I feel like there were only 3 good episodes this season and 2 of them were very fan service. Tomorrow's Enterprise (this one) and Order of Magnitude (the badmiral one), and Off-Hour (the disaster one).

Soap Opera, Stoner Vacation, Dinosaur planet, weren't bad. But I do have a hard time recommending them.

Ghost Ship was really good, didn't feel like Star Trek. But it was good horror.

Casablanca and the Muppets, were cool concepts, but did not gel with me. They might be good, but need to give them time to age a bit in my brain.

Anyway, about this episode. Conceptually fantastic. Scott and Urural hooking up seems fine, there is a bit of playful interactions with them in the films, and I actually haven't watched all of TOS yet, but from some of the discussions of reddit, it appears there is also some implications there. So I feel that's kind of interesting.

Jumping forward to Star Trek: Year One pilot is fun, since we now know that won't be happening at all. And it did feel very classic Star Trek with the banter about bluffing in poker and Spock not getting it. It seems weird with all the work SNW did to get Spock more in touch with his human side, that he now feels more estranged then ever. But, it kind of works? Like it didn't break my suspension of disbelief at all.

I thought Pike was still a Captain during The Menagerie, but Memory Alpha says he was a Fleet Captain, which I guess is a billet and not an official rank? So maybe he was a Rear Admiral but serving as a Fleet Captain? I don't know man... military ranks be confusing. Time travel non-sense can also play a role...though that feels a bit disingenuous.

Also, I feel that the Enterprise was WAY too close to the event horizon. I can somewhat excuse Uhura jumping in to the black hole and not being crushed in to a singularity, because I feel like it was likely some kind of artificial blackhole, maybe made by the Prophet to give birth? I honestly would prefer if it was not the Prophets, because I feel like the universe feels too small now with all the recurring aliens. For all of Roddenberry's faults, making TNG need to stand on its own merits and force the writers to not reuse legacy TOS content was a really wise decision.

With that said, I hate that the best of SNW is the best of TOS. Two remakes of Balance of Terror, a remake of Arena, and this. There is a lot I like about SNW, but the best is not original content, and that annoys me.

You know what really annoyed me most about this episode. No one believed Uhura! You got to be shitting me, fucking weird ass time shit happens all the time, and they just encountered weird aliens living in a blackhole, why would you not believe her, or at least humor her, especially since you don't have any other leads. Picard didn't gaslight Beverly when she was in a similar situation when she was trapped in a pocket universe that was slowly falling apart. One of the things that annoys me the most about the new Star Trek is just how unprofessional everyone is. I can live with things being a bit more loose and casual, but just be professional about it.

Anyway, great episode, and in retrospective, I thought I didn't enjoy this season, but it turns out I actually did. So...there is that.

the outcome of the “invisible ship”

Balance of Terror?

the theory about the Vulcan Cadet was true

Wait, is there a theory she's a Romulan or something?

One season to go, for the moment my biggest regret with the show is that we are never gonna see Captain Angel from S1 comeback, and I think never will (only half season left…). One of finest evil characters ever seen on ST

I wish so hard for the final season to just be nothing by Sybok. I will be so livid if there is no pay off for this!

Why did this fantasy planet exist? Maybe I missed it, but I thought this had something to do with M'Benga's daughter, and she's off hanging out with a space nebula or something.

Did they just write Pelia off the show?

I don't like how they had a magical/physical solution to La'an's mental/metaphysical problem. Feels hammy to do that. I mean, I wouldn't mind if it was solved through introspection and realization, but having a personality swap, then drinking magic potion to fix the problem...I don't know man... I don't like solving emotional distress through magic. It cheapens emotional growth.

This was an ok episode. I guess...

It is unfortunately extremely accurate to the manga. In the manga has so many cliffnotes in the margins to explain things, and honestly it does not do that good of a job at it. You have to fill in the blanks a lot of the time. It's also very fitting to cyberpunk media. Like Neuromancer is very obtuse and you have to fill in the blanks again.

Flag. It's a real robot mecha set in modern times, the mecha is basically a tank. And its told as a documentary.

Well, this was a great episode.

The only downside is that the Badmeral didn't get his comeuppance like is tradition, but I can excuse that because we get some justification why M’Benga gets a demotion.

