Star Trek: Discovery

[Dekafox]

So after watching this week's episode, and reading comments elsewhere, a thought crossed my mind that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere yet.

Spoiler

So the spore drive requires a navigator. Zora is now fully sentient. What are the chances that Zora is able to become a navigator for the spore drive herself? The existence of the "subconcious" module suggests that she may be able to develop her own controls for it, even if she can't currently.

 

[Kalidor]

I don't know why but this episode really resonates with me. Since no other episode as a whole is memorable, I can easily chalk this up to the best episode of Discovery. It really got to the root of what Star Trek was about. I would like to have heard from other federation members on their views instead of just using them as set dressing. What's the point of them all being there if it's still going to come down to Burnham giving a speech? But Tarka is a nice addition and I like where this is going so far.

I was genuinely sad it was over and even more so knowing it will be 6 weeks (give or take) before we see the follow up.

 

[Kalidor]

Well I have to say as a whole this week's return of Discovery was a bit of a let down compared to the stakes from the cliffhanger. I don't know what it is about sci-fi going out of its way to completely break the immersion in a setting and story by injecting "Space Casinos". They're terrible. They offer no unique experiences since they just use the same tropes as everything we know about regular earth gambling. Same gameplay with the cards but "different", it even used poker chips.

At least previous Trek made the extra effort to come up with new games. This attempt was pretty dreadful and just brought back memories of that stupid and pointless scene in one of those new Star Wars movies. It was just so clunky with the "find the cheaters" arc that didn't seem to serve any real purpose. The terrible, TERRIBLE interaction between Burnham and Book during that cringe card game.

The worst part about it is that it wasn't just a scene they had to interact with - but it took up pretty much the entire episode.

That said - there is one really good take away from this - Owo! A member of the bridge crew actually got to do something and move the story somewhat forward. It was super good to finally see Oyin Oladejo in action and she's really good. Half of what was in the back of my mind here was thinking they should have got her to be Burnham.

Even her great scene did suffer from the god awful writing with the silly hustle and bets and Burnham just being so embarrassing. It felt like the writers of this episode had NO idea how any of these types of establishments work. Nothing related to the casino made any sense.

Anyway, I know they "tried" and the overall bits about the aliens and what they can do and why they're doing it. A bit of progression there despite the utter botch of the casino writing.

 

[Axaday]

I just got to see Ep1 (also 2) of the new season yesterday. I'm going to watch because even in its diluted form I want to watch Star Trek. But ug. All the stuff between Burnham and the President made me cringe. The writers are clear that they KNOW Burnham is wrong and the way they write her is wrong. And they still take the official position that she is right. In Star Wars when Anakin whines about not being a Master, the context makes it clear that he is whining. In a similar scene here, I really don't feel like the context comes in. Burnham is in (I guess) her mid-30s and she posits that her experience has prepared her for ANYTHING and even if she doesn't want the job she insists that she'd be the person to do it because of how awesome she is and instead of address her hubris again, the President just kinda says there is a little lesson she still needs to learn.

Dang it, there is a HUGE lesson she still needs to learn and the writers I am sure are aware of it, but they like it like this so they keep writing it like this.

Also when they are in the middle of a crisis, the President keeps second guessing her and then letting her go. After a few of them, in the middle of a crisis, Burnham just stops what she is doing and says "Are you removing me from command? If not I have work to do" and she just stands there waiting for the answer. It's the same answer as before so I am sure she knew the President was going to let her save the day with there AWESOME, but I felt the scene was acted/directed poorly. Burnham should've delivered that line while rapidly pushing buttons or whatever. She should not have stopped.

 

[Kalidor]

The season over all is still worth a watch. This week's episode had a lot of "characters talking" about stuff that actually mattered so I was pretty happy with it. The story overall didn't necessarily move that far forward but I still felt like there was some substance here. Mild spoiler though - you won't be rid of the annoying Federation President any time soon.

