At the end of last season, we learned that the then-present day Federation was preparing to pull an Armin Tamzarian with Discovery and its crew. After Michael and the others jumped to the future (which is now the show’s present, keep up), the people they left behind who knew them covered every trace of the ship’s departure, with orders that it would never be spoken of again. This was the show’s way of “fixing” the continuity problems it had established in its first two seasons of life as a prequel, playing largely straight a bit that The Simpsons did entirely for laughs. But I’ll give the Discovery writers credit: They didn’t forget this happened. When our heroes finally show up at the new Federation headquarters, they’re overjoyed, and then crushed when the people in charge don’t immediately welcome them with open arms. But why would they? According to their records, Discovery, and all aboard her, were destroyed almost a thousand years ago.
Conceptually, this isn’t a bad dynamic. It would’ve been dramatically flat if Discovery had arrived at its destination and everything had gone exactly as planned. But the way the show presents this tension is odd, and I can’t decide exactly what the intent is here. Michael comes across very badly in her initial meeting with Admiral Charles Vance; she’s now officially serving as Saru’s Number Two, and the two of them are beamed over to the Federation base (along with Adira) early in the episode for a debriefing. Vance is polite but skeptical, which seems like a reasonable approach under the circumstances, but Michael has apparently no ability to read a room. When she and Saru find out about a sickness that the Federation is trying to cure, Michael immediately insists that Discovery should be sent back out to locate a cure, and is frustrated and seemingly confused when Vance doesn’t accept the request.
I don’t know how this is supposed to play for the audience. That’s unusual for Discovery, which has never been a subtle show; hell, it’s unusual for this episode, which continues the tradition of over-scoring every scene to the point of absurdity. On some level, I think we’re definitely supposed to read Michael as being over the line. It fits in with the suggestions in previous episodes that her year away from Discovery has made her less willing to follow protocol and more willing to take risks. As well, while she’s upset when Vance doesn’t instantly take her suggestion (which is more like a demand), she doesn’t actually break the rules to get what she wants—Saru asks her to calm down a bit, and Michael does (sort of), so while I’m sure this conflict will come back, I don’t think the show is trying to present the new Federation as completely corrupt.
The issue for me is more that it makes Michael look like an insensitive idiot. So much of the show is set up behind the idea of her being especially gifted at inspiring others (to the point where one character literally says that this week) that it’s odd for her to be so completely oblivious to how others might see her. Bad enough that she feels the need to blurt out her plans as soon as they occur to her; worse that she doesn’t even seem to understand why the current Federation might have trouble trusting Discovery’s intentions. Michael’s self-confidence and determination to make choices she believes are important regardless of protocol is something that was introduced in the pilot, and it’s absolutely a valid character trait that the show can and should explore. But having her assume that everyone will automatically agree with her despite many episodes to the contrary, even as the show repeatedly congratulates her for her insight and directness, is awkward and bad.
This is true to a lesser extent of Discovery’s entire crew, who act like teenagers at a summer camp when they learn the horrible possibility that reporting for duty might mean actual duty, ie doing things they don’t want to do. As with Michael, there is an element to this that’s not hard to sympathize with. These folks are, after all, orphans out of time; the relationships they’ve built with one another are the most important thing they have left, and the idea of getting separated to different ships and jobs with strangers in a future they still don’t completely grasp is legitimately unsettling. (I’m on Admiral Vance’s side for most of the episode, but the casualness with which he initially makes this decision isn’t great, and seems designed more to create a problem to be solved than anything practical.) But the way they all assumed they’d be welcomed with open arms is painfully naïve. Everyone acts like Tilly is the baby of the ship, but nearly every character on the show (with a few exceptions) approaches every situation with Tilly’s wide-eyed optimism.
But I’m getting bogged down over a single point. A fair amount happens in “Die Trying,” most of it circling around Discovery arriving at Federation headquarters and subsequently trying to make a case for themselves as a valuable team asset. Michael, after some sloppiness, does manage to convince Vance to let her take the ship to go recover a Federation vessel from her era that has plant samples needed to cure a deadly virus. They locate the said vessel inside an ion storm, and discover the last inhabitants were Bazan, which just so happens to be Commander Nahn’s race. So Nahn, Michael, and Culber beam aboard to explore, and find a tragic short story about a Barzan family and a father who went mad trying to save his sick children and wife.
As is often the case with Discovery, moments of this land, but it’s mostly just surfaces, exploiting the imagery of grief and sadness without spending any time with the people involved. There’s a quick, tantalizing hint of something deeper when Nahn explains that “My species is known for two things: diligence and poverty,” explaining how important children were in her culture, but it’s just a fleeting bit of texture in an otherwise largely straight putt. And again, there’s that weird insistence in making Michael the constant focus. When it’s time to explain to the survivor that his family is dead, Nahn tries to talk to him, which makes sense; they have similar cultural experiences, or at least more similar than anyone else on board the Discovery. But Culber takes Michael aside and says she has to be the one who tells the man the hard truths. Is this going to be a thing all season? Is Culber just going to interrupt any time another character does something and tell Michael she should take over?
Worse, this turns out to be Nahn’s farewell episode, as she ultimately decides to stay behind on the ship. I was never a huge Nahn fan, but it seems ignominious to bring her all the way to the future and then ditch her at the first opportunity, after teasing us with a character-centric storyline that never delivers on its promise. (And oh yeah, she’s the one who tells Michael that she has an incredible gift to inspire people.) Everything works out for our heroes, as their mission is successful enough to convince Vance to let them stay together as a crew, but it’s hard to be too excited about that, given how quickly it’s resolved. It’s also strange how fast we went from “the Federation is gone” to “here’s the Federation!” Vance et. al are clearly underpowered (and have no idea what caused The Burn), but the organization isn’t the barely existing mess it seemed like the season was building towards. There’s potential drama in that, as Discovery has to move from believing they were the heroes in a doomed future, to them being small cogs in a big machine. But then Saru gives a speech that basically argues Discovery is going to bring about the Renaissance, so I guess that’s not going to be an issue after all.
