There’s a particular personality quirk to pilots that Star Trek hasn’t really done much with, despite having pilots in the main cast of most of their shows. It’s been better portrayed in other genre shows—notably, the Stargate franchise in O’Neill, Sheppard, and Mitchell—and we’ve had moments of it, particularly in TNG’s “Chain of Command, Part II” and occasionally on Voyager with Paris and Chakotay.
This week on Discovery, we get to see Detmer in her full pilot-y glory.
In the “previously on Star Trek: Discovery” segment of this week’s episode, they made sure to show how badly Detmer was handling the aftermath of Discovery’s crash landing. I was hoping this would mean Detmer’s PTSD would be dealt with—and also that it would be confirmed to be PTSD, as there were plenty of folks who believed that it was something else, like her cybernetic implants used to heal her after the Shenzhou’s battle damage malfunctioning.
Except that never made any kind of sense because Dr. Pollard had given her a once-over and said she was physically healthy. It made more sense for her to be issues to be psychological.
And she’s not the only one, though she’s the most extreme case because, as she herself eloquently puts it at the end of the episode, pilots are overburdened with machismo. The entire crew is a mess. Yes, they chose to travel nine centuries into the future, but that decision was made in the heat of a desperate battle with unbelievably huge stakes. Now that the battle is over and won, they now have to face the reality that they’re unimaginably far from their homes and loved ones.
Saru, to his credit, tries to deal with this. He asks Culber to medically examine the crew, and they’re all physically fit, but not so much psychologically. The captain brings the bridge crew to his quarters for dinner. It starts out well, with several of the crew trying their hand at haiku—which is a delightful scene. It’s Georgiou who starts it, and Culber’s screwup and Tilly’s counting out her syllables is particularly fun, though my favorite is Nhan’s utter confusion, as she has no idea what a haiku is.
Then it goes to shit when Detmer has an epic meltdown.
Not that she’s the only one, as her meltdown is primarily directed at Stamets. The Stamets who had mellowed from exposure to the spore drive, watching Culber die, and getting him back has been subsumed by the original-model, spectacularly obnoxious Stamets. To his credit, he eventually realizes it after Detmer tears him a new one, and he apologizes to Tilly for treating her like crap.
I love that Saru tried to get everyone to bond over a meal, and while it doesn’t go according to plan, it does have a positive effect eventually. Saru is still a scientist at heart, and he takes the same scientific-method approach to dealing with the crew’s issues that he took with his first time commanding Discovery back in “Choose Your Pain.” After Culber checks the crew and they have a good talk on the subject, he consults the computer.
The Sphere Data is apparently starting to impinge on the ship’s computer, and this could be a thing moving forward. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing will depend on how much Discovery wants to fall back on Trek‘s rather hoary tendency to vilify artificial intelligence. (Seen as recently as last season with Control, not to mention the AI ban in Picard.) For now, though, it’s a good thing, as it gives Saru the delightful idea of showing holographic re-creations of Buster Keaton films, which prove cathartic to a stressed crew.
Culber is beautifully used here, as he’s in a unique position, having died and come back. He’s already had everything he knows taken away from him in a much more devastating manner. It’s why he gives the advice to Saru he does, and also why he suggests that Burnham be the one to take Adira down to Trill.
Which brings us nicely to the actual A-plot and source of the title. Adira has a Trill symbiont inside her, but can’t access the symbiont’s memories beyond knowing that its name is Tal, and was once bonded with the Starfleet admiral who sent the message that led Discovery to Earth last week. Turns out that that’s not the only amnesia Adira is suffering from: she doesn’t remember anything that happened to her prior to a year ago..
So they go to Trill. “Forget Me Not” does an excellent job of re-creating the symbiont pools we saw on DS9’s “Equilibrium,” but where the 1994 episode looked like another reuse of a cave set the franchise had used a billion times already, Discovery makes the caves look much more like an alien landscape filled with wondrous beings.
Trill has fallen on hard times, as the symbionts are scattered throughout the galaxy and the Burn makes it difficult for many of them to travel home. They are, at first, thrilled with the return of Tal, but Adira’s inability to remember anything, as well as her not being Trill, are major points against her. Apparently, no non-Trill has successfully hosted a symbiont before. (We saw an unsuccessful example in the Trill’s first appearance in TNG’s “The Host.”) Some of those present wish to extract the symbiont by force from her, and while the planetary leader keeps that from happening, at least at first, Adira and Burnham are kicked offworld.
However, one failed ambush later, Burnham and Adira are led to the symbiont caves so Adira can go into the symbiont pools and try to reconnect with Tal.
The journey Adira goes on—aided by Burnham who has to help her get past the fear—is fascinating. In a nice twist, Adira did not get the symbiont from the admiral, as was a natural assumption. Her lover, Gray, was a Trill who received the symbiont after the admiral died, but then Gray died in a horrible accident. Adira volunteered to host the symbiont to keep Tal from dying.
The Trill themselves come around to Adira hosting Tal, especially once she is able to name all her previous hosts. (I love that ritual, as the Trill muckitymucks ask Adira what her names are, wanting to make sure that the current host remembers all the prior ones.) This is predicated on the fact that not every Trill can host a symbiont, and there aren’t enough viable hosts on Trill post-Burn for all the symbionts. But if aliens can host them…
My only issue here is that “Equilibrium”—the very episode that gave us our first look at the Trill homeworld and the symbiont caves—established that fifty percent of Trills were biologically capable of hosting symbionts. Of course, a lot may have changed in the eight hundred years of story time that have elapsed since “Equilibrium” as well…
This is a superb episode, with some magnificent performances up and down the line. We start with Doug Jones’ earnestness in portraying Saru trying to help his crew and sadness that he’s not as successful as he’d like. (His lament that Captain Pike made it look so easy to lead the crew was particularly well delivered.) Mary Wiseman is delightfully knowing as awkward dinners were the norm in the Tilly household, while Anthony Rapp beautifully plays a Stamets who is retreating to old patterns in an attempt to reclaim normalcy in a situation that is as far from normal as possible. Sonequa Martin-Green does great work as Adira’s advocate, bodyguard, and mentor, keeping her on track to get her memories back.
But the standouts here are Emily Coutts as Detmer, Blu del Barrio as Adira, and especially Ian Alexander as Gray. Coutts makes Detmer’s pain and suffering real and visceral when she loses it at the captain’s dinner table, especially given how blank-faced and remote she’d been in the episode prior to that.
And del Barrio and Alexander give us a magnificent romance in an impressively short time, aided by a tight script by staffers Alan McElroy, Chris Silvestri, and Anthony Maranville and brilliant directing by Hanelle Culpepper. Alexander’s infectious joy and del Barrio’s loving confusion and worry combine to invest the viewer in their relationship, and it nails you right in the heart when Gray is mortally wounded.