 

[Shadhausen]

I actually really like the Fed President. She seems a little overbearing at first but they really do a nice job of fleshing her out and her actress is really good too.

 

[Copper Bezel]

That was actually a really satisfying season story.

Spoiler

I love the sense of scale and the classic Star Trek process of working out a form of communication. Ship-sized lighter than air aliens from a gas giant planet who've rebuilt their solar system and put up some megastructures are the kinds of things Star Trek usually doesn't dip into, and the story resolved in a way that was epic, visually spectacular, and satisfying without being all about action and ship battles. And I wouldn't have expected Booker to end up sentenced to community service instead of getting a free pass for the end of the season, which feels the world of this story is grounded and taken seriously. No disappointing mystery boxes, no forced twists, a sense of scale, a genuine sense of wonder, and some moments that felt like the good bits of TMP. A lot of things to nitpick along the way, but this season was legitimately a good Trek story.

 

[Kalidor]

That was actually a really satisfying season story.

Spoiler

I love the sense of scale and the classic Star Trek process of working out a form of communication. Ship-sized lighter than air aliens from a gas giant planet who've rebuilt their solar system and put up some megastructures are the kinds of things Star Trek usually doesn't dip into, and the story resolved in a way that was epic, visually spectacular, and satisfying without being all about action and ship battles. And I wouldn't have expected Booker to end up sentenced to community service instead of getting a free pass for the end of the season, which feels the world of this story is grounded and taken seriously. No disappointing mystery boxes, no forced twists, a sense of scale, a genuine sense of wonder, and some moments that felt like the good bits of TMP. A lot of things to nitpick along the way, but this season was legitimately a good Trek story.

I agree with all of that. I think what happened to the General was a bit of a cop out, but overall this was easily the best season of Discovery with the best finale. I know that typically comes with the disclaimer of "that's not a very high bar to meet" but it was really good. While Trek has certainly dealt with truly "alien" aliens in the past, they were at best a single episode plot mechanic. Even the Wormhole Aliens were grounded in a context that humans could understand. Ten-C was a legit "Oh shit, we didn't know ants could think" level of alien. Even though you might think they'd have noticed them having space ships, the implication was that Ten-C didn't even have or use space ships so it wouldn't really be obvious to them what they were.

Anyway, I think they set the universe up pretty well to go into another season. It took a LOT of stumbling to get there, but I think the season was legit good and the most "Star Trek" out of any of them by far.

 

[TM2-Megatron]

I find myself agreeing with everything said so far. I've been pretty hard on Discovery up to now, but I'm not one to deny credit when it's due. This was easily their best finale to date, but also one of the best episodes of the series thus far, I think.

The whole "everyone on the ship (even the ship computer's AI) is in therapy!" thing still kinda pushes my buttons... makes me miss the TNG days when the Ship's Counsellor was a rightfully mocked position amongst a crew of people who are supposed to be supremely well-adjusted, highly-trained professionals. Now it seems to be among the most important on the ship. But on the whole, I'm liking where the show seems to be headed and I'm ready to put the bizarre 23rd-century opening seasons behind me and see where the 32nd-century Federation is going to take us.

Spoiler

That ending shot of Federation HQ and the fleet orbiting the soon-to-be rejoined Earth was a nice moment. Took a while, but finally got it back where it belongs.

 

[Copper Bezel]

makes me miss the TNG days when the Ship's Counsellor was a rightfully mocked position amongst a crew of people who are supposed to be supremely well-adjusted, highly-trained professionals.

I mean, no, very much not rightfully, because that is literally what is meant by stigmatizing mental health, as well as just a bad assumption about what kinds of people therapy is useful to, and the mental health equivalent of ignoring preventative care because you feel too tough to get sick. Troi's job was mocked because 1) she was written very, very bad at it and 2) it was the 80s, and fans took "mental health" as a punch line, like "gay", even if the show did not. (None of which has nothing to do with Disco of course, Hugh's arc with being everyone's therapist has been a pretty heavy-handed one.)

