And so Discovery reaches its “mid-season finale,” a recent phenomenon of television to make sure that people tune in for the last episode before a break, and also to reassure folks that yes, we’ll be back in a few months, don’t go away and never come back, pretty please. While it’s true you never saw this in the old days, said old days involved somewhere between three and ten sources of new programming at most. Now there’s hundreds. One can’t really blame the producers for being gun-shy about losing viewers because they took a few weeks off.
Anyhow, the storyline comes full circle, putting Burnham back on the bridge of the ship of the dead, with a chance at redemption for getting her captain killed. And it’s quite a ride.
First of all, though, mea culpa: I was wrong, and every single person (practically) in the comments was right last week. Admiral Cornwell is, in fact, alive. Derp.
This is one of several things that thicken the Klingon part of the plot. It’s very unlikely that L’Rell didn’t know that Cornwell was still alive, since she was right there in the room with her. So she kept her alive for a reason. And her response to Tyler in the brig was not what you would expect a prisoner to say to one of her jailers, to wit, that she’ll protect him.
Just in general, it was good to see that there was an impact on Tyler being a Klingon prisoner for seven months. His recovery always seemed way too easy, and now we know that it was all one big-ass bit of denial. Just one look at L’Rell, and he’s catatonic. That’s someone who was very good at fooling himself and whatever doctors talked to him after Lorca rescued him, but who is also very much not recovered yet. (There’s also the casting issue that hangs over everything—is Tyler really Voq?) But since Discovery never makes it back to base, he won’t get the help he needs right off…
And yes, let’s talk about that ending. Sigh. Could they possibly have telegraphed it more? Stamets declares it’s his last jump, he will never do it again, he declares his love for Culber, so of course, it’s going to go horribly wrong. (“Just one last case before I retire,” said the cop right before he got shot……) Besides, we need to make sure people come back in January (see first paragraph of this review), so we desperately need a cliffhanger!
How we got there is fascinating, as we see Lorca inputting a new course at the last minute rather than calling one out. We already know that Cornwell has it in for Lorca, and she’s now back at starbase recovering from her wounds, and she’s likely to be talking to some other admirals once she’s walking around again. Lorca has already refused to mount a rescue mission on his own—pretty much the only time in the seven episodes he’s been in when he could be bothered to wait for orders or pay attention to them when he got them, up to and including this episode—and now he’s facing the consequences of that.
This is particularly amusing because, prior to this, Lorca’s been acting like an honest-to-gosh captain instead of a devious person with an agenda. He’s actually very earnest-sounding when he convinces Stamets to do the 136 jumps that will enable them to get enough sensor readings to penetrate the Klingon cloak. You start to believe that the war is an aberration, and Lorca really wants to get Discovery back to its proper purpose as an explorer. And yet, there he is at the end sabotaging their return to base.
Not that he isn’t willing to disobey orders to serve his own ends and hope that those ends justify his rather dodgy means. He does so earlier in the episode, but that’s a more standard Trek-ian disobeying of orders. They need to save the Pahvans, they have a chance to penetrate the Klingon cloak, so Lorca hedges his bets by warping to the starbase rather than use the spore drive. Once they figure it out, back to Pahvo they go.
Of course, yes, they do need to save the Pahvans, but here’s the thing, and it’s something the episode maddeningly does not address: the Pahvans are the ones who set this up in the first place. They called Kol there and pretty much forced the confrontation. So why did they do it? What do they get out of it? And why weren’t they involved in what happened next? Aside from a quickie mention by Saru, the Pahvans’ nature and needs and personality weren’t even addressed. They’re just straw victims for our heroes to save, but there has to be more to it than that. That was a plot ball that was rather aggressively dropped.
What I liked best about this episode, though, is that our heroes were clever, and they triumphed for that reason, not because their enemy was stupid. Kol’s actions in the episode were completely in character, but they weren’t idiotic. His tactical decisions all made perfect sense in context, he just didn’t do as good a job of predicting what Lorca would do as Lorca did predicting what Kol would do.
The fight between Burnham and Kol was kinda standard-issue climax-y stuff, but it worked. It takes a while to do 136 jumps, and Burnham needed to do something to keep the Klingons busy, and challenging Kol would do it. Getting to retrieve Georgiou’s insignia was a nice touch. (I also like the idea that the insignia also serves the same function as dogtags do in the contemporary military.)
My favorite moment, though, was Kol’s response to the universal translator. Klingons are offended by a translator as it’s another example of the Federation subsuming Klingons’ identity and uniqueness into a homogenous whole. It’s a nifty little low-key retcon. Very often, the only language that never seems to translate is Klingon—see, for example, DS9‘s “The Way of the Warrior,” where Worf is constantly translating bits of Klingon for the rest of the crew, not to mention the scene of Uhura frantically trying to fake the language in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country—and that one line of dialogue from Kol explains why. It makes sense that Klingons have resisted allowing their language to be assimilated into the UT, even when they later become allies of the Federation.
I also liked the fight choreography, because it was perfectly done for what it was: a delaying action. Kol’s fighting style was very much that of a toddler playing with his food: he has no expectations of defeat, and he’s in no rush to finish it, as he’s enjoying the duel, like a proper Klingon. Burnham, meanwhile, is fighting defensively. She has no expectations of victory, but she doesn’t need to win the fight, she just needs to prolong it until Discovery finishes its cloak-penetrating mission.
At the very end, Saru and Burnham exchange a couple of nods, and to my mind that wasn’t nearly enough. The lack of any kind of addressing of the effect of the events of “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” on Saru (beyond that one quickie mention) is glaring, and he and Burnham have a lot more baggage between them that this mission isn’t anywhere near enough to have dealt with.
I do like how Stamets and Culber’s relationship is handled. Lorca’s order for Stamets to get a physical—meant only as a way of excusing their not using the spore drive to get to Starbase 46—means that Culber now knows exactly what the spore drive is doing to Stamets. More to the point, Culber know exactly how much Stamets has been keeping from him (aided by yet another bit of word vomit from Tilly, who reveals that there have been side effects also). Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz play it perfectly.
And now Discovery is—lost in space! Sigh. Let’s hope they don’t overplay the trying-to-get-home theme, as we had enough of that for seven years on Voyager. But we have to wait until January to find out.
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be the Author Guest of Honor at AtomaCon 2017 in North Charleston, South Carolina this weekend. Among the other guests are fellow authors Gail Z. Martin, Misty Massey, John Hartness, Windfield Strock III, Alex Matsuo, Leona Wisoker, Marcia Colette, Melissa McArthur, Samantha Bryant, Tally Johnson, Alexandra Christian, SL Figuhr, William Fripp, Kyle McNeal, Gray Rinehart, Darin Kennedy, Margaret McGraw, Bill Ferris, Leann Rettel, and James McDonald; performers Noise Complaint, Dimensional Riffs, Forest Path, and Nefarious Filkferrets; costumer Cheralyn Lambeth; artists Christine Brunson and James Christopher Hill; paranormal expert Tina McSwain; and bunches more. Keith will have a table to sell and sign books, and he’ll be doing a bunch of programming. See his schedule here.
So, any thoughts about Stamets/Lorca bringing up parallel worlds?
I know some folks wondered if Stamets had been unstuck in time and seeing the future when he called Tilly “Captain” a few weeks ago.
(Tin-pressed-latinum-foil-helmet alert?)
What if he was looking into another timeline?
Not necessarily the mirror universe, but a slightly more . . . technicolor version of the DISCO universe.
One that’s a little lower tech, where the Klingons speak the same language, but look radically different, where the computers sound more like Nurse Chapel or Lwaxana Troi than Siri, and where Starfleet/UFP has an unexplained passion for velour?
I’m enjoying the whole intrigue about Captain Lorca…. is he being earnest or is he just manipulating people? Why was he fiddling with the navigational controls? What is his MO? One thing that Discovery does more than any other Star Trek Show is leave us in the dark, and that’s not a bad thing. I did appreciate that it was a very Trek problem solving (brains over brawn) and that for once the title ship held it’s own in battle. My only problem is the writers forgot that the ship of the dead was moving while Stamets and the spore drive were hopping around. While you could have accounted for the ship’s velocity if it maintains course and speed, any sort of course or speed change and stamets is hopping around taking scans of nothing. And if the ship is in fact actually sitting there with velocity zero, then just shoot the place they were after they cloaked and forget the 132 jumps and brain fry of Stamets.
In fact almost all of these characters are damaged in some way, which is a change from the magic reset button in the other shows. Lorca lost his crew and may or may not be any combination of warmongering, manipulative or just broken. Tyler (who I am convinced is attached to Voq someway, be it as a sleeper with Voq’s personality inside or a disguised Voq) is haunted by his experience as a torture victim of seven months. Burnham has a definite death wish complex, justifying all of her actions over the last couple of actions as because she’s on borrowed time/has a life sentence. Ceru is obviously bothered by the actions at the binary star as well as his encounter with the Pahvans. Stamets is a conflicted explorer who is also damaged by his actions as a navigator (which has to be a reference to Dune). I just hope that we use all of these damages wisely, as opposed to some sort of soap opera drama nonsense.
Two other things I did love- another shout out by the writers, to Culbert and Stammets seeing La Boheme, since both Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz were in Rent (Cruz taking over as Angel in 1998) which is based on Boheme. Also, the great shot in the background of Stamets and Lorca talking in front of what appears to be the shuttle bay door open. It’s just background, but it sells the fact that Stamets is looking into space with his unique perspective. It would have lost something if it was just them talking in a cabin or the mess hall or wherever. Great use of computer animation there.
@1… Jonathan Frakes who is directing some episodes said that they will address the mirror universe, so yes, expect Discovery to encounter themselves with everyone including the women sporting an evil goatee.
Guys, it’s 133 jumps, a tribute to BSG’s 33.
What, no comments of the first naked breasts in Trek history? Not to sound pervy, but we can clearly see L’Rell’s breasts for a few seconds when Tyler/Voq has sex/torture flashback. Those who threw a hissy fit with the word “fuck” a few episodes ago are going to be MAD. Now, I don’t mind seeing nudity, and I’m not complaining, but it was a bit unnecessary.
