Last week, I praised Star Trek: Discovery for how it handled a crew member’s death. While not making up for the show’s frustrating reluctance to develop its secondary characters, “If Memory Serves” at least offered us a chance to care about Airiam before shooting her out of an airlock. Not everyone agreed with me, and I can see why. A few minutes of emotionally manipulative storytelling can easily be dismissed as too little too late if it doesn’t achieve its ends. It worked for me, though, because there was just enough cleverness, and just enough pay off, to make the hour feel like the people working behind the scenes were actually invested in telling a story and not just serving up the high points.
“The Red Angel” more or less tanks this approach in its opening minutes. While I understand that it’s appropriate to give Airiam a funeral scene, and while I appreciate the show at least attempting to acknowledge the consequences of an earlier twist, this moved from “quick but effective” to “forced” for me, as we spend the beginning of the hour listening to multiple characters give speeches about what a person who’s maybe had ten minutes of screen-time in two seasons (half of which happened last week) meant to them. Everyone freaking out in the heat of the moment last week? Fine. But this long, drawn-out grieving is borderline absurd, and really just serves to underline how little we knew about Airiam before she got tossed out an airlock.
The rest of the episode finds the show back to its usual wow-first-questions-later approach, dropping multiple bombshells without pausing for breath, and climaxing with a self-inflicted crisis that’s so fundamentally absurd that there’s no surprise at all when it works. Call it a rule of narrative, like Roger Ebert’s economy of characters principle: if the heroes come up with an incredibly risky (and honestly kind of stupid) plan, it has to work, because if it fails, the plan’s shortcomings would make the heroes look like idiots. Deciding to put Michael in danger in order to draw out the Red Angel on the basis of a theory they just came up with that day is ridiculous. It generates suspense simply by how long it takes to pay off. But it also clearly has to work, because it so obviously shouldn’t.
Much of “The Red Angel” has the show focusing even more on this season’s overarching plot, with the threat from the future AI Control looming large in everyone’s minds. That this threat has to be dealt with is evident, but without any sense of immediate danger, it’s hard to understand the need for such rapid, poorly considered strategizing. There’s some quick hand-waving about the Federation dropping all charges against the Discovery (seriously, after making a big deal of them being fugitives, Admiral Cornwell undoes the whole thing in a single sentence; we don’t even have a sense of them having to do anything to prove their case), and then Leland and Georgiou show up to give us some backstory: apparently, there was a time travel arms race with the Klingons.
This is yet another in a long line of Discovery plot reveals that could’ve worked if the show had any interest in spending the time to make it work. As is, it’s dropped with the same casualness as a last name. Certain ideas need to carry weight with them if they’re going to have an impact, and you can’t treat “trying to discover time travel first” like it’s no big deal. As far as I can remember, we heard nothing about this last season during the actual, y’know, war, and hearing about it now in retrospect, it’s difficult to take with a straight face.
Yes, it makes sense insofar as I can imagine both sides wanting to have this remarkable technology, but the idea that they were both far enough along that they could almost control it is a big jump that makes the concept seem more mundane than it should. It’s a bit like the Spore Drive, that faster-than-warp form of travel that they decided to throw into a prequel for reasons that still escape me, but at least that was treated as a big deal. Here, everyone just rolls with it and moves on.
The other big revelation is the backstory on Michael’s parents who, it turns out, were working with Section 31 on the time travel project. The Klingons killed them because of the arms race—which means that race to time travel has been going on for decades now, but whatever—and Leland is basically to blame because he got them a stolen time crystal. He tells this to Michael after it becomes clear that Section 31 will have to work with Discovery to catch the Angel, and Michael snaps, attacking him before yelling at Tyler (who has no idea what’s going on) and heading to the gym to beat up a dummy.
Sonequa Martin-Green, who doesn’t always get challenged on this series, does some terrific work here, and her later conversation with Spock is very strong; as silly as I think the source of their initial combativeness was, seeing it repaired like this is extremely satisfying. (If you’d told me before this season started that Spock and Michael would be one of my favorite things about it, I would not have believed you.)
But as convincing as Martin-Green is, the reaction as scripted is too simple, too straightforward, to really work. If the episode had given time to this revelation, which is clearly intended to pay off in the final scene, it might have had Michael’s birth parents come up before this season. As is, it’s just a writer settling on the most obvious reaction, instead of a character-specific one. Again, you can defend it—she’s under a lot of strain, she already has plenty of reasons to hate Leland (remember when he was going to rip Spock’s brain out?), etc. But it plays out in a way that feels like no one ever wrote a second draft. Hopefully having her mother show up in the final minutes will give Michael a chance to explore something more complex.
Oh right, that’s the other twist. After discovering Michael’s biometric signature in the Red Angel (!), everyone decides that some future version of Michael is time-traveling to save the universe (!?!). As Spock points out, this is in character for her, but it’s still a ludicrous reveal that the episode rushes through in order to get to the actual answer. Everyone is immediately and completely committed to the idea of capturing the Angel—you know, the being who has saved multiple lives and who hasn’t ever been a threat and oh yeah it turns out might be a future version of one of our most devoted and brilliant crewmembers.
This is dumb. And, as ever, it’s the kind of dumb that could if work if they’d spent more than five minutes on it. Michael has a history of irrational behavior (remember when she more or less started the Klingon War in the pilot?), and while we know her intentions are pure, maybe not everyone trusts her. Maybe Michael doesn’t even trust herself. And while the Red Angel has so far been not a threat, this could’ve been played as a refusal to let someone else have all the answers; a criticism of how the Federation’s arrogance drives them to target the one person who might be able to stop the impending apocalypse. Or hell, maybe they don’t even believe an apocalypse is coming, and just want the Red Angel to stop lying to them. Maybe Section 31 believes she’s a Klingon from the future fucking with their heads.
Any of this could have worked if it was in the actual episode. But instead, we just get twists and action without any effort to justify any of it. The presumption that we’ll accept our heroes behavior simply because they’re the heroes is immensely frustrating, especially from a show that initially suggested something richer and more conflicted. And again, there’s the problem of the inevitability of an absurd scheme. As soon as it’s suggested—oh, the Red Angel comes when it senses Michael’s in danger (which has happened what, twice?), let’s put Michael in danger—everyone decides it’s the right thing to do. Some of them have second thoughts, but only after the plan has been put into effect.
So now Discovery (and what’s left of Section 31—bye, Leland!) has the Red Angel, which, unless they’re very lucky, leaves them with no real protection against the future AI threat. Hopefully Mom has some answers and isn’t too upset about being interrupted in the middle of trying to save the universe to share them. Maybe Dr. Culber can find a way to interrupt her at the worst possible moment, because that seems to be his gift since coming back from the dead.
Stray observations
- Right, so Culber pops into engineering while Tilly, Stamets, and Georgiou are all neck deep in work, and he barely reads the temperature of the room before diving right the hell in. He’s looking for the Admiral (because, it turns out, she used to be a therapist; apparently there are no therapists on the Discovery and Culber assumes this would be a good use of her time), and Georgiou immediately starts getting off on the tension.
- And I mean “getting off.” The weird sexual subtext of the Mirror Universe is underlined even more than usual here, with Georgiou complaining about how her Stamets was bisexual, which this Stamets assures us is definitely not the case. It’s very stupid and sort of funny, right down to Tilly’s last line, but has anyone dug into the weird assumption that “willing to fuck anything” is a pre-existing condition for the evil version of good characters?
- “How did the Section 31 program designed to eliminate threats become the threat?” This is either an incredibly stupid line of dialogue or an absolutely brutal character critique, and for the life of me, I don’t have enough faith in the show to know which.
- “You were saving your own life.” Yeah, I get it, time travel is confusing, but it would’ve been nice if anyone had been skeptical about any of this. If the Red Angel was Michael, having her go back in time to give a message to Spock to save her life is… confusing, to say the least.
- Tyler continues to be a blank slate with a bad haircut.
- I still think my dumb Borg theory has a chance to play out.
203 Comments
Tyler continues to be a blank slate with a bad haircut.I guess they’ve cut his two-season cheque already.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that last week’s episode was one of Disco’s best…and it consisted of precisely zero Ash Tyler
I preferred how TOS dealt with people dying. These people are in space, people die all the time. They’re used to it. Like, this show made a bigger deal of this funeral than Star Trek 2 made of Spock’s funeral. I guess maybe that’s because people care about Spock and don’t need to be told they should care by other characters.
Also, I really like the Halloween episode of TOS where the witch lady turns into a giant cat so what do I know?
Michael starting to break down during the funeral of a crew mate that until a couple of episodes ago was a heavily made-up extra made me roll my eyes so hard I nearly sprained them.
