Last week, Paramount+ released the official trailer for the upcoming second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Like with the teaser, this new trailer offers a mashup of the second season of the episodic series. We have pored over the trailer and pieced the big highlights together, adding context along with some educated guesses.
Flying in with Ortegas
The trailer kicks off with an action sequence of a Starfleet shuttle that’s covered in debris coming in very hot onto a blue planet.
On board are M’Benga, La’an, and a nervous captain Pike, who asks Ortegas if she knows what she is doing.
Ortegas seems to be having the time of her life saying “don’t worry I did this a hundred times during the war,” revealing a bit more of her Klingon War veteran history… and at the last minute she pulls through with a “woohoo!”
Fighting on Rigel VII
A clip released last year first revealed they are returning to Rigel VII (from “The Cage”), which we now know will be in episode 4. The landing party consists of Pike, M’Benga, and La’an, all of whom are wearing native garb to blend in with the local pre-warp Kalar. At one point we can see La’an and Pike doing some recon using an old-fashioned telescope.
Pike and M’Benga also get into a fight with some of the locals. Pike is using a phaser rifle as a club.
There is also a shot of what looks like a local leader with guards also armed with phaser rifles, including a moment with Pike deflecting a phaser shot with a serving tray.
Partying with the Klingons
As seen in the early teaser trailer, we again see Spock celebrating with Klingons and drinking blood wine.
Later in the trailer, there is a shot of the Enterprise escaping an energy wave with three Klingon D-7 battle cruisers right behind.
Crashing with the Gorn
The Gorn are back in season 2 and the trailer includes a number of shots of Spock in a spacesuit inspecting a derelict Starfleet ship, with one quick moment revealing a Gorn in a spacesuit behind him.
This spacewalk also includes Nurse Chapel and Spock. They can be seen moving away from the derelict ship as it descends into a planet’s atmosphere.
A view from inside a crashed shuttle, the derelict starship can be seen hurtling down to the surface out of the cockpit window.
The trailer also shows the Enterprise under attack from a number of Gorn ships.
Calculating the odds with Uhura
Offering up some narration for a bit of the trailer is Uhura, saying “Do you know the odds of all us being here at this time. It’s improbable, and yet here we are, together.”
She can be seen later in the trailer without any context offering a bit of a playful dance.
Getting crazy with Pelia
Season 2 introduces Carol Kane playing the new engineer Pelia and this trailer included her first bit of dialog. Uhura tells her “I have a crazy theory,” and Pelia replies, “I love a crazy theory.”
Drinking with Lt. Kirk
Paul Wesley is returning in season 2 as James T. Kirk and there are a couple of shots in the trailer showing him talking to Uhura. He tells her, “Our job puts us up against death, and we might not like it, but we do have to face it.”
DETAIL: In the other shot of the pair in the lounge you can see Kirk is ranked as a lieutenant. In the season 1 finale Kirk was a captain in an alternate timeline. In the teaser trailer released earlier, Kirk can be seen in modern-day Toronto with La’an with the rank of captain and a different badge.
Traveling with Kirk and La’an’s
This trailer has more of Kirk and La’an in what appears to be a time travel context. Here they are wearing 21st-century civilian clothing and witnessing an explosion on a bridge in modern-day Toronto (which could be standing in for another city).
Later in the trailer (but likely before the explosion) La’an tells Kirk “we are explorers.”
The two also share an intimate moment.
Kissing and more kissing
Kirk and La’an aren’t the only ones getting close. Spock and Chapel can be seen kissing with Spock asking “what does this mean?” and Christine replying, “I don’t know, shut up,” before kissing him.
Spock can also be seen wearing the same Vulcan outfit and having a little emotional outburst.
Captain Pike also gets in on the fun, seen kissing Captain Batel, who had a recurring role in season one starting with the pair together in the series premiere.
Getting into more action
There are lots of quick cuts throughout the trailer with little context, all showing off more action from season two, including some fancy flying by Ortegas, taking the Enterprise through an asteroid field.