 

[TM2-Megatron]

It just seems excessive to me to have what seems to be the entire senior staff, and the ship's computer, requiring so much counseling. A couple of them, sure. And yeah, I do say that as someone who abhors talking about my feelings; at the very least with someone I'm paying to tolerate the experience. It's not something I'd want to inflict on someone.

Having Hugh double as CMO and counselor is also a little much. It's no wonder he's overworked. That would've possibly been a better subplot for his assistant, who I don't has had more than a handful of lines, though she's a constant presence in Sickbay.

 

[Copper Bezel]

Yeah, agreed. It literally feels like a personnel problem. Not least because the 24th Century Enterprise D, admittedly with a much larger crew, did have a ship's counselor, and Discovery is a 31st C. ship now ... with a crew that was selected in the 23rd, minus the enlisted folks who sensibly bailed to the Enterprise (no-a-b-c-or-d) before Disco went through the wormhole. (Which, in retrospect, makes it a bit impressive they survived as long as they did before getting the handy smart-matter workings and DOTs.) Like, I know Discovery is a much smaller crew than Enterprise D, and Culber's job of keeping people alive is a little simpler with all that fancy new tech, but there nonetheless seems to be a workload that's not really being efficiently distributed.

That personnel problem kinda seems to be the source of the problem, too, since it all relates back to this time-displaced crew. Everyone's coping with losing everyone they've ever known and having no personal attachments outside Discovery by putting themselves into their work, no one wanted to leave the ship or see it under new command last season - but this isn't Voyager, nobody's do-or-die trapped there, and increasingly there's a whole Federation out there to fill in the holes. And contrary to the crisis-mode response of giving the crew something to latch onto last season, the three people who've left the crew for a while to connect with something else familiar and pursue a goal outside Discovery (Saru, Tilly, and Nhan) seem to be the most well-adjusted and comfortable in the new present of anyone and more or less living their best lives.

It doesn't seem beyond reason to transfer on another nurse practitioner or something. And maybe encourage some of the crew who aren't important to the season arc to take a position on not the only ship in the galaxy with an instant teleport drive that's on indefinite save-the-universe duty, take up a hobby, and get some perspective on work-life balance.

 

[Cybersnark]

Having Hugh double as CMO and counselor is also a little much. It's no wonder he's overworked. That would've possibly been a better subplot for his assistant, who I don't has had more than a handful of lines, though she's a constant presence in Sickbay.

Other way around; Dr. Pollard is the CMO, and Culber is her assistant, which is why he can focus on mental health while the actual CMO handles her job.

Remember that part of the oft-ignored original premise was that the Hero in this show was not a department head; Burnham and her (hypothetical) co-stars (Tilly, Saru, Tyler, Stamets, Culber, Mirror-Georgiou) were intended to be lower-ranked individuals who had to follow unexplained/classified/mysterious orders from the people "Upstairs" like Georgiou, Lorca, Pike, and Cornwall. This is part of where the show screwed up by giving Burnham so much narrative importance that she was basically a captain in all but name, until they finally gave up and just put her in charge.

For that matter, we never actually met Discovery's original chief engineer. It was not Stamets; he was just the scientist (note the blue/silver shirt) who developed the spore drive (and was thus acting as chief engineer during testing and when the drive became mission-critical). Jet Reno seems to have stepped into that role after she was rescued (by virtue of being the most tech-oriented person on the ship), but we have no idea who held the position before she came aboard.

Of course, none of this is obvious onscreen, because Discovery eschews the use of full-crew conference room scenes (the few times we see the conference room, it's a closed briefing, and all important ship-related decisions seem to be made in the captain's ready room or on the bridge in the midst of a crisis).

 

[Cradok]

Something else you don't realise unless you think about it is that a lot of the 'main' characters - the ones who are in the opening credits - are science officers. Burnham, Saru, Tilly, Stamets and Adira are all science officers.

