An early scene in “Unification III” shows Michael and Book in bed together, having an intimate conversation about their future. Book wants to leave Discovery, but Michael can’t just yet; she’s determined to solve the mystery of the Burn, and isn’t sure she’s quite ready to say goodbye to her friends. Book isn’t hugely happy about this (although he plays it pretty chill), and he points out that maybe Michael could afford to let this whole “Burn” thing get solved without her involvement. Not every crisis revolves around her, and Michael herself admits she has a tendency to take responsibility for everything. It’s a nice moment of self-awareness from a likable couple, and offers the brief hope that the show might finally expand its horizons a bit.
The hope doesn’t last. The title of the episode is a reference to the “Unification” two-parter from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which follows Spock’s efforts to negotiate a peace between the Romulans and the Vulcans. Here, we learn that Spock’s efforts were eventually successful, although not until long after he’d passed away. Now the Romulans and Vulcans live together on Vulcan, renamed Nevar (sorry, the spellings are going to be especially bad this week), but they’ve left the Federation. There’s some bad blood over a science project that the Vulcans believed caused the Burn, but now that Michael’s discovered the time discrepancies, she needs the information from that project in order to solve the mystery.
It’s a little suspect that the next key piece of the puzzle is on a planet that just happens to have strong emotional connections for Michael. (Also, didn’t Vulcan blow up? Or is this just a different planet completely.) But it’s not that suspect. I could’ve done without Michael getting all teary-eyed over her brother’s accomplishments, but maybe I’m just a grumpy asshole. (I mean, I absolutely am.) Regardless, shows do this sort of thing all the time, throwing in connections between micro and macro plots in order to develop character and make for stakes that are at once universal and deeply personal. Bringing back “Unification” and Ambassador Spock (including a clip of Nimoy himself, from Picard’s records) is a nice nod to series continuity, and it’s not like the Vulcans weren’t going to show up at some point.
Things get a bit dicier when Michael and Discovery at Vulcan Romulan homeworld, and Michael decides to force the issue when her request for information is initially refused; said forcing involves invoking a time-honored Vulcan ritual for exposing deep truths, and it requires Michael have an advocate, who turns out to be Michael’s mother. This is pretty unexpected, and is one of those bad coincidences that makes the universe feel smaller—not only did Dr. Burnham get saved by the Romulans, she was saved by the order (the Qowat Milat, first introduced in Picard, and boy do I have mixed feelings about being reminded that show is in canon) that just so happens to provide advocates for this process.
Which is more of a stretch, but Dr. Burnham was going to show up at some point, and this is as good a place as any I guess. It’s just that all of a sudden, instead of this being a story about trying to uncover precious scientific data from an unstable culture in order to solve a century’s old mystery, it’s about Michael not knowing where she belongs. I understand connecting larger concerns to more personal ones, but there’s a point at which it moves from dramatic efficiency to self-parody, and that point was hit here when Michael’s mom more or less forces a surprise group encounter session on her in the middle of the ceremony. After seeing her daughter for less than five minutes, Mom has decided she’s “lost,” and insists on regurgitating her backstory in order to achieve the “absolute candor” required both for her order and for the ritual. It’s absurd, and it makes any attempt to critique or subvert Michael’s Messiah complex into a lost cause. Why shouldn’t she take responsibility for everything, when it already all revolves around her? Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if she somehow ends up responsible for the Burn. (Maybe Tyler did it. Or Control.)
This is just such a tedious way to approach a story. Michael’s struggles to rejoin the more restrictive hierarchy of her life on Discovery were potentially interesting, but not framed like this, and not when they apparently resolve this quickly. All the talk about the Vulcans and Romulans struggling to keep peace, and how the information Michael wants threatens that peace, gets tossed aside or else simply reframed as a way to once again let Michael solve everything. (I mean, there’s some novelty here in that she’s solving a problem that she herself created when she invoked the ritual, but that doesn’t count for much.) If this was presented as Michael under the pressure of both her personal and professional lives, it could’ve been interesting, but instead, that job once again becomes the background noise while Michael’s problems take center focus.
There’s also a subplot about Saru offering Tilly a promotion to be his acting Number One, which once again has me wondering how old Tilly is supposed to be. At least it’s acknowledged that promoting Ensigns directly to leadership roles is unusual (even if it is only temporary), but the show’s weird insistence on making sure Tilly is given repeated reminders at how much everyone loves her is, like its Michael fixation, wearing pretty thin. She’s not a teenager, she’s an adult—an often funny and smart adult, but one whose deep rooted insecurities seem like an odd match for the constant love and praise she gets from her co-workers. (Barclay on TNG was hard to watch, but at least it made sense that he was insecure; he was off-putting, and people got annoyed with him all the damn time.) Putting Tilly into a leadership role feels like a natural next step, but the way the episode drags it out means it loses its novelty real fast. We don’t need Tilly’s self-confidence to be reaffirmed every week, do we?
I don’t know, maybe this is what appeals to people about the show. And there are moments where this lands. The conversation between Michael and her mother near the end of the episode is pretty good (although there’s one very bad line in it), and I like the idea of the Vulcans and Romulans being so upset with each other that even referencing certain parts of their past is enough to have them worried about war. Michael’s mother aggressively calling out Michael’s past choices was unexpected and appropriately intense. It’s just, I don’t think Michael’s career woes are quite as interesting as the galactic incident that decimated the Federation and hobbled civilization’s ability to travel between the stars, and I’m confused as to why the show seems so determined to insist otherwise.
Stray observations
- Seriously, didn’t Vulcan blow up? Or is this not the Kelvin timeline.
- “I’ve become someone new.” Has she, though? It pretty much seems like Michael is just still being Michael.
- Surely there are other people on board Discovery who would be frustrated to see themselves passed over in favor of Tilly. Surely that could’ve made for a more interested conflict than her being awkward and then everyone saying “We love you!” for the umpteenth time.
- Tilly calling Michael on her bullshit wasn’t bad. More of that, please.
- Oh, the bad line from that final conversation: “And she wondered how much of the man Spock became was a result of who his sister was.” Spock is Spock because he’s Spock. There was a whole TV show about it.
171 Comments
Vulcan did not blow up. Discovery is in the Prime timeline. Romulus blew up in this timeline, and Spock’s presumed death is is when he and Nero went back in time and splintered the realities, and in that one Vulcan was destroyed.
Like, literally the only reason that was a feature of the crappy “Kelvin
timeline” is because (A) J.J. has zero original ideas what so ever, and
(B) was on a mission to make Star Trek as needlessly like Star Wars as
he possibly could. So he blew up Vulcan because that’s what happened to
Alderaan. Seriously, that is the only reason why he did it – that, and
to try and buy some unearned emotional impact (because again, he’s
fundamentally incapable of creating realistically drawn characters with
believable motivations).
You’re not giving abrams enough credit: he blew up Vulcan and Romulus because he had no ideas.
