Star Trek Discovery Season 4 (Spoilers)

[Crazedwraith]

So thanks to PlutoTV I managed to watch the first two episodes of Season 4 of Discovery. Well almost all of them. It's a live internet tv show and my internet had a hiccup over the last scene of the second episode. Spoilers ahead.

It's fairly average of what Discovery is like. Lots of speech lots of people discussing what Michael is like, her command style, her issues etc. A big dramatic threat that they are going to combat apparently single handedly.

This time it's a roving gravitational disturbance. That destroys first a federation station and then Book's home planet. The second episode he flies into it to get data to try and stop it.

I really hate what they are doing to Saru. I didn't want to loose him from main cast but him being 'Number One' (and as with last season that's not a rank or formal position. It's a nickname for executive officer. ) again just makes no sense. His conversation with Tilly is a nice hallmark of their friendship but it just avoided the elephant in the room that they've both just taken demotions. It was a misstep to make Tilly XO in the first place but trying to ignore and quietly revert it is also a misstep to me.

Saru is a Captain serving as first officer to a Captain with less seniority than him. Starfleet's never been huge on military protocol but that's really a big no-no.

The positions and cast speciation is really confusing me now. Was Stamets their big science guy last season? I can't remember. He started off as just their spore drive guy but now he, Adira, Tilly, Saru and Burnham are all current or ex-science geniuses for the show to spew technobabble. Is Tilly their science officer now? There's just no organisation at all on USS Discovery.

Also and this is the tiniest complaint did the 32nd century uniforms always have so much of the division colour? Those all red uniforms on Burnham and Saru don't look good to me.

But it's fine. I do like Detmer and Owo's bravado and that the bridge bunnies at least come up with the odd idea from hobbies occasionally. and Stamets and Booker interacting was good and new combination to use. It's just not thrilling me.

[Crazedwraith]

Oh and the Federation president is a bajoran/cardassian/human hybrid and I really like that as it sets the tone for the 32nd century. Also the second episode has fairly massive spoilers for the Picard finale and how it turned out.

eta: oh and there's a disco take on a Ferengi and one of the officers on the space station is a surprisingly unchanged member of Morn's species which I like.

[bilateralrope]

Two things stood out to me from the first episode:

The first is that Michael did almost everything wrong with making contact with that species at the start. The worst being her decision to go down to the planet, instead of opening dialog over radio/subspace first.

The second is the reopening of Starfleet academy reopening. Which raises, then ignores, the question of how Starfleet were training their people without it.

The people behind Discovery are bad at details. Both in their writing and in making decisions like pulling Discovery from Netflix days before the seasons release, leaving many countries with no legal way to watch it.

[TrekkieJeff2000]

Two things stood out to me from the first episode:

The first is that Michael did almost everything wrong with making contact with that species at the start. The worst being her decision to go down to the planet, instead of opening dialog over radio/subspace first.

The second is the reopening of Starfleet academy reopening. Which raises, then ignores, the question of how Starfleet were training their people without it.

The people behind Discovery are bad at details. Both in their writing and in making decisions like pulling Discovery from Netflix days before the seasons release, leaving many countries with no legal way to watch it.

Definitely agree that the decision making process behind Discovery seems to be lacking.

[Crazedwraith]

The people behind Discovery are bad at details. Both in their writing and in making decisions like pulling Discovery from Netflix days before the seasons release, leaving many countries with no legal way to watch it.

In complete fairness to them I doubt the showrunners had anything to do with the latter decision. Presumably it was higher ups at CBS. And they did remedy the situation (badly) by putting it on PlutoTV , allowing it to bough on amazon episode by episode after release and offering discount for paramount+ when it launches.

[bilateralrope]

The people behind Discovery are bad at details. Both in their writing and in making decisions like pulling Discovery from Netflix days before the seasons release, leaving many countries with no legal way to watch it.

In complete fairness to them I doubt the showrunners had anything to do with the latter decision. Presumably it was higher ups at CBS. And they did remedy the situation (badly) by putting it on PlutoTV , allowing it to bough on amazon episode by episode after release and offering discount for paramount+ when it launches.

I'm in New Zealand. Paramount+ has no release date here, though I have found one article saying it was scheduled to launch in August. PlutoTV is unavailable here and, even if it was, I am simply done with adjusting the rest of my life around a TV schedule. As for Amazon, the site I use to see who has what shows says it's Discovery isn't available here. I can't check Amazon directly without paying for another month subscription. I can't see if I have the option to pay per episode until I pay for the subscription

Those aren't fixes.