Christine in a landing party jacket, desperately pounding against a window.
Possibly in the next moment, an airlock is released and Chapel and M’Benga (neither of whom is wearing a space suit) open an airlock into space above a pockmarked planet.
A shuttle flies over a battle scene.
Pike (wearing a breathing mask) falls as a room fills with gas.
Staying on mission
In voice over we hear Pike say, “I sense a tension, the feeling that something is in the air,” as we see a huge Gorn ship flying over a present-day looking planet.
Captain Batel is there and she says, “My god.”
Uhura appears to be at the scene of a shuttle crash (note the smoke).
Later, M’Benga says, “That’s the mission, it’s what we love most.”
The trailer features a number of shots of more alien worlds and locations including Una, Spock and La’an as a landing party.
Chapel, Uhura, and Ortegas in a glowing cavern.
Enterprising through new worlds
The trailer also features a few beauty shots of the USS Enterprise visiting some strange new worlds.
Lower Decks!
This trailer gave us our first look at the Star Trek: Lower Decks crossover (coming in episode 7) with Jack Quaid as Boimler and Tawny Newsome as Mariner, with Mariner telling Spock “Surprise!”
The trailer ends with Mariner and Boimler beaming out with Pike and La’an and Spock saying “live long and prosper, Mr. Boimler.”
Director Jonathan Frakes revealed that in this episode Boimler is “obsessed” with Spock so this is a big moment for him, which is why his response is a very flustered, “and uh you also live and…”
Watch it again
Season 2 will premiere Thursday, June 15 on Paramount+ in the U.S, the U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The second season will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in South Korea, with premiere dates to be announced at a later date. Following the premiere, new episodes of the 10-episode season will drop weekly on Thursdays.
Season 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is currently available to stream exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the U.K., Latin America, Australia, South Korea, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave in Canada and on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe.
Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
Aw man I can’t wait for season 2.
On a related note, this June is a great month for us geeks old enough to have lived through 1989. We are getting new Star Trek, Indiana Jones and Michael Keaton as Batman. All in the same month!
And later this year we’ll be getting a new Ghostbusters as well.
Just like ’89.
Ugh hopefully we get something better than TNG and Star Trek V. What a waste of the awesome TOS cast and movie environment.
Star Trek V was not the best of movies, to be sure. Lacking from budget, visual effects, script issues… but there were some great Kirk, Spock, Bones moments in there as well that I really loved.
The last Ghostbusters was a flop. Indiana Jones has received horrid reviews. A 71 year old Michael Keaton as Batman excites me even less than a 30 year old Keaton did.
Really, I thought it did really well? I haven’t seen it yet, but it must have did well enough if a sequel is coming this year.
I mean, we’re not getting another Kelvin movie this year…or next. ;)
And I suspect both Indiana Jones and Flash are going to be huge due to the nostalgia factor alone. And supposedly Flash is suppose to be really good. Indy however, yeah.
Ghostbusters Afterlife was awesome!!! I thought they did a great job bringing in the new while honoring the legacy characters.
+1
I thought they did really well with Egon
So…Kirk 3.0 is going to buddy up with a ‘Noonien Signh’ in Season 2, and then I guess forget about that by the time he gets to Space Seed? Ok whatever lol.
Overall though I am very hyped for this upcoming season. Se. 1 was (IMO) some of the best Trek we have seen in years, along with Picard Se. 3 of course!
As T’Pau would say, that quote is all of Nu Trek in a single package.
I don’t recall him ever saying that he wasn’t acquainted with any Noonien Singh in TOS.
Yeah, but you think it might have come up.
It didn’t for the same reason that Ahsoka Tano was never mentioned in Revenge of the Sith. La’an Noonien-Singh wasn’t a canon character yet when Space Seed and Wrath of Khan were filmed. It means literally nothing that Kirk didn’t mention her then. Lucasfilm isn’t gonna do a special edition of Revenge of the Sith to have Anakin Skywalker mention Ahsoka Tano or Captain Rex. Nobody is going to special edition Space Seed either.