Now that that’s out of the way, this was a FANTASTIC episode. It had everything Star Trek has to have, starting with a crew putting their well-being over the protection of a whole species, trying to end a war. And it had everything an exciting hour of TV has to have… I was holding my breath when they were doing the rapid succession of sporejumps. And Lorca is slowly becoming a more loveable person (he was already a great character, IMHO).
Tyler’s flashbacks are quite obviously pointing to him being Voq (or at least, he’s carryig Voq’s mind), so I’d be very surprised if it turns out if he’s just Tyler. I guess he could be just Tyler conditioned as a sleeper agent that might thin he’s Voq. We still know it’s not true he was L’Rell’s prisoner and plaything for seven months; if he was, it was just three weeks or less.
The ending is completely telegraphed, I know, but I didn’t mind. It was the journey, not the destination. As for Lorca inputing the course himself, I thought it was kinda fishy too, and that he was trying to force Discovery to go to that possible parallel universe(s) he was talking about… but then he looked genuinely surprised by the failure. Now, as per what you say, krad, it’s possible that he wasn’t actually going to the Starbase he was ordered to, but somewhere else… hmm.
What do the Pahvans get out of summoning the Klingons too? I think they’re too alien, hive-minded and insular to understand the concept of war; and they want everybody to kiss and make nice.
I liked how the Michael/Kol fight was coreographed, that scene was nice, as it includes the recovery of Georgiou’s badge (and all that object symbolizes). The choreography, as you say, is perfectly fitting for what the fight was supposed to be for each participant. It was also nice that Kol took offense at the universal translator.
The Stamets/Culber kiss moment had my son and I “awwing”, it was very well done. Another thought… is Discovery in the Mirror Universe now? Episode 10 is directed by Frakes, and while he didn’t exactly say it was his episode, he was the one who said there was a MU episode in the season.
Another stray thought: I love the sporejump effect of the ship spinning around (not just the saucer sections) and then “falling from above” when it reaches its destination. I think they’d never shown quite so clearly what happens in the departure point when it jumps away, this time we saw it starts “falling down” after spining, and then it continues the “downward fall” as it leaves the Mycelium network at the destination.
@2- MikeKelm: I think Lorca is being earnest, but he doesn’t know how to do it without manipulating people.
I was unable to care about Tyler’s revelations about his alleged abuse at L’Rell’s hands, because arithmetic alone proves it’s untrue. He claims he was subject to her torments for 7 months, but we already know that L’Rell spent the first 6 of those months stuck on the sarcophagus ship with Voq. We’ve known that for weeks, but evidently the writers are hoping we’ve forgotten. At this point, it’s quite obvious that Tyler is a constructed personality, that Voq was surgically altered and neurologically reprogrammed to be a sleeper agent who doesn’t know he’s a sleeper agent. No doubt he remembers the surgery as torture, and Voq’s consensual relationship with L’Rell as Tyler’s sexual abuse by L’Rell. I just wish the writers hadn’t made it so obvious by inserting that chronological discrepancy.
Speaking of which, DSC’s writers have no sense of interstellar scale. There is no way that there should be two starbases (46, which the ship was ordered to at the start, and the one which Cornwell was shuttled to at the end, which I think was 88) within hours of the same uncharted star system. In the TOS era in particular, interstellar journeys are supposed to be a matter of days or weeks. One of the rules in the TOS writers’ bible was never to treat deep space as a local neighborhood. The only times TOS showed an interplanetary journey taking mere hours was when the planets were in the same system (e.g. “Elaan of Troyius”), or at least in closely adjacent systems (e.g. “The Galileo Seven” or “Metamorphosis”).
The translator thing was odd, because I could swear that Klingons had translation capability during Enterprise, or at least had experience with Starfleet and other races using it. It doesn’t make sense that they’ve never come across the technology before.
As for the “lost in space” ending, Lorca & Stamets’s earlier discussion about parallel realities was a pretty blatant telegraph for where they’ve ended up. I just hope that Frakes’s reference to the Mirror Universe was figurative or erroneous, though. Of all the parallel realities out there, it would be contrived if so many different Starfleet crews independently stumbled upon the same one. And I’m tired of Discovery stealing the Enterprise‘s thunder as the first ship to encounter various things (cloaks, Gorn, tribbles, time travel, etc.).
@2/MikeKelm: ” My only problem is the writers forgot that the ship of the dead was moving while Stamets and the spore drive were hopping around.”
I noticed that problem too — it makes no sense for a ship to cloak and then just stay where it was — but I would attribute the fault to the director and the FX team, not the writers, who aren’t responsible for how their ideas get turned into visuals. Honestly, I’m not that happy with the FX design on this show, since the FX artists evidently make no effort at research or realism — for instance, portraying an O-type star as orange instead of blue-white, a mistake they could’ve avoided with a 30-second glance at Wikipedia.
@5/MaGnUs: I’m disappointed that Trek’s first nude scene came in the context of something being presented as a coercive sex act (even though I’m convinced it was “Tyler”‘s distorted memory of a consensual act). That’s too Game of Thrones for me. I feel Trek should be more sex-positive than that. Also, on a shallower level, I’m disappointed that it was a) hard to see and b) probably a prosthetic appliance anyway.
robtcore: No thoughts yet, though it is interesting to speculate. It’s another case of them discovering something that Kirk and Spock and the gang later knew nothing about (parallel universes were spoken of as being theoretical in “Mirror, Mirror”), but we’ll see how it goes.
Martin: Dude, do you really think that Gene Roddenberry and William Ware Theiss wouldn’t have shown a bare boob if they could have gotten away with it?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@7 – Chris: Yeah, I get what you’re saying about how it was presented. And yes, it was probably all a prosthetic, we’re not seeing Mary Chieffo’s real breasts with body painting and some small appliances. :)
@8 – krad: (BTW everybody, krad just called me by my real name, Martín, it’s not that you missed someone else’s comment.) Oh, Ware Theiss and Roddenberry would totally have shown it… I’m not saying it doesn’t belong on Trek, just that it felt a bit gratuitous. Not a complaint. I was just surprised you didn’t give it even a cursory mention, given that it’s another Trek first.
Martin/MaGnUs: Because it really isn’t that important, and I didn’t cover everything in the episode. Hell, I didn’t mention that this was the first male-male kiss in Trek history, and that really is important!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“My favorite moment, though, was Kol’s response to the universal translator. Klingons are offended by a translator as it’s another example of the Federation subsuming Klingons’ identity and uniqueness into a homogenous whole. “
Something like this also showed up in John M. Ford’s The Final Reflection – a character commenting on how automatic translation changed the name of the language from Klingonaase – where the -aase ending signified a tool, to express the Klin principal – to the generic “Klingonese”. (There was another John Ford reference in the first episode, so this might be an influence.)
@8/krad: I’ve always been of the opinion that, if Roddenberry had had his druthers, Star Trek: The Motion Picture would’ve been R-rated rather than G-rated. After all, it featured a gorgeous alien woman from a sexually open and irresistible species, and gave her (or her android duplicate) a brief nude scene. Given the option, I’m sure he would’ve portrayed all that a lot more overtly. (Although then Persis Khambatta probably wouldn’t have played the role, since she wasn’t willing to do nudity.)
@10 – krad: Yeah, but I was expecting that kiss, not the boobs. Which is weird, cause I enjoy boobs more than male/male kisses (even one as sweet and rewarding as that one). :)
@@@@@ 5 MaGnUs I guess he could be just Tyler conditioned as a sleeper agent that might thin[k] he’s Voq.
Tyler is a really existing person (Lorca checked that), and he behaves convincingly like a human, and most likely he had undergone a medical check before starting service in the Disco. So, it’s very unlikely that he is a surgically altered Klingon. Remember, it took McCoy just a few seconds to identify Darvin as Klingon.
My current pet theory is that Tyler’s body and mind are what they appear to be, but Voq takes a free ride inside Tyler’s skull, waiting for the right moment to take over the body (and probably annihilate the mind of Tyler in the process). Since L’Rell apparently finds Voq hot, it makes sense she sleeps with whatever body that currently houses Voq’s mind. It also makes sense that Tyler doesn’t like this (Klingon lovemaking has a tendency to break bones, see “Looking for par’Mach in All the Wrong Places”).
Voq could be in a relationship with L’Rell since 7 months. Perhaps some memory of Voq has spilled over and confused Tyler. If L’Rell does not anticipate that, then she might accidentally blast her lover’s cover if she gets interrogated and reveals her whereabouts since the Battle of the Binary Star.
If that theory is approximately true, then there are many possible resolutions: Any of them could die, or both (together with Tyler’s body). Or Voq could find smooching Michael so fuсkіng сооl that he will opt for peace between Humans and Klingons (perhaps not).
BTW, where has the tribble on Lorca’s desk gone?
For me, this episode is a clear winner. We see both a strong plot and in-character behaviour of almost everyone: Burnham challenging Kol, Tyler giving in to PTSD, Cornwell offering him support, Lorca being manipulative (and apparently cheating with the last jump), Stamets being too heroic and too starfleety, and Tilly thinking with the tip of her tongue. Sadly, Saru seems not really awake this time. Also, canon-wise, we can now imagine why TOS Klingons did not use the cloaking tech again till they get a superior cloaking shield in the movie era. Also, the battle scenes are great, yet I wish I had an “erase lensflares” filter on my video player.
Of course, there are also glaring inconsistencies. It is easier to send a hardly-living admiral to a Starfleet center than to relay some sensor data? When you hide sensors on an enemy ship, you choose those which are large and emit light (too much Disco)? And what do the Pahvans say to all of this?
Still, perhaps the best episode yet.
Yeah, the sensor maskers Ashburn wore were incredibly bright, and the sensor uplinks were too shiny and noisy… but that’s just TV shorthand for you.
The whole setting up of the date for La Boheme and the kiss were a very natural portrayal of their relationship (and I loved the Easter egg reference). Trek has come a long way since TNG’s “The Outcast” and DS9’s “Rejoined” in being able to openly portray a variety of relationships. My question is, why were we taught in school that foreshadowing is a standard and useful literary technique, then view it with disdain and call it “telegraphing” when it occurs on television? Would we react to Stamets and Culber’s interaction the same way if we didn’t know something was going to go wrong?