Stray observations
- I get that Saru’s arguing Discovery can use its status as a temporal anomaly to bring perspective to the future, but it’s still a huge swing of a speech.
- There’s a blonde lady on Discovery’s bridge crew that I didn’t recognize from an earlier episode. Is she new? Sounds like her name is Nilson. (Only reason I mention here is that the episode cuts to her a few times during a scene and I couldn’t understand why.)
- Saru and Nahn’s homeworlds are both new additions to the Federation in the future, which is a very nice touch. It’s something the show could use more of; given that the technology all still looks exactly the same (even with those portable teleporters), there needs to be more indications of just how much has changed in the near millennium our heroes were absent.
- Detmer struggles a bit piloting in the ion storm. I still wonder if this is PTSD, or if some Control shenanigans.
- The fact that Saru and Michael tell Vance their story and don’t offer corroborating evidence is pretty funny. And the cute sequence where various characters talk about all the wild things that have happened to them over the course of the series is also funny.
- Georgiou talks with David Cronenberg and finds out that there’s been no contact with the Terran universe in over five hundred years. Fun to see the two of them chatting, and I expect this will have ramifications for Georgiou down the line.
154 Comments
Georgiou talks with David Cronenberg
Not a phrase I ever expected to read in a ST review.
I guess seeing Werner Herzog in the Mandalorin gave someone an idea. Probably not a good idea, but hey. ADavid Cornenberg cameo in space. Always a Mark of quality.
I mean, if you’re making the show in Ontario why not capitalise on it? Just bring on Atom Egoyan and Guy Maddin on for guest parts too.
Let them direct episodes. A Cronenberg Trek episode would be amazing
I’d go back to watching Disco for THAT. 🙂
Don McKellar as a vulcan
I would pay so much money to see Guy Maddin’s “My Starfleet”.
There’s a blonde lady on Discovery’s bridge crew that I didn’t recognize from an earlier episode. Is she new?So the blonde woman (whose name I also don’t know) replaced Airiam on the bridge after that character’s death. The character is played by the same actress, probably so they didn’t have to let her go, but is not the same character.
That’s kind of neat and good that she didn’t lose her job, but it falls back into the problem that Discovery has had since the start that I do not know these characters and the show doesn’t seem interested in exploring them beyond the most superficial of details.
And then you get things like, hey, here’s character development for Nahn! ….aaand she’s gone.
Which is exactly what happened with Airiam too. Given an episode and then unceremoniously airlocked.
It’s a shame to be honest, because you have all these characters, most of whom have been around since at least Season 1 Episode 3, and I’d love to know them better, but the show feels like it fights it at every turn.
I don’t know exactly what the problem is. If I were to guess it’s serialization. The other series had characters who were bland or uninteresting, but because of the volume of episodes and the shifting focus, you got a sense for nearly everyone. People make fun of Harry Kim but I’ve got a pretty good grasp of what his character’s deal is and he headlined one of the franchises best episodes. I can’t really say that for anyone in Discovery yet.
I remember in seasons 1 & 2, where they’d show Airiam (with accompanying robot noises), and my stepson and I were always like, what the hell is up with her? Then they actually *showed* what was up with her, and then she was dead. It’s understandable, and actually kind of cool, if the producers killed Airiam off and had the actress under the makeup replace the character because she had issues with the makeup itself; I just wish we could learn more about the bridge crew. Or anybody outside of Michael, Tilly and Saru. Saru I like, the other two… well, Tilly’s way too twee for me, and I hate that everything absolutely must revolve around Burnham. I really like Detmer, but had serious anxiety when she started showing the PTSD/Control/whatever issues, because I figured character development leads to the airlock!!
I actually really like Burnham and think her entire problem is overexposure and contrived connections to the various plot threads. I think she’d work better if she were used like Worf on TNG or DS9.
Saru is one of my top Trek characters, so he’s great, but I feel like Tilly was flanderized based on exaggerations of traits that resonated with people in Season 1.
But the others…. Rhys fires weapons, Bryce works coms, and Owesekun is at ops and is nice to Detmer. After 2 and a half seasons we should really have more.
I honestly don’t mind Burnham, especially so far this season- I just don’t need her to be central to *every* plot beat in the series. The doctor should’ve gone with the Trill last episode, and Nahn should’ve talked to the other Bazan in this one. Totall with you on Saru- I love the guy (and Doug Jones in general). If they toned Tilly down a little bit she’d be better, but she seems to be the audience stand in for socially awkward folks. I just want more with the rest of the bridge crew!
Ehn, it’s about as much characterization as anyone outside the big three got in TOS, and in terms of number of episodes DISCO is equivalent to a half-dozen eps into S2 of the original show. I certainly am not going to make the claim that DISCO handles its bench as well as other series, but they’re staring to make strides in that direction. (And Saru is growing into a character I really like. He’s a great contrast to other captains we’ve seen.)
“Saru is one of my top Trek characters”Ughhh…I can’t stand Saru. He is the exact sort of bland, boring, naive and irritating idealist who stands in the way of what needs to happen because…?, milquetoast, I-could-not-give-less-of-a-shit-about character that killed Star Trek TV series for me right around the time Voyager ended. There’s just nothing interesting about him—all the alien affectations just look dumb and he’s far too much of a soft tough to be in charge.I would love it if they just handed over the ship to Georgiou.
Ah, well, I can’t stand Georgiou, so it seems like you and I simply have a difference in preference.
Rhys fires weapons, Bryce works coms, and Owesekun is at ops and is nice
to Detmer. After 2 and a half seasons we should really have more.
