Andorian

When the alien ship disappears into the atmosphere of a populated planet, Rieger invokes General Order 24, ordering the destruction of every living thing on the planet to ensure the enemy is eliminated.

Kirk refuses to stand by, uncovering the truth behind Rieger's obsession and the Admiral's connection to Kirk's father, while Pike and his away team face their own dangerous encounter with Andorian smugglers.

I feel like this is a Trek episode that absolutely stands out in this season.

I think it's another episode that obviously gives Trek admirals a bad name.

cave adventures we do

um i love that we get a little bit of uh bar table banter between ortegas and lawn talking about that um but i think that mission itself could have been a standalone episode I think it works really, really well as a plot device here, and it seems like it helps to contain separate stories in one, which gets at it efficiently.

But yeah, I thought that particular side mission was done really, really well, because we got a villain with Tor, the Andorian's army.

who was very laser focused and was seeing through all the negotiations I thought that was really cleverly written and did its own amazing job at keeping that tension going on both sides of the both on the ship and in the cave

When Kirk questions this and then attempts to contact Starfleet covertly, Rieger sends him to the brig, where he escapes from Lon and consults with Mbenga, who served with Rieger and also Kirk's father.

Meanwhile, in the cave, the call was faked by Andorian pirates who capture the party and demand Starfleet command codes.

Uhura pretends to comply, but instead uses their equipment to disable and then single-handedly defeat them.

Kirk is recaptured, claims to have sabotaged the phasers, and goads Rieger into such irrationality that Mbenga relieves him of duty.

Using her intelligence, using her knowledge, realizing that Pike's hands are tied with his command duty, she steps up, channeling the logical outside-the-box lessons taught to her by her late mentor, Hemmer.

She decides to take matters into her own hands.

She openly defies Pike's direct orders and announces to the Andorians that she is willing to give them the codes to save Oshawa.

For a tense moment, it looks like Uhura is legitimately committing treason and betraying her captain.

Melbourne, yeah.

But when you get like the Andorians who are like blue, wouldn't it be great if they were just like some Andorians were purple? And like the purple Andorians were like, yeah, well, it's like, oh, I didn't know some of you could be purple.

And it's like, oh, is that a problem to you? And it turns out there's like a deep history of racial prejudice on the Andorian homeworld against the purple Andorians.

Yeah, I mean, I guess that...

Like, the boring answer to that is that we don't have blue people.

what would be going on with their sun that would make it beneficial for some of them to be blue and some of them to be green? And you know what? Maybe that's the point of the episode.

Maybe we finally have a Star Trek episode about colour theory.

Maybe it's just that some of the Andorians evolved on a subcontinent that had more forests.

And I'm also going to bring this up, right? Okay.

We know from Enterprise that...

The Federation is founded by not just Earth and the Vulcans, but I think the Tellarites and the Andorians are in it.

But it was Earth's idea.

Yeah.

I like to imagine it was said with the same sort of tone as, we should have pre-drinks at mine, brackets, this is the unspoken part, so that I can decide I'm too tired and not come out for the rest of the night, end brackets.

We've got a lot of shit on Earth and we don't want to move it.

The Andorians don't come with a big giant space

But she went totally John McClane from Die Hard, just taking out all the Andorians.

That lead Andorian, wonderful actor.

Super charming.

Yeah.

It would have been a thankless role.

And yet he was perhaps...

Even with Admiral Rieger chewing up the scenery, I feel like that Andorian was even more magnetic to watch.

So every time we cut back to the caves, I was like, oh, no, the caves.

is

Pike Una Uhura Asha and Christine are on a landing party together chasing down some signal and they get there and it's a trap yeah it's a trap and this whole episode is a reference to Star Trek 2 yes so it's a trap in its Andorian mercenaries and I'm glad that I forget who but someone points out that the Andorians are supposed to be our friends

I was glad that

happened because I, again, spent way too much time going, what is happening?

But it just made me sad that it was these guys.

Yeah.

I understand that there are like human pirates, so there could be Andorian pirates and that's all fine and good, but we don't have enough Andorian characters

for

And I do feel a lot of this is half-ass.

And really the whole Andorian smugglers B plot really meant nothing.

The most important thing I think we missed out on this episode, though, is I think the more interesting thing is that invisible ship.

Yeah.

But, yeah, I mean, they're just so much good.

The B plot, yeah, wasn't as deep and as choppy as the main A plot.

Yeah, that was your, oh, we're going to have the Andorians.

But did anyone think that maybe we would see Bruce Horik as one of those Andorians?

yeah so there's a bit in this where Lyle obviously she's in her pre-release state she's in alpha whatever I was trying to make a gaming analogy doesn't matter right she was looking like Crichton And you go into the holodeck, and her and Troi are sort of deciding what she's going to look like.

So it comes down to either a human male, a human female, an Andorian female, or a female Klingon.

Now, my question would be, How would the Klingons feel about that?

Well, my more important question about that particular scene is when she's showing the Klingon body, Troy says, oh, you'd be a friend for Worf.