As far as the flashback involving the sex scene between L’Rell and Tyler, it seemed far less gratuitous than what we see on other shows, and allows for an interaction between Tyler and Burnham that may serve to twist the knife when the expected betrayal occurs.
After all these episodes I repeatedly get an impression that things aren’t told properly in a logical coherent way and that there’s no breathing room for all the events. In each Trek series that told some coherent large scale plots over multiple episodes I never found it dificult to follow the story and understand the flow of events. Ironically the serialized “new style” TV series is the narratively least coherent.
First we have a protagonist who is supposed to have started the war though I get the impression that even the writers don’t know of what exactly she is supposed to be guilty. The first dead Klingon? The mutiny? That would make sense but has nothing to do with the start of the war. Which the Klingons wanted and started at their own anyway. Killing T’Kuvma? Doesn’t that come a bit late? It may intensify the conflict by giving the Klingons a martyr, but the war has already started.
Then we have a captain which is in turns likeable because he’s devoted and passionate while at the same time dubious moments creep up like not mounting a rescue mission and having Cornwell rot with the Klingons or now the course correction by Lorca. Which I didn’t even notice until it was pointed out on Trek boards.
Am I supposed to notice this bit? Am I supposed to think about Tyler=Voq? Or are these blunders by the serries creators? When Chris points out the obvious six months gap problem … is this a bug or a feature? I’m sure the writers think they are insanely clever, but I find it … just confusing. And when I think of the curious sequence of events with L’Rell and Cornwell where it’s completely unclear what L’Rell intended and which of these plans worked, I have some doubts that the authors are thinking this through. Why are we suddenly supposed to care about the Pahvans who appear out of nowhere, send a message for no good reason to the Klingons, have to be defended (really?) and are gone now. And what about Mudd? How does this rather evil person deserve a comedic happy end and become the Mudd we know?
This series constantly throws at us plot points and drops them again in the next episode, in this episode the Pahvans and Cornwell. It confuses us and it has no narrative rhythm. I’m watching a forty minutes episode where the federation is first losing the war, then the tide has turned in the next one and then it has turned again due to the cloaking in the next one. And now back. DS9 and ENT handled their plots with much more clarity.
Also as already mentioned here, this begins to become a big soap opera with the ship of the traumatised people. Burnham, Lorca, Tyler, Saru and Stamets are ALL in heavy existential crises. Honestly if you nervous autistic cadet is the most sane person on the ship (I know the doc, too) you’re deep in soap opera territory. This isn’t modern story telling but the pitfalls of serialized storytelling which already makes quite a few 19th century novels unwieldy behemoths with silly twists at the end of each chapter that was printed in the newspaper.
Finally I really don’t like the special effects. i want to see stuff clearly. This bizarrely dark sets and ships, the unimaginative battles … I prefer the special effects in DS9, VOY and ENT not to mention something like TMP.
The most damning thing I can however say is that this whole war arc is supremely mediocre as an idea. Evil Klingons fight against the Federation. How thrilling.
So was the end of the episode the second soft reboot of the series?
Anyway, frankly I’d rather see a rehash of Voyager’s lost in space plot, which opens up more possibilities for exploring the unknown, than another episode of this tiresome Klingon war. I mean it might be worth it if they actually showed us some new aspect of Klingon society, but so far they’re pretty much the same old warrior dudes they’ve always been.But the show runners are on the right track with things like the water bear, the space whale and the blue beings. Love that weird stuff. Discover more of that, Discovery.
@16/lerris: “My question is, why were we taught in school that foreshadowing is a standard and useful literary technique, then view it with disdain and call it “telegraphing” when it occurs on television?”
Because good foreshadowing isn’t obvious. Consider that the term “telegraphing” comes by way of boxing and fistfights. Of course a fighter needs to be able to prepare to strike a blow in advance, but the goal is to do it in a way that doesn’t reveal that preparation to one’s opponent in advance. By analogy, with good foreshadowing, you don’t recognize it for what it was until the payoff comes. Or at least, you can tell that it’s foreboding something but you don’t know what. If it makes it obvious where the plot is headed and you can see the writer’s hands pulling the strings, then that spoils both the surprise and the illusion.
In this case, the “one more mission and then I’m done” speech as foreshadowing for a tragic or at least problematical outcome is such an overused trope that everyone can see it coming. Also, suddenly throwing in an out-of-nowhere conversation about parallel universes in the first half of the episode is a pretty clumsy giveaway that they’ve ended up in a parallel universe at the end of the episode. That one would’ve worked better if they’d raised the possibility in an earlier episode or two and then brought it up again here in passing as a reminder, so that it wouldn’t have stood out so much. As with any technique, the value of foreshadowing depends on how well it’s executed.
A theory I’ve seen going around today is that Lorca is trying to get back to the Mirror Universe. He does have a MU vibe about him. And his interest in the mutineer Burnham is fascinating, considering how often MU characters kill or attempt to kill their superiors. Thoughts anyone?
@Many I don’t think the jumping 133 times was just to get the cloaking for that particular ship, it was to get the general pattern, so they didn’t want to blow it up before then anyway.
Yeah, the ending was telegraphed way in advance. But I’m not complaining too much about that. For me, what made the episode was Stammets and Culver. I liked that they kissed. That they said “I love you”. That it was played just like any previous heterosexual Trek couple. I’ve never really felt there wasn’t anyone on TV who I could relate to, but that kiss somehow made me feel that something had been lacking before.
@16 – lerris: The difference between foreshadowing and telegraphing is a matter of degree of obviousness. And regarding the sex scene, that’s not what I found gratuitous, what I found a bit gratuitous were the naked breasts.
@20 – welby: I sure hope that’s not true. And also, he seemed genuinely surprised that they weren’t where he wanted to be, so if it they ended up in the MU, it’s not were he wanted to go.
So, basically everybody is pretty much scratching their heads thinking “Okay, so what the f*** is going on here?” Maybe that’s exactly what the writers WANT us to be doing, hmm? When the show started, my attitude was “Dear Lord, please don’t let them screw this up.” My attitude right now is “I can’t wait to see what they’ve got up their sleeves.” Cheesiness is as much a part of Trek as phasers, warp drive, and raised eyebrows are. I’m hooked.
And did anybody else notice that Cadet Decker got paged to the Ready Room? And that there’s actually a guy named Matt Decker listed in the credits?!
@22/MaGnUs: I don’t think nudity in a sex scene is gratuitous, because it’s something that would logically occur in a sex scene. Gratuitous means “being without apparent reason, cause, or justification,” and there’s a perfectly good reason for people to be naked when they have sex. What I find gratuitous, by definition, is a sex scene where the lovers aren’t naked when they logically should be. I see far too many scenes that start with the characters falling back onto the bed as if they’ve only just climaxed, and yet the man is wearing shorts or briefs and the woman is wearing a camisole and panties or something. I mean, how is that even mechanically possible? It’s very distracting, because it doesn’t make any sense. Nor am I crazy about the contrivance of bedroom scenes where the woman is naked but carefully holds the sheets over her chest, even though she’s alone with her lover and is not supposed to be aware of the camera filming the scene. It’s gratuitous for her to cover herself, because she’d have no reason, cause, or justification for doing so in that context. (Unless she’s cold, but then you’d think she’d cover up her shoulders and back as well.)
24, oh, the reason is recognized. It just requires stepping outside the Fourth Wall.
Poor Culber, I hope he has a nice black suit because he’s going to be a widower any minute. Oh gee, lost in space. Well it’s not like Star Trek’s ever done that (sarc)
2. MikeKelm: “navigator… reference to Dune”
I like your connection here. Navigators who “fold” space to arrive instantaneously elsewhere does sound a lot like what Stamets does. Neatly gets around time dilation too. Not that Star Trek is overly or at all concerned with that.
I think Ash is definitely Voq in some sense. I’d add that if he wasn’t meant to be the same person physically – if it’s just a kind of possession – then why use the same actor? If anything, it’s the other way around, it’s physically the same person but the mind has been altered. Either intentionally to be more convincing (anyone here seen Death Note? The protagonist wipes his own memory at one point, with a mechanism in place to regain it later, so he can survive a very intense investigation into his identity) or as an accidental byproduct of the legitimately traumatic surgery he underwent to transform.
An interesting thing I noticed is that Voq is the Torchbearer. When a fire goes out, what’s left behind? I’ll give you a clue… Begins with ‘A’ and rhymes with ‘bash’.
“f course, yes, they do need to save the Pahvans, but here’s the thing, and it’s something the episode maddeningly does not address: the Pahvans are the ones who set this up in the first place. They called Kol there and pretty much forced the confrontation. So why did they do it? What do they get out of it? And why weren’t they involved in what happened next?”
This is frustrating for me for a different reason also.
The reason why Burnham and Tyler were let go from Pahvo (by the Pahvans letting them use their crystal transmitter to contact Discovery) was because Burnham said (I’m paraphrasing here): “You are peaceful beings who seek balance and harmony. We want to end this war. Therefore, let us go.”
The thing is: throughout the series, “we want to end this war” is conflated with “the Federation needs to win”. For someone from the Federation to say that, I find that a little bit too convenient. Also given that the Federation doesn’t shy away from violence to end this war / win it.
This says something about how the series sees war. “We want peace” doesn’t mean the same as “we want the good guys to win, using violence to do it”. As a near-pacifist, I would say that at the very least, the tension between these things would be something to explore further.
And for a moment, it seemed to be that the Pahvans wanted to do that. “Alright, we’ve heard your side of the story, now let’s get the Klingons here and listen to them as well” may have been naive, but at least it signalled to me that the Pahvans weren’t completely buying Burnham’s line that “We want peace” means the same as “The Federation needs to win.”
The fact that the Pahvans were completely absent here (and I assume we’ll never see them again) means that this discussion will go nowhere. And I find that a shame, especially in a franchise that did have something to say about war and peace.
I really wanted to like this episode but it fell flat for me. Some interesting ideas or sketches of ideas spread throughout, but the rushed pacing just sours the experience. Feels like I’m watching the trailer for the show while watching the show. A very strange experience. They must still teach suspense in film schools, right? Because the makers of Star Trek Discovery don’t seem to value it. Streaming and serialization is supposed to allow greater creative freedom, more breathing room to tell compelling stories. So why does it all feel so confined? Why rush every single scene?
