I’m noticing a pattern in my season three Discovery reviews: I tend to enjoy the show more when it widens its focus past Michael to bring in the full ensemble. Building character relationships helps the show’s world-building (something it still weirdly struggles with, even after three seasons), which in turns leads to more interesting conflicts and more compelling stakes. At its worst, the show often feels like just a collection of big moments, jumping from highlight to highlight without bothering to build the context or depth to give them meaning beyond their most obvious signifiers—the special effects light show and dramatic music and tearful actors all tell us we should care, but Discovery often struggles with showing why.
Thankfully, the show has been improving on this aspect of itself in fits and starts for much of its run, with a lot of work happening in season three to make for a more cohesive, more distinct series. “The Sanctuary” isn’t a classic, but it’s well-directed (thank you as always, Mr. Frakes), does a good job balancing several stories, and has an earned, exciting climax against a gratifyingly loathsome villain. I’m not sure the show’s need to underline each emotional beat is ever going to sit comfortably with me, but I can at least appreciate it more when it doesn’t use those beats as an excuse to throw internal logic and common sense out the window.
Let’s start with the small stuff first: Adira comes out as non-binary to Stamets. The scene is quick enough that it could be relegated to Stray Observations, but I think it’s worth noting here, as I’ve been skeptical about how the show was going to handle its transgender and non-binary characters. The whole thing goes by in a couple of lines. After the latest development in the Burn saga, Adira mentions that Stamets keeps using “she” when referring to them. Adira isn’t comfortable with that, and wants to be referred to as they or them. Stamets accepts this without question, and everyone moves on with their lives.
There are shows where this could, and should, have been a major issue. But it just wouldn’t make sense if anyone on Discovery got worked up over an issue of gender or sexuality that’s already relatively common in our present day world. I’m sure it’s possible to imagine a future where we regress somehow, or where civilization splinters into various reactionary groups, and I’m also sure it would be possible to show an alien race in Discovery’s universe that wouldn’t understand this concept. But aboard Discovery, any more effort to make this dramatic or tense or anything more than a simple moment of clarification and honesty, would’ve felt forced and unnecessary. I’ll be curious to see how others with more experiencing writing about gender take this, but, at least for me, it works pretty much perfectly.
As for the bulk of the episode: “The Sanctuary” kicks off with Book getting a message asking him to go back home. The planet of Kwejian is in trouble; said trouble looks to be related in some way to Osira and the Emerald Chain we’ve been hearing so much about lately. Because the Chain is a Federation concern, Vance sends all of Discovery along with Book to investigate, which means at least this time, Michael is able to get through the whole episode without violating direct orders. (The one order she might have violated—Saru calling her back to the ship when Osira arrives—she never actually gets, so we’ll call that a win.) While Michael and Book beam down to the planet, Saru deals with Rin, the antenna-less Andoria introduced in last week’s episode, while facing down a demanding Osira and a potential interstellar diplomatic crisis. Tilly is firmly in Number One role, providing able support. Meanwhile, Culber is trying to figure out just what the hell is going on with Georgiou, and Detmer gets her time to shine when the whole thing blows up in a space battle.
All of this is varying degrees of fun. Book’s strained relationship with a former close friend (he calls him “brother” although they aren’t biologically related) is a brief glimpse into the character’s backstory, revealing a troubled past that’s still echoing into the present. The details are unusual, but the form—a buddy from Book’s former life of crime tries to sell him out, but they have a fist fight and get over it—is familiar enough that it never becomes confusing, and for once, Michael gets to be involved without entirely dominating the proceedings. As a villain, Osira is easy to hate; she’s introduced feeding her nephew to a trance worm, and things only get worse from there. She survives the hour, and given the build up, I expect she’ll be returning soon to menace our heroes, which is a good thing; it feels like it’s been a while since Discovery has had a consistent foe.
