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The episode title “The Broken Circle” is similar to the title of DS9’s second season episode, “The Circle”.
- The titular Circle in “The Circle” was the colloquial name for a Bajoran extremist organization, the Alliance for Global Unity, who were being covertly supplied by the Cardassian Union in order to sow political chaos and smooth the way for them to retake Bajor. Here the Broken Circle is a mining syndicate made up of former soldiers from both the Federation and Klingon empire looking to reignite the war between powers so they can profit off the conflict.
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At Starbase 1 we see:
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A number of ships which appear to be identical to the drones used by the Section 31 ships under the control of…Control during “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2”.
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Shuttlecraft of the type introduced in the episode, “Strange New Worlds”.
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A Starfleet vessel of a previously unseen configuration.
- We only see the nacelles, struts, and a bit of the secondary hull that they’re attached to of this ship, but it appears to be the Crossfake-class from later in the episode flipped upside down, including have the registry.
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A single nacelle ship, of the same type as the USS Archer seen in “Strange New Worlds”.
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The USS Enterprise NCC-1701, no bloody A, B, C, D, E, F, or G.
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A starship with the same spaceframe as the USS Farragut as seen in “A Quality of Mercy”.
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Pike’s [Anson Mount] captain’s log records the stardate as 2369.2.
- One time to refresh everyone’s memory of how SNW does things, here are the stardates mentioned in season one:
| Episode | Stardate |
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| “Strange New Worlds” | 1739.12 |
| “Strange New Worlds” | 2259.42 |
| “Children of the Comet” | 2912.4 |
| “Ghosts of Illyria” | 1224.3 |
| “Memento Mori” | 3177.3 |
| “Memento Mori” | 3177.9 |
| “Spock Amok” | 2341.4 |
| “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach” | 1943.7 |
| “The Serene Squall” | 1997.7 |
| “The Elysian Kingdom” | 2341.6 |
| ”All Those Who Wander” | 2510.6 |
| “Errand of Mercy” | 1457.9 |
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“Oh sure, just take three days off from being captain of the Enterprise to go to the other side of the quadrant and get a door slammed in your face.” Quadrant here doesn’t likely refer to the entire alpha quadrant, but the smaller quadrants that were frequently mentioned in TOS and TNG, before DS9 and VOY started having major concerns on the other side of the galaxy.
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Doctor M’Benga [Babs Olusanmokun] cites the events of season one’s “All Those Who Wander” where Spock [Ethan Peck] embraced his anger over the death of lieutenant Duke to combat the Gorn. Apparently doing so has had long term impact on Spock’s ability to suppress his powerful Vulcan emotions.
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Doctor M’Benga produced a Vulcan lute from a supply closet. We know from season one that Spock has one in his quarters as well. The instrument was introduced in “Charlie X”.
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Nurse Chapel [Jess Bush] tells Doctor M’Benga she is considering applying for an archeological medicine fellowship. Her future fiancée, Roger Korby, is referred to by Spock as ”The Pasteur of archeological medicine,” in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” and he taught classes that Chapel attended.
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Nyota Uhura [Celia Rose Gooding] has traded in her cadet’s badge for that of an officer. She did have on an officer’s delta during Pike’s flash forward in “A Quality of Mercy” but at the very end of the episode when we saw her in the show’s present, she was back to being a cadet.
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Admiral Robert April [Adrian Holmes] refers to lieutenant La’an Noonien-Singh [Christina Chong] as ”a former member of Starfleet,” because she’s been on voluntary leave for a few months. Seems kind of harsh, especially when we’ve seen characters resign their commission and come back to duty with no consequence, such as Worf in “Redemption” and “Redemption II”.
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Changes from the season one opening credits:
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The Enterprise flies through the atmosphere of a planet with massive trees - The Enterprise is depicted in front of a field of ice
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The Enterprise performs a roll as it flies directly at the viewer, and the Enterprise flies over the surface of a planet towards a distant tower - The camera pans across the rear of the Enterprise from starboard
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The planetary ring from the season one credits appears to be burning up, and the Enterprise flies from right to left - The Enterprise flies left to right through a planetary ring
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Meteorites impact against the shields of the Enterprise - A nebula orbiting a star is visible beyond the bow of the Enterprise
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The Enterprise orbits Starbase 1 with an arctic environment visible in on of the biomes - The Enterprise orbits Starbase 1 with a deciduous forest environment visible in on of the biomes
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Spock and the remaining senior staff enact a plan to steal the Enterprise so they can intervene in the threat La’an warned them about via a coded distress signal. Spock will also steal the Enterprise in “The Menagerie, Part I”, and in “Star Trek: The Search for Spock” Kirk and the senior staff steal the Enterprise to retrieve Spock’s body.