Do we need more, though? That’s really all we need to know. These aren’t central characters.
How much did we know about Sulu or Chekov during the run of TOS?
Nilson was created because the actress who played Airiam in season 1 was allergic to the makeup. A different actress played Airiam in season 2 and that actress is no longer on the show.
I hate that everything absolutely must revolve around Burnham. Well, she is the central character of the show. That’s like saying that TNG has too much Picard.
Rachel Ancheril, who plays Nahn has been added to the main cast, so I assume she’ll be back in a few weeks. The same way David Ajala is main cast but not in every episode.
I hope so- I really liked Nahn and wanted to learn more about her!
but she “gave up her career”…1000 years in the future…and will be back on her planet and done with the seed pod in (checks watch) a few months, so…she gave up her career!
I kinda feel this season they’re making more of these people characters, slowly but surely. It’s still not a proper ensemble but we have a lot more side character stuff as opposed to Michael being the main focus. Still not at the point where a non-bridge character can open an episode, carry the A plot, and only occasionally check in with the captain or first mate like in tng tho.
The way I’m starting to think that if they want to keep the serialized structure maybe they should emulate a show like LostThat show had big problems with the narrative that unfolded, but it switched focus from episode to episode also juggled several dozen characters. Clearly they shouldn’t copy everything, like its mystery box structure (one of the lesser elements of Discovery S1 and S2), but the way it managed its characters could be a template to follow.
It is more confusing than that. Sara Mitich is the actress in question. She played Airiam in season one. In season two, she switched from that role to the role of Lt. Nilisson who she continues to play in season three. The role of Airiam was taken over by a different actress — Hanna Cheesman who is now very much out of a job.
I had forgotten that detail. Yeah, thanks for clearing that up. Hanna Cheesman is like Denise Crosby if they recast Tasha Yar and then 86’d her next season.
This is spot on. The way Disco handled Ariam’s death last season was insulting. No info on her at all, then suddenly cram her backstory into the same episode she dies, all in an effort to manipulate the audience into maybe feeling sad when she’s airlocked….seriously pathetic.But anyways, season 3 has been a big step forward for Disco thus far I think, they have slowed down and given us more quiet moments with characters, and I do like how Dr Culber is finally being used as a main character. The show is still not great, but it’s no longer awful. That being said it is bizarre how most of the bridge crew remain blank slates…why not mix in a B plot every now and then to spotlight Rhys or Bryce or Owesekun??
Yeah I’m enjoying it more than I did, but I do agree with a lot of Handlen’s criticisms, and you could see elements of that at the tail end of Season 2 (thinking of the “emotional” penultimate episode).
I am on record as a Michael apologist. Regardless, the show needs to let her hang back a bit. There’s no reason, in an episode that in any of the Next Gen era shows would have clearly been a character head-liner for Nhan, for Michael to be told twice that she’s the only one that can accomplish the plot task, only for it to be Nhan’s departure story. We have instances of both Culber and Nhan telling Michael what she’s capable of when we know what she’s capable of. That’s a Creative Writing 101 error.
But yeah, the pacing is much improved and that was always a big criticism for me, and the season isn’t dipping into nihilism as much as I was expecting… or at all really. I still have reservations about the writing (I think at some point I made the connection that it feels like a CW production in how the characters interact, and a lot clicked into place) but I’m much more interested in where it’s going than I was with the Klingon War or the Red Angel.
Are closeups of the characters nodding and smiling at each other not enough for you?
I relate to that because I nod and smile all the time. They really get me.
it falls back into the problem that Discovery has had since the start that I do not know these characters and the show doesn’t seem interested in exploring them beyond the most superficial of details.
That could be said of any Star Trek show. There are unnamed crew members that pop up all the time in TNG. Data gets up from his station to leave the bridge & another crew member sits down & takes over the position.We don’t need to know the names of every single person on the ship. There are hundreds (presumably). We follow a core group of crew members, which has always been the case on Star Trek.
Lt. Nilsson is played by Sara Mitch who played Airiam in season 1. She appears to be the most senior bridge officers after Saru and Michael as she’s been in command most of the times those two aren’t on the bridge this season.I thought is was pretty clear that Detmer is suffering from trauma as established in the previous episode. The only reason I can fathom that the Control theory still has any traction is because people aren’t actually watching the show or are latching on something they feel would be able to derail the show. It’s also interesting that technically because of Discovery’s temporal travel they are criminals according to the Temporal Accords. Also the 500 years since last Mirror Universe contact lines up with Star Trek Online’s Temporal War campaign as the Mirror Universe is recruited by the villainous Temporal Liberation Front and attack the signing of the temporal accords in the 27th century.
I dunno, Detmers outburst at the dinner table felt a bit more serious than just some ptsd, I dunno if control is involved even if I think the show is often bad enough to do that, I was thinking it might be a more literal trauma to her cybernetic augments.
She’s terrified because the lives of 88 people are her responsibility when she’s at the helm. Her freezing at the conn was when the ship would be put in danger both here and in “People of Earth” The trauma of the battle with Control, the fate of live in the galaxy, and the isolation of the 32nd century is getting to her.
Aye I’m not saying the Control theory makes sense, I just see it presented as more than just regular stress and trauma. The dinner scene really seemed like she was under the influence of something more. It might have just been poorly done tho knowing this thing.
Honestly Detmer’s response to stress and trauma is far more believable than the previous 40 years of Star Trek when it dealt with it. Star Trek had largely ignored trauma before. I mean I’m not sure how many people you’ve regularly interacted with that have dealt with severe trauma before but this isn’t out of the ordinary for that.
Yeah tbh I deleted something along those lines from my last reply. I’ve known people who have severe trauma responses that are closer to Detmer’s dinner outburst than the way TV in general usually portrays it, not just Trek. It was pretty evocative in a way I don’t associate with TV, so maybe it got me thinking more, because this show has a lot of reasons to make me cynical about that kind of thing. If the writers see this story through in that way I’ll be impressed.