There are a lot of smart touches throughout. It’s a bit cutesy, but I liked the gag of Saru trying to find just the right command phrase to use on the bridge; Saru’s been doing such a solid job as captain that it’s nice to remember that he’s not the most socially engaged character on the show, and it’s a good meta joke that doesn’t cross the line into being overly self-conscious. On the more serious side of things, I dug how Tilly’s clever plan to attack Osira’s ship, the Viridian, without violating diplomatic law doesn’t seem to actually work. Saru can’t openly attack the ship when it starts firing on the planet’s defenses because it would mean breaking the fragile truce between the Chain and the Federation. Tilly suggests having a member of the crew borrow Book’s ship for an “unauthorized” assault. This works in that it stops the Viridian from wrecking the sanctuary, but Osira threatens harsh consequences at the end for all of the Federation. That makes sense—Tilly’s plan was just a smoke screen, and there’s no reason for Osira to buy into it unless she wanted to maintain diplomatic relations herself. But I always appreciate it when a clever plan fails because it assumes everyone is playing by the same rules.
I’m less fond of Georgiou and Culber’s sparring. Georgiou as character has her moments, but her constantly abrasive personality is getting less interesting as it remains consistent, and it’s still weird to see a monstrous dictator rehabbed into “the sarcastic one.” Her aggression towards Culber, which is basically her way of lashing out at an internal issue she can’t control (as well as her usual refusal to allow anyone to suggest she might need others to care for her), makes for a snappy conflict, but the more depth you try and give Georgiou, the more you have to question the value of keeping her around.
Oh, another nice thing: Detmer got to be a badass. The sequence of her fighting the Viridian in Book’s ship is good, and I’m glad Rin got some more screen time; I’m not sure her speech to him about being brave really works if you think about it more than thirty seconds (for one thing, Rin is the only one ot ever stand up to Osira? How would you know?), but Detmer has been slightly out of focus for so long that any chance she gets to be more than just a name with a cool facial prosthetic is welcome.
I think that’s more or less everything? We also have a brief Burn update: through the power of science, Adira and Stamets have found the system where the Burn originated. There’s a signal coming from that system that sounds like music—a familiar tune that keeps popping up at various points in the season. A little more work, and that music becomes a distress signal from a Federation ship. Which is probably going to be a big deal. All in all, this got us one step closer to the season’s major storyline; cleared the hurdle of dealing with potentially complicated issue of identity; and found time to tell a few good stories without short-changing them.
Stray observations
- It’s very endearing to see Stamets and Culber talking about Adira together.
- Another Linus joke: apparently he’s shedding. (Linus’s role in the show is reminding me a little of Morn from Deep Space Nine, although Linus has also had a few lines.)
- The reason Osira wanted Rin so badly? He’s the only one who knows that the Emerald Chain is running out of dilithium.
93 Comments
Ooh a classic example of “Alien that couldn’t possibly put its shirt on without taking its head off first.” Right up there with an Ithorian. Excellent. Chef’s kiss.
It’s a very weird promo still by CBS given it’s not one of the main people on the show.
Velcro. Invented by Klingons
Theirs is one of the very few planets where the button-down shirt was invented before the wheel.
There is a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy entry in this premise.
I knew I stole it from somewhere.
Well, the Mayans built huge ziggurats, but never invented wheeled transport (and this was on our own planet), so…the infinite probability of an infinite universe, I guess.
And of course, the only difference between lifeforms on different planets is the head shape.
If you’re not beaming in and out of your clothes, is it really the future?
You know, people knock on older Trek for goofy forehead ridges ear prosthetisc to pass for aliens but at least those were characters that the rest of the cast could interact with and not be overly distracting.
Discovery really made me a believer in the “single differentiating design element” school of alien aesthetics. Yes, yes, it’s probably unrealistic (although, come on…), but watching people try to act through four inches of prosthetic immediately handicaps a lot of the performances. Saru is arguably too much, but consider how little personality the Season 1 Klingons had even compared to other secondary characters like Martok or Gowron. Part of that might be in the writing, but I’d argue that a substantial part of it is just that it’s orders of magnitude harder to make an impression when you can barely use your face.
It clearly has a zipper in the front so it does not need to be put over the head.
“Should we tell him about the zipper?”
“Nah, it’s so much funnier watching him try to put it on this way.”
Unless it zips up as it does.
wut
One weird thing is that Ryn keeps talking about his antennae like they’re gone forever, but it’s been established since at least Enterprise that they grow back in a few months. Sure, his could have been cauterized or whatever to prevent that, but it sure hasn’t been made clear.
