It doesn't reflect well on her, but it does feel sort of...real, in a way that people can sometimes be shitty in real life. She's tangled herself up emotionally for a long time with someone who for various reasons just isn't going to be a good romantic partner for her, and there's certainly a bit of catharsis in realizing "oh maybe I just can stop trying to make this work and stop feeling bad at how I can't ever seem to make it work". Because the whole Spock thing clearly has been making her miserable, because she loves him but somehow it seems impossible to turn that into a whole emotional relationship. Its just that immediately after that moment, if you really care, you still need to go check on the person you're hurting. I really do hope they get a moment in the next episode to get some actual closure with each other.
Mezentine
What an absolute gosh darned delight that was. I love musicals but I tend to be pretty cynical about musical episode of TV shows, but I think that's probably the best one I've ever seen? It helps that a. its still a coherent episode with a plot about the musical itself, b. its effectively paying off three or four different emotional character arcs we've already spent a lot of time with and c. the music is actually really well written both lyrically and compositionally
I'm not a vet and I don't have PTSD but my girlfriend and I had some pretty similar issues to you with this episode. I think, thankfully, the episode doesn't seem to expect us to think that M'benga was "right" at the end, or to be happy about what happened, and the final scene between him and Pike is critically important because I don't think Pike is supposed to look foolish in that scene. Absent that, this episode would feel really gross to me.
As it is, really the only way I can work with this is knowing that the actual arc here is the enormous one that concludes with Star Trek VI, a movie that I feel only gets more radical with every year that passes and every rewatch I give it. Kirk's realization that he has to let go of all the pain and anger in that movie and allow the world to move on and healing to begin is, when you get down to it, maybe the most optimistic and important message the franchise has ever really tried to express, and if this episode exists as a "middle chapter" between the war itself and that eventual endpoint...well...I can work with it as that middle chapter. But I still feel pretty crummy about it.
I cannot believe they had Boimler and Mariner move like physical cartoon characters and pulled it off that well, holy shit. We absolutely lost it when Boimler was tangled in the control panel
No its great. I love them bringing Sybok back so much. Its so stupid. Its the goofiest decision they could have possibly made and it embodies something I love about Star Trek, which is its refusal to throw away even the bad stuff. Every reminder that Star Trek V is canon keeps the franchise from getting too arrogant about itself.
Its such a good way to write their whole dynamic! That its only when he's missing a part of himself that he feels emotionally accessible to her, but the part of him that's gone is part of who she loves as well. Its good, "nail the fundamentals" tragic romantic shit!
They're also doing a really good job of playing out the long arc of T'Pring and Spock having genuine affection for each other to the point where we're actually kind of going to be on T'Pring's side when she finally reaches the conclusion of "Man, fuck that guy"
I absolutely love the Kerkhovians holy shit. They feel like they've fallen out of a slightly different genre of Sci Fi than Star Trek normally goes for, like something from a Revelation Space or a Culture novel.
That’s probably one of my favorite episodes of the series as a viewing experience, it was pretty entertaining. I don’t think I quite track…the message, though? In the span of about three minutes we get explicitly told that for Pike and Ortegas the memory loss could be revealing experience that identified the core of the self, while for their friend on the planet it was an obscuring experience that robbed him of things he didn’t know were important. You can explain away the difference with plot logic pretty easily, but thematically it’s a bit weird to juxtapose them right next to each other
Although it does remain very funny that they're doing this much work to make us care about Sam Kirk, a character who's fate is to die off screen to a brain parasite before the episode even starts. Sorry Sam.
I really really like Pelia as a character and a concept. I think its a very smart approach to immortality to have her be someone both used to and unresistant to change. The world happens. Time moves on. Over centuries kingdoms turn into empires turn into wastelands turn into spacefaring cooperatives and she's not jaded nor stagnant, she just continues to grow and adapt and change as things change around her.
Honestly this episode feels written by Sondheim fans more than anything, which is why all the G&S references were so odd to me lol. Definitely less focus on "fun" but I think all the lyrics were really clever and expressive and the way that all of the songs felt like they reinforced character work successfully was a feat even if none of them are particular "catchy" in that ear-worm way. Company is probably my favorite musical of all time but its pretty hard for me to hum you anything off that album