Airing the episodes out of order isn’t helping, especially with La’an’s arc. Also if this is the movie homage season perhaps they should pay homage to some Star Trek movies. 
It’s time to meet The Muppets on The Muppet Show tonight
Going into this episode with low expectations. I enjoyed the episode of Angel where he gets turned into a Muppet, so it could work. Maybe it will be fun and have a few good laughs.
Okay, it was an incredibly silly episode. I thought perhaps the puppets were CGI but a recap tells me that they are physical puppets produced by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. I’m wondering what the fate of the puppets will be; I imagine they would sell for quite a lot on the collectibles market.
- I need a Pelia puppet.
- I can almost here the heads exploding from here.
I thought that when Pike mentioned his new command chair and its voice capabilities that would be how he would take control. As a puppet, he couldn’t use the touchscreen controls but should have been able to use his voice to run things.
I’m hoping that each actor got to keep their puppet, because I’d sure want to.
The hair on the Captain Pike muppet is way too subdued.
Annoyed all just a dream?!?
Pelia was awesome, they outdid themselves on that one.
On that note, why did Spock dream scenes thsy he wasn’t in? In all this was a fun episode.
Nice article on the episode:
From that I learned that the Pelia puppet’s hair was made from boiled “synthetic horsehair tubing” which I had to Google.
Pelia and her hair were epic.
I was kind of cringing when this episode came up because this series has gotten a bit uneven and it could easily have been a spectacular jump-the-shark failure, but it was enough fun that I can overlook the inconsistencies. And I am not even a Muppet fan.
The reveal at the end was kind of a cop-out but I am not sure having it be real would have been any better.
It’s just a show, I should really just relax.
It seems like this was originally written as an attempt to take a ridiculous premise and play it as straight horror. Characters dismembered, cut in half, air-locked, brutal pirates, a creepy doll…But in execution they leaned into the humor with funny voices, out-of-character exaggerated frustration, and pirates on parr with Harry and Marv from Home Alone. At no time is the audience made to feel there will be any real consequences for the crew (not even Scotty, who should never be allowed within a parsec of a starship again). But that’s always been the biggest problem with this show; we already know the fates of almost all of the characters. Having said that, they do “silly” a Hell of a lot better than they do “earnest”.
T’pring is our stand in I think. Yes, this ep did silly well but the showrunners seem to me to be trying to justify the way the run has gone - the hijinks are, to them, not a problem but the point. Many of us viewers are, to them T’pring, and need to get on board that they are not taking Trek seriously and are just having goofy fun. Yeah … relax.
And for this ep that is fine. Completely lean into the absurd. I will still be a T’pring though about the season overall!
Collectively, the T’pringles?
Earnest goes to camp?
While I prefer hijinks-y episodes as a once-a-season break to lighten the mood, throw the more serious developments into sharper relief and provide a sort of contrast to them, I can appreciate the showrunners taking a different tack. It might not be entirely for me, but that doesn’t make it bad (I had similar feelings towards Lower Decks).
But what bothers me are the multiple instances of needless carelessness. In the first episode, the single can of antimatter being able to destroy an entire planet: this suddenly and needlessly introduce weapons of mass destruction the likes of which have rarely been seen on Star Trek; every ship is now basically a death star. In the most recent episode, the ‘incredible distance’ Scotty wanted to transport something was 30,000 km, about 1/10th of a light second/the distance between Earth and Moon. Multiple ships were stated to be within that distance, but yet, later, no ship can reach the Enterprise in less than two days. It would take a rocket at escape velocity about 45 minutes to traverse 30,000 km. In the B/W episode, there not only being a perfect physical match for Una, but apparently the differences between humans and Mat’Aarians being undetectable (or the Klingons just neglecting to do any scans even after an unknown shuttle has landed).
I don’t know, maybe that’s just my inner Comic Book Guy talking. But I always find it disappointing if nobody can be bothered to think twice about these things.
I have nothing against puppet episodes, it’s just that as puppet episodes go, this wasn’t a very good one.
Star Trek has always, always been extremely bad in the science. I don’t see anything in your examples that isn’t extremely typical of ST’s handling of physics and distances. Star Trek isn’t bad in trying to show the process of science being done, but the actual details have always been worthless.