“Just some ptsd”Wow.
Right, sorry I can see why that was terrible wording. I don’t mean to suggest ptsd isn’t serious, really poor choice of words. I meant to distinguish the way she acted with what is usually portrayed as ptsd in television. For all I know it’s an interesting way of showing that the way cyborgs manifest ptsd is very different, but the show hasn’t addressed that yet, and is also really badly written a lot of the time.
The way I look at it is, if it were a computer virus, it’s cheating the series out of something it’s rarely, if ever shown.DS9 gave us survivor guilt from a holocaust, but we’ve never seen any form of mental toil on the main characters of a show where they regularly put themselves in grave danger and see their colleges killed.Exploring that is a lot more worthy than “ha she was hacked”.
Detmers outburst at the dinner table felt a bit more serious than just some ptsd
That was just knocking Stamets down a few pegs, which he desperately needed. Everything Detmer said was correct, and justified.
Star Trek Online isn’t canon, though, because characters that are now dead still exist there.
Icheb and Data no longer appear in the game. While STO’s original backstory is no longer valid nothing currently in game aside from Hobus is contradicted by Picard or Discovery.
The only reason I thought maybe she was being Controlled was because the previously on recap for the premier included Leland/control dying and swearing “this isn’t over.”
That is probably related to whatever is going on with Georgiou.
They made it a point to show that Airiam had been infected by Control so I would assume that they would have done that with Detmer, this show doesn’t really hide what it’s going to do in terms of plot that well. And speaking of Control, I think it’s still out there. Storing it’s programming somewhere or trying to evolve some more.
I 100% guarantee that some part of control or the sphere data is messing with her implant. It’s an incredibly plot twist to throw at you, and that’s what they always do.
Someone liked my comment which led me to notice that I did a terrible job writing it. That should have said incredibly obvious plot twist, but I left out the adjective telling you what type of plot twist it would be.
“ she’s now officially serving as Saru’s Number Two,”uhm, phrasing. Also, she’s serving as his Number One, not Number Two.
Yeah, this seems like a pretty bad mistake to make. “Number One” is a common phrase in Star Trek lore, and Saru called her this more than once in this and the previous episode.
It’s also strange how fast we went from “the Federation is gone” to “here’s the Federation!Except we were never at “The Federation is gone” in the first place, it’s been explicit in the dialogue ever since episode 1
I know. I’d been waiting since they mentioned that the Federation was still around to see what’s left of it. I don’t know what the reviewer is on about.
Do you expect this guy to actually watch the show? He keeps missing things clearly stated in dialogue.
It’s been a constant feature of Handlen’s reviews of DISCO, sadly. A shame as his classic Trek reviews were really good.
Considering how he said that Adira was a Trill multiple times in last week’s review, it seems that he’s not paying attention to the show when he misses things that the show clearly tells the viewer.
Yup. It’s like he decides what’s he’s gonna criticize so he ignores everything that doesn’t fit his thesis.
Which is strange since his reviews of TOS, TAS, TNG and DS9 were well-written and paid attention to details. These DISCO reviews read like they’re written by a different person, or someone who just doesn’t care anymore.
Yes! I started watching TOS after getting hooked on Disco and his reviews are interesting. But here it’s like he hates the show so he doesn’t engage with it at all.
I can accept him not liking (or hating) Discovery. But he keeps getting facts wrong, things that are clearly stated in the episodes. I don’t have to agree with the reviews, but at least pay attention to the episodes.
It’s stated in the episode that the Federation Seed Ship has seed samples of “every plant from every planet in the galaxy”. Uhm. What? There are somewhere between 4 and 8 trillion planets in the galaxy. Let’s say, as a rough ballpark figure, 1% of them hold plant life. Earth has about half a million species of plants. If we use that as a baseline, then the ship would need to be holding approximately 2 to 4 quintillion samples. I guess if it were storing this stuff in software, as DNA and other data, it might be feasible, but we see that these samples are literal cannisters of seeds in a honeycomb-like storage area. 3 quintillion cannisters each about 6 inches long would require a vault that is at a minimum 12000 meters long, wide, and tall. that’s basically a solid block of cannisters roughly the area of 9 Borg cubes. Who knows what else would be required for actual storage and maintenance of them. Instead we see a little scout-sized vessel that is dwarfed by Discovery. And a storage vault that is the size of a modest ball room. Which would be fine if we were talking about 33rd century Tardis technology, but apparently this ship existed in the 22nd century?! and furthermore somehow was one of the tiny handful to survive the burn?
sloppiness with scale have increasingly bothered me with Star Trek. When entire planets act like small villages, and moons act like boulders so on. A single ship storing quintillions of cannisters of something is just dumb. I just wish the star trek writers would take a minute to think about the true scale of some of the things they’re writing into existence.
(it’s actually 27 Borg cubes, not 9. i’m an idiot.)
Honestly the first episode I’ve genuinely enjoyed since the first few of season one. A few niggles, but they do seem to be scaling back Michael’s role and making the rest of the crew more of an ensemble. Do agree about her still being the solution to problems, old habits die hard I guess. Did we see what happened to Georgiou to make her catatonic? Did cronenberg fuck with her mind or is she just rattled about a couple of revelations she got about her universe? I might have popped out for a smoke at some point and missed whatever that was.
I imagine she’ stunned that the empire no longer exists and she can never go home.
What would going home even mean at this point in the future tho? Any mirror universe galaxy 800 years into the future is probably as unknown to her as where she is now. Ftr as much as this show drops the ball I have some faith in them addressing that if it’s the case, it just seemed like it was setting up something more.
Well, sure, but she can still feel nostalgic about it.Also, given the section 31 show, unless that ALSO takes place in the future, at some point she must be going back in time, right?
