Tuesday, May 05, 2020

Star Trek: Short Treks -- Season 2 Episode 1 (Q&A)


This may be the easiest of the Short Treks to review.  Spock gets stuck in a turbolift with Number One.  The episode actually starts with Ensign Spock beaming on to the Enterprise to start his new assignment.  Number One informs him that the best way to make it is to ask a lot of questions, to the point of being annoying.

On their way to the bridge, the Turbolift stops.  The manual override doesn’t work and Engineering’s no help.  So, Spock uses the time to ask all manner of questions of his new first officer.  We find out a lot of things, like it not being a good idea to ask Captain Pike about horses.  Number One also prefers the next-to-current operating system rather than the latest update.  (I didn’t even know starships had numbered operating systems like that, but I guess it makes sense.)

It seems to be a running joke among the All Access series that Number One’s name is actually Number One.  It’s implied that her name is Una, but it’s not clear if that’s a first or last name.  Way back in The Cage, Pike referred to his first officer as such, which is apparently a tradition among some navies.

I honestly wonder if these were recycled from rejected plot ideas.  I could see this having been worked into an episode of Discovery.  I don’t think it would have worked, even as a b story.  This works to get the idea on screens and does seem to fit canon pretty well.  We see Spock smile and Number One advise him to play it straight.  Don’t let your freak flag fly if you want command.

I have always wondered why the Discovery and Enterprise turbolifts have been shown as a group of tracks inside the ship.  I always imagined them as tubes just wide enough to accommodate a single carriage.  Maybe I was wrong.  Maybe this just looks cooler.  I don’t know.  I’m sure an explanation will come along eventually.


 

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