Star Trek: Discovery

[abake]

Actually, I was kinda surprised by all twists so far!

I'm enjoying this, this second half of the season is shaping up better than the first.
But I do agree that it does't necessarily feel like Star Trek...
Oh, and I'll also miss that character. I was really getting to like him. I wonder if there'll be another twist to make him "good" again.

 

[Darth Snoopy]

I wasn't surprised by the Voq/Tyler reveal but I was surprised by the Lorca reveal.

I figured it out at the last second with Lorca when Georgiou talked about the light sensitivity.

 

[thecapn]

The big flub on Lorca that told you

Spoiler

that he was from the Mirror Universe was when he added that last coordinate to Stamets' jump back to the Starbase. He INTENTIONALLY sent them to the Mirror Universe. And the only way he would know how to do that is from working with Mirror Stamets,
and the only way he'd do THAT is if he were from the Mirror Universe himself. That was my theory, anyway. I haven't caught last night's episode yet, but I'm assuming that's how it plays out. Guess I just think too much (when it comes to Trek, anyway!). The rest could be explained away by the exertions of war, etc, so I didn't rely to heavily on those. Does anyone know if light sensitivity was ever talked about before? Seems awfully convenient for this plot.

 

[a-dev]

I think I'm warming to the show a bit, I've enjoyed their mirror universe stuff.

Just, and I keep going back to it, why did they have to **** with the klingons. When it aint broke don't fix it. As a Star Trek fan I find it really hard to accept what they did there.

 

[dan350zr]

I was iffy about the show at the beginning, the Klingon remake threw me for a loop as they looked more like a reptile race then klingons... but story wise the 2nd half of the season has been excellent, it's turned into one of my favorite shows.

 

[DeadLeaves]

Second half of the series has been really good, I like the set designs and costumes they used for the mirror universe. The weapons & embers from disintegration was tops.

 

[Darth Snoopy]

While I was skeptical about this series, especially the Klingon remake, I really enjoy this show now and I look forward to the next episode each week.

 

[Python]

Yeah, the mirror universe stuff has been great, I was okay with the show for a while now, but I was just kind of watching it because there's not much else to do on a Monday. However, the last two or three weeks, I've actually been excited for the following weeks. So it's doing something right. Screwing with the Klingons was no doubt a bad move, it put the show back a step unnecessarily and gave it more work to do to win people over. Plus I still don't feel any kind of attachment for much of the crew, I can't even name more than a few of them which is still a big issue. But maybe that will change in time, it is still early days...

 

[thecapn]

As far as naming crew, that's really not surprising. Besides Lorca, Burnham, Saru, Stamets, Tilly, Tyler, and Culber, most of them barely have names. There's a black guy at communications, an Asian guy at tactical, The girl who was on the Shinzou and is now at the helm with the funky eyepiece, the African woman at navigation, and Ariam, the robot-android who mans the spore drive. Between them, they've had something like 20 lines the entire series lol.

I will say this last episode gave some of them more to do, the navigator and Ariam especially. Wonder if any of them will get more of a focus now that

Spoiler

Lorca's dead.

 

[a-dev]

What has interested me is the Lorca situation, Saru in the Captain role, and the most recent development with mirror universe Michelle Yeoh. I did think it was silly to kill her off in the beginning but this might vindicate it.

#newklingonsstillsuck

 

[thecapn]

What has interested me is the Lorca situation, Saru in the Captain role, and the most recent development with mirror universe Michelle Yeoh. I did think it was silly to kill her off in the beginning but this might vindicate it.

#newklingonsstillsuck

Definitely. That's an interesting wrinkle. And apparently, the writer of the episode has stated afterward that it's all a political allegory, which is interesting, though I didn't pick up on it. That many people are betraying the values of Star Trek for something more akin to the Mirror Universe (racism, feeling superior, better than others, that violence is a good solution to problems, etc), but that Mirror Georgiou

Spoiler

is there to ask the question, can a person who has that viewpoint be redeemed? Can they actually be successful in a "better" world? So she's sticking around, at least on the short term.

The big question mark for me is

Spoiler

What's going to happen to the leadership on Discovery, and whether there will be some sort of time reboot. The changes in the Prime timeline indicate the Klingons have nearly won and destroyed most of the fleet. Kinda don't buy that with the sarcophagus ship gone and Kol dead, but whatever. I REALLY can't buy that that was happening "behind the scenes" while the Enterprise was off exploring Talos IV.

The decimated fleet status means Captain Saru and the crew will probably stay intact...for now. But what about Prime Lorca? My gut tells me he's dead. If the "ion storm switch" explanation works anything like how it did in TOS, than that means the two Lorcas switched places and he was blown sky high with the Buran. But that doesn't mean they can't come up with a way around that pesky problem.

And as for Mirror Lorca, sure, he disintegrated in that Mirror Mycelial core-thingie. But I find it just as likely that he's now trapped in there - like Stamets was - as he is dead. Difference is, there's no body to come back to.

Does anyone else really hope that someone will come up with the idea that the Nexus from Generations is a rift in the mycelial network? The two seem SO similar in how they work, and it'd be a nice tie-in to Trek history. I'd love to see a novel written about it, at least.

 

[Darth Snoopy]

What has interested me is the Lorca situation, Saru in the Captain role, and the most recent development with mirror universe Michelle Yeoh. I did think it was silly to kill her off in the beginning but this might vindicate it.

#newklingonsstillsuck

I like that Michelle is coming back and I think that she will play a pivotal role against the Klingons.