I just assumed/hoped they’d quietly given up on that show.
Still in dev.
More than likely she learned that Apple no longer makes iPhones.
I assume it was the revelation that the Terran Empire fell, which happened about 20 years after she jumped universes but she has no way of knowing.
I felt it was implied either she found out more or something additional happened with cronenberg that we didn’t see, but I’m glad I didn’t miss anything specific. Maybe I’m just finding myself more invested in the characters than before after this episode really impressed me, but I’ve not noticed her be particularly interested in returning to the mirror universe. Even if she did, she’d have considered the fact that nearly a millennium had passed and she’d be completely irrelevant.
The way that storyline was just left open, makes me assume that there’s more there we’ll have to wait for.
Though I would assume that finding out the massive, interstellar empire that was at your command fell a couple of decades after you left, would leave one feeling somewhat shaken. When your self image is built around being at the top of a mighty, centuries old power, learning that the whole thing fell like a house of cards can be deflating.
There’s always been a problem with Georgiou that she’s a remorseless killer that’s exterminated entire planets and had Kelpeians made into soup, tough to make a sympathetic character out of that premise, especially if you’re entertaining the possibility of a spinoff. Mentioning the genetic anomoly that made mirror universe terrans `evil’ would suggest that Cronenberg may have modified that somehow, and we’ll spend the next few episodes watching her come to terms with her deeds.
Between the AI talking about a something in the genome of Terrans and Cronenborg’s general “I know more about Terrans than any living human” attitude, I think he did something to Georgiou.
I think the interrogation we saw was the first step of future section 31 brainwashing. Somebody is obviously trying to use her for something
No, but on a quick rewatch of the scene that confirmed the Terran Empire fell before telling her that there also hadn’t been contact with the Mirror Universe in about 500 years — there was a weird background shot of something happening with a forcefield to either seal them in or release them from something… so definitely possible something happened after cut-away…
Another Easter Egg, after you the Voyager, on the right hand side is a ship called the USS Nog.
amazing
Wow, did I butcher my post. The Nog is on the left hand side after you see Voyager.
When Michael, Saru and Adira first appear inside Federation headquarters, there are some onscreen displays in the lower left corner, and one of them says “Kazon”.
Are you grading this on a curve? Or has the show gotten exponentially better since I last watched it? From the review it sounds like you are grading on a curve. Because it still sounds awful.
So they promoted Nhan to a series regular this season and… get rid of her in episode 5. Bizzare and disappointing considering she was just getting some character development. There are like 3-5 members of the bridge crew that are less developed than Nhan and nobody would miss them. Weird choice.
She’s still in the credits, so I can’t imagine she’s gone permanently.
I’m hoping you’re right but her ending seemed forced and kind of final. Disappointing if we don’t see her again.
Yeah, but it seemed pretty final when Ash left at the end of season 1, an then there he was.
It’s almost like they put her on her own plot that will reconnect with the main plot later in the season.
Nilson has litterally been on this show since season 2, and is in almost every episode.
And she was there at the tree back in episode 3!
Yep
Honestly, while I get why people are frustrated at Michael, I have to say it isn’t anything new for Trek. Most of the captains have had the same approach – it just works better for them since they *are* in command. With Michael we get to see what happens when that certainty/arrogance hits roadblocks.
I really liked how they showed Burnham this episode. Strong opinions are part of her character, and she’s a bit more impulsive now that she’s less aligned with Vulcan culture. It’s good to show how her ideas are valuable but not necessarily the best course of action. I wish they let all the characters be their flawed selves, with checks for when they get out of line (as they did here), and with fewer speeches about how awesome they are.
Yup. I mean, I think that she’s right but that she’s also pushing a lot and really shouldn’t. The Admiral was portrayed as a reasonable man. They just clashed a little and then talked it out.
I thought actually having Burnham in command of the week’s mission helped her characterization. She seems to make smarter, less impulsive decisions when there’s no one above her to disagree with or no orders to defy. What a weird approach for the show to take for a lead character but maybe they’ve been writing around a crutch in the premise: Burnham, as the lead of the series, should be the captain.
Nice call back with the Voyager theme.
Another easter egg-y thing was when they called up the seed and the lights were moving through the pods, it was the same sound effect of dialing the gate from the Stargate franchise.
I quite liked this episode, both as its own thing and for kind of feeling like an episode of Star Trek for the first time in a while.
Same. I though it was a nice balance of optimistic trekkiness with just enough darkness to give some depth. I mean it had a bunch of dead frozen kids.
If the rest of the season is just “mission of the week” I think I’d be pretty happy. I like serialization when done right (hello, DS9), but this show really could use some time to flesh out its characters and their relationships.Well, aside from “everybody loves Michael and she’s the only person who can solve any problem.”
Was there, like, some sort of executive mandate that Sonequa Martin-Green has to hug someone while crying in every episode of this season?
I enjoyed this episode, including how they let Burnham be an actual flawed person where her boldness can be either a strength or a liability depending on the situation. I could have done without admiring speech about Burnham #1078, though. I like Burnham, just let he be who she is without the hard sell!I had to roll my eyes a bit at the Giotto speech because it rolls out a lot of bullshit mythology regarding the so-called “dark ages (no shade on Giotto himself). Was it me, or did that speech like a coded commentary on funding present-day space travel and exploration? Which I’m fine with, I’m just not sure I’m reading that correctly.
She was “flawed” but really though she was right, so other people were actually flawed for not just listening to her in the first place.
Yeah, that’s some old ass historiography that I learned was untrue 16 odd years ago as a 14 yr old
I am not sure if it’s because many of these actors are from broadway, but the scene chewing and awe shucks style of dramatics has begun to grate on my entire being….and I am saying that as a fan of this show.
The inside of the seed vault—-holy trypophobia, batman.Edit: if you don’t know what that is, do NOT google it.