Discovery has been doubling down on Star Trek’s historic commitment to trying to represent all of humanity. In the 1960s, that just meant actually including people in the crew who weren’t white males, which was the right way to start. In this episode, we not only have our first non-white Trill (seriously, all the Trill we ever saw on DS9, as well as TNG episodes and movies, were white), but also the non-binary del Barrio and the trans Alexander.
The person who now fully identifies as Adira Tal is offered the opportunity to stay on Trill, but instead chooses to stay on Discovery (because del Barrio has a contract to be in more than two episodes, obviously). And Adira is still seeing images of Gray even after leaving the symbiont pools, which is worrying. Trill have done this kind of thing before (cf. DS9‘s “Field of Fire“), but it required an extensive ritual. That it’s happening naturally is a bit odd, and while it’s great to see more of Alexander’s Gray, I hope this doesn’t cause more problems for Adira.
Keith R.A. DeCandido discussed last week’s Supernatural episode as part of the Dragon Con Urban Fantasy Track’s ongoing weekly look at the final episodes of that show, alongside Gail Z. Martin, Beth Dolgner, Damian Allen, Kristin Jackson, and moderator Carol Malcolm.
Keith, you’re wrong about non-white Trill. We saw at least two in DS9, though they were Trill-Klingon hybrids in “Children of Time,” the descendants of Jadzia and Worf. There was also Sarah in Short Treks: “The Trouble with Edward” and the Trill doctor with the really long name on the Borg cube in Picard: “Maps and Legends.”
Wow. This was probably the best Trek episode I’ve seen since DS9. It was superb, both the effective and authentic use of the concepts surrounding the Trill (it’s great that they’re free to use TNG-era worldbuilding at last) and the fantastic character interplay on the ship. I think this show has finally found itself.
Interesting how they subtly wove around past continuity. Discovery didn’t know about Riker joining with a Trill, since it was after their time. And the Trill said it had never been done successfully, so that fits. Nice that they didn’t make a point of mentioning Riker specifically; that would’ve been too on-the-nose, as it was 700 years before and there have probably been other attempts since.
The “let the tendrils connect to face the memories” bit was a little facile, but beautifully rendered. It’s the first time I’ve really liked something this show’s CGI artists created.
Apparently the voice of the Sphere AI is Zora (Annabelle Wallis) from Short Treks: “Calypso.”
Adira is non binary. The proper pronouns are they/them even if the physically Adira appears to present as female.
Charles: I struggled with that, but the scripts have consistently referred to Adira as “she.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@2/Charles: Adira has not yet adopted non-binary pronouns. Blu del Barrio has explained this in interviews:
https://www.etonline.com/star-trek-discovery-blu-del-barrio-on-playing-franchises-first-non-binary-character-exclusive
“Because I wasn’t yet fully out to a lot of my family and some of my friends still, I didn’t feel comfortable right off the bat having everyone use they/them pronouns for Adira because I wasn’t out to everyone yet. So I wanted to wait until really I was, until I was in a place where I could talk to my family and my friends and tell them who I was. At that point I could then feel that this is now an accurate way for me to represent Adira onscreen as well because I’m there too.”
Presumably Adira will begin using they/them later in the season, but at this point in the story, she still identifies as “she.”
It occurre to me that this is DSC’s “Family.” It stands out for this show because there’s very little action in it — just a brief confrontation with the Trill guardians and the asteroid impact in Adira’s memories. It’s almost entirely character-driven, and that’s what makes it so special.
Oh, one more non-canonical example of a non-white Trill host: IDW’s Waypoint anthology comic has a story depicting Dax’s former hosts (popping up like Gray did here to give her advice and encouragement, which isn’t how it works but could be taken as symbolic), and it appeared to depict Emony Dax as black:
Although Emony’s portrayal in the novel Discovery: Die Standing does not agree.
notably, the Stargate franchise in O’Neill, Sheppard, and Mitchell
This is an utterly trivial side-point, but do we know if O’Neill was primarily a pilot? He’s flight qualified, but I always assumed he spent most or all of his pre-SGC time in a USAF special-forces ground unit (air rescue, forward air control, or something like that.)
bmac: O’Neill still has a pilot’s personality, and they did use him to test their first attempt at a human/Goa’uld hybrid plane in “Tangent,” which you wouldn’t do with someone who wasn’t an ace pilot…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
You know, I can’t see Star Trek pilots as pilots. There’s just something missing without the steering wheel/stick. Touching a screen is not at all exciting. It’s almost like they’re just IT specialists…
Fantastic episode. I really love the sets/CGI in today’s modern Trek shows. This episode, in particular, was just beautiful.
-8-
Yes, it must be hard for the actors playing the pilots to make what they’re doing look exciting. At least the pilots of boats and ships have the physicality of turning the big wheel.
The only time I can recall that sort of physical piloting in Star Trek is the episode with Sisko’s sailing space ship. And you can briefly see the pilot of the Bird of Prey in Undiscovered Country turning a wheel. Oh yes, and the flight stick in Insurrection.
@2 – The proper way to refer to the non-binary Adira is whatever way Adira choses for themselves. That’s the entire point. Telling someone non-binary that they are wrong to refer to themselves as she is just as wrong as telling someone that they cannot or should not refer to themselves as they. It’s a personal choice.
I got a business card from the manager of my bank the other day and after their name they indicated their preferred pronouns. She’s a straight female but the bank now included each persons preferred pronouns on their business cards. It’s called progress.
Very good episode with some rich characterization. We finally get a slice of Culber’s day as he makes his rounds. His professional side has been underdeveloped. He was more the other guy in a couple till now. He makes a case for why starships need a counselor. His warmth in talking to everyone showed a better “bedside” manner than other prominent doctors in prior series, except perhaps Dr. Crusher. It was past time the show looked at the trauma experienced by the crew.
Loved the dinner scene. A lot happens between social beings at a meal. This needs to continue. Perhaps Saru can emulate Archer in that regard. The Captain’s mess is important in many naval stories. He also emulates Archer with movie night for the crew, or was that more of a Trip thing? In any case, even a thousand years in the future, they still watch media that’s in the public domain in the 21st century.
We hear Zora from “Calypso” for the first time. Love that development and am beyond ready for ST to drop it’s previous anti-AI stance. With Picard now an android and Zora as a benevolent AI, we’re getting a more nuanced view. Technology isn’t inherently bad (oh no! Skynet is coming! lets ban all research into AI!), it’s how it’s used.
Can we have the bridge crew’s names being used more often please? Most of them are familiar faces by now, but few speak. I still don’t know not-Airiam’s name off-hand. She’s included in the group and had some shots framed on her, so…
That dinner again. Georgiou’s Fleabag look into the camera. Awesome.
