Star Trek Discovery #3 [Spoilers] - It's A Wonderful Spock!

[SpaceChampion]

I kind of expect Airiam to be saved by the Red Angel later in the season, when whoever it is (Michael most likely) goes back in time to fix the timeline.  They've already proved their propensity to bring back characters or alternate universe versions of those characters from the dead.

[karaddin]

On 3/16/2019 at 3:53 AM, Corvinus said:

I agree. There was a lot of beauty in this episode, but also dumb stuff.

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I fear the show may have created a precedent here. Put a secondary character up front, give them a background, and then kill them off. I hope this doesn't happen. Airiam deserved more than just this one episode. We only just find out that she's basically a cyborg.

Also, I couldn't quite remember how Airiam got infected. I thought the probe that attacked Pike and Tyler did it, but if that's the case, how is a probe modified in the future connected to the AI running things in Section 31?

I wonder if Section 31 will be forced into obscurity due to the monumental mess they're responsible for, thus more aligning it to how it's perceived in the other Trek series.

And they should have beamed them back right away, not just after she was ejected. There was no talk of the station putting shields up to prevent it. I hated how the security chief got ignored while she was dying, appeared to be dying, and then there she is, to save the day. Cliche writing.

On the positive side, I now like Spock. We don't need another iteration of Spock who serves the same role as we've seen in other Treks (JJ verse included). I like seeing him in a different element, and the actor is doing a good job.

 

Do we need spoiler tags in here? I thought we didn't.

Spoiler

I agree that we needed more development with Airiam for that to truly hit home.

The probe did indeed infect her, I think the implication is a temporal paradox - the probe is modified by Future!Control to go back in time and bring the data from Discovery to Present!Control which allows it to turn into Future!Control. The data was possibly conveyed to it via a completely different route in the pre paradox loop that got things started, perhaps without all the Red Angel stuff going on Michael took it to the Section 31 in the first place (hence her being central). 

 

[DaveSumm]

On 3/15/2019 at 4:53 PM, Corvinus said:

On the positive side, I now like Spock. We don't need another iteration of Spock who serves the same role as we've seen in other Treks (JJ verse included). I like seeing him in a different element, and the actor is doing a good job.

Weirdly I realised I don’t like Spock in this episode. I know what they’re going for, we see Spock smiling back in The Cage times three years ago, so they figure he has an arc of gradually becoming less emotional. But much like the Klingon virus plot of Enterprise, it’s an answer to a question nobody asked. We all know they just hadn’t decided to give Klingons ridges, and they hadn’t decided to make Spock emotionless. So let’s all just move on. 

With every character who plays a Vulcan, the more credit I feel Nimoy deserves. On the face of it you wouldn’t think it would be that difficult to portray zero emotions, but I’ll be damned if everyone who came after him just doesn’t manage it. Aloof, condescension, arrogance, superiority, these are all emotions. I can’t help but look at Discovery’s Spock and think he’s ... a bit of a dick? Like, would you find him approachable if you had a problem? It’s probably unfair given what he’s going through, and they’ve obviously chosen to make him emotional. But I’m not seeing any of Nimoy’s character in him.

I seem to be rolling my eyes a lot at Discovery this series, Tilly’s “you have to fight it Airiam! Remember your friends!” ... seriously? That old trope? Forgivable if we’d known they were even friends more than 20 minutes ago. 

[Raksha 2014]

I am very much enjoying Anson Mount's performance as Captain Pike.  He can stay on as Discovery's captain forever as far as I'm concerned.  

New Young Spock is a bit too emotional for my taste; but he does have the excuse of being telepathically hounded by the Red Angel.  He's also very good-looking; the actor who plays him, Ethan Peck, is the grandson of Gregory Peck.

[SpaceChampion]

Okay, this is curious.

Airiam was played by Sara Mitich in season one (the actress also played Gia on The Expanse), but in season two the character is played by Hannah Cheesman (Lev on Defiance).

Lt. Nilsson is an ops officer from the shuttle bay (oversaw with the gravity thing that captured the dark matter fragment with Tilly)  that takes over the position on the bridge that Airiam held.  Nilsson is played by.. Sara Mitich.

So they wanted to keep the actress but just lose the costume?

[Ran]

Sounds right. She probably had a tough time with the prosthetics. There are people who've reported that the adhesives and materials used can trigger skin allergies and so on (John Rhys-Davies on LotR had a fairly permanent rash while filming).

[Corvinus85]

The plot line is now dangerously close to being wedged into a corner, if not already there.

Spoiler

The only explanation I can see why their ridiculous trapping of the RA worked is because the RA could not see up to that point in the timeline. She knew that Michael's life was on the line, and Spock forcing the issue was critical. Michael effectively died, and her physical condition was so bad that she probably could not have been saved by Discovery's medical personnel and machines, so the RA had to step in with the advanced tech. But the only reason this happened is because the RA, ie Michael's mom, is not going back to where/whenever. This is it for her. Because if she does, then should would have been aware of the trap, and simply intervened at an earlier point, and escape. But then again, maybe she wanted to be caught. If she wants to save the galaxy, she needed to do more than just hop around the galaxy, leaving mysterious signals. I hope they answer why she went back to the 21st century, and saved those people in the church and took them to New Eden.

Another annoying thing - the RA is Michael, 100% certain, the bio-metric signature is hers, and not a fake. So you could tell it wasn't a fake, but couldn't tell it wasn't a full exact match for Michael. smh

 

[SpaceChampion]

I don't see why the Red Angel would have to be just one person.  It's a suit.  Put it on whoever, including Michael, to do the mission required.  The bio-neural signature being Michael's and not her mom's can still be true.  When was the bio-neural signature data captured?  That's the only time it would have to be Michael.