Two planets we knew about in Star Trek vs. a handful of ones we’d never heard of (and didn’t really see) in The Force Awakens. Six of one or half a dozen of another, really.
Specifically, he blew up Romulus so that he could then blow up Vulcan.Christ, I hated that s**t.
My belief is that when Abrams is playing in someone else’s sandbox, he wants desperately for his canon to be the only canon. So with Star Trek, he could have done a standard reboot: here’s Captain Kirk and Spock and Uhura and all your old favourites, but it’s a brand new take. But he didn’t do that. He used his crappy time travel story to supplant the old canon. His story says,”These are actually the Kirk et al you know from the original series, but I’ve changed the timeline so that their old histories get completely erased and replaced by whatever storiesI create. As far as my movies are concerned, those original adventures never happened!” It’s only reinforced by ‘Into Darkness’, which basically says, “This is how Khan happens now. Spock yells ‘KHAAAAAAAN!’ this time. You’re welcome.”He does it again in ‘Rise of Skywalker’. He tries to have it both ways (“Your parents were nobodies because they chose to be”), but he flat out contradicts both the text of ‘The Last Jedi’ (Rey’s parents didn’t sell her for drinking money) and the spirit of what Johnson made just so he can make Rey a Palpatine. Rather than come up with something that worked with what his co-creator established, Abrams just said, “Nope, my canon now” and finished off the trilogy with his nonsensical garbage.
And I could even possibly forgive him that were it not also for the fact that he inevitably makes the canon dumber. Like so dumb I no longer even want anything to do with it. It’s not just that he has to own it; he has to rub salt into the wound by being so thoroughly unworthy of owning.
Ohhh Zack, you are going to make so many people angry by confusing that Abramsverse destruction of Vulcan with the discoveryverse/realverse destruction of Romulus.
Zack threatens to open old wounds that have long since healed, risking all-out war within the fandom by being unable to reconcile the two continuities. That reminds me of something from Star Trek, the Unification of two disparate peoples perhaps, and their fraught contemporary alliance. Oh right, the Andorians and the Aenar.
Between the Abrams movies, Discovery and Picard, I feel both timelines are being summarily ruined.
I’m not angry any more, this is sadly par for Handlen’s DISCO reviews
I remember hearing something very like that in a Tarantino movie….
“I’m not even mad!”
I think it’s safe to say he’s, not a fan.
The thing is, Handlen is a Trek fan, or at least he reviewed a ton of the classic shows for the AV Club back in the day. I don’t know if it’s just because he doesn’t care for DISCO, or he’s burnt out or whatever, but there’s been factual errors almost every week. Of course, goon that I am, I come back every week and talk about the errors instead of just not reading the reviews in the first place…
Yeah he’s for sure a fan of Star Trek. I guess DISCO, and Picard, aren’t his cup of tea, and that’s cool. Making obvious errors though, it’s, odd.
When he first mentioned this, I thought maybe he doesn’t have a clue, but mentioning it a second time in the stray observations, I’m pretty sure he’s trolling.
AVClub’s main thing is finding people not interested in the show to review it.And that’s totally mean, and slighty untrue.
Zack Handlen’s done a lot of great TREK review work, though it does feel like he’s just out of patience with the… What should we call it, the “Akivaverse”? The “Fullerverse”?
The “Chambonaladingdong”?
“Lens Flare Trek” as canon gets my blood boiling.(BTW, I actually liked all three of the JJ Trek films (even the really silly Beyond), but they really aren’t Trek).
A fascinating position, which I…kinda?…share.I really liked the first film, two-thirds of the second (seriously, you can play with Khan, but don’t directly crib WoK for your climax beats, plz), and most of the third (though who can countenance wasting Idris Elba like that?!), and they are Trek, right, but not “your daddy’s” Trek, and the pure stuff is still stronger.
I mean, the characters are Trek, and JJ’s people attempt to ‘adapt’ old storylines to the modern times, but other than that, they are really just action movies in space.I like to think that classic Trek is more than that.
I like to think that, too. But very few episodes of TOS were The City on the Edge of Forever, or Space Seed, or Amok Time, or Mirror Mirror.Most of them weren’t even The Corombite Maneuver.I think, honestly, we are spoiled, and our calibration of what Star Trek ever has been is viewed through the lenses of memory and posterity, to the modern incarnations’ detriment. This was true even with TNG, which shared uncomfortable space on one end with the TOS movies, on the other with DS9. And DS9 is a whole other conversation (I’m a big fan, but it represents a truly huge rupture with what came before).
Oh, I’m under no illusion that the quality of TOS or TNG were consistent throughout their runs, but with the exception of a few outlying episodes, they weren’t ‘action’ tv shows. They were, for the most part, deeper than that. The JJ Trek movies aren’t deep at all, just basically enjoyable popcorn flicks.
Nah. By now I read to see which bits of canon he gets wrong at the same time he acts like a canon gatekeeper.
All this talk about Candor, does this make Michael Divergent? Sorry.The whole Michael Superwoman thing. It had bothered me as much as anyone, but now that I know that there’s going to be a Pike on the Enterprise show which will presumably have more of a captain/crew feel to it Michael doesn’t bother me so much anymore. Two ways to look at the Star Trek universe I guess.
It’s probably already been mentioned, but the Abramsverse is where Vulcan got blowed up. This is the original timeline where it is still intact. Romulus, however, did get destroyed by the supernova that started the split timeline.
“Seriously, didn’t Vulcan blow up?”No, it didn’t. Also, Bobby Ewing didn’t get hit by a car and die. It was all just a dream, a terrible dream.
And honestly, the creative team behind Discovery just rose incalculably in my estimation for making that explicit. Like, literally the only reason that was a feature of the crappy “Kelvin timeline” is because (A) J.J. has zero original ideas what so ever, and (B) was on a mission to make Star Trek as needlessly like Star Wars as he possibly could. So he blew up Vulcan because that’s what happened to Alderaan. Seriously, that is the only reason why he did it – that, and to try and buy some unearned emotional impact (because again, he’s fundamentally incapable of creating realistically drawn characters with believable motivations).
Incredibly, he followed this up by becoming even less original still by making all of his Star Wars movies revolve around – you guessed it – things that can blow up planets. So kudos to the Disco team for taking a definitive step away from that nonsense.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Discovery has now made the Kelvin timeline “just a dream” or non-existent. Discovery has always been said to take place in the normal TOS/TNG timeline. But the Kelvin timeline is still out there — it’s an alternate timeline.
It wasn’t meant literally.
So, in the JJ-universe, Vulcan was destroyed by Nero’s little round blob of cherry Kool-Aid. But now, in the Discovery series, Vulcan is still that planet, and it’s still where it always was, but now it’s been resettled and renamed? So, that would mean Nero never blew it up, which also means he and his ship never went through the interdimensional portal, so that means George Kirk was never killed? And Nero was never sitting around waiting for Spock’s little egg-beater ship to pass on through? Well, if anyone needed proof that the ST movie series is dead for the time being, they just got it. Someone greenlit a story that erased the entire Kelvin origin story.