…”going to special edition Space Seed either” – again, you mean. Because they already have once….
Okay. They won’t do that again. Besides they can’t. It’d be way too much money since Montalban is dead.
Why? If you meet somebody and they share a surname with a former colleague would you automatically assume that the two were related and proceed to grill them on the subject? Now if it turns out that Kirk and Laan have travelled back in time to the eugenics war and Kirk comes face to face with Khan then we might have a problem but even if they do that it doesn’t necessarily break canon as lots of time travel stories involve a reset. Maybe we should wait and see what actually happens before we condemn then for breaking canon.
Looks great… makes you wish the Big-E got a part to play in the Klingon War. Would have looked great with Connies, Ortega flying fighter/shuttle support and D-7 battle crusiers with real Klingons. Oh well… here is hoping we finally get a good D-7 on Constitution class fight with real strategy, tactics, etc TWOK style, that way it was meant to be! lol
Also I already love Chief Engineer Pelia. “I have a crazy theory“.. “I love a crazy theory” haha Now that’s situational humor for you. Totally am going to use that in a meeting soon.
Some of the moralising sound bites sound cringe BUT this season does look like a whole lot of fun. I didn’t care for Season 1 but this looks to be a step up in my eyes so I am cautiously optimistic!
Looks like the court martial hearing room is a redress for Disco’s Starfleet HQ set.
Yeah it’s exactly that! ;)
I watched the first season twice, and enjoyed it much more the second time. The only hang-ups for me are the way they play fast and loose with canon (which I’m basically disregarding so it won’t bother me), the current-day phrases and language they use (‘you got this,’ etc.) and the casting of JTK, which to me is abysmal. It’s a fun show to watch, but to me it doesn’t jibe with the prime timeline. Just one (old) guy’s opinion.
I’m willing to give the guy some time to find his space legs. I wasn’t immediately wowed by Peck as Spock either, but he’s grown into the role pretty well. My bigger gripe was that we got James T in S1 at all, AU or no. I’d have been fine with waiting a full season for him to show, especially after the wink and nudge we got with Sam.
Absolutely agree with waiting to introduce James T. MUCH later would have worked for me. I think it takes the onus off of Pike to an extent, which is kind of a bummer. I’m also not Wow’ed by the way they portray Sam, as kind of a PIA coward, but it is what it is. Again, a fun show, though.
I feel like they are def testing the waters with New Kirk, in the same way they did with Pike on Discovery. Wouldn’t surprise me if they try to spin off eventually into a “new” TOS with parts of this cast (or maybe not, given the luke-warm reception this new Kirk has gotten across the board form fans old and new).
Agreed, the casting of Kirk is just plain weird. Will the actor grow on me?? The show needs to grow first. Weakest character by far is Ortega who is filling the Travis/Dax/Laforge (from TNG S1) role ie do not really know what to do with the character so just give her some lines to feed the other actors. But everyone deserves a chance so I hope they give her something to do in S2 onwards
Also what is with the Gorn being a major threat, and why is there a descendant of Khan in the show? On the other hand the one thing I was really Pleased with was when they showed Sybok!! I hope we get to see more of him. I love STV am not ashamed to say so :-p
Making Sybok awesome and giving him some back story might enhance Star Trek V.
I’d be game for a season or two covering the last two years of the original five year mission, though not so much a whole TOS redo. But I don’t know how much value P+ would see in a project that’d have a set cutoff date regardless of popularity. And agreed that our newest Kirk is the weak link for now, but like I said, I’m willing to give him some time to own the role.
Age wise I feel that Paul Wesley would be a better fit for a post tmp era series and they wouldn’t have to worry about having a limited window to tell a story as in universe there’s about 10-15 years between TMP and TWOK.
They did it with Picard. Originally it was supposed to be a single season, then became 3.
