Star Trek: Discovery

[Imperial Overlord]

- "You fight like a Klingon" seems like a compliment if you go by Klingon reputation. An insult if you look at how well they fight in STD.

That would be true if Starfleet wasn't covering itself in fail.

Some of my thoughts:

-Not a fan of the Klingons having the cloaking device during this time period. It can be crowbarred in, with the hard to detect D-7 in "Elaan of Troyius" and so forth, but it doesn't really fit and it undermines "Balance of Terror" among other things.

-"The spores might react badly with the nebula gasses" was an eyerollingly stupid reason for the Discovery not to be able to enter the nebula.

-The security measures of the alien elders that allowed a few Klingons to walk in and kill them, several Starfleet security officers, and abduct the admiral were almost as bad. I mean we all suspected it was a trap, but "we brought two extra guys and walked away with the admiral while leaving behind the corpses of the planetary leaders and the admiral's bodyguards" is laughably bad security.

-Still liking the cast.

[Burak Gazan]

In an alternate -verse some Thought Admirals and Senior Specialists are watching this and shaking their heads...."Maskan's LIVER....."

[Thanas]

What, in your view, would constitute a competent plot execution, what is ‘objectively good’ and how is it different from an opinion?

Not having glaring plot holes would be a start.

[bilateralrope]

- "You fight like a Klingon" seems like a compliment if you go by Klingon reputation. An insult if you look at how well they fight in STD.

That would be true if Starfleet wasn't covering itself in fail.

Starfleet fails at getting ships to where they should be. But when they stumble there, they punch well above their weight. So far the only outright Klingon victory was a D7 vs a Shuttlecraft.

-Not a fan of the Klingons having the cloaking device during this time period.

The dilithium mine defense fleet being ambushed makes me think that Starfleet is too blind for cloaking devices to do anything worthwhile.

"The spores might react badly with the nebula gasses" was an eyerollingly stupid reason for the Discovery not to be able to enter the nebula.

It's better than a crack in the event horizon.

[Imperial Overlord]

Starfleet fails at getting ships to where they should be. But when they stumble there, they punch well above their weight. So far the only outright Klingon victory was a D7 vs a Shuttlecraft.

Which is true if you only count the Discovery. They lost the Battle of the Binary Stars, the failed to adequately defend 40% of their dilithium supply, and security may not be wearing red shirts but they are certainly continuing the red shirt tradition of being useless and dying.

"The spores might react badly with the nebula gasses" was an eyerollingly stupid reason for the Discovery not to be able to enter the nebula.

It's better than a crack in the event horizon.

Being better than Voyager is not sufficient.

The timeline also gives us some other fun issues. The Klingon Empire is still fractured, but in six months they've gone from fractured and insular to owning Starfleet intelligence. They're abducting important captains mid transit, able to train infiltration agents to fake being Starfleet officers, and setting up abduction ops at planets with really shitty security. That's pretty goddam good. Do you know what's even better?

Voq/Ash Tyler. For six months he was stranded on a crippled ship. In one month he negotiates with the matriarchs of a Great House, is modified to pass as human, and despite being from an insular culture is trained in their language, culture, and his identity's background to pass convincingly as him. In one fucking month. Where's the fucking eye roll smiley? There we go.

[Burak Gazan]

Well, they finally did it; an episode so fucking BAD and made of pure 100% bullshit, it got switched off at the T+16 mark

[DesertFly]

Good, we can finally stop hearing your inane bitching about it. This was probably my favorite episode so far. It felt very Star Trek-y, it had silly nonsense science, and it was done differently than other time loop episodes I've seen (like Cause and Effect from TNG, or Window of Opportunity from Stargate SG-1), in that it showed it from the perspective of the people stuck in the loop, not the people who know the loop's happening (Window of Opportunity) or a 3rd person perspective (Cause and Effect). I like how it was casually mentioned during the second loop we saw that multiple loops had happened that we didn't see.

[Burak Gazan]

A) Fuck off
B) the loop didn't bother me; portraying Mudd as a fucking commando AND a super genius, DID. That was enough to bail.

