This was a confusing, but good episode. At first I was like "what first officer would not report her catching a potentially dangerous infection?" and when the chief medical officer started acting strange, I thought maybe the strange energy creatures were possessing them? But it turned out to be something totally unexpected on both accounts. Maybe, I feel, would have been better if they kept these two secrets to be revealed in separate episodes. But, well, at least they are out in the open now.
I know very little about Illyrians. They were in TOS, I take it? The conflict with Noonien was good considering her ancestry. Given that even during DS9 Starfleet had kept their ban of genetic manipulation, I assume they have not joined Starfleet since then.
The pattern buffer thing reminded me of what Scotty did to save himself, in his TNG appearance. Of course, here, the person is sometimes taken out of the buffer so the pattern would not degrade. I assume stasis would still make her age so that's why that was not an option?

EDIT: Huh, so they appeared in Enterprise, not TOS. In fact, only in one episode and their contact with Starfleet was not very positive, considering Archer stole their warp coils and left them adrift (he needed them to keep up with the Xindi threat). Guess since then relations must have been better between them and humans.
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Heh, not for me, I have watched TNG, DS9 and Voyager more times than I can remember so the only classic Trek I have not seen is TOS season 3. I might get around to that someday too. And I never gotten far in my rewatch of Enterprise.
Discovery and Picard are frankly not bad, they are far from unwatchable, they are just a product of the era, and unlike the older shows. Strange New Worlds however, tries hard to be the same episodic format as the old stories, I think that'd resonate better with the people hating the other shows - if they would still be around, but I doubt most would give this show a chance after 4 Discovery seasons.

Yeah, I think this is a product of that Kirk era. Even Archer kept things from Starfleet (like that time traveler's room). If all this had happened on the Enterprise D, I think Picard would have been sympathetic but would have reported both cases but added that in his judgment they could stay, similar to how he eventually went against directive to infect the Borg with a deadly virus after meeting Hugh.

Doesn't the TOS pilot take place later during Pike's command? As in, shortly before the accident?

Umm, but it actually did help. If Starfleet did nothing the comet would have collided with the planet.
The comet simply KNEW Spock would do that. To me this was a clear case of predestination paradox.

 

Yeah, I really poorly phrased what I said. My understanding is that the comet foretold what would happen but also the events that transpired during the away team's interaction with the comet led to the eventual conclusion. The comet could have let its shields down sooner to allow for a different plan of action to be taken by the Enterprise's crew but because it basically let things play out the way it did, the ideal outcome unfolded.

Another way to put it, Spock only came up with the plan because the comet played its part in the preordained series of events leading to the

Spoiler

forced sublimation plan

 

No, "The Cage" takes place earlier than the 1st episode of Strange New Worlds. I haven't seen more than clips from Discovery season 2, but I think they revisit the events of The Cage during that season, so the pilot predates Discovery as well.

I believe "The Cage" takes place in the gap between the end of Enterprise, and the beginning of Discovery. Looking at a few timelines, I get something like this:

2161 - the formation of the Federation, covered in the last episodes of Enterprise
2254 - the Enterprise visits Talos IV under Captain Pike
2256 - first episode of Discovery is set during this year

 

The timeline works like this:

2254 - The Original Series first pilot - "The Cage"
2256 - Discovery season 1 premiere - "The Vulcan Hello" and "Battle at the Binary Stars"
2256 - Discovery season 1 - "Context is for Kings"
2257 - Discovery season 1 finale - "Will You Take My Hand?"
2258 - Discovery season 2 finale - "Such Sweet Sorrow"
2259 - Strange New Worlds season 1 premiere - "Strange New Worlds"
2265 - The Original Series second pilot - "Where No Man Has Gone Before"
2266 - The Original Series season 1 - "The Man Trap"

 

Couple of things on episode 3...
Number One: In her entire time at Starfleet there was no routine medical examine or transporter screening or background check that detected that she wasn't human??
Pattern Buffers: Dr. M'Benga says that a pattern can be stored indefinitely. Then why, hundreds of years later, was Geordi shocked that Scotty was still alive in the pattern buffer of the USS Jenolan?
Hemmer: He's blind but his other senses make up the difference. Okay. But that still wouldn't let him interact with touch screens IMO.

