Star Trek Discovery: The Bryan Fuller TV reboot

I thought the second episode was a lot more fun! Even if some of the places points seemed underbaked.

Thank Q that they've avoided the grim gritty nonsense so far.

rip the prime directive

Oh yeah, that.

I do have a problem with how easily they're dismissing or
trivializing the Prime Directive; Pike makes noise about how important it is and then Burnham reminds him that the Starfleet orders to investigate the red signals is supposed to be even higher priority, and he goes "oh o good point." I know that they're resting on established continuity from previous shows about the importance of the Prime Directive but the way it's been handled so far seems lazy; the red signals are so information-free and without context that in managing to overrule the PD, they just make the PD seem weaker.

All the same, Tilly was too cute this episode.

to be fair, i guess it's relatively early days in the federation and the rules may not have the weight of centuries (or examples of mistakes made) yet. just recently they were willing to completely obliterate the klingon race

besides, all the other captains broke the rules and disobeyed orders constantly, so it's hardly out of character

Yeah, the other series usually mention it only to break it. Disco having so few episodes probably magnifies how flimsy it can be as a plot device.

I'm surprisingly digging Pike and so far they're nailing the season-arc-to-single-episode-story ratio. "Science mystery" is a much better season arc concept than the space opera stuff last year. I hope they keep it up! Interested to see how they'I'll integrate all the Dark Trek characters from last season (presuming they turn up). Plots are still a bit clumsy but the rest is good enough that I'm no longer caring. The main crew also seem a lot more likeable too.

has there ever been a prime directive story that didn't end with it being minutely-to-majorly broken?

xp Having to investigate seven signals scattered throughout the galaxy as a season arc seems a lot more conducive to story of the week type episodes

I do have a problem with how easily they're dismissing or
trivializing the Prime Directive; Pike makes noise about how important it is and then Burnham reminds him that the Starfleet orders to investigate the red signals is supposed to be even higher priority, and he goes "oh o good point." I know that they're resting on established continuity from previous shows about the importance of the Prime Directive but the way it's been handled so far seems lazy; the red signals are so information-free and without context that in managing to overrule the PD, they just make the PD seem weaker.

I'm wondering if the investigation of the signals will continue to chain solutions to problems as an ongoing plot device. They're first led to somewhere where they can pick up a super-heavy asteroid, only to use it in the next episode to tow a radioactive cloud away from a threatened planet? These red angel things seem increasingly Q-like

Wasn't there a TNG episode where Picard broke the prime directive for pretty much the same reason as the Discovery crew here: to prove to a pre-Warp society that the "miracles" they'd witnessed had a scientific explanation? This episode reminded me a lot of that one.

That sounds like "Who Watches the Watchers," but Picard only resorted to that after a bunch of smaller PD transgressions kept snowballing into a much more serious situation.

I wish the show gave a reason for why the "red signals" were important. I don't mind them breaking the PD, i just don't understand why mysterious signals justify it.

There was also the TNG episode "Devil's Due", where they expose a false god to a pre-warp society.

I really like this last episode! Michael's interplay with Amanda is wonderful and with one great bit of comedy (when Michael is all "MOOOOOOOMM" when Amanda lets slip that she stole Spock's records). And the Klingon scenes were actually good! Nothing that's never been done before (especially on DS9) but having SOMEONE with forehead ridges not be a complete tosser gives us someone to root for, and the resolution (which isn't all that surprising, admittedly) is straight up Worfian in its quiet, noble suffering.

“starfleet security consultant”

Yeah, the latest episode was quite good, mostly it was moving all the various subplots ahead a bit, but they're all cool, and lot's of interesting and complex interpersonal moments too. So far the quality of this season seems much more consistent than with the first season, where every cool moment was followed by something ridiculous or stupid.

would mindmeld with spock's mom

I like how they're drawing out the Spock reveal, since without knowing any other details, I'd have expected him to be on screen no later than the end of the second episode.

it seems like good plotting! hoping they pull it off well

Theyre really playing up Michael's having done something utterly awful to him to make him disown her though, and I'm worried whatever it ends up being will be a let down?

I'm "meh" on this season so far. It doesn't have anything as bad as the many low points of S1, but so far it also lacks S1's occasional high points. The adventure-of-the-week stuff is better than S1, but still never as focused as it was in TOS and TNG because there's so much serial plotting to deal with. I'll stick with the season and see where it goes.

