I’m just now watching the first episode of this, having read the spoilers everyone has posted and subsequently forgotten them because they didn’t mean anything to me. So uh I guess I’ll report back
Also why is there a sandworm in the intro
and uh
anyway I’ll re-read this thread once I’m done and I’m sure it’ll all make sense
also the deck is too dark
am i remembering wrong or has basically no redshirt/extra crew been killed on the discovery so far? has it only been top line crew members who have died? cuz that’s an interesting/miserable inversion of the usual formula
I’m 3 episodes in and uh yeah
this ain’t star trek
But so far it’s a good sci-fi grimdark show
Makes me want to watch Farscape again because, well, Farscape is just really good I guess. I suspect this show will not be as goofy as farscape was on the reg, so that’s a bit of a bummer.
this is very good
this guy died in ep 3:
kind of a redshirt
you know thinking about it the lack of redshirts is because they never explore or have any away missions so lol
has there been any sense of… discovery on star trek discovery? I mean the fungus drive sort of but has there been anything in the particularly star trekky vein of making first contact with alien worlds, diplomatic missions with reclusive civilizations, anything besides fighting aliens and getting destroyed by the cold and uncaring universe?
There was the planet with the shared consciousness before the mid-season break. I’d say the tardigrade was in that vein, too, if it’s distinct from the spore drive.
ah, you’re right, (tardigrade only counts as part of the spore drive imo)
though the planet that they were investigating they were not doing so out of a sense of curiosity but because they had to solve this military conundrum and they had to do it fast.
I was troubled by this right from the first ep and I’m still troubled by this show’s kowtowing to militaristic thinking
Is it any wonder that Michael is best friends with a fascist emperor given that even the regular star trek universe she comes from has troublingly fascist undercurrents informing everything?
Yeah, it’s an OK fix to have Lorca be the reason for Discovery’s particularly dark and militaristic vibe, but Michael is written backwards if that was the intent. They start with Michael as the catalyst of all things and work from there.
It’s a total waste of the premise to have them jump to [REDACTED] in the last episode.
Would’ve loved to see Lorca revealed, and put into the position where he willingly went on very Federation-ey missions, so you have this tension between conquest and exploration. To have someone who saw no value in Federation ideals, seeing firsthand the rewards throughout the show, would’ve been nice.
They had that bit in the time loop ep where they had to, by law, save the endangered space whale and Lorca was just sorta gritting his teeth and giving orders to do it. I really wanted that sort of stuff to take hold, where the military desperation was balanced with the idealistic good.
Argh.
They keep finding novel ways to be inscrutable and frustrating every week!
Discovery feels a little like there was a Shenzhou show that went for 7 seasons and they couldn’t renew all the actors contracts so they did one weird extra go for broke season that’s also a soft reboot.
Found in my history:
look discovrery…bad okay
they really have fucked up the klingons to such an absolutely impossible degree. i remember when enterprise had to have an entire complex retconned reason why the vulcans made no sense and i guess these writers will probably invent an even wilder one
the terraforming sequence was very nice and pretty and cute i guess
lol @ tyler calling being memory engrams inside a surgically altered body that tried to murder michael “things getting complicated” in a relationship
the georgiou decision is probably the absolute dumbest this show has ever made. i know this entire show’s MO is “A Ridiculous Twist Based On An Impossible Choice With Very Poorly Explained Stakes” but this one is at the top!
yo just a basic question here but does the discovery crew’s families think they’re fucking dead and also do they have any family in this huge swath of space that was conquered and why is no one mentioning any of this or reacting to it in any way whatsoever and why don’t they just have the basics of characters acting like humans
all of these plots make a little more sense if you do imagine it as it’s original pitch as an anthology show with literally one shot at these characters before moving on but the execution would still be unbelievably bad!
I hate this show. Lorca’s speech about scientists becoming warriors is treated as a victory speech with no thought to what that actually means or any sort of moral quandary about it. And they just killed the very nice doctor to which I said out loud about four times, “oh noooooo.”
I’m still gonna watch it but this definitely feels like someone watched Game of Thrones and said “Star Trek needs more major characters dying almost randomly.” It’s a real loss.
Reading through the thread again and this caught my eye. I was trying to figure out why this hasn’t been working for me very well and I think this is the best take so far. More quotes to come probably though, sorry (not sorry) for the multipost that will inevitably happen
heh
Yeah this uh, really pissed me off? It doesn’t even feel like a character growth moment, it feels like Michael stating what the audience is “supposed” to be thinking, and they don’t really have a strong argument against it in the show. Basically, they were united by a common enemy, the end. That sucked.
Yeah uh
yeah
okay i get it now
Okay so like, as garbage entertainment this show did its job. But it really makes very little sense, and the only character with any sense of development is Saru becoming a very good captain and overcoming his fear. I really enjoyed that. Nobody else either gets very much time (Tilly), or makes any sense (Michael jesus christ, is she just the embodiment of plot movement or what?)