Peck’s Spock is arguably better than Zachary Quinto although it is all a bit academic as it is impossible not to compare to Nimoy. I do get more of a Spock vibe from Ethan Peck though than Quinto for whatever it is worth. Hmmmmm this show is balanced on a knife edge for me, it has so much potential but the writers of “Nu-Trek” just can not write to save their lives, I was impressed by **some** of season 1 but I am wondering did they just randomly fluke a good episode or 2 or are they finally giving us proper Star Trek for the first time in 20 years? The last episode where they basically remade “balance of terror” was really weird though, great episode in terms of production etc but why be so lazy and remake a TOS episode basically line for line? Cautiously optimistic but have been stung now ever since ENT went off the air.
If all they are going to do is rehash TOS then forget it
Peck is so much better than Quinto, I agree.
There is NO comparison. Peck has the voice, attitude and gravitas; Quinto decidely does not.
Put Quinto’s face — he bears more of a physical resemblance to Nimoy — on Peck’s portrayal and it would be perfect.
When I finish of Picard season 3, I’m going to rewatch SNW again before the season 2 premiers starts. I got two weeks to finish them both so plenty of time. :)
And like you, the canon stuff bother me, but I’m not going to let it hinder my overall feelings on the show so far which I am truly enjoying. Unfortunately the new Kirk sucks, but maybe next season will be an improvement.
I agree with phrases such as “Copy” and “You got this”. If one reads “The Making of Star Trek”, there’s a reason why neither Mr. Spock nor anyone else refers to anything as “groovy”, and perhaps why Riker doesn’t describe something as “gnarly”.
A better response to an order is “Aye sir”, not “copy”.
Look I don’t normally nit-pick and I know it’s all in good fun and is of literally no consequence but regarding the latest trailer, Ortega’s shuttle antics just rub me the wrong way. Even if she’s done it 100 times, it seems like a risky and unnecessary maneuver. Not even Pike seems to mind that she nearly kills everyone. The scene where she spins and shoots the asteroid is also super risky, but the shuttle landing irks me more, as it’s just showing off, making everyone nauseous, and putting all their lives at risk. Anyone feel this way about her maneuvering?
I kind of feel that way about her attitude in general. But I may be in the minority there. Her comments and actions just don’t seem terribly ‘starfleet’ to me.
I would assume the shuttle is damaged and she is doing the best she can. I think a great pilot having been there and can deal with the emergency situation is the sign of a good officer.
The worst is for someone to panic. If your plane engine explodes would you rather have the pilot that looks over, sees the engine is on fire and starts panicking or goes all serious and cold, or the pilot that goes “well, this landing just got interesting” but stays calm because he/she has done it before.
That is also situational comedy because it makes sense. Some are actually trained to joke to relax in those situations to ensure you are not losing it and staying rational… and you always wonder if it will actually work or if one would just panic.
Unprofessional to the max. But it’s the writer’s fault, not the actress.
Last time there was a trailer thread, I noted that Ortegas is pretty much the same type of personality of a former colleague who was a pilot … he went on to command a squadron and then a wing.
An ex military on this board also commented that it was not out of their experience either.
Yes, some pilots say little and formal, but it’s not representative of all of them.
There’s a significant difference between professional military as fans may imagine and the reality. Let’s not get down on writers who aren’t wrong in the way they are writing pilot jocks.
Nope. I’m fine with it.
rewatching season 1 to get ready for season 2 and still looking forward to it and SNW is lightyears better than DSC, but after Season 3 of PIC, SNW has lost a little bit of its shine. i just want to jump back in to the 25th century and the Titan-A / Enterprise-G
What they need to eventually do is put the Kelvin cast into the movies and give us the Enterprise-A and Titan with Saavik!!!
I really enjoyed season 1 of SNW but yeah more 25th century Trek is what I long for the most as well Sean. But cross your fingers, we’ll probably get it in the future (no pun intended…ok, maybe a little ;)).
I would like to carry on with a Legacy series as well. Let’s move forward, post-TNG and after SNW, enough with the prequels. If anything, cover the period between TUC and TNG.
