Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x06 "Lost In Translation"
Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x06 "Lost In Translation"
Logline
Uhura seems to be the only one who can hear a strange sound. When the noise triggers terrifying hallucinations, she enlists an unlikely assistant to help her track down the source.
Written by Onitra Johnson & David Reed
Directed by Dan Liu
An okay episode.
Finally Una got to do something instead of being completely on the sidelines. The whole ensemble got something to do, except Ortegas who slowly turns into SNW's Travis Mayweather: that one cast member that is just there physically but doesn't get anything to do.
My personal highlight was the scene were Spock and Chapel play chess, and he passive-aggressively pushes her to play faster. Very Vulcan.
What irked me: everyone and their mother immediately started calling the First Officer of another Starfleet ship by his first name. That was weird.
Another weird thing was Pike's promotion to Fleet Captain. We've never seen this in Star Trek, particularly not when it's just two ships on a mission. So I checked the transcript of The Menagerie were Kirk speaks about the one time he met Captain Pike. And there it is:
MENDEZ: You ever met Chris Pike?
KIRK: When he was promoted to Fleet Captain.SNW's producers were sneaky with that one. I'm both annoyed and impressed.
Zombie Hemmer was freaky! Nicely done, wardrobe/makeup.
This clearly took a lot from TNG's Night Terrors right? A bit of Firefly's Bushwhacked in there too.
I liked it overall, but my favourite Star Trek episodes are when the crew gets to use their extreme competency to overcome a difficult challenge. This episode, the crew was... not so competent.
- Una's team can't identify that there's been sabotage even though it's just like, phaser blasts from a half-deranged man
- The dude easily escapes from sick bay and blows up a nacelle (had the stun setting not been invented yet? What about locked doors?)
- There's no way the medical team could keep Uhura around and try to do some tests when she's having an episode, they can only put on the brain scan screensaver
- They can't shut down the dang refinery! The lever's stuck and they're out of WD-40!
- Pike blows up the quadrillion dollar infrastructure project immediately, not even just targeted laser blasts to the parts that are doing the murder. The whole thing has to blow up.
I guess this is just trek being trek and I shouldn't take it so seriously. Emotionally, the crew was at the top of their game: intuitive, perceptive, empathetic, trusting. good stuff.
But yeah, I feel like I would have enjoyed this more had the problem been made more difficult instead of the crew less capable.
Overall a solid episode, a little different but ultimate felt very core Star Trek TOS with strange alien life and coming to a resolution.
Paul Wesley continues to impress me in the role of James T Kirk but his character did not need to be in this episode, they need to be careful with how they use him going forward.
I loved this episode. Some really great relationship progress... Chapel/Spock, Uhura/Kirk, Kirk/Kirk, Kirk/La'an, Pelia/Una, even a taste of Kirk/Spock at the end. Pike exhibiting remarkable and badass trust in his bridge crew. And Hemmer lingering over it all in such a bittersweet way. I was so here for all of it. And I actually thought the reveal about the aliens in the deuterium burning out Uhura and Ramon's "receivers" was a super cool sci-fi concept. Might be my favorite episode of the season so far to be honest!
Pike once again demonstrates his faith in the crew without second guessing Uhuras decisions. What a boss.
A little bit of a dip from last week but otherwise an enjoyable episode even if it learned a bit too much on the fan service.
Although kudos to the writers for cleverly weaving around existing continuity and throwing in the Gorn misdirection.
The whole season is very, very good. Really loved this episode and the characters development in it. Mayby the overall story of this episode wasn't the best, but who cares it is real classic trek 🖖
I'm starting to get DS9 vibes among the crew. I'm liking that things are complicated. This season doesn't feature Pike much, does it? DS9 of course handled politics and religion well and I suspect SNW is steering clear. I knew that (blank) would return but I didn't expect him to be a decomposing corpse.
Enjoyable episode, down a bit from the last few but at least we're staying well ahead of ep1 in terms of quality. I am getting a bit of Kirk fatigue though, they have him technically meeting people for the first time in this episode but it feels like there's no impact because we've seen them together in alternate timelines already.
Also, did I miss something or did they gather no proof whatsoever of the nebula aliens? I'm fine with Pike taking Uhura's word for it in the climax but it just felt like there was a bit missing in between "taking the hallucinating person's word for it" and "we now all accept that this was definitely happening and are writing scientific papers on it".
Anyway now for my truly controversial opinion: I don't like Pelia. The character is a great idea, but the execution is terrible.
I was excited at first, Carol Kane is great, but she just doesn't work here imo. She's hard to understand, every line seems to be delivered exactly the same, I don't know she just seems like a joke character but without many jokes. It's a little uncomfortable to watch.
Fully accept I am the only one who thinks this, though!
I thought this one was...fine. I don't think it will go down in history as one of the more logical episodes, but it told the story it was trying to tell.
I do wish they'd given Spock an actual reason to approach Kirk and Uhura in that final scene. I get that they wanted to commit that meeting to film, but it was strange for him to just sort of...wander over.
