Time travel to a contemporary setting is one of the oldest tricks in the Star Trek playbook and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t still work like a charm. Very fun to get to see the newest Kirk portrayer really get to play with the character, and possibly the best character performance we’ve had from Christina Chong as La’an.
It's insane how amazing the first three episodes of this second season has been. Again with an interesting classic twist and with some great acting, especially from Christina Chong. These character driven episode really is Star Trek for me. To bad there is only 7 episodes left of this season.
Kirk looks like Rob Lowe and Jim Carrey had a baby. Fun ep.
I liked this episode. This builds on lore about Khan from the wrath of khan, and on the temporal war, which is mention in enterprise and discovery. At some point we will need to see this two massive events, but I like how this episode builds on the lore.
By far, IMO the best episode of this ST:SNW yet. The dynamic between "other world Kirk" and La'an was wonderful. Great story and "lets go back in time to stop something from happening in the future" Segway's are always fun.
The camera close up on the watch she brought back from the past is obviously setting up a plot point for something upcoming - wonder where that one will come back to bite.
Overall, best episode yet!
the acting on this episode was improperly good, i never thought i would be crying watching star trek but here i am weeping for the second episode in a row... this season is really hitting the nail on the head i must say...
Usually, I'm not a fan of time-travel episodes, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
Starting to unsee Stefan from The Vampire Diaries in Paul Wesley as well. He makes a good Captain Kirk and a good love interest for La'An. Kind of cheering for them now :)
OMG... this had the feel of TOS... down to the music... I highly recommend this episode.
What a great episode! This is quality Trek, not that melodramatic melancholic BS from Picard. What amazing character development! What fun characters, and yes this includes not just the now-much-deeper La’an and New Kirk but also secondary characters like Pelia — how fun is her accent? I hate to s*** on Picard again, but that was condescending like it was written for grade schoolers while this is an actual SciFi show with chops to stand on its own. Please, PLEASE keep it up and give is MORE of this awesomeness!
This one didn't do it for me. It felt a bit slow as it plodded along. The chemistry didn't work until almost the end of the episode. Too much predictability in the storyline. Also, who leaves a weapon from any time period in a child's room?
This episode is built around a romance that doesn't work. Both Christina Chong & Paul Wesley turn in reasonably strong performances, and Chong does delightful work showing her armor cracking, but the writing doesn't give them the opportunity to build any real chemistry. The ending pretty much undoes any character development for La'an, though - the episode represents just one more thing to go on her trauma pile.
With the car chase, we get yet another example this season of a poorly executed "insert action sequence here" moment - David Reed's writing doesn't carry the sequence and the director, Amanda Row, doesn't add enough business to compensate for that. Huge waste of a stunt budget, a very boring and nonsensical few minutes.
"Get to the bridge" is somewhat clever but definitely doesn't earn an entire act beat! The practical pieces of this plot make no sense if you think about them much. Happy to get a little bit of characterization for Pelia, but she's still not very clear/relatable, and doesn't form any interesting dynamics with the rest of the crew yet.
The conceit of Trek visiting a present day that is not our own is cool, and this episode does a great Trek-insider job of patching up the Khan timeline problem where he didn't actually take over the world in the 1990s. Extra brilliant implication that a temporal war is going to keep pushing the timeline of WWIII further and further away so that it can forever loom in our near future.
The relevance of La'an's heritage brings into focus how hard it is to mesh with Space Seed / Wrath of Khan and the rest of the universe. What actually is her augment-ness? Has it been diluted by centuries of interbreeding? After 230 years, wouldn't lots and lots and lots of humans have a little Khan in them? If Khan is generally known to be a horrifying dictator, why on earth did her or her family keep the last name? Why is she so horrified by this aspect of her ancestry - most people have a monster somewhere in their family tree if they're able to look back 200+ years. My 200+ year ago ancestors must have done some shady slavery/colonization stuff (have done a little digging, haven't been able to pin down a specific case, but there are too many settlers in my family tree for it to be evil-free), and I feel responsibility related to that history, but it would be some kind of weird eugenicist phrenology to suggest that ancestry reflects directly on my character. It would be pretty messed up to blame someone for what her parents did even just one generation back! It's hard to square the bullying La'an faced for her ancestry with the rest of the Star Trek world. And is the La'an/Kirk romance supposed to be justifying why the Enterprise crew is such a marshmallow toward a horrifying dictator in Space Seed?