[tezunegari]

B) the loop didn't bother me; portraying Mudd as a fucking commando AND a super genius, DID. That was enough to bail.

Where was Mudd portrait as commando?

The loop was shown from the perspective of people trapped outside of it. Only Mudd and Stamets were in the loop.

We only saw Mudds successful loops - none of the ones where he ran into someone or failed to hack the computer or triggered an alarm.

And it hardly takes a genius to put a gun to the head of an drunk engineer and saying: "So, mind telling me how I start the engine?"

What dissapointed me about this Mudd is that he is portrait as a cold hearted killer, and not the get-rich-quick con-man he was in TOS.

[Darth Lucifer]

They can come up with some good episode titles. Unfortunately, it also shows how bad they are at actually writing the damn episode. "Choose your pain," is only ever a name drop in this episode. The first time it happens its done [by] Mudd to a character we don't know and aren't invested in. The second time it happens its just a trick. The episode is named after a physical and moral challenge that the characters never have to face.

I caught this on a rewatch, during the escape from the Klingons:

Tyler: Your eyes. That happened when you destroyed the Buran, didn't it?
Lorca: We choose our own pain. Mine helps me remember.

Voq/Ash Tyler. For six months he was stranded on a crippled ship. In one month he negotiates with the matriarchs of a Great House, is modified to pass as human, and despite being from an insular culture is trained in their language, culture, and his identity's background to pass convincingly as him. In one fucking month. Where's the fucking eye roll smiley? There we go.

I haven't ruled out the possibility of implanted false memories. What's much harder to explain is Voq's Klingon physiology, I want to see how they're going to explain all that. Tyler might be able to dodge Dr. Culber for a while, but eventually he'll have to get a physical. I really hope they don't take the easy way out and do the "fool the medical scanners" thing we saw in TNG with Juliana Soong.

[Imperial Overlord]

Tyler: Your eyes. That happened when you destroyed the Buran, didn't it?
Lorca: We choose our own pain. Mine helps me remember.

I caught that and it was a good touch, but it doesn't change the fact that they never deliver on "terrible Klingon torture dilemma". Compare the episode with Picard being tortured by the Cardassians, being broken down and shouting "I see four lights!" at the end, despite seeing five.

I haven't ruled out the possibility of implanted false memories. What's much harder to explain is Voq's Klingon physiology, I want to see how they're going to explain all that. Tyler might be able to dodge Dr. Culber for a while, but eventually he'll have to get a physical. I really hope they don't take the easy way out and do the "fool the medical scanners" thing we saw in TNG with Juliana Soong.

He's been in Klingon captivity, with super savage Klingons, for seven months being beaten and tortured. A physical is the first thing he's going to get in a reasonable universe.

[Thanas]

Not only a bottle episode but a boring one too.

[Dartzap]

On the plus side, I finally twigged the new security guy is Clem Fandango.

It should not have taken 3 episodes to realise this.

[tezunegari]

He's been in Klingon captivity, with super savage Klingons, for seven months being beaten and tortured. A physical is the first thing he's going to get in a reasonable universe.

In the TOS episode Errand of Mercy Kor mentioned a Mind Sifter... that can extract knowledge from a person.
Maybe something like that was used to implant Voq's personality in Ash Tylers body?

I mean, a purely cosmetical change wouldn't take everything from Voq... but a mind transplant? He wouldn't even be klingon anymore at all.

[Alkaloid]

Yes, I can hear you Clem Fandango...

[bilateralrope]

Starfleet fails at getting ships to where they should be. But when they stumble there, they punch well above their weight. So far the only outright Klingon victory was a D7 vs a Shuttlecraft.

Which is true if you only count the Discovery. They lost the Battle of the Binary Stars, the failed to adequately defend 40% of their dilithium supply, and security may not be wearing red shirts but they are certainly continuing the red shirt tradition of being useless and dying.

The Klingons did succeed in their objective at the Battle of the Binary Stars. The objective being to unite the Klingon houses in a war against the Federation. But they still lost a lot of ships, and they lost their leader to a two person boarding party. That seems a pyrrhic victory to me.