[Crazedwraith]

The people behind Discovery are bad at details. Both in their writing and in making decisions like pulling Discovery from Netflix days before the seasons release, leaving many countries with no legal way to watch it.

In complete fairness to them I doubt the showrunners had anything to do with the latter decision. Presumably it was higher ups at CBS. And they did remedy the situation (badly) by putting it on PlutoTV , allowing it to bough on amazon episode by episode after release and offering discount for paramount+ when it launches.

I'm in New Zealand. Paramount+ has no release date here, though I have found one article saying it was scheduled to launch in August. PlutoTV is unavailable here and, even if it was, I am simply done with adjusting the rest of my life around a TV schedule. As for Amazon, the site I use to see who has what shows says it's Discovery isn't available here. I can't check Amazon directly without paying for another month subscription. I can't see if I have the option to pay per episode until I pay for the subscription

Those aren't fixes.

Apologies. I missed that they'd only made it available in certain regions since that included the UK where I am. Yeah having to watch on a schedule is shit but it's free and better than nothing. I'd much rather they left it on netflix.

(If you could buy it from amazon, you wouldn't need to subscribe to prime to do so I think, unless it works entirely different in NZ)

[bilateralrope]

Apologies. I missed that they'd only made it available in certain regions since that included the UK where I am. Yeah having to watch on a schedule is shit but it's free and better than nothing. I'd much rather they left it on netflix.

(If you could buy it from amazon, you wouldn't need to subscribe to prime to do so I think, unless it works entirely different in NZ)

All I know for sure is that when I go to https://www.primevideo.com/, all I see is a "start your free trial" link. A free trial I can't even start without entering my CC details. If there is another link I could use, I can't see it.

As for the TV schedule issue, it's only better than nothing if your schedule allows you to watch it. I work long shifts on a 4 on, 4 off rotation. Nothing that happens on a weekly schedule is compatible with my job.

[bilateralrope]

Is it just me, or does their hologram technology look like it's gone backwards since Voyager ?

That Stamets holo was suffering from visual glitches even while they were aboard discovery. Before going into the interference of the anomaly and it didn't seem to get worse while in there. Compare that to the stability of the EMH, even when using the mobile emitter.

[Crazedwraith]

Is it just me, or does their hologram technology look like it's gone backwards since Voyager ?

That Stamets holo was suffering from visual glitches even while they were aboard discovery. Before going into the interference of the anomaly and it didn't seem to get worse while in there. Compare that to the stability of the EMH, even when using the mobile emitter.

I mean Doylist explanation is that they want to remind you he's currently a hologram and not physically there.

Watsonian maybe the holotech upgrades on a 23rd century shell are unreliable or something to do with the whole mind transfer deal messing it up.

Seems they're getting close to Red Dwarf style dead people resurrected as holograms though.

[Crazedwraith]

So episode 3 has at least 3 plot lines. Two of which can be subdivided into subplots.

Which leaves the A plot which should be the meat of the episode very underdeveloped. There's nothing wrong with any of three segments but they're not put together to be the greater than the sum of their parts.

[bilateralrope]

So the medical officer is also their ships counselor. The writers don't seem to like the idea of adding future Federation characters into the Discovery crew.

As for the episode itself, the Starfleet officer would have lived if he didn't try to grab a what looked like a sword from a pile of swords that was just sitting there. There are three things that could have saved his life:
- Had that pile of swords been in another room. One where they might make sense.
- A proper briefing about . A group of religious fighters who stick to purely swords. Getting into melee with them should sound like a bad idea.
- Orders to not risk his life if they attacked. Maybe tell him about the tracker, maybe just tell him that the dilithium is not worth his life.

Other notes from the episode:
- Trust in the Federation must be low right now if stealing from them is preferable to asking for help.
- If this species has to use cryo for a trip between stars means they don't have warp drives anywhere near what everyone else does. They are behind even the TOS Federation. Maybe they are a pre-warp civilization, having worked out how to use dilithium for power but not warp. The lack of mention of the Prime Directive means I'm going to assume primitive warp drives.
- They aren't safe just because they are awake. Not if their technology is that far behind everyone the Federation is sharing dilithium with.
- Admiral Vance's speech about trusting the president was uncomfortably close to saying that Micheal should have unquestioning loyalty to whatever the president asks.

