Star Trek Thread: Nemesis 2: Nemeses, etc. (Part 1)

Input Cinephile Shodown
1245

Thinking about that dinner scene again.

Saru is trying to figure out the best way to bring the crew together, to make them all feel like a family. Now, in previous Treks, that’s not really been the intention of the command staff, they want to run it like a ship with a military structure, but Disco is very strange in that there’s no real command structure, anyone can enter any room during any conversation, and everyone does every job.

Suddenly, the computer reveals itself to be a sentient autonomic AI with a fucked-up creepy voice. The AI makes some suggestions that prove it’s self-aware, and intensely interested in the crew, that Saru follows to the letter, delighted.

He and his entire crew had just made the ultimate sacrifice to make sure the out-of-control sentient rogue AI Control could not possibly re-emerge to threaten the galaxy again, and well, it’s the darndest thing! Here’s another one! It was created the same way, by way of the Orb data on a Federation computer AI! Lordy bagordy, hope this one doesn’t rapidly grow into an unstoppable AI control force that will use the one-of-a-kind spore drive to doom the future, heh hah

At a dinner comprised of his best friends, Saru invites the Terran Empress, a woman who genocided and ATE HIS PEOPLE in her universe. Now, Georgio is an insanely bad influence on everyone, and has only ever acted in fascistic Terran interests, but she’s family. Later, Saru leans over to Tilly and giddily mentions the whole “the ship is alive and watching us” thing to Tilly, as if santa was coming that night.

Now the show had previously established in Callispo that the Disco AI had become sentient, so that’s clearly what they’re doing on the meta level, it’s just possibly the funniest moment of the entire show where Saru is pleasantly surprised and bewondered by a new, baby Control growing in his own ship.

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1246

Strange episode. I liked a bunch of individual parts, so overall vaguely positive.

The whole fight scene with Dettmer was pretty cool, just purely from a visual perspective. I didn’t really grasp what they were doing at most parts of that fight, so it was mostly just sort of series of pleasing lights. Book’s ship is cool, the ship they were fighting was cool, the effects were great, Dettmer visually looks cool. Sort of a music-video vibe in that narratively I had no connection to it but it was pleasing to watch.

The main story with Book’s planet was mostly very dumb I felt, there’s some potential there in how Book’s race connects to the planet, but it wasn’t really explored too deeply. Another case of them juggling too much.

The Georgio thing was like your typical Discovery subplot, where it’s been dragging on for a few episodes with no satisfying developments, making us just like annoyed by it, wanting it to conclude already. Where I to guess, maybe she got infected by nanobots? And is now a composite of nanomachines? I wonder if this is them trying to de-evil her? God damn this character annoys the shit out of me. I wish they’d give her some kind of job already, like, chief of security or something, some reason to bring her on missions that isn’t an insane whim.

I actually am really enjoying the Stamets/new kid storyline. It’s being rushed, especially Caulber being like “it’s like we have a kid now!!!” the whole episode, but I am a huge sucker for found family stuff so the idea of those two adopting this trill kid is pretty adorable AND I did very much enjoy the music scene. I wish that had been the only B-Plot, with them dropping the the Georgio C-Plot entirely as well as the Saru D-Plot. JUST FOCUS ON TWO THINGS AND DO THEM WELL, GUYS.

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for some reason despite all the previous high court drama between the klingons and the mirror universe stuff, today it actually seemed to work on it’s own terms, like they finally found the right level of TOS camp to make it work. they actually managed to find the “acting” universe that michelle yeoh inhabits everyone’s matching her weird energy even better than the previous mirror eps

it’s funny that as a franchise, when cronenberg makes a claim like this is the first recorded person to travel through time and dimensions my brain starts making a checklist of everyone who did that (and to be fair i guess none of them stuck around for more than a year to get Weird Physics Disease or whatever)

mirror michael is such a fantastic showcase for martin-green to just chew the scenery whole. really only nana visitor compares for sheer audacity

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1248

It probably says a lot that this show is vastly better following an evil mirror universe crew as they do mirror universe stuff. Like, every character is better for having some clear stated want and ambition. Also, glad they didn’t try to retcon any of the horrible shit like them eating kelpians.

