Star Trek: Discovery

[Anthony W]

Wonder if he wears the suit and the glasses just for fashion.

For fashion, and he probably has various tech built into it as well because it was implied he worked for Section 31.

[ChrisIII]

Any thoughts on the latest episode? Seems the DMA is perhaps a weapon from some advanced species, and the final scene seems to be heavily implying there's something up with new scientist character Ruon Tarka.....

Plus there's the main plot with a group of prisoners (mostly for petty crimes) in it's path, which is kind of the typical Trek morality play.


Given that he's Risian, it'd be hilarious but probably extremely unlikely that the New Essentialists from DS9 are behind the whole thing somehow /s.

[Anthony W]

Any thoughts on the latest episode? Seems the DMA is perhaps a weapon from some advanced species, and the final scene seems to be heavily implying there's something up with new scientist character Ruon Tarka.....

Plus there's the main plot with a group of prisoners (mostly for petty crimes) in it's path, which is kind of the typical Trek morality play.


Given that he's Risian, it'd be hilarious but probably extremely unlikely that the New Essentialists from DS9 are behind the whole thing somehow /s.

I hope not. I really want DS9 to remain untouched by Discovery.

Why was Booker at the meeting at the start of the episode?

Burnham is the Captain.
Stamets has info concerning the DMA
Saru is first officer.
Booker is...Burnham's boyfriend. That doesn't mean he gets to hang out in the meeting. He isn't really a Starfleet officer.

The prisoner plot was pretty good. But why does Burnham and her boyfriend decide to beam down to save the prisoners? Why not send Rhys and Nilsson? Heaven forbid that someone else gets some shine in what could be the final season. Rhys job was a big nothing burger.

They wasted David Cronenberg again.

I'm glad that Burnham is showing some concern about the ship being sentient. Last season Saru found out and couldn't care less.

This...was a good episode. Good not great. Well...okay

[Styles]

This was a good episode but I would really like to see an away team other than Michael and Book. But at least there was no Adira and Gray in this ep. Their story really does nothing for me.

[Anthony W]

This was a good episode but I would really like to see an away team other than Michael and Book. But at least there was no Adira and Gray in this ep. Their story really does nothing for me.

And another thing, Why was The inmate holding on to the globe with the family tree? It had no personal value to anyone but the family he took it from....so why was he hiding it from the guards? Why not just hand it over to the guards so it can be returned? If he promised himself he would return it...then why in God's name does he kill himself at the first opportunity? Burnham should have told him that he was going to have to return the globe himself and he would have to be alive to do that. Why did the black hole experiment have to be done in the middle of an evacuation? These episodes aren't really meant to be watched more than once.

[CliffHanger2]

It is weird he was able to hide that golf ball in a high tech prison for decades. Then the new scientist who seems to feed off anger...eh. i think this is the weakest season so far.

[nx01a]

This episode exasperated me.

The Good
-The NSS T'Pau being a continuation of the ENT era Vulcan warp ring design which I love. And the USS Janeway just existing; pity it's not a sister ship to the Voyager J.
NSS_T'Pau.jpg
-Culber realizing he needed help and seeking it out.
-Seeing that the Akaali have reached the stars.
-A brusque and rude Risian.
-Namedropping the Metrons, the Nacene, and the remnants of the Iconians.
-Any scene with Oded Fehr is golden.

The Bad
-It sure looked like they had plenty of time to know the asteroid colony was going to be destroyed considering it had been pushed closer and closer to the sun all during the episode.
-Ruon Tarka being set up as questionable in his quest for knowledge in the very first episode the anomaly is confirmed to be controlled by someone. Let's hope this isn't heavy-handed foreshadowing that he's involved in creating this thing in the first place.