And before anyone throws the term “modern film making” at me, I know. I’ve seen plenty of fast-paced movies and TV shows. I’ve also seen a slower pace used in modern film making, so that’s a moot point.
@25/LordVorless: Yes, that’s exactly my point. Characters wearing clothes in situations where they’d realistically be nude, where the only reason for it is external to the story and the characters, breaks the illusion and undermines the suspension of disbelief. It’s sort of like the way every phone number in fiction is 555-01xx. I understand the real-world reasons for the artifice, but it’s still annoying.
@29/LeRoc: To be fair, I think there’s merit to the idea that “We want peace” and “The Federation needs to win” are the same thing. After all, the Klingons seek conquest and relish war, so their victory certainly couldn’t lead to peace. And a negotiated settlement is unlikely unless the UFP can convince the Klingons it’s a worthy foe that they can respect.
I have to say that I agree a lot with @17 Lubitsch,
Of course, characters shouldn’t be simple and black-and-white. But this show exaggerates in the other direction: it just throws things at its characters seemingly at random, in what seems to me as a contrived way to make them more complex. Lorca is the most obvious example of course, but every character (and even whole races like the Klingons and the Pahvans) suffer from this.
Below all the complexity, there should be some way for a viewer to have a handle on a character. A character’s actions should have some logic to the character him/herself, even if it’s a twisted, aberrant logic. Maybe some of this will fall into place in the second half of the season, but for now I’m not seeing it.
@31/ChristopherLBennett: maybe you’re right, but the thing is: that doesn’t make the Klingons very interesting.
In STD, Klingons are evil and they want war. Because they’re evil. Aaand that’s about it. Boring!
TNG Klingons were much more interesting. I can live with the different make-up and even with them speaking Klingon (although both seriously limit the actors’ expressions).
But what I miss is this: TNG Klingons were warriors and warlike and all, but they were guided by a code of honour. Klingon leadership subverts this honour. They *say* they’re honourable (and throw this in the faces of their Klingon enemies as exemplified by Worf), but in fact they’re a corrupt bunch. That’s interesting. It gives them complexity, but it still has some logic we can follow.
Compared to this, the DNC Klingons are just bland.
They’re also less effective as a commentary on present-day politics. Okay, DNC throws some stuff in like “Klingons dislike outside influences; they want to stay the way they are”. I guess you could see this as a comment on present-day politics in the US and other countries. But it’s very much on the surface here. Substitute “patriotism”, “the Constitution” or “the flag” in my story about TNG Klingons and you get something much more interesting and effective.
I liked this episode, flaws and all.
I was happy to see that Cornwell survived. It seemed to me that should wasn’t dead and it was good to be right for once.
Lorca continues to be the most compelling person on the show. Is he good? Is he bad? He’s nothing if not – complicated.
Burnham/Tyler. Ugh. Gag me. No chemistry. And if Tyler is carrying Voq’s brain in there and ends up making a noble sacrifice at season end, Burnham will lose – again. The woman has no luck whatsoever, does she?
Speaking of Burnham, WHY the hell didn’t she shoot to KILL when she shot L’Rell? That will come back to bite her on the ass big time when Voq is activated.
The bewbies. Oh wonderful. As a woman, I just love when they have to trot out the boobs. I was rolling my eyes then and rolling my eyes reading comments on my BBS. It was as annoying as the ep when Tilly had to shout out “fucking cool,” instead of someone muttering “fuck me,” when a Klingon warship decloaked or something. Things like this just make me go “right, profanity checked off. Right, nudity checked off.” At least the male-male kiss didn’t feel like “right, male-male kiss checked off.”
My hope for the rest of the season is that they get home soon. Not really inclined for Voyager Part II. The Gilligan’s Island-type stories just don’t send me. But will in be alternate universe or M.U.?
Normally I’d hate the break, but with the holidays approaching, I can live with it.
This weeks “What Spock got wrong” – Parallel worlds
First off, when someone says “I can’t feel my legs”, you don’t drag them over and prop them up against a wall. You’re most likely dealing with a spinal injury.
Of course the two people most connected to the Ship of the Dead are the only ones they send over. It’s not like there’s anyone else on the ship that could possibly place a couple of (way to obvious) sensors. Sure, Burnham was on the ship before but it’s not like she spent a lot of time sightseeing.
Yeah, you might want to hold off on that Legion of Honor until you get a chance to talk to Admiral Cornwell.
I never thought that we’d get bare breasts and a character saying fuck before we got a same sex kiss. BTW, bare breasts are the cheap way out of showing skin. Go all in or stop using breasts for entertainment purposes.
Planet Phavo – “We’re inviting the Klingons to come here”
Federation – “Oh no you don’t. We’re going to save you from decisions you made of your own free will”
Perhaps you should have been thinking that doctors should have been examining you a few weeks ago. Oops, too late. Never mind.
Yeah, there’s some connection between Ash and Voq. Everyone who isn’t surprised, raise your hand.
“As soon as we do this, the war is as good as over” and “Discovery is too valuable to risk”. Gee, ya think? All this time and you could have been at a Starbase examining the “tardigrade” DNA and getting ready to recreate the spore drive for other ships. But no, you instead were popping around the front lines, putting the only surviving ship at risk.
It’s an interesting set of destinations but I really have trouble sometimes with the routes they take to get there. And now, with TWO cliffhangers per season instead of one!
@17/Lubitsch, @29/LeRoc: I agree with everything you say.
In addition, it bothers me that this show doesn’t seem to have a message, just random action. Of course, the message in a Star Trek war story should be a pacifist one, so this criticism is similar to the one in comment #29.
@31/Christopher: “To be fair, I think there’s merit to the idea that “We want peace” and “The Federation needs to win” are the same thing.” – From an in-universe point of view, perhaps, but from an out-of-universe point of view, it’s deeply problematic to conflate the two.
I watched this episode because I wanted to see more of Cornwell, but instead I found that I really like Stamets. Probably because he’s heroic and starfleety, to almost-quote comment #14. Plus, he’s part of a sweet couple, and the existential crisis he’s in is at least unusual. And it’s always nice to see Star Trek characters value the arts, in this case, La Bohème.
@34/T’Bonz: “Speaking of Burnham, WHY the hell didn’t she shoot to KILL when she shot L’Rell?” – Because the writers actually remembered that this is supposed to be Star Trek, and Starfleet officers don’t do that?
“As a woman, I just love when they have to trot out the boobs.” – As a woman, I wish that it were more normal to show naked breasts. I mean, we have them for practical purposes, right? To nurse babies? Anyway, I agree with Christopher in comment #24 that there should be naked breasts in a sex scene. Either that, or don’t have a sex scene. Anything in between is contrived and awkward.
@35/kkozoriz: “Of course the two people most connected to the Ship of the Dead are the only ones they send over.” – I had the same thought. You need two people for a stealth mission on the enemy ship, and you pick the ex-prisoner and the person who killed someone in a rage the last time she had a similar job?
Not only are the sensors large and emit light, they also talk when activated. Very stealthy indeed.
So we’ve covered cloaking devices, time travel, energy beings, and parallel universes. What’s next, ancient gods?
Oh, my “WTF science” moment from tonight. If you were using a gravity field to bend light, there would be any number of effects that you could detect. We use microlensing to detect distant planets using just this process. The location of the ship would be very obvious, even if it were invisible.
31, being annoying and being gratuitous are two different concepts. Especially when you choose a definition for “gratuitous” that does not fit your concern. At least if you had gone with “lacking good reason” you would not be denying the reason that does exist. And it is quite obvious that it is censorship. Of course, one amusing bit of censorship I remember is involving Nick Fury, where they replaced one romantic scene with a pistol being holstered. I sometimes wonder if that was intentional.
But sure, you can be annoyed by the compromises that are often necessary in television or movie production, but you could spend all day going over things that don’t add up in reality but are necessary convention in such media. And sometimes when they try to bend convention, it doesn’t really work out better. Or what’s really bad, is when they try to adapt something that works in one media, like literature, and put it in another where it’s much harder to work with.
32, I’m afraid they may be more concerned with the “story” than they are with the “people” in the story, so whatever plot they’re going for is driving actions rather than having motivations that are driving actions.
Not the first time it’s happened in a Trek show, but yes, that can be annoying.
33, the Klingons have long been a stand-in for whatever messaging the writers wanted to portray, not that they’re that different from other aliens in the show, but it is interesting to think about how they were commentaries on the situation in the world. In TOS, they were the cunning adversaries who stirred up trouble, and were always needing to be watched. In TNG and DS9, while at times they could be something in the way of opposition, there were attempts to make them allies, and as you point out, when they weren’t, it was the nefarious manipulators within or the dishonorable ones that were causing problems, yet another commentary on the times. In ENT, they ended up being victims of their own actions, and needing some rescuing at times.
36, sure, why not? It’s traditional for Trek! Maybe this time, it’ll be the Norse instead of the Greek. Or King Arthur, I suppose that could work.
@38/LordVorless: I agree with you that Klingons are often messaging device reflecting on real-word situations. But the thing is: what is the message the show is giving us now through them? If the message is as it appears to me, I don’t think I like it.
The message that “We want peace” means the same as “The good guys need to win the war” made some sense in WWII (with some caveats). Subsequent wars have made this message thoroughly problematic however: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq …
If through the Klingons, the show seems to say “Yeah there’s a war going on but we’re the good guys here so we only need to win and then everything will be OK”, I’d strongly dislike this as a message directed at the present-day real-word geopolitical situation.
I also think that ST has rejected this idea a number of times.
39, there are very few wars where even one side is good, let alone another bad, and sometimes, it is a mix of both, as Harry Turtledove and even Isaac Asimov dared to broach, it isn’t beyond the impossible to apply that even to WW2.
Or Trek itself, though that may be considered a mistaken perception and esteem.
Star Trek has gone through a lot of messaging on the issue of war, some of it quite mixed, though it usually shies away from the glorification as such, but sometimes the Federation has done some pretty terrible things in the name of breaching peace, but then it’s a pretty common theme where they’ve done some pretty terrible things in the name of their own morality. The Prime Directive isn’t always applied in the “nice” way, and that’s been questioned a good bit too.
