An old Trek standby is revisiting an old adventure from one (or more) character’s earlier career prior to the timeframe of the show. It’s not a major trope or anything, but we’ve seen it in the original series (“Friday’s Child,” “Obsession”), TNG (“Identity Crisis,” “The Pegasus”), DS9 (“Necessary Evil”), and Voyager (“Flashback”), among others—for that matter, probably the biggest example of it is the episode that introduced Christopher Pike to the audience, “The Menagerie” on the original series.
And SNW does it this week, as Pike revisits a planet he first visited when he was a lieutenant.
Another old Trek standby is the romantic entanglement from the captain’s past, particularly on the original series (“Court Martial,” “Shore Leave,” “The Deadly Years,” The Wrath of Khan), though TNG indulged in it as well (“We’ll Always Have Paris,” “Qpid”). Here, we get Pike being reunited with Alora of the planet Majalis. He rescued her from a damaged shuttle when he was a lieutenant, and here he gets to do it again. Number One comments that Alora has bad luck with shuttles, and Alora, without even looking at her, as she’s still too busy staring at Pike, says, “Or good luck.”
Alora is played by Lindy Booth—among other things, Rebecca Romijn’s co-star on The Librarians—and she fulfills the cardinal rule of one-episode romance-with-a-guest-star episodes. Episodes like this live or die on whether or not the guest actor has chemistry with the person they’re paired up with. In the transporter room when the pair are reunited, you could put a match between the pair of them as they’re facing each other and it would light on its own from the sparks the pair generate.
The casting helps, as Booth is never not delightful, and Mount has the ability to have chemistry with pretty much anyone he’s in a scene with.
However, while the romance angle here works decently enough, the actual story is—well, fine? I guess? I mean, there’s nothing actively wrong with it, but I can’t bring myself to be too excited about it, either.
It’s a story we’ve seen before, most notably in Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1973 short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” and that makes the twist ending a little too predictable, which is mostly an issue because it’s a case where the viewer sees it coming because it’s a trope, and you wonder what’s taking the characters so damn long to figure it out. Though in this case—much like the original series’ “Obsession,” not to mention TNG’s “We’ll Always Have Paris”—the emotional baggage blinds the captain to things he might notice otherwise.
Alora was taking the First Servant back to Majala. The First Servant is a boy chosen by lottery to embody the Majalan credo of Science, Service, and Sacrifice. That last word is particularly important, because over the course of the episode it becomes clear that the child is being groomed to plug himself into a machine that sustains Majala that will kill him before too long.
The reason why the machine requires the neural network of a child to function has been lost to antiquity, and the Majalans are trying to find a new way to make the thing work, but have thus far failed. In fact, when Alora and Pike first met, she was doing research into that very thing.
Prior to the climactic reveal, I kept thinking that the First Servant’s “ascension” was going to be something horrible. Again, a big part of this is the recognition of the trope—this is a story we’ve been seeing on genre television since The Twilight Zone, where the nifty-sounding thing turns out to be a really really awful thing—but I also twigged to it the moment Alora said the word “sacrifice.” It’s hard to imagine a sacrifice that has to be made by a child that can be in any way good.
There’s a faction of Majalans who agree, as the shuttle was attacked by a group who thinks plugging a kid into a machine that will kill that kid inside a few years is a bad thing. (When the First Servant “ascends,” they remove the desiccated corpse of another child.) It turns out that the boy’s biological father, Elder Gamal, who was on the shuttle with Alora and the First Servant, is part of that rebellion, and was trying to get his son to safety, until the Enterprise interfered. It was a well-meaning interference—they were answering a distress call from the shuttle, and it was a big-ass ship picking on a small-ass ship.
Ian Ho does excellent work as the First Servant, as he comes across as brilliant and precocious without being cutesy. In particular, I love his brief interactions with M’Benga’s daughter Rukiya during one of her periodic rematerializations. (Later, Gamal provides M’Benga with some medical knowledge that might help him find a cure.)
But the best part is when the First Servant is about to “ascend,” and everything’s going great, he’s got a smile on his face, and he’s ready to go—until he sees the dead body being brought out. Ho’s face is filled with fear from this point on, and the moment that the tendrils of the machine plug into his face and he screams is as nasty a horror-movie moment as you’ll ever see on a Trek show, and it’s devastating.
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Again, the episode is fine, but I find myself frustrated with many aspects of it. Pike’s outrage once he realizes the truth is very well-played, and there’s little he can do about it, much as he would like otherwise. Mount plays it all beautifully; as usual, every emotion is etched on his pores, and he so magnificently sells Pike’s attraction to Alora, his confusion when he realizes what’s really going on, and his sad anger once everything comes to light.
I’m of two minds about the final scene. I was hoping for a conversation between Pike and Number One about what happened, as that’s what first officers are for—and Number One has been almost criminally underused thus far—but the image of him just standing there with a drink in his hand staring sadly out the window in his quarters was damned effective.
This episode also continues the getting-very-repetitive theme of Uhura’s cadet rotation coinciding with that week’s plot—away-team duty in “Children of the Comet,” engineering in “Memento Mori,” security this week. Just as with “Comet,” by a startling coinky-dink the cadet’s current assignment is a part of the ship that requires linguistic skills. In this case, it’s to translate some data chips that La’An took from the crash site of the vessel that fired on the First Servant. Because she took them illegally, she can’t run them through the translator, so she hands them to Uhura, who’s on security rotation and has to do whatever La’An says. This proves useful, as the information on the chips reveals that the attack wasn’t kidnappers looking to ransom the First Servant, as Alora proposed, but rebels who don’t want to destroy a child’s life.
Many of the comments online about this show that are favorable have all been along the lines of how there hasn’t been a dud episode yet, and I think that streak ends here. There are individual parts of the episode that are quite good, but the whole is far less than the sum of its parts.
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Well, count me as someone who did *not* see the trope. I didn’t catch on until his father had him kidnapped. In fact, the whole time we were hearing a “the ascension”, I was thinking of O’Connor from Lower Decks (only not painful)
I really felt for Pike here. He obviously had these warm memories of this lost love and that’s all tainted now.
I wouldn’t call this a bad episode. I’d call it a very good one. It’s not a bright and sunny one–it’s HEAVY. But I found it very thought-provoking. This episode stayed with me for a while. It showed us that the show wasn’t just going to give us fun, breezy episode. It showed us that they could deliver something challenging.
One complaint–and it’s not really a valid complaint since we don’t usually get these from “planets of the week”, I think it would’ve been nice to get an explanation behind this of how this First Servant stuff started. I like to know the history of events.
I don’t think this was a dud. I did start getting Omelas vibes as soon as it was established that the kid had no actual name other than “First Servant,” and when they started talking about sacrifice. But not everyone is familiar with that story, any more than everyone who saw “Balance of Terror” was familiar with The Enemy Below, say. The original Trek set itself apart from the mostly schlocky SFTV of its day by embracing the tropes (and hiring the actual authors) of prose science fiction, introducing them to a mass audience that wasn’t as savvy about them as genre fans were. So it’s appropriate in its way for SNW to do a riff on a science fiction classic like “Omelas.” And it’s really quite timely in an age when many voters and politicians claim to believe that the ongoing killing of schoolchildren is somehow a price worth paying for “freedom.”
Plus, however derivative the story, it was really well-made, with good acting and directing, plus gorgeous locations and VFX. I loved the use of digital effects to turn a real-world location into a network of fairy castles in the sky like something off a vintage SF magazine cover.
I also really liked the shot where the raider ship was firing on the shuttle, and the camera moved up and left to show the Enterprise sailing to the rescue. Kinda sent a thrill through me.
Mary: the lack of explanation was part of why this was such a tragedy, though. They had no idea how it got started or why it has to be a child. If they did know, they’d probably be able to find a way to fix it. I don’t think the story would have had anywhere near the same heaviness and impact it did on you if they provided an explanation for it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yeah, similar to you, this was a big miss for me.
I know Star Trek has had tributes to various other media in the past – a James Bond episode, a Rashomon episode, two different takes on the Magnificent 7, etc. – but being familiar with the Le Guin story, this just felt like plagiarism, not a tribute. Normally when Trek does a riff on an old story, it’s using the premise of the original (like the different perspectives from Rashomon) to tell its own story. But in Omelas, there’s nothing except the reveal, and the reveal is identical – a seemingly perfect, utopian city’s continued existence is due to the profound suffering of a single child, and some have “walked away.” Thus it is really, really grating me how many people online seem to be cheering this as an “original SF concept” who are unaware of the obvious influence.
