the writers' room who would call out structural problems and say, "OK, I like what you're going for here, but there's too much surrounding it. We need to bring the focus in some. Also, we don't need this reference or that mention and we can't have this other thing because it's inconsistent with that other thing."

Instead we have Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman running the show for Alex Kurtzman. It's too late to fix anything for next season, it's already in the can, but when the studio's internal politics are settled they need to put new people in charge of Star Trek. Preferably people who know what words mean as well as how allegorical storytelling makes Trek work best.

Let's get into it.

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Tagged Star Trek, TV, Posted on September 24, 2026 at 11:59PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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SNW 409: Once La'an a Time

Is this Anson Mount playing Sir Rauth or is this Anson Mount imagining the audience reaction to yet another gimmick episode?

At this point I have to ask if anyone on the writing staff of Strange New Worlds has now or ever had any interest in writing for Star Trek. Because they have done their damnedest to avoid it all season. They've apparently preferred to write anything, anything other than a thought-provoking science-fiction story about Captain Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise.

The latest installment of this failed season is a swords-and-sorcery type fantasy lark that is ostensibly about paying off a season-long character arc but is actually just an excuse for the cast to act goofy and out of character. Again.

Why? Why are they wasting their time on this stuff? Season three was chock full of lazy writing and bad execution from start to finish, but at least most of the episodes had something resembling a point, however hidden behind lousy structure it was. Here we get another one that pursues very little substance in the name of a gimmick that is thought to be stronger than it could ever be.

Let's get into it.

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Tagged Star Trek, TV, Posted on September 20, 2026 at 12:55AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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SNW 408: Orders of Magnitude

Don't get too comfortable in that chair, Admiral, it'll be mine in a couple years

The latest episode of Strange New Worlds is a departure from the rest of the season. Which is to say, it's not a departure from the basic Star Trek concept. There's no blatant gimmick being built on for the first time since the season premiere (which had its own subtler gimmick, if you can call dinosaurs subtle).

It is, however, derivative as hell in drawing heavily on Crimson Tide and other films, not to mention the trope refined in The Next Generation of the Bad Admiral (or "badmiral"), in attempting to tell a story about people in a chain of command resisting illegal orders and the suspect motivations of military leaders.

There's plenty of potential here, to be sure, but like many entries of seasons three and four of SNW, this episode went to production with a script that needed heavy rewrites but the writers' room and showrunners didn't recognize that they had an unfinished product. I continue to be profoundly disappointed that the people currently in charge of my beloved Star Trek do not understand why it has the fanbase it does and do not know how to write well. To be fair, they do write character reasonably well; the failings tend to be in the areas of story structure, plot details, building up to a climax and satisfactorily resolving the action. All of that is on display in this one.

Let's get into it.

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Tagged Star Trek, TV, Posted on September 15, 2026 at 7:36PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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SNW 407: Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass

Trelane has successfully brought humans to the attention of the Q. Thanks a lot, Trelane.

Strange New Worlds delved into yet another gimmick this week. Are we sick and tired of gimmick episodes yet? Yes, I dare say everyone not on staff in the SNW writers' room is well and fully sick of them and would like for once if the gimmick they chose was to write a Star Trek episode.

The gimmick this time is soap operas. And in the midst of this silly, deliberately overdramatic, parodic sendup of soap opera tropes, there is a real story trying to get out. And while using the soap conceit is a way to get to it, I doubt it's anywhere close to the best way.

Let's get into it.

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Tagged Star Trek, TV, Posted on September 7, 2026 at 4:51PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Identical buildings and morning baseball

I continue to be challenged in my understandings of my dad's condition. Maybe there is no understanding to be had, but I'm one of those that has a compulsion to theorize. I'm inclined to lean heavily on the "postoperative delirium" theory for some of what's going on. Alzheimer's is tricky enough, and my comprehension of that is quite limited, so maybe the post-anesthesia issue isn't really in play here; plus, I always thought Alzheimer's was concentrated in loss of memory, but I'm learning there are other aspects too.

Regardless of reason, the things about Dad's behavior that have perplexed me today are not really memory-related.

