When we got to the end of Discovery’s first season, I was incredibly disappointed to learn that the ship was on its way to Vulcan to pick up their new captain. (We never did find out who that was supposed to be.) Instead, they rendezvoused with the Enterprise, and Pike took over as temporary captain.
The disappointment was that Saru wouldn’t be the new CO of the ship.
Saru is the greatest creation of this show. He embodies so much of what makes some of the best Trek characters: scientific curiosity, compassion, intelligence, character growth. After being a dark, ugly place under Captain Gabriel Lorca’s evil twin Skippy in the first two-thirds or so of season one, Saru took command once Lorca’s deception was revealed, and Discovery became a kinder place, one that was more recognizable as a Starfleet ship, even though it was still in the midst of a war.
But then Pike took over in season two, though Saru still had plenty of journeys to go on, particularly once he unlocked his people’s great secret: that they didn’t die when they undergo the vahar’ai. Now Saru isn’t a prey animal anymore, he’s more confident, more aggressive—but still, at heart, the scientist he’s always been.
And he’s now in charge. I was genuinely worried that Saru would once again be forced to take a step back, get bigfooted by either Burnham or Georgiou, but—at least as of “Far from Home”—that isn’t happening, at least not with Georgiou. (Aside from the very last scene, we don’t see Burnham at all in the episode.)
Indeed, “Far from Home” makes it abundantly clear exactly who’s in charge of the ship now, and at no point is there any doubt. The hesitancy we saw in “Choose Your Pain” when he was given command of Discovery and wasn’t sure how to proceed is entirely gone. Both Georgiou and Nhan question his orders at various points—though Nhan is respectful about it and still follows his orders—but Saru never lets them get the better of him or make him doubt his decisions. He even is willing to use Georgiou up to a point, as her timely arrival at the settlement when Saru and Tilly are negotiating from a very weak position (at gunpoint) allows our heroes to gain the upper hand.
Saru never backs down, never gives up, and knows his people. His wordless exchanges with Georgiou are what saves everyone’s asses.
“Far from Home” is structurally very similar to “That Hope is You,” starting by opening with a crash landing. I found the entire crash-landing sequence to be incredibly thrilling, as the nearly-completely-depowered Discovery has to land successfully, and it only comes about due to contributions from everyone on the bridge: Saru, Bryce, Rhys, Owosekun, Tilly, Reno, and especially Detmer. The bridge crew hasn’t been all that critical to Discovery, but they’ve slowly become more and more important to the overall storyline, and Detmer and Owosekun in particular are two I’m hoping to learn more about. Detmer once again proves to be a brilliant pilot, earning the applause of the entire bridge crew. But she’s not entirely handling the situation well, either, and Emily Coutts beautifully plays the character’s PTSD after the crash, unable to deal with the destruction.
Buy the Book
Remote Control
Indeed, many of the characters are struggling to deal with the aftermath of the crash, partly because the ship has very little power, no sensors, no communications, and the only thing they know for sure is that they, like Burnham last week, did not crash on Terralysium. They don’t even know when they are—indeed, the only thing they know for sure is that their greater mission was successful, because they do detect life.
Mary Wiseman continues to be magnificent, as Tilly is obviously completely fried and confused and hurt, but she struggles through to do her job. But she’s so scattered that Georgiou is obviously ready to punch her in the nose, Nhan thinks she’s not entirely fit for duty, and even Tilly herself thinks Saru is crazy to take her along on his mission to make contact with the locals. But Saru says he can think of no one better to create a good first impression, and he’s only wrong insofar as she’s second best—Saru himself is best, as he proves when he talks to the local miners.
Tilly, though, is the one who figures out that something has happened to make dilithium crystals a rarity, as she detects warp-capable ships with no dilithium anywhere to be found, and is the one who blurts out that they have dilithium to trade with the locals, which is good, as that’s the only decent negotiating position they have.
Stamets is suffering more directly, as we last saw him in a medically induced coma. Culber has to bring him out of the coma because they need his bed, and he gets a cycle in a cellular regeneration chamber, which is enough to keep him conscious. Stamets, however, insists on going back to work, to Culber’s annoyance and Reno’s amusement. Stamets and Reno still can’t stand each other, and their banter as they work to fix the ship is epic, especially once you add the what-the-hell-are-you-doing-working-when-you-should-be-in-bed-recuperating ranting from Culber when he finds out. (“We’re gonna focus on one moment at a time, okay? And we’re going to do all of this slowly and carefully—because I need you out of there alive so I can kill you.”)
Whatever the flaws of Discovery over its first two seasons, many of which are borne out of the truly chaotic mess it’s been behind the scenes, the one thing that has been consistent is the hallmark of all great Trek: fascinating characters whose fate you become invested in. Just as “That Hope is You” spotlighted the main character, “Far from Home” spotlights everyone else superbly. This has grown into a compelling ensemble, and going on the journey to learn about this crazy-ass future with them looks to be great fun.
Well, some great fun—it’s also pretty dang violent. Georgiou kills a bunch of people saving Saru and Tilly’s lives, and Saru is too busy staying alive (and Tilly too busy hiding behind the bar like a smart person) to stop her initially. But once he’s in a position to keep Georgiou from killing people, Saru does so. Still, this is a nasty, ugly, unpleasant future, one that Georgiou is already taking to like a duck to water. This week we meet more of the true believers Book was talking about last time, and they’re all miners who are as down on their luck as it’s possible to be: they’re completely under the thumb of a thuggish criminal named Zareh (played with superlative sliminess by Jake Weber).
Overall, this is a fantastic episode that continues the work “That Hope is You” did in introducing us to the future, and also giving us some magnificent alien landscapes. Discovery crashes in ice, which turns out to be alive and it starts constricting the ship. The sound of the hull straining adds beautifully to the tension of the ship repair scenes, giving our heroes a ticking clock to get power back before the ship is crushed.
On top of that, we get some nice original-series techie callbacks, as Bryce has to repair a transtator (established as a major piece of 23rd-century technology in general and used in communicators in particular in “A Piece of the Action”) using rubindium (established in “Patterns of Force”).
And then in the end we get the big twist. Burnham finds Discovery, but she has much longer hair—because “That Hope is You” was a year ago. Looking forward to finding out what happened in that year soon…
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest novel is To Hell and Regroup, which will be on sale at the beginning of November. Also check out his “KRAD COVID readings” YouTube channel, in which he reads from his writings—this week, he’s doing a three-part reading of his 2001 Kira Nerys-focused novella “Horn and Ivory,” part of the post-finale DS9 fiction.
