

Good point. There are repetitive signals that her expectation is that he hasn’t materially changed.
Beyond the ‘you grew up’ startlement at his physical growth and development, she expects his temperament, preferences ambitions and values are exactly the ones she saw in him at six years old.
She’s not just missed the past year as a cadet in Starfleet, they both have missed his entire adolescent experience of youth separating themselves from their parents.
Interestingly, the challenge of needing to catch up with who someone has changed into is foreshadowed by Caleb and the others’ difficulties in understanding who SAM is now - and her own struggles to reconcile who she was with who she is.










Jonathan Frakes mentions several things in the TrekMovie interview that may impact costs.
Alex Kurztman set the direction style with more close up, tight camera work. More, he specifically ordered special long camera lenses to enable that. This means that despite the enormous sets and UHD cinematography, with long lenses they are able to block the scenes without as much extraneous detail.
Saving the wide angles for when they need them but closing up on the characters, and doing more in set internal volumes must surely reduce a lot of crew time and accelerate production.