I feel like you need to be careful, or else we’ll get another needless “Northern Andorians grow antennae like this, and Southern Andorians grow antennae like that” alien race continuity patch.
Given how we saw Osira feed her own nephew to a transworm just for failing her, it seems completely in character that when cutting off Ryn’s antennae she would also cauterize the wound to prevent them from ever growing back. Like if she ever burned the crops of Book’s planet, she would also salt the earth to prevent anything from ever growing there again.
The Burn:From the ShortTrek we know that Discovery is abandoned in a nebula at some point, with some more time shenanigans. I believe this short trek is the last to be placed into the main story. So Discovery will go to the nebula, discover Discovery, placing it as the cause of the burn. The ship must go back in time (the wormhole like structure seen in the credits, that give indications for events to happen in the season) to set all the events in motion. The burn will be a result of the ship gaining sentience from he probe data, and interacting with thespore network the first time. The spore network, as the show has established, allows for instantaneous movement throughout he galaxy, which is what happened with the burn.
I think there’s going to be something in there to get Georgiou back to the past so she can do her spin off show.
Does anyone still want to see that show?
the fuck is “short trek”?
Discovery is a show struggling to get out the shadow of its awful leading character; the script alternating between chastising Burnham and praising her as some kind of emotional lodestone to the crew. Her sincerity so bulletproof it could pass through a wormhole unscathed – but it’s not enough for Book to chortle at how earnest she is. We know Discovery. Sigh. We know.This has made me wonder about contracts: Martin-Green is the lead character and have so theorised if her contract insists upon her being the centre of every story. Season 3 keeps hinting like its done with her, but then immediately makes Michael the centre of things. I actually think Martin-Green is a good actor (and to be crude, she’s easy on the eyes, ahem), but Michael Burnham is an awful character who is an obstruction in front of Disco’s crew taking centre stage.This SHOULD be Captain Saru’s show.
I haven’t minded Burnham as much in the past two seasons – generally I like her fine, and Martin-Green is a solid actor.But I kind of hit Burnham burn (heh) out after ‘Scavengers.’ It’s starting to feel like the show is becoming, not even “Burnham and Friends” but “Michael Burnham…and occasionally some other characters who will get no more than five minutes of screentime each unless they get to be part of the Michael Burnham storyline this week.”Is there something in Martin-Green’s contract requiring she get the overwhelming majority of story content? The show has gotten aggressively lead-driven (more so than in the past, imo) and I think it’s a poor use of the Star Trek franchise (which often thrives as an ensemble).
This SHOULD be Captain Saru’s show.I agree, and I wish that the showrunners had the self-awareness to realize that. If they ran Happy Days, they would’ve stubbornly kept Richie as the main character rather than making it more Fonzie-centric, with the obvious caveat that at least Richie was a likable character.Doug Jones has been good throughout the show’s run, but he’s taken it to another level this season. And the character of Saru has been written very well, too, but he really should be the central character right now. Burnham is an awful character, but the show seems hell bent on forcing us to root for her because of her status as the show’s main character. But it takes more than that, and there’s very little reason to be invested in her success or failure except as it relates to the crew members we actually care about.I’m also not thrilled that they seem to be pushing Tilly in a similar way. I get the feeling that we’re headed to Burnham being Character #1, Tilly being Character #1A, and everybody else being treated like they’re in the double-digits on that list.
I suspect it’s closer to what happened to Stana Katic on CASTLE — the showrunners made it more about “Who Killed Kate Beckett’s Mother?” than “Funny&Horny Mystery Writer helps Troubled&Hardass But Hot Woman Cop Fight Crime”. It wasn’t her call to make, but she became the focus of the show — and the excuse given as to why the leads weren’t shagging like bunny rabbits by the end of Season 2 or mid-Season 3. (If it had been her call to make, they’d have been shagging by the end of Season 2.)The writers have this idea of turning Burnham into Kirk Redux (only she doesn’t have her own command, so her insubordination is even more blatant!), and they’re dragging Sonequa Martin-Greeen along with it. If that was the case, they shouldn’t have done the first half of the first season to begin with, because I don’t know about you? But I’m really wondering how the DISCOVERY Crew can trust her after some of the shit she pulled then!