But the bigger problem beyond this is after five straight episodes of smart character-based writing, this is a plot-based episode. There is absolutely nothing in this story that requires Pike to be the primary POV character. It could have worked just as well on TOS with Kirk, or on TNG with Picard, etc. None of the decisions made by the characters are really rooted in what we know about them already as characters, and they could all be swapped out for other characters more or less, since they just tech the tech to plot the plot. Yeah, they made some efforts here and there to add character flavor, like Uhura trying out security, but that was “Piller filler” more or less.
M’Benga did manage to get a bit of development of his character in this episode though, which was the high point. Honestly, I wish they dropped the whole tepid Pike romance thing, and just made him the focus character. As a parent and a doctor the idea of a single child suffering unimaginably to “serve” everyone else would horrify him, and the advanced medical tech the floating city had access to – tech that could cure his child – would have given him an internal conflict that could mirror the first stages of the aliens themselves slowly becoming numb to the indefensible. But I know there’s a full on M’Benga episode later in the season, which may be why they’re still holding back a bit with him.
Sounds very disturbing. Which of course good Star Trek is.
I liked this one despite finding it a step down after the last 2 weeks.
However, I can’t help but notice that Hemmer was MIA for the 2nd episode in a row, and if you consider he only had a 2-second appearance in the first episode, he’s basically missing from half the episodes thus far. Was there an announcement I missed about Bruce Horak only being a part-time cast member, or are the writers struggling to find material for him?
I was very well pleased by the episode. The casting was solid for the guest actors. The “love interest” back story tied into the story, her appeal and the appeal of her medically advanced society to Pike as a “cheat code” for his destiny was well done. She wasn’t just getting a leg over–and she wasn’t just a passive victim for Pike to rescue like some (not all) TOS heroines. I liked that contrast and updating of that story trope. The story remembered to use M’Benga’s daughter effectively, while showing some personality for the First Servant–and increasing the sense of tragedy that he was happy just playing with a peer, while for M’Benga, he was wasting some of the precious moments left in his daughter’s life. I completely agree that there were echoes of “Omelas” but that is a strength not a weakness. It certainly is a trope that Uhura is always in the right place, but there are only 10 episodes and it allows us to explore different departments of the ship, etc. It was well crafted, and was a good use of serial story elements in a stand alone story–which is something that is not always well done in ST or in many shows. I thought it was another above average episode and that its certainly the best first season of any ST series and one of the best seasons of ST period. But folks can disagree of course and I could be wrong.
Good artists borrow, great artists steal. In this case, from The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (as been noted). This is also apparently one of the last Phase II scripts that Gene Roddenberry wrote but never got recycled into TNG or VOY.
And it didn’t need to be said but:
“We are not part of your Federation.”
“And you never will be.”
Now I want to see how Pike would handle “Cold Equations”
Hmm, see I thought last week’s episode was a dud. This one I found to be a return to form, with commentary that frankly had me thinking of recent events here in the US — how a society treats or mistreats its children due to an antiquated system it’s struggling to change. I don’t know if that’s what they had in mind when they wrote the script, but well done if so.
Because this is the first episode to make me really feel something beyond amusement or a general relief that this show doesn’t suck. I felt genuinely sad after watching it. But it’s a satisfying sad, if that makes sense.
The worst you can say about this episode is good, but flawed. And I predict that this episode will stay with viewers longer than others.
(And to add about “Omelas”, it’s such a strong story and strong idea, that any treatment or homage to it will still come off as plaigirism to knowledgeable viewers).
Since I don’t like egg dishes, does that make me the one who walks away from omelets?
I found myself wondering if the reason they opened the episode with an onscreen caption saying “The Majalan System” was to clarify that the actors weren’t saying “Magellan.” Because it certainly sounded like they were.
I also found this episode to be a bit of a clunker compared to the previous ones. It wasn’t terrible but it was quite predictable. Even apart from the “Omelas” twist, the moment Alora started talking about how “some mean aliens tried to kidnap this poor child before his Super Important Ascension Ceremony which is the foundation of our entire society” it was obvious to me it would turn out that the “kidnappers” were trying to rescue the kid from something awful. While it was frustrating to watch Pike take so long to figure it out, he at least has the excuse that his personal connection to Alora was clouding his judgment. But why didn’t that father just tell someone “I want to request asylum for me and my child” the moment Alora beamed off the ship? I’m pretty sure Pike would have done everything he could to protect them (instead of being all “Hey there champ, let’s get you down to your super special celebration right away! :) :) :)” )
12.
I assumed the father was hesitant to trust the Federation because immediately after they were beamed aboard he saw how chummy Alora and Pike were.
I have Ep 3 as being my least favorite so far, but that is the beauty of the episodic nature of the show. We all have our personal tastes. I enjoyed this one.
Given the target demographic modern Trek is hoping to reach, expecting your average 20- or 30-something to be familiar with LeGuin’s story is asking a lot. Heck, I’m close to 50 and have never read it. I was genuinely surprised that a mainstream, non-horror production decided to put harming a child on screen.
This episode was far from a dud in my book. I could tell Alora was lying about the ransom, but I didn’t pick up on the human (Majalian?) sacrifice until the ceremony started. When I did realize the Omelas/Dostoyevsky connection, I was more excited to see how Pike would save the kid. My expectations were narratively overturned when he didn’t save him. It was a nice twist on Kirk coming in and destroying the machine-run planet. SNW is 6 for 6 in my book.
Seems to me that SNW is swinging for the fences in all their episodes, and that’s pretty cool. I always give credit to productions that take the big jump, even if they don’t nail it. And it’s far from clear that they didn’t nail this one, given the spectrum of responses here.
That’s the kind of response we got from the audience from the best years of TNG and DS9, so that makes me pretty pleased with this show.
(If this was a dud, then may ALL the episodes of all Treks be duds…it’d be a lively season of every show if it were).
I’m not familiar with Le Guin’s “Omelas” story so any similarities in this episode to it were lost on me, and criticisms of same are a bit off-putting. If I were to make it my business to compare this episode to anything else, I might mention “Return of the Archons,” where an entire civilization lives and dies and governs itself in accordance to an ancient, long-lost technology, namely Landru.
So, being unfamiliar with “Omelas,” I found this episode to be heavy and emotionally wrenching, in stark contrast to last week’s light-hearted “Spock Amok.” I have no complaints with any acting or directing or who did or did not get enough screen time. If anything, my only complaint would be with the REAL trope; that is, the captain getting to home plate with the Alien Heroine of the Week™. That said, my two snarks about that totally unnecessary scene would be “Damn, Captain Daddy’s been working out!” and his apparently bullet-proof hair.
I agree that Ian Ho was outstanding.
SNW is STILL the best thing on TV right now.
@11/Chris: Agreed on the “Magellan” thing.
I honestly thought the “First Servant” (since even the medical scanner didn’t give any other name) was going to be the new leader of the planet and that the leadership was the “service/sacrifice” noted especially as Alora said something about peaceful transition of power. Which then lead to me thinking that he was going to be the one to allow Rukiya to receive the treatment / cure of the quantum implant and reverse the “no outsiders” rule…but that was before the “twist” of course.
Sure, you could tell right away that Pike’s old flame was up to no good, and the First Servant was giving off Perfect Victim vibes (from Doctor Who’s The Aztecs) but I still enjoyed the episode (more than last week’s, actually). It was well done and not a little bit creepy (TOS often came off as a bit of a horror-lite series, so this is right in line with that).
I’m not familiar with Le Guin’s original story so I enjoyed this as a bit of an eerie adventure episode, with a slight early-TNG vibe in the sense of the heroes visiting a slightly mystical, planetary-romance-ish planet with the sense that something’s not right… but great call by Karl earlier on making M’Benga the lead character in this episode.
It absolutely should have been M’Benga’s episode. This is the planet he’s been looking for all this time, this is essentially the reason he’s on this ship and why he was prepared to deceive to his shipmates and Starfleet to the point of (inadvertently) putting the whole Enterprise at risk, and yet he’s sort of sidelined into a side plot. This should have been his moment, as his own morals conflict with those of the planet’s society. Could have been taken in two interesting directions – either M’Benga realises the cost of curing Rukiya here is too high, refuses to benefit from the torture of another child, and continues his journey hoping to find a cure elsewhere… or his love for his daughter overwhelms his morals and he’s got to try and get the ceremony to go ahead, presumably pitting him against the rest of the crew (with some kind of heroic redemption for him at the episode’s climax, no doubt). I love Pike but he was such a boring central character here, and basically spent the episode acting like an incurious dunce who blindly stumbled around the planet without bothering to think about anything for five seconds because he was too engaged in his really lukewarm and unexciting romantic escapade.