As for the dilithium mine, a Klingon force of unknown size defeated a Federation force, also of unknown size. Klingon losses are unknown. 3 Klingon ships* bombarded the mine until Discovery showed up, then were destroyed by a single ship. The dilithium mine remained intact and in Federation hands. The Klingons failed to achieve their objective, so this was a loss.

The D7 was an outright victory because the Klingons achieved their objective without taking massive losses, compared to what they brought to the fight, in the process.

*We do not know if those three were the only ones to survive the initial ambush or if others survived and then decided to do something other than bombard something that wasn't shooting back.

[bilateralrope]

From the latest two episodes we get confirmation that Micheal never earned her rank on the Shenzhou:
- She was rejected from the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. Sure, for racist reasons, it's still a rejection. She did not earn a rank in it and then get transferred to an equivalent Starfleet rank.
- Her rank on the Shenzhou was too high for fraternization with the rest of the crew to be appropriate.

She never went to Starfleet Academy. She didn't spend any time in an equivalent organisation. Yet she still got to enter Starfleet at a high rank.

Yeah, nice to see the heroine of the story being an unprofesssional asshole not just under periods of high stress and untreated PTSD, but under normal circumstances as well.

I'm not sure if it's untreated PTSD. Being taught to suppress all emotion might have been an effective treatment, if Georgiou hadn't undone all that by getting Micheal to behave like a human.

What dissapointed me about this Mudd is that he is portrait as a cold hearted killer, and not the get-rich-quick con-man he was in TOS.

Do we know if any of the writers have watched TOS ?

The more I see, the more I doubt it.

Edit: How did Mudd escape from the Klingons ?
If he could escape on his own, why didn't he escape sooner ?
If he was working with the Klingons, why did he go alone to the Discovery ?

Not only a bottle episode but a boring one too.

We were promised an ongoing plot running through the episodes. This was a filler episode. Is there any part of Discovery's advertising that hasn't been shown to be a lie ?

[Darth Lucifer]

- She was rejected from the Vulcan Expeditionary Group....

I thought that Sarek was forced to choose between Spock and Michael, and that he lied to her about being rejected from the VEG.

On another note, I wish they played up Stella's nasty side a lot more than they did. She should be the 23rd century version of OVERLY ATTACHED GIRLFRIEND.

[Imperial Overlord]

The Klingons did succeed in their objective at the Battle of the Binary Stars. The objective being to unite the Klingon houses in a war against the Federation. But they still lost a lot of ships, and they lost their leader to a two person boarding party. That seems a pyrrhic victory to me.

The Klingons showed up divided and ended the battle with a military victory and political unity. In the aftermath of the battle Kol has made himself the leader of the High Council, continued to successfully prosecute the war, obtain cloaking tech and use its distribution to shore up his political base, and have rival houses buy their way into his coalition with a captured Starfleet Admiral. The battle of the Binary Stars might have been Pyrrhic for T'kumva, but for the Klingon Empire it ends with a military victory and political unity under a capable leader. Definitely a win.

As for the dilithium mine, a Klingon force of unknown size defeated a Federation force, also of unknown size. Klingon losses are unknown. 3 Klingon ships* bombarded the mine until Discovery showed up, then were destroyed by a single ship. The dilithium mine remained intact and in Federation hands. The Klingons failed to achieve their objective, so this was a loss.

Sure it was a loss, but that's not the issue. Starfleet's performance is the issue and it was utterly botched. The protective fleet was successfully ambushed and routed or destroyed, which is a not a good performance. Furthermore the planet that is the source of 40% of the Federation's dilithium is so poorly fortified that 3 birds of prey can beat down their defences. On top of that, there are no reinforcements within range of this vital logistical location that can relieve it in time. Only a ship with an experimental drive making a Hail Mary teleport jump was able to reach the planet in time and destroy the three light warships that were on the verge of totally wrecking the source of 40% of Starfleet's dilithium. Failing to adequately defend key resources is still failing to defend key resources if someone with a magic warship saves your ass. This is still an example of military incompetence.