 

1.) Illyrians may pass as humans on scans, maybe she rejiggered some medical data to make it happen.
2.) I'm not sure where I land on this one. On the one hand, I completely get why Geordi would be shocked (we all were) but on the other hand, he may not have known about it as it seems Dr. M'Benga has kept this quietly under wraps, with the help of Number One. So, I guess we'll have to see where the show goes with it before we can say for sure. (Still a valid point worth making.)
3.) He does have precognition and maybe memorized which presses do what, but yeah, this one's on them and they dropped the ball.

What I don't understand is why they didn't find a way to use Number One's healing factor to help the girl fight off her illness. (And before anyone says "science doesn't work like that!", it's Star Trek. *nothing* works like that, yet here we are.)

 

Because she would have had to have had the disease to create the antibodies for the doctor to harvest to make the cure. It's the same reason why she need to be re-exposed to the "light virus" to make a cure.

 

Right, but it's Star Trek. Inject the girl's blood into her, let her immune system do its thing, pull out the antibodies and inject them into the girl or graft something, this, that, and the other thing.
I mean, Dr. Crusher (against her will) implanted a 3D printed spine into Worf and no one batted an eye. Blood transfusions from an alien who self-heals should be easy peasy at this point. lol

 

Yeah, that line bothered me. It has been well established in the previous series that a pattern cannot be indefinitely stored in the pattern buffer. Patterns starts to degrade after only a few minutes. Scotty only survived because he had jury-ridged the transporter in an unusual way... and it didn't work for his friend that went into the pattern buffer with him. Also, an episode of Voyager established that repeated transporter suspension leads to acute cellular degradation. So M'Benga periodically rematerializing his daughter and putting her back into the pattern buffer over and over again should actually be making her health worst...

When Tuvok was blinded in an episode of Voyager, he activated some sort of tactile setting on the panels. But considering the Aenar's telepathic abilities, I get the impression he can probably "see" without actually seeing.

M'Benga said her immune system didn't produce anti-bodies to fight off the virus. Apparently instead, it literally burned the virus out of her system, which I guess is what the glowing skin was meant to indicate. Yet, somehow her immune system created chimeric antibodies in La'an just because they were in proximity of each other when it activated again in engineering. I dunno how that's supposed to work.

 

Episode 3 continues the trend of making me a happy Trek fan.

Strongest point of the episode are the performances by Romjin and Olusanmokun, the former for carrying the weight as the protagonist focus of the episode and the latter for the reveal of the tragedy of M'Benga's secret.

I think M'Benga's plight is particularly powerful for those who are parents or guardians of children. Olusanmokun's delivery of his lines was perfectly fine but it was his eyes/gaze that sold his performance for me.

As usual, Mount and Peck just hit the bullseye with their roles. Perfect casting.

I enjoy Horacks's surly Hemmer.

Bush as Nurse Chapel is great with what little screen and script time she has.

I'm still trying to warm up to Chong as Noonien-Singh. I hope the writers have the character develop more dimension than the one note chip-on-the-shoulder trope.

 

Is it just me or does Romijn look different then how she looked on Discovery?

 

Looking back at screen caps, since I didn't watch past season 2 of the show, looks like she didn't have a tan in the Discovery episodes. Aside from the complexion, her hair was styled in a more classic Number One look than how her hair is being worn in SNW.

These are the differences I'm noticing.

 

For what it's worth:
I read the novelization of that episode. And there's a scene where Scotty is cobbling together the broke ass transporter to A) work again and B) dematerialize them and then go into a loop (using a diagnostic sequence) to keep their patterns stored indefinitely automatically. And one pad broke down that's why the other guy died. All things considered it was never meant to last, and was miraculous it lasted like it did.