Really enjoyed this episode. And I gotta say—I really love Burnham’s long hair!
Pretty straightforward story with some nice character work for several of the crew. Burnham lands in Iceland and finds the rest of the crew in Iceland a year later…
The one question that was intriguing at the end was what ship Burnham is on. We only see the tractor beam, but don’t see where it came from. We’re told the incoming ship is big, so it can’t be Book’s courier ship. Maybe it’s a Universe class, like the Enterprise J.
One other thing: no friggin’ crash harnesses? No seatbelts even? No grab bars as they come in for a crash landing? Madness!
@2
If the inertial dampers fail a seatbelt isn’t going to do much good.
Gene Roddenberry was famously asked why the Enterprise didn’t come equipped with seat belts. He replied, “Because if they had them, the actors can’t fall out of their chairs….”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I thought this was a great episode: it’s intriguing, slowly unfolding more mysteries and answers about this strange new time; Saru gets to shine and is proving to be a very fine captain; and the show just looked great visually. I’m pretty sure next week we’ll get filled in on the past year of Burnham’s life (with Book) flashback style. I just wonder if the whole episode will be a flashback or it will cut back and forth with the “present.”
There seemed to be somewhat of a focus on Detmer this episode dealing with some PTSD. I wonder if this is foreshadowing for events yet to come or just some character beats here that won’t be followed up on.
I enjoyed the episode, it was nice to see Saru in charge and Tilly getting more certain; plus, we get more future people still believing in the Federation and our Starfleet characters here to fan the flames of hope. The way the miners and the mobsters speak about Starfleet makes me think Michael has had some success spreading the word in the year she’s been in this era.
Also, I am quite pleased that we spent the whole episode with the Disco crew, nice character beats for almost everyone.
The living, parasyting ice is scary, and sounds like something out of Doctor Who (I don’t mind).
Evil Twin Skippy – name of the band.
Weren’t Rubindium crystals first mentioned in Patterns of Force? IIRC that’s what Kirk and Spock used to get out of the cell.
Charles: ARGH! You’re right, I mixed the episodes in which our heroes were trapped in a cell up. *laughs* Will fix….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, saved again by the edit function……
EDITED TO ADD: Or not. Apparently, I can’t edit the post….
Loved the TOS sickbay sounds when Stamets awoke from his coma! Also, are we sure Detmer’s condition is PTSD, rather than a malfunction of her implants?
We want Grudge! {Jonathan}
I thought this episode was beautifully done; I loved seeing Saru behaving like a real captain.
I did wonder, though, why they had Saru pause for a very long moment when the new ship showed up. There was never any chance that Saru was going to shoot without trying to talk first, so why did he seem like he didn’t know what to do? I suppose maybe the writers and/or the director thought a long pause would be dramatic, but to me, it seemed as if it undermined how wonderfully decisive and in control Saru had been during the rest of the episode.
When Georgiou showed up and saved Saru and Tilly from the bad guys, I thought, “They really need somebody who has Georgiou’s ability to confuse the enemy with her words and to take the enemy down with her fists and feet when the words don’t work, but who is guided by Saru’s morality. And then I slapped myself in the head and said, “Duh, you’ve just described Jim Kirk!” :-)
@11/Corylea: I agree with you that though the long pause upon seeing the other ship was probably meant to be dramatic, it did make Saru come across as indecisive. You’d expect him to quickly say, “open hailing frequencies” and demand to ask what the other crew’s intentions are.
One thing I noticed was our bad guy referred to the federation as V’Draysh, which we heard it called in Calypso. Im wondering if that means that short trek will be tied in somewhere?
@13: I hope that’s the case. That will mean though that at some point in this season the crew would have to abandon the Discovery and leave it derelict for 1000 years hence, so basically the 42nd century or so, when the Federation is still referred to as V’Draysh. But that would imply that even 1000 years later the Federation still isn’t restored to its former glory. So it’ll be interesting to see if “Calypso” is even followed up on.
Olatunde Osunsanmi, the director of these first two episodes has said elements from “Calypso” would make it into this season, but he was coy about which ones.
It was interesting that Michael Chabon’s syncope, V’draysh, is used interchangeably with fully pronounced “Federation” in the bar scene. With him largely gone from Trek production (having a new development deal oriented around his Kavalier & Clay/Escapist property), maybe that’s one of the few artifacts from his tenure we’ll get.
@13 to @14:
We don’t know why Zareh referred to the Federation as “V’Draysh.” To me, it sounded insulting — maybe it’s an insult from another language that’s phonetically similar by coincidence, or it’s the pronunciation of “Federation” in a language that has become prominent? Gorn, maybe? (Book last week: “It’s not enough that the Gorn destroyed two light years of subspace…”) There’s no sign yet that it’s a symptom of widespread phonetic drift.
Given the nature of the Burn, it’s possible the UFP is no longer a singular entity (for BattleTech fans: think the successor states after the Star League) and I’d starting speculating that the V’Draysh named in “Calypso” might be one of them which went bad, rather than the whole kaboodle. Since the UFP probably expanded in the 800 years between DIS and the Burn, it could be a section we’ve never heard of.
The big and welcome structure difference, IMHO: this was an ensemble episode, in the classic Trek paradigm. We had extended interchanges between several pairs of characters, and no single person took excessive prominence as the fulcrum. If you’re anti-Burnham, it’s because she was absent, no longer acting as a histrionic singularity. If we’re lucky, the show’s formula has been rebalanced, and Burnham will be part of a team. (Maybe she’s mellowed during her year with Book, and is willing to let other people lift part of the load.)
The exchanges between Reno and Stamets (and Gene in the spore drive cube, shoveling Leland-debris) were very LDS in flavor. (“Um, my name is Gene.” “Already forgot that.”)
Director Olatunde Osunsanmi remains enamoured with shakycam. Still not a fan of that. Otherwise, I do appreciate that everything was well lit. A whole lot of dark colors in the clothing and sets, but that might be to focus attention on the faces.
@philip: since you mentioned the Gorn. Should Burnham even know who they are? Kirk’s fight with one in “Arena” roughly ten years later (from her original time) was supposedly a first contact situation.
Also, two other reviews I’ve read, io9 and AVClub, thought Detmer’s dazed state had to do with her implant being impacted during the crash landing and that it may be a hint of a hidden Control backup function that surfaced somehow. She hung out with Airiam after all.
Also also, Saru is the captain, now. Unless there’s a surviving admiralty structure to appoint someone else, they’re far enough from home that they should drop the “acting” part.