Well, if anyone needed proof that the ST movie series is dead for the time being, they just got it. Someone greenlit a story that erased the entire Kelvin origin story.
I don’t know about that. I just think they’re clinging to their have their cake and eat it too solution: Literally two timelines existing side by side, one where Spock’s McGuffin juice disrupted everything, another one where it’s all right where they left it.
Michael: “Did my crew and I risk our lives in the past to save all sentient life in the universe”Gabrielle: “Yes”…Gabrielle: “Then why are you struggling with whether or not you belong here.”Michael: “I don’t know. Maybe the stakes are so much higher.”I laughed out loud here. I wonder if the writers have realized that perhaps it is not such a good idea to keep escalating threats to such ridiculous heights that the heroes have already prevented the destruction of all life in the universe twice.The whole episode is like an unprepared student making a presentation in front of the class with the teacher going, “hey, if you’re not ready, I’ll give you an extension on this assignment. You can do the presentation again in a few weeks.” And the student stubbornly trudging on. What exactly was preventing the Discovery and the Federation from gathering more data so they can make a more convincing case for themselves before approaching the Vulcans?
And why do they only have data from 3 black boxes? I find it hard to believe that for 100 years, no one in the entire galaxy ever tried to recover black boxes from the thousands upon thousands of destroyed ships to try to find out about the burn.
It’d be like if every plane in the world went down at the same time and no one bothered to recover any black boxes to investigate why it happened.
YES! There are WHOLE PLANETS FULL OF PEOPLE who probably want to be able to go back to interstellar travel sometime soon. On all of these planets are HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ACTUAL SCIENTISTS. There would be an unimaginable drive to find out what the fuck happened and why, but instead the show would like us to believe that the rest of the galaxy has just sat on its hands for a hundred years because all the spaceships exploded randomly one day. Hell, for starters, the very idea that Star Fleet no longer exists is absolutely bananas. The fleet was destroyed, sure, but not all the vessels in dry dock, not the shipyards, not the many gigantic space stations, not all the personnel on leave, or in positions that don’t require them to be on a starship. Do they think that in our world, if all the world’s naval vessels were sunk overnight, the navy would be disbanded? And that everyone would just go home and that trying to find out what sunk all the ships wouldn’t be the number one priority for basically everyone?
The whole thing makes no sense. People still use dilithium for ftl travel after the burn. You’d think more people would have tried to find out about the burn at least to learn if it could happen again. Even criminals and pirates would be interested since so much of their power depend on control of dilithium.
But they had no choice but to sit on their hands and wait – Michael wasn’t there to do it for them.
I’ve always thought the best way to write Science Fiction was to have some kind of event like this as a way to give your show a timeless quality. BSG did this really well. Why are they all using corded phones? Because Cylons can pick up cell phone signals. There’s so much potential in the recovery from a technological dark age as a means of developing futuristic gadgets that won’t appear obsolete compared to iPad.
It’s a shame this show is going the “nope, nobody ever tried to recover” route.
Do you think only starships used dilithium to regulate their reactors? It was basically everywhere from starbases to planetary reactors for everyday power.
Tilly as acting first officer? Is this show a comedy now?
Tilly technically never graduated from the Academy; serving on a starship/starbase is part of sophomore year field studies at Starfleet Academy. She was promoted to ensign due to whatever the hell Disco Season One was.That means she’s maybe twenty one. I guess that part is pretty on-brand for something inspired by JJ Abrams.
But compared to mirror-Tilly her career is moving at a snail’s pace.
Mirror Tilly was probably REALLY good at murder, so that probably explains that.
All Hail Captain Killy!
The actress is 35 so it’s pretty confusing.
Seriously? Jesus.
Strawberry blondes — they age more slowly than the rest of us.My wife was getting carded until she started to get wrinkles in her Sixties….
They need to get a veteran on staff that has an idea how chain of command works. A captain who slots their favorite buddy as XO just looks incompetent. Making Burnham XO kind of made sense based on her experience but also she’s a disciplinary nightmare and the show couldn’t even make that last five episodes.Tilly is not only unqualified but doesn’t have the temperament to be in charge because she can’t make difficult decisions. Because she’s an ensign.The next in line should have been LT Nilsson but the show hasn’t bothered to develop the other characters enough for that to be impactful. Commander Nhan would’ve also made sense but they wrote her out.
Wait! Wasn’t it always a comedy show?!?!Cheers
Nothing on the USS Yelchin mention among the destroyed black box ships? Wonder if it’s Chekov-class…
That was the one tiny bit of this episode I liked.
I liked that little nod to Anton Yelchin, a talent taken too soon.
Aww. I missed that (I’d have also missed the USS Nog if that hadn’t been pointed out). I do appreciate those memorials, subtle though they may be.
One of the things I was enjoying about this time travel thing was that it left behind the whole Michael Burnham connection to the Spock family and all that nonsense that entailed, but nope, here we are again. And we finally get to something that everyone agrees Michael is the only one that can do and she’s all, “nope”. What?
And did I miss the part where they explained how Michael’s apparently human birth mother just happens to pop up 900 or so years in the future?
And did I miss the part where they explained how Michael’s apparently human birth mother just happens to pop up 900 or so years in the future? That’s like, half the plot of the second season.
Weird. I edited my post to note that someone over on io9 reminding me of that. Guess that’s how little of thought of Season 2 and the whole Red Angel thing that it completely slipped my mind until that mention.
Yeah, I thought the 2nd season was solid and and an improvement on the 1st but when I try to remember any of it… not a lot of it sticks, meaning it perhaps was too engulfed in the convoluted main plot and the Spock-Michael -thing (which I sort of remember) to make the other details memorable.
Season 1 was the Klingon thing, right?
Yeah, the first half or so… then it switched gears with the Mirrorverse. That I remember more vividly.
Season 1 was about Michael. Season 2 was about Michael. And season 3 is about… well, Michael. All the details are inconsequantial because the only things that matter is MICHAEL!!Also… I’m the only one dreading that the BURN will be in some way linked to Michael BURNham? Like she’ll cause it traveling 100 year to the past to save the multiverse from a parasitic from of life trying to use dylithium crystals as gateways to our universe?I mean… would it be so strnge considering?Cheers
Probably because what you liked about it was the Capt. Pike stuff, not the dumb Red Angel stuff? That’s how it was for me, anyway.
it’s so weird to read something on this site that isn’t barely disguised ad copy. Thank you for hating on this stupid, terrible show.
This episode highlighted a few things for me:
1) It was sooooo nice to hear Nimoy’s voice again.
2) I enjoyed the scenes with Saru and T’Rina the most.