What M'Benga is doing with the exterior controls keep the sequence from completing. And the fact that he has to bring her out every once in a while seems to me he knows what keeping her in there long term means more harm.

 

Yeah, the episode itself roughly described all of that as well. As I'd said, Scotty jury-rigged the transporter in an unusual way. It was a desperate last-ditch effort to save Franklin and himself. For Scotty, it was a gamble that paid off but certainly not normal or expected for the transporter to be able to do.

Completing the sequence would just mean rematerializing her. Her pattern is still being stored in the buffer in the meantime...
From the dialog:
"Did you know there's no limit on how long you can store someone's pattern in the buffer? You just have to materialize them regularly."

Except, again, outside Scotty's miraculous jury-rigging, a transporter buffer cannot store a pattern for more than a few minutes. Take episodes like TNG "Realm of Fear", DS9 "Our Man Bashir", Voyager "Counterpoint" as examples. And it's "Counterpoint" in-particular that established repeatedly putting someone in transporter suspension causes acute cellular degradation. That damage was said to be cumulative, so they couldn't keep putting those people in transporter suspension. It wasn't a matter of simply how long they were in the buffer.

 

And the only reason he'd have to bring her out regularly is so her pattern won't degrade to the point the Transporters trace file can't restore her. Plus the episode calls out that it's the medical transporter. Like more than once, the dialogue calls it the medical transporter. And since they're are variants of the transporter for specific roles. M'Benga may just be exploiting a particular capability of the medical transporter to keep his daughter alive. But this being a 23rd century design it's a power hog.

 

What? Rematerializing her periodically is immaterial to preserving her pattern when the buffer can only hold a pattern for a few minutes. They're ignoring what's been established by saying there is no limit. And an emergency medical transporter doesn't mean that the technology is any different from any other transporter on the ship. What you're suggesting here is pure conjecture that isn't supported by anything in the episode and also ignores what every other Star Trek series has established about holding a pattern in the buffer. All they mean by calling it an emergency medical transporter is that this sickbay has it's own transporter to use in an emergency. Sorta like how some sickbays in the 24th century were equipped with holo-emitters for the EMH program, but they weren't any different compared to those found on the holodeck.

 

There's been people in starfleet before who have lied about their species, they somehow got past. I guess she just was able to fool them somehow. Maybe one of her modifications was that she gives off a human biosignature?

Which episodes said they can only store a buffer pattern for a few minutes? Taking her out of the transporter essentially resets the pattern cycle so no degridation happens (must admit, I don't remember episodes saying this was an issue). Maybe M'benga is saying they can do it perminantly because no one has tried doing this yet so they don't know it causes cellular degredation. Heck, maybe this ends up being the incident where they learn that. Someone has to do it first for them to know it happens. I like that they put in the line about having to materialise her often. Scotty rigged his up so he didn't need the rematerialising, which is why they were shocked that he was still in there when they found him.


Overall, another good episode. I called it what those light creatures were straight away. But did they just leave the colonists like that? Not feeling the helm officer, I don't hate her or anything, just not really feeling her character. But liking the rest of the crew.

 

This show fuckin’ rocks. I think most of the positives and odd eyebrow raiser has already been discussed but by and large, this is a fantastic bit of traditional Star Trek.

 

I'll add something else that I like about this Star Trek and that is that it's appropriate for younger viewers. Except for few bad words it's pretty clean. I could never show my kids Discovery but so far Strange New World's content isn't bad

 

So far, it's been a great entry point for younger kids to get into Star Trek. I hope it stays that way. I knew something was wrong with Trek when The Orville was cleaner and more accessible for a lot of people. I mean, it's Seth MacFarlane... You'd never ever expect something "clean" from him. Roddenberry would be shedding a tear of joy if he saw the show.