OK, it’s cool to see Ortegas on a single mission after all that manufactured nonsense about being half-et by a G’ohrn but not only that not ever being mentioned again, but absolutely ignored by Act Three of the same episode. So, I’m a little cross with my favorite decades-long comfort food right now because it used to be full-on American apple pie with a slice of philosophy and now it’s seemingly about an endless parade of atonal decisions made by characters bravely facing whatever is being foisted on them by the guys who kicked out Walter Mosley for being… too authentic, I guess?
Anyway, another shuttle accident episode far from the ship with no food and water and only your plucky, tragic backstory self can get you out of this.
So, of course, Ortegas gets a solo mission to prove she’s fit for duty and of course it’s to measure gravimetric anomalies and of course the shuttlecraft can’t fight the gravimetric anomaly and she crashes. But not before the ass of it all is shown to the audience. This show has eight-episode seasons, so they aren’t spending all the money and when they do, it’s to show epic vistas in The Volume so everything has this standing-in-a-green-screen weatherman’s workplace vibe about it. I mean, it’s a cool technological achievement, but I mean… well.
Ortegas losing the battle to gravity isn’t shown. The “blast plates” are down over the windows and there’s a computer VO telling us she’s flying by instruments and I get it. I do the same thing with my backup camera when I’m parallel parking in this hilly town. It’s fun. But this is a TV show, and it should look more fun trying to escape a black hole than it does trying to park on Page Street to go get card sleeves from Gamescape.
So, yes, the closed windows and the little silver orb thing are design choices to echo the ol’ full sized AMT model of the Galileo from TOS and proud we are of all of them. But in a show you spend a hunny mill on each episode, what’s the harm in showing us what’s out the window in the icy cold of space?
The other thing that chaps me about this show is you don’t really see all the money onscreen, and you don’t really ever get the promise of STRANGE NEW WORLDS because each episode is always a tour of old ST tropes created by the TOS writers on the regular but this show is all hey a supporting cast member is in trouble and needs rescue? Of course those colonists on Naplua Stretchie III need those weighted blankets to combat their planet-wide sciatica flare-up. The plot clock, Captain? She’s ticking! Not fast enough. Captain, the wormhole! It’s shrinking! Families! With children!
Captain Decker and the Constellation rendezvous is still on schedule? That’s the level of Star Trek we get this episode, I guess.
Then, of course, if it wasn’t obvious to you right away, Secret Hideout wants you to know they’re big ST fans and so are doing this cover version of “Arena,” but just in a sadder way. ‘Memberberry how cool it was when Kirk was on Cestus Three and figuring out how to make a weapon that can take the Gorn? “A large deposit of diamonds on the surface. Perhaps the hardest substance known in the universe. Beautifully crystallized, and pointed, but too small to be useful as a weapon. An incredible fortune in stones yet I would trade them all for a hand phaser… or a good solid club.” I mean, if you’re a TOS fan, you can hear Shat giving this dialogue a poetic performance. Kirk is getting goddamn wistful about taking out this lizard, man. Starfleet! Wisdom and philosophy at the end of a fist; geez, that delivers some entertainment. What’s the line Ortegas has at the same turn in the plot? “I could use a hand phaser.” That’s it.
This kind of thing is what I mean when I say modern Star Trek has no soul. First Harry Mudd, then Trelayne, and now this. I beg you, Secret Hideout: stay away from Ron Tracey and the Exeter.
Star Trek used to know how to Star Trek.