Aside from Prodigy S3, Pike's unresolved issues with his father is the biggest untapped potential in newer Trek.

Most arguments about the Federation being oppressive are just descriptions of a sovereign power passing and enforcing laws.

It's the year 2025 in Pennsylvania and I still hear people grumbling in random public spaces about Joe Paterno getting a raw deal.

I recall somebody talking about the number of existing options for watching Star Trek to choose from...!

I'm trying to figure out how "A Quality of Mercy," which was a direct riff on "Balance of Terror" felt fresh while so much of this season felt painfully derivative.

Total SNW Rankings:

1) Those Old Scientists
2) Memento Mori
3) A Quality of Mercy
4) Spock Amok
5) Children of the Comet
6) Lost in Translation
7) The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tale
8) The Elysian Kingdom
9) Subspace Rhapsody
10) Ad Astra Per Aspera

#StrangeNewWorlds

I'm balancing my desire to process my feelings about S3 while valuing a positive atmosphere.

Perfect picks. I might slide in "Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus" at least in the Top 5.

Going with my gut, my 4 favorite episodes of TOS are...

Balance of Terror
Arena
The Cloudminders
Return to Tomorrow

I've appreciated your YouTube reviews for SNW S3; they have articulated so well what has made me uneasy about this season.

And I don't care too much about inconsistency in Trek and really would like this to be a course correction, but it just feels like outside of Terrarium there is so much sentiment I find troubling that this episode doesn't reassure me.

If this is part of a larger arc where the crew unpacks their biases (i.e. ENT S3), great, but the "some folks just need destroyed" sentiment seems to go beyond the characters and feels so consistent that it's embedded in the writing. I worry!

I liked what they did in Terrarium (aside from a little too much copy/paste from other Trek shows), but there is still a lot of "This entity/species is just evil" talk (Hegemony, Through the Lens of Time), that makes me...uneasy.