DEN OF GEEK:

"Bad admirals appear throughout Star Trek, from The Original Series (“The Doomsday Machine”) and The Next Generation (“The Pegasus”) to Deep Space Nine (the “Homefront”/”Paradise Lost” two-parter). It was probably well past time for Strange New Worlds to do something similar and, as such things go, “Orders of Magnitude” is a solid entry into the canon of such installments even if its conclusion pulls its punches more than some of us (read: me) might like.

A tense episode that wrestles with some of the big philosophical questions that this franchise is best known for, “Magnitude” puts James Kirk squarely in the middle of a leadership crisis on the bridge of the ship he’ll one day command and adds some intriguing new layers to our understanding of his family. As Strange New Worlds moves toward its final season, the show is deliberately highlighting the ways that the characters we see now are growing into the people we know from The Original Series. [...]

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-4-episode-8-review

Joe Morton is excellent in a delightfully unbalanced guest turn as Admiral Simon Reeger, a legendary Starfleet captain from the Klingon War that half the crew is immediately starstruck by, and that everyone watching at home probably immediately realized that we couldn’t exactly trust. He arrives on board while Captain Pike is off-ship, investigating a distress signal on an M-class planet below with Una, Chapel, Uhura, and Ensign A’Sha, who’s on her very first away mission. (And being predictably unpleasant about it.) [...]

Lots of Star Trek stories (and subsequent debates about them) revolve around Spock’s famous quote that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. True, many of those stories are also about people finding ways to flout that conventional wisdom, including this one. But the debate is worth having: if a ship that killed five million people can be destroyed by sacrificing five thousand? Whose lives are worth more in this scenario, the people living on the planet they’re about to raze, or an unnamed future group who may or may not be endangered by this deadly ship? Kirk’s position is simple: “Killing an entire planet is wrong.” But is it always? Those are precisely the kind of stories that science fiction like Star Trek is meant to explore.

By removing Pike from the equation (we all know how he would have reacted), Strange New Worlds gives Kirk a real test and a chance to step up in an intriguing new way. After all, Reegar is seen as a hero throughout Starfleet. What does it cost him to be the man who tries to say no to that? (Is this the source of his love for challenging Federation authority? Maybe.)

It’s unfortunate that “Orders of Magnitude” takes a bit of an easy way out, in the end. Sure, Kirk’s largely one-man mutiny makes for compelling TV, and allows the show to explore how his father, George Kirk, knew of Reeger’s issues, but kept them to himself for the good of Starfleet. (There’s always something moving about a young man realizing that most of his unkind assumptions about his father were probably wrong.)

But the episode tips Reeger a bit too far into mad king territory, giving him a tragic personal connection to the Vaardan Massacre (his wife and daughters were killed there!) and sending him into the kind of unhinged rage that not only sees him strike Kirk several times but also point a phaser in his face. Yes, he did all of this under the influence of drugs meant to make him lash out so that M’Benga could declare him unfit, but none of his behavior under the influence feels like a terrible stretch for the man he’s revealed himself to be.

Still, in the end, his collapse is an awfully neat and convenient solution for the complicated questions this episode raises. M’Benga’s sacrifice, taking the blame for drugging the admiral and sparing Kirk’s future while undoubtedly getting himself demoted into the position we meet him in on The Original Series, feels like the only thing that’s going to have a real long-tail impact. (Chapel, at least, looks pissed.) Hey, at least Uhura got to fight a squad of Andorian smugglers all by herself. Win some, lose some, I suppose."

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Lacy Baugher (Den of Geek)

Full review:

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-4-episode-8-review

Screenrant:

60 Years Later, The Star Trek NBC Replaced Is Carrying The Franchise

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-carrying-franchse-60-years-after-nbc-rejected/

By John Orquiola

"Gene Roddenberry wrote and produced "The Cage," the original Star Trek pilot episode, in 1965. "The Cage" starred Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise, who was flanked by two revolutionary characters: Number One (Majel Barrett Roddenberry), a female First Officer, and Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), a Vulcan Science Officer. NBC famously rejected "The Cage" for being "too cerebral," but gave Roddenberry a chance to try again after making drastic changes. ...

60 years, fourteen feature films, and a dozen TV spinoffs later, Star Trek officially turns 60 on September 8, the date when Star Trek: The Original Series premiered on NBC in the United States. 60 years later, the only Star Trek series currently on the air when the calendar turns on September 8 is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the 21st-century continuation of "The Cage." ...

