Star Trek Discovery: The Bryan Fuller TV reboot

The plots of this season are better than in the last one, but jeez, these people still suck at writing dialogue! The dialogue between Michael, Amanda, and Sarek felt so unnatural, even for a sci-fi show. They're supposed to be a family but they talked to each other like they were total strangers.

Stop trying to make Enterprise references happen!

"My mother taught me the greatest mysteries come in threes."

sorry kid your mother was an idiot.

Just caught up with this. The last two episodes were great. I loved the NIN sludge monster - a rare selfconsciously creepy design that was actually effectively creepy. I thought they were gonna full Cthulhu with it at one point.

Separating burnham from the crew seems like a good opportunity to finally let her do something.

enjoyed the cheesiness of having the TOS tie-in

the 'revelation' of how burnham was mean to child spock was pretty weak, but i am enjoying adult spock being dickish to her

They're really hinting heavily that the Red Angel is Burnham from the future, aren't they? In fact the hints were obvious enough that it made me think that they're a red herring, and it's actually someone else than Burnham... But whoever it is the RA seems to have a personal connection to her and Spock, so the only other candidate seems to be Amanda.

I'm also wondering who the Red Angel's opposing force is... All we know is that they're from the 28th century and they're adept at assimilating technology. My guess is it's an evolved version of the Borg collective. The red dots seen in the cyborg officer's eyes when they're controlling her remind me of the red laser lights of the Borg, and it being them would also explain the plan to exterminate biological life.

apparently an AI runs Section 31

so, most likely the AI goes nuts in the future and is responsible for the matrix squid thing

If they are going with Burnham being the red angel as they seem to be, they should go full bootstrap paradox and have Airiam be behind the evil future robots who mind-control Airiam.

What did I miss that suggested Burnham = red angel?

it’s human, linked to Spock, is an ongoing character in the series that seems to be mostly Burnham-centered

Based on no evidence at all it’s going to be alt-timeline Zach Quinto Spock

i was going to say: the show's myopic focus on Burnham, and that the red angel first appeared to Spock when Burnham ran away. also its wide hips.

I get a strong "making it up as we go along" vibe from this show, so I doubt even the scriptwriters knew who the Angel was at this point.

That seems to be working, though? The last few episodes have been the most fun of the season - maybe hoofing it with revolving showrunners was the best thing that could've happened.

it’s human, linked to Spock, is an ongoing character in the series that seems to be mostly Burnham-centered

I get a strong "making it up as we go along" vibe from this show, so I doubt even the scriptwriters knew who the Angel was at this point.

I dunno, I do think they do have a grand plan for this season. For example, the Red Angel transporting all those humans from the Third World War to Terralysium seemed like an anomalous event, because everything else the RA had done has happened in the 23rd century, and has involved Burnham, Spock, and/or the Enterprise crew. So it seemed like her doing stuff in the 21st century was just an excuse to tell a done-in-one story about science and religion. But now that we've learned the RA is trying to stop the bad guys from destroying all the planets in the galaxy with sentient life, the Terralysium thing makes more sense. If the RA and her opponents are from the future, they would know the history of Earth and the Federation. And according to official history, the people she moved to Terralysium died in WWIII. Also, even in the 24th century the Federation has no colonies in the Beta Quadrant, where Terralysium is. So the bad guys wouldn't know about this planet with a human civilisation, and wouldn't know to exterminate it. I guess this the RA's backup plan, that even if she fails to defeat the bad guys, humanity would still survive in one form.

And the reason the RA brought Discovery to Terralysium was because she was worried about them being stuck in religious stagnation, and she wanted them to embrace science, so their civilisation would move forward.

Maybe Terralysium is even a part of her plan to defeat the bad guys? We know they come from the 28th century, and by then Terralysium could have advanced enough to be able to stand against them.

Also, the latest episode revealed it's a woman

something else i missed

Spock consistently calls the RA "she", though I guess that could just be her assumption.

His assumption, I mean.

I wasn't under the impression that Vulcans make assumptions

And since the RA is clearly showing personal interest on Burnham and Spock, the number of candidates is pretty low, with Amanda being the only other option. Though of course they could still throw in a curveball

Calling it now, the Red Angel is Deanna Troi.

discovery finale: it's all a simulation that deanna and will are fucking around with/in

I think I found the worst idea - maybe it’s the good Lorca?

I don't hate it

Supernova is Booster Gold

i'd be thrilled if jason isaacs came back he was so good

Yeah, although I like Pike just as much.

Theory might then be: The Red Angel is Good Lorca, and Good Lorca is the Captain in season 3.

I like that this show is interesting enough to sustain its dopey, simple central mystery without going Full Reddit True Detective about everything.

eventually burham is going to become captain right? if she doesn't would this be the first star trek where the protagonist is not the captain?

Depends, Mordy! Sisko started off as a Commander for the first 2.5 seasons of DS9, although he was always in charge.

That was just some weird restriction imposed by the producers, IIRC for some reason Sisko couldn't be a captain for as long as there was another show with another captain on air. So when TNG ended they made Sisko a captain, but even before that his role in the ensemble was essentially the same as Kirk's and Picard's, they just couldn't call him captain. So Disco is the first ST show where the main character isn't the leader.

