StillPaisleyCat

I liked all the Titan novels.

The Fall is a multibook ‘event’ in the Relaunch novelverse with each book by a different one of the regular authors.

It comes after Destiny and the Typhon Pact series of books.

While I like most of the books in all of these, there’s one author David R. George III whose books I find unbearably dull. He clearly knew his canon cold but his books are long on excessively detailed exposition, and short on dialogue or action. By the time I got to The Fall, I had learned to skip his books and just count on the recaps provided by the other authors.

I don’t see the documentary as the A-plot at all.

It was constantly present as a frame, but the episode wasn’t primarily about the documentary - it was primarily about how Starfleet captains and senior crew wrestle with ethical decisions when their orders do not align with their values, and how they seek to find information that can provide a rationale to pursue an alternative course of action.

Basically, it showed how important the crew that is present in the situation is and how that makes Starfleet more than just a military organization serving a military mission.

My partner and I really liked this one.

We both think it’s in the top rank of Star Trek episodes. In my view it may be the best of SNW to date.

It definitely should be the ‘For Your Consideration’ episode of this season.

The direction was excellent. This was one of the best dramatic performances from Mount as Pike since season two of Discovery.

My sense is that some viewers were mistaking the C-plot about the warring groups, for the A-plot about the Enterprise officers response to the ethical choice between orders and the free will of a sentient being or the B-plot about the making of the documentary.

I can’t agree that the episode was too short. The best Trek episodes are tightly rendered and leave lots of room for thought after.

More Prodigy erasure…

🤦🏼‍♀️

I can agree that they’re doing a brilliant job of what they’re doing.

For those of us who’ve been wondering about Pike since The Cage was first put back together and released in the 1980s, it’s been a bit disappointing.

Too much Spock, Uhura, M’Benga and Chapel, not to mention Kirk, too soon rather than a focus on Pike, Number One and the ensemble that preceded Kirk.

I had wanted a Pike and Number One focused show but the showrunners and Paramount seem determined to make this show about laying the backstory for TOS.

While I still love the show, I agree that it’s still frustrating that the opportunity to focus more on the unexplored characters.

President of the Federation by all accounts, or past President.

Bakula is pitching a series Star Trek United. It seems everyone’s personal project to revive a character or run a show or movie is coming out of the woodwork.

https://trekmovie.com/2025/08/12/scott-bakula-talks-star-trek-united-producer-reveals-more-details-on-proposed-series/

There’s a discussion thread on this article from a week ago.

I’ve got a rewatch upcoming with my spouse so I’ll take another look at if from that angle.

Perhaps that can help sort out whether the episode might have been handled better by another director.

Interestingly, I find it’s the Trek actors turned directors that manage mixed and shifting tones well. Frakes in directing First Contact, Dawson in directing The Andorian Incident, Robert Duncan McNeill directing Body and Soul are examples.

Yes, I’m not saying she’s not a capable director, but she doesn’t seem to have been the right choice for this episode.

Looking across the distribution of directors used for SNW, as well as Discovery and Picard, there definitely seems to be particular ones that are consistently asked back for specific tones.

Maja Vrvilo directed the season 2 finale Hegemony Pt I and the season 3 one New Life and New Civilizations. In season 1, she directed Children of the Comet.

Jordan Canning directed Charades last season. This season she was given Wedding Bell Blues and Four and a Half Vulcans.

I wasn’t positively impressed by the direction from Valerie Weiss in this episode.

Others have remarked about the tone being all over the map in this episode.

That’s a fair assessment in my view but it’s not a fault in the writing per se. Comic levity in the midst of intense drama goes back to Shakespeare and even Greek theatre, and certainly isn’t uncommon in episodic Trek.

But somehow it felt like the great pieces of the episode just didn’t quite come together. It doesn’t feel like the fault was in the editing or writing.

Paul Wesley’s portrayal of Kirk was excellent but at this point, I’m going to give the actor the credit over the director.

This is just the second episode directed by Weiss. The previous one was Ad Aspra Per Aspera which was a very different challenge for a director. What they needed was a director like Frakes who can do both the comic and the serious.

Discovery became increasingly hopeful and positive as it went on.

Worth watching through season two at least if you haven’t already done so.

I liked seasons three and five a lot.

Season four has a really great classic Trek premise but the constraints of the COVID protocols led to some dialogue that’s over drawn out (Picard season two suffers the same).