Then we have the performance of the no longer redshirt wearing redshirts of Starfleet. Despite being armed with phasers they are easily dispatched by Klingons with bladed weapons in Lorca's shuttle and guarding the admiral at the totally not a trap meeting. Fighting like a Klingon is definitely more impressive than fighting like Starfleet.

I will concede Ash Tyler gives a pretty impressive performance though.


On to the subject of the latest episode, it was pretty bad. Mudd's able to jack the Discovery with time travel, off screen computer comprises, and a convenient force field (which they really should establish as alien tech in order to avoid the question of why everyone on every ship doesn't do this at any sign of danger but that's probably expecting too much). Far too much is done with brute force writer's fiat (magic escape, off screen super tech acquisition, off screen super hacking, magic force field) although the many deaths of Captain Lorca and using Mudd's greed against him by having Burnham commit suicide were good. The ending though, Jesus Christ.

Mudd's guilty of piracy and high treason as well as whatever all those not happening deaths work out to (assault with a deadly weapon sounds about right). The piracy and high treason should get him a prison term that ends sometime around TNG season 1 if it doesn't get him shot and instead we get the cutesy end with house arrest. So not only have we changed Mudd into a cold blooded killer and super hacker, we've completely undermined the whole "actions have consequences" Battlestar Galactica vibe that the show clearly wants to tap into. Fail.

[tezunegari]

What dissapointed me about this Mudd is that he is portrait as a cold hearted killer, and not the get-rich-quick con-man he was in TOS.

Do we know if any of the writers have watched TOS ?

The more I see, the more I doubt it.

Nothing substantial, but I've heard rumors that they have advisors in the writing room that know TOS inside-out. But those were hired to keep anything truely TOS out of the writing due to licensing problems - CBS apparently only holds the rights to the Kelvin-verse, the Prime-verse licenses are with Paramount.

At least that's how it was explained to me.

[bilateralrope]

Some other points from the episode to show the writers "skill" at worldbuilding:
- Endangered species that lives in deep space. Starfleet ships are under orders to take it to a zoo. Which means beaming it aboard ship, which likely exposes it to the thickest atmosphere and highest gravity that it has ever experienced. No wonder it's endangered.
- Dark Matter is yet another weapon hyped up to be a very painful way to die, despite killing the victim in seconds
- Arms dealer who got rich off the war. He offered a reward to anyone who can help him find Mudd. But he doesn't want to be in debt to Starfleet/The Federation. Why didn't he just give them the reward that he promised ? (even if the Federation doesn't use money, that's not his problem)
- Arms dealer question two: Being in debt to Starfleet seems like it would be easily resolved if he was selling weapons to them. He was far too willing to beam over to a Federation ship to be someone selling weapons to the Klingons. So who is he selling weapons to ?

- She was rejected from the Vulcan Expeditionary Group....

I thought that Sarek was forced to choose between Spock and Michael, and that he lied to her about being rejected from the VEG.

True. But she never served on any of their ships. So she can't have been transfered to Starfleet and been given a rank equivalent to one she earned there, because she never earned a rank in the expeditionary group

As for the dilithium mine, a Klingon force of unknown size defeated a Federation force, also of unknown size. Klingon losses are unknown. 3 Klingon ships* bombarded the mine until Discovery showed up, then were destroyed by a single ship. The dilithium mine remained intact and in Federation hands. The Klingons failed to achieve their objective, so this was a loss.

Sure it was a loss, but that's not the issue. Starfleet's performance is the issue and it was utterly botched.

I've never disagreed that Starfleet's performance at getting ships to the right place is horrible. But we are talking about an organisation that thinks having transparent windows on the bridge is a good idea. I'm not talking about structural weakness, I'm talking about the weakness of letting the enemy blind the entire bridge crew when they find a bright enough light. For example, flying close to a star to escape Starfleet ships chasing you because your bridge doesn't have windows.

