The Star Trek Thread

[Mothra]

Yeah, the "stuck in a tube" story was pretty terrible, but on the other hand it's the most we've seen of Tig Notaro all season, so I think I cut it some slack based on that.

That's true, more Jett Reno is always a delight. She had my favorite line of the episode:

Stamets: "Hugh, thanks. Jett, thanks for nothing."
Reno: "Back at you, bobcat."
Stamets: "Bobcat?"
Reno: "I don't know, I'm on drugs."

Did they kill him? I thought they let him go. Did the other guy shoot him on the way out the door?

I feel like they killed him, but I can't remember. Maybe they just pushed him out into the wastes?

Given the comparisons to Hugh I think there's at least an even chance Gray's got a resurrection in his future. Though again, that still doesn't excuse killing him off in the first place.

God can you imagine if they did the same thing they did with Hugh... it's so very very possible, now that you mention it.

Yeah, the show's never done a good job with its cast beyond the 5 or so principals. There's a new blond lady on the bridge now, I guess replacing the bridge rando who got spaced last season; I don't know if they've even acknowledged she's new or given her a name, but I'm not going to bother learning it anyway.

HOLY SHIT I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT HER WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THAT?? They just have this new character like standing around in shots, part of the fam, nobody has ever talked to her, nor has she ever introduced herself.

But I thought 5 had its share of good stuff anyway. For all the fan service in the scene where they find Federation HQ, it still felt like a payoff of what they'd been telling us all season about the importance of the Federation and how much it means to people. One of the biggest differences between previous seasons and the current one is that Tilly is no longer the only character who ever smiles.

I'll definitely agree with you there. I actually liked the preservation part of this story a lot, but in typical Discovery fashion, it was another episode which should've been one story instead of seven.

• SECTION 31 IS BACK??? ARE YOU GUYS FOR REAL??? We just escaped thousands of years into the future and SECTION 31 IS BACK IN THIS SHOW AGAIN???

Wait what I guess I missed that one. Maybe the damn spinoff's still going to happen then.

Oh well, I guess he didn't outright state it, but I thought Cronenberg's character was a far-future member of Section 31, but that is a guess.

Very cool seeing Cronenberg show up, though.

Just now remember that they established that Terrans are genetically evil????????? Pretty wild curveball there!

[Mongrel]

Just now remember that they established that Terrans are genetically evil????????? Pretty wild curveball there!

Wait what? What sort of evil are we talking here?

[Thad]

Oh well, I guess he didn't outright state it, but I thought Cronenberg's character was a far-future member of Section 31, but that is a guess.

Very cool seeing Cronenberg show up, though.

Just now remember that they established that Terrans are genetically evil????????? Pretty wild curveball there!

Yeah, I'm really hoping he was just fucking with her. Something is happening to her, of course, that's presumably related to her being Terran. That at least is one of the many dangling threads that I expect to be addressed eventually.

[Thad]

(I guess Mirror Spock inherited the evil gene from his mother.)

[Mothra]

Re: 3x08 "The Sanctuary"

Strange episode. I liked a bunch of individual parts, so overall vaguely positive.

The whole fight scene with Dettmer was pretty cool, just purely from a visual perspective. I didn't really grasp what they were doing at most parts of that fight, so it was mostly just sort of series of pleasing lights. Book's ship is cool, the ship they were fighting was cool, the effects were great, Dettmer visually looks cool. Sort of a music-video vibe in that narratively I had no connection to it but it was pleasing to watch.

The main story with Book's planet was mostly very dumb I felt, there's some potential there in how Book's race connects to the planet, but it wasn't really explored too deeply. Another case of them juggling too much. Michael was present also.

The Georgio thing was like your typical Discovery subplot, where it's been dragging on for a few episodes with no satisfying developments, making us just like annoyed by it, wanting it to conclude already. Where I to guess, maybe she got infected by nanobots? And is now a composite of nanomachines? I wonder if this is them trying to de-evil her? God damn this character annoys the shit out of me. I wish they'd give her some kind of job already, like, chief of security or something, some reason to bring her on missions that isn't an insane whim.