I am loving this season. Seasons 1 and 2 did not grab me like these two episodes have. Like its predecessors, TNG & DS9, season 3 seems to be where they find their voice.
Bobby
@18/Sunspear:
Good point — no. The Gorn were namechecked by Book seconds after their meeting, and she was in no state to respond “Who?” — still off-kilter, not yet rigorously examining her assumptions. More generally, I’m waiting for the scripts to demonstrate that the writers have a theory of mind — i.e., that what they-the-writers know and what we-the-audience know is more than what the characters know or can guess, vis-a-vis contacted species, politics, technology, etc. Maybe that’ll happen in episode 3.03 — Burnham, Book, the Discovery crew, and future-Starfleet (as teased by the season trailer) meet and compare notes under non-crisis conditions.
* Where in the galaxy are we?
* Is your Federation the same as ours, or were there political discontinuities?
* How expansive did your Federation get?
* What alternatives to dilithium do you have?
* Say what? Wormholes and time travel are well-attested albeit rarely-used/outlawed technologies for you, but you’ve never heard of subspace fungus?
So, in my day-job I work (tangentially) with car-accident victims, and I don’t think Detmer is a PTSD case. That may be a part of it, but her disorientation and apparent visual/auditory issues (based on what the camera did whenever she was the focus) suggest at least a bad concussion (possibly exacerbated by the tech in her head, resulting from her last traumatic brain injury). I know Dr. Pollard didn’t spot anything on a quick scan, but I’d still recommend a full neurological assessment.
I’m also worried about Linus; he was last seen being steered away by Georgiou, but he wasn’t at the bar, so she either ditched him or left him out on the carnivorous glacier somewhere when Zareh’s minions caught her.
(Also note that Gene was credited as “Ensign Hazmat,” so it looks like the name has stuck.)
@21
I think someone mentioned that she left Linus on Deck 8 or something, so I think he’s safe, Georgiou just ditched him.
Since I only got a new CBSAA subscription a few days ago (thanks to a generous fellow commenter on this site), this is the first time since Picard season 1 ended that I’ve gone into a new Trek episode unspoiled, with no information about what to expect beyond what was in the promos. It was kind of a weird feeling.
I didn’t like this one as much as the first. The character work with Discovery‘s crew was pretty good (aside from Stamets acting like a macho idiot), and Zareh was an effective villain, menacing yet intelligent. But the concepts were more implausible. For one thing, it’s extremely absurd that both Burnham and the ship just happened to come out of their respective wormholes on trajectories pointing directly toward planets they immediately crashed on. On a cosmic scale, planets are very tiny moving targets, and the odds of coming out even remotely close to one are minuscule, the odds of being on the right trajectory to intersect with its surface even more so. Having it happen twice is about as likely as winning the lottery several times over. I suppose there could be some handwave about the wormholes being attracted toward planetary gravity wells, but then, the odds are that they would’ve ended up plunging into gas giants rather than habitable planets.
It’s also implausible that a 23rd-century Starfleet vessel could crash-land intact and take off again. And “parasitic ice” is a silly concept. Why was it so hard to break free of ice? They couldn’t melt it with their thrusters, or electrify the hull, or fire phasers?
On the other hand, it’s nice to hear the term “programmable matter” make it into the Trek lexicon at last, although having it be magic nanite clouds is a little fanciful. (Could they be catoms, like those used by the Caeliar in the Destiny novel trilogy?)
I also liked the reference to Saurians having a wide visual spectrum, which is consistent with my portrayal of them in the novels. Though I depict them as nocturnal and needing tinted contact lenses to operate in full daylight.
I can’t believe Burnham’s hair could grow that long in a year. According to the Internet, a black woman’s hair would typically grow no more than 10 cm/4 in in one year, give or take. So Burnham’s showing maybe 5-6 years’ growth there.
I don’t think Burnham’s “The Gorn did what?!” line indicates that she’d heard of the Gorn. It just means that she was more curious about the bit where someone destroyed two sectors of subspace. That’s a much more important thing to ask about than the identity of some species you’ve never heard of.
@23/CLB:
We have no reason to think the wormhole was random — it might be a default function of the Red Angel suit, or a property of artificial wormholes, or large-scale spatial engineering that forces wormholes into known approach corridors, or Q tilting the scales to keep his playing pieces on the board, or Travelers. In other words, “a wizard did it.”
Wild speculation aside, I’m willing to chalk it up to dramatic convenience. The “wake up! we’re crashing! everything’s offline! all our screens are seizuring! we plowed through a floating mountain!” laid on the peril a bit thick, though.
Really? This is a universe with free-floating neural energy-matrices, cloud-creatures, and silicon microbes that can feed on a starship’s power grid to grow to macroscopic size in seconds. For all we know, the ice isn’t natural, but some kind of terraforming tool or weapon gone rogue, which the locals have simply come to live with.
74,000 nanometers, he said. The human visible spectrum is 360 nm, from 380 to 740 nm; assuming the Saurian range includes ours, it would stretch from extreme ultraviolet (10 nm) to mid infrared (50,000-ish nm). Water-based tissues are unlikely to be sensitive to soft X-rays or EHF radio. Try to evade that with your cloak, Predator/Yautja. (Back in season 2, wasn’t the Sphere trying to communicate with UV light? Was Linus on board at the time?)
Odd thing for Georgiou to bring up while passing in the corridor, though.
The EMH was able to stimulate Seven’s cranial follicles, so in 3188 a similar treatment’s probably available in shampoo form on every replicator’s personal-care menu; or it’s another function of a hygiene wall, like the light-beams that cleaned Sahil’s teeth in 3.01 (see also: Jimmy Neutron).
@12 – Saru’s pause seemed completely appropriate to me. Now he knows the universe is much darker, Zara may have had other ships out there with weaponry, etc. Taking a very short pause to assess options (and it really was only a few seconds) when you have little info makes sense and then defaulting to the correct mode.
Also, a giant round of applause to (science aside but I can see ways to make it work) the idea of the Burn. Not only does it explain the loss or at least downgrade of the Federation, it gives Discovery (which likely has old school Dilithium recrystallizers) at least something to work with when they would likely be otherwise way outgunned without a chance AND makes the spore drive an advantage even more.