3) The writing in DISCO isn’t as smart as TNG or DS9.
The writing in Discovery is about as smart as Dora The Explorer.
The writing in DISCO isn’t as smart as TNG or DS9.
No, it’s really not, is it? The first season reminded me of DS9 — if DS9 had sucked.I liked the first half of Season 2, but then lost interest when it all seemed like The Universe Revolves Around Michael Burnham. Even Jim Kirk isn’t that egocentric!
The first season of DS9 actually did, for the most part, suck, lol.Plus, it contained probably the worst episode of any of the series to that point.
I mean, the first two seasons of DS9 AND Next Gen sucked, so I’d say Discovery, on the whole, is doing better over its first 2+ seasons. Though really, with 13-ep seasons, there have still been fewer minutes of actual show for Discovery in two seasons than in one full season of TNG or DS9.
It contained a few clinkers (“Move Along, Home” especially, and most of “The Passenger” up to the ending that let us know the show wasn’t playing around), but DS9 still came out the gate a lot stronger than TNG ever did.
It also had Duet, which is a top-ten contender for the entire franchise. Discovery has yet to produce something even half as good, and I doubt it ever will.
Oh my god this show is dogshit and just keeps getting dogshittier.
THEY RENAMED VULCAN BECAUSE SOME ROMULANS MOVED IN?? That’s not how things work! If Mars was colonised by a bunch of Norwegians we’d still call it fucking Mars.“I do believe he would find it……….fascinating” might be the worst line uttered by anyone on a TV show ever. Followed up by the retcon (if indeed it is) that the ‘needs of the many’ line is just a hoary old Vulcan proverb, and not a cool thing Spock said to his friend once. Somehow everyone knows it, even Saru (although I guess if he knows about fucking GIOTTO he might as well know about bloody everything in the entire galaxy), removing all the emotional power of that Wrath of Khan scene in an instant. Now Spock might as well have been said ‘don’t count your chickens’ as he wrinkled up and died in the reactor room.
Continuing the theme of this whole season, everyone they meet in the future is of course immediately a dick for absolutely no reason.Tilly gets promoted and the entire (ish) crew pull an ‘O Captain my captain’ despite the fact that in a post-scarcity universe such as Star Trek, rank is the only career goal worth pursuing, and there will be literally dozens of people she has leapfrogged to the first officer position, some of whom will have decades more experience than her, and most of whom will find her significantly less delightful than the show clearly does.Meanwhile, a whole raft of subplot about whether Michael’s gonna leave the ship? Why even bother doing this? We know she’s not going anywhere. We’re not renaming the show ‘Star Trek: Michael’s Hot English Boyfriend’s Ship’ in season 4…Then Michael wins over the Vulcan president by reading some passages from her diary in front of the quorum and having a wee cry. THE VULCAN PRESIDENT IS WON OVER BY THIS… THE. VULCAN. PRESIDENT.
And her mum is also allowed to be present at this event because conflict of interest is just something they’ve forgotten about in this society built from the ground up on logic.
And Tilly and Michael STILL SHARE A ROOM? Whhhhhhhhhhhhy?
I won’t pile on Zack for thinking the wrong planet blew up, or even for his mispelling of Ni’Var when the name of the planet was spelled out in big holographic letters. What I will call out is the final bullet about how there was a whole show about how Spock became Spock. No, Spock was already Spock by the time we saw him on TOS. That show was not in any way about Spock becoming Spock, except for the hints we got in “Journey To Babel” (and then later “Yesteryear”). Disco has been the only canon source to fill in the gaps on that topic.
In fact, that’s one of my favorite things about TOS: the fact that it’s a bunch of people who are pretty much who they are already and don’t grow nor learn that much.
“a bunch of people who are pretty much who they are already and don’t grow nor learn that much.”Seinfeld in Space
I was a Seinfeld fan also!
I like the third season a lot, much more than the second season….however, the biggest ‘wtf??’ for me is the fact that the don’t act like Starfleet officers. WAY too much emotion from Michael, Tilly, Paul, basically the whole bridge crew. It’s shockingly weird to see them be so emotional with each other and their situations, kinda flies in the face of how we’ve been shown Starfleet officers to act in the face of adversity. Oftentimes, Discovery feels like a therapy session, not actually exploring the stars.
Also, really, Zack? Why are you trolling the fact that you pretend to know know that Vulcan was destroyed in the Kelvin timeline? If it’s true that you didn’t know that, perhaps someone else should be writing these reviews..
Michael Burn-ham being somehow responsible for the Burn? Surely this show wouldn’t do that, would they?
Oof. Hard disagree on this one. I have my issues with Discovery, but this is easily one of the best episodes of the series for me, if only because it felt like a classic Trek episode. Who doesn’t love a good trial plot!
Also in the grandest Trek tradition, it was practically a bottle episode.
Yeah, I liked this one too. The therapy session trial was a bit much. But the vulcan-romulan politics stuff felt like the most trek-y geopolitics that we’ve had since I dunno…ds9, maybe? (it’s obviously not ds9-level, but picard, the abramsverse & nemesis all really did wrong by the romulans)
I agree that not every conflict has to be so deeply personal to Michael, but yeah, this kinda felt like a classic Trek episode, and I mean that literally. Vulcan-Romulan racial tensions play into a trial carried out by the overly suspicious who are then overruled by an attendant superior who is inspired/shamed by a speech from the hero about their core values is also the plot of The Drumhead, and that’s a TNG classic.
I thought Picard did mostly right by them, but I’ll give you Nemesis in a heartbeat.ETA: When did AbramsVerse deal with Romulans?
Post Dominion War things have not been great for everyone’s favorite star empire. It’s Dominion War > Shinzon kills the Senate > Supernova makes Nero sad > Picard stuffI liked half of what Picard did with them, but really hated the other half.The good stuff:a Romulan diaspora with some living on Earth, others killing time on former colonies, and others using antique warbirds for piracy.a weakened galactic empire trying to use Borg tech to rebuild their standing in the quadrant.The bad stuff:the incest twins, and the worst double agent Commodore imaginable.a very unsecrect super-secret service and its gigantic secret fleet of secret ships.That good stuff was actually nice world-building, but the stuff at the end was a mess.
Yeah, that’s about right. I really did hate the incest wondertwins, not leas because their creepy-sexy vibe was utterly pointless and had no plot relevance. Commodore whats-her-name bothered me less, but the fleet at the end was quite silly. Really, the end was just quite silly. Those last two episodes…ugh. But the first eight were pretty great! It’s just Mass Effect 3 with the serial numbers filed off, complete with a mostly disappointing ending.
