Star Trek

This is a fine episode, but I felt it tried to take on too much when it absolutely did not need to. The stolen starship thing never felt purposeful. I presume its intent is to help set up why the enterprise is going so deep into klingon territory, but i’m just not sold on that. I think an espionage/stealth set up would’ve been a better balance (especially with later sneaking through the asteroids).

Others have brought up Spock’s emotion and how it’s seemingly exceeding TOS Spock. Personally, Im not too concerned with this. I tend to be pretty fast and lose with canon (i’m here to have fun, not stress over every thing). With that said, my best theory is that between now and The Cage, Spock will have some traumatic event which forces him to lock away his emotions further.

I think this episode was fine. Glad to have it back, and hoping we don't have too many more breaks between shows again. :D

What was the magic hypo serum they used? Was it the lost Captain America serum? Or has that been referenced / used before somewhere else in universe that I don’t recall?

I'm doing my first watch of TOS and the instrument that Spock picks up is the same as in TOS 1x02. That was a cool little reference.

I understand if I get a slew of downvotes, but I thought that episode was pretty bad. The pacing was weird and many of the sequences involving the mining planet felt poorly written (what's with the Witcher potion?). I feel like I'm the only person not into the whole Spock/Chapel thing, so seeing that pushed harder was cringe for me.

Nice episode, I was expecting a cliffhanger at the end showing what Pike was up to.

I am curious about the Lanthanites, I’ve had visitor before, like Guinan in 1890s, but a whole species living among side humans, maybe they don’t have a big population, I bet they could be the origin of many human myths. I wonder what was their reason.

Maybe It will help with Una’s trial, since both pretended to be humans.

Also, in TOS there was about an Immortal Human, maybe he was a Lanthanite and just didn’t know.

Overall, a pretty good episode! I am slightly conflicted - I really like the character development of this Spock, but it's also less and less feeling like the Spock we'll eventually see in TOS. As the Klingon captain said, 'the least Vulcan like Vulcan ever' - whereas Spock in TOS is trying to suppress his human side and it takes him till like Star Trek VI to actually act on a hunch. But I am also conflicted as I really like this character too.

The stealing the Enterprise scene, I think Search for Spock is laughing... The CGI of the Enterprise manuvering away from space dock and escaping to warp was amazing though - one of the best uses of 3D space in Star Trek ever but pausing for like 5 minutes whilst stealing a ship to decide what his 'line' is going to be... I wish the new series would stop their pre-ocupation with this, it's kind of famous because Picard uses Engage and Make It So enough to be memeable, but most of the time people from Kirk to Janeway to Sisko also use Engage. (Kirk also frequently uses warp speed Mr sulu, and ahead warp factor 1, take her out, first star to the left and straight on till morning.) And so every captain doesn't have their thing. Pike's 'hit it' is ok, but 'Let's Fly' is kinda dumb and 'I want to go, now' is out of character and just a really unnecessary part of the story. It's also not going to be memeable when it's forced.

I really didn't like the scene where M'Benga and Chapel use some kind of drug to give them super strength to fight off a whole ship of Klingons and then the torture scene? Star Trek should be cleverer than that and made me lose respect for both of the characters. At least the Klingons look like Klingons again.

I like the new chief engineer a lot more than I thought I was going too though!

Star Trek has always been kind of lax when officers disobeying orders save the day, but I thought the admiral should have been angrier and I really hope there's a scene in episode 2 where Pike and Spock talk about it.

Enjoyed pretty much everything in this episode except the magic super steroids. The sequence went on for so long.. I assumed that I had forgotten something from last series because there’s no way they would have had this to hand the whole time and never thought to use it during any one of the many life and death emergencies?

That aside. Loved the rest of the episode and looking forward to where things go from here (plus really really happy to have weekly Trek again!)

Quite enjoyable, although I agree with some other commenters that it wasn't the strongest premiere. I thought the green juice and whole Chapel/M'Benga plotline was particularly rough, though dealing with the PTSD could be interesting in the future. It just felt rather un-Star Trekky in an otherwise solid show.

I'm also slightly unsure about how far they are going in regards to Spocks journey. I did like that they had an in-universe fairly believable reason for it from last seasons episode with the Gorn. I like that the show has a consequence for Spock, and I certainly don't hate it but just a bit cautious and curious where it's heading.

Otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed the episode, even with so little of Pike. The other characters are very solid and I liked that they toned down some of the quips and such. Looking forward to the rest of the season.

Season 2 is released? I just finished watching season 1 yesterday!

Have we ever heard of Lanthanites? Apparently they

I wonder if they know about the El-Aurians or Q.

I'm only 14 minutes in, and I'm already way into this season.

Finally had time to watch it tonight and I thought it was great.

I feel like what seemed corny or off was on purpose. Spock is on a learning curve with his emotions/duty conundrum and we certainly felt that.

Looking forward to next week!

What a way to start the season! I love that they're leaning hard into the TOS vibe.

There's a lot to pick apart if you really wanted to, but frankly it's hard for me to get hung up on minutae when the characters and universe are so spot on. Some good starship porn in there too. What an adventure! Gene would be more than happy with this one I think.

I do annotations for every episode on DaystromInstitute, noting references and so on. Do I post the one I’ve done for “The Broken Circle” here or wait for Sunday?

God damn I enjoyed the shit out of that!

At first glance I was unsure about the new engineer but by the end of her first scene I loved her. I wish she was featured a bit more but I'm sure we will see more soon.

Spock is the man!

Fun episode, but bits and pieces always felt a little off. Pelia was fantastic - love seeing competent non-main-characters in any sort of fiction.

Chapel/Spock... ugh. Not so much.

Whats with the wierd "Crossfield" class?

If my memory is correct, this episode contained more than half of the scenes from the trailers, most of which were theorized to be from different episodes.

That leaves two possibilities:

• this episode is the most interesting episode, which would be unfortunate but not unheardof for Paramount

• the best is yet to come, and we have no idea what's coming.

I choose to believe the second, for now, and I'm excited.

Was that a TOS style California-class docked next to the Enterprise early on?