@24/philip_thorne: “We have no reason to think the wormhole was random — it might be a default function of the Red Angel suit, or a property of artificial wormholes, or large-scale spatial engineering that forces wormholes into known approach corridors”
In that case, then, you’d think it would spit them out on a proper orbital trajectory rather than re-entry trajectory. One thing people don’t get about orbital mechanics is that it’s hard to fall out of space and land on a planet. Only a few possible trajectories and velocities will get you captured by the planet’s gravity and bend your trajectory to intersect with the surface. The vast majority of possible trajectories from a given point in orbital space will loop you around the planet on an elliptical, parabolic, or hyperbolic course. So it’s still incredibly implausible that two separate wormhole egresses just randomly happened to be on impact trajectories. It’s self-contradictory to propose that the wormhole deliberately let them out near planets for their convenience yet also deliberately spat them out on crash trajectories that would kill them.
” In other words, “a wizard did it.””
And that is exactly what I object to. Star Trek used to try, however imperfectly, to be plausible and grounded. When I was growing up, it was the only work of science fiction television that even attempted to be scientifically literate or credible on any level, and that was an oasis in the desert to a science geek like me. I miss that.
“Wild speculation aside, I’m willing to chalk it up to dramatic convenience.”
And from a dramatic standpoint, using the same opening gimmick twice in consecutive weeks goes beyond convenience to repetition.
“(Back in season 2, wasn’t the Sphere trying to communicate with UV light? Was Linus on board at the time?)”
Linus was introduced in the season 2 premiere.
“Odd thing for Georgiou to bring up while passing in the corridor, though.”
Not at all. She found it potentially useful to have an ally (or more likely a subordinate) with superhuman vision.
“The EMH was able to stimulate Seven’s cranial follicles…”
Yes, yes, I know they have technobabble for how hair growth could be accelerated. I’m not a Trek novice, you know. The issue is why she would do that. Even if the science and tech are gibberish, character motivations and choices should still have reasons.
Not to mention that story points need to have narrative reasons. If the narrative purpose of her hair growth was to indicate the passage of time, it directly contradicts that to say she had it artificially accelerated. In that case, it could’ve been just a week since the last episode. So if they wanted it to represent a year’s worth of hair growth, it should’ve been a more natural amount.
@25/Jeff L: “Discovery (which likely has old school Dilithium recrystallizers)”
The Federation didn’t have the means to recrystallize dilithium until Spock invented it in The Voyage Home, nearly 3 decades after Discovery left the 23rd century. Tilly’s alien princess friend had invented a recrystallization process, but evidently it didn’t become widely known. (I hate it that DSC keeps stealing discoveries and inventions that were supposed to be made by the TOS crew. It really diminishes their achievements.)
@23/CLB: Regarding Burnham’s hair I was also thinking of the EMH’s patented hair follicle stimulation procedure. Also, she could just be adorning very low-tech hair extensions.
@27/garreth: Again, the issue is why, not how. It doesn’t make sense to use artificial hair lengthening as a way to illustrate the passage of time.
@28/CLB:
I disagree. It makes perfect sense on TV, where visual subtlety is not a virtue — especially in this cluster of shows (*). The change in Burnham’s hair needs to be INSTANTLY! OBVIOUS! (shouting intentional). The producers (**) presumably know part of the audience consists of detail-oriented Trek-vets, but it seems their priority is to dumb things down for everyone else. (I wonder if the Trek shows are test-screened and focus-grouped at CBS Television City in Las Vegas? Is it possible they’re making informed by evidence stylistic choices, and our kind of objection has been deemed irrelevant?)
Maybe ep 3.03 will “hang a lantern on it” and explain that Burnham decided to commemorate her new life with a dramatic change in personal grooming (logically, it would be roommate-Tilly who brings it up). More, I wonder if 3.03 will put the two casts together, or turn the spotlight back to Burnham, adapting to the life of a space-rogue while catching up on 800 years of history via space-Wikipedia and (per the “this season on…” trailer) clinking space-beers with Book. Flopping eps between two casts would be unusual for Trek, but no more so than any of the other stylistic innovations in DIS.
(*) Ultra-pointy-evil Klingon ship and costume design, overdesigned GUIs, mirror-shiny deckplates, Icheb’s eyeball, shakycam, copypasta fleets in PIC’s finale, etc.
(**) Broadly describing the entire hierarchy with input into the show’s look, who may have different opinions.
@29/philip: That’s somewhat my point, that they could’ve conveyed the idea with less, err, extensive hair growth. Shoulder-length braids (or a nice big afro) would’ve gotten the point across just as well.
It’s just that from the photos and previews, I was expecting her to say she’d been in the future for something like five years, so making it just one year feels anticlimactic.
The preview for episode 3 answers your question about what its focus will be.
What’s the deal with the first episode being called That Hope is You Part 1, will we get a Part 2?
@18 I definitely think there will be a lot more to Detmer’s PTSD however I hope it’s not a control backup. Really hope that plot line is a done deal
Emily Coutts as Detmer has been a favorite of mine since the first season. And she was killing it in this week’s episode–whatever’s wrong with her, be it PTSD or something worse, she underplayed it beautifully, letting us know that something is not right at all with poor Kayla. I’d love to see Coutts and the rest of the bridge crew turn up on Wil Wheaton’s Ready Room show sometime.
Tillie is literally hugging trees. Why?
Re.: Burnham’s hair. Good look on her but I can’t help wondering who either did the braiding or taught her how.
@16: Ahh, a man of culture :) . I had a similar thought about the state of the Federation in this future; either that, or it’s become akin to the Terran Hegemony/Fortress Republic, where the Federation has decided to pull back and safeguard a small, key region of space around Earth and just left everything else to fend for itself.
@17: “The big and welcome structure difference, IMHO: this was an ensemble episode, in the classic Trek paradigm. We had extended interchanges between several pairs of characters, and no single person took excessive prominence as the fulcrum.”
This is probably the best episode of the series thus far for precisely that reason; it’s actually letting these characters breathe for once and allowing the audience to see how they operate, rather than having everyone standing around asking, “Where’s Poochie Burnham?” I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll say it again– Trek is always at its best when it embraces its ensemble rather than fixating on a single character (Discovery) or trying vainly to recreate the Kirk-Spock-McCoy dynamic (Enterprise, and to a lesser extent, Voyager). The whole episodic vs. serialized debate doesn’t really matter if the characters in those stories aren’t engaging, or never given an opportunity to be.
@33/roxana: “Tillie is literally hugging trees. Why?”
If you mean in the preview, it looks like it’s because they’ve returned to Earth and she’s glad to see it’s still around. Also… she’s Tilly. She might hug things just on general principles.