 

[Copper Bezel]

Other way around; Dr. Pollard is the CMO, and Culber is her assistant, which is why he can focus on mental health while the actual CMO handles her job.

Remember that part of the oft-ignored original premise was that the Hero in this show was not a department head; Burnham and her (hypothetical) co-stars (Tilly, Saru, Tyler, Stamets, Culber, Mirror-Georgiou) were intended to be lower-ranked individuals who had to follow unexplained/classified/mysterious orders from the people "Upstairs" like Georgiou, Lorca, Pike, and Cornwall. This is part of where the show screwed up by giving Burnham so much narrative importance that she was basically a captain in all but name, until they finally gave up and just put her in charge.

For that matter, we never actually met Discovery's original chief engineer. It was not Stamets; he was just the scientist (note the blue/silver shirt) who developed the spore drive (and was thus acting as chief engineer during testing and when the drive became mission-critical). Jet Reno seems to have stepped into that role after she was rescued (by virtue of being the most tech-oriented person on the ship), but we have no idea who held the position before she came aboard.

Hrng. That definitely just creates the same problem Burnham did, by making the most capable, important person who's always going to step in with the solution and who the show expects to be responsible for solving the problem, you know, technically not in charge of doing so, and makes every task assignment and staff meeting awkward in the way that Tilly as No. 1 was. In addition to bringing on some new hires and looking into some leave time and career enrichment opportunities for anyone who can be spared, I'm going to recommend a little bit of honest reflection on the org chart

 

[Kalidor]

The main issue to me with the entire premise of "modern Trek" is just the cultural sensibilities the writers and directors have shifted to. When you think of anything from TOS - Enterprise, the idea of a Starfleet crew is in the form of highly trained, highly disciplined and highly competent individuals. These people respect the chain of command, the infrastructure of Starfleet and (generally) the rules. They behave how fictional soldiers should. Sure you have outliers and incidents that often become the specific focus of an episode here and there, but for the most part, the reason you don't have to counsel *everyone* on the bridge is because they are the "best of the best". And in order to get to even the first level of "best" they had to endure all that training, both physical and psychological and score highly to even get INTO Starfleet Academy. And those that were lucky enough to make it can still crack and wash out before ever graduating into actual ranked officers.

Where as now, the crews are less like officers and more like a small group of anime kids that go off on random adventures and get into all kinds of mischief. Burnham has failed upwards at every opportunity because she's good at everything and doesn't take no guff! That's not how traditional Star Trek characters have progressed through story arcs. And it's the same with everyone else always crying or jumping up and down like middle school kids. It's one of the flaws I don't expect to ever be "fixed" because I think for the most part it's "working as intended"

 

[TM2-Megatron]

Other way around; Dr. Pollard is the CMO, and Culber is her assistant, which is why he can focus on mental health while the actual CMO handles her job.

Remember that part of the oft-ignored original premise was that the Hero in this show was not a department head; Burnham and her (hypothetical) co-stars (Tilly, Saru, Tyler, Stamets, Culber, Mirror-Georgiou) were intended to be lower-ranked individuals who had to follow unexplained/classified/mysterious orders from the people "Upstairs" like Georgiou, Lorca, Pike, and Cornwall. This is part of where the show screwed up by giving Burnham so much narrative importance that she was basically a captain in all but name, until they finally gave up and just put her in charge.

For that matter, we never actually met Discovery's original chief engineer. It was not Stamets; he was just the scientist (note the blue/silver shirt) who developed the spore drive (and was thus acting as chief engineer during testing and when the drive became mission-critical). Jet Reno seems to have stepped into that role after she was rescued (by virtue of being the most tech-oriented person on the ship), but we have no idea who held the position before she came aboard.

Of course, none of this is obvious onscreen, because Discovery eschews the use of full-crew conference room scenes (the few times we see the conference room, it's a closed briefing, and all important ship-related decisions seem to be made in the captain's ready room or on the bridge in the midst of a crisis).