New life goals - get uhura's linen and pillow sets and start life as a space hippy 🙃
I liked this episode, and Uhura's futuristic looking pillow
Makes me nervous about the....safety of the ship if one guy who I don't think was even supposed to be posted on the enterprise (like Ramon was part of the refinery crew before Enterprise got there) was able to cut the power (no backups?) And blow up the nacelle , maybe starfleet should review their backup and security procedures there
I don't know if it was intentional as to be a call back to TOS, but I loved the absolutely senseless way nobody secures potentially dangerous actors that are in sick bay.
This was the weakest episode of the season so far, and I still loved it. I couldn’t get over the fact Uhura wasn’t confined to sickbay or quarters by mid episode, but the rest of it showcases why SNW is quickly becoming my favorite Trek series.
So Uhura punched Kirk under hallucinations and then years after they kissed forced by telekinesis and some guy remembered me that in the prime universe when they met she thought he was hitting on her and he got punched (unrelated). In the kelvin-verse when they met he actually was hitting on her and he got punched (related).
Annotations up at: https://startrek.website/post/433024
I enjoyed the ep but I feel like lots of eps this season have followed the pattern of something messing with their heads, character development, revealing an ineffable alien thing. Which is fine from time to time, and those were good eps, but it would be nice to have more alien sociology type stuff with more humanoid species
Great episode with serious and feel good moments.
Watching Kirk and Spock meet was fun.
I like that they did the Kirk/Spock meet as an almost throwaway thing, rather than trying to make it a big deal. We already know it's a big deal, so any attempt to increase the drama would've made it cheesy, IMO. Plus, we've had lots of media about their friendship, already: we know it inside out. Instead, we got to focus on Kirk's relationship with a different legacy character, one that hasn't already been explored to anywhere near the same extent.
Although, on that note... was anyone else hoping the 'doctor on the Farragut' Kirk referred to was going to lead to a cameo from Bones? I don't remember if they served together pre-Enterprise, so it might not have been strictly canon!
I liked this episode! Although one thing that irked me was “deuterium poisoning.” Deuterium is just a hydrogen isotope; is breathing it actually poisonous? It felt like the writers didn’t realize it wasn’t a fake substance like duranium.
Also I suspected the hallucinations were coming from aliens in the nebulae because the deuterium collection was harming them pretty early on. Definitely feels like a classic Trek story though!
Also, seeing Hemmer again resurfaced my disappointment that they killed him off! He was one of my favorite characters in the first season. When they showed the flashback of his death in the episode intro, I was hoping they were going to revive him somehow in this episode, haha. I’m still holding out hope that he didn’t actually die but survived the fall and has been surviving on the ice planet (since he is Aenar after all). Unfortunately, I guess they already used the “left behind a crew member assumed KIA” with Zac Nguyen so I doubt this will happen.
This /r/Daystrom thread from last year is kinda funny, the OP correctly predicts how Pike and Kirk meet, but then he and most of the commenters dismiss it as "unlikely".
This leads us to three possibilities
- Pike was promoted to Fleet Captain and Kirk took over Command from him as a result, which is where they met. Traditionally, especially in many of the novels, thats when the met before.
- Kirk met him on two distinct occasions, firstly when Pike became Fleet Captain and secondly, when he took over Command (its possible that the order was reversed).
- Kirk met him on at least two notable occasions, which he mentions.
With James T being confirmed for Season 2 and Sam being on the ship and friendly with Pike, enough to call him "Chris", no 3 seems to be the most likely answer
It's a fun thread to scroll through now that we know this episode.
I'm with the others that say it's a really good episode, until you start picking apart some of the decisions. Pike taking the word of a person who has been suffering hallucinations, with no evidence, then preceding to destroy a massive infrastructure project with no real hesitation...it didn't feel earned. I know he trust her, and Kirk, but damn that was an extreme leap of faith.
A little sleepy w/ exposition over showing BUT had some nice moments.
An okay episode.
Finally Una got to do something instead of being completely on the sidelines. The whole ensemble got something to do, except Ortegas who slowly turns into SNW's Travis Mayweather: that one cast member that is just there physically but doesn't get anything to do.
My personal highlight was the scene were Spock and Chapel play chess, and he passive-aggressively pushes her to play faster. Very Vulcan.
What irked me: everyone and their mother immediately started calling the First Officer of another Starfleet ship by his first name. That was weird.
The Canon defenders will complain that Kirk and Pike met face to face, although there was that throwaways line in The Menagerie that they've never met. But it was kinda inevitable that it would happen sooner or later. At least we got that out of the way.
It was a good episode, but there are a few things I didn't like:
- Blowing up a space refinery on a whim.
- Too much romance/interpersonal stuff, still.
- Pike needs to grow a spine and be more assertive.
I give it a 6/10; not bad, not great. I'm looking forward to the new episode.
Alright, one of the weaker episodes.
Not a fan of this Kirk, he reminds me more of Carrey than Shatner. Neither he, nor the Farragut needed to be in this episode.