Strange New Worlds

[Khaldun]

Season 2 hasn't hit a false note yet. In fact, if you look at me pearl-clutching in the first message, the crew member related to Khan has been great and Khan himself did appear and that was great too. I feel like they're swiping stuff less and beginning to stretch their legs and live into the show's possibilities.

I would honestly be perfectly happy if this continued into the TOS era and retold the best TOS episodes with some modern twists and sensibility while adding new episodes and adventures. Introduce Ben Finney, Kevin Riley and Janice Rand as characters while Pike is still Captain. Give us a half-season of Kirk as Captain with Gary Mitchell. Show M'Benga and Chapel adjusting to McCoy (both of them are on the Enterprise still into Kirk's era). Make Janice Rand a more interesting character a la Chapel and introduce her while Pike is still Captain. etc. Maybe give us *two* crews--one with Una as captain and La'an as her first officer with Ortegas as navigator and do follow-up episodes on relationship with the Gorn and the Tholians involving them. Follow Pike's life after he goes back to Talos IV: maybe there's a complicated after-story that's more than him just living in a mental world.

[Surlyboi]

Tawny and Jack look exactly like their characters. The SNW crew were apparently the biggest proponents for the crossover and they hit it out of the park. Watching two in-universe fans fanboying and girling about their heroes and fretting about possible shit that could have happened to each other was spectacular.

What they've done with Chapel and Mbenga has been spectacular and the actors playing them have been fucking marvelous.

[Khaldun]

I mean, fucking amazing. That last Klingon War episode was just breathtakingly good and remarkably subtle in various ways. (For example, we didn't need to get a scene of Chapel using the drug after the Klingons broke the line, but it's plain from another episode this season that she did, and maybe not just that one time.) If there's any justice, this should vault Olusanmokun way up the acting hierarchy--he's delivering maybe the most complicated and nuanced acting in the history of Star Trek.