LizstarTrek - Strange New Worlds Season 7 episodes 1 - 3

Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!

This is the third season of SNW, finally coming out. We’re gonna watch an episode of this once a week until we finish, alongside Voyager, cause it’s coming out y’know, one a week. Yay! I love SNW!

Hegemony Part 2 - VOY 6.5/10

Following directly after last season, the Enterprise is surrounded by Gorn, and some of their people are captured on the Gorn ship. The Enterprise is forced to retreat… but not before tagging the Gorn ship with a dud missile that’s actually a secret beacon.

Pike’s girlfriend, Batel, is infected with Gorn Babies and they might need to kill her, but to prolong things, they’re freezing her in a block of ice. Specifically SHE’S the one asking them to kill her if they need to. Well, at least that’s the PLAN, but turns out she’s allergic to being stuck in a block of ice, which I imagine I’d be too. Now Nurse Chapel is stuck trying to figure out how to cure Being A Gorn Mom.

Admiral April is like “we have to just ignore all this and let the Gorn capture neutral people” and Pike, being Pike, says fuck that shit, we’re being treated as Prey. And April agrees, unofficially, their rules are to punch the Gorn in the nose and show they’re not prey. Meanwhile, in Engineering, Scotty and Pelia the Warpcore Witch are trying to get a Gorn Cloaking Device up. Scotty says it’s impossible. Pelia is like “we’ll have it done in an hour sir”. Scotty is, one day, gonna be REAL good at doing the impossible on a deadline, and he’s gotta figure out how to get good at it real fucking fast.

Meanwhile, on the Gorn ship, La’an wakes up and punches her way out of a Gorn sack. She rescues the other members of the crew captures, including Sam Kirk (Kirk’s brother), Doctor M’Benga, and Ortegas (who has had half her hand melted off). They want to get out… well, three of them do. La’an decides then and there, she’s going to save ALL the other colonists. Good luck.

Y’all remember Mitchell? She was a very minor background character in season 1, had some minor roles in 2, and now she’s on the bridge and refuses to leave until they can solve this. Yay, Mitchell!

They have some SMALL hope. Batel has a 14% chance of survival if they use Una’s blood. Yay! Also the Gorn seem to go to sleep when a certain kind of star flare happens.

Shit is going way, WAY worse. Man this is tense. While exploring a weird binary star that seems to hide the Gorn homeworld because of radiation, they find a BUNCH of Gorn ships blasting out of the zone and going towards Federation space. Now Pike has a choice. He might lose the tag on the colonists and his crew if he leaves to warn Starfleet, but they are NOT prepared for an invasion. So he makes the impossible choice and leaves them.

Pike seems so fucking done. He’s EXHAUSTED, he’s worrying about every single little thing. And can you blame him? When he goes to Scotty and Pelia like “Hey can we make a solar flare” and Scotty is like “what the fuck no. Not without doing this this that and this which will blow up the ship” Pike is like “Sure just do it without the blowing up the ship part” and everyone just… stares at each other.

There’s a lot of “have faith” talk in this episode, which we keep making fun of by posting Star Wars memes. It doesn’t help when Ortegas takes over a Gorn ship and flies them out in a scene that is VERY Star Warsy. Also Ortegas becomes massively injured in the skirmish, but sticks too it. Poor Ortegas, she can’t catch a break ):

We get a fuzzy fisheye scene with them in the radiation, but it works. They use the flare to trigger a hibernation in the Gorn, as they come back to go eep. Ortegas raises her deathflag REALLY high but is saved just before dying, thank fucking God. sees death flag in Ortegas’ mouth WHAT DO YOU HAVE THERE? PUT THAT DOWN.

Batel is saved, Spock and Chapel have a moment of acceptance, and the Enterprise is beat to fuck. But alive. It ends the “have faith” talk with Pike thanking God for some reason.

I thought it was alright! Not blowing me away, but good! Excited for more.

I’ll be editing this page every week and reposting it with the new episodes as they come out =w=

Wedding Bell Blues - VOY 8/10

It’s 3 months after the nightmare of the last two episodes, and the Enterprise is repaired and ready! Everyone is going to a gala to try and relax! I’m sure this’ll go exactly as expected! To try and get into the spirit, and to practice for getting things going well with Nurse Chapel, Spock is practicing dancing with La’an.

BUT NOT A BRAIN! :D

Anyways, Chapel comes on board with the doctor she’s been working with for three months, Roger Korby. He’s a very friendly guy, but a bit eccentric. Anyways Spock almost makes an ass out of himself before we find out Korby is, in fact, dating Chapel now. Whoops!

Holy HELL, Uhura’s outfit is on point.

Ortegas is doing better. Physically, at least. We meet her brother, who is flirting a bit with Uhura, who seems reticent. Ortegas isn’t into it, though.

Everyone gets together to drink a bit. Spock is, as usual, awkward. He steps away for a drink at the bar, and we get this like, weird Mxptlk mother fucker who’s tending bar. He appears as a Vulcan to Spock, but to us, he’s a weird mother fucker. He gives Spock a drink, who… wakes up later that night next to Chapel. They’re getting married! Oh boy! I’m sure Chapel will handle this very well!

This Mxptlk ass dude is basically acting as wedding planner and getting everything all right and dandy. Is he a… shipper? Of Nurse and Spock?? I will say, over all, I haven’t really… been into the Chapel and Spock thing? It’s not JUST cause I know it won’t go anywhere, but also cause of how they just… don’t go together lmfao which I think this episode is doing its best to try and show.

