Logline
Uhura seems to be the only one who can hear a strange sound. When the noise triggers terrifying hallucinations, she enlists an unlikely assistant to help her track down the source.
Written by Onitra Johnson & David Reed
Directed by Dan Liu
I thought this one was…fine. I don’t think it will go down in history as one of the more logical episodes, but it told the story it was trying to tell.
I do wish they’d given Spock an actual reason to approach Kirk and Uhura in that final scene. I get that they wanted to commit that meeting to film, but it was strange for him to just sort of…wander over.
Spock cleaned up Sam Kirk’s mess once again. That’s why he approached the table. (and I presume that’s why that one snippet from last week was in the “previously on” segment)
Yeah, it was an awfully specific snippet, really just shown to setup the last scene of that episode. Bit wrird but it felt nice seeing Spock, Uhura and Kirk together. I guess just a bit of fanservice.
I’m with the others that say it’s a really good episode, until you start picking apart some of the decisions. Pike taking the word of a person who has been suffering hallucinations, with no evidence, then preceding to destroy a massive infrastructure project with no real hesitation…it didn’t feel earned. I know he trust her, and Kirk, but damn that was an extreme leap of faith.
@deweydecibel @ValueSubtracted
That’s frankly what caught my attention, even as I was watching the episode. The decision turns out to have been right, but on thin-to-nonexistent justification.
I think what justifies it is the second case that they encounter. The other guy provides them with scientific evidence that Uhura was experiencing something that wasn’t unique to just her.
It was definitely a leap of faith for Pike, but his decision was bolstered by someone (Kirk) that he knows can make the right decisions too.
This might be a case where they compressed too much for coherence.
Yeah, there was the other guy. But in my mind, not enough had apparently been done to confirm a superficial and partial similarity of symptoms.
To give an idea of the dissonance, I’m remembering somebody (I think it wasn’t Miles O’Brien who got the line) encountering the Cardassian systems on Deep Space 9 and complaining that they weren’t triple-redundant.
In academia, we call it parsimony in a way that doesn’t quite seem to match a dictionary definition that I just dredged up on line: It’s when an explanation seems straightforward and satisfactory. For me, that was missing.
I think a challenge for script writing here is keeping the story moving without dragging this too far into soap opera territory. How much do we really want get into the weeds here?
Maybe the writers thought this was too deep in the weeds. Maybe they just ran out of episode time. Maybe we agree they didn’t get the balance right here.
i was just thrown by the fact that nobody considered the possibility that it was a plot by Romulans or Gorn to get the Federation to self-sabotage. they stated they were at the edge of known space, so i thought a much more cautious attitude was required
They could have fixed that by analyzing the signals in her brain in such a way that they could actually show to Pike.
I don’t know if it was intentional as to be a call back to TOS, but I loved the absolutely senseless way nobody secures potentially dangerous actors that are in sick bay.
It was a good episode, but there are a few things I didn’t like:
- Blowing up a space refinery on a whim.
- Too much romance/interpersonal stuff, still.
- Pike needs to grow a spine and be more assertive.
I give it a 6/10; not bad, not great. I’m looking forward to the new episode.
Nurse Chapel fiddling with a butt plug while playing with Spock. I will show myself out.
Ribbed for his pleasure.
They 100% knew
I liked this episode! Although one thing that irked me was “deuterium poisoning.” Deuterium is just a hydrogen isotope; is breathing it actually poisonous? It felt like the writers didn’t realize it wasn’t a fake substance like duranium.
Also I suspected the hallucinations were coming from aliens in the nebulae because the deuterium collection was harming them pretty early on. Definitely feels like a classic Trek story though!
Also, seeing Hemmer again resurfaced my disappointment that they killed him off! He was one of my favorite characters in the first season. When they showed the flashback of his death in the episode intro, I was hoping they were going to revive him somehow in this episode, haha. I’m still holding out hope that he didn’t actually die but survived the fall and has been surviving on the ice planet (since he is Aenar after all). Unfortunately, I guess they already used the “left behind a crew member assumed KIA” with Zac Nguyen so I doubt this will happen.
I mean, I think it’s just reality-adjacent technobabble and you’ve got to accept it as plausible in universe. Tritium is a real thing used in nuclear fission but it’s not so rare that you should don robotic arms and go on a crime spree to get some. On a more Star Trek adjacent topic, protostars are a real thing but (at least as far as we know) you can’t shove them in a box to travel ludicrous speed.
Deuterium toxicity does exist, but you’d have to ingest a hell of a lot of it, not trace amounts via breathing. The symptoms mimic radiation poisoning, although since deuterium isn’t radioactive, it isn’t actually that.
@ValueSubtracted @Buziel_411 D is an isotope of H, yes, but H is so light and D has twice its mass. It’s a kinetic isotope effect issue IIRC - throws off our enzymes.
Deuterium is toxic (in high concentrations) to multicell animals as it changes the angle of.the hydrogen bonds which is key to cellular replication and enzyme prodcution. However you would have to drink all d2o instead of h2o for about a week to begin to notice (need 25-50% of body water). Blocking cellular replication is similar to what chemotherapy does so would.be like bad chemo…eventually the dose is so large it is not useful Cancer drug.