Still floored by how good these sets and costumes look.

Hoping this somehow resurrects Lorca in the prime universe.

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1249

What if this show really is Enterprise 2 and turns good in season 4

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1250

Like, going back to the original anthology series idea for Discovery. This could’ve been a whole season! One big season in the mirror universe, you wrap up all the plot threads at the end, bam!

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I am catching up and I think I am back on board.

I was internally grousing about Adira being a missed opportunity and then got big time choked up. It probably feels cheap if it’s not personal but they literally got me.

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1252

they sure didn’t earn everyone’s weird love of georgiou but this ep did a decent job of finishing out her emotional arc and sending her off to spinoff land (which i guess could be almost any time? she could even end up during picard?). carl being the guardian of forever is a little disappointing it would be neat if he was just carl, but the idea of “what the guardian was doing during the time wars from enterprise” is actually a very neat lore concept. i wonder if even 20% of the people watching this show remember who landry was because bringing her and airam back for mirror times was an interesting choice

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Holy shit why did this have to be an entire-ass two-parter. We’re spending so much of this season tying up loose ends that don’t need to be tied up.

If the singular idea was “Georgiou tries to convince evil Michael not to be evil but because she’s evil she can’t not be evil,” does it really deserve to be dragged out this long? They had the same interaction like 15 times - “You need to be less evil.” “What are you talking about?” “I’ve changed, you should change too.” “What? No.” - and then we had a big ol’ shootout to wrap it up.

“WHAT I FEEL FOR YOU BELONGS TO YOU” god damn why. I love the crew all teary-eyed as they raise a glass in honor of their fallen comrade, a cartoonishly racist genocider tyrant who has done everything in her power to keep her people and their slaves in an unending dark age.

Maybe this was supposed to be Michael saying goodbye to her Georgiou? I dunno, none of this landed for me.

Cool seeing the Guardian again though.

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1254

Okay now that that’s out of my system, let’s get to the real To Go Boldly meat here, and ask a question I pray they will never take the time to answer in the show proper:

So the Guardian said that Mirror Saru went on to do great good, which means everything that happened actually happened. Georgiou’s actions are the new canon for that universe.

So that means that Georgiou died before Lorca returned to the mirror universe with the Discovery crew. He came back, his entire rebellion was crushed already by evil Michael. What he does then is anyone’s guess, but he has the spore drive and the crew thinks him their captain still. Does the Charion still get blowed up? Probably not, meaning the crew can’t get back to the prime universe, meaning Earth is razed as they lose the war to the klingons?

If they do make it back, the Starfleet admiral can’t use Georgiou’s “put a bomb at the center of Qo’nos and threaten them into peace” plan, so, that wouldn’t work either. The klingons have zero reason not to conquer the Federation and absorb them.

Does Control still happen?

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@familyjules This is the thread you were looking for.

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1256

I know there was never any possibility that Discovery would resolve anything with diplomacy rather than a big, dumb, overlong action slog wherein everyone on the bad guy side is killed, but, why even tease us with the full third of this ep being devoted to negotiations with the Emerald Chain?

Admiral Salt & Pepper must’ve known that the Emerald Chain lady would never willingly make a deal where she would be tried for her crimes, right? Seemed like the best deal you’re going to get? You abolish slavery across the entire Chain and the Chain stops exploiting pre-warp civilizations?

I also can’t parse if this was actually supposed to be the Emerald Chain lady trying to cut a deal with the Federation? Everything she did leading up to that, including busting in to the Federation secret base with a ruse, implied she was just trying to destroy the Federation. But then she’s actually legitimately here for negotiations? And then Admiral Salt & Pepper doesn’t budge on anything, until she storms off in an outrage?

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OH! One thing I thought was cool was the entire scene with Book and Michael’s ship navigating the debris of the transwarp conduit. Actually make the entire transforming ship thing make some sense, and it was a fun sequence.