Is it just me, or does their hologram technology look like it's gone backwards since Voyager ?

That Stamets holo was suffering from visual glitches even while they were aboard discovery. Before going into the interference of the anomaly and it didn't seem to get worse while in there. Compare that to the stability of the EMH, even when using the mobile emitter.

I mean Doylist explanation is that they want to remind you he's currently a hologram and not physically there.

Watsonian maybe the holotech upgrades on a 23rd century shell are unreliable or something to do with the whole mind transfer deal messing it up.

Seems they're getting close to Red Dwarf style dead people resurrected as holograms though.

The Doylist explanation insults the audiences intelligence and/or ability to pay attention. Especially when they could have gone with a drone instead of a hologram, painted the actors skin some unnatural color, and him not being really there would be obvious in every single frame.

I'm not seeing this as a mind transfer. Just remote operation of the hologram.

As for Red Dwarf style holograms, Star Trek has been consistent in rejecting technology that could transform into something else. Genetic engineering led to the eugenics wars, then got banned. Uploading a mind into a robot body has happened, but the process is unreliable and people lost interest in trying to improve it. Also, the bodies were intentionally designed to age like a natural body would with nobody questioning that decision. But if the mind upload process was reliable, adapting it to work with a hologram body instead of a robotic one seems relatively simple.

[Crazedwraith]

So episode 4 and the same complaints from the last few episodes still seem to apply. They've got two perfectly serviceable plots in this episode but doing both of them means neither of them gets time to really get developed and shine. Especially with time taken out for Book/Culber none of them are bad just stunningly mediocre and shallow.

Now the main plot seems to be BREXIT... in space! Especially the line about wanting the advantages on not the responsibilities of Federation membership but you know... it never occurred to me that utopian federation wouldn't just let people leave it no questions asked. I mean maybe dependent on a referendum and not just a head of governments say so but still... it felt weird to me.

Second episode in a row with no bridge bunnies, and moving Tilly to the Academy seems to be part of the continuing struggle to find something for the character to do given they've bounced her around science genius, confident and first officer over the series. Apparently the actor Mary Wiseman is still a regular on the show though, so that isn't her being written out, maybe?

Also how is Burnham supposed to have time to be a starfleet captain and be on this supervisory board thing? ugh.

[bilateralrope]

it never occurred to me that utopian federation wouldn't just let people leave it no questions asked

Didn't some planets leave the Federation during the Dominion War ?
Then there are the planets that left before the Burn.

I'm also a bit suspicious of the idea that this issue didn't come up at all during negotiations.

I think the situation was political theater. The Federation wants to hold planets tighter than it did before the Burn. Ni'Var doesn't want to be held that tightly. Both presidents were willing to compromise, but couldn't afford the political costs of being seen as backing down by being the one who proposes a compromise. So they scheme to get Burnham to suggest a solution.

Also how is Burnham supposed to have time to be a starfleet captain and be on this supervisory board thing? ugh.

It's not just an issue of how much of her time it takes up. There is also the question of how well she could represent anyone other than Starfleet when she has a 900 year disconnection with the culture of Ni'Var.

The best I can see is that she is there to be the politically acceptable choice. With the hope that she can be replaced by someone who can do the job before an issue comes up that requires this supervisory board to do something. After all, the Federation managed most of a millennia without this board before the Burn. It can probably handle one more human lifetime.

[Crazedwraith]

it never occurred to me that utopian federation wouldn't just let people leave it no questions asked

Didn't some planets leave the Federation during the Dominion War ?
Then there are the planets that left before the Burn.

I don't remember anyone leaving the Federation in the Dominion War, just everyone not aligned with the Federation/Klingons signing Non-Aggression pacts.

And yeah obviously a lot of planets left in the burn. The president was saying the Federation would never stop anyone leaving if they wanted to but also didn't want the formal escape clause in the treaty.

I'm also a bit suspicious of the idea that this issue didn't come up at all during negotiations.

I think the situation was political theater. The Federation wants to hold planets tighter than it did before the Burn. Ni'Var doesn't want to be held that tightly. Both presidents were willing to compromise, but couldn't afford the political costs of being seen as backing down by being the one who proposes a compromise. So they scheme to get Burnham to suggest a solution.

Yeah, the episode pretty much says this yes. At least the Federation president was, I can't recall if they said she'd actually contrived it with the Ni'Var one.

