Submitted 1 day ago by ValueSubtracted@startrek.website to startrek@startrek.website
Written by: Onitra Johnson & Davy Perez
Directed by: Andi Armaganian
My only complaint is that Ensign Gamble got this great episode, while Jenna Mitchell has yet to see an iota of character development and more than a few minutes of screen time away from the helm. Of course Gamble had to die for the privilege, so I guess that’s fair. Still, I think the writers owe Rong Fum some love.
A lot of random things that weren't explained. Chinese writing? Is there a purpose to the wrist band that was found? With the pattern buffer glitching, it feels like this is a part 1. Who were the other aliens and how did they get the visor?
I know they tried to explain it but why did the building vaporize that guy?!
Note to self, never go on a first away mission. Skip it and go on a second or third once all the kinks are worked out.
The story is reminiscent of more classic trek - away mission, something goes wrong, and the crew have to fix it. There was a lot of classic science fantasy tropes in here - right from the start with the blood magic to open the prison up. When immortality was first mentioned, my immediate thought was that immortality would involve consciousness transfer into another being, and we kind of got that, but not from the immortal beings themselves and instead from others that snuck in through the gaps in between dimensions. I guess these creatures are some sort of lovecraftian indescribable horrors. Seeing how Pelia and Batel both reacted to them suggests there is some shared history amongst many of the species that now exist, and that they all know instinctively to fear them.
They killed off a named character (F for Gamble), which is surprising, but definitely raises the stakes for the rest of the show. I was really not expecting that, and getting such in your face gore (pardon the expression) was quite a lot to take in. The evil doesn’t really seem quite well contained in the pattern buffer, and I hope the crew notice this pretty quickly. If it’s messing with the computer system, if it can quantum phase itself around any barriers, it should be obvious fairly quickly something isn’t right. And the pattern buffer has shown that it can’t keep stuff stable forever without continually re-materialising it, which seems like a really bad idea, so that needs dealing with.
Amongst the characters, Spock really shines out here as the voice of reason. If they had listened to him in the first place this whole thing could have been avoided. While I get where the archaeologists amongst the team were coming from, they should have been overruled, and Spock’s only flaw here was not putting his foot down. As security, La’an should have pushed behind him on this, and chapel shouldn’t have let her desire to explore cloud her judgement.
On sets: Nothing beats a good quarry, love to see that. I really like the exterior and background visuals within the prison - reminds me of the videogame manifold garden (highly recommended if you like first person puzzlers). However, I did feel that the physicality of the room (or just floor) they were on made it very obvious it was a set. The background visuals felt detached from the area where the away team were standing and, backgrounds aside, was too bland for my liking. I think it is a pity we didn’t get to explore more because some parts, especially the exterior and the life form they found, had a really cool design.
The directing was good. It was tense, it captured the confusion in the prison well. The chaos on the ship was exciting and felt like there was a risk of real damage. My only major nitpick was it made it very obvious when the evil was first making it’s presence known. I don’t know if this was an attempt to capture the fact that the evil was there all along and it could choose when to appear, or if it was just trying to signal to the audience “hey, right now something’s not right”, but I would have preferred if it had been more subtle and let us try to figure out what was going on.
Great episode. With an episode like that I can see why they wanted to add some extra comedy ones around it, but I hope there are more like this. Though I could do without the eye gore, in future.
I would not have released Patel into Pike’s custody after how she lost control when confronted with “Gamble”. Like, clearly the being inhabiting his body was malevolent, but “the enemy of my enemy” doesn’t make it ok that she basically got taken over by a consciousness besides her own. Leaving her alone with the captain of the ship feels especially dangerous (and letting her captain her own ship again, for that matter).
Given it’s been established the only person who can really help control Batel is Spock, and he is incommunicado for the whole episode, both Batel and Gamble should have been in confinement as soon as possible.
3/10: well directed horror flick, not particularly good Trek.
Pokéball GO!
Crosspost of what I mentioned on Reddit:
Was this a sly deep cut prequel to ‘Wolf in the Fold’ ?
Given that both episodes cover the same terrain dealing with “monstrous, terrible evil” and " immortal, non-corporeal entities" possessing people?
‘Wolf In The Fold’ also ended with the entity jumping and taking over the ship.
(‘Wolf in the Fold’ in the fold was written by Robert Bloch who also wrote ‘What Are Little Girls Made Of?’, the episode that introduced Korby and Chapel)
It totally was. It’s no coincidence that it was Scotty who caught the entity and Scotty who is taken over by it years later in Wolf in the Fold.
RIP Ensign Gamble. You knew what you were getting into.
I liked this one a lot - I’m generally a fan of “ancient, unspeakable horror” stories, and this one was pretty well-told.
The Enterprise is seemingly able to declare its own red alerts - not much fun in that.
My biggest complaint is this show’s continued abuse of the transporter buffer - it should not be easy to use it as a form of stasis!
To be fair, it was used the way in the TNG Episode Relics, when Scotty spent 75 years stuck in the Jenolan’s transport buffer, so quiite a long precedent.
Sure, but “Relics” had a built-in caveat (which I think was an intentional piece of writing): it had a 50% mortality rate.
The auto-red alerts did stick out a bit, but it kind of makes sense. The computer knows where everyone is and what they usually do, and behaviour-based intrusion detection systems are starting to become normal cybersecurity concepts even today.
RIP security guard.
Soon as he picked up the artifact I knew it was bad vibes from there on out
Exactly. The moment the camera focused on the orb I knew that little twerp (RIP Gamble) would do the typical redshirt thing and pick it up.
The effect on the screen at the end whispered "Borg" in my ears, am I the only one? Could this be an origin story for them?
The planet they were visiting was Vadia IX, which “Trelane” referred to as “the old homeworld” in episode two, so I’m thinking it’s an origin story for something else…
Annotations for 3x05 up at: startrek.website/post/27217291
Stormygeddon@startrek.website 1 hour ago
add +2 to the “some sort/kind of” count
La’an saying “fascinating” makes me wonder if Spock is rubbing off on her.
For some reason I knew Pelia was going to say “heebie jeebies”