First, and from what I'm told this started shortly after his surgery, he is more often than not utterly convinced that he is not at home but in a hospital-provided housing unit that is connected to many others and on a vast campus very far from his house. He has repeatedly expressed amazement that so many of the buildings are identical to each other in layout and furnishings, and has asked me how the building I've been sleeping at looks—is it the same as here? He also has been impressed with the quality of the TV as being "much better than the one at home," and is confused about why there's a pool in the yard as that seems dangerous for a place like this. This isn't something that varies, it's consistent in his perception even when other things are not.

It does go away from time to time, sort of—when the cat comes inside or goes out, he's not startled that the cat is here rather than "at home"; he has wanted to go out and get the mail, which is only an at-home thing. But soon afterward he remarks on when he goes home after being here, or how he's been in this place for a long time and shouldn't he go home soon.

I've been trying to figure out how this concept got lodged in his head, whether there was an event while he was in the hospital after surgery or while in again after a subsequent fall that locked in and the experience of going home was skipped over or never registered or something? I also realize that trying to figure that out is a fool's errand and not worth spending my energy on, I just can't help wondering.

The other thing today was that, after a nap in the afternoon, he got out of bed around 6:00 and greeted me and Marty with "good morning," not facetiously, and a little later when I rigged up the TV to use my MLB.TV account to watch Your Seattle Mariners lose again he found it very, very odd indeed that they were playing baseball—in a packed stadium, no less—at 8:00 in the morning. It was dark here, it was dark outside the ballpark on the screen, we'd mentioned it was evening, Marty was serving dinner, but he kept coming back to morning baseball. "Did you stay up all night so you'd be sure to be awake for this game?" he asked me, knowing I am not at all a morning person. "No, Dad, I got up around noon." Did not compute.

The morning baseball confusion is less perplexing to me than the not-at-home thing. He had slept during the day and got up in early evening, habitually he gets up in the mornings, given the overall condition I can understand that at least somewhat.

All of this is really hard to see, though. It's one thing to be informed from afar that Dad's in decline—even when the informing is greatly detailed—it's another to actually witness it. And that's just from me being here a couple of days. I expect Marty's pretty much crushed, or would be if he could relax long enough to just feel instead of being on guard as the caretaker while still trying to manage regular stuff. I think my being here at least helps him, even if it's not doing a lot for Dad. Though Dad is glad I'm here, and asks me two or three times a day how long I'll be here for. I've taken to just answering "a week or so" instead of attempting the more honest answer of "I'm not sure yet, it kind of depends" that I gave the first couple of times.

Also, I have been so preoccupied with all of this that I let it slip my mind that yesterday, September 3rd, was what would have been my grandfather's 106th birthday. Like I said last time, Grandpa never had to deal with dementia of any kind and lived to be 92½, fully cognizant all the way. I still miss him, though I admit to thinking about him less as time has gone on as it's been "normal" not to have him around. Bums me out a little that I missed acknowledging the day on the day, though.

One bright spot from today: I was wearing my Mariners cap and a J.P. Crawford jersey T-shirt while running an errand to the local Walmart (in typical circumstances, I would never patronize Walmart, but this is a "when in Rome" situation). A young (maybe 20 years old) employee at the store approached me and I was prepared to dismiss her, thinking it was going to be one of those, "can I help you find what you need" sorts of accostings that I usually avoid, but instead she indicated my attire and asked if I was from Washington. "I am," I said. Seattle? "Yep." She told me she had just relocated from Vancouver, WA, and was experiencing culture shock/weather shock/environment shock as she got used to living down here. I didn't press, but it sounded like she was questioning her life choices; I probably would be too if I were a 20ish young woman raised in the PNW and found myself living in the scorching desert populated by mostly senior citizens, retirees, and gay dudes (and gay retirees). Especially if I didn't play golf. I mean, what would I do for fun? Go to LA? Anyway, running into a friendly Washingtonian seemed to make her day, so I'm glad there was something to smile about amidst all this.