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Commander Pelia [Carol Kane] is seen wearing a Stafleet operations division badge with a black backing, possibly indicating her position as an instructor at the Academy.
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”You can always count on a Vulcan’s inability to lie.” Vulcans lie all the time.
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In “The Menagerie, Part I”, Spock tells Pike, “I have never disobeyed your orders before, Captain,” which contradicts “The Red Angel” where he refuses an order to stand down.
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In “The Menagerie, Part I”, Spock made a false entry in the Enterprise’s log.
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In “The Menagerie, Part 2”, it is revealed that Spock has been aware the entire time that the trial was a Talosian projection and thus has been making false statements in service of that deception.
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In “A Taste of Armageddon”, Spock lies as a distraction, claiming there’s a bug on someone’s shoulder before nerve pinching them.
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In “Errand of Mercy”, Spock tells Kor he’s a merchant.
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In “Amok Time”, Spock lies about his excitement seeing that Kirk survived kal-if-fee, claiming it was simply logical relief that Starfleet did not lose a capable captain.
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In “The Enterprise Incident”, the Romluan commander asks if it is merely a myth that Vulcans cannot lie, to which he responds, “It is no myth.”
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In “The Enterprise incident”, Spock claims he was unprepared for Kirk’s attack, and used the *”Vulcan death grip” instinctually. Clearly the attack had been planned, and there is no such thing as a Vulcan death grip.
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In “Yesteryear”, Spock lies about his identity after travelling to the past and visiting his family.
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In “More Tribbles, More Troubles” Spock claims that Vulcans don’t have a sense of humour, which they obviously do.
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In “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”, Spock lies about how long it will take to repair the Enterprise in case the transmission is being monitored. When Saavik calls him on this, he claims he merely exaggerated.
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In “Spock Amok”, Spock told Chapel that he had a dream where he had to fight his human side, whereas it was obvious that in his dream Spock was the human half fighting his Vulcan side.
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Pelia notes that Spock is the son of Amanda Grayson, a character first introduced in “Journey to Babel”
- We learn that Amanda is one of the first people whom Pelia came out regarding being a Lanthanite. This is presented as being fairly noteworthy, yet in the episode Spock is apparently unaware that Pelia is a Lanthanite, or even that his mother is acquainted with one. It would seem that Spock learned his habit of keeping personal information close to the chest from Amanda.
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Pelia implies that she contribute to the design of the engines aboard the Enterprise.
- Pelia says that it has been 100 years since she previously was on a ship with engines she worked on, which would mean it was around 2160. The Federation was established in 2161.
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Uhura recognizes Pelia’s accent as being Lanthanite.
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Spock says that Lanthanites ”managed to live on Earth among other humans, undetected until the 22nd century,” which would seem to imply that Lanthanites are actually an extremely long lived subspecies of humans.
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In “Requiem for Methuselah” we were introduced to the character of Flint, a human born 3834 BCE.
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Spock’s “I would like the ship to go. Now,” does not survive to his becoming first officer, nor does he have a “thing” in TOS or the movies.
- Kirk did not have a ”thing.” Nor did Sisko or Janeway. The idea that everyone likely to give the command to go to warp needs to have their own catchphrase is unsustainable.
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The bloodwine mugs appear to be slightly battered versions of the ones first seen in “Apocalypse Rising”.
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When Doctor M’Benga catches La’an’s attention, he traces a line with his index finger beneath one eye, a gesture they shared in “Strange New Worlds”.
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La’an reveals she was able to locate the parents of Orianna, the child rescued from the wreck of the USS Peregrine in “All Those Who Wander”. La’an took her leave of absence to find them at the end of that episode.
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”Up until the war, this planet provided a steady flow of dilithium to both sides, like it does now.” In “The Vulcan Hello” it was established that there had been no interactions between the Klingon Empire and the Federation for 100 years. Presumably one or both sides could have been supplied through some third party, though.
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We learn that Doctor M’Benga and Chapel both served during the Federation-Klingon War. As per “Project Daedalus” the USS Enterprise was not recalled during the war.
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A curtain in the makeshift medical tent reads ”Medical Clinic” in Federation Standard, Klingon, Illyrian, Orion, and Tellarite.
- The tent also has a Starfleet Medical caduceus stencilled on it.
La’an bluffs a Broken Circle weapons buyer with an ”antimatter detonation switch,” something she tells Uhura she made up on the spot. In “Surrender” Jack Crusher pulled a similar trick on Vadic, implying a personal forcefield was actually an unknown weapon.
In the dilithium mines, Doctor M’Benga and Chapel see what appears to be a mostly constructed Starfleet ship.