I was very confused by the way they got the seeds. At the very top of the vault, a chain of lockers lights up, one at a time, until it comes to one at grabbing level which is the one they wanted the whole time?
Elevator seed transport?
I took that as her selection going through a group, a sub-group, a sub-sub-group, etc until it got down to the specific seed they wanted.
Hmm… I do respect a well-organised cabinet. I’ll take it.
So we get a Nahn character development show. And still ignore the bridge crew. Three seasons and we know nothing about any of them other than Detmer is really upset.
Obviously David Cronenberg messed with Georgiou’s head. Because that is why you hire Cronenberg.
I also liked that there was a Voyager-J. That the only ship other than Enterprise to get the letter suffix. I hated that show. But it seems fitting.I would think that the Discovery crew would want to use the Starfleet records to find out what happened to friends and family. Michael would want to know about Spock.
make it stop.daddy, make the bad man STOP
I enjoyed the self-aware commentary when the medical AI is examining Burnham: “Are you prone to emotional exaggeration?”Also, the Tilly / Stamets / Reno trio continues to be amusing.
“Duh.”
“…which means magnetic.”
“I know what duh means.”
“Can we just irradiate your entire personality?”
I wonder who they’re writing this show for. They have Starfleet characters who don’t know pretty basic science just so they’d have an excuse to explain things to the audience. Sure, old Trek shows had to explain stuff like nanotechnology, DNA, and simple computer concepts but that was back when people were way less savvy about sci-fi and a lot of those ideas were pretty cutting edge science.Nowadays, many of those ideas are so widespread in pop culture that we have big blockbuster movies tossing it out without needing any exposition. You have youtubers making videos telling people to invest in companies developing nanotechnology and gene editing. Heck, you buy a gaming PC and they tell you to download folding@home. Do they really need to write characters who are supposed to have been through Starfleet Academy not know stuff like prions and coronal mass ejection?
I only know what a prion is because of mad cow disease. If the children of the federation don’t have herds of cattle being fed each others’ mashed remains like some kind of bovine Matrix, I can accept the gap in their knowledge. Coronal mass ejections, on the other hand, are a shocking lapse. That’s like having Dominic Toretto not know about potholes.
But Starfleet officers aren’t supposed to be regular people. They’re highly trained professional. Getting into Starfleet Academy is like getting in an Ivy League University.
“And again, there’s that weird insistence in making Michael the constant focus.”This show is so convinced that all we’re so captivated by Michael as a character that they just as well should follow Picard’s lead and call the show MIchael
I get that the doctor didn’t want to abandon his family, but was there some reason they couldn’t have taken their bodies to Discovery and get that guy some medical attention, and then eventually he get can get that back to Barzan to bury them? This show makes the dumbest choices sometimes, and they are usually in service of these huge manufactured emotional moments. Though it’s a bit hard to call them huge emotional moments when you get several of them in every episode. Flooding the market devalues the currency.
I liked Nahn, and I wonder how the Federation would feel about Discovery just leaving someone they don’t know (and who was non-compliant to the point of belligerence in her debriefing) in charge of the seed vault. That sounds like a resource they would want someone they had vetted to be in charge of. I’d like to see her come back, but I doubt it. What’s the over/under on that 31st Federation Officer who babysat them this episode being the one to replace Nahn on the Discovery?
Lastly, I’m calling that guy with the glasses as Section 31. He played Phillipa’s hubris (not hard to do) and hobbled her because he could see what a threat she can be.
“I’d like to see her come back, but I doubt it.”As others have said, Nahn is in the main cast, so it’s likely she will be back.
Nahn’s departure was incredibly sudden, forced, and honestly didn’t make a bit of sense to me.
we’re probably going to her home world soon
It felt like old-school-trek, but in the bad way. Like it was Dax suddenly deciding that she was going to stay on planet-brigadoon, or Marla McGivers heading off with Kahn.The old shows usually had to tell a whole story in 45 minutes, so some abruptness was understandable. But if Disco is going to pretend to be serialized it really doesn’t have an excuse for the whiplash with Nhan and Ariam.And even if Nhan does return later in the season to save the day, her decisions in this episode will still feel really weird.
They didn’t make clear what the dilemma was at all. I got the emotional motivation – missing her people and wanting to see what happened to them -, but why was it even a problem was more ‘???’.
This is quite a good articulation of my feelings about what happened.
I honestly think it would have worked better if instead of a dilemma Nahn would have just gone ‘you know, knowing my people joined the Federation and seeing this, I have to check on how they’re doing’.
Or if maybe we had actually gotten character development for Nahn at some point about her people’s deeply held beliefs and how incredibly much she missed home and hadn’t seen another person from her planet in such an incredibly long time.
Of the group that went to the future on Discovery, she has the least connection with any of them. Everyone else, except Nahn and Georgiou, have served together on Disco for years. Even Georgiou has a strong connection to Michael, and knows most of the crew. Nahn was a member of Pike’s crew, and even when she was on Discovery she was more connected to Pike than any of Disco’s crew.So now she’s in the future, everyone she knew is dead, and she’s on a ship where everyone has served together for years, and she’s only known Michael and some of them for a few months. Suddenly there’s a chance to help out a fellow Barzan and visit her homeworld, something she thought she’d never get to do again. Of this group she’s the most likely to make this choice.
It has the air of an show-runner decision, along the lines of, “We need to cull some bodies here, if we’re going to do justice to any of them.” Nahn was the least essential of any of the bit players.