I’m still undecided on the “current” Klingons, it may have to wait on more material being produced, and it won’t be the first time the writing got muddled by concerns beyond the story. And there are some rumblings going on that are a bit more distressed than you are.
@38/LordVorless (sorry, still wanted to give another reaction to this)
I feel that my issue with the show isn’t so much that it is story-oriented vs. character-oriented. I have the feeling that often it is neither; instead it is “let’s have a cool moment”-oriented. And both story and character suffer from that.
41, yeah, I can see that problem too, there are plenty of people who might think “Ah, I can finally make Trek” and just think of all the awesome stuff they can do. Now there’s nothing wrong with having awesome stuff happen in your work of fiction(which if you look at some of the failed story ideas is not uncommon in Trek either), but when you do it, fitting it in might require a lot of work to do well, and this won’t be the first time they didn’t smooth down the rough edges.
@38/LordVorless: I “chose” the definition of “gratuitous” that’s in the actual dictionary. It’s not my opinion, it’s what the word literally means. Gratuitous nudity is nudity that has no good reason to be part of a story or scene — for instance, if a dialogue scene between two male characters is set in a strip club or brothel when it could’ve taken place anywhere, or if a medieval village in a Roger Corman sword-and-sorcery movie is populated by fully clothed male extras and virtually nude female extras. Certainly gratuitous nudity is a thing that exists. But I posit that there is also such a thing as the gratuitous lack of nudity, i.e. characters wearing clothes in situations where it would make more sense for them not to. If you accept that nudity isn’t intrinsically bad, that it’s just one possible state for a person to be in, then you see that there are situations in fiction where it would make more sense for characters to be nude, just as there are situations where it would make more sense for them to be clothed. It can go both ways.
And yes, censorship is the “reason” for gratuitous non-nudity, but titillation is the “reason” for gratuitous nudity. Both of them have real-world reasons that are easy to understand. So in both cases, what makes it gratuitous is that it doesn’t serve an in-story reason.
And in this case, I agree with 36/Jana. If you don’t want to show naked bodies, then don’t show a sex scene. If a sex scene has a purpose in the narrative, then it’s logical that it should involve nudity. And it’s really quite sexist to see the female chest as intrinsically more obscene or dirty than the male chest. If it’s okay to show a man topless, it should be okay to show a woman topless. I mean, heck, there are plenty of cultures on Earth where women go topless in public all the time, or at least in certain settings such as beaches.
I see your discussion of nudity and acknowledge it, but, really, I wish I had been warned this was Star Trek after everyone decided TV series Must Have Nudity. Why, you ask? Maybe I’m a prude? Nope. It’s because this was the first series we managed to convince our pubescent son to watch with us, and he was quite enjoying it, but now he’s all awkward because he got a glimpse of klingon breasts and the most sexual scene in all Trek series. In case you don’t remember, watching sex scenes with your parents is THE WORSE.
I’m not sure he’ll come back for the rest of the season, come january. *sigh*
@44/Saoki: “but, really, I wish I had been warned”
You were. At the start of the show, the ratings box in the top left corner said “TV-MA SV.” That means a mature audiences rating due to sexual content and violence. TV shows always warn us about content inappropriate for children — those ratings boxes have been mandatory in American television for the past twenty years. It’s not the show’s fault if you failed to pay attention to the warning.
43, except there’s more than one dictionary, and usually most dictionaries have more than one single solitary definition. You chose to focus on a definition that poorly fits your example, however, as there is a reason. It’s just outside the Fourth Wall, as I already mentioned. I think you’d have been better off choosing one of the other expressions for your definition for gratuitous or even just including an acknowledgment of the actual reason in your discussion from the start.
You’re not alone in your concern about the discrepancy in gender nudity, it’s long been a concern, both titillation and avoiding exposure. Of course, the amusing thing is that when Trek began showing a belly button was still almost forbidden. Have we come a long way? I don’t know exactly. Recent events give me some concern for a variety of reasons.
44, even aside from the discomfort involved, I’m not sure how well they’ll be able to handle the writing on the subject. It’ll be easy to try and fail, which might offend people even more.
Saoki: 1) As Christopher said, you were warned, right at the beginning of the show. 2) That was most assuredly not “the most sexual scene in all Trek series.” It doesn’t even crack the top ten.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Pure speculation, but I’m starting to wonder if all of the episodes we’ve seen thus far are actually in a mirror or alternate universe than the prime universe we’re used to. That might help to explain a lot the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between STD and previous series. I’m wondering if the upcoming “mirror” episode may be an encounter with the Star Trek universe as we know it.
(In fact, I’d go further and say that Tyler’s PTSD flashback to being in bed with L’Rell isn’t a sexual scene at all……)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@46/LordVorless: As I already said, there is a real-world reason for gratuitous nudity too — namely, the desire to titillate the audience. So the fact that there’s a real-world reason has nothing to do with whether something is gratuitous; what makes it gratuitous is that it doesn’t have a good in-story reason but is only done to pander to a segment of the audience. Gratuitous nudity is pandering to the prurient; gratuitous non-nudity is pandering to the prudish. It’s symmetrical.
What a pity, after a promising start in the first episodes (#3 is by far my favourite, but up until Lethe they’re all decent episodes, at least), these last three have been a rather depressing downfall. And I really wanted to like Discovery, I’m not one of the “It’s not Trek” army nor a canon-continuity enthusiast. But to me it feels like this “new” Trek is just a mystery that the audience has to solve catching some rather cleverly hidden pieces of the puzzle… Like, is Lorca actually from the MU? What is it that he’s after? Is Stamets losing his mind due to the spore-drive? What do we make of his “double” in the mirror (or have we forgotten about that)? What is L’Rell’s plan? Does she have one? Is Tyler a secret agent sent in by the Klingons? Has he had his mind erased? Is he Voq? What is Mudd’s role in all this? Why would I care about any of these things?
Once you take away this rather shallow game, what you’re left with is absolutely nothing: no actual plot development, no character study, no message whatsoever. And a trillion plot points (some potentially interesting) that are just left there hanging, which accumulate episode after episode and none of them is ever solved if not in a half-hearted, thoroughly unsatisfying way. I totally agree on that with the analysis by Lubitsch (#17), and there are other examples, such as Cornwell’s just being alive when everyone (maybe not L’Rell, but definitely the other Klingons) left her for dead, and no explanation whatsoever. The entusiastic reviews I read elsewhere about this last episode baffle me. I mean, Keith has been very complimentary to DIS since the beginning (a bit too much imho, though I always enjoy and have always enjoyed a lot reading his recaps, even when I totally disagreed) but he brings up several problems with this episodes, others act like it’s the best Trek ever seen for decades…
Just for the fact that this is still Trek, I’m willing to stay on board and hope for better things next season. And for the second part of Season 1 to be a bit less offensive than the last couple of weeks. I know that both my favourite Trek shows, TNG and DS9, had rather weak (really weak in TNG’s case) first seasons, but the main problem (for me, that is) is that both shows were clearly unsure of which general direction to take. DIS on the contrary seems very steadfast on its direction (that “mystery puzzle” thing, not the direction of the plot, obviously), and it’s something I really don’t enjoy.
50, yes, yes, there’s a lot of walking the line between what will get butts in seats and won’t get pickets outside theaters and studios. Unless you want that, because sometimes the latter is a means to get the former. It curves back on itself, so to speak.
There’s also another reason we’ve been neglecting though, personal comfort as a performer. Some things you just may not want to do, and you may not want a body double to substitute (though that does happen as well). And maybe a few times, actual illness. There have been some inconvenient flues which lead to a judicious choice of camera angle. These are actual reasons, and if you don’t want to factor them into your words that’s fine, but in the future, again, I’d advise stating that up front from the start. Specify that you’re talking about in-story reasons and deliberately choosing to exclude others.
Just watched “After Trek”, and they had a segment about the design and construction of the sarcophagus ship; among other things they showed that the stairs have Klingon writing taken from John Ford’s novel “The Final Reflection”, which others have noticed references from in previous episodes. Very nice.
@23 – DonRudolphII: I heard the “Cadet Decker”, but I didn’t notice that in the credits.
@24 – ChristopherLBennett: I agree with all you’re saying, and let me add the magical L shaped sheet that covers the woman up to her breasts but the man up to his waist. What I’m saying is that the same exact scene, IMHO, could have been done without showing L’Rell’s entire naked breasts. Nudity is used time and again in TV and cinema without actually showing everything. Again, I’m not complaining, I’m just, I don’t know, puzzled that they would do something like that for the first time in Star Trek when they could have avoided it entirely without resorting to those cheap tricks you mention.
@27 – Sunspear: Stames doesn’t fold space or anything, that’s the spore drive. Stamets just makes the calculations.
@28 – Matroska: They can use the same actor to make us talk about this.
@34 – T’Bonz: Burnham stunned L’Rell because she was in a cell with another prisoner. She might be a dissident of some sort, and worth capturing. As for the breasts, I’m the one saying that it felt unnecessary, but I don’t think it was to be tantalizing or titillating or whatever.
@43 – Chris: I guess I can see it as an act from Trek defying sexism. But that’d have to mean that going forward, there’d be no situations where men would have their chest bare and then see women in similar situations covering up theirs.
@47 – krad: You’re right, this doesn’t even make top 10. All those scenes of Ferengi getting their lobes fondled are right there. My son is always like “they’ve told us those are erogenous zones, why do they make so little of them getting massages there?”.
@48 – benjicat: God, please people, stop it with that. The show is in the prime timeline, period. And it’s certainly not in the MU.
@49 – krad: Regardless of whether you can call rape a “sexual situation” (I think you an, even if it’s centrally about having power over the other), we’re not sure we’ve actually seen a rape scene. These might be Voq’s memories of consensual sex with L’Rell; and the Tyler personality is interpreting them as rape (and whatever procedures Voq underwent to be Tyler as torture).
53, you let your son look at all of those clothed females performing oo-mox?
Luckily, he’s not Ferengi, or I would suspect my paternity.
@52/LordVorless: You’re still totally missing my point. Yes, my definition differs from the conventional idea of what’s gratuitous. That’s the whole reason I’m presenting it — to challenge that conventional definition and offer an alternative way of looking at it.