By the way, speaking of M’Benga, did anyone else find it weird that he told the ascension-kid that he mustn’t tell anyone else about Rukiya? The First Officer literally gave her explicit approval of Rukiya’s presence, presumably cleared it with Pike, and got the Chief Engineer to work on a tech solution to keep Rukiya’s buffer online indefinitely. Is it meant to still be a secret or something?
I found this one to be a definite step up from last week. But then I prefer episodes where the Federation folks learn that they can’t go around telling everyone else in the galaxy how to live. Yes, it’s horrible how they sacrifice a child to keep their civilization alive. What if Pike had stopped the ascension? Would Pike stand by as the inhabitants of the floating cities plunged to their death into lava and acid? How many more children would have died?
The cast was excellent all around and the chemistry between Mount and Booth was believable and natural.
Trek often brings up The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few. Well, sometimes it’s not pleasant to look at. I most certainly wouldn’t want to live in a society like this one but I can understand how they would be willing to do so.
I found it interesting to draw a parallel between this episode and the recent lass shootings in America. How many people, how many children are being sacrificed while a large percentage refuse to do anything about it?
@21/Descent: My impression was that Una’s arrangement with M’Benga was off the books. It wouldn’t be difficult to come up with a cover story for why an emergency medical transporter needs a dedicated power feed.
Count me in the “not dud” camp, and I find the lack of drawing parallels between Pike and the First Servant interesting.
I saw the trope coming right from the get-go, and I think a savvy watcher could be as clued in to the outcome by the knowledge that Pike does not return to miracle planet that could heal him in a decade’s time as knowledge of the trope.
But I still think it works, not least because right up until the last moment I really wanted Pike to save the kid. The interactions with Spock and M’Benga’s daughter were brilliant at building empathy for a kid-of-the-week (not always easy), and its so hard to watch them fail to save him.
And there is a character story underlaying this, albeit more buried than previous episodes. The choice of the First Servant is brutal (and emphasised beautifully) because he is a child, and cannot possible consent to his fate. But we know Pike is contending with the same choice (at least from his perspective), with what utilitarian thinkers would say was a much smaller payoff. That he, as a grown man and captain, will go on to make that sacrifice is worlds away from this planet’s choice and that mirroring, and his own unspoken recognition of the difference, is what makes this a Pike story and not a Kirk or Picard or Janeway story.
Since when Alora said the thing about an investigation not being necessary I think you could tell that there was something fishy. Anyway, as others had said, I didn’t realize that the destiny of the poor kid was going to be something so gruesome until the reveal, so I reckon that the plot was very well executed.
I wholeheartedly agree about the chemistry between Pike and Alora, particularly the pillow talk scene. Both performers really sold their role and their relationship.
As for the real life parallels, I’d say that for me the clearest analogy is with our world and its modern contraptions; which, in many cases, are, like the ones in Majalan, based on children’s suffering, either indirectly or very much directly e.g. the child labor used to extract cobalt.
For me another really good episode of a really good series.
@22. Have to agree. The show is about exploring strange new worlds but it’s funny how as soon as the strangeness conflicts with humanistic ideals of morality our heroes Have no problem forceably attempting to interfere in the means by which other peoples manage to stay alive.
To me the most unrealistic part of this episode was how Alora wanted Pike to stay and watch the ascension, Because of course if he doesn’t, the Enterprise flies away and all is well in the universe.. She should have known him well enough to know he was going to be a dick about it. After all, there’s members of her own people who have rebelled against this concept, so she ought to know that an outsider might not be so excited about witnessing what is literally called a sacrifice of a child.
BTW, I should be clear that I totally had forgotten about “Omelas” when I first wrote the review. I edited in the mention of it later when two separate friends of mine instant-messaged me with variations on, “OMG that’s Omelas!” But in general, I saw it coming as being the trope of the innocent life sacrificed for paradise, of which Le Guin’s story is but one example. I edited in the reference because it was important to cite that. But I’m not dinging the episode for using that same storyline specifically, but for using it in a way that I saw coming a mile off and which didn’t do anything to leaven it. Particularly since nobody on the Enterprise ever actually asked what ascension meant in this context…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I picked up on the Omelas ripoff as soon as I realized there was an ascension “ceremony” with a repeated evocation of the word “sacrifice”. Also, in a more general sense, this is like the bloody sacrifices which the Aztec priesthood committed to assuage their sun god Huitzilopochtli (see the sacrifice scene in “Apocalypto”, which is Mayan, but basically the same).
Which begs the question: on Majalis, there is a super-advanced civilization which has medical innovations far beyond that of the Federation, and they also don’t seem to have any conflict. That’s not even mentioning the whole idea of their floating world hovering above a planet of molten lava. So, if they have such advanced technologies, why couldn’t they think of another way to save their world (or, just transport all of their people to the colony on Prospect 7, and rebuild their paradise there) rather than continue a barbaric ritual of human sacrifice which would otherwise be against their morals if it wasn’t enshrined in their religion. In other words, their science is top-notch, but their religion is goofball nonsense.
It was a fun episode, especially for all the glorious visuals that SNW seems to be good at. And it was nice for Pike to finally get some nookie. But it seems like the writers just simply said, “Hey, let’s do an Omelas thing and see if anybody notices.” And then they didn’t really think out their conclusions too well.
It appears that whether this story works for you or not inversely correlates with whether you’ve read “Omelas.” I’m one of those who’s read it, so I spent a large chunk of the episode trying to figure out how they would twist the plot so it wouldn’t be a complete lift of LeGuin’s story. And a smaller chunk waiting for a character or location with a name that sounded something like “Omelas,” as a kind of deliberate wink to those in the know.
I can’t fault Pike for how he reacted, nor Mount’s brilliant portrayal of it. I did find myself wondering how Kirk or Picard would have handled the same situation.
@26
I don’t think Pike was inherently wrong to attempt to intervene, though IMO the episode had a few issues with the way Pike was written – mostly in that his failure to investigate anything that was happening left him without sufficient information to act at any given point in the story. He didn’t really try to learn about what the motives of the rebels were, even after holding one at gunpoint and seeing him get fatally stabbed, and then didn’t try to figure out what the purpose of the ascension was before they literally put it right in front of him, at which point his sucker-punch-filled rescue attempt just made him look like a bit of a flustered fool.
As much as I thought the scene where Pike pulls back the shroud to reveal the remains of the previous “ascendant” was incredibly effective and a highlight of the episode, I think the script might have gotten more out of instead revealing the twist during the first act and having the rest of the episode be Pike and Alora debating the ascension prior to it actually happening, with the audience and Pike both getting the chance to see exactly why something so horrific is considered necessary, and the potentially even worse consequences of the ascension not taking place. What would be especially interesting is to get more of the child’s own perspective – we see him consent to what’s about to happen at the end, but of course we might be justified in suspecting that he’s been groomed for that moment for his entire short life, and we don’t find out what happens in the event that a child revokes their consent before entering the machine.
I liked the episode, not at all a dud in my view. It was clear where this was going, but it was effectively done character work nonetheless. And I’m not unhappy to see an homage to Le Guin, even if it ended up rather close to her story.
What disappointed me most was the discussion between Pike and Alora at the end. I wanted a little more philosophical wrangling along with the emotion/horror. Obviously, we are going to see the Majalans as monsters here, so it was especially important that they have Alora make her strongest utilitarian arguments — and to have Pike make good counter arguments. (“A choice, you say. How can a child possibly consent to this? …) The point of this is not that the audience might be persuaded by Alora but to prompt the audience to consider the values and choices of their own society in a new light.
I also think it would have made sense to be more explicit about the father’s actions and choices. It would have been nice to see him tempted to talk to, say the doctor, requesting help but to shy off for fear that the Captain and Alora are friends.
Here is where I think we see the real benefit of episodic television: namely, that when an episode is kind of weak, at least it won’t scuttle the rest of the entire season.
One hopes.