Agreed. He’s become my favorite character, and the back story of his race makes his cerebral style understandable, and his command an interesting subplot.
Another thing I like about him is that he’s calm. It makes him a lot more like a real naval CO than a lot of the portrayals we see in fiction. When I see Saru in action, I’m reminded of Captain Mancuso from The Hunt for Red October, especially this scene:When he says “right full rudder, 30 degree down angle,” the absolute calm he displays is impressive. He doesn’t have to yell, or bark orders, or act like his hair’s on fire. He’s confident in what he’s doing, and that confidence and calm keeps his subordinates from freaking out, too.Another Mancuso parallel:He doesn’t know it all, nor does he pretend to. He has capable officers and enlisted personnel under him who are comfortable coming to him even if it’s something off the wall, and he listens to them. It’s a collaborative atmosphere, and you need that on a ship. The final decision is his, but his crew know that they can present him with anything and he’ll genuinely consider it.And on a ship like Discovery, with Michael Burnham off Michael Burnham-ing all over the place, a CO like Saru is absolutely vital; his demeanor and presence allow them to continue to function even though there’s someone in a position of significant authority who has demonstrated that she is completely untrustworthy, whether one agrees with the reasoning behind that chronic untrustworthiness or not. The crew would fall apart, in my opinion, without a presence like his as CO.
This is a perfect comparison. Thank you.
This show continues to be an absolute SJW LGBBQ dumpster fire. When Michelle isn’t saving the day with improbable Mary Sue powers it is Gorgiou, who is now impervious to phaser fire, or Adira with her multiply personalities, or now Green lady and her awesome firepower ship that was laughably done by Booker’s weak and tiny ship that now had its own Mary Sue powers because it was flown by Detmer. Who we are constantly told is amazing. LOL! Also, just to should how liberal I am, I think Detmer and the black chick should hook up. They have more sexual on screen chemistry than Book and Michelle.
The thing is, Burnham isn’t that bad of a character. We’ve had LOTS of Trek characters exactly like her. The problem is she’s the sole focus of the show, and that gets exhausting. Imagine if every single episode of TNG had been focused on Riker. He’s charming as hell, and hyper competent, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we would have been sick as shit of him long before he ever grew the beard if he was the focus too.
I know it’s all the rage in the comments for this show to hate on Burnham’s character. And there seems to be an ever-growing view of Saru as “the best.” I’m still in the small minority that likes Burnham and thinks Saru is the most milquetoast uninteresting character that the Star Trek universe has ever come up with.He’s so simple and middle-of-the-road. He doesn’t so much command the ship as gather everyone’s opinion and does whatever everyone thinks is best. He’s easily manipulated and gives in to emotional appeals far too often. He’s just a sop.There’s nothing dynamic about him and nothing very distinctive about him as a character, unless you count the prosthetics and his physical affectations. He’s boring as fuck.
I agree – in the grand scheme of things, Saru is mega boring. But he remains the sole character in the entire collection of Discovery that feels like an actual Star Trek character. Everyone else seems dragged straight from other sci fi franchises.
That’s not really such a bad thing.
I do not see any struggle.. DIscovery is in love with her..
A few things: I think the Andorian’s name is spelled “Rynn” from the closed captioning, and he was introduced 2 weeks ago, not last week.And I was thinking that Georgiou’s behavior at this point is not just her snarky sarcastic self but includes effects from whatever is wrong with her, like dementia or something else (PTSD?).
That’s very likely — don’t forget Georgiou went from Emperor of Her Universe to Refugee to Bartender to Section 31 Agent over the course of a few months. It’s likely she was too busy just surviving to start falling apart, but now that things are on a more-or-less even keel (relatively speaking), her subconscious is going, “Okay, we’ve put this off long enough — time for me to process what happened to you, so you can lose your shit big-time!”More likely, though, they’ll come up with some Weebledy-Wobbledy, Timey-Wimey…Syndrome that requires her to go back to the 23rd Century and pick up where she left off with Section 31.
I’m still curious about the statement when they first met up with Starfleet about how there hadn’t been a Mirror Universe sighting in hundreds of years now.
