Star Trek Discovery: The Bryan Fuller TV reboot

remanding a dude who just killed you 60 times over to the custody of his prospective father-in-law is indeed dorky as hell

Even if it doesn't feel Star Trekky, I'm getting into it. A big part of the non-Trek feel is stuff like Tilly's convos with Michael and Michael's feelings toward Ash that previous shows never dealt with in the same way - it feels more modern and personal in that sense.

the klingons are tedious, lorca is insanely over-the-top and suru is mostly annoying (though i guess he gets his this weekend). i like tilly in small doses and stamets in slightly larger doses

i suppose i keep watching because burnham/martin-green are awesome, apart from the voiceovers/monologues. her predicament isn't entirely reasonable, but it's interesting, and i hope they don't wreck it

Tilly is awful. xoxo

If we really do get a season 2, I might revisit this.

Already renewed.

In spite of all the p!racy? That's impressive.

Yeah, both this and Orville got renewed, didn’t they?

https://i.imgur.com/rLF9GZl_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium
Dorky enough for trek

In Star Trek TOS they broke ground by having non-white Anglo ethnicities on the bridge. We’ve had aliens and androids through theough the other series. Now with Tilly we have regular shaped human beings (later TOS movies notwithstanding)

Still can’t deal with Clem Fandango as head of security or deadmau5 arriving by spacewhale.

I suppose this one was mainly set-up for the next episode? Two things going on, but neither went anywhere interesting.

i may be an outlier here but i really enjoyed the last two episodes as fun, largely standalone riffs on the TOS/TNG formula.

the klingon scenes are unbelievably silly and incomprehensible and i say that as someone with a high tolerance for 40k style bullshit. so is the starfleet admiral dead now? and the female klingon? what was the point of any of that if so?

Complaints aside that last one was probably the best so far. It's not often we see a time loop plot from the outside and it was done pretty well. Mud does seem like a classic TOS villain.

Between this and The Orville I feel like I'm enjoying Star Trek for the first time since TOS.

DISCO has shown it has potential, at least. No longer a hatewatch for me.

I actually really enjoyed the last episode as well! Even the Klingon scenes weren't terrible -- I'm kind of curious what's going to happen to L'Rell.

I am really enjoying this unreservedly now. There are lots of callbacks to TOS, but it doesn't just seem like recycling. I *really* like Saru's race's origin story. The show also strikes a nice balance thus far between episode and serial and although I'd prefer pure episodes as that kind of world offers more possibilities , I know entertainment has changed. One weird thing is Burnham's height. As Sasha on TWD and as Burnham, Martin-Green WALKS TALL, so it's always surprising to see her so short next to Saru and Ash (who are tall).

I read somewhere that sets on films are usually built 90% of scale, too, so the actors loom larger. I want to go back now and see if he's always ducking his head getting into elevators. There are some fairly recent SF books featuring a prey species developing a civilization, I wonder which ones of those the runners have read.

I like how the writers are indulging in some Westworldesque fucking with expectations - I thought that of course the 'I want to defect' bit would turn out to be a ruse, for it to be genuine I didn't see coming. There's some long game that's hard to see underneath those giant rubber heads (how painful must those contact lenses be). The legalese surrounding the not-yet-Prime Directive is interesting too

I thought that of course the 'I want to defect' bit would turn out to be a ruse, for it to be genuine I didn't see coming.

I'm not convinced she really wants to defect! She hates Kol for sure, but she's a spy and pretending to defect would give her so much access to Starfleet.

Didn't like the last episode - too much too fast, all three plots needed more room IMO.

She hates Kol for sure, but she's a spy and pretending to defect would give her so much access to Starfleet.

if she really wanted to defect, she could have just gone with lorca/ash rather than take a phaser disruptor to the face

she's also much smarter than every other klingon, it would seem. which is more evidence that ash is a time bomb -- letting lorca/ash get away was uncharacteristically half-assed of her

So am I right in thinking that Stamets is actually exchanging places with himself from a parallel ('mirror', if you will) universe/dimension, in which case the spores are not only a method for instantaneous travel but may also be a method of traversing universes - implying that each jump is actually a jump to a different physical point in a different but very similar universe? That seems to be where we're going but if we are it feels too much like a retread of the 2009 film which justified itself as a reboot by starting over in a fresh timeline

some sort of *engineer voice* organic quantum folding going on here

My timecubes, let me show you them

i think it's a retcon for the genetic engineering ban -- suggesting that the engineering is a form of time/dimension travel.

This is post-Khan being out on ice and the admiral did call them out to doing a banned eugenics experiment

Mid-season finale *sigh* tonight; series resumes Jan. 7.

So am I right in thinking that Stamets is actually exchanging places with himself from a parallel ('mirror', if you will) universe/dimension, in which case the spores are not only a method for instantaneous travel but may also be a method of traversing universes - implying that each jump is actually a jump to a different physical point in a different but very similar universe? That seems to be where we're going but if we are it feels too much like a retread of the 2009 film which justified itself as a reboot by starting over in a fresh timeline

Intriguing!

Pretty clear that A=V is correct from tonight's episode. Not only in L'Rell's words but also in the tech of the humans being able to mask as Klingons.

Next up, mirror universe arc where they wear VERY shirts.

I didn't think about it, but they're going to be in the universe where Michael's preemptive strike plan went into effect, aren't they?

Oh good call, circling back to roads-not-taken plot points from earlier episodes, I hadn't thought of that

This and the Mudd-loop episode is making me wonder just how mindfuck they want to get with the show. If they reveal bf to be a surgically-altered and brainwashed Klingon this whole ride is going to turn into a serious acid trip

Who am I kidding, the torture-sex scenes have already sent it over the edge

It would be wild if - assuming they could ever get back to 'their' universe - Discovery instead of a weapon-to-end-wars became the ultimate research vessel, collecting information on how things turn out elsewhere given certain choices. They'd have to rename the ship the A/B Discovery or the USS Choice Architecture

Now I'm really wondering why they call the Prime Directive "General Order 1".

That's what they called it in TOS, IIRC.

if tilly is going to be working on starfleet's most important system, she really needs a promotion

even wesley got acting ensign

definitely going to get a “Tilly steps up” plot in here somewhere, where she steps up in some dire circumstance and her awkwardness is cast off

xpost

Memory Alpha says "General Order 1" is actually from The Animated Series - nice.

They’ve made other refs to the Animated series, too

Fun episode with one genuine shock (although as they're now in an alternate universe I imagine it will be fairly easy to bring him back)

I'm enjoyjng this but a Michael is getting a little boring.

The "shock" was interesting - I would've thought the writers were smarter than that trope, so I'm guessing that's not the end of that story.

I think I should have seen it coming when the episode had me thinking, "Wow, this character is maybe the most empathetic character we've seen in this role on Star Trek, what a great guy"

I should have guessed, all spontaneous declarations of love for a partner must be followed by death.

It's a little unnerving to see out of all the spinoffs, Enterprise is the one that is being mined for the most material to weave canon out of. Maybe we'll get to see evil Porthos cameo.

Ashhole amirite?

It's a little unnerving to see out of all the spinoffs, Enterprise is the one that is being mined for the most material to weave canon out of. Maybe we'll get to see evil Porthos cameo.

Maybe WE'RE the ones in the mirror universe.

no midriff mirror universe uniforms yet so may it’s changed over there

It's nice to see Frakes directed this, IMHO his is the first Trek name to have been associated with a good series.

Oops, forgot Nick Meyer.

he went a little overboard on the camera-circling-everyone thing

The camera NEVER STOPPED

Static locked down shots don’t exist anymore