What is that I hear? Is it the clarion call of Trek Talk Tuesdays? That’s right. What’s up my know-it-alls!? This week we’re talking about last week’s episode, “Ghosts of Illyria,” and I’m not recapping it and I’m not reviewing it. If you want the review, it’s already on the channel. This is the one where I get into the things you brought up in the comment section, and we talk a little more Star Trek while we’re at it.
One piece of business first. I’m wearing version 2.0 of the uniforms I’m putting together. I’m still lining some of this up with my printer, and I was mostly trying this one on for the quality, which is a nice little zip deal. The rank pins and the combadge come separately, through your various vendors. I’m doing all of this myself, and the idea is big and tall sci-fi uniforms. I’m six foot seven and I weigh about 350 pounds, and it’s hard to find stuff in my size when it comes to cosplaying. So I’m doing my best to put some things together for us big guys, and once I’ve pinned the design down I’ll make them available for other folks too. End of my sales pitch, I promise.
Number One Finally Gets an Origin
The episode gives us our very first official canon backstory for Number One. And the truth is, that isn’t quite the first time. There was a book, back when we were still arguing about whether Star Trek novels counted as canon or not, that gave her a background, and I even think the name Una was used there. I could be wrong, and I can’t remember the name of the book. I just remember reading something similar a while back. Either way, she picks her name because the Illyrian name is actually unpronounceable.
Some folks have been making inferences that the Illyrians we saw on Enterprise and the Illyrians we’re seeing now are different species, or that there’s some confusion there. If there’s one thing Star Trek fans know how to do, it’s rationalize a plot inconsistency. We’ve been doing that for a long, long time. That’s a fandom thing, and it didn’t start with new Trek.
Matthew Strathmore got into it in the comments:
“The Illyrians wanted into the Federation, eh? Well, that’s cool. Guess they (spoilers for Enterprise) didn’t hold a grudge against humanity after all. Or maybe that craft never survived the Expanse long enough to tell the rest of their people what humanity did to them.”
True. But I lean more toward this being a different group of Illyrians. It sounds like they’re one of those species that spreads out, and each group that goes somewhere becomes something a little different. I don’t think they were as homespun as one species that just colonized. When a colony went out, that became what Illyrians were for that place, and the same with the next one and the one after that. So I think the particular group they met on Enterprise hadn’t fully formed what they were yet. I’m willing to go there. I’m willing to rationalize that one away.
What I Dug: The Jackets, and Engineering
There’s a lot I dug, and one of the things I dug was the jackets. If you remember “The Cage,” they wore gray away team jackets over their uniform tops, like any normal person would if they’re going someplace rough. I think this is a little homage to that, a callback, and from a production design standpoint I thought it was really cool.
And we should talk about how sexy engineering looks in this whole episode. Every time they’re looking down that tunnel I’m sitting there going, oh, this is beautiful. It also reminds me of every title sequence of an Iron Man movie ever, because you get the big circle glowing at the end of the thing. As a former chief engineer: chef’s kiss at how gorgeous engineering looks right now.
Everybody’s a Genius, and We Get It
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how self-assured these characters are. We’ve always joked that you’d have to be a rocket scientist to be in Starfleet, and that their Academy would need ridiculous amounts of the most advanced science you could possibly imagine. But there’s a lot of “I’m a genius” going around, and it feels a little on the nose to have everybody keep saying it. I get that you’re all the best at what you do. I’ve never doubted it. So I don’t know that you have to keep reminding me. Just a thought.
Why Didn’t Anybody Think About a Shuttlecraft?
Another observation that came up, and I found myself asking the same question later. We have transporter problems. Fine, totally down, I dig it. Why didn’t anybody think about a shuttlecraft? If I’m not mistaken they should have several on that ship. It’s not one ship, one shuttlecraft. I think there’s four or five of them at least. I feel like they could’ve taken one down.
Now, I like to play both sides of this, so I’ll argue back. If you take a shuttle you deal with several other factors, and “The Galileo Seven” from the original series is the prime example of a shuttle dealing with ion storms. I had to explain to my wife what an ion storm was, and I started with “it’s a totally fictitious sci-fi thing,” and then the truth is I went into great depth and detail about what makes an ion storm in Star Trek. Because that’s what geeks do.
So there’s an answer available. I just feel like they could’ve explained it away for us a little better, and that’s the sign of lazy writing. I don’t mean lazy as in they didn’t want to write it. I think it’s lazy in that they’re not thinking about those kinds of things, and that’s where you need a story keeper, the person who understands how all of this is supposed to work from a writing standpoint and from a sci-fi standpoint. Gene Roddenberry always wanted to make sure the science was viable. It may not be possible today, but in a perfect world, theoretically, it all adds up: phasers, force fields, deflectors, how the warp drive functions, transporter technology, shuttlecraft. It could be real, potentially. And I feel like we lose a little of that when you’re not careful.