The fleet ruins so many other ideas that are better and more interesting.A Romulan empire which is struggling to rebuild itself – using spies, and Borg tech, and synthetics – is interesting. There are stories there. And theoretically those stories eventually lead to Reunification III.But the zhat vash throwing together a bigger fleet than anything we’ve seen outside the dominion war is completely silly. And it’s also really un-Romulan. Where’s the sneakiness?It is possible to fanwank that whatever central Romulan government remains channels every single resource into the zhat vash. But that’s still less interesting than just about any other way that they could have copy/pasted ME3.
Yes, it was, but it felt like a thousandth-time rehash of an old Trek plot. Filler episode, IMHO.(adversarial council comes around in pseudo ‘12 angry men’ fashion when protagonist admits own personal flaws)On another note, Tilly getting promoted to FIRST OFFICER as an ensign, while on its face would seem to be ludicrous, it is no more silly than an officer once convicted of mutiny becoming first officer.
I mostly disagree with the review, and while i agree that this did feel like a classic Trek episode, that’s a blessing and a curse. Usually when watching this show, or any show, I often think about the actual actors filming the scenes, and sometimes I wonder “I wonder if that felt embarrassing to say totally seriously in front of a bunch of people?” And this ep had a LOT of those scenes. One or two of those every ep, fine, it’s the cost of doing business. But almost every scene here was sort of cringy. It was almost like a season 2 TNG level cringy at times.That said, I liked the actual plot, though I do agree with the review that having Michael’s mom show up as a member of a “sacred order” that we’d never heard about until Picard was a big choice.
Agreed, it was a solid ST-episode. And the Vulcan-situation needed to be cleared anyways at this point, it’s only logical (heh) that the crew of the Discovery mines info from the places they used to know best… I just hope the writers can the deliver on the whole Burn-thing being something clever and massively surprising.
Agreed. I watched this with my nephew who has never seen any Star Trek ever and told him it’s about as representative of the universe as can be. Talking backstory was fun: ‘that guy can fly the ship through space and time cause he injected himself with space tardigrade DNA’ and ‘that wicked handsome guy is kindof a pirate but secretly saves endangered space species’ for example.
Agreed. I watched this with my nephew who has never seen any Star Trek ever and told him it’s about as representative of the universe as can be. Talking backstory was fun: ‘that guy can fly the ship through space and time cause he injected himself with space tardigrade DNA’ and ‘that wicked handsome guy is kindof a pirate but secretly saves endangered space species’ for example.
Agreed. I watched this with my nephew who has never seen any Star Trek ever and told him it’s about as representative of the universe as can be. Talking backstory was fun: ‘that guy can fly the ship through space and time cause he injected himself with space tardigrade DNA’ and ‘that wicked handsome guy is kindof a pirate but secretly saves endangered space species’ for example.
Why do all the reviewers on this site hate the shows they review?
Nevar (sorry, the spellings are going to be especially bad this week)
Why? There are subtitles. There are plenty
of ways to double-check the spelling. Can you really not be bothered to
spend 5 seconds making sure you’re spelling something right?
It’s a fine question. I mean, I don’t expect fawning, but we have many cases here of people basically hate watching tv shows.
Also, the name “Ni’Var” is shown onscreen more than once in this episode. This shouldn’t be that hard to get the spelling right.
I loved seeing Nimoy-Spock. It was just nice to see him and a way to tie Disco to TNG and TOS, which I liked.But yeah, the Tilly subplot got old quick, and Michael’s mom showing up? Meh. Seeing the Vulcans and Romulans together but not really getting on that well was interesting though. So I’ll give this episode a pass. Still enjoying this season so far.
this show requires plenty of “suspension of disbelief.” Once you get by spore drive, I guess anything is possible. Mycelium spores for interstellar space travel? hmmm….that makes sense. Ok and Spock had a sister nobody knew about. Why am I watching this show?
It goes along nicely with the mother and father Spock had that nobody knew about, and then the brother he had that nobody knew about. It’s pretty canon that Spock doesn’t talk about his family until he absolutely has to.
i’ll give you that!
And by ‘absolutely has to’ we mean ‘they show up’, so it actually makes sense he never mentioned his sister that went to the future.
Well exactly. He doesn’t talk about his parents until they’re right there in front of everyone, while his sister is officially classified. That’s two pretty solid reasons not to mention her.
Oh yes, I was agreeing with you. I just find it the most hilarious characterization.
And he neglected to notify the Captain that he would have to go to Vulcan for his arranged marriage. Well to be fair he “hoped” he would be spared the mating drive, but still… why not at least give a warning about the possibility.
Also, wasn’t there an episode of TOS where Kirk suddenly has a brother he’s never mentioned before? And that brother is immediately killed.
Stop grading this show on a curve! Compared to any other Star Trek show (including Enterprise) it’s trash.
It’s time to put this poor, sick dog of a show to sleep. It just gets worse as time goes on.
This is not the Kelvin timeline. It never has been. Neither is Picard, in case you were wondering. Its a little disappointing that youve been so thoroughly trashing what has far and away been the best season of Discovery so far and dont even know its basic premise. Io9’s coverage at least gets the technical stuff right without complaining all the time.
I’m going to toss this out there as a trend I’ve noticed in both io9 and AV club reviews, that the show (and all plot lines) revolving around Michael are somehow inappropriate, forced or contrived. I mean, “…but the show’s weird insistence on making sure Tilly is given repeated reminders at how much everyone loves her is, like its Michael fixation, wearing pretty thin.” strange, I was under the impression that Michael was actually the star of the show and her character arc is actually the raison d’etre of the series. However well or poorly that’s played out, it’s hardly surprising that plot points are built around her as a character. It’s almost like the subtext is she’s not deserving of the show and the universe revolving around her… in counterpoint to that, I don’t recall conversations around ‘a bald and in the larger universe obscure character who’s a ships captain attracting the attention of an extradimensional, inmmortal and nearly omnipotent being who gives him chances to relive his life and because of his fixation on Picard is principly responsible for everything borg, how contrived,and once again the universe revolves around Picard…’ The fairly consistent disparaging of the character feels a bit… sexist… in context.Also: “: “And she wondered how much of the man Spock became was a result of who his sister was.” Spock is Spock because he’s Spock. There was a whole TV show about it.”, is a little bit of a cheap, and frankly mean-spirited, tautology. It’s just as easy to take up the implication that Spock is able to relate to humans, and eventually Kirk, because he grew up with a human sister. It’s actually a nice moment when Michael sees the person her ‘brother’ grew into. You’d have to be pretty cold to not find that even somewhat moving.Juse some thoughts on running trends…
I don’t disagree exactly, but Michael’s prominence shows why the typical leader-centric focus of trek (and BSG, and Babylon 5, firefly, and the bits of stargate I’ve seen) was a solid formula.You never need to justify why a story revolves around the captain: because the captain is the captain. And if a show wants to do an episode focussed on McCoy or Geordie or Bashir or Torres or Starbuck or Garibaldi that’s fine, because they’re part of the ensemble.But with Disco it’s like every episode is a Scotty episode. And that gets really clunky, because the writers need to keep inventing ways to place Scotty at the centre of every single story.I remember the first season finale where the Klingon war is over and they’re back at starfleet hq, and Michael gives a big inspirational speech to a room full of admirals who all should have been asking “Who gave that mutineer the mic?”tldr; Michael is Poochy. Whenever Michael’s not on screen, all the other characters are always asking, “where’s Michael?” That is justifiable for a captain, but less so for randomscienceofficer3.