Watched Jessie Gender’s review of this episode on Youtube. She mentioned that the asteroid hitting the generation ship could be viewed as a Bury Your Gays trope. Gray isn’t gone, but he’s not alive either. Didn’t the damned thing have a deflector dish? Defense phaser net for stray objects in space? Seemed too convenient a way to immediately kill a character we’d just met. Also, wasn’t the admiral on Earth? How did Gray get the symbiont if he was on a long distance trip? Doesn’t quite line up for me. One quibble: referring to the Trill S as a squid? It’s visually a slug.
I loved the Adira/Gray story. Truly romantic. As Jessie said, the quilt is a perfect representation of their relationship. Also got a bit of Lower Decks vibe when Adira mentioned how they screwed up the replicator to only make apples.
The other quibbles: Liked seeing the planet Trill, but it’s representatives were uh… very simply presented. They were actually color coded. Yellow – hardline/bad; red – compassionate/good; white – neutral. It’s not the point of the episode to explore Trill society, with no time given all the other things packed in. But still, I want more worldbuilding from this series. It is literally a slow burn explaining about the Burn.
Last quibble: I will never stop complaining about the imprecise use of the word “decimated.” (Reminds me of the time Thanos “decimated” half the universe.) Language is malleable and mutable. This word has drifted into use to replace the perfectly useful “destroyed” or “devastated.” Trill society was decimated because 10% of their people were on spaceships that exploded during the Burn? They make it sound worse than that. It seems like an existential crisis for them: the symbionts don’t have enough Trill hosts to receive them.
Next episode: we finally meet the remnants of the Federation, with the great Oded Fehr as an admiral.
@11/Sunspear: “Can we have the bridge crew’s names being used more often please? Most of them are familiar faces by now, but few speak. I still don’t know not-Airiam’s name off-hand. She’s included in the group and had some shots framed on her, so…”
I think you mean Lt. Nilsson.
“Didn’t the damned thing have a deflector dish? Defense phaser net for stray objects in space?”
It was a generation ship. Those things have a tendency to break down over time, as documented in many works of fiction.
“Also, wasn’t the admiral on Earth?”
Twelve years ago. This was one year ago.
“Also got a bit of Lower Decks vibe when Adira mentioned how they screwed up the replicator to only make apples.”
I still crack up every time I think of “Banana, hot. Banana, hot.”
“They were actually color coded. Yellow – hardline/bad; red – compassionate/good; white – neutral.”
Seemed more like yellow — security (naturally defensive), red — Guardians (naturally solicitous of the symbionts), and white — leader (hopefully open to both sides).
And I liked how it managed to encapsulate a complex societal debate through three characters representing the different points of view. It was efficient. It’s better than having all of them think or act the same way.
“Next episode: we finally meet the remnants of the Federation, with the great Oded Fehr as an admiral.”
Oded Fehr! I knew I recognized him, but I couldn’t place him.
Having a DIS episode that uses a conventional Trek techniques of parallel plots and ensemble dialogue is such a relief, IMHO.
* A plot, unlock Tal: Burnham, Adira, guest stars. Burnham’s advice to Adira casts light on her own feelings.
* B plot, crew-sized PTSD: Culber and Detmer, Saru and the senior staff sans Burnham. (Linus is included, but not Reno.)
* C plot, update the spore drive: Stamets, Tilly.
* D plot, the Sphere Data reveals itself.
I paid close attention to the rank pips on the DIS crew. Saru has four, Burnham three, Dr. Culber three (impossible to tell if one is a half-pip) and Dr. Pollard two (so she’s not the CMO).
There was some audience-concern with ep 3.02 “are they out of shuttles, that Saru and Tilly hoofed it?” but they definitely have at least one (it’s marked “DSC 31” although the PA system says “Shuttle Three”). To travel to Trill, it’s odd that they use a shuttle instead of the transporter — maybe it facilitated a wider-angle establishing shot?
Lots of drones working on the hull, and our first(?) scene with one indoors, in the shuttlebay. Using the shuttlebay for movie night (especially with the hatch wide open, as seen in the final shot — the greyscale movie holo-field is visible (yay, HDTV)) seems wildly dangerous. There aren’t any other compartments capacious enough to seat a reduced crew of 80-ish — cargo bays?
We get a second ep in a row with sober cinematography (non-nauseous good) — except during the “inside Adira’s mind” sequence, which you want to look off-kilter (contrast good) — but this show has gone all-in with “outside the windows, space is always sun-bright, not space-dark.” It strains credulity that every scene happens to be on the sunny side of the ship, but I guess we have to count this as part of the show’s styling and mood.
@CLB: “It was a generation ship. Those things have a tendency to break down over time, as documented in many works of fiction” plus “Twelve years ago. This was one year ago.”
If the admiral left earth 12 years ago, that’s a bad maintenance crew and/or shipbuilding. Scotty and O’Brien and Trip and B’Elanna would like a word. Breakdown over a hundred plus years, maybe; a dozen, not so much.
Add to that: somehow Adira is back on earth as an inspector one year after being joined to Tal, when she was supposedly outward bound on a generation ship… no fast travel… and… no, math not add up.
@14/Sunspear: I don’t think they said the ship was launched from Earth. I’m assuming Tal boarded it at some point along its journey, maybe as it passed near Earth.
“Add to that: somehow Adira is back on earth as an inspector one year after being joined to Tal, when she was supposedly outward bound on a generation ship… no fast travel… and… no, math not add up.”
Some ships have fast travel, others don’t. Remember, dilithium is very scarce now. Those with access to dilithium, like Earth, can travel at warp. Those without dilithium are stuck at sublight. As is usually the case, the wealth is unevenly distributed.
@13. philip: I forgot about the “dark matter interface” to the spore drive. That’s some next-level technobabble right there.
STO is going to have to introduce some more Tilly gear. Her shield array, still “review pending,” is the best available in game. She’s still an ensign, but can we make her Chief Engineer already? Do we even know who the Chief is?
I cried a lot in this episode. Adira and Gray were wonderful. This might be the first not Enterprise moment of Discovery that invoked pure nostalgia. I only saw the episode on Trill once, but I was instantly aware that those pools were the exact same ones, excellent work. I perceived the tendrils reaching for Adira as nerves, trying to connect to their brains, it’s actually very eerie. I get why it terrifies her, but I also figured out that they were trying to communicate by touching her as soon as she complained about while standing still. And that moment when she gave her names, and the look of hope and rejoicing that washed over the Trill was spectacular.
You feel bad for her, as the trauma of losing Gray basically kept her from getting Gray back. She was too scared to relive that memory and it blocked all of her memories. Intense and logical.
I know it’s not unusual for Burnham to be a bad ass, but her dealing with the Trill trying to assassinate them so smoothly and then stunning him with the simple “fine”. That’s how I write a main character and I’m down with it.
I love how Georgiou gets annoyed by the fact that she is finding it more and more difficult to refuse kindness from the rest of the crew. “At least the wine was good.“
@4/ChristopherLBennett
Oh My God…this IS Discovery’s “Family” that’s high praise, Family is one of my absolute favorite TNG episodes…also, made me cry. Despite the limited action on the ground this is an episode focused on the relationships of the crew.
