Star Trek Discovery: The Bryan Fuller TV reboot

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.

tig notaro going "yo, anybody got gum?" and tilly immediately hooking her up with gum is a portentous clue that things are not what they seem.

I didnt think of that.

I did like that she appeared to use the gum as a jerry-rig fixit device though!

That's particularly suspicious when she specifically mentioned duct tape earlier. Why brag about duct tape but then use gum?

Whats yr thinking, theyre in another reality again or sometin?

http://imgs.fyi/img/78zb.png

Leee, all I know about this show is the subway poster.

lol Philip

Just seen the Saru short. God the prime directive is literally the worst! Yeah you can go ahead and slaughter these intelligent beings because y'know they haven't invented spaceships yet.

i watched it too. that bit doesn't make sense to me either. why would they allow another advanced species farm a second sentient species for food just bc the second species isn't as advanced? that's fucked up and makes the PD look like an attempt to allow civilizations to progress organically and more like some isolationist make the federation great again bullshit.

makes the PD look *less*

feel like it's a good time to withhold judgment when they're definitely going to continue down this line of inquiry

we're also assuming the people doing the harvesting aren't also kelpians

the prime directive was always bullshit. a rule designed to show how often it should be broken -- like asimovs'.

Yeah, don't think Brightest Star actually explained what happened to the Kelpians that were taken, did it? xp

we've got some expectations based on the alternate universe people eating kelpians, but who knows?

Remember that scene where Evil Georgiou (before she came over) was eating Kelpian brain? I wonder now if that somehow links in.

Dammit I literally did not see mh saying exactly what I just said. Durgh.

we're also assuming the people doing the harvesting aren't also kelpians

this wouldn't make it any better imo since it would suggest that spacefaring races are allowed to keep subcastes in ignorant squalor

fwiw it doesn't really bother me vis-a-vis the consistency of the universe the federation has been shown to have questionable ethics and some kind of "not our business" PD could make plenty of intuitive sense even tho i feel like maybe this is generally a darker federation than in other series? but i'm not really an expert.

they keep referring to it as 'general order one', which i guess may not precisely be the PD?

I think that's what TOS calls it (TNG calls it the PD).

Yup

General Order 1: "No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society." (TAS: "The Magicks of Megas-Tu") General Order 1 was also better known as the Prime Directive. (TNG: "The Drumhead") It superseded all other laws and directives, with the exception of the Omega Directive. (VOY: "The Omega Directive")

enough with the corny-ass burnham voiceovers

Enjoyed this week's. Seemed to have some grit in my eyes at times too. Lol at all the fanboys whinging at the science fantasy aspect of it, as if Trek has always been some paragon of hard sci-fi.

But yeah, the voiceover at the end was a bit much. Had to check it wasn't the mid-season finale as it had that kind of vibe about it.

did the show hire voyager's science advisor? because it felt like a writer wrote down "(TECH) will save him!" and an advisor replaced it with "DNA".

feels like they are trying to explain things from TOS that didn't need to be explained. like how season 1 was trying to explain why TOS Klingons looked human... never mind that they were only spies in their first TOS appearance and that it was clearly a budget issue. now we have an extradimensional network that could explain how spock put his mind in mccoy. i'm guessing the whole spock plot in discovery is trying to explain Jerk Spock from The Menagerie part 1 -- he was a jerk because roddenberry was a bad writer.

Getting through the second half of season 1 was pretty tough, enjoying the first couple of S2 much more. If they kill Tilly at any point, I'm done with the series.

The awful expository dialogue (explanation of WWIII to a room full of people who definitely had history classes at Starfleet Academy) is the worst part.

I’m still amused by the fact one of my work team members convinced us to name our software development team “Section 31” way back in 2012 or thereabouts, before the trek writers decided to throw that premise into... everything

if only we were still around, we could have had team merch

Technobabble saves the day? Well, that's a Trek tradition too, unfortunately.

so was the section 31 ship cloaked before tyler called it for help? seems like technology that might have been useful in that recent war they almost lost to the klingons

yeah I thought it was jarring that the tech in this series seems above and beyond anything centuries later used in VOY/DS9.

I’m still amused by the fact one of my work team members convinced us to name our software development team “Section 31” way back in 2012 or thereabouts, before the trek writers decided to throw that premise into... everything

so was the section 31 ship cloaked before tyler called it for help? seems like technology that might have been useful in that recent war they almost lost to the klingons

Yikes, those voiceovers. "There is no word for the unique agony of uncertainty" -- unless it's, er, "uncertainty".

I really, really like the crew (much more the Voyager or ENT) but the scripting is so bad sometimes. I noticed this episode was written by one of the now-fired showrunners. So that could be a good sign for the second half.

Berg & Harberts are credited with the story of the Saru cold episode. Which had flaws but wasn't terrible. I read that they were fired for abusive behavior in the office.

I feel bad about how much I like Pike

I think he was consciously Shatnering this week too

I still want more of that saurian with the sinus problems

Technobabble saves the day? Well, that's a Trek tradition too, unfortunately.

the problem with this show is there's not enough technobabble! it all moves too quickly and nothing is explained.

1) there is a subspace fungus permeating the entire multiverse.
2) ????
3) we can travel anywhere instantaneously!

I was commenting last episode how there is less technobabble and I like it!

feel like i know nothing about the bridge crew, which seems odd at this point in the series. like, the helmsman got her eye made weird in the first battle with the klingons and the navigator grew up among luddites and that's about it. the communications dude just looks worried a lot, and i don't know what's up with the buck rogers twiki person

have we seen the android guy lately?

Was there an android guy? I only remember the android (cyborg?) lady?

I just took it as read that theyre minor characters, like in TNG there were bridge crew you barely heard speak but they were always there.

xp wait, I rewatched one of the reboot movies last week and they were the ones with the android guy with a glowing hole in his head. my bad.

did everyone know about this except me?

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0003/0041/7038/products/btmr_700x700.png

I did not, and: lol

one of the signs that trek has too much baggage: the red angel person (people?) seems like a probable time anomaly and my first thought is, "isn't there an agency to keep tabs on that kind of thing, and is this guy one of them"

do we want to put money down at this point on whether the time traveling/teleporting/advanced tech being is someone we've seen before in other trek? seems like the Q angle is maybe ruled out if it's using some sort of mecha suit

Saru: You don't think I can uphold my duty as a Starfleet officer if I go down to my home planet??

*goes down to homeplanet*

Saru (within 60 seconds of meeting his sister): I COME FROM OUTERSPACE.

Anyway, midway through, I thought they were going to reveal that the Ba'ul were really the evolved Kelpiens, and that Saru's dad would be the one we'd see for the first time. Instead, they're a bunch of Armuses. So, good on the writers at least for surprising me, even if it's the more obvious route. Not to say that I liked this last episode much, though.

the directors may change, but they each give us one camera-swirling-around-everyone scene each episode lol