I thought from the first blackout after she left debriefing that she had been replaced with some kind of synthetic life form, and they pretty much confirmed that this week, with her glitching out the way she did. Looked like programmable matter to me. Cronenberg clearly didn’t like her, and I expect the real Georgiou is in a prison somewhere.
I like Michael Burnham, I’m just sick of her. They could learn from next generation and feature the rest of the crew once in a while.
I loved the running gag of Saru’s catchphrase. I feel like “Proceed” would be enough.Detmer and Grudge, a combination I wish we could spend more time on. Ryn (as per captioning) and Grudge too, that was fun.I’m really curious to see where they’re going with Space Baby Shark, but I don’t know if I’m curious in a “this is going to be ridiculous” way or in a more genuine manner.
More Grudge!
space baby shark?
The song that Grey played on the cello and I think was played in the core? Basically the song that was memetically spread across the universe.
So what is the deal with Book’s species. Are they all empaths or just him and his brother? Because it seems really weird that no one on his planet would think “Hey, what if we work together to ask the locusts to leave?” Yes, Discovery boosted their powers but no one in all the time the locusts have been a problem has thought to do that?
Georgiou’s belligerence was cool at first but it was just irritating this episode. I don’t care how much of a badass you are, if your body is doing shit like that then you might be freaked out and I don’t think the doctors would let you walk out of sick bay.
I was thinking that too about the empaths. Since they are not bio brothers, it’s possible they are only a few who have the empathic ability. Of course it does need to be cleared up.
I think the “they/them” scene is emblematic of Star Trek losing its way in a middle ground. Past Trek would’ve more likely shifted this issue onto an alien/civilization of the week, and Trek’s heirs-apparent (like The Orville) would’ve found a way to be less uptight about it all generally – which would be more believable for the universe they’re ostensibly in.
The show decided it was going to be an important moment because it’s still important in the real world. That’s fine, but that’s also why “alien/civilization of the week” makes so much more sense as a format. You can adjust the alien civilization to any cultural epoch you want – and, of course, fuck around with its basic social structures on top of that – to make sure that the issue the script is tackling is *sensibly* important, rather than being important because of a cloying fourth wall break. As a bonus, you can have the Federation be its reliable Gallant self, with the usual ounce of hand-wringing due to the ever-looming spectre of colonizer mentality.I mean, come on now. You’re pairing Adirah up in a friendship with Stamets, who’s gay, and the show’s been 100% on the side of “he’s gay and it’s fine and nobody cares,” at least inside the Federation. If suddenly the show wants to take a different approach with a fairly similar social issue, also inside the Federation, it needs to justify the shift. Here, it doesn’t. It’s a fourth wall break.
I don’t even love The Orville – though the second season was vastly more consistent and coherent than the first – but honestly, I just keep thinking about how much better that show would’ve handled this (granting it’s a similar setup, where it’s a crew member rather than the aforementioned planet of the week.) That’s not a great place for Discovery to be.
Probably the most mediocre episode of this season so far. I really couldn’t care about Book’s problems, and the Emerald Chain shouldn’t be the antagonists of this season. Osira is just so by the book evil (no pun intended) and uninspired.
Nonsense — what makes you say that…?
That was terrible, really badly written
Ok, so that “manual control” was obviously a nod to this, right?
Uh… Ooops?
Huh?
I think it was a reference to Riker getting his xBox on in the middle of battle….
I’m sure it’s possible to imagine a future where we regress somehow, or
where civilization splinters into various reactionary groups
ST:TNG’s episode “The Outcast” — or “Garth Marenghi Tackles Gay Rights!”.
Back when we rediscovered the Federation I was wondering if we would get a big Battlestar Pegasus pivot, since the Admiral and David Cronenberg sure seem like they’re evil. But after a few episodes it feels like they’re probably not murderously evil right? Everyone else seems more annoyed with the Federation than actually angry with them?
Linus is Star Trek: Discovery’s Dann from The Orville.
How many people live on Book’s planet? Because it seemed like it was just a small town. Couldn’t they have just dropped off a couple of replicators? In fact, why didn’t they mention replicators at all? Replicators were already pretty common in the 24th century, surely by the 32nd century, replicators would be even more advanced and easy to obtain.Also, would sending the locusts back into the sea solve anything? The locusts still need to eat, don’t they?