Although I’d imagine Earth was hit pretty heavily in the Burn, since it would’ve had a ton of warp-capable ships in orbit and on the surface, plus dilithium storage depots and such.
This is from the season preview. An interesting shot of future Starfleet. Has a couple ships on the left using negative space similarly to D’deridexes. There’s a Section 31-looking ship on the right. And a saucer that’s similar to ships made by Lukari in STO, though that race, far as I know, hasn’t yet appeared in other Trek lore.
Btw, meant to say that one of Tilly’s inventions is considered meta for ship builds in STO. It’s called “Tilly’s Review-Pending Modified Shield.” Besides weapons, consoles, and devices, a ship build consists of deflector, engines, warp core, and shield, with a secondary deflector added to science ships. Tilly’s is the best shield option currently.
Also, from the Discovery era is a tactical console, “Lorca’s Custom Fire Controls,” which shows up in most high-end builds, especially those oriented to combat and damage-dealing.
The current story arc in the game started with Mirror Tilly, in charge of the ISS Discovery, opening a mycelial rift that also drags the 23rd century Klingons into the 25th century. The main baddie is T’Kuvma’s sister, J’Ula. She’s currently challenging the Klingon Chancellor, J’mpok. the player character is allied with her (enemy of my enemy arrangement) and Martok, who will likely become chancellor again. It’s a whole mess… Trek can’t avoid time travel shenanigans.
But at least we get to hear the wonderful voices of JG Hertzler and Robert O’Reilly in new dialogue.
@37: As someone who hasn’t played STO, is it common of them to do crossover updates tying into current Trek TV series? I seem to recall a trailer a little while back featuring Burnham as well. That said, more Martok always sounds like a good thing…
@37. Devin: they tie in as often as they can, sometimes in weird ways. Burnham was indeed part of a recent story that retraced your path through the game. But she was a construct made by the Excalbians to rehash their debate about good versus evil from the TOS episode, complete with the return of Space Abraham Lincoln. They actually did a good job recreating the fight against Control after the Discovery crew captures the Red Angel. That same story featured Seven pretty much as she appeared later on Picard, complete with twin tetryon rifles. Oddly, the STO story was set about ten years after the events in S1 of Picard. There was also an excellent mission where teh player helps Seven stop the Borg from interfering with Troi and Riker’s meeting with Zefram Cochrane in Bozeman, Montana.
Paul Stamets also exists as part of a story where you venture into the mycelial realm. Only he’s a holographic recreation. The jahSepp imbue the hologram with Stamets’ actual memories (which they can access because he’s interacted with their realm before), apparently making it sentient. Many of the TV characters from various series exist as holograms, some as bridge officers on your ship. For example, I have the option to use a holographic Bashir. Which gets weird (once again) when you go on a mission with the real, now older, Bashir to save the Founders’ home world at the end of an excellent Gamma Quad storyline.
The game mechanics sometimes undermine Martok’s badass stature. The current chancellor (2411) is presumed to have killed Martok in battle. But a rival house revives and imprisons him, denying him an honorable death. You help rescue him on a mission with General Rodek (still voiced by the great Tony Todd), who is still unaware that he’s Worf’s brother, Kurn. Martok almost gives the game away when he recognizes Kurn, but stops himself. Martok is a mortal enemy of the Tzenkethi, who call him the Butcher. You (the player) and Martok end up on a Tzenkethi ship where he fights his Tzenkethi rival. Martok keeps dragging that captain over to you, while you’re supposed to be shutting down some crucial consoles, so that you have to engage and fight. Martok’s not bad at combat, he’s just coded that way…
Anyway, I could go on, but there’s plenty of evidence that the game’s writers love the Trek universe.
@38: Oh man, it’s even better/goofier than that. The STO mission with Burnham has you dragging Seven of Nine to Excalbia (the planet from TOS’ Savage Curtain) where you team up with Abraham Lincoln, much as Kirk did in the aforementioned episode. Don’t want to spoil it, but it wonderfully spins further out of control from there.
@23/CLB “It’s also implausible that a 23rd-century Starfleet vessel could crash-land intact and take off again.”
I did it in a Discovery novel, as you’ll recall, though the escape was from a small moon, and still required five months of repairs to achieve. And even so I only dared it after poring over the blueprints and vetting the method with a scientist! Not sure how I would ever explain parasitic ice, but I’m sure any of us would have fun trying.
On another note, I wrote my Georgiou book between seasons two and three, so this episode felt like a reunion. (And it went down about like I’d expect, too: the kind of reunion where we’d lose the deposit on the hall. Just like old times!)
Why is no one questioning Saru’s lack of action which led to he and Tilly being disarmed and held by three hostiles, and then the miner being needlessly shot dead? Did he really have to wait for Georgiou to show up before he could use his darts? Didn’t we already establish in season 2 how formidable in combat those threat ganglia darts made him even without a phaser?
“…where the Federation has decided to pull back and safeguard a small, key region of space around Earth and just left everything else to fend for itself.”
That ignores that the Federation is not only Humans and planet Earth – there are and have to be other signatories to make it the United Federation of Planets. Why would the other alien signatories accept the UFP retreating to safeguard only Earth?
@44/M/R: Going by Star Charts, the five founding worlds of the Federation are all within 16 light years of Earth, which is entirely consistent with the phrase “a small, key region of space around Earth.”
Besides, not everything in life is optional. Some things are forced by circumstance and whether you “accept” them or not is irrelevant because there aren’t any alternatives. A Starfleet in ruins, with few functional ships, simply wouldn’t be able to defend a large area. Spreading them out would leave them too weak to accomplish anything. And if a nation’s defenses are depleted to the point that they can only defend a small part of it, isn’t it obvious that they’d choose to congregate around the capital of the nation?
We want you to join the Federation so when the going gets tough, we decide who is deserving of protection based on seniority.
Or, All Federation members are equal but some are more equal than others.
@39, 40: Certainly sounds like they’re having a lot of fun with it! Actually reminds me of the Caverns of Time instances from World of Warcraft, where the content is as much about celebrating previous storytelling as it is providing a compelling gameplay experience.
@44: Well, Earth is the long-standing capital of the Federation, has been from the very beginning. It makes sense on some level that, in the face of such an existential crisis, that such a strategically vital world be prioritized, if only to preserve the administrative/industrial infrastructure they’ll need to survive and hopefully rebuild.
@46: To be fair, the full extent of the crisis has only been touched on at this point, and we still have no idea how far this future Federation extended at its peak. Safeguarding everything might have been impossible from a practical standpoint; better to keep five systems secure and functional than maintain tenuous order over a hundred and risk losing everything.
