'Space Babies' was a classic RTD dumpster fire. It felt like a first draft and the exposition dump at the beginning was very badly done. The script editor should have pushed back hard on this one.
'The Devil's Chord' was better although hamstrung by the fact that they couldn't afford the rights to any Beatles music.
Ncuti and Millie have quickly established themselves and I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the season brings.
Generally Doctor Who gets into a quagmire when it starts mining the backstory for story ideas. Too much of it and the show becomes unwatchable. Chibnall didn't appear to have many plans for it beyond introducing Jo Martin's Doctor so it's hard to understand why it was brought up in the first place.
That said RTD seems to have found an interesting take on it with the orphan angle and seems to have used it as a soft continuity reset of the backstory. With the new "happy go lucky" Doctor that we have in the 15th and the fact that we are back to being the "last of the time lords" (at least for the moment) I think it's going to hard to explore the abuse angle in any depth without bringing the angst back.
I think 'The Devil in the Dark' from the Original Series would be a good option. As would "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach" from Strange New Worlds.
I would have it run until Kirk takes over as captain. Then jump forward to just after The Motion Picture.
This not only gives them about a decade of time before TWOK that’s barely been touched by the screen canon, they can do a design revamp to freshen the series up using TMP as a starting point, and they handle the fact that with a series per year the actors are going to quickly age ahead of their characters.
It’s also been suggested in the beta canon that the Gorn are made up of multiple reptile variants. The ones in SNW seem to be raptor based. It’s possible the less agile more tank like variants might show up later.
At a minimum the script editor should have asked the writers hard questions about the Chapel and Batel subplots to justify their inclusion.
I would have dropped the two subplots and used the screen time on La’an who was strangely reduced to giving color commentary for an episode that she should have been front and center on.
(Ignoring sloppy writing as the reason…)
Star Fleet seems to like to compartmentalize information. Examples:
At least post ‘First Contact’ they had hints of the Borg before ‘Q Who’ but kept it quiet. Similarly the Genesis device information was on a need to know basis (although probably for good reason). There was also that Voyager episode based around the Omega directive that only Janeway knew about.
La’An theorises the Gorn have a weapon capable of rendering their enemies blind by interfering with comms, sensors and transport. In TOS: “Arena”, they were capable of faking subspace transmissions to lure starships in.
In Arena while pinned down by the Gorn landing party, Kirk also mentions that communications are being interfered with.
I've long accepted that SNW is basically an ensemble anthology show and TOS crew and others will rotate in and out as needed. The only fixed character is the Enterprise.
A lot to unpack here. Definite 'Best Of Both Worlds' vibes. Great end of season episode. Hopefully this time they have the resolution to the cliffhanger written.
I figured Batel would suffer the fate she did, even before the episode started. It was lazy writing that she should end up in the situation she did and so it happened. The writing team can and should do better than this.
Scotty appearing was a nice touch, and was well played by the actor. Given that Chapel is probably going to be rotated out for a while I think pairing him with Pelia for season 3 might be fun.
The Gorn were also well done, although the Aliens homages are getting tiresome and unless they are going completely retcon 'Arena' then there isn't a huge amount more than can be done with them. Thankfully so far they seem to using them sparingly. Hopefully they will move onto other TOS races in season 3. The Tholians, for example, have a unique feel and less alpha continuity to worry about.
Chekov was on the Enterprise during s1. Continuity with TWOK requires it. Plus some of the star dates for s2 episodes that starred Chekov where set before the star date for Space Seed.
But yes at this point we are ~6 years before TOS so Chekov would be in his late teens.
Is that also the first 32nd Century Klingon we've seen?