I am on the “not a dud” team for this episode, though as with others, I saw the twist coming. Honestly, the shoe-horning of Uhura into each episode is actually causing me more issues than anything else at this point, particularly given how underdeveloped some of the other main characters continue to be. In any case, I think they played the trope quite well. And I think Alora knew very well how Pike would react, but she wanted him to know nonetheless. She knows what they are doing is terrible, else she wouldn’t be looking for a way to end it, but she respects him enough to show him the truth of their society and not just have him fly away thinking they are more ‘enlightened’ than they truly are. And while it isn’t something I need to see often, having your heroes fail from time to time is a good thing as well. They aren’t all happy endings.
I think Pike had a right to feel outraged by the reveal in the end, not only for the obvious reasons of harming a child but because I imagine it felt like a betrayal that Alora waited until the last possible moment to be honest with him. If she really wished to figure out a better way, then why not tell him years earlier? If the Federation was willing to save them from a pulsar, surely they would be willing to help them develop a workaround that would harm no one. There must be cyberneticists out there who could try simulating a child’s brain.
I’m reminded of the controversy of THE LAST OF US ending that will come up here as there’s essentially two kinds of people who respond to the ending of that and I suspect will have the same reflection in the fandom here.
1:] “What a fascinating moral dilemma! The needs of the many versus the needs of the few. Is it justified or not?”
2:] “These child killing sickos should be nuked from orbit.”
To go with The Last of Us example, one of the things that the developers found out was the younger fandom were all about the belief Joel did something terrible and was selfish. While the older fandom generally reacted with the view Joel did nothing wrong except not telling Ellie about killing the Fireflies.
Here, it’s pretty clear that Captain Pike’s reaction is his ex-girlfriend is a serial child murderer. There’s no actual debate, he’s horrified and disgusted by her. Which I feel is an appropriate reaction but prevents any sort of Star Trek back and forth.
Weirdly, I also note this episode reminds me a lot of “When the Bough Breaks” where the people have forgotten how their technology works and are more or less okay with it since it still provides them what they need. It doesn’t take me being a scifi writer (and there’s several other here on these forums) to come up with reasons that the technology is either damaged, malfunctioning, or not designed for their species but they’ve gotten it to work “close enough” that they don’t care about its cost. After all, plenty of people in our present day primitive society ignore the needs of children suffering to benefit their own luxuries (child labor being just one example).
I also get why Pike’s girlfriend tried to show him the ceremony. She was hoping he’d accept it and stay with her. Obviously, she gravely misjudged how it would go over with him.
I don’t mind the moral dilemma; I just thought that it felt completely arbitrary.
How does this system prevent their cities from crashing into the lava? Why does it need a forsaken child to power it? How did they come to live in this situation? If they had tried to set this up in terms of broader in-universe world building, then I would have liked this one a lot better; but, as it was, I saw the strings too much. It felt too obviously like what it was: a contrived eigenplot to which the only possible solution was child sacrifice.
We’ve actually had this happen before with the Ware (as named by @Christopher Bennett) in Enterprise. There was the gas station that was powered by plugging people into it to keep it running.
Here, something similar seems to be at work.
They need a biological interface for their God-Tech to work and they prepare a child as said biological interface. A regular kid won’t do.
@36/jaimebabb: That kind of bugged me too, the way it felt set up to force the situation without really offering a good reason why. Though I wouldn’t have thought of a cool word for it like “eigenplot.”
One thing that seemed a bit off was Pike being only a lieutenant ten years ago, given that “The Cage” was five years ago at this point. Can you go from lieutenant to captain in just five years? He also said his radiation accident is ten years in his future, when it’s more like seven or eight.
I wonder if Ensign Shankar, the guy filling in at communications, was named for TNG science advisor/producer Naren Shankar, who’s gone on to a very extensive post-Trek career.
@37/C.T.: “We’ve actually had this happen before with the Ware (as named by @Christopher Bennett) in Enterprise. There was the gas station that was powered by plugging people into it to keep it running.
Here, something similar seems to be at work.”
Not exactly, since (in my novel version) that was essentially a mindless techno-evolutionary process at work, the tech adapting itself to use available resources without any sentient awareness, just pragmatism. This is apparently something that sapient beings designed and built.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the original designers either planned this to be an emergency one-time deal (our planetary surface is becoming like lava so we have to do something horrible until we can do something better) or the technology was not meant to be lethal but has broken down or is no longer understood. This is the kind of meaty thing that I hope the authors will revisit in future Star Trek novels. It’s exactly their kind of thing to follow up on later on.
This story reminded me of Torchwood (Dr Who spin off) series 3 Children of Earth where children have to be sacrificed to an alien race, though it was much nastier than this scenario. I thought the child actor was terrific. And thanks La’An for the Rules of Security – fun addition
This was my favorite episode so far. It had the feeling of TOS and TNG era episodes that has been missing in other nu-trek. It was great looking, too.
But more than that, I found the allegory very powerful, especially in light of recent events. We are the Majallans, sacricing children to preserve the 2nd amendment. This is the best of Star Trek.
@38/ChristopherLBennett:
I wish I could take credit for it, but I think it used to be the name for a page on TV Tropes (though in that case, it referred to a plot tailor-made for a particular set of characters, whereas I’m repurposing it to be a plot tailor-made for a particular moral dilemma).
13 minutes into latest Strange New Worlds and I say “Is this Omelas? Tell me this isn’t Omelas.” I very rarely catch the twist ending so I’m torn between being proud I caught it and dismayed that the telegraphed their punch so clearly that even I could get it.
Anyway I am glad that they did not adhere to the traditional Trek trope of the Captain rushing in and overturning their entire civilization because he knows they are wrong. Of course, the fact that the Majalans are at least technological equals to the Federation weighs in here. I could see Pike going back to Starfleet and saying “they may be our technological superiors, but they are only a single system polity. We could take them on and save them from themselves.” I doubt they’d listen, but he could try.
I like the allegory of the episode, but unlike many, I didn’t find this to be about guns or the second amendment.
Instead, I felt the allegory was more about climate change. We continue to live our current lifestyle even though we know it is destroying our planet. Instead of doing what we can now to fix the problem, we pass many of the burdens onto our children, who will be the majority to suffer (and die) from the consequences of our inaction today.
I think thats the point of the other colony, and why it is important that they are an offshoot colony of our main setting. It shows there is ‘a’ way they (the Majelans) could live, even if it means suffering hardships now… But they refuse to even consider or acknowledge it. Instead they must sacrifice their children to uphold the norm.
Much how we know we could probably cure much of the problem of climate change by hard action now, at the cost of our comfort and indeed consumer society as we know it. Yet, we refuse to do it. We choose to sacrifice our children.
My friends, we are, for all intents and purposes the Majelans.
@38/CLB
I suppose if he was a Lt SG on the edge of promotion to Lt Cdr he could make Captain in 5 years, especially if there were combat. In the US Army during wartime people can go from company command to brigade command in a few years, especially if they’re highly competent.
Not a dud. Solid episode. I didn’t realize the twist until the end. It felt like an allegory of all the harms that we as a society tolerate so that we can have our prosperous way of life. Things like carbon emissions, abusive practices against immigrants, factory farming, etc.
The one thing that irked me is the whole thing with M’Benga’s daughter. The ability to easily store someone in a transporter seems like a pretty radical change to Trek canon. Seems like there could be a ton of applications for this: No sick people would ever die, they could be stored there until a cure is found. If people wanted to travel into the future, they could store themselves in a transporter for X years. People could be kidnapped and hidden in a transporter.
Similar to the Khan blood from the Kelvin movies, the transwarp beaming from planet to planet also from the Kelvin movies, and the idea that the series has never explored that you could just beam bombs onto other ships instead of using phasers and torpedos, it feels like this whole “hiding someone in a transporter” idea breaks the canon of the show.
I guess they will have to come up with a reason why this won’t become a standard function of the transporters from now own, similar to how Discovery made it so that their spore drive engine is solely reliant on Stamets so that they could never use it in other ships.
@43/Ilennhoff: “I could see Pike going back to Starfleet and saying “they may be our technological superiors, but they are only a single system polity. We could take them on and save them from themselves.” I doubt they’d listen, but he could try.”
He wouldn’t do that. In the premiere episode, he didn’t force anything on the Kiley; he just revealed the Federation to them and said “Here’s the mistake we humans made, and I hope you’ll choose not to repeat it.” He just laid out the stakes for them; the decision of what to do about that knowledge remained in their hands. In this case, the Majalans are fully aware of the situation and have chosen to live with it.
