askryan @ askryan @startrek.website

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These are all great choices, except what in the world is Pete McTighe, writer of the most quietly evil Doctor Who episode ever made (and then one of the most forgettable), doing there?

Every day this world gets dumber and dumber and yet I'm still surprised by how completely incompetent and unstable the main ENT crew (sans T'Pol and Phlox) are. It is something that even by 2025 standards - which are just about the lowest standards for stupidity possible - these people probably could probably not get through a week working at Walmart without getting fired for like fighting a stranger or sexually harassing their coworker.

Brent Spiner, who has a story credit on “Star Trek Nemesis”

Life finds new ways to disappoint you every day

Their capital city being a bunch of egg-shaped buildings around a giant birdcage building was a hilarious touch.

“Kahless, the first one, the original one, the one who did impressions” is just, I have no words

Their capital city being egg-shaped buildings around a giant birdcage building was a hilarious touch.

I have definitely been proven wrong by Star Trek things that look terrible at the outset, but...this looks terrible. I mean I guess we're getting a Deltan, so that's fun? And a chameloid is a bit of a deep cut? But jesus, I could not want to see this less. I hope I'll be proven wrong!

Usually contracts have to be negotiated after five seasons. Especially after the strikes last year, studios are committed to never budging an inch on contracts or residuals, even if it means losing money in the short term. To them, it's worth it to cancel even a successful or popular show if it means keeping their workers in a perpetual state of gig work and at a disadvantage for contracts on new shows.

Boims is an indoor kid

Judging by Nacelle's website, it looks like once again these will be expensive display figures that kids can't play with.

As a parent of young Star Trek fans, the fact that this is the worst-merchandised franchise in the world is incredibly annoying

The social media thing is a bit of a red herring. This isn't an episode about social media really, it's an episode about race and class - if there is a comment on social media in particular, it is about people's tendency to use social media to insulate themselves from their own awfulness, which they use social media to inculcate. It's an episode about people rather than about the tools they use.

The people of Finetime (and, it seems to suggest, the Homeworld – or at least, those people of the same class as those of Finetime) are a segregationist, hyper-privileged class that values appearance, propriety, and conformity with social expectations. They prefer surface-level friendships and interactions that enhance their social standing or self-regard to deeper or more complex relationships, and there's a blurring of social and parasocial relationships so that they're essentially the same. The Bubbles don't create this culture, but they allow their users to wallow in it completely and exclude anything distasteful or any challenges to this worldview.

Spurred to consider our own world, we might ask ourselves if there's any equivalency (again, the show's not an allegory, but it is a commentary). And if so, who is it that is performing the labor that keeps that class going? What does it mean to put them out of view? What do we become if we put everything unpleasant like that out of our minds? What happens when that becomes completely untenable?

The slugs are controlled by the Dots. The implication is that the people of Finetime are so loathsome that their own social media platform has grown to hate them enough to kill them (which, fair).

Who created the slugs? I dunno, a Doctor Who creature designer who liked The Macra Terror. Why didn't they just kill everyone at once? Because then there wouldn't be time for an episode of Doctor Who. If we want to guess at the alphabetical thing, a social media app presents users in alphabetical order, so for the rogue AI of the Dots, that's just what their programming supplies. Why don't the Dots just kill people themselves? If we want to guess, well, people would just take off their Dots if they started killing people (or whatever company produces them would see them malfunctioning and fix the error). And it seems a lot more obvious to people in Finetime when someone has trouble with their Dot than when a slug quietly nabs someone. But also, because the episode wouldn't really work if the Dots just sniped people. These are the sorts of questions that don't really matter –– personally, I don't think leaving their answers to the imagination weakens the episode at all, and putting it in just wastes time spelling out unimportant details. There's a certain degree of suspension of disbelief we need for stories to work.

Lastly, while it may seem sci-fi that an ultra-privileged, racially-homogenous class of people would create an environment for their children where they can succeed and meet no challenges while performing essentially no labor or doing anything of consequence, I invite you to visit the Hamptons or, like, any golf course.

There's quite a lot to think about in this extraordinary episode. In my mind, it's one of the best episodes since late Capaldi, and of post-2005 Who as a whole. Also always worth noting that Gatwa's final scene here was the first scene he shot as the Doctor (save for those with Tennant).

Man, they could not have picked a collection of less interesting ships if they tried

I adore the books but I have no idea why you would put them to film. If I would characterize anything as unfilmable, it would be this series. You might as well cast a physics textbook and put it on screen.

Actually this brought up a completely buried memory for me. For a few years I lived in the same neighborhood as him – at the time, cool guy that I was, I had a Starfleet badge on my coat, and one day I was at the grocery store and had an awkward moment with him where our carts got sort of wedged together negotiating the too-narrow checkout lanes. He saw my pin and gave me a Vulcan salute as he moved into his lane. He seemed nice and a bit sheepish. The staff at the coffee shop I used to go to told me he was extremely lovely.

My kids are dying for this thing. If anyone is at SDCC and feels the desire to make some little girls happy, I will Venmo you to buy this and ship it to me so I can stop hearing about it 😂

As much as I love the new series, I haven't liked the new screwdriver, but I think I've realized it's just the colors I don't like. I do actually enjoy seeing it look and feel more like a tricorder, and having the little display that slides out does make it feel more like something the Doctor can actually interpret. For some reason, while I'm totally on board for tentacle aliens and killer candy robots and giant space eyeballs and moon eggs, the scenes where the Doctor uses the old style screwdriver and stares at the handle like he's reading it always felt a little silly to me.

Yeah, all of the recasts have been spectacular with this one exception; I'm fully stumped by Paul Wesley and his take on the character. I don't need anyone aping Shatner and I love the idea of highlighting the more bookish actual Kirk as opposed to the pop culture image of him, but Ozempic Kirk spends 90% of his time looking bored out of his mind and 10% of his time doing a terrible Han Solo impression that just comes off as creepy. I cannot understand spending so much time on him when literally everyone else on screen sparkles and he has the charisma of wet felt.

I have never seen such cursed content

Breaking the fourth wall is a Doctor Who tradition - the First, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctors all directly address the camera in addition to the Fifteenth, as do River Song, Martha, Clara, and various Classic villains. I don't understand why people suddenly need some sort of in-universe explanation for it. It's a narrative technique, and Doctor Who is a goofy camp show that's always been flexible enough, playing with various tropes, that it works. Davies explains it perfectly in the link: "I mean, you would [be taken out of the story by it] if it was Pride and Prejudice, that would be odd. But there’s something showy about Doctor Who, there’s something proscenium arch about it. There’s something arch about it, full stop."

This sort of needing an in-universe explanation for every theatrical device or inconsistency is how you get garbage like Trek's Klingon augment virus.

I'm not sure I can think of another modern companion that would have carried that episode that well, especially as their first week of work. Donna's the most complete companion for me, but she's a very different vibe. Billie Piper's also really good when she's given the chance but I don't know that Doctor Who ever gave her that much chance. Clara by the end but it took a few series I think.