Meantime, my sister texted me from a Los Angeles movie theater that was among the many nationwide celebrating the 60th anniversary of Star Trek by showing some of the feature films, tonight's selection being Star Trek—The Motion Picture. Part of the event tonight was a Q & A with Eugene "Rod"  Roddenberry Jr., and among the things texted to me was a short video of my nephew Ben asking Rod a question about how Gene Sr. would have felt about some of the newer series maybe straying from the original's ethos. Also a photo of Ben with Rod. Very cool. Glad my sister's raising him to be a proper nerd. (Rod's reply included his lack of affection for my favorite Trek series, Deep Space Nine, but I see where Rod's coming from even if I think he's missing out.) Then she complained about the movie being too long. Can't argue with her there, STTMP is bloated with nothing scenes that exist just to show off new-for-1979 special effects and pad the run time. I've long thought I could do my own edit of the picture, cut a good 20-30 minutes out of it and lose zero dialogue. It'd surely be a way better movie that way.

Tagged Dad, Health, Star Trek, Posted on September 5, 2026 at 12:51AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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WTF, SNW?

I just watched this week's episode of Strange New Worlds. Unlike with the rest of this season's episodes, I don't have questions. I have question. Singular. With variants. To wit:

Why was this even made?

Who thought this was a good idea?

Was there a point in its development in which it was at all funny?

Or relevant to the series?

I will do a real review later. It will not be favorable.

Tagged Star Trek, TV, Posted on September 3, 2026 at 1:42AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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SNW 406: Off-Hour

This week's Strange New Worlds episode is more like Star Trek than anything since the season opener has been, and it may well be the best episode of the season thus far. That said, it's also another empty-calorie episode that doesn't leave us with anything to think about after it's done, at least not in a big-picture kind of way. The stuff we have to think about after is more like, why was that guy there, or is the macguffin of this story plausible, or can we accept the implausibility of the macguffin.

The gimmick of the week—what, you thought they were done with that? If only—is real-time countdown. It's a disaster/action movie, one part The Poseidon Adventure one part Speed, one part 24 (the TV show). Trek homages to other stuff is nothing new, of course; nothing inherently wrong with doing a riff on another film if done well. And this one is better than just OK.

Let's get into it.

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Tagged Star Trek, TV, Posted on August 30, 2026 at 9:23PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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SNW 405: Level-Five Transporter Accident

The writers of Strange New Worlds just can't help themselves. They get a nutso idea in their heads and go at it with no hesitation, no filters, no pesky need to respect what came before. In a way, that's admirable—take chances; "risk is our business," and so on. In another, it's frustrating as hell—know your subject matter, keep its values, don't throw it all out for a gimmick. In the case of this week's episode, it's both admirable and frustrating.

The nutso idea this time is "what if the crew of the Enterprise were muppets?"

This season alone we've seen Enterprise crew fights dinosaurs, Enterprise crew boards a haunted ghost ship, Enterprise crew gets high and loses their shuttlecraft, and Enterprise crew does black-and-white film noir, so why not Enterprise crew does The Muppet Show?

One reason why not is that it's so much more absurd than anything else they've done, but it ... kind of works? And when it works it's mostly for non-puppet reasons?

Let's get into it.

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Tagged Star Trek, TV, Posted on August 20, 2026 at 9:29PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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SNW 404: A Case of Chiaroscuro

You're looking a little ashen, Number One, are you feeling OK?

T

his week's episode of Strange New Worlds brings to mind this exchange from the 1967 Star Trek episode "The Squire of Gothos":

KIRK: You don't find this unexpected, Mister Spock?

SPOCK: That his food has no taste, his wine no flavor? No. It simply means that Trelane knows all of the Earth forms, but none of the substance.

Substitute "Myers/Goldsman" for "Trelane" and "Star Trek" for "Earth" and Spock would be accurately describing this fourth season (and the third) of SNW.

The latest episode is yet another gimmick-of-the-week installment that fumbled along through its runtime without actually delivering anything significant. The gimmick: Film noir. Sort of.