KRAD I’m surprised you didn’t recognize Zora. Frankly I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop on that Sphere Data achieving sapience within Discovery’s computer for what? A year and nine months now?
I liked it. I liked it a lot. Great Star Trek episode, revisiting a popular species, focusing on our character’s relationships. A+
@CLB: true enough. We don’t know the details of Tal’s journey. Still, that’s some convenient flitting around with a Plot Drive.
@16/Sunspear: “I forgot about the “dark matter interface” to the spore drive. That’s some next-level technobabble right there.”
I’m not a fan of sci-fi having characters in the future talk about “dark matter” that way, because I realized a long time ago — and by chance, I just heard the same idea expressed in the Doctor Who audio Song of the Megaptera — that “dark matter” is just a name we use for something we haven’t identified yet, like “terra incognita.” Once we know what it is, e.g. axions or lots of little black holes, we’ll call it that.
@17/Mr. D: What I meant about the tendrils is that it’s kind of a simplistic hurdle for a character to overcome if they just have to stand still and let something happen. Generally in these psychological journeys to unlock buried secrets, you expect the characters to have to do more work to earn a breakthrough. Here, once Adira moved beyond fear, the answers were just handed to her.
And yes, the “state your names” ritual was a nice, plausible addition to Trill culture, and the payoff was effective.
@19 – We already know what Trek Dark Matter is. It’s something that can form nebulas that block all sensors. Voyager gave us that one. No connection with “our” dark matter. Much like how Futurama’s dark matter is Niblonian droppings.
^It’s not about knowing, it’s about approving. Trek is far from the only work of science fiction that has characters in the future still use the term “dark matter,” and what I’m saying is that that’s unrealistic if you think it through, because once we identify dark matter, we won’t use that placeholder name for it anymore. That Doctor Who audio is the one story I’ve come across so far that recognized that — or at least nodded at it while still using the term anyway.
Star Trek: Discovery, thank you so much for the hour that I didn’t spend worrying about the US election! Seriously. It’s been an awful couple of days, and I SO needed that break from it all.
I loved Wilson Cruz in this; I hope we’ll see a lot more of Dr. Culber’s attending to the crew’s emotional needs. I loved the otherworldly weirdness of the Trill cave scenes; it made flashbacks seem even more interesting than they already were.
What a beautiful hour both visually, emotionally and storytelling. It was pure Trek. All too often Disco has “gone big”- so much that I remember feeling exhausted by it in Season One. I think my exact line was “Can we stop at planet exposition and catch our breath.” This was that episode. It’s on par with Family, the Inner Light and The Visitor. There are no real stakes- the ship isn’t threatened and except for a quick attack, no one is in danger (there’s not even a miner trapped off screen). But it was a story about people who are hurting, as so many of us are
It was also successful in moving our arc forward- Our crew got their next destination and the next clue in their mystery but that’s almost irrelevant.
I was impressed by the continuity from DS9’s trill episodes. We knew those caves immediately but as KRAD said it felt bigger and more fantastic (isn’t technology and money wonderful?) The invasion of the body snatcher tendrils might have been a little too on the nose, but outside of that it felt like we were going back to a place we had been to before plus 800 years. It was
It was a good episode, but not as good as the previous one. I liked the idea of the episode, the themes and many beats, but not the execution. I felt it was too centered on Adira, a new character (even I like her), and left little time to explore the crew we already know, even if they tried. I did love their use of Culber.
And while I appreciate Gray’s inclusion, and his interaction with Adira; the “seeing someone who’s not physically there” is too much like Tilly’s “imaginary friend” from last season.
That said, their scenes together were very touching.
@11 – Sunspear: Yeah, I’m a bit put off by the fact that the trans character they touted so loudly in publicity is actually a ghost. (And yes, the replicator apple thing reminded me of “banana, hot” from LD.)
@19: Splitting the atom is a contradiction in terms: since we are able to do that, it’s clear that atoms are not “that which cannot be split” as the name implies. Yet we never changed the name, because that’s what we’ve always been using. Similarly, unless we discover that dark matter is actually something we already knew, we won’t have a better word for it, so I don’t expect it to change.
@24/MaGnUs: “I felt it was too centered on Adira, a new character “
Isn’t that exactly what you’d expect of a new regular, though? Ezri Dax got a focus episode right after the 2-parter that introduced her. Seven of Nine had featured B-plots in several of the first few episodes after her intro (except “Nemesis,” which was postponed a week because she wasn’t in it). Worf got a whole 2-parter centered on him when he joined DS9.
“and left little time to explore the crew we already know, even if they tried.”
I felt just the opposite — this is the most character development the bridge crew has gotten so far, since it’s the first time we’ve really gotten to see them off duty.
“Yeah, I’m a bit put off by the fact that the trans character they touted so loudly in publicity is actually a ghost.”
Rather, a persona within the symbiont. A joined Trill is essentially multiple people sharing a body and mind. We’ve seen how the zhian’tara ritual can separate those individual personalities out from the merged collective. Basically, Gray Tal is still alive within Adira Tal. They’re both real people, coexisting within a single body.
@25/Athreeren: “Similarly, unless we discover that dark matter is actually something we already knew, we won’t have a better word for it”
Huh? That doesn’t make sense. Science predicts and theorizes many things we don’t already know to exist, and it names them so that we can talk about the theories and predictions. We already do have names for the various candidate particles for dark matter, such as axions or WIMPs (though the latter have been pretty much ruled out). When and if we confirm that dark matter consists of, say, axions, then we’ll call them axions. If we find that it’s actually sterile neutrinos, we’ll call them sterile neutrinos. If it’s actually primordial black holes, we’ll call them primordial black holes.
I suppose it’s possible that the term “dark matter” could continue in vernacular use or casual conversation, or maybe as a generic descriptor if there are multiple types, but I think actual scientists talking about it and how to utilize it in technology would be more specific.
@26 – Chris: I’m not saying centering episodes on new characters hasn’t been done (then again, Dax and Worf are not exactly “new”), just that I would have preferred they hadn’t gone this way. Discovery has considerable less episodes per season than DS9, as well.
And as for Gray, you do not have to explain to me how Trills are, thank you. There is still a huge difference in having a trans character that’s a flesh and blood person that is out and about, interacting with the rest of the crew.
And I know I’m not the only one who is a bit disappointed that they made their non-cis characters two characters joined with an alien that contains multiple people of different gender. Showing trans and NB people as just people that exist without alien intervention would have been much better for what it communicates to the real world.
I’m not saying it’s not good to have the representation we have, but that it could be better. YMMV.