Number One Takes the Bridge
Then we get this really great moment when Number One gets back up to the ship and stands on the bridge. In the review I called it the moment she had to tell everybody the bad news. What I noticed this time is that she takes charge in a way that is very Starfleet. Nobody asks questions. Nobody says, well, you’re not Captain Pike, or you’re a woman, or you’re this or that. The order’s been given, let’s go. I was impressed by that, to say the least.
One of you said in the comments on my review that this director is overemphasizing this moment as something more grand than it should be. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest this director has probably never worked on Star Trek before, and I’ll agree with you that it’s a real possibility. Same thing with the writers. I feel like they know what Star Trek is on a perfunctory level, but they don’t know what Star Trek is. So you get somebody who needs a piece of jargon and uses “isolinear chip” the wrong way, and we know what that means, and they’re like, whatever.
Further along, Number One is researching and giving instructions like a first officer, and that’s another one Matthew Strathmore flagged. He made a lot of really good comments this week, a lot of good beats. So sir, you win the Mr. Know-It-All prize as far as I’m concerned.
Rationalization 101: What Is Pike Looking At?
Somebody pointed out that when Number One has the conversation with Pike, we never see what console Pike is using, and when we cut to him he’s holding his communicator.
I’ll say this first: the actor should not have looked at anything. He could very well be looking at his communicator, but the angle is wrong if he is.
The second thing: remember the fourth movie, The Voyage Home. They’re flying in the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, she gives them the coordinates, and he says bring it up on screen. Technology that can take data from point A and generate a viable image, so you get around zooming and lenses and line of sight, is very doable. It’s very plausible, in fact, and it’s not a new science. If the ship can triangulate where an image should be based on the data it’s given and then generate that image, okay, I’m totally down. If we can deepfake today, imagine how much you can extrapolate from just data in the far-flung future.
I’ve said this before: there shouldn’t be windows on a starship. What they’d be are glorified displays showing you outside, because a window is an unnecessary concept when you think about the technology you have available.
So I believe Pike’s picture is coming from the communicator, and the communicator is using a much smaller, more basic version of that monitor technology. If it can extrapolate a 3D view of the entire area from the information it’s pulling in, there’s your answer. Welcome to Rationalization 101.
La’an, Khan, and Whether Star Trek Just Got Smaller
This is the one I want to talk all the way through, and I showed the comment on screen. Matthew Strathmore again:
“La’an Noonien-Singh is related to Khan? Oh boy, is that gonna irritate a lot of Star Trek fans. Why would they do this? This smells like Akiva Goldsman nonsense.”
And then: “Wow, they really did make this character related to Khan, didn’t they? Like, for what purpose other than to feed into nostalgic member berries?”
I haven’t talked much about the casting choices from early on. When those were being announced and I saw the names of the characters, other people wanted to blow up about it. My feeling has always been that I wanted to give the show a shot on its own, and we’re still at that place. They haven’t made La’an’s heritage a major issue. It’s been voiced and talked about twice.
A season like this is 10 episodes, or 12, or 14, instead of the old 22, 24, 26. The purpose of these tighter seasons is to tell a tight beginning, middle and end. Serialized storytelling, not episodic storytelling. And that makes it harder to process information like this. If this were The Next Generation or the original series or Deep Space Nine, you’d have 20-some-odd episodes to digest and chew on before the end of the season, when maybe the Augment decides to stay and everyone says it’s okay, you’ve earned your place. You’d have had all that time to deal with it in the middle of your episodic storytelling. We don’t get that here. You’re stuck with however many episodes we’re getting, and that means you have to concentrate a whole lot of storytelling into smaller bites.
So why would they do this? Well, Matthew, let’s discuss. I do feel like it’s an Akiva Goldsman piece. Anything that subverts the popular opinion, sometimes the showrunners want to go in that direction, and that’s a creative decision. I make no judgments on that. I’m a fan and a consumer of this content, so I meet it where it’s at. If I don’t like something I say I don’t like it. If I love something I say I love it. I don’t go finding reasons to hate things. I will sometimes say things feel a little abrupt, a little stiff, and for me this is one of them.
It seems like every character right now is beginning to be defined by trauma. I don’t know that it’s always got to be trauma. It just seems like it’s working out that way right now, and it’s okay, I’m fine with that. But La’an is going to have a lot of different things to deal with. Is this the best use of this character’s time?
Matthew brings up a really good point. Is it plausible, or does it make Star Trek feel small? Small as in the universe feels a little smaller if everything is that interconnected and tightly woven together. Mind you, it’s not as small as it’d be if there were an Archer on the crew, or a Picard on the crew who’s some great-great-grandfather of the one we know. Obviously Jean-Luc’s the first one to leave, you know what I’m saying, so that’s just an example. It could be anybody. Maybe it’s an earlier Riker. You sit there and you go, does it have to be that small?
So I sit here and ask whether we had to bring these two beats together, because it raises another question: how much does she know? If she knows so much about her ancestors’ history that she was called Augment by other children, then she’d know the end result, which is that they were tried and eventually sent off planet. I would think that’s enough to warn somebody. Hey, by the way, there may be a ship out there floating in space. A derelict, if you will. “Space Seed” is sitting out there in the middle of all this.
