r/Star_Trek_

Don’t ask me about what I thought of the puppet episode, I haven’t even seen it.

I’d name her Finder

I don't think so.

Live-action nuTrek has access to FX that makes previously inconceivable aliens and creatures possible, but what has this FX actually been used for?

We've gotten whales, T-rexes, xenomorphs and puppets...nothing really original, alien or interesting (IMO nuTrek's best aliens appeared in "Children of the Comet").

Trek has admittedly not had a good track record when cooking up truly alien aliens - for every Horta, Vox Sola, Crystalline Entity or Space Amoeba there have been a dozen Forehead Aliens - but with CGI, the possibilities are now endless. IMO the writers should be making an effort to cook up multiple truly weird species/organisms every season. After all, part of the fun of scifi is speculating about different forms of biology, and different ecosystems.

For reference, here is the scene from Stargate SG1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9XrrEaZ7Y4

For its 200th episode, SG1 did a puppet segment. The thing was hilarious, and had a great payoff at the end. As I recall, the existence of this segment was used in an interview for justifying SNW's puppet episode dropping tomorrow.

But, there are some distinct differences in basic approach. SG1 did it right from start to finish, while SNW looks like it's positioned to air one of the worst episodes in its history. So, what is the difference?

Let's break it down.

The show within a show

Context is everything. It's not just that SG1's segment was a reference to Marionation shows like Thunderbirds, it was actually positioned as a "show within a show." The entire episode was a television creator pitching ideas (many of which were hilariously bad) to the characters, and the characters reacting. Nothing within the segment was actually happening to the characters.

Everything we know about this upcoming episode suggests that the characters really are going to be turned into puppets. And this means that what SG1 did as a deliberate parody, SNW is about to do for real.

Living vs. inanimate

Star Trek has had characters transformed into things before. TNG had an episode where some of the cast were turned into children, as well as one where they devolved into weird animal things. These weren't necessarily great episodes, but there was one thing in particular that made them work: what they were turned into was still alive.

Adults being turned into children still leaves them with functioning living bodies. They may be smaller, but they've still got lungs and can breathe, etc. Same thing with devolving into weird animal things. They go from something that is alive to something else that is alive and then back to something that is alive.

But a puppet is not alive. It's an inanimate object, something that only moves when a puppeteer is operating it. It has no lungs, no brain, and no voice of its own. Without a puppeteer, it is, for all intents and purposes, a stuffy. It is functionally the same as turning the entire crew into rocks.

Or, put another way, in-universe they should be dead, Jim.

SG1 recognized this rather brilliantly in their segment at the very end. Going through the gate cut the strings, and then they just flopped to the floor because...they're just puppets.

And this brings me to...

Unanswered Questions

There are certain questions that you can handwave away and still maintain suspension of disbelief. Some mysterious entity invades the ship and forces them and Klingons to repeatedly fight to the death, bringing the dead back to fight again? Sure, why not? The entity is powerful enough to do that.

But turning the crew into puppets raises too many questions that destroy suspension of disbelief: how do they breathe, are there suddenly a bunch of mysterious puppeteers who have appeared, etc.?

This is a genre thing. Angel did its own puppet episode, where the main character was actually turned into a puppet. But Angel was horror/fantasy, not science fiction. There are different genre rules, one of which is that while you can stretch the constraints of reality in SF (such as having a mysterious ghostlike entity tormenting the crew), you can't break them entirely. And SNW looks like it's about to break them entirely.

Fixing the Episode

Can SNW do a puppet episode and have it work? Absolutely. SG1 did show the way, and that's by having it be a show-within-a-show.

Imagine this for a moment (and this is just off the top of my head): the episode starts with the Enterprise is in the middle of a difficult first contact, where communications have been plagued by misunderstandings. At the same time, Starfleet has collaborated to create a children's show using puppets about the adventures of the crew, and sent a copy of the first episode to the ship for comment.

We see the story in the show-within-a-show, but as we do, the situation gets worse and worse, with the aliens coming to believe that Starfleet are conquers come to destroy them. Finally, Pike shows them the children's show, and they understand what Starfleet and the Federation actually is, salvaging the situation.

And that's just off the top of my head. No doubt there are other stories that would work. But, this isn't by itself a bad idea - it just looks like it's about to have a very bad implementation.

How do you get anywhere on a ship when all the corridors look the same.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DcPNxNyINxB/?igsh=bnF5bGNxYnRsODRi&igsi=bnF5bGNxYnRsODRi