This is basically SNW's take on disaster movies, like The Poseidon Adventure and TNG: "Disaster”, in the same way so far this season they’ve homaged Doctor Who, Event Horizon, The Hangover Casablanca and The Muppet Show.
The stardate is 1213.72, and the “weekend” is about to begin. The jaunty notes of the soundtrack at the beginning remind me of a motif from TOS: “Shore Leave” when his old nemesis Finnegan appears to taunt Kirk.
As established in TNG: “Chain of Command”, starships work on a three-shift rotation, although some captains prefer four. Alpha shift is also usually the one where the captain is on duty.
The Bussard collectors that Ortegas mentions are the glowing caps at the front of the nacelles. They generate a magnetic funnel that sweeps in front of the ship gathering stray hydrogen from space which are then used to top up the ship's fuel.
Dr Boyce would be Phillip Boyce, the former chief medical officer of Enterprise in 2254, who was played by John Hoyt in TOS: “The Cage”. This is the first time we are told he was actually interim CMO until M’Benga came along.
In TOS: “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, Kirk mentions that Chapel gave up a career in “bio-research” to sign aboard a starship. When first introduced in SNW: “Strange New Worlds”, Chapel was on a civilian exchange from the Stanford Morehouse Epigenetic Project (mentioned again later in this episode), although it was revealed later she did serve with M’Benga during the Klingon War a few years prior. Scotty is right that there doesn’t really seem to be much of a difference between the terms “Bussard collectors” and “Bussard ramscoops”, the latter of which is just another name for the same technology. LT Radha (assuming it’s the same character) first appeared as a helm officer in TOS: “That Which Survives”, played by Naomi Pollack. On the wall in the briefing room we see a picture of Phoenix, the first Earth vessel to break the warp barrier (First Contact).
The person playing the piano is a Bolian - although I’m not sure if this is the ENS Rankin that Uhura mentioned earlier, which sounds like a human name.
Getting caught in a wormhole slipstream seems similar to what happened to Enterprise when initiating its upgraded warp engines in TMP. An antimatter imbalance created a wormhole and sent them speeding out of control.
M’Benga isn’t being wholly unfair when he says Chapel runs when things get real. In SNW: “Spock Amok” she confesses that she avoids relationships because they require sacrifice. When Spock became more serious about her, she applies for the archeological fellowship and broke up with him (SNW: “Subspace Rhapsody”). We’ve not been updated on the state of her current relationship with Roger Korby, although we do know they get engaged before he vanishes on Exo III (“What Are Little Girls Made Of?”). Chapel’s retort hints at what she knows about M’Benga’s past in the Klingon War and the trauma he carries from it.
Pike’s recklessness in reaching for an electrified control may be due to his knowledge that he has yet to meet his destined accident in a few years (DIS: “Through the Valley of Shadows”).
Scotty’s thought that the ship’s computer doesn’t recognise his accent (which is fairly mild by Scottish standards) reminds me of a sketch from the Scottish comedy show Bornistoun, where an elevator equipped with voice recognition technology hilariously fails to understand Scottish accents. “Neutrino radiation at lethal levels” strikes me as a bit odd, because neutrinos have no charge, have almost zero mass, and trillions of them coming from the Sun pass through our bodies all the time with no issues since they rarely hit other atoms (and even if they do the radiation is negligible). That being said, the number of neutrinos emitted during a supernova could be lethal, and if they were focused enough, but the levels would really have to be ludicrous. Inertial dampeners are what protects the crew from being smeared against the walls at high impulse or warp velocities. Ortegas is referring to the high G-forces produced at such velocities when she talks about “nosebleed city”.
The Vulcan cadet is A’Sha, who first appeared in SNW: “Valles Marineris”and has only ever been named in the closing credits. Black pudding is not a desert, but a sausage made from flour, onions, grains, pork/beef fat and pork blood. It’s a vital part of a Full English Breakfast and really yummy.
Scotty calling Enterprise a “damn useless bucket of bolts” is a far cry from the affection he will feel for the ship in time to come, even willing to come to blows with people who insult her (TOS: “The Trouble with Tribbles”). This episode shows that transition. Princess Leia calls the Millennium Falcon a “bucket of bolts” in The Empire Strikes Back.
The lab table holding M’Benga’s vital organs in place and keeping him alive despite a fatal injury is similar to what happens in the Homicide: Life on the Street episode “The Subway”, where a man is only kept alive because a subway car is pinning him between it and the station platform. This was based on an apparently real incident related in the HBO show Taxicab Confessions by a New York City detective.