The entire episode is shot in black-and-white and the bulk of the story takes place on a Klingon-occupied subject planet that looks like Fritz Lang and Tim Burton designed it. It's also home to people who are not only for all intents and purposes humans, but humans with a 1940s sense of style. It's a Star Trek version of Casablanca, without the romance and with the doppelgänger plot of Hollow Triumph thrown in.

It could have done something interesting. I mean, our characters find themselves wrapped up with the resistance movement of a society under the thumb of an authoritarian occupying force—seems like there might be some good allegory to be had if a little thought were to be put into it. The film noir movies generally involve not just mysteries and capers, but characters navigating moral grey areas and hard-choice dilemmas; all of that is here, but only at a surface level—nothing resonates. Once again, the SNW writers' room thought the gimmick was enough, the underlying structure could just be phoned in.

Let's get into it.

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Tagged Star Trek, TV, Posted on August 17, 2026 at 8:51PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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SNW 403: Human Best Friend

Does anyone know what I had tattooed on my face?

This week's episode of Strange New Worlds actually isn't terrible. Part of me does hate it, but it's the part that has been disappointed by the writing in so many streaming era and 21st century film installments of the Star Trek franchise; here we again have an episode that has little to no depth to it, another junk food meal of empty calories. On the other hand, I did find it entertaining despite my qualms. It's very much like last season's "Wedding Bell Blues" in that regard, though not as steeped in the series mythology and a whole lot more derivative.

Had I known in advance what they were going for with this one—it's a stoner comedy that borrows heavily from lowbrow films The Hangover and Harold & Kumar Go Wherever They Went; it could be titled "Dude, Where's My Shuttlecraft?"—expectations would have been lower than low given what came last season, in which case this post would be about how I was pleasantly surprised by the not-terribleness of it. But even though I kind of liked it, it does nothing to assuage my fears that the rest of the series is going to be frustrating. Especially knowing that both this season and the abbreviated next season was all either in production or the can before any of the flawed and troubling season three had aired (dropped? What is the proper terminology for the release of streaming internet TV?). I suspect that no one in this writers' room ever came to any realizations that last year had real problems before it was too late and all was completed. Thematic depth? Nah. Ethical quandaries? Meh, we might touch on them vaguely. Dumb humor? Oh, yeah, that's our jam, and if we can cheapen what comes later in the timeline, so much the better.

There is plenty of dumb humor and cheapening what comes later in this one, to be sure, but in large part—not entirely—I am choosing to overlook it because there's some fun to be had.

Let's get into it.

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Tagged Star Trek, TV, Culture, Posted on August 8, 2026 at 8:32PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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SNW 402: The Griffin Incident

The latest episode of Strange New Worlds is another "genre of the week" installment, this time the genre is "horror flick." It's not the first time Star Trek has gone this route, exactly, but it is more overtly in-your-face in terms of horror tropes and scenes of mutilation. Generally, I am most definitely not a fan of such things, and while I don't exactly hate it here, it's not good, either.

Which isn't to say the episode itself isn't good taken as a whole. It's...well, it's hit-and-miss, like most SNW efforts. There are some semi-interesting character bits, and some things that may or may not move a season arc along, but once again we have a script that wouldn't have been deemed ready for production under Gene Coon or Ira Behr.

Let’s get into it (spoilers and very nerdy nitpicks ahead):

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Tagged Star Trek, TV, Posted on August 4, 2026 at 5:26PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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SNW 401: Valles Marineris

Can you stun a T. Rex? Let's find out.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returned last week for its fourth season premiere, and, wouldn't you know, I have thoughts.

After the painfully flawed mess of the third season, I was prepared to be disappointed. However, I was also hopeful that, without the rush-job environment that produced the season three scripts, we'd get back to at least the level of quality we saw in SNW's first two seasons. The premiere landed smack in the middle of those poles—there's stuff that doesn't make sense, there's some lazy shortcut writing, there's avoidable science mistakes; but there are also really funny moments, a clever premise, and good character stuff that almost makes me give them a pass on the bad character stuff.

Let's get into it (spoilers ahead):

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Tagged Star Trek, TV, Culture, Posted on July 30, 2026 at 3:20AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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