There is a profound moral difference between offering to help someone change and forcing them to change. The whole reason for the Prime Directive is that Earth history shows clearly that imposing a change on a culture by force can never turn out well, that it will just provoke resistance and resentment from the population you’ve forced to change and make them double down on their traditional practices in defiance. No matter how much you may dislike a practice, trying to get rid of it by force can only make things worse. It’s not rescue, it’s assault. Consent makes all the difference.
So no, Pike would never ask Starfleet to force the Majalans to change. He knows better. The only way a change can take hold is if the Majalans choose to do it themselves, if they accept it willingly. It’s up to the Prospect 7 rebels to solve the problem, or the Majalan scientists searching for an alternative.
@46/Tim Kaiser: “it feels like this whole “hiding someone in a transporter” idea breaks the canon of the show.”
Trek canon has never been seamless. “The Lorelei Signal” established that transporters could reverse aging, but that was ignored later on. (If you could do that, then transporters could be used to heal any injury or disease just by restoring someone to an intact pattern. Doctors would become obsolete.) Deep Space Nine‘s first season established the existence of rapid cloning (“A Man Alone”) and consciousness transfer (“The Passenger”), which between the two of them should allow immortality by transferring a dying person’s mind into a clone of their body. But this was ignored.
It is a total misunderstanding of the word “canon” to think it means something perfectly consistent. A canon is just a body of stories. Any large body of stories will contain contradictions and inconsistencies, because they’re human creations and therefore imperfect, and the more of them there are, the more imperfections there will inevitably be. TOS alone had enough continuity and logic holes to allow fans to argue about them for decades before any of the sequels came along. The idea that Trek has ever had a cohesive, consistent continuity is laughable. We’ve always just tried to pretend it did.
I get the impression what Doctor M’Benga is doing is probably extremely dangerous and we get hints of that as well. It’s not something he should be doing as a doctor but he’s desperate.
@47/Chris: Re: “’The Lorelei Signal’ established that transporters could reverse aging, but that was ignored later on. (If you could do that, then transporters could be used to heal any injury or disease just by restoring someone to an intact pattern. Doctors would become obsolete.)”
But isn’t that exactly what they did in “Unnatural Selection,” using a “transporter trace” and one of Pulaski’s hair follicles? To wit, from the final act: “Chief Medical Officer’s log, supplemental. The adults of Darwin Station have been restored to normal health using our transporter.”
@49/Eric; “But isn’t that exactly what they did in “Unnatural Selection,””
Yes, but they acted as if it had never been done before. That’s the point. And then they still never used it again after that.
@47 – “In the premiere episode, he didn’t force anything on the Kiley; he just revealed the Federation to them and said “Here’s the mistake we humans made, and I hope you’ll choose not to repeat it.” He just laid out the stakes for them; the decision of what to do about that knowledge remained in their hands.”
No, he just hung a starship with the power to kill everyone on the planet over their capital city and informed them that he had the biggest stick.
Making a decision with a gun to your heard isn’t letting them choose freely, regardless of whether Pike was bluffing or not.
Dud? No. Average? Yeah – it’s just that almost everything prior was superior.
My one thought was that they are looking for a way to write themselves out of the MBenga scenario (which is implausible at BEST) without ‘random miracle cure from higher order entity).
Brilliant, disturbing episode.
Star Trek almost never has the guts to go for a climax as unambiguously grim as this one. Whether SNW goes “where no one has gone…etc.” or not, as of this week it’s gone where the producers of post-NBC Trek have been for the most part too timid to venture. They’re doing more now than just evoking the original series, they’re making an effort to keep pace with it.
I love that this episode has spawned such diverse and thought provoking comments. It shows that Star Trek is relevant again.
But I do hope they show more interaction and camaraderie between Pike and #1 going forward. It barely seems like they’re part of the same crew, let alone a command team. Both characters are awesome by the way. Best captain and first officer since Picard and Riker. I’m just so happy to be enjoying Star Trek on this level again.
@47
“No matter how much you may dislike a practice, trying to get rid of it by force can only make things worse.”
Interesting question. Did ending slavery by force in the Civil War make things worse? I suppose that an argument could be made that imposing abolition on the South by force led to Jim Crow, but I’m not sure that I would be willing to argue that the Jim Crow system was worse than slavery.
Then there’s sati in India. Did the British ban on the practice make things better or worse? I have some Indian colleagues who are vehemently anti-British but who who also believe that the Brits did the right thing in that instance. Of course, I suppose that one could argue that, since the Brits were already in control, allowing it to continue would itself have counted as a kind of intervention….
I may have to rewatch this one to decide, but at the moment I remain conflicted by this one. I was in the same camp as others who think this inaugural season was very good until now. Personally, I ascribed it to Kurtzman’s attentions being elsewhere while he was making Man Who Fell to Earth. I stopped watching that show because the writing and performances, especially Ejiofor’s, were so overwrought. Even Bill Nighy, who I usually like, did Bowie’s portrayal a disservice. The show even managed to make Kate Mulgrew look like a dick in one scene.
It seems Kurtzman’s stamp is back with this episode. He had previously taken a shot at claiming inspiration from Le Guin’s “Omelas” with season 3 of Discovery with the “dilithum kid” dilemma. Except he completely misunderstood the premise of the story as he applied it to the Burn.
Missing the moral dilemma
Here at least they transcribe the problem in a literal sense. It works as an allegory for climate change. It may work as an allegory for any other problem that gets passed on to the next generation. Alora is completely deluded if she thinks the child is freely agreeing to sacrifice himself. He has no idea what he’s about to undergo and has simply been conditioned by the rhetoric of the First Servant Cult. He’s obviously afraid from the moment he sees the dead body of the other child. The previous occupant’s desiccated corpse is a scene of horror.
What this society needs is a pissed off Greta Thunberg to defy the received wisdom and passivity of her elders. Otherwise there will be another “Spock’s Brain” in a few years.
And that’s the hinge for me. The moral dilemma of children dying is important and has resonance for our current problems. But is this episode riding on that issue and poorly executing it? It is awkwardly set up and presented. Pike himself is passive or under Alora’s “spell,” even sharing her bed. The initial scene where she makes him nervous is cute, but does a disservice by softening the gravity of her manipulations. Something is missing here. I’m disappointed in Pike.
One Youtuber referenced Stargate SG1’s much better take on this theme or trope: season 3 episode 5 “Learning Curve,” which I don’t remember. I’ll have to hunt that one down and compare.
Learning Curve
Congratulations to Chris Pike for apparently establishing the precedent of Enterprise commanders hook up with the locals- a tradition proudly carried on by Jim Kirk…
Put me in the category of “not a dud but not a hit” and might give it a 6 on the old KRAD episode scale with much weight given to the general awesomeness of Anson Mount. The episode this actually reminded me of was TNGs “Half a Life” where the Enterprise is faced with a somewhat horrifying local custom. I completely get Pikes reaction- he’s horrified by this and while he’s not as completely accepting as Lwaxana (I know she doesn’t fully accept it) he realizes he can’t change it either. One of the things that was an interesting writing choice was Alora’s speech where she admits that everyone is horrified by this but accepts it anyways. There was some general social commentary there to not look away from suffering but a trek twist to remind us that Alien Cultures are in fact alien.
Great acting by Ian Ho as the first servant and the horror movie scene was well done- I’m trying to think if Trek has ever done “the horrible thing” on screen like that and I can’t think of one- The closest I could come up with Edith Keeler and that had a cutaway.
As far as the earlier comments about Pikes ascendency to Captain- TOS era trek seemed to move people up quickly which makes sense if the fleet was rapidly growing. Kirk graduated the Academy in 2255 and had taken command in 2265 so that’s only 10 years from commissioning to command. Regardless I think Discovery showed Pike as graduating the academy in the 2220s and taking command in 2250 so he’s had a 20 year run already. If his pulsar shuttle save was right before he got promoted to LCDR then 4 or 5 years up to the big chair isn’t impossible to bump up 2 more ranks in a rapidly growing flee
This episode made me think more of film noir than anything from science fiction. It had a mystery, a kidnapping plot, an attempted assassination, and even a femme fatale of sorts. Pike in the end could’ve just as well been a detective looking out the window on a rainy San Francisco.
As for “Omelas,” I wasn’t familiar with the story before watching this. But even now I don’t necessarily see that as a minus. I can still watch “Balance of Terror” fully knowing it blatantly rips off quite a lot from The Enemy Below. As long as the execution is good and the translation to sci-fi is solid, I’m okay with it. The rest is in the purview of the lawyers.
@55/Diana Fowler: “Did ending slavery by force in the Civil War make things worse?”