Shockingly stupid episode.
The whole thing was clearly just a low-budget cop out with extremely lazy writing… most of the main cast only had a few lines. Barely any custom sets or CGI. Even managed to avoid having to do Romulan makeup. I don't hate Star Trek episodes set in the past, but they are generally pretty bad when they're set in what is more or less the present day (though Voyager's Future's End wasn't bad).
The only thing accurate about this episode is that the Toronto police suck at their job.
Most time travel stories require some suspension of disbelief to enjoy and this is no exception to that rule. But it did well with that it had at its disposal. Calling in on 21st century Pelia was a nice surprise and then a gut punch to La'an with having to save a young Khan. Oof.
So thrilled to have a La'an centric episode in general. Christina Chong absolutely crushed it and those final moments almost had me in tears along with her.
There's only one thing I would have done differently and that's not having the phonecall. I would have preferred her running into Kirk in person a few eps from now as their first contact and the weight that carries for her.
The Department of Temporal Investigations... holy smoke, lemme just cackle here, because this is hilarious. xDDD Wasn't that long I finished rewatching DS9, and this bit just stuck with me. Really great little easter egg.
Gotta agree I didn't really feel the romance was all that necessary or well done though.
I'm usually a big fan of time travel episodes - so maybe my expectations were too high - but something about this one didn't quite land for me. Not bad, per se, just rather underwhelming and the fault of the writing rather than anything else.
Carol Kane continues to be an excellent addition to the show's wider cast but I felt the very rushed romance between La'An and Kirk was both unearned and unnecessary, despite the best efforts of the actors. The plot overall felt a little lightweight but presumably / hopefully, this episode has opened the door for future appearances from the secret timeline protection division of Starfleet, or whatever they are called, lol.
That said, Strange New Worlds remains the strongest iteration of the new batch of Trek shows.
Struggled to stay awake. Can we have more Pike please
Oh man. I was really liking SNW but this episode was Discovery level dogshit.
I thought this was a very entertaining episode especially compared to last week's woke BS. :wink: Time travel is always a safe vector to use.
8 billion people on earth to fill the role of Kirk, paramount picks Paul Wesley to play the role. He must have been the only one to audition. Chris Pine IMO, did a better job and had the look and feel of Shatner.
beautiful episode, may just be one of my favorites for the series so far
This was a good episode, though I wonder how it'll fit in with the bigger story/season-arc (or if it will at all). Overall, however, the "ST returns to the present"-trope has been overdone a bit. Granted, La'an's struggle with her decision in the end, not to kill Khan as a child and thus damning Kirk's reality, was well done... on the other hand, her pretty quick (romantic) interest in Kirk right from the start felt a bit contrived, so I wasn't as moved as I could have been if they had had more contact or a more natural connection.
But again, I'm curious to see this season play out, if it's going to remain stand-alone episodes or if there's going to be some bigger arc yet.
Just one (major) nitpick: Just how much money did they win playing chess? I mean that hotel suite didn't look cheap, they had to buy provisions (I assume more hotdogs), they went to Vermont (and back) etc.
Why's M'Benga suddenly portrayed as a fighting champ? Even distracted La'an should be able to defeat him easily when he's not juiced up.
Of all of Star Trek's "let's take the crew back to the viewers' current time because we think they'll get a hoot out of it" episodes, this was, quite probably, the weirdest one.
Also, honestly looking forward to see more of Paul Wesley's sort of childish take on Kirk, what a loveable guy! Poor La'An...
Tried and true Trek theme with the time travel and after nearly sixty years it works just as well as it always has. While I missed most of the rest of the crew throughout the episode, I loved seeing Christina Chong nail the ending and give her character some added depth. Can't wait to see what the rest of the season brings us throughout the summer!
I really liked the first episode but the last two personally didn’t find them very slow. I see most liked it so maybe just me! I like ship action…and the captain envolvement.
Shout by DurackBlockedParent2023-07-01T10:40:45Z
This episode made me fall in love with La’An Noonien-Singh. Great acting by Christina Chong, in a brilliantly written episode.