Well, to be fair, Gray was already trans before he was implanted with a symbiont.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I just think it’s sweet and romantic that these two lovers are literally united as a single being, sharing a single body. It’s the ultimate in a committed relationship, the actual realization of the ideal of two souls becoming one. And it’s between two people who both transcend conventional assumptions about who should be allowed to join in a committed relationship. I think that makes a very positive statement in itself.
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the dinner with the “senior officers” failed to include the chief engineer (which Stamets it’s not) and the CMO (which Culber is not). Also, we need more on Lt. Nilsson. I think we know the least about her and she’s apparently 3rd in command after Saru and Burnham (we see her several times in the Chair when neither of them are there).
With that said, I’m loving this season so far. They seem to have found the sweet spot with having a season long story arc with self contained stories in each episode. Can’t wait for Oded Fehr next week!
@31/Jason: Saru said he gathered these specific people because they were the ones who worked most closely together. It was about community, not rank. Which is a very Saru way to approach it. (Although of course, yes, it was because these are the main characters.)
Oh, and the gray haired man behind the holo display at the end is David Cronenberg!
@29 – krad: Yes, I understand that, but I’m still concerned about the overall message this projects.
@30 – Chris: I think it’s horrifying to lose individuality and privacy like that.
Well, that’s 4 good episodes in a row. Keep it up Discovery! I liked the in-depth look at Adira specifically and Trill culture in general. Sonequa is the star obviously and she still had an important presence in this episode but it’s also nice when the spotlight is spread around more like it was in TNG-era Trek. I was surprised that Gray was “killed off” so quickly but I guess we’ll see how his character is used as a “ghost” moving forward. It does remind me a lot of how Tilly had her dead friend appear to her back in the second season and also when Culber was dead and appeared to Stamets in the first season. And unfortunately this continues the unfortunate trope of “kill the LGBT character” so that they don’t have romantic relationships.
I think we all just witnessed the emergence of Zora on Discovery so it’s cool that we are now getting our first link to the Short Trek “Calypso.” Looking forward to seeing how this story element progresses.
When those certain Trill “fanatics” wanted to remove Tal from Adira it reminded me horrifyingly of those real-life crime stories of pregnant women who are cut open alive and murdered to get at their unborn babies. Obviously I’m glad we didn’t see that happen to Adira but I did wonder if their methods of extraction were going to be particularly bloody.
The main crew dinner scene was very uncomfortable and awkward but of course that was the intention of the scene. But Detmer looked seriously disturbed and unhinged and I was a bit shocked that no one there took a more proactive measure to see that she gets psychiatric help immediately rather than wait for her to ask for it. But at least she did do the latter after she recognized she needed it.
@31: It was interesting that Jett Reno wasn’t included in the dinner since she seemed to work closely with a lot of the other main characters. And while I get that Michelle Yeoh is a star of the series, I find it a bit hard to believe that her character would be invited to a nice intimate friendly dinner given her quite antagonistic personality not to mention the little fact she’s a mass murderer. But whatever!
@34/MaGnUs: “I think it’s horrifying to lose individuality and privacy like that.”
Did you feel that way about Dax? Because that’s what Trill symbiosis is, pretty much. See also Nancy Hedford and the Companion.
If the parties involved are content with the nature of their relationship, as Adira and Gray are, then you don’t get to say it’s wrong just because you wouldn’t choose it for yourself. Isn’t that the whole point?
@35/garreth: I still don’t agree that Gray is dead. He just lost his body. His consciousness is alive and well in Adira Tal.
The only issue that I had with this episode is that it didn’t make sense to me that the Trill sent Michael Burnam after Adira. Seemed to me that it would make sense that another Trill would go after her since they initially didn’t want Adira to go in the caves because she would taint it.
Other than that this was another great episode! Love all the new Star Trek shows so far!
@37/publius75: Burnham was the only person present that Adira knew or had any personal connection with. I assume that’s why it had to be her, since the rescue effort was on the mental plane. It’s like in Voyager: “Flashback” where the Vulcan ritual to recover a buried memory required a guide who was a family member or close friend of the subject, someone they would trust implicitly and who understood how their mind worked.
Besides, the Guardians are the ones with the authority over the symbiont pools, and the Guardian was the one who okayed Adira going in. So it follows that he wouldn’t have objected to Burnham going either. Others may have objected, but it wasn’t their call to make.
Quite enjoyed this one. There was good character stuff for everyone, more for some less for others. Nice getting to know the command crew a bit better. Very smooth integration of lore which, I have to admit, Disco hasn’t always been so good at.
The episode also washed away the concern I had about Adira becoming annoying, being a teen genius and all that, but del Barrio pulls off the scared kid beautifully. Nothing like vulnerability to endear a character to you.
In addition, as to the Detmer situation, I want to note that pushing people to take psychological help doesn’t work. A person has to (a) admit they have a problem and (b) be willing to be helped in order for it to have an impact. Being too forceful can actually be counter-productive and drive a person further from aid.
Sadly I was underwhelmed by the episode but Detmer during the dinner was brilliant acting and so amazing to watch. For once someone acting out of character isn’t a duplicate or foreign entity taking over their body. I hope this is developed fully and not just cured with a magical hypospray.
What I don’t understand is that the episode asked how Adira was so well versed in 23rd century tech but when she named her Tal hosts she named, what, 5? Either the hosts of Dax have bad luck or Tal should have a few more hosts to its name.
Despite my view of this episode – I am liking this season.
@35 – garreth: Given the reverence even Trill fanatics have for the symbiotes, as well as future technology; I doubt they’d use bloody extraction methods.
@36 – Chris: I don’t really see the Trill symbiote connection with their past hosts as the same as having an actual person speaking to you, more like you become a person who is a blend of all past hosts and the symbiote.
As for the relationship, I said I think it’s horrifying. Emphasis on it being my opinion for myself.
And yes, Gray doesn’t seem to be dead, just bodyless… but it still means that TV LGBTQ characters hardly get to have relationships without intense tragedies happening in most cases.
41/magnus: True, it probably wouldn’t be bloody in the Star Trek universe but the reflexive reaction for the audience (not to mention Adira) would be to recoil in shock and horror at a group of armed people confronting you and telling you they are going to remove by force a living being within you that you don’t want removed. And Adira and Burnham only just met these Trill so in their minds they don’t know how humane or not they’d be when it comes to extraction methods.
@40/JLP: “What I don’t understand is that the episode asked how Adira was so well versed in 23rd century tech but when she named her Tal hosts she named, what, 5? Either the hosts of Dax have bad luck or Tal should have a few more hosts to its name.”
I’d think someone who was an expert in centuries-more-advanced technology could be able to handle 23rd-century stuff. It’s not like tech has gone backward.
Let’s see, Dax had eight hosts in 300 years, which is an average of 37.5 years per host, but Torias and Joran had very short lives, so it’s closer to 50 years per host. And Curzon was a host for close to 80 years, so let’s call that an upper expectation. That would give about 400 years as a maximum for Tal, extending back to the 28th century, about midway to Discovery‘s time.