The protective fleet was successfully ambushed and routed or destroyed, which is a not a good performance. Furthermore the planet that is the source of 40% of the Federation's dilithium is so poorly fortified that 3 birds of prey can beat down their defences.

We do not know how many ships the Klingons sent to attack the mine in the first place. There are three possibilities:
- A lot of birds of prey showed up. Defenses destroyed all but 3
- 3 birds of prey showed up and killed everything
- A lot of birds of prey showed up. Some were destroyed by the defenses. Others left after the defenses were destroyed.

I will concede Ash Tyler gives a pretty impressive performance though.

Lets see where his story goes before drawing any conclusions on it.

Nothing substantial, but I've heard rumors that they have advisors in the writing room that know TOS inside-out. But those were hired to keep anything truely TOS out of the writing due to licensing problems - CBS apparently only holds the rights to the Kelvin-verse, the Prime-verse licenses are with Paramount.

At least that's how it was explained to me.

Trying to do a prequel without getting the rights to do the prequel is the stupidest idea for a prequel I've heard of. If true.

But if it is true, how did they get to use the characters of Sarek and Mudd ?

[Darth Lucifer]

Nothing substantial, but I've heard rumors that they have advisors in the writing room that know TOS inside-out. But those were hired to keep anything truely TOS out of the writing due to licensing problems - CBS apparently only holds the rights to the Kelvin-verse, the Prime-verse licenses are with Paramount.

At least that's how it was explained to me.

Trying to do a prequel without getting the rights to do the prequel is the stupidest idea for a prequel I've heard of. If true.

But if it is true, how did they get to use the characters of Sarek and Mudd ?

Are you sure about that, tezunegari? The producers have stated that DSC is taking place in the original Prime timeline, not the Kelvin-verse.

Personally, I like to pretend this is JJ-Trek, because it's the only way my brain can handle the inconsistencies and violated canon.

[Omeganian]

I wonder if the guys who made that episode read Starcrossed.

[Enigma]

Nothing substantial, but I've heard rumors that they have advisors in the writing room that know TOS inside-out. But those were hired to keep anything truely TOS out of the writing due to licensing problems - CBS apparently only holds the rights to the Kelvin-verse, the Prime-verse licenses are with Paramount.

At least that's how it was explained to me.

Trying to do a prequel without getting the rights to do the prequel is the stupidest idea for a prequel I've heard of. If true.

But if it is true, how did they get to use the characters of Sarek and Mudd ?

Are you sure about that, tezunegari? The producers have stated that DSC is taking place in the original Prime timeline, not the Kelvin-verse.

Personally, I like to pretend this is JJ-Trek, because it's the only way my brain can handle the inconsistencies and violated canon.

Can't find the source but I thought it was stated that it took place in a separate continuity but ties up with the beginning of TOS?

[tezunegari]

Nothing substantial, but I've heard rumors that they have advisors in the writing room that know TOS inside-out. But those were hired to keep anything truely TOS out of the writing due to licensing problems - CBS apparently only holds the rights to the Kelvin-verse, the Prime-verse licenses are with Paramount.

At least that's how it was explained to me.

Trying to do a prequel without getting the rights to do the prequel is the stupidest idea for a prequel I've heard of. If true.

But if it is true, how did they get to use the characters of Sarek and Mudd ?

Are you sure about that, tezunegari? The producers have stated that DSC is taking place in the original Prime timeline, not the Kelvin-verse.

Personally, I like to pretend this is JJ-Trek, because it's the only way my brain can handle the inconsistencies and violated canon.

I'm not sure about the rumor, but that's how it was explained to me:

Essentially the rights to anything TOS lies with a new Viacom which holds Paramount Pictures licenses and is selling the old DVD/BluRays of TV shows and movies (TOS,TNG,DS9,VOY, Star Trek 1-10), while
the rights to the Kelvin-verse belong to CBS Television Studios (Star Trek 11-13) and Star Trek Discovery.

Until Season 1 is over I withhold my judgment but so far I consider DSC a third timeline with a yet unknown point of divergence (possibly Burnham surviving the klingon terror raid?).