I actually am really enjoying the Stamets/new kid storyline. It's being rushed, especially Caulber being like "it's like we have a kid now!!!!!!!" the whole episode, but I am a huge sucker for found family stuff so the idea of those two adopting this trill kid is pretty adorable AND I did very much enjoy the music scene. I wish that had been the only B-Plot, with them dropping the the Georgio C-Plot entirely as well as the Saru D-Plot. JUST FOCUS ON TWO THINGS AND DO THEM WELL, GUYS.

[Mothra]

Re: 3x09 "Terra Firma, Pt. 1"

It probably says a lot that this show is vastly better following an evil mirror universe crew as they do mirror universe stuff. Like, every character is better for having some clear stated want and ambition. Also, glad they didn't try to retcon any of the horrible shit like them eating kelpians.

Still floored by how good these sets and costumes look. Hoping this somehow resurrects Lorca in the prime universe.

I'm not gonna go on another one of my patented Georgiou rants again but this one just goes to show how Yeoh's character only works in the mirror universe, where everything is a cartoonishly evil version of reality, and everyone is endlessly scheming. She's great here, barking orders and intimidating everyone around her! Having her as part of the Discovery crew is like having Rita Repulsa as part of the main cast, which, sounds incredible in theory, but in practice? Tiring.

Going back to the original anthology series idea for Discovery. This mirror universe saga could’ve been a whole season! One big season in the mirror universe, you wrap up all the plot threads at the end, the writers do everything they clearly want to do on one go, bam! Done with!

[Thad]

Yeah, not much to add to what you said about the last two episodes.

I will say that, while I'm enjoying the "found family" arc too, there's a little bit of a "let's put all the LGBT characters off in a corner together" vibe to it that probably could have been handled better.

[Mothra]

Yeah. I do like the idea of Stamets and Caulber taking a care of a new character, I like those kinds of "healing" storylines, but, god, it's so rushed. Please, Discovery, please earn anything. Please put the time in guys.

[Thad]

This is a show that, three seasons in, finally managed to give its main character some development by...skipping ahead a year.

[Mothra]

Dude... where to even start with this one? Any good will I had from part 1 was crushed under the wheel of the same interaction happening 15 times, until a big dumb shootout closed it out pointlessly. “Michael, you need to be less evil.” “What are you talking about?” “I’ve changed, I'm not evil anymore, stop being evil too.” “What? No. We're all evil here, that's our entire thing!”

I won't get into how nothing whatsoever mattered because it was in the cartoon clown universe. What struck me was that they could not pull one single emotional throughline across this two-parter - you never once believed for a second that Evil Michael would be swayed, so like, where's the investment?

I have to stop trying to take this show seriously, because the real reason we threw three precious episodes of S3 into the woodchipper is that they had to set up their Section 31 spinoff, and fuck everything else.

Them teary-eyed, toasting to their dear departed comrade and found family member, the comically racist genocidal torture tyrant, is gonna stick in my memory for a long time. This writer's room has zero control.

[Thad]

I felt like there were enough interesting ideas that it wasn't a total loss, but yeah the execution was just more of the same trend of character development by tell-don't-show. They keep telling us how much Georgiou has changed, but they just haven't demonstrated it believably. The mutual respect she and Saru have...well, not developed, because that's entirely the wrong verb, but...suddenly acquired for each other is completely unearned. A better script, one that had the confidence to play up the inevitability of Michael's betrayal, could have said something interesting about Philippa becoming someone who chooses to try to do the right thing even when she knows it's not going to work, but in this script it just makes her seem like a chump. And yeah I kinda liked Carl but then when we found out what his deal is it's just another "Hey, remember that much better episode of Star Trek?" Stop doing that, Star Trek. All it does is make me think "Oh yeah, why am I watching this instead of that?"

