The Broken Circle

I was a big fan of the first season of Strange New Worlds and was excited for this new one. Perhaps I was overhyped because this opener ended up being my least favorite episode so far. While I liked the basic idea, the execution felt contrived, melodramatic, and rushed overall.

I am also not sure how I feel about the new engineer played by Carol Kane (from Taxi). While I liked her in other shows, she comes off a bit too quirky, comedic, and out of place here. However, her newly introduced race is intriguing and I will give her a chance.

I certainly still like the show and will continue to watch the new season, but hopefully this episode was an anomaly and the subsequent ones are better.

I'm a day one Star Trek fan, in that I saw the first episode broadcast in September of 1966 and I've seen virtually all Star Trek since ...

Except I had to give up on Discovery due to stupid writing. I gave a pass on Picard 2 simply from reading the synopsis which sounded nothing but moronic ... and now this in Strange New Worlds, which started out with a decent set of season one shows?

I don't care what kind of boost they get, a doctor and a skinny nurse beating up mercenaries at odds of 6 to 2, with many of them Klingons? That COMPLETELY lost me. Stealing the ship shades of The Search for Spock? Just ... no.

The escape into space ... evidently written by second graders.

Just nothing, nothing, nothing about this episode made any sense at all. It's a great shame.

After watching Picard season 3 and getting to this, uh, yah nah. The fighting scenes were somehow more cheesy than tos and 90s trek. This episode was pretty half-baked. I really enjoyed season 1 for the most part, but good lord why are the writers and producers allergic to making a consistently good trek show in this day and age? Starfleet personnel once again acting like unprofessional bozos. If this is how the rest of the season is going to be I'm just not going to bother watching any more of this show. A hangover is a punishment for stealing a ship? Yeah that's fair.

I guess you can watch this episode for yourself and make your own call on whether this is what you'd like to see. It's a downshift from the solid start that season 1 brought in, not looking great so far.

Anson Mount gets something of a day off, barely visible in this Season 2 starter, as crew members Jess and Babs get to take centerstage.

Several novelties mark the show, first off having Spock "steal" the Enterprise for a definitely unauthorized mission necessary to thwart some greedy folks on the verge of restarting a federation war with the Klingons.

Former colleague Chrisitna sends the warning, and it's Spock and his crew to the rescue. It's a rather serious and talky segment, leading to Babs & Jess excelling at hand to hand combat to selflessly save the day and survive under a minute of freezing unprotected (no space suits) in Outer Space before Spock rescues them on cue. Carol Kane as new cast and crew member is delightful, adding humanity to the show, even though she isn't human.

Season 1 was for the most part a wholesome, well written and respectful collection of stories.

The writing in this episode however is all over the place. The crew faces no consequences for their actions, two characters who have no business fighting suddenly fight their way through a small army of klingon warriors, and the episode is littered with hateful sexist steriotypes. Hopefully the issues in this episode were due to some kind of internal conflict surrounding the season opening. If the rest of the show becomes like this from now on, SNW might just end up walking in Discovery's shoes, and like its predecessor end up loosing money.

Edit: After watching the rest of the season i can confirm that this was not a one-time thing and the entire season has all the same problems. If you read this to consider if you should watch the rest, i suggest downloading a playback speed extension for your browser and speeding through the episodes for the absolutely FANTASTIC CGI the vfx team produced. The story is garbage and the characters are nothing like themselves. They simply have the same faces and voices but are written as empty stereotypes. One new stereotype for each episode. Do not waste your time on this. Go watch season 3 (skip 1 and 2) og Pickard instead. It is incredible!