How is anybody supposed to take you seriously when you say that Burnham is serving as Captain Saru’s “number two.” They literally refer to the first officer’s position CONSTANTLY as “Number One” across most of the series and since this season has begun, this gets badgered about incessantly by name. Your fitness for these reviews is… debatable…
I dutifully scrolled down before making the same comment, because it seemed like the single most obvious thing in the world to me, and I knew I couldn’t be the first.Zach reviewed 180 episodes of TNG in which Will Riker, the first officer, was nick named “number 1″ by Picard. He reviewed the second season of Discovery, in which the Enterprise’s first officer is exclusively referred to, by every one, as “Number 1″ (though it is now canon that her actual name is Una, iirc). And not least of all, Zach reviewed the last episode of Discovery, in which Burnham says to Saru (I may be paraphrasing, as this is from memory), “I would be honoured to be your number 1″.So seriously, wtf? It’s obviously a small thing at the end of the day, but it’s like calling the spaceship the “HMS Discovery”, it requires a catastrophic brain fart.
All of this! Yes!
Also, I have spent like a cool 10 minutes absolutely ROLLING over Her Majesty’s Ship Discovery.
The first officer is second in command. So Number One is in fact number two. Note the capitalization.
You literally called them “the first officer”. That’s why they’re called “Number One”.
This, plus how Zack has constantly said that Adira is a Trill when we had an entire episode based on them being a human with a symbiont, makes me think that Zach is not paying attention to the show. Or maybe he’s farmed out these reviews to an intern.
So I have just finished binging the whole show up to the previous episode. (Netflix out here gives me the new one tomorrow). I did want to offer a general opinion that I don’t see too much of on these here comments or maybe it’s hidden among the trek arguments people are having. I have never watched a Star Trek show before this one. Like not a single episode. My only exposure to Star Trek media was the 2 newer movies I watched in the last couple of years which I would describe as “meh”. So I watch this show entirely on it’s own merits and can only judge it for what it is instead of what I wish it was which the reviewer and a lot of lifelong fans are clearly doing.In my opinion the show is a very mixed bag. I enjoy a lot of it but the lows are so damn low. The acting is generally good to great but the writing is CW levels of inconsistent. Burnham as a character was fascinating to me but they managed to water her down to steely determination or crying. Nothing in between. Which sucks because there seemed to be so much potential there for a complex character and some nature vs. nurture internal conflicts, but instead her actions and motivations seem to come down to “because the script says so”. I gather from reading what a lot of you have said that the previous shows are more ensemble pieces but again having not seen them I didn’t really need that. UNTIL I was randomly asked to start caring about the human shaped furniture that is the bridge crew. The show can be about Burnham sure but my god you can afford to cut a scene of angst with Ash (the fuck was the point of him??) and show me the other crew member reacting to the shit their going through. It was a huge missed opportunity to not have Culber accompany Adira last week. Aside from the medical aspect I think he would have a unique perspective having been stuck in the spore world(don’t remember what it was called ) then resurrected. The Airam business was insulting not emotional. Visually she caught my eye every episode so it’s an insane waste to me to kill her off like that. The thing in that episode that worked and I think they’ve do only one other time, was show the crew interacting outside of Michael. Maybe it’s just me but I like seeing the downtime occasionally. It grounds the characters in a way that may make me care if the black guy and the asian guy on the bridge are okay after Control tried to take them all out (and not hit any of them). The fact I don’t know their names is a huge problem.Anyway all this to say that while I do actually like the show, their in space with aliens and I have allllll the time for time travel shenanigans, the negatives are starting to outweigh the positives. I would be curious to know the opinions of others who don’t have old Trek shows to compare and contrast to. I don’t know if it ‘feels like trek’, but I enjoy it. ( most of the time).
I don’t agree the lows are so low, the lows are just really bog standard TV cliches but they’re not actually BAD TV.
I mean some of the lows discussed I agree are just TV cliches like the terrible romance but there is some legitimately bad TV in there. I would argue that the funeral for the character we were only properly introduced to the previous episode was pretty bad. Burnham’s adopted parents somehow turning up for a face to face goodbye in the middle of a universe ending situation was an eye roller too. I thought they were telepathically linked, that would have made a lot more sense. Making a plan to trap the red angel with the person they assumed was the red angel was infuriatingly stupid for a room of smart people. Everything about Georgiou still being around, aside from the fact she’s played by Michelle Yeoh, is terrible once you think about it. Yes she’s a lot of fun but that is legitimately space Hitler. A woman who actively presided over mass genocide and regularly ate your captains people as a power play is a step to far for a redemption arc isn’t it?
These are all just lazy functional TV tropes to keep the plot moving, but they’re not actively bad TV. Even the multiple. Lengthy. Shot of the crew smiling at each other and looking hopeful over EXTREMELY OVER ORCHESTRATED ARRANGEMENTS are not terrible TV, they’re just hitting TV tropes too hard. ST:D (yikes!) has mainly had the problem that it leans too heavily into being an action movie and too heavily into trying to hit the middle band between people who liked original trek and people who liked stupid action JJ Abrams reboot trek, but it has at least been consistently what it was from the start and some characterizations have grown. One thing I would like to point out is that any genre enthusiast should know watching genre is about picking out the pearls from the poo. For example, Oded Fehr (underrated even back in The Mummy) made an off-puttingly prickly admiral; his acid counterbalanced those schmaltzy fucking spielberg faces. Also, the reviewer notes that Michael is acting like a dummy to him, but…Saru points this out. Also, for TV, having Michelle Yeoh play space hitler and facing off against David Cronenberg is enough.
Ha you make a lot of good points. Just watched this episode and while I had a lot of the same issues, you’re right it’s just the cliches and tropes that smack me in the face. Took me an embarrassingly long time to recognise Oded Fehr though.
I think we all have to guard against ruining things for ourselves, especially right now when having anything you like at all is important. If you want an object lesson go to the Mandalorian pages and look at the comments of LaurenceQ (sp?). The guy is an absolute maniac. Every week he goes to the page, posts long screeds crying and shouting about everything in the show, literally everything, then he goes to reply to everybody’s comments if they liked anything to try to wreck it for them. We must all not be him.I’m a fan of a team that doesn’t win much but every time we win a single game people go “we’re never going to win the championship!” or find some area of the game we lost. I’m 100% a hypercritical thinker, just trying not to suck all of the joy out of life.