Definitely. That's an interesting wrinkle. And apparently, the writer of the episode has stated afterward that it's all a political allegory, which is interesting, though I didn't pick up on it. That many people are betraying the values of Star Trek for something more akin to the Mirror Universe (racism, feeling superior, better than others, that violence is a good solution to problems, etc), but that Mirror Georgiou

Spoiler

is there to ask the question, can a person who has that viewpoint be redeemed? Can they actually be successful in a "better" world? So she's sticking around, at least on the short term.

See my answer above about Gerogiou.

The big question mark for me is

Spoiler

What's going to happen to the leadership on Discovery, and whether there will be some sort of time reboot. The changes in the Prime timeline indicate the Klingons have nearly won and destroyed most of the fleet. Kinda don't buy that with the sarcophagus ship gone and Kol dead, but whatever. I REALLY can't buy that that was happening "behind the scenes" while the Enterprise was off exploring Talos IV.

The decimated fleet status means Captain Saru and the crew will probably stay intact...for now. But what about Prime Lorca? My gut tells me he's dead. If the "ion storm switch" explanation works anything like how it did in TOS, than that means the two Lorcas switched places and he was blown sky high with the Buran. But that doesn't mean they can't come up with a way around that pesky problem.

And as for Mirror Lorca, sure, he disintegrated in that Mirror Mycelial core-thingie. But I find it just as likely that he's now trapped in there - like Stamets was - as he is dead. Difference is, there's no body to come back to.

Does anyone else really hope that someone will come up with the idea that the Nexus from Generations is a rift in the mycelial network? The two seem SO similar in how they work, and it'd be a nice tie-in to Trek history. I'd love to see a novel written about it, at least.

Now that would be interesting and a nice nod to Generations.

 

[thecapn]

You know, it dawned on me that if they really want to bring Shatner in somehow, that'd be a way to do it and have it make sense. He's in the mycelial network, as an offshoot of the Nexus, an "echo" that can't leave, like Guinan was. Hell, throw in Stewart with him. Now THAT'D be interesting. Could do an episode where someone gets stuck in the network (again) and runs into them all. A fun piece of fan fic, anyway.

I'm one of those who doesn't think Shatner needs to be in it, but it keeps coming up, so...

 

[a-dev]

I don't currently see how this show can reference forward in Star Trek lore without it seeming like blatant fan service for fan service sake. It would be much easier and more plausible with a sequel show to refer back in time.

As far as having Kirk and/or Picard appearing via the mycelial network (if they were to say that it is the Nexus) - they could do that I guess but two things - surely they wouldn't have aged. Secondly, who are they to the current crew? Picard won't exist yet, does Kirk even exist yet? To the Discovery crew it would just be a random meeting with one or two starfleet officers who apparently will be famous and prolific one day. When it happened in Generations it was a big deal to Picard to meet the legend Captain Kirk. It didn't matter that Kirk didn't know who Picard was because Picard knew who he was. And by then, to us, Picard too was also pretty much a legend. So it had impact.

But the Discovery crew wouldn't care that they met Kirk or Picard...nor would we have any particular reason to care beyond us getting to see Shatner and/or Stewart in their roles again.

 

[thecapn]

Completely agree. I mainly said that because of the ongoing "Will Shatner ever be in Trek again" discussion that'll never end. This is one way it'd make some semblance of sense in-universe.

I thought about the aging problem, but we have no real explanation of how this whole thing really works. How is Culber there? Is he a part of Stamet's brain talking to himself in a manafestation of his own head? If that's the case, where did Mirror Stamets come from?

In the Nexus, Kirk was reliving his time between TMP and TWOK (at least, that's what's assumed, since he was "going back to Starfleet"). He didn't appear de-aged. You can explain it away.

There's absolutely no reason to do it, though. It'd probably have a 'These are the Voyages' feeling where it's really an episode of another show.

 

[a-dev]

And I also don't think it can be overstated how much of a headwreck it is that they changed the klingons and their ships so dramatically....and needlessly. So if they're going to start referencing previous Star Trek surely at some point they have to acknowledge that the klingons have changed yet again and explain why the hell we aren't seeing one of the 2 other types of klingon that we would have expected to see in this era.

Personally I think it's easier to just call this a full reboot.

 

[Darth Snoopy]

The writers weaseled out of an explanation about the smooth Klingon foreheads during the DS9 episode when the crew went back in time to the "Trouble with Tribbles" episode, from the original series, and when asked Worf simply replied (I'm parapharsing here) "We don't talk about that"

 

[thecapn]

They explained it in Enterprise, though.

The full on Klingon reboot is the one thing that's really grinding my gears. There's other things I don't necessarily like, per se - the uniforms, the ship design - but that's the one that's a real headscratcher for sure. I get putting a new spin on them, but what was wrong with the design from Into Darkness? They weren't my favorite, but they still looked like Klingons (at least, the "Undiscovered Country" version of Klingons). Why make them blue and black?

 

[Darth Snoopy]

They explained it in Enterprise, though.

The full on Klingon reboot is the one thing that's really grinding my gears. There's other things I don't necessarily like, per se - the uniforms, the ship design - but that's the one that's a real headscratcher for sure. I get putting a new spin on them, but what was wrong with the design from Into Darkness? They weren't my favorite, but they still looked like Klingons (at least, the "Undiscovered Country" version of Klingons). Why make them blue and black?

I forgot about that episode.

 

[dan350zr]

I forgot about that episode.

Yeah the episode where they were trying to make enhanced Klingons after the whole incident with Lt. Data creator.... I kind of miss that show....