Theyre really playing up Michael's having done something utterly awful to him to make him disown her though, and I'm worried whatever it ends up being will be a let down?

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Sunday, 3 February 2019 08:03 (thirteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thought it was odd that Amanda stormed out before knowing what Michael did, seemingly motivated only by the needs of the plot.

Also, what was fungus hallucination actually after? It/she wanted Stamets to do something.

That part was hella confusing for a while there!

Also I am really struggling to GAF with the whole Klingon Houses sub plot.

As to the parasite in Tilly - I think it is angry at Stamets from when they were fucking around with the spore drive jumps and he went into that alternate universe? It saw him as the "captain" of that. I...think!?

yeah I think that's right but what did it want to find him for?

it might be trying to make its way home

Bit of a messy letdown after the first two episodes. I'm not sure if the Klingon story was agreeably metal or just a bit stupid. Although I think we can safely put severed baby heads into the column labelled "not super Star Trekky".

Anyway, if this was just an episode long-excuse to drop the Klingon story and setup the Georgiou's Section 31 spinoff, I'm fine with that.

Awww @ this, though

https://www.instagram.com/p/BtB_BeLFqh7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

HE TOUCHED THE BEARD. O_O

lol @ "agreeably metal" I'd forgot about the severed baby head part :/

When I stroke the beard, thusly

People who don't like each other not having fun. Posted by someone who's not jealous. At all. Or bitter.https://t.co/BmbWx6PjI8#DontReleaseTheAlbum#NoSeriously@SonequaMG @albinokid @actordougjones @may_wise @StarTrekNetflix @startrekcbs @CarpoolKaraoke

— Jason Isaacs (@jasonsfolly) February 5, 2019

Jet Reno!

so whats with the bearded Vulcan, is he evil?

Are you talking about the season 2 promos? Because that's (yet another rebooted) Spock.

This was back to pretty-good-ness again this week!

Could've done with less space blob and more universal translator shenanigans - the show finally comes up with a killer, interesting idea and then fixes it five minutes later.

Tilly/Stamets/JET! are a great threesome tho

i don't really like saru, but i kind of hope he turns into an ice-cold killer now

did you watch the short about his journey to starfleet?

Ha, he’s prob my favourite regular cast member - he’s the most trad Trekky, well-rounded character, but he does such a great job of emoting through all that latex fish shmutz. I like that they’ve found a new place for him to go, too.

“Death” scene went on way, way too long tho

these "death of a regular cast member" episodes haven't aged well in the past. everyone knows worf isn't going to kill himself.

I suppose the sentient planet episode in S1 (which was very bad) was set-up for what Saru will become.

I think I missed something what was the lie that Saru mourned his people still labored under? Was it that you could lose your ear gland things and still live or was there something else/more?

i didn't get that either.

Makes a but more sense if you watch the short from a couple months back

So did I understand it correctly?

I think the death scenes are so drawn out because the writers were trying extra hard to establish Burnham and Saru as becoming such close friends as to be family, when before this episode any time their relationship was a focus it was more adversarial.

I liked the scenes where Meet snarks on Stamets, but otherwise I didn't care for the episode. The vastly more intelligent alien sentience trying to communicate with humans who interpret it as belligerent has been done to death imo so I was really impatient for Disco to figure it out.

Nice to see Number One though, especially without giving her a proper name yet.

Either something different is happening with Saru’s biology because he’s not with his people or they’ve been told a big lie about their lifespan. The implication was that at a certain age they are either harvested or have to do this ritual that kills them.

It really looks like maybe it’s actually a second puberty-like thing and after they lose their fear tendrils they enter another life stage. Which is an interesting concept — having an earlier adulthood with an excess of caution followed by another where you’re not guided by fear.

In the Saru short it was shown that the Kelpians' "gods" come to harvest them regularly, with the obvious implication being that they technologically advanced aliens taking advantage of less developed species... So apparently that's the lie Saru figured out in this ep. But I find that weird, because he should've figured out what the "gods" really are as soon as the Starfleet took him in and he saw their technology.

I guess it's possible he still thought those aliens were doing them a favour by harvesting them before their glands kill them, but I still don't find it credible he wouldn't have looked closer into this whole thing during all his time in Starfleet.

respect for tradition plus the prime directive, I’d guess, but it looks like there’s more to come

Im going to guess the ganglia were some kind of fear implant controlling kelpians for the benefit of the ba'ul (or however its spelt). And maybe not naturally a part of them at all.