[bilateralrope]

Another idea that comes to mind is that Burnham might end up leaving the captains chair to work on this committee, leaving Saru in command of Discovery. This is partly because her record in Starfleet is bad, partly wishful thinking on my part.

[Crazedwraith]

Episode 5 has the same a/b/c plot issues but overall I found it a much stronger and interesting episode.

The episode has a strong moral centre rescuing prisoners rather than letting them die and the guy remaining behind and Burnham and Book's disagreement were great.

Stamets and Culber's scenes were great it feels like a genuine relationship and it's been a while, I think, that they've had material about them and not their surragate dadding of Adira.

Nice that that one bridge bunny got some characterisation, pity he didn't get to do more on screen.

The B plot, well I think we just me our bad guy for the season of a secondary antagonist at least. I'm assuming he's going to try and grab control of the DMA/power source for his own ends. It does highlight Disco's on going problems. The main characters, do everything, the main ship does everything. The risan guy got nothing from Stamets and there was no reason he couldn't petition starfleet to use a different ship with more power available.

At least Starfleet actually has ships (Uss Janeway -_- ) staking out the anomaly. I thought the revelation it was artificial was something everyone already realised when it changed course but apparently not.

And as a random aside I enjoyed that the base they were evacuated was cool mutli-asteroid type thing and not a moon or planet, a nicely original design.

But why burnham had to look through regs to realise she can grant people asylum is a bit of a headscratcher. Still strongest episode of season 4 so far I think.

[Darth Lucifer]

Second episode in a row with no bridge bunnies, and moving Tilly to the Academy seems to be part of the continuing struggle to find something for the character to do given they've bounced her around science genius, confident and first officer over the series. Apparently the actor Mary Wiseman is still a regular on the show though, so that isn't her being written out, maybe?

Bridge bunnies...lol, i haven't heard that one, but it's fitting.

The rumor I've heard is that Mary Wiseman will be heading up a Starfleet Academy spinoff set in the 32nd century. As for her character, I've been burned out on Tilly even before she became the XO. I feel like they've over-developed her into a Mary-Sue whiz kid at the expense of the rest of the cast. We're four seasons in and we've only been given little slivers of Detmer, Owo, Rhys and others.

The two instances I can remember where there was significant character development, both characters also departed the show. Airiam was airlocked because her systems had been hacked by Control. And Nhan was left as the new custodian of that seed vault ship, the USS Tikhov.

[bilateralrope]

Did anyone else react to the line "Nothing in space just disappears" by thinking that Discovery pulls that vanishing act all the time ?

The risan guy got nothing from Stamets and there was no reason he couldn't petition starfleet to use a different ship with more power available.

Yeah. That kind of experiment is one best repeated on a purpose built vessel. An expendable ship that you're planning to operate remotely. One you've planned to lose when you push the experiment beyond what the ships power supply can handle.

But why burnham had to look through regs to realise she can grant people asylum is a bit of a headscratcher. Still strongest episode of season 4 so far I think.

There has been plenty of time for the Federation to change it's laws during the time jump Discovery went through. It might not be a question of if she can grant asylum, but what the correct procedure is.

The rumor I've heard is that Mary Wiseman will be heading up a Starfleet Academy spinoff set in the 32nd century.

I've been hearing rumors about a Starfleet Academy spinoff for decades. It's never come to pass and doesn't sound like it would be interesting to watch.

[Crazedwraith]

So the downside of PlutoTV and the holidays is I've got to make time at the right moment to see the show rather than seeing it on demand when convenient on the other hand, last Christmas I did fall behind, now I have to keep up.

I watched episode 6 on Christmas Eve but didn't have the energy to review it then and I've just seen episode 7 so addressing them both at once.

In a way, it's good to do these both together because they both feature a prominent B plot with Zora the AI. In the first episode she is overwhelmed and frightened and has to be encouraged to work, in the second she has to be convinced to prioritise the greater good over the well being of the crew, and the crew exemplified by Stamets have to learn to trust her.

The A plot of Stormy weather involves a pretty poorly planned adventure inside an Anomaly (I've already forgotten if it was the DMA itself or a side affect of it.) which nevertheless produces results eventualy.

The A Plot of ...But To Connect involves a meeting of all the Milky Way's powers to decide whether to make peaceful first contact with the DMA's creators or just blow the DMA up with a very side effect heavy banned WMD.

Burnham (of course) wins the argument for the Federation but Book is unconvinced and uses the new version of the spore drive to go off to destroy the DMA in the cliffhanger.

