Star Trek Social Club

I'm less concerned that neutrinos don't act like this, and more amused that any particle can heal a bisected corpse simply by being aimed at it.

Diverting power from life support makes all the heat from the hallways instantly vanish? Where does it go? Is 23rd century technology somehow effortlessly recapturing the heat and turning it into electricity? Is that what they've been doing all these years every time they "diverted power from life support?"

It was cold enough for Chapel's finger to snap right off, but she's walking around completing tasks with her face uncovered? It's great that they let the actress emote, but...

What the episode lacked in believability it made up for in good character work. Loved seeing Scotty's connection with the Enterprise being born, loved seeing Chapel put to the test (and actually giving her actress something to do for the first time since the second season). I also always appreciate bottle episodes just because of how gorgeous these sets are, and the special effects here were top notch, too.

I guess I'm nostalgic for disaster movies because I rather liked this one. I liked the subplot of keeping M'Benga alive between a rock and a hard place, even in noncompliance of some orders. Scotty's character was really endearing this episode whereas I usually didn't care much for Montgomery Scott in the original series and earlier season.

That said, the "Strong Force Neutrino" stuff felt a little too out there for me in terms of stretching the plausibility of technobabble. I guess the concept of a starship acting like a particle lab because it's moving so fast could be kind of cool, but it felt like they forced talk of the famously neutral neutrinos because it was the "Wormhole" particle in DS9.

Other random thought: I kind of wish they'd gotten the gross body stuff out of their system with "The Griffin Incident" and would stop with it already.

An episode that was a breath of fresh air after last week. Dropping Boyce into it was...interesting.

I don't know that the onscreen countdown clock really worked, though. At least not for me.

I liked this episode. Reminds me of TNG's Disaster, obviously because they both meant to be disaster movies.

I liked that we had a lot of plots requiring everyone to work together to solve the problem of the week. Felt better then the last few episodes.

I'm also starting to feel like Roddenberry's decree that there shouldn't be any interpersonal conflict really does sell the competence porn aspect of Star Trek that I love. So because of Chapel's and M'Benga's fighting, it did take me out a bit. Also...I do find it slightly hard to believe that they don't have dermal generators to heal a crushed pelvis. This conceptually, seems survivable to me. But then again, I guess there was a time Worf was going to be paralyzed but then Klingon anatomy saved the day, so I guess medical tech can fail if the plot needs it to.

Here's another one for you (I don't know what's up with the story editing this season).

Spock doesn't go for the grav plating controls because the script demands that he be later placed in jeopardy in the ion pod and have a dramatic complication that has to be solved by his mind meld.

But of course it strikes one as a bit odd in-universe why he didn't try for the grav plating controls when Vulcans are hardier - obviously nobody would have known he'd be needed later for the ion pod.

But, if he and Una had swapped, and Spock was the one with the broken foot, not only would have made more sense initially, but also actually lucky. Una may have made it out unscathed, or at least less injured, because she's shown an ability to cure lethal radiation exposure in the past due to her Illyrian heritage (SNW: "Ghosts of Illyria"). Every story beat would be the same except for the mind meld bits.

But then you sacrifice the mind meld scene for story logic.

This one felt like we were halfway towards a proper episode. The plot had a big ethical decision, it had opportunity for growth, a decent if treknobabbly sci fi threat. But this episode really suffered from prequelitis - it never really felt that Chapel was going to do anything other than try to save Mbenga, we know mbenga survives in some capacity anyway, and Chapel's decision is made within seconds with little room to explore "when should you let a patient go". Ditto Spock's grand sacrifice going out into the radiation, and a lack of tension around the pod being ejected. There was a lot going on here, possibly too much. The clear stand outs here are Scotty getting his drive and motivation to own engineering on enterprise, and nurse chapel getting the push to likewise take more agency of her life on enterprise.

I guess this is meant to be borrowing from the 24 style of show - the only 24 I've ever seen was when the Simpsons parodied it. Overall I didn't really like that particular style of direction / editing, but it wasn't terrible. It kind of bugged me that we only learnt what the threat we were counting down to was half way through the episode. This episode would probably have worked just as well without the counter, it didn't add anything for me.

Random notes:

• The reference to the lift sketch was amusing
• Getting a bit more scortegas friendshipping is cute
• Good we managed to avoid some lizard space babies at warp limit
• Once again our Vulcan cadet comes up with a line that sounds superficially vulcan but which under scrutiny makes no sense ("I'm a vegetarian, therefore the thing you said about meat is illogical").
• Lastly, this is probably one of the first instances where the crew acknowledge that starfleet ships apparently do not having proper electrical wiring and grounding on the control panels. That got a laugh out of me. They should fix that.

It was okay, except I don't understand (a) why they had to use neutrinos of all things, when it's a particle we know stuff about and that we know cannot possibly do any of these things and (b) draw attention to the implausibility by having Pike question it and (c) then try to justify it by saying that these are magic neutrinos that can do all sorts of stuff ordinary neutrinos can't do. Completely unnecessary. Just make up some new particle!

And of all the characters to choose to put in jeopardy, they had to choose two of those that we know survive to the future.

But the neutrinos bit really threw my suspension of disbelief for a loop. This was worse than "red matter".

Pretty enjoyable episode - I feel like it's been a while since we've seen a good "disaster" (or "Disaster," if you prefer) outing.

The Chapel/M'Benga plot was affecting - M'Benga may decide not to leave, but they seem to be laying the groundwork for him to take a subordinate position to McCoy once he eventually shows up.

The Scotty plot has the most long-term impact, I think...enough impact that I was beginning to think Pelia wouldn't survive the day.

I liked the callbacks in this one - they mostly seemed organic. The sudden return of Boyce was the biggest surprise. I couldn't figure out why he looked so familiar, but it turns out Brian Markinson is a Trek veteran, playing several characters throughout the 90s, including my boy Elias Giger.

Beyond that, we got a weird TMP-style warp wormhole, and Kirk's ion pod from "Court Martial."

Big fun, all around.

I can't think of a time where they used the gravity plating in such a way and, yikes, that is a pretty scary thought that the floor could crush you at any moment.

I liked this episode a lot. The Scotty/Pelia and Chapel/M'Benga scenes were fantastic. It felt like both Scotty and Chapel turned a page with relation to the careers. Scotty's American accent made me laugh out loud even though it was literally one word.

Doctor Boyce' actor is apparently the same actor that played Lt. Durst in the Voyager episode "Faces", who apparently also played the Vidiian that wore Durst's face.

Annotations for 4x06 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/43916537