@53/MaGnUs: I don’t think L’Rell’s breasts were the gratuitous part of the scene. Breasts are just part of the human body. They aren’t obscene, they aren’t evil, and it’s insulting to women to treat a part of their bodies as something shameful. If anything about the scene was gratuitous, it was the fact that it was portrayed as coercive sex. We’re supposed to believe at this point that Tyler was forced to submit sexually to L’Rell, which made these flashbacks a putative rape scene. Surely that’s far more disturbing than just showing a female body part. It certainly should be. Particularly since it’s probably a fakeout anyway, a distorted memory of Voq’s, and that cheapens the treatment of the issue. It makes it feel like something done for edginess and shock value rather than something with a real story purpose.
So it was probably unnecessary to show the sex scenes at all. But in a different context — say, a warm, romantic, consensual scene between Burnham and Tyler — I’d have no problem with them showing it or including nudity.
@53 – I’m not saying it’s the MU, and again, it’s just speculating, but I see lots of potential for it being an alternate universe, like one of the universes that were seen in Parallels on TNG, for example. Subtly different but still having a lot of the people, events, being the same. Is there some evidence I’m not aware of that points to this being definitively set in the prime universe? The more I think about it, the more appealing it is to me, just to explain things like the level of technology for pre-TOS, the fact that we had never before heard about Michael being connected to Sarek and Spock, the differences in Mudd’s back-story with Stella, just to list a few. I also wonder if doing so might have allowed the writers a little more freedom from canon with a story that is set pre-TOS.
I’m still not inspired to get CBS access or whatever they call the thing.
From the description this ‘mid-season climax’ episode strikes me as murky and confusing. All this stuff going on and none of it seems to make any sense.
55, now you’re making me think up a story where somebody adopts a Ferengi (though yes, I do know there is one where such happened with a human child.)
56, well, I get that you think I’ve missed your point regarding your seeing the modesty convention as gratuitous, but I think you’d be much improving your ability to make your point by consideration of my suggestions. Yet I don’t see a word of acknowledgement towards them. Am I missing them somewhere?
As for the interaction itself, while I do think it’s a bit premature to determine what the actual scene means(as opposed to the particular form of it, which is a readily alterable detail), being coercive, however, would seem to quite likely be the point, as an actual traumatic event. If they don’t develop it, you might fairly complain, but if they do, as well they could, it might mean quite a lot.
As I said in reply to 44, I’m still not sure how well they’ll do it though. It can be very difficult to do properly.
I really didn’t need to see a rubber orc’s breasts. That said, I get what they were trying to go for there, the acting from Tyler was good and portrayed the trauma he’s feeling well, it just completely fell flat because of the godawful costuming and general lack of actual character development or progression on this show.
This is part of why the forced romance between The Great Michael Burnham and Mr. Tyler was a bad idea. I’m supposed to believe that this guy who’s totally comfortable hooking up with a colleague at a disco party was tortured and r*ped for months ending just a couple weeks ago? I’m sorry, people do not recover from trauma that fast. The inconsistency from episode to episode speaks of a very undisciplined writers’ room and isn’t a good sign for the show, especially one with only 15 episodes that has the streaming cushion to help it out.
Further, Burnham no longer has any character except “Protagonist”. While her racist attitudes from the pilot (the whole thing about Klingon culture being inherently violent, anyone?) were certainly reprehensible and disgusting, at least those were character traits, and beliefs that some people hold. I’m not thrilled about our hero (and what a mistake that was) being neocon T’Pol, but at least that’s a character concept. Yet here, they’ve discarded the woman whose traumatic experiences with Klingons were so painful that she mutinied and assaulted a trusted superior&close friend to launch a preemptive strike, in favor of a generic “cool, suave, and collected” demeanor. There’s no sense of progress or development and she’s had no real exposure to Klingons between episode 2 and here. She just suddenly is The Protagonist with no distinguishing features.
Plus, what character you could squeeze out of Burnhan is now done. She has her captain’s badge back and is no longer a racist or traumatized by Klingons, plus she’s generally accepted by the crew. What else is there to explore? Family relationships? Nope, James Frain is a godawful actor and bringing up the Sarek plotline will only make fanboys even angrier, speaking as a fanboy. Romance? Yeah, that worked out so fucking well with Lt. Blandsome and his safely generic looks and personality. Friendship? Unless Saru’s going to bring up what a disrespectful prick Burnham was in episodes 1/2 your only option is Tilly, who’s both annoying and an implausible collection of unrelated tropes.
I also rolled my eyes at the hilarious stupidity of the Klingons in this episode, but then this show treats the Klingons like barely sentient barbarian lizard-ape-men with faces made of rubber and costumes made of spikes, so I really shouldn’t be surprised.
The plot, thinly-sketched and dominated by action and setup rather than actual thought as it is, is better than the Mudd episode, but that’s only because they aren’t quite as stupid as they were when they turned the psychopathic serial killer loose with nothing but an arranged marriage to hold him back.
The Burnham-focused structure of the show has crippled the show’s storytelling potential. Back on TNG, by comparison, you’d have 3 characters take one view and 3 characters take the other view, each adding their own nuance to the total take on the issue with just a couple of lines apiece (frex, Data would say “My android brain has calculated these odds for Plan A, the risk may be worth the potential to save more people quickly” and Worf would counter with “But there remains a risk that our people could be killed, I think we should do Plan B and run the risk that we don’t save all the people in time rather than risk getting everybody killed” and Riker would say “We have good odds, though, and I think it’s immoral to not try to rescue everyone” and Geordie would say “but our engines can’t take it because XYZ” and they’d lay out the case for and against plan A or B that way and Picard would give a quick summary of what he thinks is the best option and why and they’d do that), which allows for both character involvement and a frank discussion of the issues involved in the episode. Here, though, the format is very much that Michael Burnham is Right, and she must convince others to do the Right Thing like her. The (plagarized and ripped-off) tardigrade episodes in particular reek of this, the “discussion” is basically limited to “We can’t hurt a sentient creature!” versus “But we need it to win the war…Ok, we have a third option, so yes Michael, whatever you say, ma’am.” There’s no negotiation or nuance or compromise, just “Michael Burnham Is Right and everyone who disagrees with her is Wrong”, the exact same attitude that poisoned Captain Janeway to many fans (in that since she had no consistent character, and the writers wanted her to be always right, she came off as a massive hypocrite).
Acting is generally good, but Martin-Green needs better scripts to work with since she can’t salvage Burnham from the boredom bin. Also, the Klingon costumes continue to be a serious detriment not only to the Klingon actors’ performances but also directly and indirectly to the show as a whole.
3/10 at best. Overall, this episode, like STD as a whole, is a disappointment, much like Voyager was in the 1990s; a good idea executed badly due to incompetent writing and obvious executive meddling as a sleazy corporate cash-grab.
Am i the only one wondering why they can detect the power signature a cloaked ship with long range sensor, and can’t detect it short range ? Oo
Because the ship can’t travel cloaked, perhaps? So they detected it when it came out of warp? Or even if they can warp cloaked; the energy output of a warp jump is so big that it allows them to detect it, and match it to that particular ship.
@61/Millie: The portrayal here is consistent with “Balance of Terror,” where the Enterprise could detect the cloaked Romulan ship’s movement with some kind of “motion sensors,” but couldn’t pin down its location precisely enough to target fire upon it.
@62 : Thanks MaGnUs i was thinking something along those line.
@63 : And Christopher. That’s a good enough “patch up” argument. (Can’t wait to read your next book ;) )
But is Discovery set in our universe? Or is this a long-con setup to have a show about an alternate federation?
And does it even matter?
@65/Daniel: None of Star Trek is set in our universe — after all, we don’t currently use interplanetary sleeper ships, there’s no Millennium Gate, and we don’t (yet) have Sanctuary Districts. But everything we’ve been told about Discovery indicates that it’s meant to be in the same putative continuity as all previous TV series (which already have many, many continuity discrepancies between and within them, but that all still pretend to fit together) despite certain tweaks to the visual depiction and technological details. It doesn’t make sense that they’d tell us that in order to fake us out — I mean, doing any new Trek series that’s even slightly new or different in any respect is going to bring down fan outrage anyway, so why invite even more outrage with a blatant lie?
We don’t have official and formal Sanctuary Districts. But in practice? :/
The Eugenics Wars were a secret, covert war, like how the Red October was never a REAL Russian Submarine, eh?
@66/Christopher: That’s one way to see it. Another is that it is set in our universe, and any differences are just additional continuity discrepancies.
Did anyone notice that Joe Menosky’s name hasn’t shown in the credits since ep. 8? What happened to him? Did he join the Orville instead? I’m a bit disappointed, Menosky ‘s a great writer and he could have penned some really fantastic Disco shows. Still waiting for Nick Meyer’s first Trek script in 25 years, though.
66. ChristopherLBennett
“so why invite even more outrage with a blatant lie?”
“Cumberbach isn’t playing Khan”
Sure, thay say that is’s set in the TOS reality but it really is a much better fit for the JJverse. Windows on the bridge. Klingons looking nothing like the TOS/TNG version. Mudd rebooted into a mass murderer. Heck, even the tribbles on Lorca’s and Scotty’s desks make sense in the reboot universe. You could even say that the cloaking devices were fight found on Klingon as opposed to Romulan ships.
Sure, you can say that it’s the TOS universe but you really have to squint hard to do it.
Or it’s changes in the timeline from all the time travel that went on by Kirk and afterwards.
But the showrunners say that it is, so it is.
@70/Clay: Nicholas Meyer’s script was going to be for episode 2, but they ended up rewriting it pretty much completely.
53. MaGnUs: I didn’t say Stamets folds space. That’s what the Spacing Guild navigators of Dune do. While high on Arrakis spice, they expand they’re consciousness, called prescience in the books, to find a safe route thru quantum space. The heighliner engines use these “calculations” to travel instantaneously.
Discovery does something very like that (spores/spice), only invoking a mycelial network rather than quantum foam. Stamets even experiences altered states as an effect of plugging into the drive (he likely saw an alternate universe in his mirror). Don’t know if any actual science backs use of an organic sub-space, with giant tardigrades travelling naturally along its pathways. Star Trek may not always (often?) reflect rigorous science, but this concept may place this series closer to science fantasy.