The burn is caused by “Burn-ham” right?
I’m calling it now:The Burn was Kevin Uxbridge pulling a Husnock on all of the dilithium in the universe because he was sick of people visiting Rana IV unannounced. In the years since TNG the music box for Rishon has gotten a little out of hand, and now its broadcasting a song to everyone, which is what’s making Detmer and Georgio go a little bit weird.(I’ll allow that this is possibly mirror-Kevin Uxbridge, because sure, why not?)
I liked this episode a lot, even if it was kindof a mess. But I wish we had a better idea of what the crew think about their situation. The characters talk about their feelings a lot, but I still don’t know if they’re cool with being in the 32nd century. Is this Voyager II, where we’re all searching for a way back home?Or is everyone just resigned to never seeing their families again, and also never talking about it? The Nhan stuff this episode lands awkwardly because every single person should be desperately homesick. Did no one else have spouses or kids or parents? When they were on Earth did anyone look up their descendents? Does Michael know what happens to Spock and Sarek? Wasn’t there anyone on the crew who said “Yeah, Earth is mildly xenophobic now, but it’s still pretty nice, so I’m going to resign and hang out here.”There should be a huge dramatic weight to being cut off from everything. And we got a tiny bit of that this week with Nhan. But the show is mostly dancing over it, which makes it all feel really impermanent, and like there’s a reset button just around the bend. (as an audience member I’m pretty sure there will be a reset, but that doesn’t mean that the show shouldn’t commit to its current premise).
If they had only travelled 50 years into the future then I can understand the human crewmembers wanting to look up their families. But they went 900+ years into the future. Everyone’s family are long dead, and so are their children, and their children, etc. Even Spock and Sarek, long-lived as Vulcans, are long dead. I just don’t see the point of looking up your family’s history to find out “Oh, they died ~850 years ago. What a surprise.”
There are a number of people I know now, that I’d want to find out what happened with if I suddenly zapped 1000 years into the future. Of course they’d all be dead, but what happened between now and their deaths matters to me. This would absolutely be true if any of the crew have children left behind – which is pretty likely for at least someone on the crew, but not any of the named characters of course. But wondering about other family is reasonable – surely Saru will look further into his people’s history – and his sister. I know we were talking about Earth … the same thing would apply to many of the Earthians.
Agree to disagree. I think being ~1000 years removed would make you realize you would have no connection with any descendants despite them being very distant relatives. They would have mixed with so many other family trees in those generations there is barely nothing you have in common with them.
“Vance et. al are clearly underpowered (and have no idea what caused The Burn)…”Well, now, hold the phone. We don’t know for sure that Vance and company don’t know what caused it. We know precious little about Vance, except for one thing made abundantly clear to us—Vance doesn’t trust the Disco right off. As such, wouldn’t he be more likely to withhold any knowledge he may have about The Burn?I think they do know something, and I’m pretty sure that the knowledge is definitely held by the fella that questioned Giorgiou (whom I had not recognized as David Cronenberg). We know how this show works: one of the arcs for this season will absolutely be the Disco crew learning about The Burn. It’s like Chekov’s gun (Anton, not Pavel).
It did put a smile on my face seeing the USS Nog in the background. That was a damn good tribute.
VOYAGER!!
VOYAGER-J!!
The show has fixed most of its issues and I think there’s a foundation to make a pretty good show but there is a Michael problem that needs to be dealt with. She’s just not a strong character enough to carry the show the way the writers want her to, and keeping the focus on her prevents the other characters from growing. Other than the science trio, nobody else seems to be able to fix an issue on its own.To stay with the Simpsons references, it’s as if there were a directive for all the characters to ask “Where’s Poochie?” whenever Poochie isn’t on screen.
“she’s now officially serving as Saru’s Number Two”No, she’s Saru’s Number One. Saru specifically called her this in this and the previous episode.“Number One” is a common phrase in Star Trek lore. This is a pretty embarrassing mistake to make for someone who’s reviewed for this site every episode of TOS, TAS, TNG and DS9.
“Discovery’s entire crew, who act like teenagers at a summer camp when they learn the horrible possibility that reporting for duty might mean actual duty, ie doing things they don’t want to do.”This is a crew that, for most of them, have worked together for years, and gave up everything to travel into the future where everything they know is gone and all they have is each other. And now the Federation is saying they are all going to be separated? Their reaction is completely reasonable and not like a “teenager” at all.
“There’s a blonde lady on Discovery’s bridge crew that I didn’t recognize from an earlier episode. Is she new? Sounds like her name is Nilson.”She has been a background character ever since season 2. The actress originally played Airiam in season 1 but they changed actresses and gave her a different, human, role (and then killed Airiam off). She’s appeared in every (?) episode, although usually just saying 1-2 lines.
Michael has spent a year alone in the future, unable to find the Federation, thinking that Discovery may never appear. She spent that year making her own decisions, acting less like a Starfleet officer every day. So it makes sense that she would be insubordinate and speak out of turn like she does here. It wouldn’t make sense if she didn’t act like this, like her year alone didn’t happen.
No mention of Voyager-J? The USS Nog? The Kazon reference?
Once again I find myself agreeing with your review, but finding it hard to agree with the grade you give it. It seems like you’re critical of the show for valid reasons and then someone else assigns a much more generous grade to it.
I 100 percent agree that Michael’s character actions make no sense and everyone looking to her as the moral center of the show is off putting. And, yeah, do we need more mawkish soliloquies where the music swells and everyone learns a valuable lesson about themselves . . . and each other? I think giving this episode a B is extremely generous when it hardly earns a C-.