Korby is the ONLY person who seems to realize something is wrong. He can remember things how they SHOULD be, and is trying to subtly sabatoge the wedding. Spock catches him, and he explains that this is all wrong. Spock punches him out, but then for some reason remembers that yes, this IS wrong, and… well yes, feels bad, but most importantly is like “this needs to be fixed”. He and Korby work together, they’re both smart science boys, and though they love the same woman, they have to work together to figure out what’s wrong.

It’s kinda fun to watch these two try and wander around a changed reality, testing at the waters and touching the boundaries to find where they are. Spock tries to get others to realize something is wrong. He tries to get Kirk to punch him. He insults his mustache. It doesn’t work.

When they confront the Wedding Planner about this, he reveals he’s a giant fucking baby and this is all a game to him, which they’ll have to play, or he will wipe everyone from existence. Welp. Korby and Spock change up their plan and yeah, the only thing they can possibly do now really, is try to go along with it. When Korby DOES act up, he’s turned into a dog, and no one else seems to care. They’re really just his puppets.

Eventually Chapel snaps out of it too, thanks to Spock, and when the Wedding Planner announces everyone is going to die. But he’s interrupted by his… dad. Who is, in fact, played by John de Lancie. Hmm. The bartender is just a kid, and he’s made to clean up his toys. Everyone is like “WELL THAT WAS WEIRD” and then tries to celebrate the actual reason they’re there, the Cenntenial. La’an dances with Spock, who has no regrets. We have one of the three armed aliens from TAS, who joins the crew as their bartender, yay! Aaaaand Ortegas has a PTSD episode. Yay!

Shuttle to Kenfori - VOY 7.5/10

Somehow, the Gorn Tissue has returned. Patel is still sick cause of Gorn, but they think they have a way that can fix it. It takes a flower, but it can only be found in a no-fly zone that would cause a Klingon War if they went to it. So Pike does an off the books mission, setting himself up as the person who’d take the fall if it goes bad. Mbenga goes with him, cause y’know, it’s a medical thing. It’d be a good idea to bring a Klingon War Vet to this possible Klingon area~ And on the way they get a warning beacon of “GO BACK OR DIE”, which is weird to have on a planet where no one’s supposed to be there.

There are no life signs on the planet. It’s a jungle, but no animals, at all. And they find a corpse that probably died after the evacuation. Welp, it’s Aliens time or some shit.

While going through an old building and gathering their flowers, a Klingon shuttle (the first in the series? At least that I’ve seen) comes and blows their ship up. Now they’re being hunted by some Klingons, oh boy! It’s two guys and a woman who appears to be in charge.

The Klingons get them, but then they’re attacked by… zombies. Just, straight up zombies. They eat a Klingon alive. Jesus CHRIST. I dunno if we’ve ever seen ANYTHING like this in Trek? It’s now a fucking zombie horror movie. By the way, this planet, Ken Fori, is named after Ken Foree, the lead actor in Day of the Dead.

Back on the Enterprise, they plan how to rescue their crew. Still radio silence, they dunno what happened, they just haven’t heard anything from the ground team, so they go after them with a very slow, but safe tactic. Ortegas is VERY unhappy about this and pretty insubordinate. La’an is worried about her health, which we know isn’t doing very well.

So this flower causes genomes to like, fuse, basically. Hybridize people into different things. They tried to use it on a moss that could grow anywhere to make a super food. It accidentally hybridized with corpses and now there are zombies. Mbenga refuses to call them Zombies. Pike keeps using the “Z” word. And now that he knows what the Chimera Flower does, he knows that it’ll turn her into a Gorn hybrid. He is NOT happy about this, but it was her decision, and is the only way anyone knows to save her.

They get chased by more Zombies, and find themselves with the Klingon girl behind a force field. She stabs Pike, and we find out that she’s the daugher of Dak’Rah. Remember him? He was the dude from last season who was a straight up war criminal who was trying to act like he had changed, and was killed by M’Benga in a scene where it’s not clear exactly what happened, if it was self defense or not. Now it’s coming back to bite him. She hated him so it’s no problem there, but she’s sure that if SHE had killed him, she would have brought honor back to her house, and now she has to kill his assassin. And M’Benga admits that he intentionally killed Dak’Rah, it was NOT self defense.

We get PTSD War Hero M’Benga again.

We get a fight scene between M’Benga and this Klingon, fighting with D’ktaghs. In the fight, they damage the force field generator, which is probably not good. M’Benga then wins the fight and chooses not to kill her, which is maybe the rudest thing you can do to a Klingon. So she chooses an honorable death by sacrificing herself. No one will know, but she will. And so with M’Benga, who respects the choice.

Some good flying by Ortegas gets them to save the away team, though Una is VERY unhappy with how Ortegas has been acting. And now Pike has to decide whether or not to turn M’Benga for doing a murder. But luckily, M’Benga only told a story to save Pike’s life when there was a knife to his throat, so, y’know, checks out.

Uh oh. Ortegas intentionally did a bad job so they’d do her idea instead. It was unneccesary, because Pike and M’Benga were going to get on a shuttle anyway and would be safe, and she endangered everyone. So she gets a slap on a wrist, but a “please do not EVER do this again”.

Patel and Pike have a heart to heart about it. He’s like “why didn’t you tell me?” “Because it wasn’t about you, and we both know if I did tell you, you’d tell me not to do it and find another way even though there is no other way”. Which y’know, he did. On the planet. So she’s right. And then it just… ends. I guess we’ll find out next week how it goes!

This one was uh… fine. I dunno how much we needed zombies in Star Trek but that’s fine. Fun Klingon fight!