Restless in the monotony of real space exploration, James Kirk is getting impatient for his chance to take the big chair and lead without the overt caution of his Captain during a routine survey mission. Until the monotonous mission suddenly falls into chaos when the planet comes under attack from a devastating weapon that tears the ship apart, leaving Commander Kirk without a captain and without a clue as the USS Farragut is torn to shreds.
Writers: David Reed, Bill Wolkoff
Director: Valarie Weiss
Paul Wesley’s interpretation of a young James Kirk has had it’s moments despite technically not having that much screen time. His first two episodes were alternate realities and even in season three we’ve only had a transporter pattern used to test a holodeck instead of the real deal. So when we do get a look at a rare look at a Kirk before the Captain, it tends to have a purpose in the greater prequel logic and here that purpose is setting the foundation for who Kirk will become when he’s ready to take the chair.
To help with the story, we have the relief team from the Enterprise with some of Kirk’s future command team working with him for the first time. Warping in to save the day, Pike’s Enterprise answered the Farragut distress call. After planting Spock, Uhura, Chapel and Scotty on board, the Enterprise has a bit of a problem of it’s own when the planet killing attackers are revealed in a giant mechanical whale-like ship and capture the Enterprise for salvage while Commander Kirk and his makeshift team are left to watch, unable to help in the broken ship.
In a way it all felt like a prime timeline version of the kelvin timeline movies. Early on Kirk is pushing his captain for a landing party and moments into his argument, the whole planet blows up. From there we get a bit of a bruised ego in the confident Kirk showing that his expectations of what it would be like to be the bold captain in charge versus the reality of being forced to make tough decisions where there’s no room for error isn’t all fun and games. While following similar themes as Into Darkness, it’s done in a more subtle way with the pressure building through a series of unfortunate events and Kirk trying not just to win over the crew, but also win over himself after realising that his original plan would have gotten a lot of people killed.
Playing again on the idea of James Kirk the bookworm instead of the public perception since the 60’s, the story comes off really well, especially with Scotty, as the one person on the away team who hasn’t crossed paths with Kirk until now, raising the pressure with emotive rants pointing out the flaw in every random idea given. And unlike the Kelvin movies, it’s not someone with five minutes experience as there is a heavy emphasis still on Kirk’s experience and professional goals, but even with experience in leadership he’s never had to face this level of intense pressure – and it just keeps building.
It all plays nicely and as Kirk storms off the bridge to clear his head after all his risky heroics plans go wrong, having Uhura nudge the crew into having a little faith in him following their scenes together last season worked nicely to calm the raging Scotsman in the room who’s continuing his lack of grace under pressure story. Laying the foundations for what’s to come, or rather whats already happened with the original series, it was also fairly well done having Spock to accidentally volunteer himself to sort out the not-quite-Captain with his calm Vulcan logic, helping bring balance to help nudge the Captain in the right direction.
Contrasting the struggles on board the Farragut, Pike’s calm and in control of the situation on the Enterprise. Out of the way to let the Farragut’s story take over, Etnterprise is in the bowels of the massive alien ship, tied down with grappling hooks as it’s drained of power ahead of being stripped down for parts. Seeing inside the ship that they’re not the first ship to be stolen and scavenged, Pike and his team have the fun task of breaking free.
Being the B story, there wasn’t that much to their side of things in terms of the action, but it did liven things up a touch. Pike and La’an made for a good pairing with the quipping Captain and his straight faced security trying to fend off scavengers and break their hold while on the bridge Una hands over more control than she’d normally like to follow Pelia’s mad plan; with no power, barely functioning systems and no comms, Pelia builds her own telephone exchange so Ortegas can give commands to Una and M’BEnga manually controlling port and starboard thrusters with parts of an old Atari – courtesy of Pelia’s relentless hoarding.
The reveal of the bad guys felt a bit cliché. They played it out nicely from Pike realising the enemy wouldn’t shoot at him, to finally unmasking another to find the scavengers were humans. After Kirk finds a way to beat the baddies of the week, he’s left with the knowledge that his saving the day was at the cost of over 7,000 humans descended from a pre-warp expedition who had, over the generations, lost their way to becoming brutal pirates taking what they could at any cost to grow and evolve their home ship on the borders. Maybe another nod to the Kelvin Timeline as the idea of simple people becoming monsters as they survived in isolation was a key point of Star Trek Beyond.
In the end, while another side step from the personal side stories that seem to be ticking along off screen, it worked to bring the same themes and learning experiences from the Kelvin timeline in away thats less dramatic and more impactful for Kirk while letting Pike leave him with a lesson in humanity and understanding to help settle his guilt. It’s one of the few episodes that takes the prequel idea and uses it to advance the character backgrounds instead of overwriting them and among the tension and quips, gave us a good story that shows the first challenging command of one of Starfleet’s biggest legends.
Highlights
- Pelia's box of 1980's stuff was wonderful, especially explaining the wonders of what a telephone is to the 23rd century crew.
- "Your bums out the window." Martin Quinn seems to be injecting a lot of good phrases to confuse the no Scots in the room.
- Pike rejecting the oppertunity to volunteer himself for a horrible task will stay in my head for a good long whole.
All Connected...
The bad guy of the week being born of human explorers being thrown into the unknown and suffering for it mirrors the main antagonist of Star Trek Beyond. After the Romulan Wars a MACO turned Starship Captain Edison would get stranded in the late 22nd century along with two other survivors.
Resentful enough with Starfleet and the Federation, he’d modify himself with alien technology and draw in Kelvin Timeline’s Enterprise to become something new, alien and vengeful, eventually breaking free of his isolation and launchign an attack on the prestigeous Yowkrdown Station.
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