43. ChristopherLBennett: “it’s really quite sexist to see the female chest as intrinsically more obscene or dirty than the male chest. If it’s okay to show a man topless, it should be okay to show a woman topless. I mean, heck, there are plenty of cultures on Earth where women go topless in public all the time… “
I agree with you, but still got a chuckle reading this. It’s essentially a high-minded argument for seeing more boobs in filmed entertainment.
73…Ever?
@36 Because the writers actually remembered that this is supposed to be Star Trek, and Starfleet officers don’t do that?
They do when they’re AT WAR and when they’ve invaded their enemy’s ship.
@53 She might be a dissident of some sort, and worth capturing. As for the breasts, I’m the one saying that it felt unnecessary, but I don’t think it was to be tantalizing or titillating or whatever.
And she might be someone who would wake up too soon and rat them out to the rest of the Klingons. WE know she wouldn’t, but THEY didn’t know that she wouldn’t.
@73 It’s essentially a high-minded argument for seeing more boobs in filmed entertainment.
This.
@73/Sunspear: “I agree with you, but still got a chuckle reading this. It’s essentially a high-minded argument for seeing more boobs in filmed entertainment.”
Granted. I certainly do get something out of it if society overcomes its taboos on showing the female body. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other, more important reasons for treating male and female bodies equally. I mean, in principle, most everything I’m saying applies to male frontal nudity as well. I personally don’t have as much desire to see that, but I think it’s fine if other people want to, and I think that if there’s going to be a scene in a story where a man or woman is nude or logically would be nude, I’d rather see it presented matter-of-factly than to see the filmmakers go to all sorts of contrived lengths to hide the “naughty bits.”
You can’t blame fans for speculating about which universe Discovery takes place. Incongruous canonical and surface details aside, the showrunners have opened this can of worms themselves by apparently taking the deep dive into the multiverse–even going so far to show us a map or something of it. And they already hinted at the Mirror Universe with the creepy mirror image several episodes back. So buckle up, the speculation has just begun!
@77/Cheerio: Maybe I can’t blame them, but I can sure be sick of it. Fans have been “speculating” about the newest Trek not being in the same universe as previous Trek since the first couple of movies came out. I once saw a letter to Starlog or some magazine in 1982 or so insisting that TMP and TWOK couldn’t possibly be in the same reality as TOS because of the completely different technology, uniforms, and alien designs as well as the continuity discrepancies. This same damn thing happens with every new series — which is why I don’t take it very seriously here.
#78 — The difference here is those other series didn’t take a hard and sudden turn down the multiverse off-ramp midway through their first seasons. Judging by that map, the Mirror Universe isn’t the only possibility; every universe and timeline is. So, perhaps in this case you should be annoyed with the show. Me, I’m delighted by the possibilities. Especially if we end up in a universe where this series is something more than mediocre.
@79/Cheerio: Exacty — midway through the season. If a show is about characters being stranded far from home as its ongoing status quo, that usually gets established within the first two hours (e.g. Quantum Leap, Voyager, Sliders, Stargate Universe), not introduced in the midseason cliffhanger. If said cliffhanger involves being stranded in a parallel dimension, then usually it’s a problem that will be solved by the end of the next episode. So nobody would be expecting this universe jump to be permanent if they hadn’t already wanted to believe this show was in an alternate timeline. It’s not valid logic, it’s just confirmation bias, grasping at any straw that lets them believe their assumptions were right all along.
79, now you’re reminding me of the people who would have preferred Worf to have stayed in one of the Parallels.
Which is not entirely wrong.
@78 – Chris: “Maybe I can’t blame them, but I can sure be sick of it.”
This. It’s only second to complaints about the show from people who don’t actually watching it.
In the end, half way through the season, I think the show is alright. Its not great or wonderful. Its not the Star Trek I was demanding, but it is A Star Trek.
Anyways.
With this, they could’ve left a Klingon War off the books and just had this be some skirmish with power mad Kol or something, I’m not getting a feeling of ‘there’s a war on!’ from this show. DS9 it really felt like there was a war, even in Take Me out to the Holodeck, you knew there was still a war. Here it just doesn’t seem that way. No matter how many times the characters tell us there’s a war will make it seem like there really is.
The ship jumping 133 times to break the Klingon ship was cool, as was the invasion of the Klingon ship. BTW Taylor was tortured then raped, were we all cool with that? I mean, just seems glossed over and all..I mean I know they’re supposed to be Klingons and therefore barbaric, but I don’t remember rape torture being a thing Klingons did?
And now a midseason cliffhanger! Like what they do on that there Walkin’ Dead show! I dropped my CBS all access membership, but I’ll pick it up again in January or February.
Me, I’m glad that we haven’t gotten a continuos portrayal of the war in the show. I wouldn’t have minded if it was like the war seasons of DS9 (my favorite Trek show), but it could have felt like a retread. Discovery, with its spore drive, can jump in and out of the war, and that’s cool with me.
As for rape/torture, it’s obviously not the same, but in TOS we saw that they used mind scanners that were torture devices. And it was Kor, of house Kol, the same house L’Rell was operating under (supposedly). It could even be just L’Rell that uses those tactics.
In any case, those flashbacks might even be mis-remembered consensual sex between Voq and L’Rell; or even a mix of that and actual torture suffered by Tyler.
82. MaGnUs I couldn’t agree more. The stubborn insistence that this is set in the mirror universe is annoying, as are complaints from those who haven’t actually watched the show. I’d like to add people who are still complaining about it being on CBS All Access.
As for the show, I thought the mid-season finale was pretty good and I’m looking forward to seeing where they take it. My hope is that they time-jumped to post Nemesis, but I don’t think that’s likely.
I understand the CBSAA complaint… ONCE. There are people in other sites (it’s died down here) who go into EVERY post about Discovery to complain. (And it’s usually the people who think they’re so snarky when they use the STD acronym.)
As for jumping to the future, post-Nemesis, that’d be a nice surprise. But all signs point ot the MU.
86. MaGnUs You are absolutely correct. I help moderate a Star Trek page on Facebook (Star Trek Universe if anyone is interested) and we’ve got a couple of members who go on constantly about CBS AA and insist on calling it “STD” because they feel the need to insult it every time they talk about it. It gets tiresome.
I agree that we’re most likely going to a parallel universe (and it will probably end up being the Mirror Universe, although I hope not). I just think it’d be cool to explore these characters who just left their time/reality and see them adjust to a post-Dominion War/decent relations with Romulans/allies with the Klingons world that Nemesis left off on.
@84/MaGnUs: I didn’t get the impression that the mind scanner was supposed to be painful. I know that it has been portrayed as such in fanfiction, but Kor never threatened Kirk with pain, only with the prospect that he would become “a mental vegetable”. The only thing we know for sure is that it extracts information from the mind and can destroy the mind if used with too much force.
On the other hand, Kang tortured Chekov in “Day of the Dove”.
@87 – Jason: No thanks, I don’t wish to inmerse myself in a Facebook group full of Discovery haters. :)
@88 – Jana: Well, something that quite possibly leaves you a “mental vegetable” unless you give up the information willingly sounds a lot like torture. It’s been a long time since I saw the episode, though.
@89/MaGnUs: I guess what I’m trying to get at, in a roundabout way, is that the TOS Klingons had a different attitude towards violence than the DSC Klingons.
TOS Klingons were ruthless power players – Kor prides himself on their ruthlessness – but they were not cruel for cruelty’s sake, they weren’t sadistic, nor were they interested in breaking people or using them for their personal pleasure. The mind scanner is a technological device that records people’s thoughts and knowledge. If it destroys the victim’s mind, so be it, but that isn’t its primary purpose. It seems to be a new invention in “Errand of Mercy”, and it seems that before that, they used truth drugs, just like the Federation. (I conclude this from Kor telling Kirk that his drink isn’t drugged, because “With our mind scanner, we have no need for such crude methods.”) In “Day of the Dove”, Kang threatens to “torture [the landing party members] to death one by one”, but he does so to force Kirk to beam them aboard. He’s perfectly goal-oriented.
Of course, as you say, it may be just L’Rell.
Speaking about attitudes, there’s another difference between the shows. TOS Klingons were not worried about cultural purity. On the contrary, Kor was clearly dismissive of the “minor ideological differences” between the Klingons and the Federation. Mara tells Kirk that “there are poor planets in the Klingon system, we must push outward if we are to survive”. That may be true or not, but either way it’s very different from the motives that drive the DSC Klingons.
Hmm, I just realised that DSC didn’t start this cultural purity thing. In TUC one of the Klingons attending the dinner says: “We know where this is leading. The annihilation of our culture.” And maybe there was something similar in early TNG?
@90/Jana: Keep in mind that the whole underlying premise of Discovery is that the Klingons of the 2250s are not a unified society. They’re fragmented into numerous factions that don’t share a common set of goals or values. So it isn’t trying to claim that the attitudes of the Klingons we’re seeing are uniformly shared throughout the Empire. People like T’Kuvma and Kol are the heads of the more aggressive factions taking advantage of the power vacuum to jockey for dominance. The Klingons we see in TOS are the military representatives of a more unified, authoritarian state. So the differences are understandable.
Of course, anyone in the U.S. or Europe today should be keenly aware that a single society can have different factions with radically opposed beliefs, and that a faction that’s politically marginalized in one decade can become politically dominant in the next. Seeing how drastically America’s foreign and domestic policies have been altered by the new administration in just the past year, it should be clear how rapidly a nation can change.
@91/Christopher: Oh, absolutely. I’m not saying that changes like that can’t happen, only that there have been major changes, and there isn’t a straight line that leads from Kol to Kor.
I also find it noteworthy from an out-of-universe point of view that 2017 Star Trek portrays its antagonists as much more savage than 1966 Star Trek. I’m not quite sure what to make of that.
90, in TNG I think some of the Klingons made reference to losing themselves, or was it time-traveling Alexander?
@92/Jana: Well, for one thing, it’s simply that DSC is operating under much less censorship and thus is able to take the depictions of violence and sadism much further than TOS could.
