# Star Trek Discovery season 4 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted, star-trek-paramount\ **Created:** [November 19, 2021, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597 "2021-11-19T02:56:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2021, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/61 "2021-12-15T02:25:58Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Or how the season’s big bad suddenly became this computer that someone built for some reason that turned evil for some reason and was somehow going to destroy all life in the galaxy, for some reason. They literally pulled the same thing out in Picard with the magical Doctor Octopus monster that was summoned by Robot Model Lady. And how it was inside the Section 31 guy. and then they killed him and SPECIFICALLY SAID it was destroyed, but they literally forgot about it moments later and went into the time warp anyway for no reason. This is what happens when a show has 20 producers. (Yes, it does.) ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2021, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/62 "2021-12-15T09:06:46Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > They literally pulled the same thing out in Picard with the magical Doctor Octopus monster that was summoned by Robot Model Lady. Also, the actual, TNG Picard wouldn’t have just closed the wormhole, he would have flown right into it and explained to those Doc Oc Tentacles how killing all sentient life in the galaxy was Wrong, and that they shouldn’t do it, and he’d keep on explaining it to them until they agreed. (If TOS Kirk had been there, he’d have flown in and convinced them to kill themselves). ---
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2021, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/63 "2021-12-15T13:39:16Z")
I wonder if the reason there appears to be so much filler is directly related to having so many producers? Almost like a committee, where twenty different visions want expression, so we end up with an excess of mostly inane and inconsequential B, C and D storylines that suck most of the oxygen out of the A. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2021, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/64 "2021-12-15T18:16:31Z")
I think it is a problem with lots of very long-running shows. Sometimes they end up being bad fan fiction by people that grew up watching the old show. Somehow, a group of people end up writing scripts for the show instead of having them lost in the giant slushpile of AOOO. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2021, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/65 "2021-12-17T00:59:59Z")
So they made a point of focusing on the scar on the back of Risa Guy’s neck. Could they finally be picking up the dangling thread from _Conspiracy_? > **[Conspiracy (Star Trek: The Next Generation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation))** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > > > "Conspiracy" is the twenty-fifth and penultimate episode of the first season of the syndicated American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, originally aired on May 9, 1988, in the United States. The premise was conceived by the show's creator Gene Roddenberry in a single sentence overview titled "The Assassins", being expanded into a thirty-page story by Robert Sabaroff. From this, the teleplay was produced by Trac... ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2021, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/66 "2021-12-17T04:36:19Z")
I love GRUDGE ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2021, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/67 "2021-12-17T04:54:45Z")
Smart cat - totally ghosted this 5th episode… ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2021, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/68 "2021-12-17T06:15:25Z")
If it turns out that Grudge was actually one of [these](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Isis) all along and behind all of the DMA conflicts, I will flip to loving this show. ---
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/69 "2021-12-18T05:54:55Z")
I bemoan that we never see well done alien societies. Because of a lack of imagination and for dramatic purposes, aliens motivations are always anthropomorphized. So in my head canon, I took the aliens at their word when they said they ‘share a love of the theatre with humans’. And they WERNT your basic ‘evil villains’. They just did it for a lark. For some drama in their lives, and once done they fucked off. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/70 "2021-12-18T23:39:57Z")
Episode 5 wasn’t AS bad as a lot of Discovery. It was an okay story, and we were spared Robot Prom Date. though the DMA being a thing dragging from episode to episode is not great, and the scene with Doctor Whatshisname and David Cronenberg was dumb, example 7814 of this show trying to sell an emotional scene the show had not earned. Burnham was again seemingly on the verge of tears multiple times, Stamets acts like a child, and the bridge officer who volunteers to help and then of COURSE he gives an emotional speech rather than just doing his fucking job. I enjoyed Tig Notaro saying that things don’t just disappear. She serves aboard a ship than can, in fact, just disappear. I liked the Arrogant Scientist Man until at the end we find out that he’s probably in some kind of conspiracy, which is 100% going to turn out to be a story that will drag and drag and drag, spacing 7 minutes of content across 35 minutes of screen time and causing people to be very upset and to cry. It would have been so cool if he’d just been an Arrogant Scientist Man. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/71 "2021-12-19T01:45:50Z")
They were _so_ shocked to find out that the DMA was artificial. Kirk and Picard ran into massive unscrutable destructive godlike alien artifacts every week. Kirk tricked them into blowing themselves up, Picard talked them into feeling embarrassed for their actions, both got on with their day afterwards. With the Discovery crew, we have the pre-realization emotional trama episodes, the realization emotional tramua episode, and surely a few post-realization emotional trauma episodes. When all they really need to do is get a Kelpian child to _really_ hate DMA conflicts (like I did With early versions of Windows). ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/72 "2021-12-19T02:21:23Z")
super science mind or not - you don’t create one of those on the fly the first time out. And if you do, the captain doesn’t let you use all avaiable power during a rescue mission to test it. What were the ‘other’ ships for that went to save the ~1200 colonists? the way they talked, all were being beamed aboard Discovery. I met you like 5 minutes ago - you want to kill yourself by staying behind ? I guess I need to cry about it (almost). ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/73 "2021-12-19T04:50:00Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > They were _so_ shocked to find out that the DMA was artificial. Being shocked I can handle; it’s a black hole. It’s the fact they seem emotionally devastated by it, as they are by fucking everything that ever happens. It’s like a show written by thirteen-year-olds. > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > With the Discovery crew, we have the pre-realization emotional trama episodes, the realization emotional tramua episode, and surely a few post-realization emotional trauma episodes. Your use of the word “trauma” might give some insight here; one gets the sense that the writers think the concept of dealing with trauma, or at least paying lip service to it, is a stand in for earning real emotional payoffs. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/74 "2021-12-19T05:05:14Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Being shocked I can handle; it’s a black hole. Romulans use small black holes as a power source. > **[Singularity](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Singularity)** > > A singularity, or quantum singularity, is an extremely dense region of the spacetime continuum which produces extremely powerful gravitational forces. Singularities can be produced both naturally, as in black holes, or artificially, as in wormholes.... ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/75 "2021-12-19T18:54:25Z")
…which of course they’d already forgotten about as an alternative energy source to dilithium after the burn. ---
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/76 "2021-12-20T14:50:09Z")
I don’t care what Disco says…dilithium (and only in TOS, in TNG we heard about trilithium) was a conduit for the power. The power comes from antimatter-matter. Or in the case of the Romulans a forced singularity. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/77 "2021-12-20T15:03:33Z")
My recollection was that the dilithium or trilithium is used to mediate the matter-antimatter reaction to make the reaction controlled (as opposed to a torpedo, which was also an matter-antimatter thing.) Power is then transmitted through “conduits,” which was whatever had replaced wires in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/78 "2021-12-21T16:29:01Z")
Essentially Dilithium lets you focus the antimatter so you can control the reaction to generate energy more efficiently than just combining the two willy nilly. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/79 "2021-12-21T19:41:29Z")
And it has twice the efficiency of applied phlebotinum! ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597/80 "2021-12-22T16:08:40Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I have little confidence they can stick the landing. In Season 2 we started with the “Seven signals” thing and they only got around to four of them and forgot there were seven, and in the last few episodes had clearly missed critical points and forgotten to explain setups they’d established earlier in that season. Reminds me of the Cylon numbering screwup in **Battlestar Galactica**. > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Romulans use small black holes as a power source. Hmm, a Romulan faction that opted out of reunification with the Vulcans is an interesting idea, but I doubt they’ll go there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-discovery-season-4/954597.md?page=5)