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Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x10 "Hegemony"
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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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The more I think about the Chapel plot, the more I think it was a blunder.
If she survived the initial attack on the Cayuga, it's likely that others did, too - at the very least, it should give Spock a reason to look before hot-dropping the saucer onto the planet.
Gotta agree, it seems like an unforced error. A good chunk of the audience knows she shows up in TOS, which robs the whole idea of any tension it might have, and on top of that it feels plot armor-y to have one person survive and then not check for anyone else.
They could've just contrived to have Spock and Chapel be the best persons for the saucer deorbiting-- Spock as the precise vulcan/science officer to place the thrusters, Chapel as medbay's lead in case they could bring anyone back from the Cayuga.
I'm fine with Chapel being stuck there - I think the tension comes from the overall Spock/Chapel emotional arc, rather than wondering whether she will survive - but the sequence practically demands a second scan with the newfangled tricorders to verify that there are no other life signs on the ship.
Isn’t the point though that the Gorn interference field was preventing any scans, comms or transport? The tricorder wouldn’t have worked there. And sending rescue teams would have been dangerous given Gorn belligerence, demarcation line or not.
The anti-Gorn tricorders seemed to cut through the interference on the surface well enough.
True, but that’s on the ground and short range. There’s specific dialogue to show that it’s interfering with signals between space and ground.
Spock can’t even scan for life signs on Cayuga. The best they have is passive sensors like spectrometry.
That’s why they had to do a visual confirmation and discovered Cayuga’s sickbay had been blown away.
All that being true, I think the discovery of a single survivor should have scuttled the entire mission.
I was just trying to answer the technological criticisms about why Spock didn’t search.
I see where the criticism is coming from, but I can also see there are all sorts of extenuating circumstances around it (not to mention lack of time) and to take the plot there for a search would kind of kill the story momentum.
It’s not invalid as a criticism, just saying that tech reasons are covered.
This is a blunder on writer's/producer's/etc. They could have written a one-off line where Spock cold-bloodedly says "the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few." They could have sent rescue shuttles to search the wreckage since it was on the right side of the line early on in the episode. They could have chosen an entirely different solution (seems like flying a shuttle disguised as wreck worked well, toss another stuffed with torpedoes).
It's fine, they'll lampshade it next season.
“Shuttle stuffed with torpedoes” wouldn’t work because it’d be obvious it was weaponized - a single shuttle likely couldn’t take out that beacon on its on.
At least the saucer section of the Caygua was big enough to provide plausibility. Even if they found pieces of the rockets later they’d have no real proof - the rockets could be claimed to have been standard equipment or part of the RCS or impulse systems.
Agreed, the entire saucer section was on the Federation side of the line of demarcation, they could have openly had rescue teams checking for survivors
Which does raise the question of why there was a Gorn aboard the wreck of the Cayuga.
The Gorn drew up the demarcation line and broadcast it to the Federation, held their fire as promised, and did not consider the arrival of another Gorn ship as a hostile action.
So the Enterprise sending a shuttle to check the parts of the Cayuga’s wreckage for survivors is something that appears permitted and even expected, so long as it doesn’t cross the line.
But any such rescue party would then bump into this lone Gorn who was very clearly violating the demarcation line that they themselves proposed.
Sort of feels like the attack on the colony was unplanned, and that the later Gorn ship was playing damage control while trying to figure out what happened.
That's consistent with what they theorized regarding the solar flares causing the first ship to attack the colony.
That's the best explanation I've heard, and I'm going to stick with it until a better one comes along
@JohnnyDelirious @Zoboomafoo One moment Spok is frantically trying to find Chapel on the Kayuga, but then doesn’t even mention survivors when they plan to crash it. It’s too much of a stretch. There must be some key plot here they deliberately didn’t show us. We don’t see the initial attack on the Kayuga at all. Why was the lone Gorn (stuck?) on that side of the line trying to access command codes on a destroyed ship? I think we’ll get a revealing flashback in S03E01.
Agreed about the survivors part, it seems like a major oversight that I hope they can explain in a satisfying way.
As for the Gorn on the ship, I presumed it was just a crewman trying to gather intelligence on the Federation by picking through the remains of the saucer section