Mine rolled behind the refrigerator. They’re still a little linty as I hate that every episode of this stupid show has to start with platitudinous attempts at profundity.That said, this season is way fucking better than the first one that I couldn’t even force myself to get through.
So many people spraining their eyes for no reason, especially if they actually watched the show they wouldn’t have any reason to. This is becoming an epidemic.
Yeah, because anyone who disagrees with your opinion clearly didn’t actually watch the show. Sure.
Hey, people want to wax hyperbolic, be my guest, but expect to have such on your part over the top silliness to be called out for what it is.
Sure.
Ah, the old “hate-watching” bullshit.“I hate this show so much, I have to keep watching it to see if I still hate it.”
Well I mean, TNG once had an entire episode about the loss of a character that we’d never even seen before, not even as an extra. They invented a character on the spot, just to have everyone cry over her death for the entire episode.
(This is it)
Star Trek: TOS, S02E03, The Changeling. A damaged earth-made probe, mended and reprogrammed by alien technology, destroys a planet of Four Billion people, kills at least four red-shirts, temporarily murders Scotty, and wipes Uhura’s mind of all knowledge.And I shit you not, Kirk is cracking-wise on the bridge with Bones and Spok by episode’s end. Star Trek is not a sentimental show. Discovery might keep that in mind.
Zack – Your first paragraph mentions “If Memory Serves” as the episode that focused and built up the character of Airiam; she was barely featured in that episode. I think you meant “Project Daedalus,” the episode that followed it. If not, no big deal. Otherwise, love the reviews.
I can’t tell; did you miss the (poorly set up AND poorly executed) reveal at the evil AI killed Leyland and wanted them to succeed, or are you just non-plussed?
Section 31 having secrets — I get it, that’s their thing. They’re scum. Etc. But as a viewer, Leland suddenly coming out of nowhere with information about the time travel suit being theirs was REALLY eye-rolling and unpleasant. A plot revelation pulled completely out of thin air without any kind of graceful build-up.Speaking of Leland, just what the hell did he do at the end? Before his bloody eye was stabbed by the computer there was that weird bit of dialogue. The computer says the system is offline, and Leland kind of sloppily mumbles the line “Tyler I need —” and then it’s online, and he says “ — never mind”. Then the computer reports “Authorizing security buffer override”. Then there’s an echo (…temporal delay?) of Leland bitching “Let’s go, it is not that hard…” before getting stabbed in the face and collapsing with his stabbed eye having cataracts for a second. Then he’s all “Tyler, you should have the power you need now!” over the comms.I guess we’ll find out next week, but that was weird even for this show.
They’ll trace the AI back and discover that IT’S COMING FROM INSIDE THE SHIP!!!
I got the impression it was the future AI getting into Leland’s ship, then giving Leland some kind of implant, making him the new traitor.
Com voice was control. The “echo” was it practicing.
Pretty sure that’s future AI coming back to mess up Sect. 31 again. But then again, who knows with this episode.
I thought that was the computer assuming Leland’s identity by mimicking his voice, and then killing him.
It’s an interesting design choice to put an eye stabber in your retina scanner.
Extra deterrent, means anyone trying to fake an ID is taking a big risk. It kind of fits with the whole Section 31 ethos. Mind you, Section 31’s planning AI just went gone rogue and threateans all sentient life, they must have lost quite a few people until they worked out all the bugs in the retina scanner….
Also an interesting design choice to have the security buffer override located off the bridge so that in an emergency requiring it the ship has to go without its captain for a while.
The Phantom did it first.
Omg that was terrible! I’d have to try to kill the fuck who did that to me. Good catch tho. Might be what made the writer think of it or just a coincidence.
31 needs to keep that security tight. Plus, what a gas it is to play hijinks and pranks with your 31 co-workers. “Hey Frank- check this out! Look in the scanner!” “Ok but why? What am I looking a- HEY FUCK YOU TOM! NOT COOL BRO- NOT _COOL!_ THATS TWICE!”
So you’re going to try to trap the red angel who you think is Michael but it has to be Michael in the future so you’re going to include her in a plan she’s going to remember later is a trap… …that is an idiotic plan truly in the finest tradition of trek. Yet I completely bought into the episode almost entirely on Soniqua Martin-Green’s performance. My main complaint with the series is she’s almost criminally underused. She is so much better than the material they’re giving her…Same for all the other cast members, but again, they go all in to make it work, and in spite of itself it does.
It’s so frustrating to watch show that has all its shit together except the writing. Last week showed how good the show could be if it tried harder. I knew it wouldn’t last. This week we’re back to our regularly scheduled blaaaaahhhh.Of course the Red Angel is Michael’s mom. Of course Leland is responsible for (at the very least) her dad’s death. It’s hard to critique Martin-Green for not reigning in her performance when she’s playing such a soap opera character. “The one variable we cannot possibly predict is the future.” I can’t decide whether that line’s so stupid it’s clever or if it’s just plain stupid.
It’s definitely just plain stupid.
Says a lot that my husband was watching and asked why they killed off Michael. Also, not a fan of the name for her character…big fan of the actress!
“The one variable we cannot possibly predict is the future.”The quick-hitting finger guns eyebrow raised “philosophical” dialogue on this show makes me morose.
Yeah… all variables describe thing that haven’t yet happened (are in the future). All predictions occur in the future. It’s a tautology. Not even one that sounds good.
A “show that has all its shit together except the writing,” is like a person with all their shit together except, y’know, a job or a place to live.
Do they know where their towel is?
I’m kind of looking forward to her mom explaining why she did not come back to save her from death all the times she was in danger during last season’s events. It should be fun.
That line was amazing.“Greetings, my friends! We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friends; future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable; that is why you are here. And now for the first time we are bringing to you the full story of what happened on that faithful day. We are giving you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimonies of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places, my friends, we can not keep this a secret any longer; let us punish the guilty, let us reward the innocent. My friends, can your heart stand the shocking facts about the grave robbers from outer space?”- Criswell, Plan 9 From Outer Space
I still think my dumb Borg theory has a chance to play out.BORG! Canadian BORG! YOU WILL BE EH-SIMILATED!
Canadian Borg would be too polite to assimilate anyone.
“We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
Eh, when would be a convenient time for you?”
“Resistance is futile. Sorey for being a hoser aboot this, eh?”
My takeaway after this episode is that they killed off Airiam just so they could bring Sara “Lt. Nilsson” Mitich onto the bridge without the extensive makeup and prosthetics.
After a great episode last week, Discovery took a giant leap backwards here. The whole episode just felt very hastily and haphazardly constructed, which is odd considering how slowly the show built up the red angel arc all season.The Airiam funeral scene set the tone. As a viewer it felt insulting and is yet another example of Disco trying for some grand powerful moment without having done a damn thing to earn it. Immediately I thought of the Tasha Yar funeral scene, and how much more genuinely and impactfully freakin season one TNG handled a similar scenario compared to Disco…ugh.
I’ve been a huge booster of this show. I’ve maintained that the first season was the strongest start for any Trek since TOS and I’m still convinced I’m right. I’ve said that everything about the aesthetics and cast is perfect and wonderful and makes this look and feel like the best Trek has ever been and I still maintain that’s true.But this was the stupidest goddamn episode I could have possibly imagined. This was the laziest, most bullshit hackneyed writing that could have happened. At the beginning of the episode I was annoyed that of course it’s Michael in the suit, why would it be anyone else. By the time the suit opened, I was wishing it had been. I wish it had been Neelix. I would’ve taken the Allamarain guys over this bad-season-of-The-Flash-ass writing. Berman and Braga said the future guy in Enterprise was going to be Archer himself, a concept I thought was deeply stupid until now when I long for Rick Berman’s wisdom. Daedalus is the wrong Greek myth, because this cast is actually Sisyphus struggling mighty to push this garbage writing uphill and never succeeding.I’m eager for this season to end to put me out of my misery. At least they telegraphed another Mudd encounter, maybe that will be fun.
I was wishing it had been. I wish it had been Neelix.I was kinda with you til you said this. No one wishes for Neelix.
I’m still waiting for the reveal that Tilly is Neelix’s great grandmother (as well as Wesley Crusher’s).
“GREETINGS MR. VULCAN!”“Sorry Neelix, he’s on The Orville this week.”
I think we’ve been watching different shows.I realize that my opinion is no more valid than yours, but I am tired of this show. I didn’t like the first season, stopping halfway through. Then people said it got better, so I gave it another shot, even going back and re-watching the entire run. I can honestly say that, of all the episodes, I may have enjoyed five minutes of it (total).It has no sense of joy. None of the characters, save Sarek & Amanda, are particularly likeable. The entire Tyler romance has seemed forced and tepid, while the actor himself is as bland as dried paste.I could go on about its many failings, but why bother? As a life-long Star Trek fan, they’ve managed to cure me. I’m over Star Trek. I’m done.