And I think this concept of "new captain every season" is a good one, cos it allows them to tell different kind of stories... Obviously the big plot twist of season season 1 wouldn't have worked if Lorca was the main character. And Pike this season is too straight and decent to be an interesting protagonist, but he works very well as a supporting character.

It seems next season the captain will be whoever they were supposed to pick up on Vulcan at beginning of this season, before Pike took over. If it's gonna be a Vulcan captain, that will create yet another new dynamic to explore. So I think having captains as supporting characters is a good idea, and I wouldn't want any of the main characters to take the position.

The strongest hints towards Burnham being the Red Angel were in this episode when Spock was mindmelding with the RA, and the shot of its helmet was cut with a similar shot of Burnham's face. That felt like such an obvious hint that it made me think it's a red herring.

Yeah but remember in the first season this show basically led viewers by the hand through the Voq twist before the big reveal so I wouldn't rule it out just yet.

am i misremembering or did they say that the brain extraction tech section 31 wanted to use on spock was "terran technology"? if so, does that mean that georgiou gave it to them bc otherwise how could they have gotten it?

I wouldn't have guessed about Voq if I hadn't read it here - it just didn't occur to me that ST would do "puzzle show" elements

But I also didn't ken the hints about Burnham (or the red angel's gender) so maybe I'm just not very observant

Did no-one else notice that "the probe used multiple SQL injections"? 20th century database technology still in use on the most advanced ship in the federation!

how exactly did spock get cured?

the talosians did something to him telepathically i guess? or maybe burnham's presence inspired him to wake up and bitch at her

using linear time as the bedrock of one's sanity did not seem terribly logical tho

The Talosians magicked him to health (in semi-creepy exchange for Burnham revealing to them what she did to Spock).

Did no-one else notice that "the probe used multiple SQL injections"?

I caught this! I was a little bummed that 300 years from now people are still writing code that's vulnerable to this.

BUT THEN IF I PLAY THIS OUT... Burnie is one insubordinate if not serially mutinous officer, and she's probably not going to face repercussions this time; in fact, the entire DISCO crew are also really eager to ignore direct orders (lol at Detmer cutting off Pike in mid-"I'm about to disobey orders but I'm not asking anyone else blah blah blah" speech like "Yo just give me the course and heading, boss"). Granted, their orders were pretty stupid, being given by a stupid 31 captain -- but Starfleet themselves seems to have given 31 wide operational discretion in pursuing Red Herring Angel signals, so it's a bad sign of Starfleet's own leadership that they'd delegate to dum dums and/or always give bad orders that are begging for insubordination.

So if all that's the case, I can easily imagine Starfleet outsourcing their IT infrastructure to a bunch of Ferengi consulting services who are in turn probably using some slave labor as their "talent" pool.

we should probably have the mods change the thread title to something about Discovery, right?

sounds like the angle about a federation/s31 AI that helps run things taking control (or rather, being Control) was right

Can’t wait for the next “person with a secret other person/thing inside them” plot! The first three were so great.

this was my favorite episode of the season so far. i loved how spock fucking around at chess was just spock fucking around and he didn't have a secret n-dimensional strategy.

i expected the randomness strategy to come back up when michael was fighting an AI but oh well.

golden opportunity missed for burnham to trick airiam/ai into a logical paradox, thereby making it explode

we should probably have the mods change the thread title to something about Discovery, right?

I've been thinking the same thing.

The ending shot in the latest episode is quite beautiful, but everything leading up to it did not build up to it. A bunch of stuff thrown together that never coheres into an actual plot. Trek has never been hard SF but it should at least make some kind of internal sense!

OTOH, this episode was hitting hard at the dysfunction in Sarek's family, and how his decisions have driven a lot of the action in the show's universe. It's almost like the house of Atreus, where ripples of recrimination and vengeance eventually turn into huge tidal waves that culminated in a decade-long and generation destroying war.

What was Burnham hoping to achieve that Airiam's best friend and Airiam herself could not? Quit disobeying orders and open the airlock! Also smdh at the other character who suspected and spied on Airiam for the entire episode but failed to tell anyone or discover anything.

Why did she disable her suit? Surely she would be unable to do much harm floating about in her suit while they figured out how to stop Control.

What was Burnham hoping to achieve

just proving spock's point that she thinks she can solve everything herself

they could start doing that regularly, as the show starts to concentrate on other characters and she keeps trying to pop in as the main character

by the end of next season she’s trying to unclog a toilet and they’re like, hey Burnham, we have a plumbing robot

I thought it was a bit disappointing that Discovery would use the good ol' "evil AI wants to destroy organic life" trope, since it's such a cliche, and ST in general has been more nuanced when it comes to doing stories about artificial intelligence. Though the revelation came so early in the season that I think they could actually be faking it? Maybe the real antagonist is someone else, and Control is trying to stop it? It's not like Control itself even appeared here to confirm it's behind it all, they only have are Airiam's words and the dead Section 31 officers, all of which could've been frame-up.

I've got a bad feeling about this named but yet unseen logic extremist that's somehow made their way up the ranks