We've seen this plot a few times, I don't feel that's a bad thing. I feel like some of the best of Star Trek, and especially SNW, is just recycling plots but doing them better, or at least something different.

Also, it was super nice to give Uhura the spotlight. It felt a bit over the top, but I kind of accept it... I kind of wish A’Sha had a bit more development to land her decision, but she was not having a good time on the Enterprise and she clearly almost died, and technically she's seen enough times where the Enterprise was almost destroyed, it really does seem logical for her to nope out of Star Fleet. I cannot fault the Vulcan prioritizing self preservation over Uhura's attempts to make her feel welcomed.

And a few continuity notes. The ship is obviously the same one from Balance of Terror. The other helms men next to Sulu says, everyone knows who attacked the Star Fleet Base. So this cloak ship has been a problem for a while and everyone knows of it, but there is likely political problems that make it impossible to deal with.

We also know cloaking tech is not new, as we also see it in ENT's Minefield.

We also seen an alternate reality version of Balance of Terror in SNW's A Quality of Mercy, which I feel this has some strange parallels with. Where in QoM Pike hesitates to attack the Romulan Ship, while we see in BoT Kirk is gungho. In this one Kirk is less gungho (but like, reasonably so). I just thought it was an interesting take. It also explains why the writers need to make sure Pike wasn't on board or else he'd have spoiled the big reveal that it was Romulans.

Hot take. I liked this episode. I felt is landed better then most of the other gimmicks like the puppet episode.

I do believe this season has REALLY been stretching my suspension of disbelief, but I feel a Q episode works well enough as a way to make people perform out of character while also doing some character development.

I just feel like the character development feels a bit weird.

I feel like Ortegas is a simple premise for a character, but I feel like she has had the best, and most realistic character work.

M'Benga, I feel like his character is all over the place. He's like a vengeful war veteran, a bit of PTSD, yet a caring healer. The tone of his character is wild.

But it was actually nice to give them both a bit of screen time together. If it wasn't for the stuff around it being complete nonsense, it was honestly pretty heartwarming.

And I've been waiting for Sybok to get some screen time for so long, and then they take it away from me! I would have loved it if they had really had him, and have him played by Ethan Peck. Just play all of that complete nonsense straight! They foreshadowed he'd play a role, and you have no idea how insanely disappointed I am. Like he really could use some character development, so Star Trek V doesn't feel like it just comes out of nowhere.

I also did find it interesting how they did weave Pike's and Uhura's shared drama of loosing their families. Its something I never thought they'd bother to deal with. And I thought they handled it pretty well.

Also, hilarious that Chapel had an entire adventure off screen. Honestly, kind of what seems like happens to Chapel all the time, like when everyone turned in to Vulcans.

So...I actually like this episode.

EDIT: Also stay tuned for the post credit scene for this episode.

Ghost is meant to be your soul. That unquantifiable part of you that makes you human. The shell is just meant to be a cybernetic body.

So a Ghost in the Shell is a person's soul/spirit inside of a robot.

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.

Yeah, since it's a dream, I really wish they had gone all in on the cartoon gags. That's my only complaint.

I can excuse the premise and even the cop out, it's all a dream, but they really need to just go all in on the concept. Like maybe some Kermit tilting his head back while his arms flail around or crumple his face with the puppeteer's fist like when he's mad. Like literally the lowest hanging fruit is using puppet hair whip to the face. Or maybe some cecoling, fourth wall breaking, a Pigs in Space reference which is a parody of Star Trek. Like, just go ape shit with the concept.

I feel really conflicted about this season. I like they're experimenting and trying new stuff, but like, i don't know if it's landing.

However, I do believe in like 10 years I'm going to look back and think, this is good Star Trek. But similar to...honestly all Star Trek, I find it hard to really enjoy it in the moment for some reason.

I guess Star Trek is a fine wine. You got to let it age a bit first.

On retrospective, I really like the development of Ortega. We've seen her rebuild a motorcycle in her quarters. We've seen her jury rig a universal translator in Terrarium. So her revealing she's mad that she didn't become an engineer makes a lot of sense, and taking it out on Scotty.

That's solid character development that has been building over multiple episodes. I appreciate the slow burn and foreshadowing.