I object to that characterization, which misrepresents the historical facts. Lincoln intended to end slavery through legal, peaceful means, by changing the law of the land, not through armed coercion. The southern states feared that and pre-emptively started a war of secession, breaking away violently from the United States. The South initiated the use of force. It wasn’t until two years later that the Emancipation Proclamation defined ending slavery as a specific goal of the war, and that was explicitly stated in the Proclamation as being for the purpose of suppressing the rebellion, by allowing any escaped slaves to become free members of the Union Army and thereby strengthen the Union forces and weaken the rebel side.
However, it does illustrate my point, because ending slavery without the consent of the enslavers certainly did provoke a backlash. Certain factions have never accepted that outcome and have spent the past century and a half fighting to perpetuate white supremacy and the subjugation of black Americans by any means necessary. As we saw with the Tulsa massacre in 1921 and the insurrection on January 6, 2021, the forces of white supremacy have remained willing to employ extreme, violent tactics to resist accepting racial equality. And millions of Black Americans have suffered for generations from that oppression, despite not officially being enslaved.
So while force may not have made things worse, it didn’t make things that much better in the long run. It’s naive to expect force to be a simple, pat solution to any problem. That’s why it should never be employed unless you’re left with no other choice.
“Then there’s sati in India. Did the British ban on the practice make things better or worse?”
Oh, good grief. Sati was never a widespread practice. It was a custom of just one specific religious community, and it was never mandatory, more just an ideal of purity that not many women actually practiced, analogous to, say, becoming a nun. But the British lied about it, claiming it was a universal and coercive practice of the evil, barbaric Hindus, to make it seem like the Empire needed to enforce civilization on them for their own good. It was propaganda to justify oppression and religious intolerance, the very kind of “Civilising Mission” tyranny that the Prime Directive was created to prohibit.
And yes, in fact, the British ban did make it worse. Because once the oppressors defined sati as an intrinsic part of Indian identity to be suppressed, that encouraged Indians resisting oppression to embrace it more than they had before, as a gesture of defiance against the suppression of their culture. It is foolish to assume that people who have a change forced on them will just meekly accept it. On the contrary, it will make them resent it and push back harder.
@57/MikeKelm: “I’m trying to think if Trek has ever done ‘the horrible thing’ on screen like that and I can’t think of one.”
I would point to the final scene of “Conspiracy,” when Picard and Riker surprisingly and uncharacteristically blow up Remmick’s head with their phasers, instead of the typical blue- or red-glow total vaporizing or, as when Kruge shot his navigator, a slow and grisly dematerializing. I believe the Remmick assasination is the only instance in the Star Trek franchise where a phaser shot literally causes the victim’s body to explode in a shower of blood and guts and body parts.
@56 / I agree that it wasn’t a very good episode, but I think that it’s kind of silly to attribute everything that goes wrong with any current Trek series to Alex Kurtzman personally.
@55
RE: Using force to end objectionable alien cultural practices
Some might note that I did not discuss the question of genocide in the above response, My reasons for this omission are twofold. Firstly, genocide is a tad too easy. Stopping the mass murder of millions via the use of force is, barring diehard pacifists, something of a no-brainer. Secondly, I’m not sure that one can properly characterize genocide as a cultural practice. That is to say, whereas things like slavery and sati were deeply embedded cultural institutions and were defended as such, genocide (Cf the Qianlong Emperor’s genocide of the Dzungars in the 1750s, the Armenian genocide in WWI, the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge, etc) tends to be more of a situational affair and not a deeply embedded cultural practice.
@46
This is hardly the first time someone’s been kept alive in a transporter when they should have died—Star Trek: TNG sets the precedent in “Relics” by having Scotty preserve himself via transporter buffer for 75 years. And that was relatively few years after this episode.
I think it’s clear that it CAN be done, but simply isn’t because of the immense risks. In “Relics,” the crewman Scotty had tried to save along with himself ended up dying because his pattern, unlike Scotty’s wasn’t properly preserved.
I wonder if the colony can join the Federation? Although, the Majalians in general seem to be private.
Is Alora a bit of an outliner as she seem to be friendly with Lieutenant/Captain Pike? Like have a relationship and goes out of the way to include him in the ceremony even though she knew it would probably horrify outsiders?
It was kind of fun trying to figure out Alora when she was obviously up to something. Thought she might even be one of the kidnappers and told the story of reverse roles until I saw her on the planet.
Have a great weekend.
While it has been a bit contrived that Uhura has been on exactly the right team each time, I thought it was a really cool use of linguistics to uncover a mystery. Recognizing that the kidnappers’ language was an offshoot of the main colony’s was a very different way to connect the dots.
Let’s focus the discussion on Star Trek, rather than on RL historical events. Our full moderation policy can be found here.
@62. jaime: saying “everything” is a bit much. I gave specific examples. You don’t have to watch the video I linked, or any others that point out how much Kurtzman productions lift, borrow, and steal from other shows and movies, but as the current Big Kahuna, his imprint is there.
In the specific case if “Omelas,” my take is that he was a bit stung by the criticism that he misunderstood or misapplied the moral lesson on Discovery. This is a do-over.
I think, sometimes, a truly great episode will prompt very divergent opinions (I’m looking at you, In The Pale Moonlight). Few universally praised contemporary stories seem to stand the test of time.
That being said, I loved this episode, which I see as the first really great episode of SNW. The rest has been fantastic, but this one will really stick with people I think.
Also, i doubt think it’s fair to criticize the obvious Omelas inspiration, because it’s almost a half century old at this point. I’d never even heard of it, but now I will absolutely seek it out.
Also also, i think the writers used the optimistic nature of Trek to pull the rug out from under us. We expected a happy ending, because it’s Star Trek for God’s sake. Who’d ever expect an overly tragic ending, especially one where a child is concerned to a long, painful death? I certainly didn’t, which is why I was as flabbergasted as Pike by the end.
@64 – “This is hardly the first time someone’s been kept alive in a transporter when they should have died—Star Trek: TNG sets the precedent in “Relics” by having Scotty preserve himself via transporter buffer for 75 years. And that was relatively few years after this episode. “
Yes, but that was Scotty the miracle worker. He was an engineer. He knew the transporter. M’Benga is a medical doctor. Having him come up with it long before Scotty did is like Rand going into the radiation chamber instead of Spock in TWOK. Or Scotty operating on Sarek in Journey to Babel.
Doctors already preserve all sorts of specimens in a variety of ways, not to mention keeping patients in stasis. Why not a transporter, too? The idea is already there in a physician’s mind.
But really, preserving someone in a transporter wouldn’t be that difficult a leap to make for any operator. After all, the patterns are momentarily stored before being transported. All M’Benga and Scotty did was prolong that period of time. The daughter’s is incremental, while the miracle work from Scotty was preserving his own pattern for decades without anyone there to oversee it.
The thing I think back to is that I’d presume the First Servant is always the same age when they go into the machine. Which means that everyone who raches adulthood in their society has ‘lost’ the lottery to be First Servant and Texan tell themselves that if they had been chosen, they’d have absolutely walked to the altar with a smile on their face and a song in their heart.
Good episode, but a bit too ponderous to be as great as most of the others.
But I was very happy to see a healthy civilization that relied on technology so ancient it had forgotten not only how, but even why, the tech had been designed and built the way it was. Star Trek so often features aliens at or near the same stage of development as Earth, when you’d think there would be a lot more variety in other societies’ age and longetivity.
Agreed with others who realized very quickly we were getting “The Ones Who Warped Away from Omelas” and was hopeful they’d at least twist it a little.
Also agreed with those who think this should have been M’Benga’s episode. They could also have used a story about unconsenting children to explore his daughter some more. Imagine the life: a recurring nightmare of bouncing in and out of existence with nothing more to look forward to than your dad soothing his own conscience by reading you stories, wasting what’s left of your life in a limbo where you have no freedom and no options because someone else can’t let go. And now there’s an opportunity to break the pattern and live/have a life, but no, your new friend is assimilated by a planet that won’t even share the tech to help you.
@@@@@58. Hasenpfeffer ~ Wow, nice catch. It really is a lot like a Raymond Chandler structure / noir film, even including the secret clandestine papers stolen from the crime scene, and ending with the protagonist looking out the rainy window with a drink in his hand. (I’d almost wish they’d’ve leaned into it, but I don’t think it would’ve worked.)