I think they are both perfectly serviceable episodes and are definitely less bogged down with b and c plots, the b plots of each episode merging easily with the main plot but I'm not blown away with them.

The only specific complaint I have is that the delegates at the conference they ran were quite poorly defined. There seemed to be multiple Ni'Var representatives voting for example and Burnham got a vote for no apparent reason. (perhaps because of her role supervising federation/ni'var relations?) Seemed to be. you're in the room, you get a vote.

Still the plot is moving forward, though they didn't reveal anything about the extragalactic DMA creating species or if they are someone we know. Also despite the focus on the Zora AI it all seems massively incompatible with the short Trek episode Calypso and they've yet to attempt to address that.

[bilateralrope]

The A Plot of ...But To Connect involves a meeting of all the Milky Way's powers to decide whether to make peaceful first contact with the DMA's creators or just blow the DMA up with a very side effect heavy banned WMD.

A more sensible plan would be to prepare both plans. Hope for peaceful contact to work. But build the bomb to destroy the DMA just in case the peaceful option doesn't work before the DMA threatens another major world. For all we know, they might not have anything better than that bomb. Or they might already be dead.

But instead, we get the false dilemma of them only being able to do one of the two plans.

[Crazedwraith]

The A Plot of ...But To Connect involves a meeting of all the Milky Way's powers to decide whether to make peaceful first contact with the DMA's creators or just blow the DMA up with a very side effect heavy banned WMD.

A more sensible plan would be to prepare both plans. Hope for peaceful contact to work. But build the bomb to destroy the DMA just in case the peaceful option doesn't work before the DMA threatens another major world. For all we know, they might not have anything better than that bomb. Or they might already be dead.

But instead, we get the false dilemma of them only being able to do one of the two plans.

Yes and usually Michael is pragmatic enough to point that out. As another reviewer I read pointed out, when Booker points out that Michael did something very similar to the Klingons, she doesn't says 'well that was wrong, I regret it' she says [paraphrased] 'doing that was based a knowledge of a klingon culture and previous experiences with them, with 10-C it's a shot in the dark'. (She also presents both moral and practical arguments for going with first contact first, which is good)

They could easily have put that in, and also expanded more on how many systems were endangered by the DMA and how soon, to give a ticking clock to have more or less the same decision with people plausibly be unwilling to give peace a change before going for the boom-boom.

Or have it implied that the spore drive is the only one capable of reaching species 10-C and have the Risan scientist underplay how ready his second drive is to force the same dilemma.

[bilateralrope]

Or have it implied that the spore drive is the only one capable of reaching species 10-C and have the Risan scientist underplay how ready his second drive is to force the same dilemma.

They are an extragalactic species. I'm not aware of the Federation having any other drives which could reach them. But they did say that the Spore drive was the only way to deploy the bomb to destroy the DMA.


If they only had one spore drive, we could have had the moral dilemma because Discovery couldn't do both options at the same time. Instead we get a spore drive that has been improved so far, without solving the navigator problem, that I question how they are prioritising their research efforts.

[Crazedwraith]

It's back! And pluto Tv still puts an Ad break between the end of the episode and the credits for no apparent reason.

Spoilers under the cut

Not the best episode but it could have been worse. Certainly doing a decent job of melding the episode plot and the season plot together. It was entertaining but it felt like treading water a bit. At the end, Book and Tarka are still poised to do their plan, Burnham and the federation are still opposed to it.

We get some more exposition on what species 10 c are doing and that Burnham is definitely right and Book wrong though.

The combination of Burnham and 'Oh Wow' Owosekun is a good one and unexplored giving the bridge bunnies more screen time is always good though it feels like they have a new skill/interest everytime they are highlighted. No reason they can't have multiple skills of course.

It was never quite clarified for me if Owosekun was taking a dive each time and didn't tell Michael so her reactions were believable or if she really did get her arse kicked twice. Taking a dive seems more likely given the results. It does seem odd for Star Trek to have fight club and cheating at cards as the key to success though.

Stamets and Culber's scenes continue to be nice.

And on a call back note we get a changeling. The effects were very different but his final face looked Odo-ish so maybe a ds9 changeling rather than TUC one?

And in other news apparently Picard Season 2 is coming out in March and Strange New Worlds (The Pike spin off in May, though we don't know if we'll get it in the UK) How much Star Trek is too much Star Trek?

[bilateralrope]

That barrier 10c built raises a question. What are 10c protecting themselves from ?