What’s funny is The Orville is the show that’s made me kind of wonder if Trek has always been bad. Not because it’s better than Discovery or any particular Trek (though it is definitely better than some Trek) but because there’s times when I’m watching it and thinking ”This seems exactly like Star Trek, but it’s boring.” Like, it gives me insight to all of the people who say Trek is boring, like J.J. Abrams. Like, they’ll solution a problem by describing out loud some fake sci-fi nonsense as we slowly watch it happen and it’s…it’s rough. It’s a hard pill to swallow. I think Discovery could use a bit more Orville and The Orville could use a bit more Discovery.
The Orville has been fixing its problems, especially with the last few episodes, where the stakes were higher.TNG had a lot of boring episodes, far too many. During its seven years, there were probably 15 really good episodes. TOS is still the highlight, I can rewatch almost any of it’s episodes and enjoy them, and it’s not nostalgia – they are actually better written and acted. Obviously the modern shows are much better looking, but the heart is missing.Part of the appeal of Star trek is it’s optimism. I’d like to live in the future depicted in TOS or TNG. I would not like to live in the Discovery future.
Part of the appeal of Star trek is it’s optimism. I’d like to live in the future depicted in TOS or TNG. I would not like to live in the Discovery future. Well don’t worry about it- the Discovery future only has the crew of the Discovery, Section 31, a handful of admirals, the charred remains of Kaminar, and maybe some Klingons.
Honestly, if you stuck through Enterprise and this is putting you off, we’re on different time crystals.
I still didn’t think it was Michael as Red Angel (I thought it was Tilly) because of the time paradox. How could you go back in time to save yourself if you died before getting the time travel suit?I also knew that the Red Angel would not be from previous Star Trek shows but from this show and it would be someone we already saw or heard about.As for calling the project “Daedalus”, I thought it was more about Daedalus being all about knowledge.
You know what actually would have made this episode actually watchable? If the Michael’s active participation of the plan to use herself as bait to trap the Red Angel was inverted. What if she was completely unaware of that plan? With Spock, Pike, and Section 31 plotting behind her back, knowing the only way to trap the Red Angel is to try to kill Burnham? And then watch her scream in agony as the rest of them have to deal with that? That would be so much more interesting than the holy-god we get it self-sacrifice of Michael Emotion Burnham.
That would have been great. It would also require the show to allow Burnham to be less messianic, so them going with that kind of idea is as likely as a nudist surviving on the surface of Rura Penthe.
Haha yes, exactly. I really don’t get the writers perspective regarding Burnham. She obviously is the most undisciplined officer we have ever seen on Trek, she is supposed to have been partially raised by Vulcans, yet is one of the most emotional characters we have seen on Trek. I don’t think these contrary traits make her interesting, just inconsistent and poorly realized. Yet the show has gone all-in on her. The entire show revolves only around her character. But the show has also decided she is completely flawless – all her decisions are justified. But her decisions IRL are mind-bogglingly dumb.
I flew in here from the future in an angel suit to say: I had a similar thought. I wanted the audience not to know the plan. I wanted to be in the Red Angel’s perspective, where somehow Michael is imperiled in a much more believable way, and the Red Angel swoops in, and then we realize it was a setup. This is, of course, also a cliche, but a less painfully boring one than the one we got. It would have felt like it had more interesting stakes, something more interesting to think about. Combining the ideas, we get Section 31 setting it up, and a lot of our good guys in the dark, not just Michael and the Angel.(But the larger problem, of the setup being rushed, of each episode introducing the elements its own isolated plot needs, is still the biggest problem. Nothing works because everything is kind of introduced right before we need it. At most, an episode or two before. So even my idea would have had me here complaining about how dumb it was, without a better setup.)
This was me. The goofiness of the plot: if Michael is the Red Angel, she’d know that this trap was about to be sprung – she’s basically threatening suicide to make the Angel show up. This dumb-ass plan doesn’t work to catch Future-Michael … it only works to capture someone else – someone who is very invested in Michael living. Future data would have to show that Michael’s life ended right here.Now if the show wanted to “fake” her death, they could have explained it better. To fool the Angel, Mike would have to end her vital signs, and then commit to changing her name and data files for the rest of her life – like going into witness protection. Michael would cease to exist & the Angel would be like “oh shit, she killed herself – better go save her” while unaware that a Jane Schmidt suddenly joined the crew with similar stats.
The actress who plays Lt. Nilssen, Airiam’s replacement on the bridge, also played Airiam in the first season. So that’s weird.
I noticed that too and it was SO WEIRD. I guess we’ll find out next week whether it was supposed to be a winking curtain call for both actors, or whether they’re actually going through with this. For all I know the producers just really like Sara Mitich and had to figure out a way to keep her on when they realized they had to kill off Airiam.
Or they had her on a multi-year contract so killing her off in season two would cause her to be paid for 4 more years while not appearing on screen.
It was also weirdly shot. There’s all this tension with the plan about to go down, we’re cutting back and forth between Discovery, Leland and the planet, and suddenly this new officer walks to her station and everyone’s stealing glances at her, breaking the pacing completely. And we get no explanation for that pause. It was like “Look here!(blink)Fine, were done”.
Yep, this show can be weirdly shot at times. The pacing of each episode is just kind of off…I have to watch twice. I agree with the review here, and like the show. I just would like to only watch once, and I’m actually not high or drunk when I watch. Shouldn’t have to rewind when the editors get weird.
Not really, it’s a Trek tradition for them to play different characters across the various shows and movies, not usually the same show, but it’s not uncommon at all. Jeffery Combs played both Weyoun and Liquidator Brunt in the same episode and one of the best new characters in ENT, Shran. Ethan Phillips played Neelix Voy, a Ferengi TNG, and a holo suite character in First Contact. I think it is a matter of how much they like an actor and how much tolerance they have for the makeup chair.
James Cromwell played about half a dozen characters over the years, many of them without makeup. Edit: Coombs definitely wins.
James Sloyan played a Klingon, a Romulan, a Bajoran, and a Haakonian (I had to look that last one up) in 5 different episodes of TNG, DS9 and VOY.
i’ve never been a fan of time travel shenanigans in star trek, but I legit rolled my eyes when Leland actually said “time crystal”.
What. The. Fuck.
couldn’t even bother with some patented star trek technobabble nonsense.
Harry Mudd had a time crystal in Season 1 and it was one of Season 1’s best episodes.
Forgot they had that in that episode. Still doesn’t make it any less dumb tho.
Time Crystals are based on Actual Science. Do try to keep up.
Forgot about the time crystal too. Still doesn’t explain why it’s not referenced or used or a plot point in any of the many post-prequel series and movies, especially the ones that involved time travel. “Jeez, don’t you wish you had a time crystal when you need one?”
A time crystal or space-time crystal is a structure that repeats in time, as well as in space. Normal three-dimensional crystals have a repeating pattern in space, but remain unchanged as time passes. Time crystals repeat themselves in time as well, leading the crystal to change from moment to moment. A time crystal never reaches thermal equilibrium, as it is a type of non-equilibrium matter, a form of matter proposed in 2012, and first observed in 2017. This state of matter cannot be isolated from its environment—it is an open system in non-equilibrium.
The idea of a time crystal was first described by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012. Later work developed a more precise definition for time crystals. It was proven that they cannot exist in equilibrium.[1] Then, in 2014 Krzysztof Sacha predicted the behaviour of discrete time crystals in a periodically-driven many-body system.[2] and in 2016, Norman Yao et al. proposed a different way to create time crystals in spin systems. From there, Christopher Monroe and Mikhail Lukin independently confirmed this in their labs. Both experiments were published in Nature in 2017.So yes, Time crystals are based on actual SCIENCE.
Time crystals are based on actual SCIENCE.No, they are not. The time crystals in Discovery are in no way related to the crystals the scientists named “time crystals”.
They are related in the same way that many other Star Trek tech and science is related to real world tech and science ,a scifi version of what they have repurposed to serve a scifi purpose, just like dilithium, teleportation, warp drive travel etc. I didn’t say they were a”actual science”.
No, not really.
Yes, really.
except, not really, really
Well thanks for all that. Now that’s all very interesting. Kudos to the writers for using something that sounds very generically sci-fi but is in fact, based on something real. Fun facts to the rescue yet again.
“Time Crystal”. Next time, just call it McGuffin and save us all some time if you’re going to be that lazy.Also, who the hell wrote this conversation for two ex-lovers?