The Ugly
-With the anomaly being created and controlled, it gives the crew someone to shoot at and Book someone to kill in one on one combat vengeance in the final episode. I thought the producers said this season would feature a different kind of threat. I wanted them to figure this one out, stop it with science, not blow up this season's throwaway bad guy.
-Dangerous experiment during an evacuation with the anomaly literal minutes away? Nothing they did had to be done immediately or were specific to being done in that location. It seemed like needless drama.
-Michael leading an away mission to break out prisoners whose crimes she didn't know, freeing them no matter what they wanted, then respecting one's decision to kill himself? I would have preferred she lean into the god complex and stun Felix (who was never referred to by name until the very end) and beam him back. Michael decides if you live or die! :P VOY's Repentance was far better. Michael freed sympathetic prisoners. What if she'd encountered violent thugs and suave serial killers?
-Felix not giving the family xmas tree ball up at his trial or at any point over the past 30 years.
-The explodo-beetles's wheels of death not just... rolling around the rock Michael and Book were hiding behind.
-YOUR SHIP IS SENTIENT AFTER MERGING WITH ALIEN KNOWLEDGE!!!! If this isn't immediately followed up on, they deserve whatever they get.

Other
-Michael and Book did the exact same thing Archer did against the Akaali during 'Civilization': shoot their phasers at something with interesting thermal properties until it exploded and saved them. I'm not sure if this is a good callback or just a lazy ripoff.

Final thoughts...
I found the episode forced suspense where there should have been none (the anomaly test during an evacuation with the anomaly nearby) and went easy where they should have been drama (freeing non-violent prisoners without raising greater moral questions).

[Anthony W]

It is weird he was able to hide that golf ball in a high tech prison for decades. Then the new scientist who seems to feed off anger...eh. i think this is the weakest season so far.

Weakest season? Keep in mind that last season was about a sad child making warp almost impossible by destroying vast amounts of dilithium. Ni'Var has Romulans and Romulans perfected technology that allowed ships to run on miniature black holes and not dilithium. The Federation knows this as well. So tell me again why they didn't just start retrofitting old ships and start making new ships that run on black holes instead of scrounging for dilithium after The Burn hit?

[ChrisIII]

Had a bit of a fan theory that the Ni'var might've accidentally created the anomaly that way, but with it now being deliberately controlled that seems to have fizzled out.

Unless the Romulan side is up to their old ways....

[Anthony W]

Had a bit of a fan theory that the Ni'var might've accidentally created the anomaly that way, but with it now being deliberately controlled that seems to have fizzled out.

Unless the Romulan side is up to their old ways....

It's Borg, no way is Discovery ending it's run without a Borg appearance.

[ChrisIII]

Apparently the DMA aliens are from outside the galaxy, or another galaxy according to the latest episode. Even refers to the galactic barrier from the first Kirk episode (Not to be confused with the one in Trek V which was the center of the galaxy, not the border of it).

[nx01a]

Didn't really care for this episode. The review will be appropriately harsh.

The Good
-Extra-galactic threats.
-Saru's anger advice to Book.
-Book taking something good from his hallucination.
-Mentions of the Enterprise and Voyager's encounters with subspace rifts.
-The Eye of Sauron...
disceye.jpg

The Bad
-This feels like another Xindi probe situation, and Discovery has to fly off into the unknown to stop them before they strike again! Will Book be Trip and forgive the aliens or will he be Archer and blow them up with a thermal grenade?
-Bryce again with something nautical. Consistent but still annoying with the 20th and 21st C analogies. Sonar? *sigh*
-Book hallucinating yet again.
-No mention of a service for poor Cortez? Was his face even on Michael's tree? He didn't get a mention from Zora on her tree?
-While I appreciate dealing with the sentience of the ship the episode after said sentience was discovered, it was only a dire situation that led to it, not the crew realizing that their computer suddenly having feelings was a serious problem. To paraphrase Picard, "This is an intolerable situation. I have no wish to harm her, but I cannot allow Zora to continue to act as the computer. I don't care how smart she is." Zora describes herself as a 'sentient organism living inside a supercomputer'. Hopefully she can be removed and put inside another supercomputer... one resembling pre-refit Discovery... then left in a nebula for a thousand years.

