Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
201: The Broken Circle 2023 June 15
(First watched 2023-06-15) Seems like a bold choice to start the season with an episode almost entirely absent Pike. I wonder if next week we see what he is up to during this time?
Definitely pulling some Star Trek III vibes with running away with the Enterprise to help another crewmember. Maybe a bit TOO much.
I... really dislike the bad guys in this episode. There are lots of bad folks in Star Trek, but "reignite a war that was killing tens of millions, to take the price of our goods from High to Really High" is insane in the amount of collateral damage done to give themselves excess wealth.
202: Ad Astra per Aspera 2023 June 22
(First watched 2023-06-22) Well, Pike's adventures during the time frame of the last episode only covered a few minutes, so not exactly what I guessed.
All the regulars were here, but... most of them spent most of their time watching a trial on TV, which felt pretty unusual.
We know the prohibitions against genetic engineering remain to the late 24th century at least so this trial wasn't going to cause some sea change. But "Una gets off by having Starfleet grant Asylum from the Federation" seems like a really damn narrow loophole.
203: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow 2023 June 29
(First watched 2023-06-29) Son of a bitch. At the end of Picard season 2 I thought it was pretty dumb that they were retconning Khan to be several decades later than the 90s... and here that is explained away. I'm still not totally on board with the decision, but the ability to provide an in-universe explanation for such a thing in a totally separate branch is kind of the beauty of a megafranchise.
There are probably more connections to Picard season 2 that really eagle-eyed people like Jorg will notice but that went by me. Like... logos or wording or something that would be familiar from Bob Soong.
The rest of the episode worked well enough. With it being set up very early on that Kirk was from a timeline that shouldn't be, I had a pretty strong feeling he would have an "Edith Keeler moment". Close enough.
So after two episodes with a large amount of ~alternate reality versions of James Kirk, we finally see the real deal very briefly at the end.