“Please don’t apologise. What I said to you was not fair. I was angry… [embarrassed] and I didn’t know where to put it.” “I think you put it where you knew it’d be okay.” Literally started bawling with laughter. Nice one, writers.
Voyager literally had “interferometric waves” that interfered with a ship’s functions.
Yeah SFDebris had a notable rant on that in The Swarm review I believe. I mean just cause that was dumb doesn’t excuse this bit of dumb.
I’m kind of a sucker for dialog like that.
So here’s the thing about time crystals: they’re real. They were theorized in 2012 and observed in 2017. When Harry Mudd used one in the first season, it was actually subtly really good sci-fi without explaining it- time crystals are structures that repeat over time as well as space. So by applying unobtainium to it, you could create a scenario when you extend those properties further, making, say, an entire ship’s timeline repeat.Which makes me even angrier at this episode because what was once actually *good science* into a macguffin.
“Michael Burnham and the Secret of the Time Crystal”. Classical ST title.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2017/01/26/scientists-unveil-new-form-of-matter-time-crystals/
I was thinking the same thing. What the heck is a time crystal and why haven’t we heard about these things in the long saga of Star Trek? Sounds a better macguffin then whipping around the sun.
Right? This review is going to go all-in on the ridiculousness of this ep and just glide right past “time crystal”?
“The thing that enables time travel? Fuck it, let’s just call it a Time Crystal and go for beers.”
I don’t think the reviewer stressed enough how fucking stupid it is that Michael Burnam, the person who is ostensibly the past version of the person in the Red Angel suit, could set a trap for her future self. I mean, yeah, it turns out Spock is willing to risk everything to make the plan work; but no one knew that except Burnam and Spock, so Pike and the entire crew are a bunch of fucking idiots who can’t see the fatal flaw in this plan. This is the fundamental problem with this series: the only character motivation is plot convenience. That’s no way to tell a decent story.
“The suit was missing a key component. A time crystal. The element that would enable it to travel through time.” NO SHIT!I was saying when they dropped that bomb at the end of the teaser that it was a pretty nonchalant way to reveal the identity of the Angel. I kind of suspected there might be more to it and while I wouldn’t have predicted it being Michael’s mom I’m not really sure it’s much better.At this point Michael is kind of like the skewered version of Daisy Johnson at this point. Whereas the backstory stuff with that character ended up really helping to propel that character over time all this additional crap with Michael just keeps making things more stupid.Culber’s suit was pretty bitchin’ though.
The time crystal line just had me lauging out loud…Culber’s suit was the best thing about the episode. That guy was styling!
Huh. I guess I’m in the minority. I enjoyed this episode every bit as much as I have the rest of the season. (Though not quite as much as last week’s, which I thought was a real series high-point.)I liked that Georgiou finagled it so that Burnham got the story out of Leland and I liked that Leland owned up to the whole thing. I worried he would duck the conversation, or that they’d come up with a convenient reason to drag out knowledge of the story for forever (not necessarily a problem particular to this show, but I have seen this elsewhere on television). And I really enjoyed the scene between Spock and Burnham – there’s been so much tension between them, it was nice to have a moment of connection.
And I really liked the twist that it was Burnham’s mother in the suit. I think it’ll be a lot of fun to see how it plays out.I did laugh pretty hard when they talked about weaponizing time travel – they made it sound like time travel is a thing they haven’t yet discovered or accomplished; as if it’s not already rampant in the Star Trek universe (though maybe as much in the 23rd century?)Heck, I even like Tyler, so I guess I’m in the minority there, too. But then, I pretty well enjoy the whole cast without exception.
The ones that like it like it, the ones that don’t hate it and want the world to know. I liked it though I wouldn’t give it too high a rating because of the pacing.
I agree with he review about all of the things that were wrong about the episode, but also enjoyed all of the side character interactions (Spock & Burnham interaction, engineering room conversation with Georgiou, and Saru intimidating Lealand). There were genuinely enjoyable crew interactions in this one, that gave me hope for the plot. TheThe actors are clearly holding this show together.
I’m happy to see that the real reviews were allowed to return, but does someone else assign the letter grades? B- is far too high for that mess.
So is it official now that Discovery has created a new timeline in which Burnham exists, much like the alternate timeline the JJ Abrams’ movies exist in? The Red Angel saving Burnham as a child gives Spock the sister he never mentions in TOS presumably because she dies so early in their relationship hed have no reason to mention her. Now I’d imagine shed have to be a mentionable part of his life during his adventures with Kirk and Co.
Isn’t it easier to just accept that Spock never talks about his relationships with Kirk? In TOS alone there are two episodes with shock reveals of Spock’s wife and the identty of his parents.
Also a whole movie where it turns out he has a brother he never mentioned to anyone.
yeah, Spock keeps his private life, uh, private.
Hell you want to get into it, Kirk was so secretive he didn’t even tell his best friend (Gary Mitchell) his real middle name.
I’m still waiting for Spock’s brother, Sybock, to make an appearance on Discovery and retcon why Spock never mentions him or his sister Michael. Mark my words, it will happen.
Plus, it’s an old and tired criticism of this show. Like you and others said, Star Trek pulls this shit a lot. Spock doesn’t speak on his personal life. That’s the on show reason his brother and sister were not mentioned before.This show isn’t perfect, but it’s not terrible. And a person can criticize this show. But that “Spock never said anything about Michael” shit needs to die.
There was never any criticism from me, only proposing the possibility that this was their way to retcon the situation.
That’s not so far fetched. After all, we didn’t know about his half-brother until five movies in.
Or she never becomes his sister at all because her mom doesn’t time travel.
Clearly none of the characters on Star Trek: Discovery have ever watched any Star Trek.No one mentioned that if the Red Angel was Michael, wouldn’t the Red Angel remember these briefings? Would no one mention that the only time any EVIL AI Daedalus got into our time is when you sent a shuttle into one of the Red Angel’s vortexes. It was the crew of Discover that fucked up in that case, not the Red Angel.And also, not even Michael put forth that they should trust the Red Angel? Clearly the Red Angel is a force for good with knowledge you don’t have, and also it’s a future version of one of the people you trust enough to be in the room, and your first instinct is to take it off the field when all life is at stake?Everything in this episode was brilliantly acted. Sonequa Martin-Green sells the shit out of everything she’s given. I just wish the craft of the writers equaled the craft of the actors, directors, and effects artists.
That’s what’s so frustrating about the show. The notion that you’re going to trick someone from the future with (as far as they know) A PLAN THEY CAME UP WITH is crazy. And that’s before we even get into why you would want to.
I’m actually enjoying the show, but this isn’t fridge logic. These are big plot holes that are obvious as we go.
They seem to be hoping that if we go FAST ENOUGH they won’t be.
The bigger question is why was a pericope was built with the same needles used to perform spinal tap procedures?
I was screaming about this. IF MICHAEL IS THE ANGEL YOU CANNOT USE MICHAEL TO SET A TRAP FOR THE ANGEL. JESUS CHRIST. Michael storming up to Leland and demanding that “if this whole thing is to capture me, I need to know everything” is INSANE. It is the exact opposite of what is true!
This is what i was struggiling with throughout until the climax. Future Michale would know already of all their plans and would take whatever measures to prevent being captured whilst saving her past self at the same time.This is why i hate time travel as a storytelling device. It just throws up too many plotholes and inconsistencies which makes it harder especially in the fast pace this show moves at.Ive seen how badly time travel has affected The Flash and it actually is my one big concern about Avengers end game.
Time crystaling from the future to say: I know this is not Discovery, and is more of an Orville thing, but I really wish they had set up the whole trap and all that fancy equipment only to have the Red Angel parachute in on a beam of tachyons, interrupting before they even throw a switch, going like “I know what you’re up to and you’re all idiots”
Yes, that would have made it watchable. The Orville is a lot more in line with Star Trek than the new, serious, humourless, versions.I know many won’t agree but it’s the same with Batman. Of course fun Batman died when we were kids and now fun Star Trek is dying when we’re adults. Real life time travel.
That was somewhat strange how quick Michael was to distrust her clearly more knowledgeable self but overall I enjoyed the episode.
I agree with you about Sonequa Martin-Green in this episode. Some amazing acting in those scenes.
At the VERY LEAST you had to formulate a plan without Michael knowing the specifics. Or, i dunno, blindfold her or something.
I was wondering exactly this while watching it, it made no sense. Also, why would the time travelling entity decide to save Michael *AFTER* the trap was set up? Why not foil the whole plan even before they came up with it?
