Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S2E1 "The Broken Circle" Episode Discussion
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S2E1 "The Broken Circle" Episode Discussion
Description: A distress call from Lt. Noonien-Singh compels Spock to disobey orders and take the USS Enterprise and its crew into disputed space, risking renewed hostilities with the Klingons in a bid to aid their shipmate.
This episode would be fine as S2E3 but for a season opener it feels like it missed the mark.
The episode did some things well and others not sure much. I'll give a thumbs up to the Klingons and a thumbs down to the quippy Marvel like dialogue scenes (Looking at you Ortegas)
I could have done without the extended bit about Spock's warp command. I wanted to grab Ortega's shoulders and shout "Weren't you listening? His Thing is that he gave the order concisely and clearly. And then you spent an endless amount of time on silly nonsense before executing the order."
The scene of M'Benga and Chapel fighting off two dozen Klingons after injecting some unnamed super juice was also weirdly out of place. I don't mind fisticuffs, but it was really stretching belief that these two could fight off that many Klingons by themselves, apparently with only one knife among the thirty of them? And not a single double fist hammer punch was thrown.
I liked Carol Kane's character, and am intrigued by the mystery of her. And it was a weird choice to take the captain off the board completely for the first episode of the season, but this show has also demonstrated that it intends to give its whole ensemble a chance to shine, and this was a good way to do it. No doubt we'll get plenty of Pike and Number One next week.
I thought it was an OK episode, but nothing more than that: hit and miss.
I didn't mind Carol Kane's character, but kept on thinking that she's finally left Taxi's Latka. ;-) Still, an intriguing character.
The fight scene was absurd, and I didn't appreciate it. OK, the superjuice that they injected themselves with to give super strength and speed helped, but they'd still need some fighting history. M'Benga has that to some degree, but not sure about Chapel. Even with that proviso, it still came off as a bit OTT.
Liked that they focussed on Spock taking command and let Pike go on holiday. At least SNW is giving their major characters their time to shine.
I agree with someone I read elsewhere who said that it felt more like a mid-season filler episode than a season premiere. That said, it was a reasonable episode and I look forward to the next one.
I think the best thing I can say is it was competent and nothing really had me rolling my eyes like I would if I was watching Picard or Discovery.