But I think it’s also building on how the Berman-era shows portrayed the Klingons, turning them from the calculating nemesis of TOS into operatic samurai space Vikings constantly shouting about death and honor and swinging swords at each other and eating the hearts of their enemies. I don’t see DSC’s portrayal of the Klingons’ culture and psychology as all that different from the Berman-era portrayal, aside from the fact that they’re more internally chaotic, isolationist, and hostile to the Federation at this point.
As far as the change in Klingon politics goes, each portrayal reflects the time when it was made. The TOS Klingons were Cold War villains, filling the same role as Red Chinese or Soviet adversaries in the action or espionage thrillers of the era. The TNG-era Klingons were post-glasnost and pre-Putin Russia, a former enemy now turned friendlier after the end of the Cold War, but still with its own culture and agenda that didn’t quite align with ours. The DSC Klingons are more like the Islamic State, a vicious, warmongering foe from a fragmented culture, using the pretense of religion to assert leadership and attract followers.
@94/Christopher: “The DSC Klingons are more like the Islamic State, a vicious, warmongering foe from a fragmented culture, using the pretense of religion to assert leadership and attract followers.”
Yes, it’s this real-life parallel that’s bothering me. I’m not happy with the Cold War stories in TOS’ second season, but at least the TOS Klingons were basically rational and could be dealt with in a number of ways – they could be unmasked, or outschemed, or reasoned with. So far, the DSC Klingons seem more like pre-modern throwbacks with whom war is inevitable, and as a statement about real life, that’s unfortunate.
Of course, the show could still surprise me. Perhaps they meet some Klingons in the parallel universe and gain insight into Klingon culture that enables them to end the war peacefully. Who knows?
@90 – Jana: Besides a few interesting tidbits like those you mention, TOS Klingons weren’t much more than a “red/yellow scare”, “mongol horde” stand-in. There’s not much there to compare them with against DIS Klingons. And, as Chris says, their culture is not monolithic. This is good, unlike TNG/DS9 portrayal of Klingons, they have multiple subcultures, even multiple physical appearances.
@96/MaGnUs: I’ve always found that they became quite interesting in “Day of the Dove”. A bit like a mixture between TNG Klingons and Cardassians. And I find that DSC overdoes the alienness and the savagery of their Klingons. But then, I haven’t watched episodes 4-7. Perhaps they’re portrayed differently there.
Day Of The Dove was interesting, but there wasn’t much more flesh on those bones before or after that episode. And about the DIS Klingons, they haven’t have much focus beyond L’Rell and a bit of Kol after episode 4.
I prefer them more alien than thinly disguised space viking samurai bikers.
I’d find these Klingons more interesting if, when we got the gathering of the houses, we saw a TOS Klingon and a TNG one as well as a TNG type. Instead, the impression we got is that they’re all pretty much identical to L’Rell and Kol and the rest o their merry band. They had the chance to show us Klingons as multi-racial and instead they punted the opportunity to totally redefine the race.
A little variety would go a long way towards making all the Klingons more interesting.
We only saw the heads of the houses, not the entirety of the Klingon empire.
But it’s like seeing the UN General Assembly and only seeing white people while claiming that there’s other skin tones in the world as well. Sure it’s possible but you can’t tell from that picture. The impression we’re given is that ALL Klingons now look the the ones on this show.
Imagine if TOS had an all white cast and they claimed that there was racial diversity but we just didn’t see it. It’s the same excuse they made for not showing same sex relationships while having no problem showing heterosexual ones. It may be true but you sure can’t tell from what you’re shown.
@23 good catch with credits. But if it said Matt Decker that’s a mistake. Decker has already been identified in Saru’s query as a leading captain. It should have been Will.
@102/WhiskeyJack: Or it could be Will’s older brother, named after his father.
@102/WhiskeyJack: No, the Matt Decker listed in the Discovery credits is not a fictional character — he’s the show’s music editor. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2223038/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr460
Matt Decker is obviously not that unusual a name. There could be dozens in Starfleet and literally millions in the Federation.
I agree with the other commenters that the sets on this show are far too dark.
Even when watched on HDTV, it is hard to get much detail on them.
I feel it is being done on purpose to create a more sinister and mysterious atmosphere, but it is making many of the scenes feel more like they could be from Alien vs Predator or a horror flick.
I am also a little worried the show is becoming too serialized. Shows that are heavily serialized can be very hard for new viewers to pick up.
Casual fans (as opposed to hardcore fans) would probably be totally lost watching this episode without seeing any previous ones.
I think DS9 and VOY hit the right balance of serialized vs. episodic storytelling.
It’s behind a paywall, I doubt there are many casual watchers. Lots of people who aren’t hardcore ST fans, but are still watching this on purpose and following it. Not many people are just going to “catch this episode” by chance.
@108/MaGnUs: Exactly. Any new viewer who comes in late will presumably start with episode 1 and binge through until they catch up.
It’s only behind the CBS paywall in the States. It’s on the Space channel in Canada, a staple of cable packages. The rest of the world has it on Netflix so you may just stumble across it there. And considering that Netflix currently has only half of Futurama available, it’s not unlikely that at some point you’ll only be able to start in the past couple of seasons.
Netflix is a paywall. Not the same kind as CBSAA, but still, you stumble upon a show on Netflix, not a single episode. Even if they at some point stop having later seasons, this first season was partially bankrolled by Netflix, I doubt it’s going to ever not have season 1.
111. MaGnUs – Depends entirely on the contract between CBS and Netflix. It’s possible that they get the series for 2 (or 3 or) years, after which, CBS is free to move it to another service or even release it to syndicated broadcast/cable. It’s not like CBS is likely to give it to Netflix forever.
@111/MaGnUs: “Netflix is a paywall. Not the same kind as CBSAA”
How is it not the same? They’re both streaming services with monthly subscription fees. The only differences are that CBSAA has a commercial tier and a commercial-free tier, and it releases episodes once a week instead of a season at a time.
113, I think the whole sentence is pointing out to it being a distinction without a difference.
113. ChristopherLBennett – For one thing, Netflix has a lot more on it, a lot more original content as well as movies. Most people, given a choice of one or the other, would choose Netflix hands down. You can spend $10 a month and get lots of variety or you can get CBSAA for slightly less and a lot less choice.
CBSAA reminds me a lot of the old UPN, with Star Trek as its flagship but not much else to offer. Plus it’s late to the streaming game, much in the same way UPN was late to the hip alternative broadcast network game Fox already dominated. So maybe CBS can keep it going long enough to get a full Trek series out of it? Hopefully.
Or, you know, they could just put it next to Supergirl on the CW. They’d have to lose the F-bombs and Klingon sex scenes, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to see. :)
@116/joeyjoejoe: You forgot to mention the violence. That’s a sacrifice I would like to see.
#117 — I would like to see it too, but most violence is allowed on American broadcast TV. Take from that what you will.
As it has already been said, the difference between CBSAA is not one of system, but of quantity and variety of content. People have Netflix or get it for a variety of reasons; most people who get CBSAA probably did so for Discovery. It doesn’t have enough stuff yet to make it worth getting it if you’re not interested in what little original content it already has, at least for most people.
@119/MaGnUs: Yeah, but what you said was “Netflix is a paywall. Not the same kind as CBSAA.” And that phrasing is misleading. As far as the paywall part specifically goes, they are the same, in that they both require you to pay a monthly fee for access. There are differences in the content, of course, but they are behind the same kind of paywall. In the same way that a safe containing a million dollars in cash and a safe containing mostly sentimental family heirlooms can be behind the same kind of combination lock. What’s behind the lock doesn’t alter the nature of the lock itself.
As far as CBSAA’s content goes, I was hoping it would have a larger selection of CBS’s old shows from decades past. Instead it’s a fairly limited portion of their library, favoring more recent or popular shows. Which I guess shouldn’t surprise me, but I was hoping for more.
120, your quotation is partial, the actual words in the entirety were:
The latter part is what’s important in understanding the meaning. I think you may be misleading yourself.
As far as CBSAA goes, I believe they’re limited in regards what they have rights to stream, and many of their archived works are actually Paramount/Desilu/other company’s productions that weren’t originally broadcast on CBS anyway. Some of this came from the FCC rules, but others were obviously resulting from existing contracts, like Star Trek for example.
Amusingly, I have heard people complain that NetFlix is no longer what they wanted it to be, that it is losing the aspects of availability that it used to possess, and focusing too much on their own in-house works. Some of this, of course, isn’t their fault since the studios are re-possessing what they licensed to Netflix as they see the opportunities for their own enrichment.
Interesting times we’re living in, interesting times.
I have some minor quibbles, but from a suspense point of view, the first two thirds of this episode are all one can ask for. You have several interesting, suspenseful stressful situations all playing out simultaneously, and all interrelated, with Burnham confronting Kol, Tyler confronting his demons, and Stamets running a gauntlet of shocks to his system. All of this culminates in a very satisfying explosion. After that… meh. As has been noted, we all knew Stamets last jump was going to turn out badly. This is the first episode where Burnham’s earnest, unblinking style is growing a little wearisome. As someone else noted, she’s always the hyper intelligent voice of reason, and it seems like lazy writing just to wait for the other characters to catch up to how wise she is. Although I will say I guess watch for what you wish for. Last week I was disappointed that Tyler seem to be skating through his post-torture life without any issues, so this week they went way over the top with it. Having the Admiral sitting next to him basically narrating for us what he was going through as if we couldn’t figure out for ourselves was a little heavy-handed. All in all though, I remain entertained and intrigued, and want to keep watching….
As for the boobies, I don’t really think that qualifies as a topless scene, since what we’re seeing is a painted prosthetic on an actor playing an alien belonging to a race that doesn’t actually exist. It would be like claiming a scene with Marge Simpson in the shower was a nude scene….
Ceci n’est pas une pipe
Representation is never the thing itself.
It’s still nudity within the story’s context. If a character is tortured or dies, that’s not the actor being tortured or dying, but there’s still death and torture in the episode.
@124. magnus: Being turned on by Marge’s boobies? Well, I guess that explains hentai…
Lots of people get turned on by drawn images. Nothing wrong with that.
@126/MaGnUs: Yeah — it’s not like porn never existed before the camera was invented. If artistic representations of things can’t evoke the same emotional reactions as the things themselves, then why is there art at all?
I wish you two would talk to my girlfriend about why it would be OK for her to wear a Wonder Woman costume for me…
That’s between you two, pal.