I've mentioned in my Star Trek: Discovery reviews that it's the first Star Trek series I've watched every episode of, though I've seen bits and pieces of many of the other series. Ironically, The Original Series is the one that I've probably seen the least of. However, Discovery made me curious enough about Strange New Worlds to watch it. Plus, as I mentioned in my Heartstopper reviews, I've wanted a new show to watch every week, so now I have Strange New Worlds for that.
The episode opens with Pike in Montana. Discovery never shows much more than quick glimpses of Earth, so it feels kind of strange to see a relatively normal Earth in Star Trek.
We see Spock next. He's on a date with T'Pring, who he's been "courting" for a year. They end up becoming engaged. I'm aware that T'Pring is in The Original Series, though I know very little about her. I'm curious about the role she'll play in Strange New Worlds. At this point, I can't say that I like her necessarily, but we'll see. We didn't really get to learn much about her.
Early in the episode, we hear from Spock that Pike has requested a Lieutenant Kirk, which was an interesting detail that definitely left me curious.
Pike is seeing images of his future after seeing it in Discovery. He ends up sharing this with Spock, which I thought was an interesting development since I feel like characters rarely open up about stuff like this with others (which always leads to more problems down the line). I can't imagine knowing the circumstances of my own death, and I'm very curious how that's going to affect Pike's decision making going forward.
Enterprise goes to a planet to find Number One and two other Star Fleet officers who've gone missing. They discover that the planet has actually made a warp bomb instead of a warp drive, all because of what happened to Discovery. I really appreciate getting to see the consequences of Discovery on the former "present" of the show in a way that we can't on the show Discovery itself.
The planet has an ongoing conflict that's constantly compared to Earth during the episode. I don't know when this episode was written or filmed, but it certainly is interesting timing to have it coming out now during the war in Ukraine.
Pike gets the two sides of the conflict to negotiate with each other in a move that plays out a little too ideal, but I pretty much expected that. While I haven't seen much of The Original Series, I've seen more of The Next Generation than any other series besides Discovery, and the general vibe of this reminded me of TNG.
At the end of the episode, we meet Samuel Kirk, who I know from researching on the wiki is future Captain Kirk's brother. I'm curious about him as a character, but the actor is also being played by the same actor who played Mary's brother James in Reign. There are many actors who I can watch in various shows with no problem, but this is one case where I couldn't stop thinking about Reign. He was only there briefly though, so here's hoping that that'll fade as time goes on.
Overall, I'm nowhere near as invested in Strange New Worlds as I am Discovery, but I wouldn't expect that after only one episode. I'm definitely intrigued enough to keep watching and see where the story goes.
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