Yeah, given they are currently complete strangers unable to see past their respective memory of each other… I could see her up and leave. A life on the run probably taught her to cut her losses. Same goes for Caleb, really.

Is there any chance for a resolution of this story where Caleb’s mother does not die?

Well, she could be in line as the next season’s big bad, somehow. Or get trapped in a transport buffer or something. The chances are marginal, but it could happen.

I’m curious if they’ll be able to think up a satisfying alternative to the “lost relative is found/lost relative dies tragically” trope. This show has surprised me a few times, so I’m cautiously optimistic.

I haven’t checked to see if Tatiana Maslany has been mentioned in connection with season 2 shooting, but that might be all the proof you need to her fate.

Could be the Venari Ral were careful to destroy the inventory or otherwise make it useless. Braka seems like the type who will go out of his way to make administrative staff cry.

Oh, that’s right! I blanked on the Lurians for some reason.

I apparently forgot Section 31 existed!

That’s a personal life goal for me.

To my eyes, the second season of Disco was way more nostalgic in its focus on Spock and Pike — they even had a whole episode revolving around the original TOS pilot.

And all of SNW basically takes place between “The cage” and “Where no man has gone before”, filling in (sometimes pretty hamfisted) back story and foreshadowing events of TOS. It very much does appeal to nostalgia in and of the legacy characters, and the ways it references TOS. Unnecessarily so, IMO.

On the movie side of things, almost every film made or announced to be in development post-TNG have centred squarely on the TOS crew.

So I think it’s natural for OP, upon watching SNW s1, to get the impression that Star Trek is retreating into nostalgic fan service. But for the most part, Disco did the opposite, paving the way for SFA as well.

The Section 31 one-shot was… a lot of things, but that didn’t dwell on past lore either. The machine gun fire of deep cut references had Lower Decks walk a tightrope between nostalgia and mining a vast canon for its own purposes. I think it succeeded toward the latter.

Star trek as a whole is doing a less stellar (sorry) balancing act. There appears to be suits involved with the franchise, as well as creative staff, who need to have the TOS cobwebs shaken out of their heads, so the show can be allowed to grow without recasting Spock and Kirk every decade.

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Do they not have inventory

They would have, but I guess this was so secret it took a while to cut through confidentiality and disclosure red tape? Clearly, the real processing time factor was to push the release into this episode.

I’m pretty sure Caleb didn’t mean the things he said to Darem and Genesis.

For sure. But they’re still true, or at least speaking to some true fears of theirs. SAM saw right through him, of course.

Very good points, both of you. Especially the reflection of Caleb’s and SAM’s experiences. One hasn’t seen his mum in 16 years, the other grew up with only her dad* for 17 years. Clever juxtaposition, that.

• Possibly also chancellor Make.

they did say [the Ishana cypher] something he used to try pretty often

…but not at all for at least two years? Because that was the cache of messages from his mum. It feels odd, but it’s probably best not to think too hard about it.

This ep had some rough spots, like a concert where you can hear the orchestra is still tuning their instruments before they get started for real. I’m pretty excited for the symphony.

Thanks for this. Your annotation deep dives are a constant pleasure!

Glad to see Caleb hit paydirt on finding his mum. But… are we sure he’s a genius if he never thought to try that moon’s name as an encryption cypher? Maybe I’m expecting too much of people in a future burdened by a thousand years of cognitive debt from “AI” use.

I finally, completely bought the Caleb/Tarima romance when they cut the coy quippage and he simply told her she was like music to him. There was more raw, naked acting in that exchange than in their sex scene together.

You can tell a month has gone by from the length of Vance’s beard. Nice touch, implying he’s been too busy tracking down Braka to groom himself.

Suddenly, Ake and Kelrec seem direly unsuited for their jobs. “Oh hey, is that planet in the Federation now? You know the one, what’s it called?” Come on, I’m pretty sure you expect your cadets to know that from day one!

Not sure how I feel about the Omega-47 threat. First, I’m sort of disappointed that Starfleet has been developing that kind of WMD. Boo, Science Division!

Second, it feels a bit like a retread of The Burn, at least in the way it leaves warp travel obsolete, if only locally. It’s more of a threat to the franchise’s premise than to the peoples inhabiting the fiction, you know?

But generally speaking, I actually liked this episode. Any last-but-one episode will be saddled with a lot of setup for the season finale, but it was pretty fun and organic how SAM, Genesis and Darem were drawn into Caleb’s mad dash rescue attempt. SAM’s personality changes could have used some more space to be explored, hopefully we’ll see more of that next week.

It’s fairly impressive that over the course of 8-9 episodes, the cadets’ relationships have solidified to a degree that Caleb wanting to rejoin his mum over staying with his friends felt like a real betrayal. And his teardown of Darem and Genesis even more so. That was brutal.

I was more sorry to see Jay-Den and Tarima sidelined as this episode progressed, but I assume they’re let out of Ake’s office to join the action eventually. Holy shit, wait. Ake’s office is in the saucer section, right?

Edited to add: I think I’m going to enjoy rewatching the scenes from the Ukeck market. I only caught a Ferengi or two at first glance, but there has to be other familiar aliens, right?

100% agree with your Youtube preamble. The “pundits” over there rarely bring anything besides shallow nitpickery to the table.

Thanks for the suggestion. I figured it might be one cache or other, so I tried switching UI theme temporarily. When I changed back to Estuary, the thumbnail rows were back. Except somehow my entire TV library had been marked as watched… 🤷

Ah, sorry. It’s a LibreElec install of Kodi, not Android. Tried rebooting fwiw, no luck.

Yeah, it also has aliens, matter-to-energy transporters + replicators, as well as universal translators and faster-than-light travel.

Complete drivel, Star Trek needs to get back to its roots and just be Horatio Hornblower fan fiction.

Ah yes, enforcing the protection of minors — that old staple of “ageism”. Seems the author’s issue is really with legal age as a concept.

Do I think it’s dumb that state authorities need to pressure big tech to ensure legal protections, and do so at an OS level? Yes, and yes. But framing this as ageist is a weird choice.

On your aside — yes, from the setting down to individual character arcs, SFA is proving very good at recognising past trauma, but not allowing it to define the path ahead. Like I said elsewhere, it’s wild how well it addresses our current time, given it’s written a few years ago.

This was quite interesting, especially confirming how moored the writer’s room is in the lore of Trek, going way back. But also the really wild swings they’re willing to go for:

“You know, let’s just add in a 17 year extra growth that will deeply affect two central characters’ personality profoundly from one episode to the next”. And even that isn’t such a radical departure from, say, “The inner light”.

Somehow though, this fact sticks out to me, that Gaia Violo is “the first solo credited creator of a [live action] Star Trek series since Gene Roddenberry”… 🤯 And TBH she is a complete blank sheet to me as a viewer.

Anybody familiar with Violo’s previous work? I’ve been on IMDb for facts and reviews, now I’m curious about the trekkie feedback.

It also follows that we will be seeing a different EMH Doctor going forward. Parental, warmer, probably overprotective…? Looking forward to see Picardo flex his acting chops a bit further with that change!

Sidetrack: What would that be in terms of personality, EMH version 5 or 7 as seen on screen so far, or potentially in the hundreds depending on what happened in the centuries we haven’t seen?