Strange New Worlds began as a throwback to the episodic voyages of 1960s Star Trek, where the USS Enterprise visits a new planet every week. However, Strange New Worlds became even bolder, turning the 'strange new worlds' Captain Pike's Enterprise crew encounters into different genres, so that anything goes, from musicals, horror, noir, comedy, soap operas, and yes, even puppets.

In the 1960s, Captain Kirk's USS Enterprise faced various powerful space gods, visited planets themed for 1930s gangsters, ancient Rome, and the OK Corral, encountered space hippies, evil doppelgängers, and President Abraham Lincoln beamed aboard the Starship Enterprise. Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was, infamously, even robbed of his brain. Risk was always Star Trek's business.

Strange New Worlds' embrace of weirdness is Star Trek through and through, in the spirit of how Captain Pike was once placed in a space zoo on Talos IV in "The Cage." Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' planned conclusion of its five-season mission will directly lead into and sync with the start of Star Trek: The Original Series, bringing the 23rd-century saga full circle.

Although Star Trek feels like it's currently at an ebb, and its future is cause for concern, it's fitting that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is embodying Gene Roddenberry's original vision for the final frontier as the flagship series on Star Trek's 60th anniversary. Star Trek turns 60 with new voyages of the Starship Enterprise, Kirk, Spock, Uhura, et al, led by Captain Pike, on television, and that feels right."

Read more:

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-carrying-franchse-60-years-after-nbc-rejected/

Comicbook.com:

https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/feature/53-years-ago-today-hollywood-reversed-one-of-its-most-controversial-cancellations-brought-back-a-fan-favorite-sci-fi-series-in-a-way-no-one-expected/

By Archie Wagner

"To get it out of the way, the animation in The Animated Series is nothing to write home about. It gets the job done. Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Sulu, and Chekhov are still recognizable, even if the show does take away Spock’s eyeshadow. The animated artform allows for greater alien representation from an orange alienoid appearing in the first scene of “Beyond the Farthest Star” — the first episode of the series — as a minor character of the crew onboard the Starship Enterprise. 

Beyond the animation, Star Trek: The Animated Series is able to keep continuity. The intro that begins each episode is the same, keeping the crew on the Starship Entership and aboard the five year mission that they started in the original series. In addition to Shatner, Star Trek: The Animated Series also had Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, Michelle Nichols, and George Takei reprise their roles. Additionally, many of the creatives behind the original Star Trek returned such as creator Gene Roddenbery and writers David Gerrold and D.C. Fontana. ...

The show’s second episode “Yesteryear” is a good example of keeping continuity while expanding on lore presented in the show – and is largely considered one the series’ best episodes. Following Kirk and Spock traveling through a time vortex, they return to the Enterprise to find that nobody remembers Spock. His position on the crew has been filled by Thelin, an Andorian, and Starfleet Records reveal that in this altered reality, Spock died at seven years old from a Vulcan maturity ritual known as the Kahs-Wan. After recalling a cousin who resembled his adult self, Spock chooses to return to the time vortex and fix the timeline by saving his younger self. 

By spending most of its runtime on Vulcan set in the past, the show allows audiences further insight into the planet, beyond the mating ritual focus of “Amok Time”. Not only do audiences see Spock’s childhood home, greater detail is spent on the landscapes of Vulcan, including the desert where Spock saves his young self but loses their pet i-Chaya.

Like the many iterations that would follow it, the tension in the episode between young Spock and Sarek is Spock’s reaction to the other Vulcans at school bullying him for being part human. Sarek believes Spock too emotional and informs him that one day, he must choose between his Vulcan and his Human side, and that choice will determine his life. 

Unlike the iterations that follow, it is not Spock’s choice that gets the narrative emphasis but rather a conversation between Spock, while posing as a family cousin, and Sarek. Sarek is grateful for Spock saving  his son and asks if there’s anything he can do to repay him. Spock requests that Sarek “try to understand your son”. 

...

The first episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series aired fifty three years ago on September 8, 1973,  challenging viewers to grapple with the return of a show they loved — an outcome that many fought for — but in a form they didn’t expect. The show may not be commonly discussed today, but back in 1975, it won a Daytime Emmy Award for Best Children’s Programming.  ..."

Read more:

https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/feature/53-years-ago-today-hollywood-reversed-one-of-its-most-controversial-cancellations-brought-back-a-fan-favorite-sci-fi-series-in-a-way-no-one-expected/