The first two episodes of the final season are out, if anyone wants to say anything about it. So far it has occasional action sequences punctuating long, slow scenes with melodramatic music, often of crew members expressing their love for each other. There is plenty of slow whispering. And a (apparently) season-long Dismantled MacGuffin quest
Let’s take one of the most stupid episodes of TNG and expand it to a whole season.
I’m hate watching it now just to see how bad it can get.
This was not a bad start. The acting often rubs me the wrong way (especially the Captain) but at least this feels like Star Trek. There’s a mystery and adventure.
TNG’s The Chase was answering a question they didn’t need to ask but was a good episode of TNG and since it did happen, deserves a followup. I am interested to see what happens next.
I had given up on Discovery after watching the first or second episode of season three. The jump to the far future and all the changes turned me off, and I couldn’t get into the characters. Is there any point in trying to pick up the story to be able to watch the last season?
I, like JacobSwan, an hate-watching. I think you can hate season 5 well enough without hating season 4 first.
See, I gave up mid-season 3 because of the lack of changes. They jump centuries into the future, and what do they find? Earth is… fine. The Vulcans are… fine. Starfleet is… fine. Where’s the imagination? Make Starfleet evil! Have the Vulcans descend into barbarism! Make the Klingons peace-loving hippies! Do something interesting with the canvas you’ve been given! It was depressing.
When it comes to TNG callbacks Lower Decks does it so much better.
Taking time to respectfully notify the family of a dead robot? Check.
Taking time to respectfully repair a “desecrated” sacred site? Check.
Fireball-spewing exhaust ports still on the bridge? Check.
Hugs galore? Check.
Whispering galore? Check.
Easiest game of Discovery bingo I’ve ever played.
I actually didn’t hate the time bug episode.
So I wonder if we are going to get any more explanation on why Breen have a makeup face and a CGI face, or was that it?
Wait - after all these years, that’s what the Breen look like? Lame.
The Breen are green.
The ‘time bug’ episode is a good example of where Discovery has some fantastic ideas - but still manages to lame them up by the end.
So, in this episode - we find the ISS Enterprise - and it is where they hid the piece that contains the clue - but how did anyone initially even know the ship was there - and abandoned - in which to hide said clue? And Michael sends a signal that ONLY Commander Ears would understand - if I’m sending a mayday - I’m sending one that 99% of the ship will understand - isn’t there a federation equivilant of SOS in the 32 and 1/2 century?
This is an episode that exemplified much of what is wrong in discovery - sure, we got ALOT of backstory for mal and loc - but, why do we care again? they are the bad guys, right? and of course they got away - I’m sure they’ll be back in just the nick of time to save the day with love or something.
Since it’s the second time loop episode they’ve done, I can’t say I agree that it was a fantastic idea.
I’m just going to give you the long answer because I have nothing better to do right now.
In the mirror universe 800 years ago, there was a battle between the usual evil mirror baddies and mirror reformers who wanted to change the mirror universe to be nicer like our universe. The mirror reformers lost and mirror Saru led some mirror reformers to use the mirror Enterprise to try to escape to our universe. The mirror Enterprise made it to our universe but got stuck in a wormhole, so the mirror reformers abandoned the mirror Enterprise in the wormhole and made it out to our universe where able to blend in with everybody else because they all shaved their goatees. One of the reformers from the mirror Enterprise would wind up becoming Dr. Cho, one of the group of scientists who later discovered all the stuff about the Progenitors tech (which is the Macguffin they are all after this season). The group of scientists knew that in the wrong hands the tech would destroy the universe (always a concern in this show) so they destroyed all evidence of it, wiped their own personal histories, and hid clues to the tech that could only be found if the searchers were pure of heart and did things like cry and whisper all the time, ie Burnham et al. So Dr. Cho, the mirror universe reformer living in our universe, decided to hide her clue wrapped in a wormhole inside the mirror Enterprise because it was a lesson to learn that even evil mirror people can chose to be good. Which sort of kills the entire evil mirror universe narrative that’s been so popular for nearly 60 years, but hey, sometimes you just gotta lie back and think of crying and whispering.
okay fine TL;DR
One of the scientists hiding the Progenitor clues originally came from the mirror universe to our universe via the mirror Enterprise so she knew it was available inside the wormhole to be a hidey hole for one of the clues.
I’m pretty sure that’s all mostly right, anyway.
I think it was because they couldn’t communicate directly through the wormhole aperture, so Burnham reconfoobleated the tractor beam to send out a repeating pattern that Commander Bat Boy would recognize as a reference from that book from his culture they were talking about earlier. In other words, not only did Burnham save the day with the code, she had to do it while also rubbing Commander Bat Boy’s face in her whole it’s-so-important-to-hug-love-and-understand-your-crew directive.
Of course not. There are no bad guys in Discovery, only people who haven’t been group hugged yet.
Didn’t Michael eat mirror Saru?
I think that’s what everyone thought at the time, but no that meal of Kelpien wasn’t made out of Saru, Michael picked one of the other Kelpien slaves.
I like the novel version of the Breen where they are a pseudo Federation of multiple different species that take equality to absurd lengths Harrison Burgeron style (thus they all wear those masked suits that hide all their features to be “equal”). It explains all the contradictory things we have learned about them. What’s nice is nothing we have seen in Discovery so far has necessarily contradicted this take yet.
What’s funny is they mentioned they were going to Tzenkathi space so I thought, “cool, we will finally see what those are like” (although the novels also have a fleshed out version of them too) and instead we got a look at a different species we never really saw before.
Any British fans of a certain age would have been expecting a Soup Dragon in this weeks episode.
Next week I expect Michael will take the parts of the Maguffin to a small shop run by a saggy old cloth cat. There a mechanical woodpecker will mansplain things to her before some mice mend and fix it.
I assume the mice used the whistling for more than the first few minutes and didn’t completely drop it, never to be used as a relevant plot point in any way, like with Discovery?
After a couple of the decent episodes, what a boring slog this one was.