And yeah the ending sucked. If there's one thing I've learned from long goodbye scenes, it's cut them. There are many, many shows and films I've seen that feature tearful departures, and I almost always find myself thinking, "You know, that would have been a lot more effective if it had ended a scene earlier." This episode was no exception.

Plus I guess this means they're still making the damn Sector 31 spinoff.

[Mothra]

So it turns out that two-parter was written by the team from the Section 31 spinoff, so, it was literally entirely meant to set up their spinoff. Which I guess we knew, obviously, but god, the swinging brass balls on these people to torpedo to eps this season on a sub-plot for a show I could not imagine being less interested in.

I started listening to some Greatest Discovery, which is done by The Greatest Generation guys, and it does really take the edge off. They also are real frustrated with it, but at least it's a fun kind of frustration with them playing it back.

"Consistently stunned by how quickly this crew has adapted to these incredible new technologies. If you brought the crew from a Spanish galleon from the year 1018 A.D. into the present day and gave them a six-week crash course on how to work a modern destroyer, you have to wonder, could they do it?"

"Ben I'll do you one better: Our parents have been alive for decades... can we be sure they know how to use the internet and email? They have not traveled through time, at this point. They've known about it all through their lives, at this point."

There's also an entire bit about Culber being on Facetime with Starfleet support trying to figure out why the medical device keeps blinking 12, which is extremely good.

They talk a bit about hos this show suffers from being a "mystery box" style of writing that started with Sixth Sense and Lost, and keeps popping up again and again, always was incredibly unsatisfying results. Discovery is trying to work backwards to reveal their season-long concept, but the actual process of watching that happens is wildly frustrating, because there's no connection or drama, it's just people being in the right place doing the right things to achieve the right ends. Stamets, for example, has randomly gone a full 180 degrees character-wise, from being the grouchy engineer with a soft-spot, to being the single most supportive character on the show, to everyone. If everyone is like that, god, where's the drama?

They also pointed out something a while back that gave me pause, which was the fact that anyone can seemingly enter any room and participate in any conversation. There's seemingly no rank or anything. Michael will walk into a closed conversation between the Starfleet admiral and the captain back in S2 and say her piece, and nobody bats an eye. It's very strange to go from Trek shows which are all about very controlled military-like ships, to this, which is like a Farscape sort of deal with everyone being one big family and voluntarily always doing what they're asked.

[JD]

To be fair, apparently anybody could walk into Ops in DS9. Jake, Nog, Lwaxana Troi, Maihar'du, Quark...

[Büge]

So it turns out that two-parter was written by the team from the Section 31 spinoff, so, it was literally entirely meant to set up their spinoff. Which I guess we knew, obviously, but god, the swinging brass balls on these people to torpedo to eps this season on a sub-plot for a show I could not imagine being less interested in.

Gosh. I wonder if people felt that way about Assignment: Earth.

[Thad]

I know better than to judge a part 1 before I've seen part 3, but if I were to judge Su'Kal in isolation without seeing how the story plays out, I'd say I thought it was great. It was absurd in the right ways. Michael, Hugh, and Saru playing Alien Makeup Roulette for reasons that don't make a whole lot of sense (and presumably just boil down to actors who play humans wanting to try some alien makeup, and Doug Jones wanting to show his face for once) was the right kind of silly. The reveal on the Burn -- "All the dilithium in the galaxy suddenly explodes because a child on a ship orbiting a dilithium planet has gained strange powers, and lashes out in grief and rage when his mother dies" sounds like a plot you get when you feed every Star Trek episode synopsis into a learning algorithm, and just to be clear that's praise, not criticism. It's hokey and it's anticlimactic, but in a way that fundamentally feels like the third-act twist in a classic Star Trek episode.