The reality is the overwhelming majority of fans wants to go forward in a post-Nemesis setting. They obviously know this,and why 5 of the 6 current shows (when you include Starfleett Academy) are indeed post-Nemesis. But I think most fans specifically want a 25th century show more than others because you can use the legacy characters but also create new characters to build on this era that is now wide open. It really is the best of both worlds. ;)
And another reason why I believe it’s more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’ that the Legacy show will happen.
I do love this show, but I still have several beefs with it: 1) Ortegas is far too broadly written. 2) The new Gorn are so off the mark, it’s bizarre. 3) Kirk romances Khan’s ancestor, then does not recognize Khan a few years later in TOS, and none of the cast comments on the same last name. 4) Uhura and Chapel meet T’Pring in SNW, then forget who she is by the time of TOS. Overall, the writing on this show is fun and the cast are great, but there is too much sloppiness and illogic.
On #2 I do think they should have made it where it isn’t the Gorn, but a closely related lizard type race. That’s the point of saying its the Gorn and then making them totally different. Also first contact I think should have stayed Arena, could have easily just made it a related race maybe in an alliance or something. #3 – I don’t think Kirk would be all “oh man, your great, great, great, great grandfather was a dictator!! OMG I am totally going to remember that. I mean there are a lot of Signh’s I assume (and I don’t see her being all, I’m NOONIEN SINGH” . Also in Space Seed, I think it’s safe for Kirk to think that they two had never met and had no connection even if they had the last name. #4) Uhura and Chapel really had no time or focus to be all “oh yeah, it’s T’Pring”. Instead it was all we need to get Spock to Vulcan, and on Vulcan they weren’t really present.
UHURA: She’s lovely, Mister Spock. Who is she?
SPOCK: She is T’Pring. My wife.
She had no idea why T’Pring was.
Was that on the bridge? I have to rewatch Amok Time!!
Yikes, could have worked had they not had T’Pring and Uhura get close/introduce themselves, you think the writers could have avoided that.
Yes you do! And I wish the writers had as well. It’s pretty clear that even Spock hadn’t seen her since they were children.smh
Yeah. This is something I had forgot about as well until the premiere episode came on and I saw many people commenting on that. Again that’s not ‘bending’ canon, that’s outright breaking it.
But I’m willing to overlook it because at this point, you will be hitting your head against a wall if you didn’t over some of it at least.
That’s why I’m pretty much ditching canon/continuity with this show, treating it as a separate entity. It makes it much more enjoyable. As you pointed out, there are just way too many inconsistencies like that for plausibility. Agreed, great cast and fun to watch, but no way I’m buying all these differences as to canon.
I would not recognize my wife’s grandfather, let alone her great^4 grandfather.
And when Kirk and co do, in fact, realize that their very sleepy/fatigued passenger Khan is in fact Khan Singh, they know they are in trouble already. The last thing that Kirk is going to do, is tell Khan – hey, I used to bang your great, great, great, great granddaughter. La’an has already indicated that she has negative feelings for Khan, and Kirk would not get her wrapped up in that.
Did Uhura meet T’Pring? Was she on the bridge when T’Pring was on the screen?
UHURA: She’s lovely, Mister Spock. Who is she?
SPOCK: She is T’Pring. My wife.
The point is that in TOS, she has no idea Spock is married and doesn’t know who T’Pring is.
Exactly! They didn’t ‘bend’ canon in this case, they outright broke it the second T’Pring showed up on the Enterprise.
Not necessarily. So far Uhura and T’Pring have not met to my knowledge.
These mental gymnastics are tiring. TOS is five years away in the timeline. Uhura and Spock work together every day on the bridge and on a ship that only has 200 crew members. T’Pring has already been on the ship multiple times. It’s not a secret they are together. Do you honestly think she wouldn’t know who T’Pring was five years later? Does this make any real sense logically?
And do you think they won’t meet together since T’Pring already met Chapel in episode 5 who also didn’t know who T’Pring was in TOS?