…and that reminds me that Lower Decks has a similar problem. I liked Lower Decks more than I tend to like disco, but Mariner is Poochy to the xxtreme and is bad.But the difference is that Lower Decks really does feel like an ensemble show, with ~45% for Mariner, 30% for Boimler, and the remaining 25% split between the other two. While disco is at least ~75% The Michael Show, and everyone else gets the scraps.
The reason it works better in Lower Decks is because the plots are small, second contact stories that can be centered around the captains daughter fucking up things. Discovery has the problem of placing the fate of the universe in Michael’s hands every season. The stakes are just too big on this series.
I really do hate Mariner, and hope they tone down her Poochyness between seasons. She’s so over the top that she makes Michael seem less obnoxious in comparison.But yeah, Mariner is the center of 22 minute comedy episodes, while Michael is the center of entire seasons. And Michael makes so. many. speeches.I like McCoy and Geordi and Bashir, but if they’d been the sole focus of their shows I’d have gotten tired of them too.
Glad to hear that I’m not the only one who hates Mariner. I disliked her in the pilot and hoped that like most pilots, they would improve characters as the season went along. Unfortunately it just got worse, especially in the episode where they had the entire crew as a holodeck story, where she took glee in murdering everyone, including her mother. She comes off a narcissistic psychopath there. I’m amazed that anyone on the show wants to be her friend.
Same. I’ve mentioned this before, but she reminds me of Jake Peralta from the Brooklyn 99 pilot. Pilot-Peralta is a bunch of redflags warning the audience to never watch another episode. Thankfully the B99 writers immediately tweaked him for the better, while the Lower Decks writers just keep making Mariner worse.
I sure would have liked a show that focused on Garak. Even though he’s just a simple tailor.
“They were going to make me a tailor for this, and I was even in the fucking Order anymore…!”I don’t remember who wrote that, but that was a DS9 Fandom Winner if ever I read one.
Note: Michael died on the way back to her home century.
Thanks for shitting this drivel out
I haven’t seen this show (Discovery, not Star Trek in general) but it sounds like it’s becoming a real chore to watch as thousands of plot points, historical facts, alien races, galaxy-wide events, and other items of canon have to be integrated into every episode of a TV show that SOME people might just want to sit down and watch and be entertained for a few gosh-darn moments.
Some comicbook editors have said that “continuity is a crutch” and gets in the way of telling good stories. But I feel the opposite – when you have a rich history like Star Trek, it gives you lots of history to work with. For example, the Vulcans and Romulans history, culminating in the TNG Unification episodes, helped explain how these two cultures came together as one here. If you never saw previous Trek series before you could just take what this episode told you, but if you have seen those shows (and Unification) then this episode is a nice nod to that continuity.
Star Fleet personnel have evolved beyond petty jealousy or the cute Nordic Lieutenant who we’ve already seen run the bridge occasionally would be pretty annoyed she wasn’t tapped on the shoulder to be the XO
Zack got flack last week for forgetting who she was, but the writers seems to do that a lot too.
Justice for Lt. Nilsson!
Ugh. You don’t know that this show is set not in the Kelvin timeline, but in the same timeline as all the other television series?And there is no excuse for spelling anything wrong, as all of the spellings are in the captions.The best thing about this episode was that there were no fights, either hand-to-hand or ship-to-ship. No phasers were fired. There were no chase scenes. Nothing crashed or blew up.All the action was advanced through dialogue, in the greatest Star Trek tradition. That alone made this probably the most enjoyable Discovery episode yet.Note to the A.V. Club: Can we get someone else on these reviews? Preferably someone who is aware of what bloody universe the show is taking place in, and someone who is professional enough to get the spellings right by watching with the captions on.
What I like is how our reviewer oft complains about canon (which is annoying in and of itself, to me anyway) and then confuses canon….
He mostly complains about the shitty writing, but ok…it’s just, when the writing is this lazy who cares about canon?
To be fair, Discovery has violated canon so often in was great and small that it totally feels like part of the Kelvin-verse.
Shutup loser!
Also the name of the planet, Ni’Var, was shown on screen in holographic projects more than once in this episode.
| “I’ve become someone new.” Has she, though? It pretty much seems like Michael is just still being Michael.Your trouble is you actually care about Michael. When I watch this entire episode about characters I don’t care at all about doing absolutely nothing except talk about themselves and nothing else happens and the highlight of the episode is the trailer for next week’s episode when it seems something non characters I don’t care about related, I don’t think about it at all. I just remember the pretty shiny sets and weird looking people, some with the weirdest cauliflower ears and funny accents.
“Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if she somehow ends up responsible for the Burn.”You mean Michael…B-U-R-N-ham? Whoa, right?(My wife actually wonders if this isn’t where we’re headed. She may have a point.)
Every time I decide to watch some Discovery I’m reminded why I don’t care for it. It feels as if the writers are grabbing my head and forcing my face closer to the screen while screaming ‘LOOK AT HOW COOL THIS IS! LOOK AT HOW IMPORTANT THESE PEOPLE ARE!’ while the characters make stupid decisions and plot points are added and discarded willy-nilly. I really, really dislike this show. It’s got a lot of the same problems that Sherlock had, come to think of it, just on a grander scale.
I had issues with this episode but I wasn’t as harsh as Zach.
I had originally forgotten which universe Vulcan was destroyed in so I can forgive that. I mean, if I was getting paid to write here I would try to do some basic fact checking but it isn’t a huge deal.
While
I have been waiting for them to bring up Vulcan, the story wasn’t that
great. At the moment when the three tribunal members started sniping at
each other I was really hoping that the big reveal would be that the
Federation send Burnham there in order to stir shit up between the
factions. They really seem to be planting the seeds that the Federation
isn’t as nice as they seem and I thought this might be the moment they
reveal it.
I had honestly forgotten that Burnham’s mom was in last season and including her here seems like they just wanted to bring the actress back. Having
the tribunal on the ship clearly seemed a way to save them from paying
for another set to be built because it doesn’t seem likely that the
president and a bunch of important people would beam onto the ship at
the drop of a hat when they distrust the Federation.
It does seem strange that they went all the way to Ni’Var (aka new Vulcan) and Michael never set foot on the planet.
So. They’ve introduced a sect of Romulan warrior women, and the two most notable members are a male and a human.
This episode was AWESOME. No action? FINALLY. Tilly made me cry. The whole thing was , imo an A++++++++++++++++++++++.TY.