When the ship enters space, Mitchell says she thinks it’s a Crossfield-class, like the USS Discovery. The ship does have a Crossfield-class saucer, but the secondary hull is very different.
Motion graphics art director for the series, Tim Peel, has confirmed on twitter that it is not actually a Crossfield-class.
The Crossfake’s transponder has its registry as NCC-1729.
Doctor M’Benga and nurse Chapel inject themselves with a serum that that makes them slower and weaker so that when they attack their Klingon captors they don’t completely overwhelm them. Not doing so would be considered a war crime, as Klingons are extremely bad a fighting as seen in many, many episodes including, but not limited to:
“The Trouble with Tribbles” - Klingons provoke Scotty, Chekov and other Enterprise crew to a fight, only to lose
“Star Trek: The Search for Spock” - A Klingon lord gets the jump on a Starfleet captain, and ends up dumped into a pool of magma like he’s trying to steal the One Ring
“House of Quark” - The head of a Klingon House attacks a small Ferengi and ends up stabbing himself to death
“Marauders” - A group of malnourished colonists fend of a group of armed Klingon warriors after only a day’s worth of Vulcan martial arts training
“The Vulcan Hello” - A Klingon Torchbearer attacked an unarmed Starfleet officer with a bat’leth and stabbed himself to death
Apparently in the Klingon Empire they do call them Klingon disruptors.
The D7-class battlecruiser we see appears to be a reuse of the CGI model introduced in “Through the Valley of Shadows”, perhaps with some updated textures.
Doctor M’Benga was able to use the Crossfake’s transponder communicate with the Enterprise in Morse 2. Morse code has been previously used in:
The SS Botany Bay’s call signal in “Space Seed” was broadcast in morse
Scotty tapped out ”stand back” before destroying the wall of the brig in “Star Trek: The Final Frontier”
The SS Mariposa’s distress beacon was an SOS in “Up the Long Ladder”
In “The 37’s” the *USS Voyager” discovered an SOS coming from a planet in the Delta quadrant
Harry is able to alert Tom Paris of sabotage aboard the Delta Flyer using morse in “Drive”
In “Mindwalk” Dal was able to send an SOS to the rest of the Protogies, but they assumed those were the only letters he would have memorized so they couldn’t use it to communicate back to him.
”They thought it worth their lives to prevent another war. Logical.” This follows Spock’s reasoning from “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” where he first says, ”Logic dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
The maneuvering pack Doctor M’Benga finds looks to be of the type introduced in “Brother”.
We see the D7’s nacelles reconfigure to ready weapons; “Elaan of Troyius” established that the nacelles also house disruptor cannons.
Spock is able to revive Chapel using CPR. We’ve previously seen Kirk use the technique to save the life of a child in “The Paradise Syndrome”, and Tendi do so with Boimler in “First First Contact”. It’s not entirely clear if Chakotay actually performed CPR on Janeway in “Coda” or if that was only part of a hallucination inflicted upon her by an alien entity.
Captain D’Chok’s armour has a similar design to the Klingon armour introduced in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and used all through TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, and the TOS and TNG movies, but is gold, like the tunics Klingon soldiers wore during TOS.
D’Chok’s baldric bears a House symbol first seen in the DIS episode “Point of LIght” one by one of the members of the High Council.
Both House D’Ghor and House Kol wore gold armour in season one of DIS.
Spock states he ”[has] been known to” drink bloodwine. In “The Conscience of the King” Spock tells Bones that his father’s people were *”spared the dubious benefits of alcohol,” which might imply that they are not actually capable of becoming drunk from it. And in “Cease Fire” Soval declares that Vulcans do not drink, but he himself immediately makes an exception. Also, T’Pol, Sakonna, Tuvok, and Spock are all seen drinking at one point or another. And both Vulcan port and Vulcan brandy were introduced in “The Maquis, Part I” and “Repression” respectively.
Despite his claim, this is the first instance of Spock drinking bloodwine on screen.
Spock is hungover during his call with April, so perhaps even if Vulcans are spared the benefits of alcohol, they still experience the drawbacks, which could explain why they don’t drink. Except when they do.
When the map in April’s office resolves, a few locations can be made out
Deep Space 2
Galdonterre - The planet where Kang, Kor, and Koloth were able to track the Albino to in “Blood Oath”
Cestus - Cestus III is introduced in “Arena” as the planet where the Enterprise beams down to have dinner at an observation outpost only to find it’s been razed by the Gorn
What is a probable Gorn attack ship - in the Gorn Hegemony they just call them ships.
Ok, that’s pretty dang funny about the serum slowing them down. That part of the episode jumped the shark for me. I’m excited to see the rest of the series, but thought this episode wasn’t great.