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Episode Analysis | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x01 “The Broken Circle” (startrek.website)
submitted 3 years ago by [M] to c/daystrominstitute@startrek.website
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This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Strange New Worlds 2x01 The Broken Circle.

Now that we've had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.

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[–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

I'm personally okay with knowing the destination, as long as the journey is worthwhile.

M'Benga was a blank slate on TOS, so I'm enjoying the character that they've pretty much invented wholecloth for this series (I certainly find this current direction more interesting than the story with his daughter in season one).

Chapel is another big departure from the TOS portrayal, but I'm enjoying the trajectory as she, I don't know, "flirts with destiny".

Spock is full of surprises as they connect the dots between the smiling Spock of "The Cage" with the version seen on TOS proper.

Pike...well, Pike is probably the one I'm least happy about, because I thought they way they had him confront his fate on "Discovery" was perfect, and everything they've done since then has diluted it somewhat for me.

But for the most part, I'm enjoying the journey, even if I know where they're going.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Yeah, I guess my problem isn't knowing the destination, it's knowing that the destination is going to be pretty rough in ways that run counter to this show's general vibe. Which really is pretty similar to my broader frustrations with Discovery's "the distant future includes 120 years of horrific geopolitical strife where basically everything your heroes fought for falls apart". I really want to believe in the happy ending, you know? Even when the concept of an ending doesn't actually make real-world sense.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    A lot of it does have happy endings, or at least not overtly tragic ones. Spock do goes thru it, but ends up in a very good and important place, and is deeply at peace with himself for decades after all this stuff wraps. We don't really see how Chapel wraps up, but she gets her MD and clearly stays in Starfleet, and so far as we can tell gets over Spock. And Pike gets "the illusion," of course, which is about as happy as any person could be, given his circumstances.

    Trek isn't all happy events with clear closings; there were a lot of tragic endings in TOS, for example. Even TWOK is pretty much a tragedy, taken in isolation -- Kirk's hubris in deciding to exile Khan causes a lot of death and pain. Hell, even the resurrection of Spock comes at the loss of both the Enterprise and Kirk's only son.

    As long as the pain and tough times have narrative and character meaning, I'm more than OK with them happening because we know so much about how things do work out. Trek reminds, on the whole, a positive and uplifting look at how we can live.

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