“I don’t really see the Trill symbiote connection with their past hosts as the same as having an actual person speaking to you, more like you become a person who is a blend of all past hosts and the symbiote.”
Normally it isn’t, but it is the nature of this specific relationship. The fact that it’s unconventional doesn’t invalidate it.
“As for the relationship, I said I think it’s horrifying. Emphasis on it being my opinion for myself.”
Which is a complete non sequitur when talking about whether a relationship between two other people is romantic. The only thing that matters is how it makes them feel.
“but it still means that TV LGBTQ characters hardly get to have relationships without intense tragedies happening in most cases.”
But my point is that this is different from those cases because the couple is still together. The reason “bury your gays” is a bad thing is because it doesn’t let the characters have lasting relationships at all, or implies that they’re being punished for having them. Here, the relationship actually transcended physical death and became even more intimate, committed, and permanent than most relationships. I think that inverts the trope rather than perpetuating it.
I think dark matter will still be called dark matter regardless of whether its constitution becomes better defined. Its salient characteristics are that it moves at sub-light velocity and interacts with the gravitational but not the electromagnetic field – thus it is matter, and dark.
We don’t call ordinary matter ‘atoms’, after all.
@35: garreth: “And while I get that Michelle Yeoh is a star of the series, I find it a bit hard to believe that her character would be invited to a nice intimate friendly dinner given her quite antagonistic personality not to mention the little fact she’s a mass murderer.”
Plus, she ate Kelpiens as a delicacy back in the mirror realm. It’s a good thing Saru doesn’t know that. Or does he?!
@44/Gerry_Quinn: “We don’t call ordinary matter ‘atoms’, after all.”
That analogy is the wrong way around. The point is that we aren’t limited to calling atoms ordinary matter. When we want to talk about their specific nature for scientific purposes, we call them by their actual names because we know what they are. Laypeople use the word “air,” yes, but a scientist talking about an oxidation reaction would call the substance molecular oxygen, because it would be ridiculous to call it air in that context. A scene like this, where scientists in the future are talking about harnessing and utilizing dark matter in practical terms but still calling it by its vague “here be dragons” placeholder name, strikes me as implausible.
I mean, if you set aside its familiarity and really take a critical look at it, “dark matter” is a pretty dumb name, about on a par with “Red Matter.” It’s just so handwavey and unspecific. It could mean practically anything. Technically, we are dark matter, because we’re nonluminous (except in infrared) and would not be observable through optical telescopes except by reflected light. It’s incredibly generic, a term we only use for lack of alternatives. I don’t believe it’s useful enough to survive once we actually are able to talk about what the stuff actually is. I think scientists in the future will look back on it as quaint, the way we look at Terra Incognita on old maps.
Besides, it’s always unwise to assume that the usages our generation takes for granted are guaranteed to persist for all time to come. To people 80 years ago, a “computer” was a clerical worker, usually female, who performed the busywork of mathematical computations to assist scientists and engineers, or else it was a handheld, cardboard or metal slide rule-type device that you could slide or rotate pieces on as a shortcut for performing certain specific types of calculation. “Gay” meant light and carefree, or heterosexually libertine and licentious. Words change their meaning, or fall out of use altogether.
@Magnus: I don’t want to speak for you, but perhaps what we’re dealing with here is the difference between spiritual love and carnal love. Spiritual love is romantical and it fits with the dreamy quality in which the Gray/Adira relationship has been presented. Perhaps it fits with their ages (dunno how far YA stories go with this kind of thing). But all physicality has been removed. That’s the tragedy. These two will never again be able to touch each other as lovers, unless they pull a twist and bring Gray back in a body.
I do see the relationship presented as romantic, but mindfucking is just half the equation (roughly speaking). Does this render the relationship safer for a mainstream audience? I’m not qualified to answer that.
Just rewatched Ladyhawke recently. There’s some connection to that story where the lovers can never occupy the same space as human bodies. The spiritual romantic love continues, but the bishop’s curse denies them physical love entirely.
Two quibbles: first, while this was the first episode that didn’t make space feel either too big or too small (episodes one and two had ships crashing into things which is hard because space is big and three didn’t seem to get the size of the solar system right), time was a bit screwed up as Saru just put on a dinner while Michael and Adira were away and they didn’t seem to be gone for that long yet.
Adira and Gray were adorable and of course the fluff has to be balanced out by tragedy. I really hope the show explores what it’s like to have your boyfriend in your head. I could wish it had been done with older characters though, I feel like youth will complicate those kinds of stories.
Detmer’s breakdown was great. Nice to see pilot’s ego and machismo in action. It made me think of astronauts from Kowal’s The Relentless Moon. “Nic PTSD, where’d you get it?” “Fighting off endless waves of living shrubs while I was gardening.”
I’m not entirely sure the writers remembered that it was established that compatibility with symbionts was reasonably common. On the one hand, they say they no longer have enough potential hosts; one the other hand, it’s easy to infer Trill got hammered badly enough to lose that much of their population. Though it appears there will be at least two kinds of responses to a call for non-Trill hosts.
@35: ““And while I get that Michelle Yeoh is a star of the series, I find it a bit hard to believe that her character would be invited to a nice intimate friendly dinner given her quite antagonistic personality not to mention the little fact she’s a mass murderer.””
Keep your friends close; your enemies closer and loose phaser cannons like the empress the closest of all.
Do you REALLY want her loose and manipulating the crew?
@48: “compatibility with symbionts was reasonably common”
The key word here is “WAS”. Could be a side effect of The Burn. Or The Burn triggered a mutation or disease that drastically lowered compatibility (and it WOULD be ironic if that mutation allowed more extra-species compatibility).
@45: Oh, he knows. “Many find me simply unpalatable.”
@47/Sunspear: “These two will never again be able to touch each other as lovers, unless they pull a twist and bring Gray back in a body.”
I don’t think that’s true. Gray isn’t literally a ghost, but a persona within the brain of the symbiont within Adira’s body, directly connected to Adira’s nervous system. Indeed, at the end, we did see Gray image touching Adira, kissing her and guiding her hands to play the cello. Not only does that imply that Adira’s hallucination of Gray is tactile as well as visual, but it implies that Gray can take motor control of Adira’s hands and feel what they feel. So I believe both consciousnesses can still experience the sensation of touching one another, although Gray would be feeling Adira’s actual body through Adira’s hands, while Adira would be experiencing a hallucination based on her tactile memories.
@CLB: “while Adira would be experiencing a hallucination based on her tactile memories.”
The cello scene plays like a reference/reproduction of the scene in Ghost with Swayze guiding Moore’s hands while making pottery. …which can be and has been parodied.
We do know that a previous host can take over the bodily functions of a current one. But no, that is not carnal love. Neither is actually touching the other. It’s simply being mediated by the symbiont’s memory. As far as we know… there may be some weirdness there yet to be revealed.
