Written by Kirsten Beyer & Davy Perez
Directed by Eduardo Sanchez
Logline
Returning to a planet that dredges up tragic memories, Captain Pike and his landing party find themselves forgetting everything, including their own identities as he confronts a ghost from his past.
Nothing to add pertaining to this last FANTASTIC episode; I really just wanted to say I appreciate everyone posting here. After Reddit, I thought these kind of threads were done for, but here we are. So even if no one reads this, thank you and much love 🙏
We are reading this and I totally agree.
Wow, these SNW writers really bring it each week, don’t they? Not to say every episode is perfect but I’ve found every single one to be very entertaining and exactly what I want out of Star Trek in 2023. The combination of standalone stories mixed with underlying character development and arcs is perfect.
As for this week, the idea of encountering a planet that could make you forget everything was weirdly creepy, if not a bit implausible. Even if this wasn’t her showcase episode, I grinned at Ortega’s “I AM THE PILOT!” moment. Also enjoyed the away team being out of sorts on the planet which I thought was well done and not an action overdose like the season opener.
SNW really is a masterclass in balancing episodic and narrative storytelling.
I’d love to attend a workshop/lecture with Goldsman, Myers, et al.
Wow, these SNW writers really bring it each week, don’t they?
Don’t they just! Genuinely excited whenever I fire up the episodes and watch the intro everytime (love the intro music!)
I know the feeling! SNW’s theme and opening credits definitely bring back memories of eagerly looking forward to TNG every week. It’s easily my favorite Trek theme since TNG.
Can the writers stop making La’an suffer? she can’t catch a break lol
Miles O’Brien: “First time?”
A very TOS episode that I thoroughly enjoyed!
Can we let La’an have a few happy moments in this season? That woman must be riddled with PTSD by now.
It was great to finally get Pike back! Has he ever told his girlfriend that he’s almost certainly going to be disabled? What a pickle he’s in. I think if I were in his shoes I would have let the relationship end. The guilt must be driving him insane.
I feel like they might be messing around with the timelines so that they can save Pike from his horrendous fate and just say it’s an alternate timeline compared to TOS. Normally I’d be against that, but it’s Pike and I love him so much that I almost want them to do it.
The nature of a time crystal is that it’s a fixed event in every timeline forward.
Once Pike drew the crystal on Borath, it was locked in.
Thanks, I should know that, I’ve seen every episode!
In a kind of sad way he does have a happy ending. I just don’t want it to happen to him. Poor old Pike!
Annotations up at https://startrek.website/post/282663.
This was a very TOS episode yet in terms of feel.
The dialogue could easily have come from the mouths of the TOS cast, and the situation on the planet reminiscent of officers violating the Prime Directive like in TOS: “The Omega Glory” or “Bread and Circuses”. Even Mount’s delivery when on the planet was Shatner-esque.
I can readily imagine Kirk, McCoy and a random redshirt or Chekov on the planet in Pike, M’Benga and La’An’s place, and Sulu pulling it together like Ortegas.
I agree that it has a genuine TOS feel.
Especially as it gets back to the mid 20th century thought experiments around how the mind functions, but informed my more current understanding of memory, cognitive function and emotion.
I wasn’t quite sure the balance of the scenes was what it could have been, but it was good to see all of the main cast having their moments. I was nonetheless frustrated that Number One was quickly sidelined once again.
Also I was uncomfortable with how far Pike was willing to go in his aggression in order to get information from Zack. I believe we’re supposed to feel that, but it did feel that it was pushed just that moment longer to drive home the point that Pike’s deep ethics are what keeps him in check, not his emotions. It also tracks with his anger and how he even used it to break the thrall of the Talosians in The Cage.
But overall, I liked it. It’s a deeper and more challenging episode than it may seem on the surface, first watch. I suspect it will be one that stands up over a longer horizon.
I felt like they were trying to show Captain Pike as going a little far when beating up Zac, but I thought he was being totally reasonable given the situation of “this guy knows how to keep your memories and you really really need to force him to hand that information over.” There was no way for him to know all he had to do was wait around in the palace for a little while.
It’s an interesting insight into Pike’s character - the fact that he had to remember not to beat the crap out of Zac implies that innately he’s not a pacifist or a nice guy; that dark side is something he’s learned to keep in check.
@psychothumbs @khaosworks That *was* interesting. His instincts work overpowering Zac in the phaser battle but then we don’t actually know if he’ll “remember” he can’t just beat him senseless afterwards. Maybe we’ll see some Pike backstory at some point that shows him learning ethical lessons when he’s younger.
Yeah theres a sort of goofy way memory loss works and how it was still taken very seriously gave me a good old school trek vibe which I dug throughout the episode.
This episode should have started in media res, with the away team already on planet and having lost their memories. Once we got the explainer as to what was happening, then we could return to the Enterprise to show the growing crisis there, and finally wrap everything up as the episode already did.
Yeah, the more I think about it, I think you’re right. It’s possible they didn’t because they wanted to bookend it with stuff about the pilot.