I was thinking “It’s a cookbook!” the whole time. The storyline partly parallels that. (Which is a decade older than Omelas.) A clue in the beginning is decoded by a put-upon scientist and then the word needs to get out but there’s no stopping the cold-hearted aliens who live in a paradise, etc.
But of course, whenever you hear something lke “Ascension” it’s a cinch something sinister is going on; this has been true since “The Lottery” (1948) and a zillion other stories.
I do appreciate the parallel to our own society. I also appreciate that he doesn’t pull a Kirk and destabilize a planet. And yes the cast and the visuals are all amazing. So I feel like this was a B minus. Because if you’re going to do a tropey thing and play it like it’s a surprise twist, you should do something new.
I also agree that Pike and M’Benga were too passive. They both mostly spend the episode having things happen to them. A scene where Pike chats with Una about falling for Alora and wondering if he could change his fate would have helped. Going deeper into M’Benga’s pain would’ve been good; I wish it felt like he could barely contain himself.
But yeah I felt like we’ve seen it all before. I knew the kid wasn’t on the shuttle (those poor decoys though). I knew the kid would think he was fine with the sacrifice. It’s a Tropeathon; it’s Trope Vs Trope.
As much as I agree that Uhura is too coincidentally in every plot, I did love watching her dealing with La’An breaking her spheroidal organs. (I also enjoyed La’An acting tough but also kind of giddy about breaking the rules.)
Still loving this show though. Loving loving loving.
well, for me it was an excellent episode with, as has already been said, clear references to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, and I think it is precisely at that end where all the dramatic tension disappears after to push away the raw vision for a rather hopeful ending for Dr. M’Benga. but beyond that great detail, I really like the fact that SNW does not have complexes to show stories of all flavors.
I thought the “device” was very Warhammer 40k, but I haven’t read the Le Guin story, obvs she is far superior writer compared to 40k lore.
really enjoy these kinds of stories where alien customs horrify “us”, and “we” have to deal with that.
I didn’t love this episode. The show is — *gasp* — mortal! But I didn’t hate it either; it was just kind-of predictable, with the problems that entails as Keith writes.
I guess the story gets points for not going exactly as I thought it would when Alora singled out that guard and chased him down: I was reading it as them both being members of the rebel faction and him understanding that she had to expose and ultimately sacrifice him to keep her own, more important cover.
Pike did seem oddly befogged for much of the episode, and I can’t chalk it up simply to the romantic haze. The kid playing First Servant was very good, however, and the scene where he creates Neon Hopscotch for M’Benga’s daughter was a bit of delight for giving them a brief moment to be kids.
I applaud our humble recapper for his restraint in not referring to the audience at the First Servant’s ceremony as the Large Majalannic Crowd.
I just started a Next Generation rewatch and in my head’s best Picard impression he deals with this scenario by asking “How much power could you get from two children at once?”
” I mean, there’s nothing actively wrong with it, but I can’t bring myself to be too excited about it, either.”
What’s to get excited about a morality play about the costs of building an ideal civilization?
Even if the viewer can figure out pretty quickly that something bad is going to happen to the child, I think this story is better thought of as focused on Christopher Pike. After swaggering around with hubris and “bigger guns” and of course winning the day each time, he is at last confronted with a society that he can’t handle … either morally or personally. And he’s up against a “zero-sum” philosophy that is very much anti-Federation, that is, in order to build a more perfect world, someone HAS to suffer for it.
***
I’m rather surprised that no one has pointed out the synchronicity of this episode being shown just a few weeks after the Uvalde shooting. America seems to have come to the conclusion that child victims of gun violence are just the unfortunate by-products of our rights. It’s clearly not a direct analogy but certainly a tangential one.
@80
Some people have pointed the allegory out–here and on Twitter. I didn’t catch it as I watched it, but I can see it now. The sense that this is a morality play that shines a light on current events–well that makes the episode even more profound to me.
@76/jofesh: “But of course, whenever you hear something lke “Ascension” it’s a cinch something sinister is going on; this has been true since “The Lottery” (1948) and a zillion other stories.“
Not always; see the Stargate TV franchise, for example.
“I also appreciate that he doesn’t pull a Kirk and destabilize a planet.“
To be fair, in the TOS episodes where that happened, Kirk didn’t do it arbitrarily, but because the writers contrived the situations to put the Enterprise in danger so that Kirk had to destroy the evil computer or whatever to save his crew. Here, there was no threat to the ship.
Also, Pike did try to save the boy, despite the fact that doing so would have caused the literal collapse of the civilization; he was just prevented from succeeding. So it’s not like he chose to exercise more restraint.
I haven’t actually read Omelas, so my connection was to the manga Magic Knight Rayearth (complete with floating islands, POV visitors from outside, a “villainous” rescuer, and an uninhabitable [except to the villains] world outside the safe bubble of magical protection). The biggest difference is that Rayearth actually showed the consequences of the Pillar’s absence; maybe seeing a few floating islands falling to their doom (after being evacuated, but with priceless irreplaceable relics left behind) would’ve added some complexity.
@82. “So it’s not like he chose to exercise more restraint.”
Oh yeah. Point taken!
Long as I’m posting I’ll add: I’ve been thinking about Pike seeming passive. I think part of that is that he (like others) doesn’t ask questions with his usual level of insight. Simple questions that most people would ask, which would have revealed more sooner, and made the plot less suspenseful. But like, lots of not communicating in this episode, and it feels like some of the characters got a little less impressive. :)
Is it time for the next episode yeeettttt
P.S. I want Alora’s bedroom, like, a lot.
@83… read Omelas. One of the deepest pieces of literature from the 20th century
I personally never read Ursula K. Le Guin before. Maybe that was a factor? Because I was floored by the final act. I knew there had to be something incredibly wrong with the Majalans and that something bad was obviously going to happen to the First Servant well before it was made clear, but I was still blown away by the actual twist. Sometimes, the execution more than makes up for it, even if we know how this type of story goes.
If anything, this to me was the most brutal morality play Trek’s done since probably Enterprise‘s Cogenitor (which we’ll be getting too in a few months). The scene where the boy’s face goes from excitement to dread and fear was nasty, especially for Trek standards. It takes a lot to give me a queasy feeling in the stomach. This episode pulled it off. A phenomenal marriage of writing, directing and acting. Yet again, Strange New Worlds swings for the fences and delivers!
And the show is getting better and better at complimeting the main action with smaller B or C threads. Also, that was some breathtaking VFX of the Majala city. Given that, and especially with the Prospect 7 attack, I was certain they were trying to remake a plot similar to TOS‘s The Cloud Minders. Thankfully, it went for something much better. And the silent ending was very much the right choice. Trek doesn’t do downbeat endings too often. This was a first for SNW, and it pulled it off.
…Well, I guess they can’t all be winners.
I’m with krad; this episode definitely ends a streak for SNW.
I guess it would be weird for the first season of a Trek series to not have the requisite clunker episode.
This episode is visually fantastic, and very well-acted. It’s just a tad frustrating to not see Pike putting the pieces together, not questioning what this “ascension” actually entails, and being in a fog with this woman who seemed particularly “sus” (my wife though the same thing others have commented, that Alora was in on the kidnapping plot. If only…)
I fully agree with others that this should have been M’Benga’s episode; the moral dilemma here almost writes itself. Remarkable the writers swung and missed on that opportunity.
I am not familiar with “Omelas”, so I did not see the horrifying plot twist at the end coming. Kudos to all the guest actors, particularly Ian Ho, who give us one-off characters whose fates we become fully invested in.
Finally, if we’re not gonna really spend time with Number One, can we at least see her do the “First Officer things?” Order shields up, call for Red Alert, all that stu
@87/Eduardo: “Trek doesn’t do downbeat endings too often.”
More often than its reputation would have it, especially in TOS:
“Where No Man” — Kirk has to kill his best friend.
“The Man Trap” — McCoy has to kill the image of his ex-lover.
“Charlie X” — “I wanna stay–stay–stay–!”
“Balance of Terror” — The noble adversary kills himself and Angela mourns the husband she lost on her wedding day.
“What Are Little Girls Made Of?” — Chapel mourns her lost fiance, and a lot of people die or were dead already.
“Dagger of the Mind” — Only the bad guy dies through his own (literal) devices, but it’s played grimly, like the end of a horror story or noir movie.
“The Conscience of the King” — Literally going for Shakespearean tragedy.
“The Alternative Factor” — Good Lazarus is trapped with his evil double for eternity.
“The City on the Edge…” — Need I say it?
“Who Mourns for Adonais” — Apollo’s self-destruction is played tragically.
