The entire series is set in a snow globe on Sam Kirk’s mantle, in the home where he lives to be 147.

How kind of them to not release it in any other format…

Camera spin continues to be a big part of the visual language.

I was genuinely surprised that Olatunde Osunsanmi didn’t direct.

Hegemony, Part II

I appreciated the continued exploration of the Gorn as a truly alien alien species. All the stuff with their different sensory modes, and solar-associated life cycles, is a lot of fun to me.

It also seems like they’ve written the Gorn off as a going concern, which I think is fine. This is a good place to leave it until “Arena” - they even added some dialogue about the various Gorn stories being somewhat vague, so there’s some wiggle room for them to seem a little different when they’re encountered again in the future.

They managed to film the AR wall in a way that didn’t just seem like a round room, which I appreciate.

Wedding Bell Blues

Give this show all the makeup and costuming awards immediately.

It was a fun romp, and I always like it when two opposing characters have to team up against the universe. I could have done with more dancing at the end - it seems like the actors put in a lot of work for a fairly brief scene.

I’ve never been a big fan of drawing a connection between Trelane and the Q, so I’m glad neither was mentioned by name (Edit: I think…?).

Please give me a Sam Kirk spinoff that runs for 50 years.

Very cool - I honestly had never considered the logistics of these sorts of operations, but seeing the host of these videos work out the fuel stops along the way just to make it out to the ships they’re evacuating people from has been incredible.

In at least one case, I pressed the create button, and it appeared to not work, so I pressed it again.

I have had this happen - I hope the Lemmy UI eventually gets a better “working” signal.

I’ve learned to eventually just trust that it’s working, and that the post will go through in a few agonizing seconds.

not short sighted fiscally

Talk about a big ask…

I don’t think there’s much to worry about - Goldsman may be open to the idea, but he’s also got another job lined up, so I think it will remain hypothetical.

“Unfortunately Discovery’s loss was our gain. So they basically said, ‘Look, we think we’re done after four seasons.’ And we said, ‘Hey, what about our whole ‘Let’s get the fans to the TOS era,’ because what happens to all these people, and how does this person will come up?’ And they were like, ‘No, that’s fair. That’s true.’ And they said, ‘What do you need to get there?’ And we said, ‘Six episodes’ and they said okay.”

“The good news was, when I say ‘they,’ really the folks who make this show wanted this to happen too, but there are fiscal constraints that are real. You know what’s going on with Paramount. So to move things forward in that environment was a challenge, but everybody—CBS, Paramount, Strange New Worlds, and [Alex Kurtzman’s production company] Secret Hideout were all pulling in the same direction. And that’s how we ended up getting six episodes. So it was a wasn’t really a negotiation, but it was a heavy lift for pretty much everybody, because everybody wanted not to have another Discovery circumstance where it felt abrogated in a way that wasn’t thorough.”

Surprisingly candid stuff. I’m glad that some of the CBS pencil-pushers are creative-minded enough to make this happen.

Direct YouTube link to this bit of silliness.

Yeah, I’m honestly thrilled with how it turned out.

I’ve been saying for a while now that they need to recapture the feeling of this episode for the Daleks, where they’re actually a significant threat.

This is almost enough to be its own thread. I agree…but I’m also not sure it’s possible.

There are certain villains in sci-fi that are set up for inevitable diminishing returns. Usually, it’s because they are (a) immensely powerful, and (b) single-minded. I think the Daleks and the Cybermen fall into this grouping, as do Star Trek’s Borg.

When you set up an enemy like that…it seems like you can only really use them once or twice before you have to start making changes. Either they have to get less threatening, because otherwise it’s ridiculous that they keep getting beaten, or you have to start tweaking the “single-minded” aspect of them to find new storytelling angles.

With the Daleks, they’ve done both since 2005, to varying degrees of success. Hell, this episode does it to an extent, giving the Dalek a mutation to allow it to be unwilling to kill Rose, and eventually declare itself to be…not a Dalek, really.

But to keep them as a powerful, single-minded “kill everything” type of villain…it’s just not sustainable, even though they’re a powerful metaphor.

As much as I miss the crazy pepper pots, it’s probably a good thing that the RTD2 era has given them a “rest” so far (though I quite liked Chibnall’s Dalek-centred New Year’s specials).

Yeah I’m not super familiar with the podcasting world, but I think they have technology that stitches current ads into the back catalogue.

The big problem with the Undo button is that I keep forgetting it exists, plz fix.

It seemed like the Federation thing to do.

Next year, we’ll probably go smaller.

Big thanks to everyone involved - I had a blast, and truly appreciated the collaboration in bringing a fairly large starship to life!

Yeah, he cobbled together a fake Gorn transponder, and built a trap out of force fields and fake biosigns.

But he probably gave accurate time estimates like a rank amateur.

Don’t they have a table or something this year?

I think it looks great!

I’m no longer available today, but I was working on replacing the light blue pixels with light grey - it just seems to look better.

If anyone is able to finish that, awesome. If not…still awesome!

The first perfect, or nigh-perfect of the revived series.

This episode does a couple of things exceptionally well. Firstly, it introduces the Daleks to a new audience. In doing so, they take something that’s unquestionably goofy-looking and goofy-sounding, and making it seem like a credible threat. The second the Doctor sees the Dalek, he absolutely panics, begging to be let out of the room. This leads to Eccleston spending the episode showing his true range, from that panic, to sorrow, to rage. It’s superb.

Related to that, we get the more complete update on what, exactly, the Last Time War was, and how it has affected the Doctor. He’s burdened by what he’s done, and what he’s lost, but won’t hesitate to justify it, and even gloat about it if the situation calls for it.

The supporting cast is quite good, too. Van Statten is the sort of character that often doesn’t land well on this series, but he works pretty well. Hiring an American actor to play the prominent American character helps a lot, and his dialogue seems more effective than “American” dialogue on Doctor Who often does. Anna Louise-Plowman is also pretty memorable in a role that would normally be a bit of a throwaway.

The episode is adapted from the Sixth Doctor audio story “Jubilee” - I’ve never listened to it, but the wiki summary suggests quite a lot was changed.

I guess the last thing I’ll note is that the gimmick of Rose’s DNA somehow repowering the Dalek is pretty silly, but its the sort of silly that makes a good story work.

I’m sure there’s loads more to say - I’m looking forward to hearing what others think!