He looks Vulcan, not exactly like Spock.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x10 - "A Quality of Mercy"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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Older Pike tells younger Pike that he’s seen many different timelines. No reason he’d pick the one closest to “the original” to show to Pike. He’d pick the one with most compelling scenario to make his point. And no, we DON’T need to see multiple versions to understand the story. We just need to use our imagination. Not everything needs to be spelled out.
I never felt that was a plot point in Balance of Terror.
Perhaps Pike became more hawkish and this led to the Romulans responding in kind. The idea is that small changes have big consequences which is a common SF trope.
yes, this fixation of modern Trek with ludicrously huge fleets is really annoying: it’s supposed to raise the stake, yet it’s so difficult to communicate how vast these fleets are effectively it just looks stupid.
Really stupid. Space is big. And apparently the Neutral Zone is less than the length of an American football field. (See also: The Enterprise tells Hansen they're still out of range. Except then we see that they are RIGHT THERE.)
Apparently Decius had a really overblown idea of the Praetor's "finest and proudest flagship".
I loved this season and I was pretty chill about the things that don't "line up" with TOS because I was having so much fun. But this episode (with some blindingly shining moments that are exceptions) was such a thud.
But Spock and Pike makes me tear up even writing about it. It was so good.
I think the last time I was this excited for a new season of Star Trek was Best of Both Worlds II.
1) While I agree that I the Romulan Commander shouldn't have been given ridges -- is this really what makes the episode good or bad? Is this really a detail that's important dramaturgically?
2) The Romulan Commander does not look exactly like Spock in either "A Quality of Mercy" or "Balance of Terror." I think you are confusing this with the fact that he was played by Mark Lenard, who later went on to play Spock's father Sarek in S2 "Journey to Babel."
3) The point of the revelation wasn't "the Romulan Commander looks exactly like Ambassador Sarek." The point of the revelation was, "Oh snap, the Romulans and Vulcans are clearly related."
I do kind of wish SNW had booked James Frain to play the Commander, though.
It would have made for a nice symmetry to have the same actor who played Sarek again.There are any number of possible explanations, from the idea that Pike's staying on as Enterprise C.O. indirectly allowed a different person to come to power to the idea that there might be multiple praetors to the idea that Romulan Praetors might use masculine pronouns no matter the gender identity of the actual person holding office to the idea that that particular person might be genderqueer. Again -- is this really that important of a detail? Is this really what makes it a good or bad episode?
No, I think it makes perfect sense. They were probing for weakness; if they felt they had found weakness, they would pounce. If not, they would have plausible deniability.
I believe the implication is that Oh was using her position in the Tal Shiar to co-opt a Tal Shiar fleet for the Zhat Vash.
Yep. The Butterfly Effect.
In fairness, "Balance of Terror" also depicts space as unrealistically small.
Kind of. It was a huge deal in Balance of Terror. He looked enough like Spock that it made everyone's jaw drop in the original. And if they don't want direct comparisons then don't make shot for shot remakes.
The simplest and truest being: They ignored it.
Yes. And I wanted the guy who appeared as Stonn to be Decius.I do kind of wish SNW had booked James Frain to play the Commander, though.
Yes and no. Star Trek always has distance rate and time problems in every iteration. ("We've lost power and we're going to fall into the sun!" "That should take months, right?" "No! It's right NOW!") But at the very least the Neutral Zone was big enough for ships to fly through and be there a while. The Enterprise wasn't entering Romulan space, it was entering the Neutral Zone. Here the Zone isn't big enough to hold a ship.
In TOS you rarely saw ships in the same frame. I'd like to think that it's because they realize that the dialog usually says that the ships are miles (if not thousands of miles) apart. But the reality is they didn't have the budget or the technology. Now the effects are affordable enough that we have space battles that take up the space of a middle school dodge ball game.
But the resemblance between Romulans and Vulcans is still clear enough that the relationship is clearly revealed. So I just don't see how it's that big an issue.
Yes, because it's not that big an issue.
I'm at odds with myself because I'm really enjoying these versions of Chapel and Sam Kirk and M'Benga.
But there is really lots of room to play Star Trek without running into problems. I mean, for one thing, DON'T use characters with names of people that they really aren't. There's a huge amount of room to do a character (Sam) that we've heard of twice and almost saw once. But if you then surround him with people (three, right?) who will seem oddly nonchalant about his death in a few years, well, that's on you.
Don't do Balance of Terror if you don't want to be held to what was in Balance of Terror.
There is all the room in the worlds for Michael Burnam. Spock never mention a sister? So what? He never mentioned a first date. Or his favorite teacher at the academy. We really don't know a lot about Spock. You don't need to then say "Well, she was actually a SECRET and it's against Federation law to talk about her! (But we're totally naming a shuttle craft after Paul Stamets.)" Bleh. (We just re-watched the end of Season 2 of Discovery. I was having such a good time until the Starfleet debrief..)
There was never a Klingon war in the 2250's? Says who? When did they ever mention the Almost War of 2266 again? They barely mentioned the Organians.
You want to write Christine and T'pring? There's not TONS of canon on that point. There's one episode and one scene! They'd never met!
There aren't that many things to run into in TOS canon. Unless you want to go where you will run into things in TOS canon. You want to do big episodes about the Gorn? Go watch THE episode! You want to make a character a descendant of Khan Noonien Singh? Ohhhkay. But maybe watch the episode before you say that she got grief about her NAME hundreds of years later when Our Heroes had barely heard of him.
I love SNW more than any Star Trek in 25 years. But you can either flat out say "We don't care about 'canon'" (fine) or try harder to follow it. "It's tooooo harrrrrrd" is nonsense. I loved Spock Amok. But that wasn't an accident.
I mean, you can care and still not follow it strictly.
The real world scientist.
And for all we know the fictional Paul Stamets was honored by Starfleet because he was a gifted scientist and engineer and the cover story for Discovery being lost in space only referenced his "official" career and those of other officers on the ship.
Yes, but Michael Bunham (who had some notoriety) could not even be mentioned by her PARENTS.
Stigma. Still a thing in the 23rd century. Not like Sarek would mention her anyway.
Or Spock.
Or Sybok.
Hell, look at Sybok. Spock doesn't even tell Kirk who his parents are other than "they're pretty important back home" and that one's an ambassador and the other's a schoolteacher until they come aboard the Enterprise for the Babel Conference in 2267, and by that point Spock's known Kirk for at least two years.
Not talking about family members is a House of Sarek thing.
It was an alternate timeline version of Balance of Terror. That alone should handwave away any differences.
I feel the same exact way. I love this series too, but you can't do a call back to a classic episode or bring back characters and not expect comparisons. I've been doing a re-watch of TOS and ....yeah....they defintely should have paid a little more attention to these type of things. I'm a fan, but not a blind one.
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