Boyce makes his first SNW appearance, played by Brian Markinson, who previously appeared in various other roles in Star Trek, notably as Dr Elias Giger in DS9: “In the Cards”. He also appears in TNG: “Homeword” as Vorin and VOY: “Cathexis” and “Faces” as LT Pete Durst/Sulan. He is wearing a pin above his delta which I can’t quite make out but it looks like the one on the tunic he wears in TOS: “The Cage”, which is an Earth map encircled by laurel leaves.
I know Una’s an Illyrian, but why isn’t Spock going? Vulcan is normally portrayed as a high-gravity planet in various RPG source books, and Vulcan’s are physiologically hardier.
Scotty invokes Starfleet Safety Protocol 429 to shut off life-support in the corridors (first mention).
Chapel uses the medical transporter to put M’Benga in suspension, a trick that she and M’Benga used during the Klingon War (SNW: “Under the Cloak of War”) and which he used on his terminally ill daughter Rukiya (SNW: “Ghosts of Illyria”).
The warp threshold Scotty refers to sounds similar to the concept established in TNG that nothing can exceed Warp 10 (on the TNG scale Warp 10 is infinite speed, where the ship is simultaneously at all points of the universe at once). VOY: “Threshold” refers to the “transwarp threshold” that divides warp and transwarp speeds. The maximum speed the TOS Enterprise achieved was Warp 14.1 (TOS: “That Which Survives), which by the TOS warp scales was about 2,803c.
M’Benga says the temperature will reach “negative 400 degrees”. He must be referring to the Fahrenheit scale, because temperatures can’t go below -273°C (0 Kelvin, or absolute zero), which is -459.67°F. The vacuum of space is approximately 2.7 K, or -270.45°C or -454.81°F.
The ion pod is a manned pod that is usually used to take readings during ion storms. It can be jettisoned if it picks up a dangerous charge from the storm (TOS: “Court Martial”). We’ve seen spacewalks while the ship is at warp before (Trip Tucker in ENT: “Divergence, Dal R’El in PRO: “Mindwalk” and Michael Burnham in DIS: “Red Directive”) - it’s usually okay as long as you remain within the warp bubble. Scotty materialises in a Jeffries tube, a maintenance tube named after real-life Enterprise designer Matt Jeffries, in a shot instantly familiar to those who have seen James Doohan in that exact position. Rukiya was M’Benga’s terminally ill daughter which he placed in the care of a non-corporeal life form (SNW: “The Elysian Kingdom”).
“Strong force neutrinos” are made up because neutrinos and other leptons don’t possess any color or electromagnetic charge, and are therefore non-interactive with strong and electromagnetic forces. It’s not a question of a big enough lab. And since we’re making stuff up, sure, these “strong force neutrinos” could very well heal tissue. And be a desert and a floor wax. Pike points out that neutrinos are “ghost particles” (thank you!) and Chapel retorts that these are “new ones” that act differently. Ooohkay. And now they can make more deuterium? Can I call them deus ex neutrinos?
Pike does the same as Kirk did in “Court Martial”, jettisoning the pod with a man inside (in the latter’s case LT-CMDR Ben Finney) before it endangers the ship.
Pelia tells Scotty he has to be a “miracle worker”. This is something he will try to continue to keep up a reputation for being (ST III, TNG: “Relics”).
Spock’s bruises look like they’re red with green scabs. Vulcan blood is supposed to be green, i.e. copper-based as opposed to human iron-based blood (although hemocyanin should be blue), and Spock does bleed green in TOS: “Patterns of Force”. The colour of his bruises here could be a function of his half-human heritage. That being said, in Star Trek (2009) young Spock had apparently red blood, and in SNW: “Ad Astra Per Aspera” Spock’s knuckles are red after he punches a wall.
Aquans first appeared in TAS: “The Ambergris Element”, and we recently saw one in the Cesnar Grand promotional video in SNW: “Human Best Friend”. Lanthanites are Pelia’s very long-lived race. Benzar is the homeworld of the Benzites (TNG: “A Matter of Honor”).
If Chapel’s fingers can get frozen to the table, why doesn’t vital tissue from M’Benga also break off when she pushes the table away? Oh fine, I give up.
Scotty says to tell Chapel she “rewrote the laws of physics”. In TOS: “The Naked Time”, Scotty says, “I can’t rewrite the laws of physics,” and in TNG: “Relics”, he says “You canna change the laws of physics,” when he relates the story of “The Naked Time” Geordie.
Chapel finally signs on permanently to Starfleet, fulfilling Kirk’s remark in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”