Man the story is coo-coo bananas. I love it. This episode was PACKED but I think it ‘trimmed the fat’ in a way that’s going to make for a cleaner exit. Shame they couldn’t have spread it out a bit though.- I enjoyed Airiam’s funeral. It does suck that we didn’t get to know her better as a character, but seeing other characters we know and love feel this way about someone lets us have surrogate feelings. The Kelpian durge was amazing, and the acting was spectacular. As for wiping her memories, I didn’t think that was just them callously disregarding her – I’m pretty sure they were doing that so that no trace of Control would be left in her brain.- I wonder if their wonkey brain-wave science was mistaking how DNA works between family: easily misidentified. That whole scene in sickbay was amazing. Spock’s jabs, Michael’s reactions, the faces of the others; the face-acting in this episode was unbelievably well done (especially by Burnham and Cornwell). The standout scene was definitely finding out what happened to her parents. SMG has the amazing ability to show her emotions and thought process flicker across her face very quickly.- Speaking of Cornwell, she’s a great prescense on the show. I know it’s hard to make an excuse for an admiral to be around so much but I hope they keep it up. Her acting, emotion, counseling, scoffing – “Admiral, we have a solution.” / “I’m cringing already.” – it’s all so believable and fun to watch. She’s the type of admiral we’ve never gotten before: giving leeway to those with more experience in an area than her and reigning stuff in only when it gets necesarry.- And then speaking of counseling…finally! Who the hell let Culber out of sickbay without mandatory DAILY counseling sessions after he spent months trapped in another dimension being hunted AFTER being murdered by a supposed colleague only to be reanimated from an alien cocoon? That dude needs some serious mental TLC and I’m glad if no one else realized it then he himself did. I wish that scene was longer though.- Not only was the engineering scene with Stamets/Culber/Georgiou/Tilly hilarious – “What just happened?” – but something else is going on. Georgiou was specifically baiting Stamets and Culber to talk. Later on the lab on the death planet they clearly focus on her face while Stamets is shutting down Culber. Is this showing us that she’s starting to soften, or is something ulterior and weird going on? Maybe she’s trying to recruit Culber – he looks good in black anyway.- The reveal that it was Michael and then her mother was just surprising enough. It wasn’t so out there like I had been expecting. I’m still not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. Her ‘death’ scene was pretty hard to watch; not only was that a very convincing acting job, but SMG’s screams are super grating and unnerving to me.- I’m glad Michael and Spock had a pseudo-healing moment. Their chemistry is great and it’s nice to see Michael catch a small break for once. Similarly, I didn’t have trouble accepting her smooch with Ash. She’s always still loved him, she just didn’t know how to process it. I think when she felt alone and terrified she realized there was one person who would get the state she was in at that moment.- I hope there’s more explanation about Section 31 building something so fantastically advanced. Something left over from the Temporal Cold War? Anything other than “smart scientists”, especially since it shot a straight-up video game healing ray at Michael and revived her. I also assume we’ll see Control slowly take over the organization through holograms and shadow tactics now that it poked Leland in the eye (mind-control probes? toxins?) and took his voice.I guess it’s a testament to everything crammed into the episode that my thoughts are so extensive. Info dump!
My opinion: this show is raw ass written by a crayon eating moron.
First off, MU Stamets was pansexual, not bisexual.Lastly, I had just been wondering what Sonja Sohn was working on lately, when Kima fuckin Gregg’s jumps out a wormhole at me. As the previews show she may be throwing hands with Klingons, we can only hope one is played by Andre Royo.
if she doesn’t sing Goodnight Moon with a trek twist to Michael at least once i’ll be extremely sad. not disappointed, just sad. Also, maybe have the scientist who invented Control be Dominic West, so when he realized what he did he would say “Ohh, what the fuck did i do?” all somber and serious
Can you please explain this whole she started the Klingon War bit?I’m seriously confused on this point. The Klingon Religious Zealot deliberately triggered the beacon to lure Starfleet there to start a war. What really set off the Klingons is when the Captain gave her whole “We come in Peace speech”. Michael wanted to follow standard Vulcan protocols when meeting the Klingons by firing on them which given the Warrior nature of Klingons actually makes sense. A show of strength is the logical course of action.
The plan they come up with is to beam over to the Klingon ship and capture the zealot. In a society where honour and strength are appreciated as highly as the Klingons do, and where being taken prisoner is a stigma, this will instantly discredit him and his plans. It’s clearly stated that if they kill him, he will have died a hero’s death and become a martyr around whom the Klingons will rally.
So they beam over, he kills Georghiou, and Burnham who has him at her mercy shoots him dead. One Klingon war coming right up.
Not seeing how its her fault. They were already at war when the entire klingon Armada opened up on Starfleet.
All she had to do was use her phaser on stun and beam out with T’Kuvma, and the rest of the Klingons would have decided not to lay their lives on the line for someone who gets captured and given up the war. Instead she blows a hole through him. Her choice, her action, her responsibility.
So what your saying is she failed in an attempt to end the war which had already started, because a Starfleet Captain flew right into a set up and failed to follow the advice of the person with actual experience in dealing with Klingons.Not seeing how you can blame her.
I’m only taking what the show gives us, and there never was any inkling that capturing T’Kuvma would not stop the war.
Burnham had a choice between an action that she knew would cost the lives of thousands and an action that she knew would save the lives of thousands. She chose the former. She must bear the responsibility.
There is no evidence that capturing him would stop the war.I’m taking what the show gave us and pointing out at that point the Federation was already at war with the Klingons.
“Captain, you can’t do that. T’Kuvma has anointed himself the next Klingon messiah. If you kill him, you make him a martyr. Someone they can fight for endlessly. That might even be what he wants.
But if you capture him, you make him a symbol of defeat. Of shame. And if you take him as a prisoner of war, you give the Federation leverage to sue for peace.”
This is how Burnham convinces Georghiou to beam over.
Either she is “the person with actual experience in dealing with Klingons” and she’s right about what his capture can garner, or “there is no evidence that capturing him would stop the war” and she knows jack-shit about Klingons. You can’t have it both ways.
And in either case she is convinced that killing him would prolong the war and capturing him would potentially end it. And she chooses to do the former.
Her choice, her responsibility.
So please explain which part of that is HOW BURNHAM STARTED THE WAR?SUE FOR PEACE MEANS THEY ARE ALREADY AT WAR.YOU KEEP BLABBING ON AND ON ABOUT STOPING THE WAR WHEN I’M ASKING HOW BURNHAM STARTED IT.
So far you’ve moved to goalposts from “it’s Georghiou’s fault” to “you can’t blame Burnham” to “there no’s no evidence capturing the Klingon would end the war” to “alright, capturing the Klingon would end the war”. Can you at least set up a final defense line somewhere? It’ll help the conversation immensely.
If you want -as it appears- to get all ruleslawyersy about it, Zack wrote “more or less started the Klingon war”, which affords a certain flexibility. She did kill the first Torchbearer, providing the first martyr to T’Kuvma’s cause and proof of the Federation’s hostility. She then disrupted the Starfleet chain of command, hampering her captain’s actions. Her killing of the Torchbearer sparked off the battle at the Binary Stars, a border incident- a major one, but still a border incident, with only about a dozen Starfleet ships engaged. While it did seem sufficient to lead to an all out war for the Klingons, by her own admission she was certain capturing T’Kuvma would have discouraged them and contained the affair to its original scope.
So yeah, Burnham didn’t sit there and declare war against the Klingons, you’re right. She is, however, fully responsible for the war taking place, and the thousands of lives lost. Which is what I’ve been saying from the start, that the war is on her.
Clear enough for you?
Lets check what I asked Can you please explain this whole she started the Klingon War bit? Hey look my question still stands HOW IS THIS WAR BURNHAM’S FAULT?So I haven’t moved the goal post you keep blaming her for not stopping the war she never started in the first place.Yes she killed the First Torch Bearer…Which did not in fact start the War.The First Torch Bearer was sent by a single Klingon Religious Zealot who wanted to start a war with the Federation. Burnham went to investigate, was attacked and defended herself. This incident did not start the War. The Zealot set up the Federation with a huge speech and When the Federation acted extremely predictably to the Klingons AGAINST BURNHAM’S ADVICE the ENTIRE KLINGON ARMADA STARTED A WAR WITH THE FEDERATION.BURNHAM SHARES ZERO RESPONSIBILITY FOR STARTING THE WAR.
Oh alright, I’ll give you that technicality if it means that much to you.
No you aren’t giving me anything you couldn’t read what I said. I repeated myself you kept posting things that had nothing to do with the topic. Then you accused me of moving the bar. All you did is act like an ass. What you should do is go you know what I’m sorry you are right. How ever your dumb pride won’t even let you do that. Micheal Burnham did not start the War with the Klingons. All she did is fuck up trying to stop it and got herself sent to prison for trying to do the right thing.