Trek has always been inconsistent on the use of replicators for food on a planetary scale. DS9 had repeated mentions of famines on Bajor as they tried to rebuild their agriculture industry, even though other episodes mentioned the Federation gifting them replicators. There’s similar stuff on occasion in TNG, but not as frequent and could be hand-waved away as worlds not being in the Federation but requested assistance.
They also established that Bajor had issues with power generation. In the first season Bajor was so desperate, they couldn’t power hospitals and heat their homes in the winter.It’s stated that the Federation gave Bajor industrial replicators, which were likely used for critical infrastructure.Bajor also had severe resource and supply shortages since the Cardassians strip mined the planet, took all their valuable resources, and stole almost everything of value.Book’s planet looked like it was barely populated and it was completely pristine. Not at all comparable to a ravaged and plundered planet with billions of people.
The point I was making was more that traditional food production in Trek hasn’t been replaced by replication and seems to be a thing that’s more than a luxury for retired Admirals
I’ve always gotten the impression from Trek that while replicators can create food, it’s not a long-term sustainable solution for feeding a planet. Replicators require power to run, and if a planet (like Bajor) that had no farming of its own relied only on replicators to feed its populace, that would mean the replicators would likely be running non-stop to generate food, using a lot of power. Plus, if those replicators were ever damaged, stolen, or if there was some planetary EMP surge, suddenly everyone would be unable to feed themselves.But farming, creating your own food, means that you aren’t using your power on replicators, and you’re not dependent upon replicators in case of a power failure.Also, aren’t most replicators we see ones inside a room built into the wall with a small creation area? If you had to rely on a replicator to feed a family/city/planet, how much food could a replicator create at a time? Usually we see a replicator creating a single drink, or a meal for one person. Could you actually ask a replicator to create 500 meals at once?
Book’s planet didn’t look like it was very populated at all. It didn’t look like they had any cities or major population centers. They made it seem like they had a small village.In previous Treks, even though they had budget limitations and couldn’t have a bunch of extras on alien planets, they had matte paintings of cities and establishing shots or dialogue to suggest how populated planets were. Even with devastated planets like Tasha Yar’s homeworld, they took the effort to show ruins of cities and large structures.
see, that would be logical, and the Vulcans left a few hundred years ago….
Pretty sure it’s Osyrra. The ship in the nebula is Discovery, right?
This show continues to be an absolute SJW LGBBQ dumpster fire. When Michelle isn’t saving the day with improbable Mary Sue powers it is Gorgiou, who is now impervious to phaser fire, or Adira with her multiply personalities, or now Green lady and her awesome firepower ship that was laughably done by Booker’s weak and tiny ship that now had its own Mary Sue powers because it was flown by Detmer. Who we are constantly told is amazing. LOL! Also, just to should how liberal I am, I think Detmer and the black chick should hook up. They have more sexual on screen chemistry than Book and Michelle.
I have decided that the people of Kwejian are some of the most highly developed Trek has introduced simply because they have adopted comfy oversized bathrobes as their primary clothing option. I will be cosplaying a Kwejian at every opportunity once I find a suitably comfy blackish oversized bathrobe to adorn with random blackish fabric.
The scene with Detmer was embarrassingly bad, clearly written to get the stupider viewers pumping their fists at the screen.
Empress Georgiou has never been interesting and should never have been made a regular. I forgot that she came to the future with Discovery and was very disappointed when I was reminded of that fact. The show should kill her off.
She’s not a regular. She has “Special Guest Star” credit when she appears, meaning she’s not part of the regular cast.
Failure to consider the bigger picture this week: the space battle.Book’s ship can’t possibly be as powerful as the flagship of the Bad Lady, otherwise she wouldn’t be a threat. Presumably this means that speed and good piloting can defeat a capital ship in combat, as we observed. This is a development that fits with the Defiant in DS9, and the fighters used in that series during the Dominion war, and you could argue the Delta Flyer in Voyager: speedy ships are hard to hit with big guns so can gain an advantage.However, if this is true, then capital ships would carry a complement of fighters, or travel with an escort. It just takes a few minutes to establish the paradigm for your world but the writers just can’t be bothered to think beyond the immediate drama they want to construct. Pew Pew! She’s a good pilot! World building in season 3 when we rebooted the world once already.. nah.. that sounds like hard work.