You have to be careful that the decisions you’re making aren’t just, like you said, member berries. And not even the right kind of member berries. We were talking about this last week with Star Trek Into Darkness, the J.J. Abrams movie that had Benedict Cumberbatch play Khan. Spoilers if you haven’t seen that movie yet. I find myself asking what the why is, because there’s got to be a point to all this.
If you’re going to go in that direction, there has to be more. I want to know where they’re going with it, and I hope it lands. Even if it doesn’t, I’m still going to enjoy the show. But I hope it lands.
How Dope Is Hemmer
I had three or four comments about this very thing, and I noticed it too: how dope is Hemmer? Level five lockdown, all of this goes down, and Hemmer’s just, boom, clearly we’re doing stuff, and everyone jumps and starts going. Brother’s got himself a tight, tight ship. I love seeing Hemmer as a character. I wish we’d get more than just his brash genius, and hopefully we’ll get more episodes that do that.
Was anybody else confused by the whole Hemmer, emergency transporter, M’Benga thing? Mrs. Know-It-All definitely was. She couldn’t figure out why M’Benga is being creepy and why the lights have to come back on. So I had to explain it, and this is what I’m getting, because the episode says it without saying it. There’s a thing going on, and it’s his daughter in the transporter. So when the chief engineer shows up to investigate, I’m guessing M’Benga turns the light off to make the people out there uncomfortable.
Problem number one: you’re a medical professional. What are you doing causing trouble? Do no harm. That’s rough. I’m not okay with that.
Then you have Hemmer somehow being dumb, for a guy who told us on screen just minutes ago that he’s a genius. He’s not geniusing enough for me right now. Come on, guy. And then M’Benga turns the light back on, because he’s the one who turned it off to begin with. That’s the whole point of that exchange, just in case there was that much confusion about it.
The Memento Mori Trailer: We’re Getting the Gorn
Then we looked at the trailer for episode four, “Memento Mori.” They’re supposed to be hundreds of people here. The bodies were all dragged. “The monsters are coming.” “What monsters?” And somebody takes the Enterprise down into a giant gas cloud of death.
The first thing that came to mind for me, watching everybody walk in, is how easily they’re able to make us feel that level of stress. I love that the episodes are leaning into their own aspects. If it’s scary, here’s some horror. If it’s light, here’s the light stuff. If it’s action, here’s action. When you tell a story, not every story needs to feel the same. If something is scary, let it be scary and play it that way. They’re doing that.
And we’re getting the Gorn. I’m excited. That’s one of the first things I said a while back, when we first saw the season breakdown: one of these ships we’re seeing is going to be the Gorn. It was the Shepherd ship or it was this ship, because you could tell both were being super aggressive. I was actually more convinced the Shepherd ship we saw two episodes ago would turn out to be the Gorn. So once that turned out to be the Shepherds, it cemented for me that this one is the Gorn ship.
There are some refugees they’ve obviously helped, a colony ship or something, and you see La’an trying to help one of the kids who’s dealing with this whole thing. La’an is not stupid. La’an has dealt with a lot and seen a lot. So when the girl starts describing it, I guarantee La’an’s thinking, oh man.
Remember, the Gorn are vicious predatory creatures. We already had that thing where they talked about a lone survivor. The Gorn let a lone survivor go sometimes to draw in others. Letting someone escape can be a hunting tactic to get people to come back in and say, let’s go help them. Then boom, they pounce, and the next thing you know they’re replenishing their numbers. It’s pretty brutal.
I don’t know that we’re actually going to get to see them, because of quote-unquote canon. I also don’t know that we won’t. I’d love to see them. I wasn’t a big fan of the redo they tried back on Enterprise, when they showed an earlier version of a Gorn. It was a little too CGI. What I want is a happy marriage: do with the Gorn what you’ve done with the Enterprise. Take the production design from the original series and make it with today’s aesthetic. That Gorn would look awesome. It would look vicious. It would harken back to the original.
What Strange New Worlds is facing right now is what Doctor Who faced when it was rebooted in 2005. Part of its charm was that papier-mâché monster of the week idea. So taking the charm of the production design of the past and doing it in today’s font, today’s language if you will, is a smart move. Just do that. I trust you guys. You’re doing amazing work keeping Star Trek alive and I’m here for it. I’m ready. Let’s go get the Gorn.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 3, “Ghosts of Illyria,” is an 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index. That’s the number I gave it in my review, and after working through all of this with you, I liked the episode. It wasn’t bad. The shuttlecraft question and the La’an question are still sitting there, and I want to see where they take them.
One housekeeping note from the end of the video: my wife and I are still working on the details for how Trek Talk Tuesdays could become a Q&A, or possibly a Q&A on Fridays. And right after this one I hit record on my Discovery season two review.
Should they have tied La’an to Khan, or should they have left it alone? Don’t just be angry. Tell me your reasons, and let’s discuss it like rational people. And tell me what you thought of the old Enterprise version of the Gorn. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