Nice. I’ll try that defense at my murder trial – “Your Honor, all I did was fuck up trying to not kill that guy I had at gunpoint! What’s important here is that I tried to do the right thing.” If the judge disagrees I’ll fuck up trying to not punch him in the face.
No, I agree. I’m not sure why the show has been insisting she’s this accidental mega-criminal that purposely did a terrible, horrific thing and should lose her life for it (via life in prison). I’ve never understood that. The show goofed that up big-time IMO. What we really needed was a tautly-written follow-up episode in S1 which went thru her trial and subsequent investigation and conviction in depth. Of course we didn’t get that, and they zoomed right past all that as she was on her way to the prison mining colony already. Also- hasn’t the Federation gotten beyond using prisoners for slave labor?? You’d expect that from some planets, but not the (mostly) enlightened ad moral Federation. We’ll maybe it’s more like a work camp and is actually fairly humane and tolerable in conditions.But I agree. Technically she did mutiny but only in order to try to save everyone’s life. I don’t see how she had a controlling act in the war, unintentional or otherwise. The Klingons initiated contact and engagement that day. They were determined to fight and fight they did. Blaming Burnham for the ensuing battle that the Klingons very much wanted makes no sense to me, unless of course there’s something I’m missing.
This got to be one of the worst design of web page I’ve ever seen.Just horrible.
The only way for that plan to have worked was of course that the Red Angel wasn’t Burnham, or she would have known about it. Then again, can we REALLY be sure it isn’t just 30 years older Burnham looking like she remembers her mom?They sure got the Space Opera knob turned to 11, but I’m not sure it is good space opera either.
“There is absolutly no way I can be deceived. It’s 100% definitely Michael in that suit. There is no other person that could possibly have that bioelectric signature. Well. Except close relatives, maybe but how unlikely is THAT? Hah.”The Doctor could have given her a slow working sedatives that painless kills her – OR we tie her to a chair and expose her to a hostile atmosphere and let her suffocate slowly and excruciatingly painful. It has no purpose, but we REALLY wanna see Michael suffer, so…
That should be pansexual, not bisexual.
i love DISCO (especially with Pike in it), and i really want to like Michael Burnham but i just can’t. Sonequa Martin-Green is either a very bad actress, or she’s playing Burnham very badly, but either case, watching her emote is stressfully miserable.
Actually, I hope the keep Pike for next season. They could keep him another season, without messing up “canon”.
They’ve already said that Pike won’t be back for the next season. I guess that’s not altogether unexpected but it’s still bittersweet.
Boooo!
He’s an interesting and engaging character audiences enjoy and so has no place on the show.
Pike needs to be on the Enterprise. I want to see a real Star Trek prequel with the voyages of the Enterprise before Kirk, with either Captain April or Captain Pike.
There’s just not much to the character –
‘I’m a human who was orphaned and raised by Vulcans.’
ooh – interesting, what about the rest of the crew? Who’s the blue robot lady is she an alien or-?
‘Actually she’s a human with extensive prosthetics and maybe survivor’s guilt’
Ooooh – tell me more!
‘Narh, she’s dead.’
Oh. Who else you got?
‘Well, Micheal is a human who was-’
We know.
‘-was orphaned and raised by-’
We know!‘-by Vulcans.’
I don’t think it’s entirely about the character. A better actress could make it work. SMG is just very bad, in my opinion.
like… she has two states of emoting. zero and 150%. she can go from one to the other without as much as batting an eyelid. and i understand the whole “human orphan” raised by vulcans and becomes a strange hybrid-concept, but whenever she takes lead i just cringe unstoppably. literally anyone is a better acted character on DISCO, and i prefer anyone to her in any scene. and i am an accepting kind of fella, i mean, i even like mr tyler (yes, i really do!).if i try to picture vulcan “coolness” and emotional distance, i’m imagining something calm and collected. Sonequa seems to able to go only as far as “forced down contempt or explosion,” which in my book is a clear sign that she does not know at all how to play a vulcan.i’m holding out hope, though – the show’s called DISCO not BURNHAM or MICHAEL. i just wish the creators would realize that michael in this incarnation, and with Sonequa, simply does not work.
have you seen her in anything else? i know she played in the walking dead, but i can’t watch even a minute of that drivel. (sorry, i have zero interest in the zombie genre.)
Like you, I want to like Michael — I love a good female lead — but the actress is terrible. Whenever she tries to cry or show strong emotions, all teary eyed, the result is embarrassing. More generally, whenever she tries to make a face, any kind of face, the result is beyond bad. It’s surprising they cast this actress for the main character.
Stole a Time Crystal? They should have called Rick Sanchez, who did that already, from the Testicle Monsters. Maybe he could have given them his. Or maybe Costco has them.
Also, I’m not sure why the reviewer felt we needed some big elaborate scene or explanation to show the Federation dropping all charges. Its a minor plot point and we don’t need to see everything that happens in the Star Trek “world”. It happened. That’s enough to move the story forward. Like the funeral and Airiam. We (the viewers) didn’t know about her life, but its perfectly fine to assume the crew, in their world, did know her and felt her loss.
Also, while I didn’t know it would be her mom, I guessed it wasn’t Michael either. Her future self would have known everything that happened in thr past and would know they wanted to capture her. Why not just tell her now “hey, remember in the future we need to talk to you about what’s going on”.
This show gets better and better each week. What a great episode. Tightly plotted, great character work, logical, exciting and interesting reveals. I am digging it so much!
Christ.
This season has been an improvement but I knew this was going to be a slog when they gave more screen time to blue lady while she was in a casket then any time before as they eulogized about How Great She Was and It’s A Shame We Never Developed Her Character Or You’d Care But You Should Look How Sad We Are.
Then Male Model Hairdo Man is let out of his quarters so he’s going to have to be seen more. He has a scene with Micheal in the turbo lift and the tension is there like rubbing two bits of cardboard together.
There’s a meeting in which Tilly walks in and establishes that she like to stutter and be awkward (remember at the start of the season she faced some challenges and grew as a character? They’ve flushed that away, she’s back to being a walking speech impediment). And she reveals that Project Daedalus was a file in Blue Lady’s brain – so that’s that mystery solved.
They talk about the how Micheal is the Red Angel and got future tech from the future because Commander Saru saw it and he said it was futurey and time travel definitely is future stuff.
Then the increasingly non-secretive Section 31 show up and it’s casual Friday as Georgiou is wearing her favourite dominatrix costume and they say nope, actually the Red Angel is something we made some 20-odd years and everyone just nods and goes with it.
Micheal appeals to Georgiou as she trusts her from their long experience serving together, forgetting yet again that this Georgiou was the Empress of the Terran Empire and would consider Micheal as disposable drone any day of the week in her old life.
Stamets lays out their their A-team plan to capture the Red Angel and then – I skipped some 30 minutes and watched them do just that. And the big reveal is the Red Angle is actually Micheal’s mum – even though at the start of the show bio signatures showed the Red Angle was absolutely 100%-so-accurate-you-can’t-fake-it certainly Micheal. Further complicating Micheal’s life and heaping more story on her hoping some of it might make her interesting. I’d like to learn about the rest of the crew but not in a postmortem pre-credits scene.
I learn from this review the secret section 31 is keeping from Micheal is her parents used to work for them – which is as devastating a reveal as the previous week’s reveal that the horrible and unforgivable think Micheal did to Spock as a kid was call him a name. I was as shocked by this as much as I was sad during whatisface’s funeral at the start.
Did I miss anything in the show? Or was this week a complete wash? Season 2 showed such potential at the start. We had humor, character development and adventure. Now we’re back to thunderous nonsense.
What frustrates me about this show, and it frustrated me about the 2009 reboot, is the laziness of the writing. Ok. Star Trek has time travel. sometimes. Not all the time. Not even most of the time. Once in a while. But damned if that’s not the first thing everyone goes for when Star Trek falls in their laps. I mean. Season 1 is an alternate universe and Season 2 is time travel. Can’t mundane shit happen for an episode or 3?
If I want mundane, I’ll just watch my life.
Of the many problems with Season 2 of Discovery, the one that grates me the most is the way they hanle personal relations. I assume they reason that the emotions the characters go through is more relatable if they are grounded in something the viewer has experienced themselves, like having estranged their brother. Also, it’s been common practice in Space Opera for ages. In actual practice, however, it makes the characters look like a narcissist collective caring more about their friends and relatives than their job, even when their job is to save the galaxy.
-World shattering events are occurring, but more importantly, my brother is mad at me.