Yeah, also not really a fan of the space battle.For starters there’s just the suggestion that a diplomatic incident could be avoided by launching a little ship to do the shooting, instead of the big ship. Saru is still a big chump.And then that Book (who is a smuggler? animal rights activist? junk dealer? I’m not really sure) has a ship which isn’t just armed and maneuverable, but is armed and maneuverable enough that it can engage in and win a battle like that.Part of it is just how vague this universe is. Osira’s ship travels at “high warp” and is “heavily armed,” but what does that mean? Is she like a gangster with a fancy limo, or is she an admiral in a grand empire? Is her crew trained soldiers, or just a bunch of goombahs?
(and not to pick on Frakes, but probably 90% of the battle was a really tight shot of the cockpit/bridge and I don’t think it really gave the rollercoaster effect he probably wanted. It wasn’t bad, but it felt kindof cheap.)
“the suggestion that a diplomatic incident could be avoided by launching a little ship to do the shooting, instead of the big ship”Except this is an actual thing in relations between nation states. Capturing a privateer did not results in all-out war even if caught red-handed with their letters of marque and reprisal. Proxy wars occur to this day and their outcomes turn on the relations between the external actors, e.g. the quick end to the recent hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh in part because Russia was not willing to press its relationship with Turkey but *was* willing to press its relationship with its proxy Armenia.The reason that fails in this case is that Osyrsaa still views herself as running a crime syndicate rather than a nation-state. She’s as concerned about losing to another Orion as she she is to the Federation, so she needs at least the appearance of action when for the overall criming she’s be better being less visible.
This isn’t the open seas. Book’s ship leaves Disco’s shuttle bay, it immediately starts shooting Osyraa’s ship, and when it’s done it heads back to Disco. And that’s not only all on sensors, but anyone could have watched it happen out the window.Book’s ship can cloak, and so that would have been a way to handle it: leave from the shuttlebay cloaked; warp out; and then warp back in and at least “pretend” to be unrelated to Disco. But nope.
Not even the Paklids would have fallen for Saru’s plan, and someone like Kang or Tomalak or Dukat would have gutted Saru for the disrespect.
If wasn’t just Detmer’s fancy flying that made the attack by Book’s ship on Osira’s ship effective. Alone it wouldn’t have been enough. It was Rynn’s knowledge of where to fire to damage the ship enough that made it effective.
Which is something that happens at least once in DS9. In Treachery, Faith and the Great River, Weyoun reveals where to shoot at a Jem’Hadar fighter to destroy it.
Also, don’t forget Grudge! His presence on Ryn’s lap probably made the difference.
I dont understand why if theres going to be a non binary character it would be Adira, wouldn’t joined trill use They/them anyway regardless of gender identity so it seems a bit half heartedI’m intrigued to see what happened to the Tellarites, the Federation is already missing 3 out 5 founder members, who exactly is still in the Federation at this point, Some human colonies, and maybe Cardassia from the starfleet people we’ve seen around
There are shows where this could, and should, have been a major issue. But it just wouldn’t make sense if anyone on Discovery got worked up over an issue of gender or sexuality that’s already relatively common in our present day world. If anything, I think the show made too big of a deal out of it. A simple “can you say ‘they’?” during Adira’s first or second episode would have made more sense. It’s 3188. We have to hope these types of coming out won’t be awkward by then.
Part of what apparently happened is that Blu del Barrio, the actor playing Adira, hadn’t come out yet to their family as non-binary when filming the first several episodes.This is according to a SyFy Wire article:
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/star-treks-new-non-binary-star-blu-del-barrio-talks-their-debut
And this was basically the case because I still wasn’t really out to my family and I didn’t want to be out on screen as a character who was out until I was.I thought this week’s episode handled Adira’s request fairly well. The first scene where it came up was good and what could be expected for the far future. The later scene where Culber and Stamets constantly used the they/their pronouns instead of just saying Adira’s name once in a while felt like it was pushing the button a little too much.However, I may have felt that way because I was initially confused with the use of the singular they/their in the scene and the couple kept repeating it. I recognize that this confusion is on my part. In the end, the scene made sense and repetition may ultimately be for the best.