Really makes me yearn for a version of the season where the actual USS Discovery didn’t show up until the very end, to pick them up.

Also liked the feel of that fight between Michael and Stamets, even though the entire reason for the struggle was dumb and there was never any tension or anything, I like the concept of these two characters being at odds and having a struggle. Actors did the best they could with what they had there.

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I want to just loop back on this and point out that Detmer’s brain damage never came up again in any meaningful way for the remainder of the season, and whenever she needed to pilot a ship she did so absolutely without issue.

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1259

look discovery “technically” has never even shown the chief engineer there’s no time to invent a counselor character for detmer to get through her PTSD(?) she just has to blast through with an action sequence

edit: speaking of offscreen personnel the ship being taken over might have been a good time to see some sort of head of security but i guess since nhan’s gone they just…???

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1260

Catching up again and okay, let’s talk Su’Kal

As soon as they said “basically a child” I braced myself but it’s so bad

You’re seriously telling me the burn was literally a cosmic autistic meltdown? Fuck off

This fucking show

Tilly in the captain’s chair was good

Glad I didn’t watch this right when it aired, what an infuriating cliff hanger

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1261

Finale today but before I let it go with whatever crash of metal happens in S3E13.

Hello, Star Trek. You’re running first person essays on your website with titles like “Neelix Taught Me It Was Okay To Be Weird.”

If you want to make your evil scientist sympathetic, maybe their use of a wheelchair and genetic disorder shouldn’t be the hook? I may do evil but you don’t understand I have to work for the slavers!

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1262

God damn it Holo Gray has me back in

Sometimes I wish this show was just trash instead of a mess

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that sure was a full series finale for a show that is currently filming another season, but i guess you could consider the first 3 seasons the longest pilot of all time? i feel like i’m probably right about them pulling an enterprise and the show will feel more star trek like in season 4.

that was pretty okay as the second half of a die hard on a spaceship episode. i still don’t like the way this show, despite being very directly emotional and compassionate, still puts so much character development offscreen so it’s nice to have more onscreen this season

not trying to be all “representation win” because the show sure treats them like shit but i really would not have believed that a star trek show would have five queer members of the cast and it actually does warm my heart to see stamets little found family

it’s interesting that the dr. aurellio guy played a couple klingons in previous episodes and developed ALS so they create the weird space wheelchair specifically for his role which is kind of nice if goofy

first sisko now burnham becomes captain at the end of season 3. if it happens to mariner i guess that’s some kinda black protagonist hat trick lol

i don’t know who was excited to hear the TOS theme song for the third time relax we know you are a star trek show

the color scheme of the 32nd century uniform is like the apple store version of galaxy quest? like without the panache?

somebody said it upthread but this did kinda sideways become the original bryan fuller anthology pitch

not sure what i want or expect from this show anymore. saru seemed like maybe a big part of the heart of the show so i’m not sure what it would be without him

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This finale actually kinda did it for me. Having Saru, Culber, Adira, and Gray together for the Su’Kal plotline was great, I like these characters together a lot, and I liked how it could only have been properly handled by these people.

All the Disco stuff was, pretty much, all action shlock, ending with the deaths of everyone on the Emerald Chain side. I did like the Michael-on-the-elevator sequence, that was fun. Really wish any of this Emerald Chain stuff had meant anything at all, rather than “these are the bad guys, we have to kill all of them.”

Saru seemingly maybe being off the show is pretty alarming?? His arc this season hasn’t been good but Doug is such a perfect Trek actor, it would be awful to lose him. The bridge crew is just so flat and unexciting, without Book and Michael there’d be nothing there to work with. Hopefully her becoming captain means fewer overlong action sequences with her trading phaser fire with a bunch of aliens, we’ll see.

Wonder if we’re ever gonna hear about the vast Emerald Chain again, seems odd that they’d just drop that. I guess they can always stand in as your general bad guy, I just wish there was more to them but “low-modulated-voice motorcycle helmet goons”, so there’d be something to explore.

Guess we’ll see next season!

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