@47/Devin: Indeed, as you say, we don’t know how big the Federation got. It could’ve been so large that a proportionally “small, key region” could be nearly as big as the entire 23rd-century Federation and could hold hundreds of systems.
This is stating the obvious, but with the Discovery having an abundant supply of dilithium in addition to having a spore drive, I think a considerable portion of this season will deal with the ship and crew having a large target painted on their back.
I also wonder if we’ll get scenes where Burnham and gang either look up, or resist the temptation to look up, the fates of people that were loved ones and perhaps even their own biographies. For instance, maybe if they looked themselves up they would see that they did in fact travel back in time back to the 23rd century or maybe even another era. Maybe Burnham will be crushed if she learns what ultimately happened to Sarek and Spock. Or perhaps rather conveniently, maybe all or a lot of Federation historical data has been lost post-The Burn.
@48: A fair point. Bringing this back to BattleTech (because any excuse to talk about that franchise is a good one), the Terran Hegemony encompassed 95 systems at its height, while Fortress Republic had 35 behind the Walls during the Dark Age, and all this is in a setting where FTL travel is pretty inefficient. Given how we saw in the Voyager episode “Timeless” that warp technology had advanced in that future timeline far enough to make efficient travel to the Delta Quadrant a practical reality, it’s not unrealistic to assume that the Federation might have spread into the Delta and Gamma Quadrants before the Burn. I’m actually excited to see how the worldbuilding for this future setting plays out, which is a pleasant surprise; it’s been something that Nu!Trek has always struggled with, and it seems like they might be getting a better handle on it this time around.
@49/garreth: I’m sure the producers have zero intention of sending Discovery back in time again. That’s why they put in that line about all time travel technology being destroyed after the temporal wars — they want to make it clear that this is permanent. And it should be. Enough prequels already. Enough time travel already. Go forward.
@51/CLB: Obviously on Star Trek nothing is impossible so it’s not inconceivable that the Discovery crew come upon time travel technology such as through aliens that aren’t adhering to any rules on the technology by some arbitrary organization. Further, the crew could go back in time to say the 25th century and it would still be “the future.”
@52/garreth: I’m not talking about the fictional rules of the universe. I’m talking about the real-world logic of storytelling choices. As I said, the writers of the episode made a point of having a character inform us that all time travel was destroyed. That’s a clear declaration of intent directed at viewers like you who expect a time-travel reset. They’re telling you that’s not what they intend to do, that this is not that kind of story, but a permanent realignment of the series premise.
Heck, they established that quite clearly in the penultimate episode of season 2. It was always explicit that the trip into the future had to be permanent, that they could never risk returning the data aboard Discovery to a time when Control might still exist, lest all life in the galaxy be eradicated. The characters explicitly have no intention of returning to the past, and the writers clearly have no intention of making them do so. I don’t see how they could possibly have made that any clearer.
“Further, the crew could go back in time to say the 25th century and it would still be “the future.””
But what would be the point of doing that? If the goal of the creators was to move the show permanently into the future, why in the world would they devise two separate futures, and fake us out with one before settling on the other? That’s just silly.
Can’t help suspecting that a little bit of Control managed to ooze into Detmer’s electronic headgear…
This looks interesting: New Titan/Riker/Troi novel
Wonder if Boimler will make an appearance. And more Romulan content is welcome.
Only tiny thing gives me pause is the ad copy line “The Alpha Quadrant is mired in crisis.”
Sure, member planets like Denobula (gone strangely quiet since Archer’s day), Trill, and Betazed are on the alpha side of the meridian, as is Bajor (which shows the extent of the Federation’s reach; or ambition if you’re so inclined). But anything involving Klingon and Romulan matters should be referred to as happening in the Beta quadrant. It puzzled me while rewatching DS9 that as Klingons and Romulans became more involved in the Dominion War, which was expanding into the Alpha quadrant, the show never pointed out that both of those political entities were crossing over Fed space from the Beta quadrant. Their expanses were never directly threatened by the Dominion, yet they crossed Fed space to come over and help, while referring to the Alpha quad as if they all belonged there.
Sure, it’s all imaginary lines, just as nation states draw imaginary lines today. My point is that both novels and TV shows sometimes don’t seem to know where in the galaxy they actually are. Not sure there’s even acknowledgement of spiral arms. It’s a bit of a flattened approach.
All of which leads to hope that this new season of Discovery will do some satisfying worldbuilding. How big did the Federation get? What was it’s reach? And if they ventured so far, including what the Voyager relaunch novels did with slipstream tech and returning to the Delta quad, why didn’t they develop more alternative travel tech?
53.
That’s just Discovery. Well, they have done silly things before, so…
@55/Sunspear: Europe is considered “the West” even though the vast majority of it is in the Eastern Hemisphere. Trek uses “Alpha Quadrant” the same way. Sometimes verbal convenience outweighs precision.
As for time travel, it felt to me at times that the end point for the season was undoing “The Burn.” I’m not saying I’m advocating for it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it happened.
@58/M: I very much doubt it. I don’t believe the producers would’ve taken this big step and created this whole new playground to set the season in if they just intended to erase it at the end. Plus, they’ll soon have Strange New Worlds in the 23rd century, Lower Decks and Prodigy in the 24th, and Picard on the cusp of the 25th. It only makes sense to let Discovery keep carving out its new territory in the 32nd. That’s its niche now.
Besides, a story about trying to rebuild a nation in decline after a catastrophe is one that’s going to be pretty timely over the next few years.
Or, they could find some future tech that wipes out Control from Discovery. Or, the crew finds another ship and abandons Discovery as seen in Short Treks. You can outlaw time travel tech but if they discover the slingshot around the sun method, all the laws against time travel go out the window. Heck, all you need is a primitive atomic bomb and a hold full of kemocite as seen in DS9’s Little Green Men. Or perhaps there’s still time crystals on Boreth. Just because something has been outlawed, doesn’t mean that everyone is going to follow the law.
Discovery may not be able to return to the 23rd century but that doesn’t mean the crew can’t.
@CLB: may be interesting to track our current misusage. But I still don’t like that kind of “convenience” and “imprecision” transposed to a galactic level. Three of the UFP founding worlds, except Tellar, are in the Beta quad. There’s a vast stretch between Tellar and Bajor in the actual Alpha quad.