To which many reply, so what?
it’s only ‘so what?’ if they call this show a new timeline. But they are actually insisting it’s in the same continuity as TOS, which when they do stuff like that and w/ the Gorn makes one wonder then if they are even AWARE of the original continuity.
From a pedanticanon perspective, either call it a new timeline or be as faithful as possible to the original timeline. Having your cake and eating it too ends up more like they are just saying ‘meh, let them eat cake’
Also, Ortegas is there to attract younger viewers. My daughter likes her (I do too). If Star Trek is going to live or die by the people who watched TOS and TNG alone, it’s going to die.
The Gorn are a problem. Granted all we have seen so far is younglings. But TOS Gorn has always been recognized as a larger threat, somewhere between Tholian level threat and Klingon level threat. They have established that the Gorn are extremely smart, but they have to show somehow that they work as a community and not just as vicious lizards. I am all for the creation of a big bad which is not Romulan or Klingon — I think the Gorn retcon may be a bit too far — but does it really stop me from liking the show? No.
The Gorn thing is also dumb because they’re just lizard Romulans. In the season finale when they did “Balance of Terror” (Dumb Version), the Romulans behaved exactly as the Gorn did, right down to culling their own.
On the Ortegas thing, that feels like a situation created by the writers finishing enough of the season, writing-wise, well in advance of shooting. I don’t think they knew what they had with her until it was too late. I think Melissa Navia is a bright sparkly presence but she was written a bit more sardonic or Daria-like. Her being the Stiles stand in “Balance of Terror but it sucks” was kind of a big tell in terms of the plan going into shooting versus the reality of shooting. I’m sure we’ll see an adjustment in this season where she’s more fun and pumps everyone up. Definitely a standout character from season one.
Yeah agree with 2-4 easily! Its the stuff that doesn’t make it a great show for me, but still a solid show overall when you ignore all the blatant canon issues.
I’m going to wait on #1 though. I think Ortegas is probably a bit too comical at times but I want to see how she develops this season and how she is treated in the episode that focuses on her this season. They should’ve had one last year but when you have only 10 episodes and a big ensemble its only so much you can do I guess.
In the 23rd century Noonien Singh is as common as :”Smith” or “Jones”…
….or Soong
You can’t keep making new Trek without bending some stuff. Just go with it. It’s not going to kill us.
Great analysis TM! And soooo excited for this season now but I’ve loved every season of these shows since the first season of SNW. It’s just been a great year overall even if it all haven’t been perfect. I now love every show minus Discovery sadly, but I’m hoping that one will go out with a bang too.
It’s a great time to be a fan. :)
When I was a kid I used to love drawing the Big E in exaggerated perspective like in the shot with the Paramount + logo. (Often when I should have been doing schoolwork.). Casts and the decades pass, but I’ll never get over loving that ship.
When I was a senior in high school, I spent an awful lot of the last half of my senior year trying to draw the mothership from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (my GPA was so bad that even with a killer SAT score, I was not getting offers from anyplace, so I just gave up.) After awhile, I realized that it didn’t matter how long I spent, the mothership was always going to look incomplete (and BAD!), so I hit on a shorthand way of sketching it that emphasized the belly, where I’d put messages like BEAT ARMY or LOOK BEHIND YOU (it was usually taking phaser fire from a stick-figure Enterprise off in the distance.) Until I tossed my yearbooks a few years back, I still had a mothership on the front page where all the signed messages go, and nearly everybody commented on it unfavorably and truthfully. (it was much better than the previous year, when a ‘friend’ wrote ‘you’re lucky to be on your feet after that gallon of wine and thai stick,’ which got me in real trouble at home — and it wasn’t even true!)
I don’t know if I ever shared this here or not, but there was a girl I had a crush on back then who I kept pestering to see CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. Karol did finally go in late spring 78 (with somebody else) and told me afterward, “Legs, I’ll be honest … I liked the movie … but why did he have to get on the ship at the end?” I never did ask her out, and I cannot tell you even now whether it was failure of nerve or a part of me that decided, ‘if she doesn’t get the end of this movie, she is never going to understand me.’