For now, Gray as a persona stored in a slug’s memory (how much storage capacity do they have anyway?) is a far cry from the living Gray.
@cap: I missed that! That’s brilliant!
@52/Sunspear: “We do know that a previous host can take over the bodily functions of a current one. But no, that is not carnal love. Neither is actually touching the other. It’s simply being mediated by the symbiont’s memory.”
When it comes to Adira perceiving Gray’s physicality, that’s correct. But in the other direction, Gray touching Adira through Adira’s own hands, it absolutely is physically real. It is incorrect to dismiss masturbation as a legitimate form of sexual activity. It is, if anything, the most frequently practiced sexual activity of all.
After all, the symbiont’s brain is inside the host’s body, one with its nervous system, no less so than the host’s own brain. That’s the whole point — that both brains share the body equally, that all the consciousnesses of symbiont and host are together within it. So Gray’s perception of Adira’s body is 100% as real and physical as Adira’s own perception thereof, because both brains are literally, physically inside that body. There is no meaningful difference.
Indeed, since they both occupy the same body, it’s incorrect to say they can’t feel each other’s bodies. It just means that Adira’s body is Gray’s body now too. It belongs just as validly to both of them. We can’t be trapped by our conventional assumptions of what defines a relationship, or what defines a sexually fulfilling relationship. There are countless permutations of that, even more when you throw in sci-fi possibilities. It’s frustrating to me that we’re talking about a relationship between a trans masculine person and a non-binary person, yet still making the kneejerk assumption that our pre-existing expectations about sexuality and relationships are absolute and unquestionable, and that we’re entitled to judge anything outside those limits as unreal or wrong. We should know better.
@43/CLB: We saw one of Tal’s hosts wearing a circa-2399 uniform à la Captain Riker. Either Starfleet kept that uniform style for far longer than the monster maroons, or Tal was around in the 25th century.
@55/Grey the earthling: Good catch. So either there have been some serious advances in Trill host longevity since Dax’s time, or one of the hosts skipped over centuries through time travel or cryogenic suspension.
@43/ChristopherLBennett “I’d think someone who was an expert in centuries-more-advanced technology could be able to handle 23rd-century stuff. It’s not like tech has gone backward.”
During DS9’s Trials and Tribble-ations O’Brien himself said that he couldn’t comprehend 23rd century technology and he was only 80 years from that time period. In addition the previous episode specifically had Stamets act surprised at Adira’s ability to handle 23rd century technology; as such I interpreted this that Adira was able to do so due to her symbiont’s knowledge.
However host longevity as you previously mentioned could be the factor.
ChristopherLBennett@46: I concede that Tilly would have referred to ‘axions’ or whatever (though most viewers would probably think it was typical Trek technobabble rather than a real word). It would be a more specific term that would be used in terms of a putative interaction with subspace spores or whatever.
However in terms of galactic dynamics, the problem dark matter was invented to solve, the current usage is to the point. Though I suppose if – for the sake of argument – it was found to be axions, the usage in that context might or might not shift towards axionic vs baryonic matter.
Bear in mind that the axion, if it exists, is really described in terms of concepts not so greatly different from those underlying the term ‘dark matter’ i.e. particles of a hypothetical field with just-so properties chosen to solve problems rationalising observations related to universally accepted fields.
@55 Remember….Tal and Adira was on a generation ship. That implies they CAME to Earth on a generation ship. Bet there’s time dilation involved.
@59/gwangung: An interesting point, except the starscape outside the window didn’t look relativistically distorted, and that asteroid approached awfully slowly.
And really, though, generation ships would probably not be traveling at relativistic speeds. At those speeds, you could cover a substantial interstellar distance within a single lifetime. It’s not as extreme as fiction sometimes portrays it — if you could manage 99% of lightspeed, you’d get sevenfold time dilation, but that would still let you travel on the order of 5-600 light years in a human lifetime. Generation ships are usually far slower than light, needing hundreds or thousands of years to make even a comparatively short interstellar journey, so they wouldn’t be time-dilated to any significant degree.
But Impulse drives weren’t affected by The Burn so they’d still get to an appreciable fraction of light. The tech manuals say that full impulse is 0.25c but that’s not backed up by anything on screen.
I’m very confused by the discussion of Gray as trans. I know Ian Alexander is a transman, and I know reports indicate that the character will be revealed as trans, but has it been shown yet? Watching the episode, even with my very queer eyes, I didn’t see it.
This makes the ‘bury your queers’ trope not work for me. I read a SyfyWire review that said the show’s first trans characters were introduced badly, but…do we even know they’re trans, yet? Am I too focused on canon and should be considering spoilers/noncanon material?
Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to have nonbinary and trans characters on Trek (pretending the J’naii never existed, obviously), I just don’t feel like I’ve met any yet. I’m super excited to see their stories evolve (Adira) and be revealed (Gray), but all the discussion of Gray being trans makes me feel like I missed something…but I don’t think I did.
@62/Meredith: Well, Gray was referred to as “he” but looks and sounds feminine to me.
But no, it hasn’t been overtly established in the text yet, just in interviews. Here’s a Variety piece that talks about it:
https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/star-trek-discovery-trans-non-binary-blu-del-barrio-ian-alexander-1234824183/
So not immediately making a thing out of it is kind of the point. Supergirl did much the same thing with Nia Nal (Nicole Maines). She didn’t state onscreen that she was a trans woman until her second episode. They didn’t make it the first or only thing that defined her, just one of multiple things we learned about her along the way.
It’s interesting how they talk about approaching these issues both literally and allegorically at the same time. Since there’s no bigotry against such things in the Trek future, they addressed that aspect allegorically through the Trill’s offense at the idea of a human host.
@60 True, true….but it’s still an odd detail to include. I wonder how it figures into Tal’s backstory….
@64/gwangung: I think the generation-ship mention is less about Tal and more about the general post-Burn worldbuilding. This is a galaxy where warp travel has become rare and difficult, so many have to settle for slower alternatives.
@CLB: “It is incorrect to dismiss masturbation as a legitimate form of sexual activity. It is, if anything, the most frequently practiced sexual activity of all.”
I actually expected you to go there. But I’m not going to touch that one.
“both brains are literally, physically inside that body.”
Gray’s brain is literally not in Adira’s body. He exists as a stored personality, a series of engrams, a ghost. Gray’s brain died.
“It’s frustrating to me that we’re talking about a relationship between a trans masculine person and a non-binary person, yet still making the kneejerk assumption that our pre-existing expectations about sexuality and relationships are absolute and unquestionable, and that we’re entitled to judge anything outside those limits as unreal or wrong. We should know better.”
I am decidedly not doing anything of the kind. I am saying that bodyloss prevents them from exploring their relationship as separate beings. Masturbatory hallucinations are a weak replacement. We’re not far from Beverly Crusher having sex with a ghost here.