There is also mentions of dizziness and impact on vestibular system (senses) but not the wiki article does not expand on this and the linked article just mentions nystagmus (involuntary eye movements)
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1974Natur.247…404M/abstracthttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
Interestingly there is also a theory it may affect circadian cycles in some insects https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC433660/ (which could impact sleep pattern in humans)
All in all it looks like the writers may have looked into it afterall.
Yeah when you have “refinarey”, mysterious signal, it was well hinted, then acts of sabotage it did seem that way and when the other victim was focussed on jestisoning the gas from the nacel seemed even more certain
deuterium poisoning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_biological_systems
As may occur in chemotherapy, deuterium-poisoned mammals die of a failure of bone marrow (producing bleeding and infections) and of intestinal-barrier functions (producing diarrhea and loss of fluids).
So Uhura punched Kirk under hallucinations and then years after they kissed forced by telekinesis and some guy remembered me that in the prime universe when they met she thought he was hitting on her and he got punched (unrelated). In the kelvin-verse when they met he actually was hitting on her and he got punched (related).
The whole season is very, very good. Really loved this episode and the characters development in it. Mayby the overall story of this episode wasn’t the best, but who cares it is real classic trek 🖖
A little bit of a dip from last week but otherwise an enjoyable episode even if it learned a bit too much on the fan service.
Although kudos to the writers for cleverly weaving around existing continuity and throwing in the Gorn misdirection.
I’m starting to get DS9 vibes among the crew. I’m liking that things are complicated. This season doesn’t feature Pike much, does it? DS9 of course handled politics and religion well and I suspect SNW is steering clear. I knew that (blank) would return but I didn’t expect him to be a decomposing corpse.
Anson Mount had a new baby just as filming this season began, so they worked around his schedule a bit so he could spend more time in Canada with his family.
Anson Mount’s wife had their first child just before the filming of the season, so he was given a few episodes off
Annotations up at: https://startrek.website/post/433024
I forget, but where is Uhura from?
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This will be the thing we need mentioned at least once every season.
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I do agree, but I feel like we need this every season.
New life goals - get uhura’s linen and pillow sets and start life as a space hippy 🙃
Enjoyable episode, down a bit from the last few but at least we’re staying well ahead of ep1 in terms of quality. I am getting a bit of Kirk fatigue though, they have him technically meeting people for the first time in this episode but it feels like there’s no impact because we’ve seen them together in alternate timelines already.
Also, did I miss something or did they gather no proof whatsoever of the nebula aliens? I’m fine with Pike taking Uhura’s word for it in the climax but it just felt like there was a bit missing in between “taking the hallucinating person’s word for it” and “we now all accept that this was definitely happening and are writing scientific papers on it”.
Anyway now for my truly controversial opinion: I don’t like Pelia. The character is a great idea, but the execution is terrible.
I was excited at first, Carol Kane is great, but she just doesn’t work here imo. She’s hard to understand, every line seems to be delivered exactly the same, I don’t know she just seems like a joke character but without many jokes. It’s a little uncomfortable to watch.
Fully accept I am the only one who thinks this, though!
I agree with you on multiple accounts. Seems like the writing was lacking. In addition to not securing the hallucinating guy, they also made no formal announcement to security or to warn others about his dangerous presence. You would think with such a huge crew complement that there would be more people walking the halls in the scenes when they were trying to apprehend him. Or at least folks trying to figure out why it is dark, etc.
Also agree with the lack of direction on Carol Kane’s character. In fact, the way they included Hemmer as a hallucination, in the pre-recorded video, as well as in commentary by Una and Pelia, it almost seemed as if they were apologizing to the audience for getting rid of the Hemmer character. I am unsure of the reasoning behind it, but I thought he was a great character and wish they hadn’t killed him off.
So far this is the first episode that kind of disappointed me in the new series. It almost felt like it was filler to create the establishment of relationships between Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise crew.
@TeaHands @ValueSubtracted you’re not the only one, the way Pelia delivers her lines irks me quite a bit.
Plus, I was shocked at Pike giving Uhura so much liberty with something that he said was so important for the federation, especially since she didn’t have any proof. 🤷♀️I was 100% braced for a deluge of downvotes so thank you for standing with me on this one 😅
This /r/Daystrom thread from last year is kinda funny, the OP correctly predicts how Pike and Kirk meet, but then he and most of the commenters dismiss it as “unlikely”.
This leads us to three possibilities
- Pike was promoted to Fleet Captain and Kirk took over Command from him as a result, which is where they met. Traditionally, especially in many of the novels, thats when the met before.
- Kirk met him on two distinct occasions, firstly when Pike became Fleet Captain and secondly, when he took over Command (its possible that the order was reversed).
- Kirk met him on at least two notable occasions, which he mentions.
With James T being confirmed for Season 2 and Sam being on the ship and friendly with Pike, enough to call him “Chris”, no 3 seems to be the most likely answer
It’s a fun thread to scroll through now that we know this episode.