The problem I see continuing with SNW is that the tone is flippant and unprofessional. The showrunners are pandering to unserious and lowest common denominator folks. They don’t have faith in the material so they’re ‘having fun with it’. Is that what fans were asking for when they supported a series for SNW?
Aww but I love being the lowest common denominator. wtf does this comment even mean anyway.
People think they’re sophisticated because they watch Star Trek, apparently, and no amount of showing them the silly nonsense from TOS will cure that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a secret agent holodeck program to run.
It means someone is looking for something to bitch about. Because professional Kirk wasn’t a skirt chaser, or raped his Yeoman, or Spock leered at her about it, or that the TNG professional bridge crew took a whole damn season to figure out “the boy” had a name.
Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
I just see it as more lighthearted and cheerful. I think they just wanted a show that is less dark and tense after all the flack they got with DIS and PIC being too serious and cynical. But I agree they can make the tone a little serious at times and the dialogue more mature. A little closer to TOS and TNG than Lower Decks ;).
I think the point they are missing is that you have to have both yin and yang. The playful asides — whether they involve the command staff on Trek or cop partners in THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO, to name a show I recall as a teen that I enjoyed most for their repartee rather than their casework — work as a break from the drama and/or to offer character insight, it isn’t just a matter of where they live all the time cracking wise.
TOS humor, aside from the never-worked-for-me line about dipping little girls’ pigtails in inkwells, fell most often into this category, and that’s why it worked (along with the occasional turn toward farce like A PIECE OF THE ACTION.)
For me, it only really works when you have a solid veil of professionalism supporting it.
I always like to cite Shatner talking about wearing command as a comfortable old jacket, hence his laid-back style, rather than the authoritarian mode that I found so weird about Picard given the 24th is supposed to be more evolved, not less. But Shatner also said he had to evince authority confidently so that people knew better than to question Kirk in a key situation. He said he struck that balance so that you wouldn’t get killed because your subordinate is saying, No Jim, turn the ship left not right doesn’t float on the bridge of any ship.
Short answer is to get the writing right and the tone should take care of itself. Wish it was an answer that these writers could deliver on.
I don’t think anyone is gonna mutiny on Pike because he doesn’t have whatever Shatner had in his portrayal. Because he does still have what Kirk had. He respects and cares about his crew and they respect and care about him. How they talk and walk and everything else doesn’t change that. Also if a captain can’t take being told that they’re wrong sometimes then why tf are they a captain.
“Don’t confuse style with intent,” said a stuffy-but-mellowing Frenchman.
Very much agreed with all of this Kmart!
“A little closer to TOS and TNG than Lower Decks”. You hit the nail on the head there, Tiger. I LOVE Lower Decks! But it’s intended to be cartoonish. I wasn’t expecting that from SNW. The writers need to course correct a bit, as you imply.
It’s interesting how several of us who have worked with real military, especially pilots, don’t find the deliberate colloquialism in informal communications at all unprofessional or unrealistic.
My experience working alongside military colleagues has been that the formal communication chain and tone is very formal, but otherwise they can be much more informal than in other workplaces and rely heavily on informal communication to fill in the rest.
Yeah, and I been critical of LDS doing the same thing and I love it too. But of course it’s easier to get away with it on LDS for being a comedy. Again I don’t have a major issue with it on SNW, but it does just feels a little too flippant at times. I just think they can nudge it a little bit more to the middle.
It’s really not bothering me at all.
Flippant is a pretty good description. I don’t know why they couldn’t simply channel that attitude through one character, like a Tom Paris, with Ortegas. But they want to make Pike that way at times for some reason, too, and I find it a bit jarring. He’s the level-headed commander, but then it’s like someone flips a switch and suddenly he’s the college professor trying too hard to be the cool guy from Coolsville who’s cool with the kids. Which ear do you think he’ll get pierced this season?