Meanwhile, just about every familiar world and enemy we’ve seen in the series is located in the Beta Q. Why would such a misusage persist? Answer: most writers and production people go along without questioning it. Humans and aliens aren’t ignorant flat worlders anymore. (Well, some still are in the present; but hopefully not in 300-400 years.) It just seems intellectually lazy.
Also, I largely agree with you that the show should stay in the future. But I’d be careful about making such assertive statements. You’ve done that before, as in stating “there will be no time jump when they leave the mirror universe.” Next episode… 9 month time jump. What you wish and what you get are different things. Cave Videntium.
We also know that Georgiou will use time travel at some point to return to the past and head up her own Star Trek series. There isn’t much point to have a Section 31 in a nearly non-existent Federation in the 32nd century.
@61/Sunspear: “Why would such a misusage persist?”
Because it’s a television show, obviously. DS9 got in the habit of using “Alpha Quadrant” to mean the entirety of Federation space and its neighbors, because it was a convenient shorthand to contrast it with the Gamma Quadrant. Therefore, the television audience in the real world recognizes “Alpha Quadrant” to have that meaning, and thus subsequent series use the same terminology. In a work of fiction, the priority is the audience’s comprehension.
“You’ve done that before, as in stating “there will be no time jump when they leave the mirror universe.” Next episode… 9 month time jump.”
I’ve reviewed the posts in question, and you missed my point. What I was responding to was the speculation that when they returned from the Mirror Universe, there would be a time jump to the post-TNG era, that the dangling plot threads concerning the Klingon War would be left unresolved. I did not believe the writers would set those threads in motion merely to abandon them, and I was entirely correct about that. There was a small time jump, but it was still within the time frame of the war and led to a resolution of the lingering story threads rather than simply an abandonment of them.
@62/garreth: That is not “knowing,” that is assuming. We already know that some pockets of the Federation survive. It’s not just one guy behind a desk; Sahil said there were two Federation ships operating in his sector, and there were others beyond what he could scan. It’s always possible that some substantial portions of it could survive in some parts of the galaxy.
I mean, come on, Section 31 is a fictional conspiracy, and fictional conspiracies are all-powerful, infinitely resourceful, indestructible, and eternal.
@63/CLB: We’ll just have to see how this season plays out because none of us really knows anything. It’s fun to speculate and anything can happen which is why I’ll never shoot down what someone conjectures might happen. At the most I’d just call an idea unlikely.
@62: Oh, right. Forgot that Star Trek: Knockoff Cerberus Section 31 was a thing in production. Sigh…
@@@@@ 63 – “Sahil said there were two Federation ships operating in his sector”
I just rewatched the scene to make sure. He said there were only two Federation starships in a 600 light year radius, Strangely, he used a map of the entire galaxy to determine that.
@60
Excellent point. We’ve seen so many different methods for time travel it seems pretty laughable that any authority would have great success at banning it. But maybe that could be Discovery’s hook going forward — a takeoff on Prohibition era outlaws with the Discovery hauling time crystals across state lines!
@CLB: “That’s just silly.”
You’re missing the context of my point here. Unless you claim inside information, you don’t know where the story is heading. So it bothers me when you characterize another poster’s thoughts as silly or shooting them down. Or any characterization, really. (Thought it was against commenting rules, too.) Just state your thoughts and move on. Don’t be dismissive. You are JACITW (just another commenter in the wild). :P
@68/Sunspear: I was saying that the writers would be silly to do something so messy as to send the crew even further into the future if they only intended it to be temporary and then bring them back to a nearer future from then on. It would be needlessly convoluted and clumsy, and I’m entitled to the opinion that it would be silly to structure a narrative that way. I know that I as a writer would not structure a narrative that way, and I’m entitled to speak from my experience about what would and wouldn’t work in a narrative. That’s how critiquing works. It’s not just about “information.” It’s not about cataloguing what happens, it’s about assessing whether it was a good idea or not to do it that way. Any artist goes in knowing that what they create will be judged and criticized, both by audiences in terms of their satisfaction and by fellow professionals in terms of technique. That’s part of the process.
I loved Captain Saru’s self-confidence in this episode and liked quite a bit of it; not quite as good as the season premiere, but rather good indeed.
Also, that bit with the predatory ice absolutely delighted me(I remember thinking something along the lines of “Discovery has been an icebreaker before and can be an icebreaker again!”) and thankfully NCC-1031 lived up to the high standards set by Great-great-great-great-etc Granny RRS Discovery … eventually.
@@@@@ 69 – Star Trek does silly things all the time. Giant tardigrades? Time crystals? Cloaking devices before BoT when Spock referred to invisibility as theoretical? The Mirror Universe being kept secret from starship captains who might encounter it again? And that’s just Discovery. Whatever happens, it’ll be because the writers want to tell a particular story, not because they’ve got some sort of unchangeable plan. Just look at all the contradictory versions of the Prime Directive we’ve seen.
@23 – Chris: Stamets is hard-headed and usually thinks he can do all the stuff by himself. I didn’t see it as out of character.
@72/MaGnUs: It’s not about whether it’s in character. Critiquing fiction isn’t just about whether the facts fit, it’s about whether you enjoyed it or not. And I’m sick of fiction about men who act like macho idiots. It’s stupid and egocentric for someone who’s physically and mentally impaired by injury and drugs to think he’s more useful in a crisis than someone whose brain and body can actually be trusted not to fail. Stamets’s ego and pride actively endangered the ship. If an able-bodied person had done the repair, they would’ve been able to do it faster with less risk of passing out before it could be completed. I’m sick of seeing that kind of selfish, toxic macho pride celebrated as some kind of heroic virtue. Stamets was a negligent, selfish idiot and he had no right to be there at all.
Ah, gotcha.
Really good episode! A bit violent at parts, I guess to keep folks who are into that sort of thing paying attention. Me, I’m always fascinated by the talky, thinky stuff, and we get some gold here (Jett Reno, you are a treasure).
Captain Saru is definitely at his best here; never a doubt about who is in command. He’s also understanding and encouraging to Tilly, and it’s beautiful to watch. Odd to me that the bridge crew called Saru “commander”. The tradition would be to call Saru “captain” regardless of his actual rank, which the crew did back in season 1, after Lorca’s betrayal in the MU. Still, I like seeing the bridge crew shine; here’s hoping we get more of Detmer (who took a pretty bad tumble over her console and is definitely struggling more than she’s letting on), Owosekun, Boyce (who we actually talk to off the bridge for once), and Rhys.
Tilly is a more subdued version of herself, but still very much Tilly. I’m very interested to follow her journey in this new world.
