When an old enemy resurfaces as an existential threat to the Federation, Nahla must outwit a vengeful foe with a personal vendetta against her — as our cadets and instructors undertake a dangerous, seemingly impossible, mission to save everyone and everything they hold dear.
Teleplay by: Alex Kurtzman & Kirsten Beyer
Story by: Noga Landau & Gaia Violo
Directed by: Olatunde Osunsanmi
There is no spoiler protection in the episode discussion threads, and spoiler tags are not necessary!
Great episode, great finale, really strong first season. I had issues with some episodes trying to do too much in too little time, but for the last two episodes the writers focused on one story and did a damn good job tying up the season arc. Can’t wait to see where the show goes next season.
The one criticism I have of the finale, and literally everywhere else it comes up in new era Trek is: Stop moving the camera so fucking much! It’s unnecessary and really takes me out of it when the camera is wiggling back and forth, or spinning around in an arc, or acting like an unstable drone during the trial portion (particularly at the end). I want to drink in what’s going on, not be trying to puzzle out WTF I’m looking at, especially when stream compression turns a lot of motion into blurry pixels.
A little shaky cam when things are intense or exploding, sure, but overall I wish it was shot in a more conventional style.
I’m not sure I can agree on the camera work. This show has come a long way from the JJ Abrams directorial tricks embraced by Discovery and other shows of this production era.
I actually thought that Producing Director Osunsamni was restraining himself noticeably in his use of whipping cameras as compared to his directing style in previous shows.
Kurtzman set a directorial mandate for the show in the opening episodes with longer pans and more close ups on the characters. He even commissioned special amorphic lenses that enable close ups within the large sets. Jonathan Frakes mentioned that the directional norms for SFA are quite different and that he enjoyed the opportunity on his episode to rely more on shots where he closed in on the characters.
For this episode, the choice of using a shifting drone view for a remote news audience made sense in the context of an otherwise static scene of Nus’ theatrical show trial.