The episode as well was a decent one-episode-and-done thing, with a few threads they left open to explore later. But I agree that if they’d begun with the memory loss and cages, and worked backwards from there, it would have been “cooler” and more emotionally effective.
The episode wasn’t a bad one. It wasn’t a great one. It was solid. Given how many fans have said they want Trek like this, it’s probably serviceable and “good enough” for the season.
I’m looking forward to some cooler episodes, though. The first 3 spoiled me, I liked them a lot.
Was the high pitched ringing sound really necessary, especially for that long each time? That almost physically hurt and it scared the fsck out of my cat.
@BorgDrone @ValueSubtracted As a person with tinnitus, it seemed important to me. Let me know exactly what was going on. It’s also very common in video games, for example when someone is dazed by a nearby explosion. Again it conveyed a lot of meaning to me and helped explain what they were going through.
Sure, but there is a difference between having that sound at low volume for 2 seconds and blasting it through all 10 speakers for 20.
It seemed a perfectly harmless and appropriate volume to me listening on headphones. Perhaps your bass needs adjustment.
It seemed a perfectly harmless
As someone with tinnitus, it not only hurt, but triggered my tinnitus to be worse for the rest of the day.
Far from harmless. I had a proper issue with the excessive ringing in this episode.
Well that definitely sucks. Sorry you had to deal with that.
It’s not the bass that was the problem, it was the high pitched sounds.
Ooh, look at this guy with ten speakers! Fancy pants over here! : P
Yeah. I watched with a loved one who needs hearing aids, and I can vouch that that exact pitch plays havoc with high-tech hearing aids and apparently results in actual physical pain. We finished the episode with the sound way down, reading the captions to understand it. It’s fine for 99% of people but I would have appreciated a warning for the 1% that experienced actual pain from that.
Memory loss is one of the scariest things in the known universe. This is a horror episode to me.
Similar to how we refer to TOS episodes as “The Nazi Planet” and “The Gangster Planet” this one will be “The Alzheimer’s Planet.”
Ok, at the risk of sounding like a filthy casual, it’s only now when I’m digging into Memory Alpha that I realized we’re finally getting visualization of what Pike was so miserable about in TOS the Cage. I was like, why does Rigel VII sound so familiar…
This is the kind of retcon I live for!!
I’ve been watching Trek since I was basically a baby but don’t have anywhere near the depth of knowledge of most people posting here. We are still valid!
I like that the original away mission failing wasn’t some weird magical thing - it was just a mission that went bad in a fairly mundane way.
I don’t understand that dude, needling the dude with no memory who was beating on him, then acting all surprised when that same dude puts a gun on him. Like, what was he trying to do? It seemed like he was trying to get Pike to kill him, but then he wasn’t. Wtf?
deleted by creator
The way I read the scene was that he was so high off his power that he thought with the tables turned and Pike having no power that he would have the upper hand. But Pike managed to subdue him and High Lord Zacarias was all of a sudden staring down the barrel of a phaser rifle and all of a sudden wasn’t so confident that the Pike he knew, who would lower the weapon once the combatant was subdued, was still there. I think the sudden switch was just an “OH shit, what have I done?” moment.
@Tired8281 @crazycanadianloon yeh that’s my interpretation. For a moment it looks like Pike has not recovered enough to remember he shouldn’t kill someone when he has the upper hand. Zac suddenly changes demeanor when he realises Pike might not show any mercy.
Really enjoyed this episode, it didn’t make the most sense at times but made up for it with an extremely disturbing core concept. And there is comfort in the idea that even without a significant portion of our memories, we’re still “us”.
I’m confused about one thing though and maybe I just missed something so someone can enlighten me. If the palace is so well-protected that just literally being inside it for ten minutes is enough to completely reverse the memory loss, why was Pike first affected by it while standing in the palace? Is it just that they weren’t in there for very long during their first encounter with Zac, and the symptoms caught up with him, or did I miss something about how that worked?
Yeah this episode didn’t make much sense. Outside of the disturbing concept and well directed drama, this episode felt pretty weak
It didn’t really bother me, still thought it was a very good episode, but I am glad it’s not just me being stupid!
At the start of the episode, when Ortegas was getting ready for the away mission, I thought this episode would have the scene from the start of the season 2 trailer where she (gleefully) pilots a shuttle down to a planet.
At least we know she will eventually get to go on an away mission!
This episode belongs together with the better episodes of TNG. I liked it a lot.
Definitely felt like classic trek this week. Fun episode. I was really hoping we would get a more in depth episode for Ortegas’ character. I did read something last year that she was getting her own episode, so im going to assume this wasn’t it.
I did let out a big guffaw when I realized their bait and switch. Started it out like it was going to be an Ortegas focused episode, and then Spock comes in and pops hers and everyone else’s bubble with his Vulcan science. Loved how she put the hat back on as she was walking away, as if to say “I’m gonna wear this for a while longer because I can, dammit.”
@ieightpi
She didn’t get her own episode but at least a cool hat.😉
oh wow tf was that lol… didn’t know I was signing up for Strange New Worlds: Dementia Simulator…! , great episode!