Finally that ending. Another tear-jerker. Just beautiful.
CLB, I’d have to watch the scene again, but I don’t think Discovery successfully lifts off, she’s only pulled out of the ice by the ship Michael was on. As for Michael’s hair, there are natural growth items we use to grow our hair now (I have locs myself, that profile pic is 3 years old), so I imagine some seriously advanced items from all over the Quadrant would be available in the late 32nd century.
And I agree about Stamets. That kind of macho bullshit is seriously played out, and was kind of disappointing coming from Stamets. Thankfully Culber has the cure that.
Now that our crew is reunited, and it feels so good (sorry), I can’t wait to see where we go from here.
@75/Dante: Yes, the ship was pulled out by a tractor beam, but that’s not the point. The point is that 23rd-century ships shouldn’t be capable of surviving a crash landing and remaining structurally intact enough to return to space.
Seeing as the ship did indeed survive, I’d say that you’re mistaken. We’ve seen Discover get close to a planetary surface in the opening scene of the first episode. Perhaps it’s designed for landings, being flat bottomed and all and is reinforced for just such a case.
@CLB: ” That’s how critiquing works… That’s part of the process.”
Well, yes, of course. I’ll accept your good intentions… for now. As long as you respect others who engage in the same process.
Btw, I have a proposal for you: it’s a half-baked idea to pitch a Siskel & Ebert (bickering movie critics) type column to Tor.com, where me and you go back and forth telling each other how wrong you are. We provide free content for them as it is, why not get paid for it?
Part of me enjoys the clever way the writers have found to make Discovery’s mission resonate. In a sense, jumping Burnham and ship 900+ years into the future is a surefire way to clean the slate and begin exploration anew.
But part of me really loathes the future dystopia concept. Trek was always built on the notion of prosperity and flourish. That humanity would work out its issues and work together for a greater good. Roddenberry’s utopia, so to speak. Other than some major conflicts against Klingons, Romulans, Borg, Cardassians, Dominion and so on, the status quo would be maintained and galactic civilization would thrive. The Federation would last forever.
It saddens me that the writers have to resort to this unexplained wiping out of Dilithium to justify purging the Federation’s ability to explore and keep the quadrant intact. I really don’t like when things take such a left-field dark turn just to generate extra artificial drama. It’s not unlike the Star Wars sequels that had to resort to create a poor man’s Empire successor to keep the war aspect ongoing for new viewers. It’s the inherent tragedy in trying to sustain a billion dollar franchise. Part of me wishes it never happened.
But only part of me. This episode and the previous one, for the most part, manage to turn that tragic galactic outcome into a new venue for hope. Saru represents the best Starfleet has to offer, and inspiring those miners is the beginning of a new movement towards restoring that hope. I can get behind this kind of story, which is more than enough to keep me invested on more Discovery seasons.
@79/Eduardo: This isn’t dystopian SF, it’s post-apocalyptic SF. There’s a difference. A dystopia is a state that is oppressive, tyrannical, or otherwise harmful to its people through its policies and values. In dystopian fiction, the government or the society itself is the threat. Here, by contrast, the surviving bits of the Federation are a source of hope in hard times.
Besides, no government and no status quo lasts forever. There will always be rises and falls, and indeed any government that remains stable and unchanging for a very long time is likely to become ossified and rigid and do more harm than good. What’s more important is that the values and principles survive as one government evolves into another or is replaced by another.
@80/Christopher: Well put. Dystopia wasn’t the right word I wanted to convey. Post-apocalyptic seems about right.
Still, I’m more hopeful after these two episodes. It is an apocalyptic galaxy now, but not a hopeless case either – certainly not on a Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica level. Humanity is still out there, and there’s a sense of purpose for Discovery now to rectify what went wrong.
But I still feel the show ought to explain the dilithium burn at some point. It can’t just be a random plot device. Since time travel is possible in the Trek universe, I hope we’ll get to see it at some point.
@81/Eduardo: I think there was a line in the season preview about trying to discover the cause of the Burn. I get the impression that’s going to be the season arc, or at least part of it.
It looks like this will be the first season of DSC that’s had the same showrunner (Michelle Paradise) from start to finish. I don’t think either of the first two season arcs ended the way they were meant to when they started. This one should hopefully be more cohesive.
Yes, a consistent showrunner at last. Hopefully, it will be noticeable in the season’s arc.
princessroxana @@@@@ 33:
Faster-than-light travel, aliens, and starships that can survive crashing on a planet without leaving the squishy organic lifeforms inside it a thin smear of paste on every available surface – I think the existence of weave shops in 3188 isn’t that much of a reach.
I know people who’ve tried to do box braids on their own heads; it’s taken days, and the back center is never as tight as when someone else does it.
@84/Epiphyta: Unfortunately, the montage at the start of “People of Earth” is hard to reconcile with hair extensions, since it shows Burnham’s hair getting longer over the passing months as if it were growing out naturally. Like I said, the clear narrative intent of her hair growth was to illustrate the passage of time, which doesn’t mesh with the idea that she just got fake extensions.
And now I am thinking about programmable matter hair extensions and am intrigued, having Bindi flashbacks and concerned about security issues all at once – can you imagine someone hacking your hair?
@85:
. . . I have natural hair myself, after decades of heat and chemical straightening, and I’m well aware of how much time it takes to grow out that sort of coil pattern: the point just before she’s shown with the shoulder-length braids is about right for a year’s worth of growth.
There are interesting discussions taking place elsewhere around what the hair choices mean for Burnham, with some speculating that she’s had the opportunity to explore parts of her Black human heritage that were suppressed by her Vulcan upbringing – or that after several months’ grow out while working as a courier, she’s realized that box braids mean all she has to do for six-eight weeks is put some gel on the edges. And that she can dramatically change her look at least every six to eight weeks – that much weight can cause damage – also useful for a courier who’s possibly dealing with less than savory sorts.
Anyway. Just offering a different possible interpretation, from a different perspective, which Trek is supposed to encourage.
Incidentally, going by the scheme used in the TNG-era shows, the stardate of Burnham’s log entry, 865211.3, would correspond to 3188 rather than 3189. (TNG started with the 41000s as 2364, so that adds 824 years x 1000 stardates/year.) Perhaps there have been some tweaks to the stardate system in the interim.
Perhaps stardates don’t take leap years into account. A stardate year could be defined as exactly 365 24 hour Earth days or an equivalent number of seconds or some such. After nearly 1000 years, the earth calendar and stardate calendar would no longer be in sync.