Two thoughts: (1) the directing sucked, and (2) Discovery has been consistently weak when it comes to weaving recurring characters back into the plot. Overall I did mostly enjoy the episode—I enjoy the series as a whole and eagerly look forward to every episode, but graded on a curve with other episodes, I had some points of frustration.This was an episode with a lot of beats that I think would have looked really good on a storyboard. And several of them I think did land effectively thanks to the acting (like Saru’s diplomacy with the Vulcan lady, and the crew’s intervention to support Tilly becoming #1—there is good and genuine cast chemistry, those large group moments are almost a guaranteed win) but a few of the beats that had potential instead fell flat on their face (like the reveal of Burnham’s mom), and in no instance did the production choices do any favours. I looked it up and this episode was directed by Jon Dudkowski, who has zero directing credits on his resume prior to this. He’s a journeyman TV editor, whose edited a handful of Disco episodes. I’m all for giving unproven talent a shot at directing, and Star Trek has a long legacy of doing that (and uncovering some gems in the process), but they can’t all be diamonds in the rough.To be fair, I think anyone would have had a hard time making Mama Burnham’s re-introduction to the plot as a Romulan Monk of Extreme Candor Who Also is a Lawyer for Vulcan Academic Debates feel natural and smooth. It comes completely out of the blue in so many ways. It a huge leap vs. what we learned about the character in the previous season (which defined her as a Starfleet scientist willing to do anything to secure a safe future for her daughter), and is an extremely weird leap from where we know she found herself in the future when she was sucked back (this hyper-independent, very mature and very capable woman was taken in like a foster child by roving Romulan monks?), and there was no effort to set it up, or foreshadow it, or build anticipation for it in previous episodes, in a way that might have helped to boil the frog. I’m totally willing to suspend some disbelief if it is ultimately necessary in support of a good story, or gives us good character moments with a great actor—Georgiou’s continued involvement in the series is also not well justified, but she contributes more than enough that I can easily look past it. This episode didn’t do enough to justify the plot acrobatics of how they reintroduced Mama Burnham—it was distracting, for me.
If you’re an editor on Disco and you want to direct an episode, this is the type of episode that you would be given – something that’s all talking, no fight scenes, not outer space battles, not a lot of new special effects.
The entire premise of this episode relies on the people of Vulcan knowing who the hell Michael Burnham is.
The entire f—-ing Federation pinky promised to never mention Discovery or any of its crew ever ever. Sarek never mentioned her in his Bendii syndrome delirium. Spock never mentioned her to his best friends in the universe. Admiral Vance had never heard of Discovery or its mushroom drive.
They should have called this show Star Trek: Having It Both Ways.
I also rolled my eyes at the Tilly subplot, especially the final scene, and I actually like Tilly as a character. They really missed an opportunity to have multiple people vie for the role (or choose not to). It could have fleshed out some of the side characters, like new blonde lady who used to be a robot.
Saru specifically stated that Tilly would be his acting Number One while he found a permanent replacement. So maybe we’ll see Saru interview other candidates, or discuss them. We’ll probably get one of these by the end of the season:1) Tilly becomes the permanent Number One after excelling in the temporary position.
2) Michael redeems herself in Saru’s eyes and becomes Number One again.
3) Saru chooses someone else to be the permanent Number One (like Nilsson, the blonde Lieutenant).
Good point. Here’s hoping they do something along those lines and it’s not just an endless cycle of people telling Tilly what a great job she’s doing.
I mean, it has to be Michael, doesn’t it? Or maybe Saru gets promoted/reassigned and Michael ends up Captain.
Behold, another episode for Commander Mary Sue to be the saviour of the Universe. Can we just kill Michael fucking Burnham and Tilly (another Mary Sue character. What is this? Voyage of the Damned Fucking Irritating?)
This just in: the main character of a Star Trek show is the most important character!Did you know that in TOS almost every plot revolved around James Kirk? And in DS9 Commander Sisko was the Space-Pope of an entire race? Shocking, I know!
Now that you brought up Picard, I have to wonder where are the synthetics in this future?
What is the Federation of Planets / Starfleet if all the originating planets have left? Who are the members of the Federation now?
and what about the Holograms? Is Georgiou a Hologram now? Because that’s crossed my mind. And seeing the preview of next week’s episode..
I’m hate watching at this point. Michael solves every mystery despite millions of souls in the universe not understanding. But she does. THANK GOD no one at the Federation was even tasked with figuring out the burn. Michael will figure it out in weeks.. and probably somehow caused it. So sick of her crying and the dramatic whispering with the head tilt. So tired of the constant promotions and demotions! I mean now their part of the official federation. You have to pass tests, go up the ranks in any military. Even in the ST universe. The captain can’t just make a #1 on a whim. And EVERY PERSON on the bridge is more qualified. And now Spock is so great because Michael inspired him? I love some of the little bits but Michael is not one. Fuck she could date that guy with the can AND solve the Burn, right? so stupid this show is.
If you dislike this show so badly – – being bothered or bored by so many of the choices and so much of the dialogue – – then, why review it at all? Are there any episodes of DISCOVERY that you’ve liked? Or that excited you? Or that you enjoyed? I honestly would like to know, because I was really moved by this episode.
The scenes between Michael and her mother were wonderful, and the acting in the scenes with Saru and President T’Rina was exceptional. I agree that, sometimes, DISCOVERY leans so heavily into some emotional moments that they border on melodrama (or soap opera), but for the most part, their emotional moments are earned. I get the feeling from your review that you believe very few (if any) of their emotional moments are earned. If that’s the case, again, I ask, why review them?
I have defended this show for a long time but this episode might finally be the one that breaks my resolve. It wasn’t the worst episode in its history but it doubled down and tripled down on its biggest flaws.
The Tilly plot was just horrible. She is not suited for the #1 job, even in an interim capacity, and this choice – coupled with the choice of Michael before – reflects poorly on Saru as a captain. And I hate all these “we all love each other” scenes we seem to be getting every week. Once in a while is fine but it’s a trick the show relies on too often and they break the suspension of disbelief. It would be okay if some characters didn’t get along.As for the Michael plot, it was a big disappointment – but hardly surprising – when the writers made it all about her again. I thought the concept – having her deal with the legacy of her brother – was a promising one and could have been a nice opportunity to give a final goodbye to Spock through his sister. Instead, the writers went out of their way to praise Michael for the accomplishments of her brother. They always give her so much praise and it becomes very, very grating. It feels unearned and weakens her as a character. She’s the weakest lead in all Star Trek shows by far.
I watched The Trial of the Chicago 7 yesterday and this tonight. That was the wrong order to do that in. The courtroom-esque scenes in this episode were just so much terribly worse in comparison.
Technically this wasn’t a courtroom. Nobody was on trial. It was more of a debate.
Yes, which is why I called it courtroom-esque.
But comparing a debate to a courtroom trial is like comparing a came with a truck. They are both modes of transportation but completely different.
