Logline
La’An travels back in time to twenty-first-century Earth to prevent an attack which will alter humanity’s future history—and bring her face to face with her own contentious legacy.
Written by David Reed
Directed by Amanda Row
Note: This is a second attempt, as technical difficulties were preventing people from seeing the original discussion post. Apologies to the people who were able to comment in the original.
I enjoyed the episode. I think what makes SNW stand out for me is the characters. All the main crew are interesting, likeable characters, and that for me is generally a key ingredient for great Star Trek.
It has been quite a weird opening to the season. We haven’t had the crew together on the bridge (or even the ship) for 3 whole episodes. I’m guessing there was a real world reason for this (i.e. availability of the cast), but kind of hoping the next episode is a bit more “normal”.
Also, given that Kirk features, it was a missed opportunity to open with “Personal log: We’ve. Travelled. Back in Time…” without further explanation.
I don’t think we’re going to see in this show any Starfleet officers committing information to personal logs that could threaten history.
SNW seems very conscious that personal logs aren’t entirely personal beyond access.
Una recorded and deleted her personal log acknowledging she is Illyrian in season one.
Later shows in the continuity have revealed to us that some personal logs to become available to next of kin, or are even studied by future Starfleet personnel.
Having Uhura pointedly resist providing the personal logs to La’an in ‘Ad Astra Per Aspera’ also underscored to us that it’s the ethics of communications officers that protect privacy.
This would be entertaining but wouldn’t necessarily fit due to Star Fleet not existing and presumably no reason to make personal logs.