I want professionalism, as Kmart described above. And I always liked the mournful Pike in the TOS version. That said, Anson Mount just pops, and I think he will show throughout this series’ run that he can do it all when the trip and the script are well written. So he pops out the crew, but is privately serious about his dilemma. Grief has many faces.
There’s no such thing as “lowest common denominator folks”. That’s a highly pretentious load of garbage you just wrote there friend.
The Original Series is peak camp, which is unserious by nature.
I loved most of S1 of SNW and found it much better than any of the post-Voyager Trek (yes, that includes S3 of Picard). So I’m eagerly anticipating S2 of SNW!!
Screeners went out to reviewers this week. The first 6 are pretty darn good.
How do they compare to season one, Ralph?
Thanks for the non spoiler summation.
Great for good non spoiler word of mouth to get going.
I saw elsewhere that Paramount sent out the screeners with reviews embargoed until just before the premiere.
Wow another good season after Picard. Star Trek is on a roll. :)
It’s funny how people react to Ortega’s seemingly anachronistic dialogue – feeling like it seems to “now” for someone in the 23rd century to be saying. On the other hand, I know I hate it when writers try to make up “futuristic slang” – like “frak” in Battlestar Galactica. It’s a delicate balance – you don’t want to seem too present day, and when you write something that sounds “new” then it feels out of place. One thing we know is that for centuries, people have spoken formally, casually and colloquially. And of course some slang (and “four letter” words) have been around for centuries, so there’s no reason to suppose that they are going away any time soon. So, is Ortega (and sometimes Pike) too “present day” in what they say, yeah, probably, but no reason to assume that people won’t speak that way in the future. It was infrequent on TOS because it wasn’t the TV writing style at the time, but more than once, we heard McCoy say “damn it” or “in a pig’s eye.”
Well, there is no one TV writing style, though. It could just as well be as formal as any modern drama. I mean, Better Call Saul had a less jokey tone than this show and that had honest-to-goodness comedians Bob Odenkirk and Michael McKean in it!
Anyway, I think it might be easier going if they kept the jokey dialogue and moments to one character like Ortegas, but the writers for whatever reason choose to spread the jokes around to nearly every character. Even Spock appears to be getting into the goofy going to warp catchphrase game. Also, why is that a thing in-universe now? It’s just an order, guys. Obsessing over catchphrases is soooo 1991.
I much prefer Frak than Disco’s f-bombs which were so jarring (regardless of moralizing arguments)
I never found any of the “F bombs” jarring because I’m an adult. Whereas Frak takes me out of the moment every single time.
F bombs are just normal to me.
Me too. I use them all fucking day long in the real world.
Me, Aaron Fox, who also uses them multiple times a day. (Also yeah that’s not this body’s name and if you Google it, you won’t find me unless you know what specifically to look for so no worries.)
Is it really anachronistic if what’s being depicted is the future?
Ld. Unis are great but I think the black is a little low on the live action. Can’t wait for s2
The communicators sit on the line in the animated version, but it’s up on the shoulder due to the distortion of animated figures.
So, it was either keeping the same design and having the communicators moving up the communicators in a silly location high up, having the communicators where they should be but on the red, or dropping the black.
Having seen how the costume design team in Toronto works up every possibility (based on previous releases of sketches), I expect they went with what looked best in real life.
> Later in the trailer, there is a shot of the Enterprise escaping an energy wave with three Klingon D-7 battle cruisers right behind
The room behind them are bend like an lens. So i assume more it’s an Gravity Shock-wave they try to break free . Perhaps that’s why the Pilot is spinning the Ship hope to create some corkscrew effect or something mumbo jumbo
I just cannot figure out the horrible casting of Kirk. Zero presence or charisma. Every other casting choice was great.
Yeah, this new Kirk really sucks. :(
I’m hoping I will be proven wrong next season but I’m not holding my breath.
Who is having a hard time seeing 40 year old (!) Tawny Newsome as Mariner who is in her late 20’s? At least Quaid is 30 and closer in age (mid-20’s) to his character. Perhaps once we hear them in character, it’s more believable…