So here’s the thing though
If Lorca is supposed to be a bad guy, then we are supposed to retroactively look at his behavior and go “yeah, that was bad guy stuff and we as people should be above warmongering etc.” But Lorca’s behavior fits in just fine with the rest of Starfleet, which is apparently a huge military organization. And the literal second they get back from the mirror universe they are talking about who to kill next and how to justify killing them.
And you know the final “hard choice” is going to be, do we destroy the Klingons’ military capability or do we genocide them? And that’s
So I guess the takeaway is…be like the Terran Empire, but a little less genocidal?
Even the one episode where they make any motion towards trying to establish peace through means other than “blowin shit up” immediately turns into “Klingons can’t be trusted.”
Okay my brain like split right down the middle during this second-to-last ep. My higher brain functions were just absolutely capital-S S c r e a m i n ', but the lizard part actually enjoyed it.
There were a lot of scenes of people just talking. Talking in a hallway, talking in a briefing room, talking in their quarters, talking in the mess hall. I liked that a lot. That doesn’t happy very often in this show. It seems insane that I’m saying that about a Star Trek show but here we are.
I really like the Admiral and the guy playing Sarek, so, great seeing a lot more of those two. The scene with Michael and Sarek was delightful. The scene with the Admiral just being straight with absolutely everyone about how fucked up their situations are was refreshing.
In a similar vein, that scene between Michael and Tyler was really well-acted and genuinely affecting, which is insane considering how dumb Tyler’s entire side of the conversation was (and how dumb it felt that Michael would let it get to her). Sonequa Martin really is great in this role, even when they give her nothing at all to work with.
Terraforming sequence was wonderful in a very Star Trek way. I’d love to see a lot more of that, with some kind of big constructive scientific project as the “action” of the episode, and a lot less ships shooting at each other.
As utterly shlocky as it was, I did like the idea of Sarak and the Emperor having a talk about their dimensionally-displaced, twice-adopted common-law daughter.
Nice seeing more Andorians and Tellerites in this one - been feeling like there’s not a whole lot of non-humans in Starfleet proper up until now.
So that stuff was good.
The context for absolutely everything was maddening.
The entire episode is them talking about how fucked up the klingons are, carrying out suicide bombing attacks on star bases and like, destroying the atmosphere of a planet to slaughter everyone on it, etc. The Admiral talks to that klingon woman in the prison and she tells them “we are unable to stop, we have no control over ourselves, and you must stop us,” which is like the final nail in the coffin for any hope we had for an interesting klingon race. It’s wild that they’ve taken away the only defining trait of that star trek race - their honor - and turn them into savage hypocrites.
Starfleet decides that their tactics aren’t working and that they need something completely different in order to survive, which I think makes sense dramatically (what was that Quark line about humans only being civilized so long as they had their creature comforts), but it in the story arc of the show, it just goes to further show what hypocrites humans are, and yeah, as VirtualClint said, makes this entire universe no more interesting or unique than any Good Guy race vs any Bad Buy race in any shitty sci-fi show.
Michael, boy howdy. VirtualClint is on the money here, but like, taken in its own universe under its own terms, one thing that’s really been grating on me is how obsessed everyone is in Michael - Lorca, the Emperor, Saru, the klingons, Starfleet - and how special and unique she is. How ‘nobody but her could’ve done what she did’. Beyond her ability to remain stoic while acting in the mirror universe, it doesn’t feel at all like she brings anything to any situation but competent military ability and a commitment to not get pulled off-mission. Think of every major challenge she’s faced, and she’s succeeded by following a pre-set strategy that Saru or Tilly/Stamets put together. The living planet, Kor’s ship, the ISS Charon rebellion - she has succeeded by simply not being the one who fucks up the plan. Now that is incredibly valuable in a war, but it isn’t like she’s got some unique trait on the level of Picard’s diplomacy, Sisko’s strategy, Janeway’s absolute all-in resourcefulness, etc. She doesn’t think differently in any way, she’s just good at keeping on-task, which sucks as the ‘thing’ that makes her a hero.
Yeah, stuck with me that if this is what Starfleet is currently valuing, Michael is basically just a lesser version of Lorca. Lorca was doggedly on-task to the point of suicidal, which I guess is what everyone is looking for?
I won’t get into the fact that bringing the genocidal Terran Emperor over here has immediately, within one day, resulted in Starfleet electing her into the captain’s chair for what I’m going to assume is a genocidal plan to destroy the klingon homeworld. They could not wait to get another mirror universe warrior into command, apparently.
Yeah I dunno.
Sleazy: Not to enable your desperate hope that any of this could fit in-canon, but… had a thought. Tyler and Vok are now one being. Imagine if the virus idea was true, but the virus changed them into a hybrid race like Tyler - Klingon on the inside, but human-looking on the outside. That would be their solution to the war - making the alien race literally more like them.
Which would be all kinds of fucked up, but, this is Discovery.
