Star Trek: I miss Hemmer (spoilers)

[Ran]

18 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

In fact in an alternate reality, I did!

La'an did not actually sleep with alternate reality Kirk. She got out of bed when they were sharing the hotel and was clearly wrestling with her desire, but didn't wake him. And later they kissed, but he was shot dead a few minutes later.

 

[Werthead]

In interviews they've said that Once More With Feeling was their #1 influence and inspiration, so that makes sense.

Also, Trek has managed to go 891 episodes of television without doing a musical, I think they can be forgiven for doing one now. Buffy only managed 107 episodes before falling back on that idea.

[IheartIheartTesla]

I liked it a fair bit (although I did feel the middle dragged a bit), however, the entire plot was paper-thin. From the reason for their singing (it was never satisfactorily explained how subspace folds interacted with brains to trigger the singing) to the eventual conclusion (some gibberish about voltages that made no sense). If you are looking for patterns a computer would be the first place to start, and in fact, by TNG they were routinely asking computers for analysis first. I can only imagine these ships are fitted with ENIAC level punch card operated gizmos.

[sifth]

I was really liking it until the Klingons started singing. That joke was a little too much for me. The rest of the episode was good though.

[Durckad]

That was okay, but the fact that I don't really like musicals means that anything other than cringey or terrible is a straight up compliment.

The Klingon scene was kinda funny though.

[Ran]

Funnily enough, the first "musical" piece of Star Trek material, across the whole universe of the stuff, is the late, great John M. Ford's How Much For Just the Planet?, a TOS-era novel published by Pocket Book. It is, essentially, a musical comedy in which a planet of aliens who are unhappy that the Federation and Klingons want to mine dilithium on their planet decide to try and convince them that their species is just too crazy and should be left alone, so they proceed to act very, very oddly... including random, lavishly choreographed musical routines while the Klingons and Enterprise crew are bewildered. And other such nonsense.

It's hard to describe but it's a ridiculously funny farce.

[Jaxom 1974]

Come on! It's bonkers fun! And the second time this season we've gotten to see the opening credits played with too.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Come on! It's bonkers fun! And the second time this season we've gotten to see the opening credits played with too.

I almost hit skip forward… then noticed the choral not orchestral music…

Edited August 4, 2023 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Ran]

Decided to rewatch "Once More, With Feeling" thanks to this episode. SNW shows it has a higher budget and production value, especially in the big Chapel number, and the curtain closer, but there's something to be said for doing a musical episode six seasons in rather than two seasons in -- the episode has a lot more emotional weight that way. And the lyrics are generally better, but actually one downside to a Star Trek musical, as LInda pointed out to me, is the awkwardness of trying to fit technobabble into the lyrics.

[Jaxom 1974]

And yeah, this is a somewhat silly episode, but yet again, like the Lower Decks crossover...the attention to the canon and the implications of driving characters to where they need to be come TOS...not 100% perfect, but very well done. For me, it makes any cosmetic alterations (the ship design for example) very minor.

 

And are we not going to discuss the Kirk name drop? 

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

And are we not going to discuss the Kirk name drop? 

I thought for a moment you meant La'an calling him Jim, but I realize you mean Carol Marcus. Yeah, revealing that was a good twist to stymie La'an's hopes. But, as we know, Kirk'll soon be off-again with her and preparing to screw his way across the galaxy, so.... always a second chance, La'an.

[IheartIheartTesla]

5 minutes ago, Ran said:

 And the lyrics are generally better, but actually one downside to a Star Trek musical, as LInda pointed out to me, is the awkwardness of trying to fit technobabble into the lyrics.

Look up Reina del Cid's rap about Star Trek technobabble. It should be on tiktok or youtube somewhere, I lack the skills to post it here. Pretty hilarious.

[Jaxom 1974]

38 minutes ago, Ran said:

I thought for a moment you meant La'an calling him Jim, but I realize you mean Carol Marcus. Yeah, revealing that was a good twist to stymie La'an's hopes. But, as we know, Kirk'll soon be off-again with her and preparing to screw his way across the galaxy, so.... always a second chance, La'an.

He's never going to be into you, La'an...at least not if he's going to forget about the whole Khan thing to make "Space Seed" more workable...if I'm being honest, I don't have an issue with La'an as a character, but the Khan connection is one aspect of the show that still doesn't sit right with me. Of course, it seems like they needed it to help fix the Khan continuity to let things fall more into our own tineline, rather than just allowing canon to be canon...

 

Okay...just watched the Ready Room and Wil's suggestion of a theory that it's the La'an connection that gives Kirk the impetuous to give Khan a chance in exile...hmmmm...