I thought the B story was fine too. I've decided I like Osyraa. There's not really anything to her but swagger, but Janet Kidder (Margot's niece!) sells it. She's like an evil Kirk. I don't want her to overstay her welcome like, say, Georgiou did, but I think she's got one more good episode in her. (Unfortunately, there are two more episodes this season.)

And then what happens? What with an entire planet of dilithium, have they just resolved the Burn storyline over the course of a single season? On the one hand, that seems a little too soon; on the other, having Discovery travel the galaxy to distribute dilithium and reunite the Federation would be a solid hook for season 4.

But all that's getting ahead of myself, because again, judging a multi-part storyline by just the first part is a mug's game. A satisfying cliffhanger is much easier to write than a satisfying resolution, as we've seen over and over again, most recently a week and a half ago. We could be in for a bumpy ride the next couple of weeks. But at any rate I liked that one.

[Mongrel]

Wait, did they just make Star Trek into Dune? :O

[Blossom]

Damn, that is just. Even by Discovery standards, that's stupid.

The thing is, yeah, it feels like the third act twist in An Episode, because usually that sort of thing is just. The plot of An Episode. Not an entire season and presumably the new normal of the setting.

[Mothra]

I guess I'm just glad they didn't go with "the Romulans did it" or something like that, but god damn, this reveal makes no sense. So like the kid who grew up on the dilthium planet (?) is naturally linked with all dilithium across the universe? And if he gets sufficiently scared, all dilithium everywhere explodes?

Not even the most hokey TOS episode pulled something like that. Talk about unsatisfying.

I did enjoy seeing these characters clowning around the hologram, so there's that at least.

[Thad]

I guess I'm just glad they didn't go with "the Romulans did it" or something like that, but god damn, this reveal makes no sense. So like the kid who grew up on the dilthium planet (?) is naturally linked with all dilithium across the universe? And if he gets sufficiently scared, all dilithium everywhere explodes?

My interpretation is that it isn't just him, it's also his continuing proximity to the dilithium planet, and once they get him out of there (which we can reasonably assume is going to happen since the season finale is titled "Outside") then he won't be able to do that anymore.

Not even the most hokey TOS episode pulled something like that.

Not that specifically, but universe-destroying cosmic powers in the hands of an enfant terrible who doesn't understand them and strange, previously-undiscovered planets that grant superpowers are both pretty stock tropes.

Talk about unsatisfying.

The Burn was one of those things where I knew going in that any explanation they offered could only serve to make it less interesting. It's a plot device; "What caused the Burn?" was never as compelling a question as "What are the sociopolitical ramifications of the Burn?" (At least, for us in the audience. Obviously "What caused the Burn?" is a pretty goddamn important question for the characters on the show.) So maybe I benefited from low expectations (wouldn't be the first time!) but I think this explanation works for me about as well as any explanation was going to. It's both a "there's weird shit in the universe we don't understand" explanation and a problem they're going to have to solve by thinking and talking instead of punching and kicking and phasers and photon torpedos. I'm willing to chalk that up in the Win column.

[Mothra]

Re: 3x12, "There is a tide...":

I know there was never any possibility that Discovery would resolve anything with diplomacy rather than a big, dumb, overlong action slog wherein everyone on the bad guy side is killed, but, why even tease us with the full third of this ep being devoted to negotiations with the Emerald Chain?

Admiral Salt & Pepper must’ve known that the Emerald Chain lady would never willingly make a deal where she would be tried for her crimes, right? Seemed like the best deal you’re going to get? You abolish slavery across the entire Chain and the Chain stops exploiting pre-warp civilizations?

I also can’t parse if this was actually supposed to be the Emerald Chain lady trying to cut a deal with the Federation? Everything she did leading up to that, including busting in to the Federation secret base with a ruse, implied she was just trying to destroy the Federation. But then she’s actually legitimately here for negotiations? And then Admiral Salt & Pepper doesn’t budge on anything, until she storms off in an outrage? The fuck was the point of any of that?