“A Private Little War” — Serpents in the Garden of Eden.
“Wink of an Eye” — The Scalosians are doomed to extinction.
“That Which Survives” — The Kalandans are already long dead.
“…Last Battlefield” — Lokai and Bele are trapped together on a dead world.
“The Mark of Gideon” — A lot of Gideonites are going to die and Kirk is unable to do anything about it.
“The Way to Eden” — Several of the space hippies die.
“Requiem for Methuselah” — Rayna dies, Kirk grieves.
“All Our Yesterdays” — Zarabeth is stranded alone in the past.
“Turnabout Intruder” — Lester is pitied as a broken woman.
So it was mostly in seasons 1 & 3 that TOS went dark. But it did go there pretty often. So it’s no surprise that SNW followed suit.
The dud part for me was there she confronts Pike with the stinger of ‘What, the Federation doesn’t have poor people?’, to which his immediate reply should have been ‘Well, no, we solved that problem decades ago; what else you got?’.
The setting, with the floating cities, really reminded me of “The Cloud Miners”, but since no one else seems to have picked up on it, I’m guessing it’s a different planet.
Also, the Majalans seem to have the same level of disregard for guardrails as the Empire…
@90/Wayne Ligon: “The dud part for me was there she confronts Pike with the stinger of ‘What, the Federation doesn’t have poor people?’, to which his immediate reply should have been ‘Well, no, we solved that problem decades ago; what else you got?’.”
I noticed that too, but it would’ve weakened their message. And to be fair, the TOS Federation was less utopian than the TNG version. Earth itself and the core worlds are probably paradises, but there are a lot of colony worlds where people still struggle to get by, as we saw in “Mudd’s Women,” for instance — the women all joined Harry’s scam because they hoped to find better lives than what they had on their homeworlds. And then there was the famine on Tarsus IV when Kirk lived there as a teenager.
I noticed the”Omelas” vibe pretty quickly, and, for me, this was a respectful and thoughtful tribute, with excellent acting. I don’t consider it a dud at all. And I, too, thought of our worship of the second amendment at the cost of children’s lives.
I haven’t watched any Trek since mid-run Voyager. I am really enjoying this show.
But I do agree that this should have been M’Benga’s show. The First servan’tst father was worthy of his son. He is one of those who walk away, and I would like to know what happens to him after this episode. I can’t fathom how he could even remain sane after this tragedy–but his impulse to try to help another grieving father, one who might actually manage to save his child, was very touching.
And I, too, want to see more of Number One!
@93 Well put. I also picked up on the Le Guin vibes early, but then, I have read the story. There’s no reason to suppose that Pike or any other member of the Enterprise crew has read Le Guin’s classic, and if I had not, and were in that situation, I’m not sure how readily it would occur to me that this entire society was founded on surrendering a child for torture.
Sure I might have questions about what all the homage was about, and wonder when I could not get a direct answer, but to jump from that to the awful reality? Not at all surprising that they did not see it coming.
I thought this was in many ways the best episode so far.
If there’s one thing that makes this compellingly different from “Omelas,” it’s the way that the First Servant is fully aware of what he’s in for, but chooses to go through with it anyway, even defying his father’s attempts to rescue him from it. He has a moment’s shock and fear when he sees the previous child, when it becomes concrete rather than abstract, but (IIRC) he still commits to it. In “Omelas,” though the circumstances of the selection aren’t specified, it’s pretty clear that the child was condemned to this while still too young to understand it. By contrast, the First Servant goes along with it willingly because it’s the purpose he’s been raised all his life to accept. He’s totally indoctrinated to the idea that it’s a necessary and noble sacrifice for the greater good. That adds a whole other chilling layer to it.
Come to think of it, there’s also an echo of Neon Genesis Evangelion, where children are used in combat because they’re the only ones capable of merging with the Evas (the semi-organic giant robots). Maybe also a touch of Ender’s Game, where children are trained in combat because only young minds are flexible enough to adapt to alien battle tactics.
If I were to pick a mid-20th century story that I think people would be familiar with in 200 years, Omelas would be one of the top. So I think the least realistic thing here is that Pike didn’t say, “Omelas is not supposed to be an instruction manual!” If I was assigned to read Homer’s The Odyssey in high school, you know Pike would have been assigned Le Guin’s Omelas at some point in his education.
It’s also interesting to consider how the other species in Star Trek would react to that story. The consensus Vulcan opinion might be that, while it would make no sense to create that situation, if it already exists then the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one). Klingons would be super insulted: Kor’s “planet of sheep” without superpowers. I could see the Klingons blasting the entire civilization to rescue the one kid they thought was worthy. Would Cardassian duty to the state override their reverence for family? TOS Romulans would probably say, “as long as it doesn’t have to be a Romulan child.”
Hologram Doctor would be against it. Data, I wonder about Data.
@95 – that puts my finger on it: Omelas via Ender’s Game…
@95: “If there’s one thing that makes this compellingly different from “Omelas,” it’s the way that the First Servant is fully aware of what he’s in for, …”
But is he really? It’s one thing to be fed some BS all his (short) life about the “noble cause” for which he’s being groomed, but it’s another to realize only at the last moment while he’s about to be strapped in that it actually involves a slow horrible death while hooked up to some machine. Granted, I’ll have to rewatch the episode to get a better sense of how much the First Servant actually knew in advance what he was in for.
@99/Larsaf: I’m talking about the part before he gets to the chamber and has qualms. The point is that he knows he’ll be sacrificing his future and believes it’s what he wants, so that he actively escapes from his father’s efforts to free him. He’s been indoctrinated to believe it’s a noble sacrifice and takes active steps to ensure he goes through with it. That’s the striking part that makes it distinctive from “Omelas,” where the child had no say in the matter and their utter powerlessness was the whole point.
Although it’s a bit like TNG: “Half a Life,” with Timicin believing it was right to die at sixty for the good of his society.
I’m with KRAD: this was the first episode of this series that I thought was overall blah and a bit bored by. I actually watched part of it one day, and then took several more days to get back to it and finish the thing because I wasn’t particularly excited by the subject matter. But there were little aspects about it that I did like, such as the fantastic kid actor, Pike going shirtless and bedding the alien woman (how very TOS!), and even if it wasn’t such a big twist ending, just the fact that it was a downbeat ending for once and Pike’s devastation. I was a bit surprised by Pike’s moralizing at an alien culture. I mean, it is their culture and they’re not part of the Federation. But on the other hand, he is a human being, and so of course he is going to find what these aliens doing to a child as abhorrent. Alien love interest of the week lady does make a good point though: is the suffering and ultimately early death of one person, in this case, a child, a reasonable sacrifice if it means the welfare of an entire civilization? We’d like to say no but what would actually happen if we were placed in such a situation? That’s the beauty of sci-fi: we can ponder these far-out hypothetical situations and hope they never have to occur.
The stuff with Uhura popping up in a different department every week does feel kind of gimmicky but at least it gives the character and actress more to do.
Lt. Kirk made a brief appearance again. At least he hasn’t been forgotten about yet. He doesn’t feel like a fully realized character yet though.
Well, a 5 good episodes in a row streak is still pretty darn impressive. I’d really like to see some focus now on Hemmer, and Ortegas, and Chapel.
Christopher L. Bennett is posting falsehoods about historical sati practice in India. While the British had their reasons for misrepresenting it, Bennett is repeating dubious postcolonial revisionism as fact. In actuality, one example: In 1812, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, founder of Brahmo Samaj, began to champion the cause of banning sati practice. He was motivated by the experience of seeing his own sister-in-law being forced to commit sati. He visited Kolkata’s cremation grounds to persuade widows against immolation, formed watch groups to do the same, sought the support of other elite Bengali classes, and wrote and disseminated articles to show that it was not required by Hindu scripture. He was at loggerheads with Hindu groups which did not want the Government to interfere in religious practices. (Summary from Wp). I could go on, but this is not the proper forum.
I think people are being a little hard on Pike. He’s probably seen many societies where they pick a kid to be a ruler or figurehead from a young age. This is presumably the first one where they feed the kid to a machine.
Coming from Voyager, I like that they spent the money to show us some of the planet and more than just the sacrifice chamber, too
Hi,
In Addition to catching the obvious stealing from Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1973 short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” did anyone else catch the fact that Alura (allure) used sex to “handle” Pike when he started asking too many questions? It doesn’t put Captain Pike in a very good light to fall for something like that.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s literary estate should sue.
Yours in haste,
Gandalf