-We just received another signal from the super powerful entity we are pursuing, and it’s coming from your home planet! Great, finally a reason to meet up with my sister and talk about old times again!
-We’re on a super important mission with this one-of-a-kind ship, so let’s put it in grave danger to rescue one of our colleagues, because she’s my pal!
– We’re being sucked into a time vortex!
– You took this mission just to prove how tough you are, right?
– I just found out life as we know it is about to end.
– Yeah, but why are you still mad at me?
– So, this is the plan to trap the time traveler…
– You know, i used to think you were kind of hot.
etc
Did anyone feel that the Airiam funeral was maybe intentionally similar to Spock’s funeral at the end of Wrath of Khan, so maybe they’re setting up the return of Airiam in some capacity, even if it’s just her consciousness or memories in another body or in the Discovery ship’s data banks?
Yes, there was certainly a similarity (Saru’s singing substitung for Scotty’s pipes, for example). But I think it’s mostly them aping what successfull Trek has done to tug at our fan strings.
Can we talk about Culber’s suit jacket/half-buttoned shirt? I mean, what the actual fuck is up with dressing like that on a weekday in the middle of space? Like they’re suddenly gonna spore-drive him to a hot date in West Hollywood on their way to picking up the time crystal.
They have an interesting take on civilian clothes, that’s for sure. Weren’t there some strange outfits in the Harry Mudd episode as well? “Strange” in the sense that they don’t gel easily with the uniform designs that we’ve had so far.
This show is embarrassing to watch.
I read Georgiou’s weird sexual posturing as an attempt to stir some jealousy in Stamets and Culber to ultimately get them back together. I’m not really basing this on anything, except that she clearly loves to mess with people and that she cares more than she lets on.
Is there any technology that Section 31 can’t come up with?
I get that it’s meant to be alarming that the covert-ops people have resources available to them that are above and beyond the rest of the Federation. But this week it came across like someone at the top read a memo with the word “time travel” in it and then told engineering to go invent time travel — and they did it.
Is the Federation so starved of ideas-men and blue-sky thinkers?
that’s the kind of society Utopia gets you.
Until we get some story lines that don’t premise all of their dramatic tension on people being related to each other or romantic clichés, just going to refer to this as Soap Trek.
I’m neither a trekker nor a Discovery fanboy, but one could have a field day mocking the ridiculous nitpicking of this review. The guy clearly compares it to the TNG sequel he fanficked and, unfortunately, it can’t measure to that.
I’ve been on these threads giving Zack shit for his excessively critical reviews. I even lied and said I was so fed up I’d stop reading them. Well Zack, I’m here to apologize. You may have been on to something. On the heels of last week’s episode that was brilliantly good, the whiplash to this week’s piece of shit was eye opening for me. Let me be clear, I love the main cast, and think the acting is impeccable. Ethan Peck’s Spock is especially fantastic. The production value across the board is impeccable. That’s what makes it so frustrating that the writing is an absolute fucking disaster (particularly at the macro plot level—the dialog is very good at times). And although some weeks that gets covered up by everything else being done so well, this week the deficiencies just punched me in the balls.Almost every scene included a ham-fisted setup that served an obvious screenplay purpose but made no story sense. They want to make a mirror universe sex joke, so… Culber goes to engineering looking for the admiral? They want to advance the Culber-Stametz plot, and a therapist is a tried-and-true way to do it—so the admiral is a therapist now. They want to set-up a reconciliation between Spock and Burnham, so they have Spock just show up and start talking about things that happened to Burnham (never mind whether he had anyway of knowing about them; seriously, to whom did Burnham report her conversation with Leland, down to the detail of punching him in the face, that Spock heard about it so quickly?). They need to reveal to Burnham that her parents were involved in time travel research so that the end of this episode doesn’t come *TOTALLY* out of left field, so… Leland basically just tells Burnham. To say that there is even a pretense for it would be generous. The set-up was that Burnham demanded to know how they were planning to catch her, because “she deserved to know” (actually, telling past Burnham how they planned to trap future Burnham would be incredibly stupid, given that they are effectively leaking their plan to the one person who’s not supposed to know it’s a trap). I’m really upset about the wasted potential. [Edit: I started reading other comments after posting and discovered several others sharing nearly identical sentiments — I think the fact that we could get there independently reflects that we’re probably right]
Wasn’t the Admiral always a therapist? I remember a conversation between her and Lorca from season 1 to this effect.
True, yes.
Absurd writing?
Anymore than Sisko’s mother being a wormhole alien? The deaths of Tasha Yar or Jadzia Dax? The last two Next Gen movies? Voyager? Enterprise?
Have you guys forgotten what franchise you’re watching? The explanations offered in this episode kinda made sense or at least were in keeping with the kind of sense Star Trek has offered us in the past. Every series is guilty of slapdash writing and we love them (or most of them) all the same.
Yes but old Trek also had moments of fun, was funny and adventurous. This nonsense is 90% delivered as something we’re supposed to take Very Very Seriously.
My favorite line this season so far has been: ‘So you have a new engine, powered by mushrooms?’‘You kind of had to be there.’ I loved it. Raising how unlikely the tech from last year’s season was. But as the big story arc comes to a finale the fun stops.
I agree, however all Trek series have trouble from time-to-time with comedy. Even DS9, which managed to make the Ferengi both the comic relief and characters with some genuine pathos, had its eye-rolling moments. The hit-and-miss of Trek’s comedy is one of the things The Orville emulates almost excruciatingly well.
The TNG-ENT shows tended to take themselves ridiculously seriously.
the idea that they were going to use burnham as the bait to catch her future self was very stupid considering her future self would know what happened.
The biggest reason the plan was idiotic was that, if Michael was the Red Angel, then the Red Angel KNEW THE PLAN! Spock was the only one who acted rationally, actually, because if the Red Angel knew that Michael wasn’t in mortal danger (which she would’ve know since she’s supposedly future Michael), then why show up? Letting Michael actually die was the only smart thing anyone did, but of course it only worked by accident since the Red Angel wasn’t Michael at all.Oh, and I guess Hugh going to Admiral Therapist for a talk was pretty wise, too.
“I still think my dumb Borg theory has a chance to play out.”I wouldn’t have thought so before the Talos 4 ep, but now… Given the way this show is going–and i actually do enjoy the show–having this season as a sneaky Borg origin story is not out of the question. For most of the latter-day Trek series, when ratings/creativity are floundering, the answer was BORG!
RIP Leland. As far as deaths go, being stabbed through both eyeballs is pretty low on my preferred ways to go. Being stabbed through both eyeballs IN SPACE is even lower.
What Discovery needs in order to be respectable TV:1. Help Tyler to the nearest airlock (or have some timey-whimy way of having the whole cast forget he ever existed – I know I wish I could)2. Send the whole writers’ room out with him. I don’t know if there is just too damned much support for every stupid idea that lands on a white board (“Yeeeaahhh….no. Yeah! That’s a good idea!” “Oh my god! Yes! Haha!”) or if there’s too much conflict in it to be productive. But either way, it must be one small room full of stoopid dysfunction. 3. Make the new writers/producers watch Firefly, The Expanse, TOS, TNG, and DS9, Game of Thrones (and in the not-scifi category) Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire. Those are shows that put big ideas on the backs of solid, interesting characters. 4. Stop swinging for the damned fences between every commercial break. Just try and get on base…for now. 5. If none of the above are possible, just have the show be a little bit quiet and wake me when the Picard series starts.
I’d add Babylon 5 to your point 3. If for no other reason than it handled people’s reaction to a character coming back from the dead properly (surprise, wonder and a lot of suspicion, mainly).
I wonder if Discovery will end up being a prequel to the whole “prime universe” timeline.
Because in Enterprise, they already learned about time travel and the
fact that technological advancements were engineered by time travelers.
Both the Suliban and the Xindi were both provided future technology by
time travelers.
Maybe Discovery starts the whole temporal cold war that creates the timeline in Enterprise.
I hear your suggestions on how to rename Star Trek Discovery.
My proposals:
Star Trek – the Michael Burnham appreciation society
Star Trek – the Michael Burnham tears (geez she cries a lot)
Star Trek – the Michael Burnham Monologues (geez, she talks a lot)
Star Trek – the world of Michael Burnham (everything is about her)
Star Trek – Michael Burnham and friends
Star Trek – the Michael Burnham Show
It is not only her character, I am sorry to say, but it is also the actress. Truth to be told the material she is given is awful, still she is bad.
I am afraid my english is not as good to help me describe how badly written is this show. Worst problem is that Discovery takes itself so seriously. Well for me is now just a parody. We do not hate-watching it. We watching to laugh with it. (who am I kidding? I still hope it can be saved)
So you’ve reached the depression stage of the five stages of Star Trek fandom. On the plus side, the next one is acceptance.
aha! but acceptance of what? 😉
“The World Of Michael Burnham” sounds about right.