The Ugly
-Entering an anomaly and not at least trying to keep track of where the rift is behind you at all times? The minute they couldn't detect it, red alert.
-Wouldn't checking on the status of the mycelial network before trying to jump have been prudent? It seemed obviously compromised.
-Everyone's getting a weepy backstory without actual on screen character development. Give Joanne and Detmer and the rest of them an episode!
-Zora. Gray. Book. (Culber from last episode.) Everyone's got troubles, stormy weather.
-Couldn't Zora have just beamed Cortez back aboard? Was she too emotionally compromised to do so?
-Michael saves the day again. Shouldn't synthetic life form Gray have been the one to stay behind in the no life support ship to give the lacking confidence computer a pep talk as its hull melted?

The Verdict
-I'm looking forward to having the show literally jump even further beyond its original premise to explore between galaxies and even another galaxy. Star Trek: Universe!
-Is everyone on this show emotionally compromised, mentally unstable, and woefully incompetent? Even the computer?! I don't want to see perfect people in Star Trek, just competent officers who do their jobs without weeping and insubordination seemingly as the first options.

[Ascended]

I don't really disagree with most of your assessment. I think a lot of the ideas and overall plots in this show are pretty fun and relatively smart, at least in the broadstrokes, but the episode-to-episode stuff often gets a little squirrely. Couple thoughts......

Give Joanne and Detmer and the rest of them an episode!

I'd really like that. The rest of the crew almost never get the kind of screen time we're accustomed to in Trek, but this show has always been Burnham's and I don't expect that to change.

-Couldn't Zora have just beamed Cortez back aboard? Was she too emotionally compromised to do so?

The void was right up against the hull by that point right? Pretty sure there was nothing left of Cortez to beam back. I think I did see him on Zora's tree though?

-Michael saves the day again. Shouldn't synthetic life form Gray have been the one to stay behind in the no life support ship to give the lacking confidence computer a pep talk as its hull melted?

Well, Gray isn't exactly a synthetic; his actual consciousness is in that android and they made it pretty clear that he can't just jump from body to body. So it's not as cut and dry as using a easily discarded machine. And the ethics of leaving a untrained kid, who isn't even part of Starfleet, in charge during a situation like that....

I don't want to see perfect people in Star Trek, just competent officers who do their jobs without weeping and insubordination seemingly as the first options.

They learned it from Michael.

Looking back though, there's been plenty of times in Trek history where the crew have done stupid things for the sake of the plot.

[nx01a]

You're right about Cortez and the anomaly. He's atomized. I'd have to rewatch to see about his face on anyone's seasonally timely tree but I really don't want to.

The synth body thing is still confusing me. Gray and Picard are just human-form Cylons or human-form Replicators: flesh and blood but made up of exotic materials and cellular machines? Would Gray have been just as vulnerable as Burnham? And our favourite ships have been left in the hands of the most outrageous people before.

I hope the next episode before the mid-season break is better than the last two. I enjoyed s2 and s3 for the most part but everyone's doubt and trauma-fest so far this season has been emotionally draining. Book seems to be making progress toward healing only to slide back into more anger every episode. While that's far more reasonable than say Leia getting over Alderaan going boom almost instantly, it's very hard to watch but at least he's shown getting help. Trek is inspirational for me in that the characters are able to overcome and thrive in spite of their traumas; I suppose we just see the actual process of recovery now with serialization and without the weekly reset button.

[Anthony W]

Even their ship needs therapy now? That is soooooo Discovery. Why didn't they just leave Gray behind when the crew went into the pattern buffers? If Gray died they could have just gotten a new one out of storage and downloaded her personality into that one. I guess Culber forgot to make a copy?

Also, Zora has to be given a new assignment now right? It's just too dangerous and irresponsible to keep taking a newly sentient being into the field, especially when it's your ship. When Zora offered to sing Burnham a song was anyone else hoping it was going to be "Daisy Bell"? Just me huh?

Oh and Saru, I know that the Ba'ul were horrible but it was a cycle and your folks were horrible to them for centuries. The story is more powerful if you tell both sides.