“The later scene where Culber and Stamets constantly used the they/their pronouns instead of just saying Adira’s name once in a while felt like it was pushing the button a little too much.”I felt this was to show that Stamets had already talked to Culber and told him about Adira’s request, so that Culber wouldn’t call them “she” when talking to them.
yeah, have to admit that did sound odd to me as well. I’m not clear on what the grammar conventions are there.
As in- “She is sleeping.”
“They are sleeping.”
“They is sleeping.”
My guess is you would go from 1 to 2 cause 3 doesnt sound right, but there are more complicated sentenced where this starts to get tricky.
I wanted Osira to die a horrible death after 5 minutes, which looks like the sign of a good villain. Or that I have unresolved personal issues. I’m reasonably confident it’s the former.Too much cutesiness though. It’s the show’s biggest issue this season.
I liked the scene where Adira came out to Stamets as non-binary. Of everyone on Disco, the only people they likely feel close to are Stamets and Michael, and at this point Stamets might be #1 since they revealed to him that they are seeing Gray. If Stamets hadn’t already had this “Gray” conversation with them, and realized they both had the “we love someone who’s died” connection, he may have had a flippant response to their request – not because of the nature of the request, but because that seems part of his personality (based on his back-and-forth with Jett Reno). But because they have this burgeoning friendship, he realizes that they already trust him with telling him about Gray, and that telling him this new request is important to them too.
The Emerald Chain has been mentioned a few times, and we heard about Osira last (?) week, so it looks like they are going to be the main antagonists for the rest of the season.
Of course Tilly’s plan isn’t meant to fool Osira. It’s for when they return to the Federation and explain what happened. The Federation can tell the Chain that they didn’t technically violate their treaty since it wasn’t a Federation ship that attacked them.
As a fan of Grudge, I was wondering what she was doing during the space battle just as she jumped into Rinn’s lap. During all of that chaos she just wanted to be held.More Grudge!
I don’t know what’s going on with Georgiou, but I hope it doesn’t come down to “Mirror universe people can’t survive for this long in our universe”, because wasn’t Mirror-Lorca just fine in our universe for longer than Georgiou has been here? I’m assuming this is either some repressed memories, or something that Cronenberg did to her.
It’s too early to say if this is the best Star Trek series, but it is easily the most in the spirit of TOS. If you really love what Star Trek tried to be in the 60s, then this show is a joy to watch.
“Stamets accepts this without question, and everyone moves on with their lives.”
Sure, but could he be more smug and patronising? Rewatch, look at his face. Smack that jowl.
Boy, I came away from this with the complete opposite take from Zach – this was one of my least favourite episodes this season yet. Nothing about it worked for me: the villain had zero presence, the actor playing Booker’s brother was mediocre, the space battles fails to thrill, and that dumb “engage/execute/hit it” running joke fell super flat every time. The only thing I think I liked about the episode was Adira’s pronoun scene… which was nice.
Osyraa and RynBro, do you even close caption?
Two thoughts, both centered around Adira: it seemed to me like the issue of adjectives was actually hit a little hard, in that it took up more than like one line, and maybe it’s just me, but it sure seems like Stamets has resting smug face. I don’t know if it was an attempt to come across as “I’m proud of you” or “all right”, or a Trebekian “Good for you”, but it sure looked like he had a smarmy grin on his face the whole time Adira was asking for respect. (Tangent, unrelated, and from a place of genuine curiosity: wouldn’t someone who preferred they/them pronouns also opt for we/our first-person pronouns? Especially if said person was a Trill? Anyway, random Trek Thoughts.) Second, and I hope I’m reading more into this than necessary, I really hope Stamets and Culber don’t adopt (or “adopt”) Adira. As characters, they’re fine, but didn’t Culber have a line in the last episode about how if he had time, he would have kids? Oh I hope they don’t go down that path. Adira is enough of a character on their own to need to be hooked with two more.