I mean, I knew Stamets wasn't the Chief Engineer and it's always kind of bothered me we've never even seen[ Discovery's conventional warp core, either pre- or post- 32nd century refit. We did see their Dilithium-crystal storage area, though, which was kinda cool.

I had no clue about Culber, though. Weird that Burnham's never even had a discussion with her Chief Medical Officer as far as I can remember, lol. This season has done a better job of giving side characters more to do... hopefully Season 5 expands on that and we can learn more about these other people we've seen on-screen.

 

[Copper Bezel]

The main issue to me with the entire premise of "modern Trek" is just the cultural sensibilities the writers and directors have shifted to. When you think of anything from TOS - Enterprise, the idea of a Starfleet crew is in the form of highly trained, highly disciplined and highly competent individuals. These people respect the chain of command, the infrastructure of Starfleet and (generally) the rules. They behave how fictional soldiers should. Sure you have outliers and incidents that often become the specific focus of an episode here and there, but for the most part, the reason you don't have to counsel *everyone* on the bridge is because they are the "best of the best". And in order to get to even the first level of "best" they had to endure all that training, both physical and psychological and score highly to even get INTO Starfleet Academy. And those that were lucky enough to make it can still crack and wash out before ever graduating into actual ranked officers.

Where as now, the crews are less like officers and more like a small group of anime kids that go off on random adventures and get into all kinds of mischief. Burnham has failed upwards at every opportunity because she's good at everything and doesn't take no guff! That's not how traditional Star Trek characters have progressed through story arcs. And it's the same with everyone else always crying or jumping up and down like middle school kids. It's one of the flaws I don't expect to ever be "fixed" because I think for the most part it's "working as intended"

It recently occurred to me that one of the consequences of removing Starfleet from the equation in Voyager was that the comparatively insular, familial, and demilitarized crew made it kind of an office show, which is probably part of why it's the preferred comfort Trek binging option.

I'm glad the characters in Discovery emote, because Trek since TNG has tended to feel rather stiff to me. That was deliberate too, the acting has always been a bit Shakespearean stage, and the gravitas of a Picard or Sisko benefits from that, I just don't prefer it. Meanwhile, Burnham still makes speeches but they end with a bunch of hugging, and it's saccharine at times but at least sort of wholesome. So it's less how characters emote and more what they do that tends to bother me - too many artificial conflicts with authority that are easily circumvented or resolved such that Discovery or Burnham or whoever gets to do what they want, too little involvement from the rest of the fleet in whatever the season's conflict is, etc. Because they really do feel like they could just be a superhero team out there occasionally checking in with Commissioner Gordon at times.

I mean, I knew Stamets wasn't the Chief Engineer and it's always kind of bothered me we've never even seen[ Discovery's conventional warp core, either pre- or post- 32nd century refit. We did see their Dilithium-crystal storage area, though, which was kinda cool.

Teeeeechnically we did see the warp core post-refit when they ejected it at the end of S3, but it was in the Turbolift TARDIS at the time, so there's little indication of how it would have related to the ship's habitable space.

 

[Kup]

Staments isn’t CE? Culber isn’t CMO? TIL.

The show did a poor job of communicating that. 4 years in and in just now learning this info.

 

[Copper Bezel]

I knew Stamets wasn't originally CE, because in the original crew arrangement he was described as a mycologist and seemed to be a specialist for the development of the prototype spore drive. And not a sole inventor, which is a nice change of pace from the usual Trek approach of having this one mythical genius who invents a thing and keeps all the plans in his head, Cochrane and Soong and so on. But I definitely assumed he had taken over that role. It makes sense though if that's actually Reno's job, like that time they wrote her out of a couple of episodes the actor couldn't be in by saying she was busy completing refit stuff; Stamets definitely has enough to do as the resident physics genius as well as the spore drive expert and navigator.

Dr. Culber, though, I can't possibly square. He is consistently the only medical officer who matters, and has been since at least S2. I don't remember him being established as not CMO, but they should retcon it.