Edited August 4, 2023 by Jaxom 1974

[SpaceChampion]

That was Bruce Horak (Hemmer) as the Klingon commander.

 

[Spockydog]

This is the best ever Star Trek show. 

[Werthead]

Star Trek: Prodigy drops a full scene preview of Season 2.

Brilliant cameo by another Trek veteran as well.

Oh, and nice:

Spoiler

The hero ship for Season 2 will be the LaMar-class USS Voyager NCC-74656-A, personally commanded by Admiral Janeway.

 

[fionwe1987]

After last week's episode, I expected this to be a lighthearted and silly episode and delayed watching. I've learned my lesson.

They certainly read their music theory and neuroscience and quantum mechanics. The idea that music might help cohere reality for is hardly new, but this was a fantastic exploration of the concept.

The technobabble was actually very, um, coherent to me. They certainly got the neuroscience of music down. I loved how Spock was shown looking for patterns at the start of the songs, and it is Uhura who figured out that the pattern they need is about how music connects to emotions.

I need to listen to her solo again, because beyond the bang on lyrics, they then literally showed her working out the pattern by jamming along, which is a very very universal experience with music.

I'm honestly tired of being so impressed by each episode this season. I too would like to whine about imperfections, but damn them, they're making it very very hard.

 

Edited August 7, 2023 by fionwe1987

[fionwe1987]

On 8/3/2023 at 7:27 PM, IheartIheartTesla said:

it was never satisfactorily explained how subspace folds interacted with brains to trigger the singing

If we had a satisfactory explanation for this, I doubt it would pop up in a scifi show.

That said, we do know that one set of physical rules does allow for bizarrely synchronized musical output from large groups of intelligent beings. So nothing they're saying is absurd. This is, quite literally, something that happens, despite it being a very very unlikely state. 

On 8/3/2023 at 7:27 PM, IheartIheartTesla said:

 

) to the eventual conclusion (some gibberish about voltages that made no sense).

Hmmm. Again, they obviously aren't doing doable science, but they explained what the link between the music and the voltage was well. It's not a real link anyone has been able to prove with respect to a single actual molecule, but the hypothesis is sound, if taken to obviously ludicrous levels to fit the demands of the plot. But this is no more nonsensically explained that faster than light travel is, in Trek. 

On 8/3/2023 at 7:27 PM, IheartIheartTesla said:

If you are looking for patterns a computer would be the first place to start,

And was, in this episode. That's why Uhura had to play literal telephone operator. Modeling the new physics inside the subspace rift was taking most of their computational power.

Computers are not the best at finding the right pattern, though. In fact, they often suck at it. Humans are much more imprecise, but we are each and every one of us clearly better at finding grammatical patterns in language and communicating them better than the latest and greatest AI available today. 

On 8/3/2023 at 7:27 PM, IheartIheartTesla said:

and in fact, by TNG they were routinely asking computers for analysis first. I can only imagine these ships are fitted with ENIAC level punch card operated gizmos.

Or, you know, they explained this, and you missed it. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Figuring out that every time someone sang, the quantum improbability field experienced a spike (and that you'd need to get to 344 GeV to shatter the rift) is pretty much a linear correlation that simple models are very adept at finding out, but thanks for explaining in a very non-patronizing way what present day computers are incapable of doing regarding grammatical concepts. At any rate, I said I enjoyed the episode and just wanted a bit more talky exposition the way TNG excelled at (same thing happened with the dilithium mining episode too)

3 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

Or, you know, they explained this, and you missed it. 

Apologies for missing a couple of lines of such explanation which doesnt even make sense based on how simple the solution was what Uhura found. At any rate, not interested in going down this rabbit hole further regarding my minor quibbles with a mostly enjoyable episode. 

[fionwe1987]

On 8/7/2023 at 5:11 PM, IheartIheartTesla said:

Figuring out that every time someone sang, the quantum improbability field experienced a spike (and that you'd need to get to 344 GeV to shatter the rift) is pretty much a linear correlation that simple models are very adept at finding out,

That's not how it worked, though. It wasn't every time someone sang, it was what they sang and how it moved the emotions of those around them that seemed to correlate with how the reality collapsed. For instance, when Chapel did her power ballad, everyone was looped into it. And that's what clued in Uhura on what to do, I thought, when she went through the range of emotions in her own song, and saw how that was affecting the collapse. There wasn't anything linear about the response. The 3.44 (I think?) GeV was like a threshold that had to be breached. Individuals or even small groups singing didn't cross that threshold, so they had to do a musical number with many many folks, across ships, to cross it.

Again, there's nothing factual here, but the link they established was explained fairly well I thought, and more, demonstrated in the plot several times.