No. You’re being ridiculous. And on an incredibly petty thing.
Sorry that you can’t recognize a debate when you see it, and don’t know the difference between a debate and a trial. Hopefully someone gets you a dictionary this Christmas.
I mean, what often happens in courtroom-esque scenes is two lawyers (or teams of lawyers) essentially having a debate with the judge moderating and witnesses as their evidence. Sorry you can’t figure out that two things that are not exactly the same may have a pretty similar overall feel.
But there wasn’t any opposing council – it was Michael arguing in front of a panel of 3 Vulcans/Romulans. If this was a trial then there would be opposing council. While Michael’s mother sometimes seemed to be against her, she was actually trying to help Michael present a truthful argument. If there’s no opposing “lawyer” giving an opposing argument then it’s not a trial.I described this as a debate, but now that I think about it a more accurate description would be a job interview. Michael is applying to work with the Ni’Var company, and the interview is with 3 representatives of the company. She has to convince them to hire her so she can work with them. And just an FYI, a job interview is nothing like a trial.But no, this was nothing like a trial. Sorry you can’t recognize when something is a trial and when something is not a trial. Good luck with that.
I really wish you could block people on kinja.
Yeah, I guess that would make it easier for you – to block someone who points out when you’ve said something wrong, so you can just pretend they don’t exist instead of admitting that you made a mistake.
Sometimes what happens in a courtroom-esque setting is that someone presents an argument directly to a judge or jury. I’ve watched lots and lots of courtroom movies. The scenes in this episode had the tone and rhythm of a courtroom movie.
What you’ve described is *not* a trial. It’s a lawyer presenting a motion. Sorry, please try again.This episode was a debate or job interview. Nothing like a trial.“I’ve watched lots and lots of courtroom movies.” Congratulations – you’re an honorary lawyer. Lionel Hutz would be proud.
Which is why I said “courtroom-esque scenes” and did not say there was a trial. Sorry you can’t figure this out.
Again, this wasn’t a courtroom. It was nothing like a courtroom, or a trial. It was a debate or a job interview.Sorry you can’t figure that out. Good luck with the nighttime extension-courses to become a lawyer in your spare time!
It’s always been the original universe.
“And she wondered how much of the man Spock became was a result of who his sister was.”I heard that and thought “They have to be trolling their detractors, right? The writers cannot have thought that might actually be the case, right?”
Totally agree with your reviews Zack and I find it impressive (?) that despite having written the reviews with the even more generally inferior Picard which had Romulus being destroyed (a pretty major plot point…) you still got it a bit confused with the moviesI suppose you’ve already repressed Picard – I wish I could say the sameI always guess your grade before I open up the website and I generally have the same exact one as you.At this point I generally have a sense as to whether the episode will be at least okay if it’s written by Michelle Paradise who’s proven herself to be the most consistently worthwhile writer.If this weren’t trek, I wouldn’t watch this.Btw – have you noticed Saru’s arms when he walks?
As many others have already said, it’s ridiculous for someone who has watched and reviewed so much of Star Trek not to know that Vulcan only exploded in the Abrams films, which are in a different (Kelvin) timeline. This show is a spinoff/prequel to TOS, a century before that movie timeline was created (by Spock/Nero going back in time).Seriously, this is a pretty embarrassing mistake for someone who has seen this much Trek to make.
“’I’ve become someone new.’ Has she, though? It pretty much seems like Michael is just still being Michael.”She is referring to the 1 year she spent in the future without Discovery – an entire year on her own without having to follow any Starfleet orders. Unfortunately the show just zipped past this year with a quick montage showing her hair growing. They are telling us that she spent this year apart from Discovery and Starfleet instead of showing us. They really needed an extra episode showing clips of that year, showing how she changed from a Starfleet officer to someone who didn’t have any orders or rules to follow – each day of that year her hopes that Disco would arrive likely decreased, so each day she would have embraced (just a little bit) her new life where she wasn’t in Starfleet and didn’t have to follow any orders or worry about a command structure. Then suddenly Disco shows up, and to everyone on the ship only days have gone by since they last saw Michael, but for her it’s been an entire year where it became more and more likely that she would never see them again, and that this was her new life – alone without Disco or Starfleet.
(Also, didn’t Vulcan blow up? Or is this just a different planet completely.)
I believe only in the Chris Pine movie universe, which is not canon.But my thing is — did they ever explain how Michael’s mother ALSO magically traveled 900+ years into the future?
“I’ll have to content myself with observing your spore drive as you return back home.”Wow, I guess the Vulcan president was the source of the Burn.
I literally fell asleep while watching this..on my desk on the kbd..
I think it was Burnham continuing whispering..
She was even whispering in that council-whatever-it was.. I doubt even her mother standing next to her could listen clearly what she was saying.
Really has the actor been to acting school only that day they were teaching “use whispering to show your emotional status?” No wait, she also went to the “let’s learn how to cry” lesson day.
That’s it. She can only cry and she can only whisper.
SO annoying..
They keep trying to force feelings from us that were never earned.
Like the scene with “Tilly and friends (also known as the “bridge decoration/furniture people”).
So much overacting melodrama, every single scene…
jfc, will you just chill?Also, wtf is the “kelvan timeline”?
Well, according to Memory Alpha, Kelvans “were an intelligent and rigidly disciplined non-humanoid species from the planet Kelva, located in the Andromeda Galaxy, and masters of the Kelvan Empire. Only a few Kelvans were known to have traveled to the Milky Way Galaxy.”But I don’t think that’s what Handlen meant, and it occurs to me that Kinja (in addition to its many other sins) desperately needs to hire copy editors.
I realized something watching this episode—I think I might actually like Star Trek: Discovery, but not so much Star Trek: Burnham. Taking her off the shop and out of everything this episode really just kind of hammered it home—when she’s whispering and being a messiah, I can’t really roll my eyes enough. “You won’t get Ni’Var back into the Federation so easily.” Ha, yeah, but she will. And get the black box she needed. And have an overly emotional showdown with her mother, who’s a Romulan now because sure. (And yes, I get it, I watched the show, but geez. Doesn’t Tilly have a family? Or Stamets? Or Detmer? Or Dr. Culber? Or anyone? We had a Saru episode, sort of, that Michael saved the day in, but someone else in the comments mentioned that this series is like if every episode of TOS was a Scotty episode, and yeah, kind of. Even Kirk wasn’t the focus all the time, and he was an actual captain. Which Michael will be, obviously, but she’s not yet.) Meanwhile, I think I was one of the apparently few commenters who actually got affected by everyone standing on their desks and shouting “O Captain My Captain!” at Tilly at the end (or something like that). And I though, aw, the crew is banding together for one of their own, that’s nice. It’s so much fun to see the crew, who we kind of know at this point in the show despite the series itself. And then Michael showed up to turn the focus back on herself.