Strange New Worlds. SPOILERS...
I had such high hopes for this show. Sadly, I'm not feeling it. Writing seems amateurish to me, and there seems to be nothing but disdain for the Roddenberry canon. I get that social and cultural attitudes have changed and certain conventions of the sixties and seventies are now considered out of touch. I'm ok with that. I don't want to live in the past any more than a Gen Z-er does. But there are just certain standards you shouldn't violate if you want to ride the coattails of someone else's success. For example, in Search for Spock, after Kirk does the unthinkable, he gets to second guessing himself when he destroys the Enterprise. He says to Bones. "What did I do?" And Bones replies. "What you had to do. What you always do. You turn death into a fighting chance." If there's one perfect descriptive of who and what Kirk is, this is it. But in S2E3 of SNW, they have a time traveling, alternate timeline Kirk facing a Romulan spy with a gun. This spy needs a hand print from Kahn's daughter in order to break into and sabotage a nuclear power plant. Kirk's way of handling the threat is to say, "You're not going to shoot me." And guess what? He turns out to be wrong. And he gets shot and dies. Not exactly what I would call a Kirkian attempt to turn certain death into a fighting chance. Pretty lame and lazy writing for an iconic character that virtually birthed one of the greatest TV franchises of all time.
And on the technical side, I have another complaint. The Tritium watch. Singh and Kirk track down an immortal alien (like Guinan) hiding on Earth to help engineer a device that they can use to find a nuclear reactor in Toronto. The alien gives them a Tritium watch from the 90s. At this point, in 2023/24, the radioactivity in the watch's Tritium is spent (halflife of 12-1/2 years) and Singh says that all they have to do is walk around Toronto until the watch dial lights up (presumably when the beta emissions from the Tritium at the reactor site are absorbed by the phosphorescent powder in the watch) and they'll find the reactor. Really? That's all? Nope. Tritium emissions aren't like cosmic rays. The Beta particles can only travel a few meters at most, so Kirk and Singh would have to be standing next to the source to find it. It would take Singh and Kirk forever. And this assumes the emission isn't intercepted first by some other object. Beta particles can be stopped by wood, aluminum, steel, concrete, even a few layers of clothing. So, in fact, it would be just as sensible for Singh and Kirk to look for the reactor with a shovel, as it would for them to be looking for it with a Tritium watch.
I had such high hopes for this show. Sadly, I'm not feeling it. Writing seems amateurish to me, and there seems to be nothing but disdain for the Roddenberry canon. I get that social and cultural attitudes have changed and certain conventions of the sixties and seventies are now considered out of touch. I'm ok with that. I don't want to live in the past any more than a Gen Z-er does. But there are just certain standards you shouldn't violate if you want to ride the coattails of someone else's success. For example, in Search for Spock, after Kirk does the unthinkable, he gets to second guessing himself when he destroys the Enterprise. He says to Bones. "What did I do?" And Bones replies. "What you had to do. What you always do. You turn death into a fighting chance." If there's one perfect descriptive of who and what Kirk is, this is it. But in S2E3 of SNW, they have a time traveling, alternate timeline Kirk facing a Romulan spy with a gun. This spy needs a hand print from Kahn's daughter in order to break into and sabotage a nuclear power plant. Kirk's way of handling the threat is to say, "You're not going to shoot me." And guess what? He turns out to be wrong. And he gets shot and dies. Not exactly what I would call a Kirkian attempt to turn certain death into a fighting chance. Pretty lame and lazy writing for an iconic character that virtually birthed one of the greatest TV franchises of all time.
And on the technical side, I have another complaint. The Tritium watch. Singh and Kirk track down an immortal alien (like Guinan) hiding on Earth to help engineer a device that they can use to find a nuclear reactor in Toronto. The alien gives them a Tritium watch from the 90s. At this point, in 2023/24, the radioactivity in the watch's Tritium is spent (halflife of 12-1/2 years) and Singh says that all they have to do is walk around Toronto until the watch dial lights up (presumably when the beta emissions from the Tritium at the reactor site are absorbed by the phosphorescent powder in the watch) and they'll find the reactor. Really? That's all? Nope. Tritium emissions aren't like cosmic rays. The Beta particles can only travel a few meters at most, so Kirk and Singh would have to be standing next to the source to find it. It would take Singh and Kirk forever. And this assumes the emission isn't intercepted first by some other object. Beta particles can be stopped by wood, aluminum, steel, concrete, even a few layers of clothing. So, in fact, it would be just as sensible for Singh and Kirk to look for the reactor with a shovel, as it would for them to be looking for it with a Tritium watch.