Discovery is beginning to remind me of when in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy they plug Zaphod into the Total Perspective Vortex and it turns out he is the center of the universe.
Too long, didn’t watch; Red Angel is actually Michael’s mom.
“As far as I can remember, we heard nothing about [the time travel race] last season during the actual, y’know, war, and hearing about it now in retrospect, it’s difficult to take with a straight face.”My take on that was that the time travel race ended back when Michael’s mom took the Red Angel suit during the Klingon spy attack when Michael was a kid. Leland said that the race against the Klingons was 20 years ago. (I seem to recall that the Klingons were involved in the temporal cold war way back in Enterprise).Also, we saw very, very little of the Klingon-Federation War last season. That’s like saying something along the lines of: “It’s ridiculous to argue that the United States was working on nuclear bomb technology during WWII, because nuclear bombs weren’t mentioned even once during ‘Saving Private Ryan’!”
Actually -to stick with your WWII analogy- it’s like watching a series on Eisenhower’s staff investigating why half their cities are burned to the ground with no answer only for some USAAF guy to show up ten episodes in and say “yeah, that’s our incendiaries”.
(tha should read “German cities”, darn my absent-mindedness)
I’ve got to give kudos to Zack for managing to write a review of the episode that isn’t just the word UGH.
It’s easy to appreciate the intention of putting a woman in the center of the series, and build her up as a hero- it sounds like a very Trek thing to do. But the show revolves around Burnham to such an extent it becomes unbearable. This episode we had Security Chief Nahn, who nearly suffocated to death last episode because Burnham was totally indifferent to her fate, walk up to her and goddamn apologize for saving the ship and the Federation by doing what Burnham couldn’t bring herself to do. And later, Pike needs convincing that risking Burnham to save all sentient life in the Universe is worth it. The fact that the only person who can convince him is Burnham herself is just more salt on the wound. What sort of messianic cult of personality are these folks getting off to?
It would at least be nice to attribute this to an overabundance of enthusiasm, or a desire to push Trek boundaries. But it’s pretty clear it’s just stupidity, ignorance, and lack of talent. To have someone in a show that’s been jumping through hoops for a season and a half to make sure Burnham suffers no consequences for her actions describe her as “always taking resoonsiblity even when she is not to blame” is beyond dumb.
Combined with the idea apparently holding sway in the writers’ room that a satisfying story is one that’s simply a series of plot twists, this feels like it’s written by teenagers who’ve never read a book in their life.
But certainly that is new territory for Trek, so at least there they’ve achieved their aims.
UGH.
Not to mention (this stuff hits you in waves, right?) that we get a powerful, emotional scene that hinges on Leland being responsible for the Burnhams’ deaths, and half an hour later we find out that hey, her mom’s still alive, no worries. They keep undercutting any drama like that. UGH.
The thing with Burnham completely ignoring Nahn while she very obviously and loudly suffocates to death while Burnham worries about Airiam who is still typing away on the keypad left me so flabbergasted I had to Google it to see if anyone else was talking about it. I thought Nahn was even dead before they finally see her just barely grab her oxygen tubes (or whatever they are). And Nahn has a much bigger role than Airiam does.
And then Nahn apologizes to Burnham for… what, exactly? Not crying hard enough at Airiam’s funeral while Nahn just barely escaped with her life while no one on the entire ship could give any less of a crap? What. Why. What is happening.
Flip the scores with The Orville, because this show is losing me hard.That was the dumbest episode in the series, I heard time crystal and I was like “Oh really? THE time crystal? This should be clever” and it’s like, no, macguffin, sans lore, flavor, or actual grounding the series. They just straight up forgot what it was, some new person was like “Time crystal!” and any-JK-Simmons-character lead writer blurts out “Genius!”. I was agape, the show is literally surviving on superb character interactions, which there are a great deal, and seem to be solely built on the great quality of actors, and gorgeous FX.They made the right call getting rid of Bryan, obviously, but it didn’t seem to matter, I keep wondering if Kurtz is going to turn this ship around in the last handful of episodes or if he’s the reason things are so bad. There’s no real bead on the internals behind why things are getting so dumb so fast. The final reveal was clever, although getting there was not, nor was Mike being involved in the plan all along on the assumption her future self wouldn’t just refuse to intervene with her past knowledge.The show isn’t ENT bad, but it’s getting there fast, it has other things going for it unlike ENT, but if we get into time travel aliens and anymore ridiculous apocrypha I’m about done. Imagine if they actually moved the universe forward instead of fixated on prequels, the contradictions would at least be a lot less distracting.
A question I kept asking myself as the the trap was set; If they were attempting to trap future Michael WHY THE HELL INCLUDE MICHAEL IN THE PROCESS!?!?“Hay, we want to set a trap for future you. I hope current you is ok with that and your knowledge that it is a trap has zero effect on the decision making process of future you.”Obviously it’s a moot point but Christ, you’d think Spock, at least would’ve thought of this. Also the bi-sexual thing: I brought this up at the end of last season in discussion: why is it that a recurring character trait of bad guys (women bad guys especially) is bisexuality or pan-sexuality? Titillation, I suppose but, c’mon, isn’t Trek supposed to be woke?
That being said I love the way Yeoh plays it as a dirty little secret that she’s happy to spill just to fuck with everyone in the room. Villains also seem to have the most fun.
From the git-go back in TOS it’s clear that in the no-holds-barred Mirror Universe Starfleet, sleeping your way to the top is a legitimate tactic (whether it’s done to get someone’s favour or murder them in their post-coital fatigue is besides the point). So sexual flexibilty and prowess is an asset.
The rationale for the paradox as far as I can make out is that if Future Burnham knows that they’ll kill Past Burnham, she has to come back and save Past Burnham or there’s no Future Burnham. Of course the show does not really come out and say this clearly and simply because some boop in the writer’s room thought “variance” sounds cool.
Not to be THAT guy, but I believe Emperor Georgiou described Mirror Staments as pansexual.
The funeral did nothing for me, watching a character die when we knew she wouldn’t actually die did nothing for me, any time Tyler was on the screen that did nothing for me, but DAMN the Spock and Michael scenes did so much that I think I ended the episode feeling like I liked it.I will say this: How many more times will we have a reveal or assumption or some dialogue say “oh this character is on that fleeing ship” or “this character is the mystery person” just for them to change it later in the episode and call it a twist. I was so disappointed when Red Angel was momma because I was actually interested in a story where she was some future version of Michael, and I was kind of impressed with the Discovery writers that they stopped trying to build it and reveal it and just… told us so we could move on with the story having that info. My foolish mistake. And finally, just to be annoyingly critical of the time travel element, I’ve been thinking… would future Michael just somehow not remember her own plan to trap herself? While I would accept that our Michael now has lived through an altered past and would thus make different decisions, wouldn’t that mean that the future of her would also be a different person? It seems like the alterations to the present we are watching don’t seem to affect the Red Angel. So then why would the death of this new reality Micheal kill the Red Angel Michael who must have been a Michael from a timeline before she, as the Red Angel, went back in time? If we are to assume that the Red Angel causes herself to be the Red Angel, in a cycle (which might be evidenced by her saving her own life as a child), then would that mean that none of the Red Angels actions can actually change the course of history, making her efforts pointless? So I guess having her Mom actually be the Red Angel fixes some of this, but in the time that the characters thought it was Michael, they really didn’t seem to think any of this through before trying to kill Michael.
There’s a simple answer to your questions: the writers clearly didn’t think this through as much as you did!
As you say, this show is obsessed with being twisty (clearly they think this makes it cool and awesome) it forgets to think where it’s putting its footsteps.
I think you’re right. Out of fairness, I’ll say that Star Trek in general is littered with time travel that doesn’t make sense. At this point I guess it’s silly to try and nail down any actual rules or constants.
I agree with you on a lot of things but I don’t get the Tyler hate. The writing doesn’t do him any favours but Latif is a solid actor.
I wish the Red Angel had been Ben Sisko.
How can she trick her future self with this self sacrifice bit? Either she should already know the trick and remember doing it to herself… or there is an alternate universe created by the split. Can’t she just tattoo on her hand to remind herself to come back to this date and explain what she needs to know? The whole premise of all of this is just so dumb. Overall I know the show is kind of bad but this really made it hard to watch on this episode. Is there something I’m missing here? Because the time travel idea of tricking your future self (how could you forget that) seems to be the worst plot issue here, but everyone is just talking about Rick and Morty Time Crystals instead. I guess they are funnier.