A phantom limb sensation is not actual touch. It is not sexual passion between two people.
I’ve been thinking too about how unlikely it is for symbionts to store multiple personalities. It’s the equivalent size of a human brain. Say it’s mostly brain tissue with some muscle for motility and it weighs between 3 to 6 pounds. Any larger and hosts would look pregnant, which they do not. Maybe the tissue is dense. But how much storage capacity can it possibly have? Six or more minds layered on top of each other. It must be confusing in there. We saw Airiam editing her mind last season, storing memories externally. Does this alien creature really have the ability to store complete multiple minds? Only if we handwave it.
Gray’s life was taken too soon. I’m actually hoping they bring him back in body form.
There’s one possible thing you may have missed when discussing the age of Tal.
While Trill seem to have a relatively human-esque life span the Symbiont has a lifespan of multiple centuries.
It is entirely possible that Tal simply took a break from having a host for an extended period, or didn’t take a host because one didn’t take their fancy. While joining with a host is a normal thing, the symbionts are not parasites and do not require hosts to stay alive within their natural habitat, the Pools.
@66/Sunspear
I’m not sure the Beverly and her ghost example is a good one, that ghost was so good in bed, Dr. Crusher was gonna take early retirement and settle down with him.
Forgot to add: the presentation of these two characters takes me back to discussions of gender in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary books. I had doubts when she announced it would be developed as a TV series. That was years ago now. The project is likely dead.
Use of the pronoun “she” for all genders didn’t seem workable when casting live actors in the roles. But with increased representation and presence of multiple genders on screen, maybe casting is now far easier. Maybe we’ll see a show or movie in that universe after all.
@Mr D: LoL.
Didn’t he also play Kira’s boyfriend on DS9? That guy gets around.
@66/Sunspear: “Gray’s brain is literally not in Adira’s body.”
It’s not about literal vocabulary, it’s about the practical fact of how Gray’s consciousness perceives things. Gray’s consciousness is stored inside the brain of the Tal symbiont, which is indeed inside Adira’s body and connected to her nervous system. Therefore, everything that Gray sees is seen through Adira’s eyes, everything that Gray feels is felt through Adira’s skin, etc. The locus of his perception does not literally exist outside Adira’s body; Adira hallucinates him there, but Gray himself would be experiencing Adira’s sensations through her own senses, not separately from them. (Although, well, I suppose it would be possible for his mind within the symbiont to convince itself that he was seeing and feeling things from outside Adira’s body, through the same neurological illusion that gives humans “out-of-body” experiences. But it would only be a trick of the mind, not a literal reality.)
“I am saying that bodyloss prevents them from exploring their relationship as separate beings.”
And I’m saying it’s the other way around — that they’ve gained the opportunity to explore a relationship far deeper than that. One door closes, another opens. There are countless romantic metaphors about lovers or spouses becoming one, being joined inseparably into a single being. Adira and Gray have now achieved that idealized state in literal fact. Looked at in those terms, it’s very romantic. They certainly seem content with it.
“I’ve been thinking too about how unlikely it is for symbionts to store multiple personalities. It’s the equivalent size of a human brain. Say it’s mostly brain tissue with some muscle for motility and it weighs between 3 to 6 pounds.”
The ratio of brain size to brain complexity is not an immutable thing. Adira calling the symbiont a “squid” may have been more a reference to its neurology than its physical shape (which is more sluglike). The brains of cephalopods are incredibly intricate and complex, with keen intelligence in a far, far smaller volume than the human brain. Science also increasingly shows that the brains of certain birds like corvids and parrots are far more intelligent than we used to believe possible in such a small volume. If anything, it seems mammalian brain structure is pretty wasteful of space, as intelligent animals go.
@67/Mr. D: Ooh, good point about Tal taking a break from being hosted. That could certainly explain it.
@CLB: “And I’m saying it’s the other way around”
I know you are. There’s been huge swathes of literature written about that kind of love. It’s what keeps lit professors employed.
I said it was romantic from the beginning. But still… nope, not taking that over actually touching and squeezing someone.
@72/Sunspear: This is a conversation about Adira and Gray. Why are you making it about yourself?
@CLB: that’s actually funny… context really is a problem for you it seems. I was countering your ode to hallucinatory mast…
Nah, I’ll bow out again, since saying more would likely be too much.
It took a little while for this episode to really hit the sweet spot, but when it did … oooh.
If this is the shape of things to come from DISCO then the future looks Good (I was especially delighted by that little “Calypso!” moment, the former symbiont hosts being so lovely to the new kid and people just generally being nice, despite horrible circumstances).
My first impression of Detmer, back when Discovery began, was a chilling one. The way she looked at Burnham when they reunited on the Discovery, back when Lorca drafted Michael to the ship against the crew’s wishes. Her look was a look of disgust, of rejection. And her cranial implant was a reminder of the way Michael’s actions ignited the battle of Binary Stars, triggering a war, thus causing that disfigurement.
By design, Detmer being a bridge officer means she doesn’t get a lot of development or screentime in comparison to Michael or the people in closer orbit to her story. But that’s okay. I like the bite-size scenes where we get a glimpse of what makes people like her or Owusekun tick.
I was thrilled to see the dining room fight. Reminded me a bit of Undiscovered Country’s dinner with the Klingons, but more overt in the way Detmer sniped at Stamets, triggering that onslaught of frustration and anger across the table.
One thing that bugged me about Discovery’s second season was the way the crew became a little too cozy, too friendly, and always declaring open love and affection for Burnham and one another. It seemed to me the writers were overcorrecting after the sheer darkness that was the first season, and unless you were named Stamets or Mirror Georgiou, there wasn’t a lot of conflict going on among the crew, which in a way was the result of having a fatherly figure in the form of Pike as captain. But I definitely missed that first season tension, and this dinner sequence brought it all back in style. The writers shouldn’t lose sight of that. These are still 23rd century officers, not quite as evolved or past petty conflict the way Picard and company are in the 24th century.
As for the Trill plot, it’s a delight to see the Trill homeworld once again, this time properly depicted. What a difference 26 years of evolving VFX makes. Having a superior budget isn’t a bad thing either (at least, I assume it is bigger). Early DS9 suffered from Berman’s budget-conscious approach to production. Reusing the cave set for the Trill pool felt cheap back then. I like it that fear is a driving force for some of the Trill who aren’t willing to let an outsider be the host for one of their own. And in great Trekkian fashion, it takes the courage of another Trill willing to give Adira and Michael a chance at finding that connection, not only as a selfless gesture, but also one made on the notion that this is crucial for the continued survival of Trill society.
And thanks in no small part to superb casting, we get one of the best Trek love stories in a long time. This is almost a spiritual successor to DS9’s Rejoined. Adira and Gray instantly connect with each other, and there’s not a single false emotion across the story. It takes skill to pull that off in a single episode. Culpepper’s confident direction is a clear factor.