[SpaceChampion]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Sounds right. She probably had a tough time with the prosthetics. There are people who've reported that the adhesives and materials used can trigger skin allergies and so on (John Rhys-Davies on LotR had a fairly permanent rash while filming).

That would explain why they went with Hanna Cheesman, known for playing Lev in Defiance under similar conditions for several seasons, I assume without a poor physiological reaction to it.

[Gertrude]

I did hear somewhere that Ariaim 1.0 was having a reaction to the prosthetics. Cool that they found a way to work with her.

Spoilers below, but I'm not tagging it because ... why are we spoilering in this thread?

 

I didn't mind this episode, but if I wanted to poke holes in it, it would be fairly easy to. I was wondering why they didn't address the issue of Micheal has to die, but RA Micheal has to be future Micheal, so she knows she has a back-up team and thus not really in true danger. They fudged it with Micheal being scared because who knows what will go wrong, but it bothered me that they didn't address it. OK, they wanted the surprise of Spock going rogue, but that really should have been addressed in the planning stages because it was annoying me the whole time.

And as I'm writing this, SpaceChampion has said the other thing I was thinking. The Red Angel is a suit, not a person. It can still be Burnham.

I like Tilly's quirks, but lately they are not letting her have any normal dialog without it being brimming with her personality. Balance her out. I did like her answer to 'who raised you?". I did not like Georgiou coming on to Stamets - that felt forced. I don't think Yoh's delivery matches what the writers want Georgiou to be.

[Corvinus85]

10 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

Spoilers below, but I'm not tagging it because ... why are we spoilering in this thread?

Since the thread title doesn't call out spoilers, I was trying to be considerate. Not everyone watches it at the same time.

Maybe @SpaceChampion can modify the thread title.

[SpaceChampion]

3 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Since the thread title doesn't call out spoilers, I was trying to be considerate. Not everyone watches it at the same time.

Maybe @SpaceChampion can modify the thread title.

Ha! hadn't even noticed i started the thread, and I was wondering why the OP wasn't modifying the thread title.

Now I can add a funny title.  Vote: 
1) It's a Wonderful Spock!

2) Every Plot A Time Loop Rings, A Red Angel Gets Its Wings!

[DaveSumm]

On 3/22/2019 at 3:21 PM, Gertrude said:

 I was wondering why they didn't address the issue of Micheal has to die, but RA Micheal has to be future Micheal, so she knows she has a back-up team and thus not really in true danger. They fudged it with Micheal being scared because who knows what will go wrong, but it bothered me that they didn't address it. OK, they wanted the surprise of Spock going rogue, but that really should have been addressed in the planning stages because it was annoying me the whole time.

This is a more charitable version of what I was gonna say. It bugged the crap out of me the whole episode. Did I completely miss WHY it’s so critical that they capture the Red Angel? They seem to have a pretty good understanding of all this; if it turned out to be Michael as they thought, she’d have complete knowledge of the time that they tried this plan and whether it worked or not. But doesn’t the Red Angel seem like she has things entirely in hand? She’s doing a way better job than anyone else, why trap her and stop her doing it?

And as you said, the plan doesn’t work if they have a back up plan for resuscitating her. The plan had to be to kill her all along, but they went with the ‘Spock goes rogue’ instead. So, bad plan to complete an unnecessary objective, where the stakes are the complete annihilation of all sentient life? OK.

On 3/22/2019 at 3:21 PM, Gertrude said:

I like Tilly's quirks, but lately they are not letting her have any normal dialog without it being brimming with her personality. Balance her out. I did like her answer to 'who raised you?"

Yea, they’re overemphasising the ‘nervous babbling’ stuff that she does every time she enters a room. It’s quite unprofessional a lot of the time.

[karaddin]

I've had my issues with the season being hit and miss, but one thing I'll say has really worked for me now is the sibling relationship between Michael and Spock. The snarky put downs are fantastic, particularly the deniable one from him about her emotional profile in this most recent one.

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

On ‎3‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 11:21 AM, Gertrude said:

 

I like Tilly's quirks, but lately they are not letting her have any normal dialog without it being brimming with her personality. Balance her out. I did like her answer to 'who raised you?". I did not like Georgiou coming on to Stamets - that felt forced. I don't think Yoh's delivery matches what the writers want Georgiou to be.

Tilly's quirks only really work if she had as much screen time as Reg Barclay. I always looked forward to seeing him because I recognized him in myself and the one or two episodes a year were special. So yeah, balancing her out might be a good idea.

 

My "issue" with that scene if you can even call it that is simple. I know descriptors like that are for the benefit of the viewer but would they be in use in the 23rd century?

[sifth]

3 hours ago, karaddin said:

I've had my issues with the season being hit and miss, but one thing I'll say has really worked for me now is the sibling relationship between Michael and Spock. The snarky put downs are fantastic, particularly the deniable one from him about her emotional profile in this most recent one.

So as someone who gave up on this show a month and a half ago, I have to ask this question. Are we ever given an in universe reason why neither Spock or the many members of his family we see ever mention Micheal outside of Discovery?

[Gertrude]

Not yet. Amanda is pissed at her, but Micheal and Spock seem to be getting on better now. I suppose the time travel might play some role, but it's not apparent if that's going to be the reason.

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, sifth said:

So as someone who gave up on this show a month and a half ago, I have to ask this question. Are we ever given an in universe reason why neither Spock or the many members of his family we see ever mention Micheal outside of Discovery?

The time travel aspects, and some of the more recent revelations bring the question as to whether this is even the same universe. It could be a different timeline.

[Toth]

Spock: I regard your behavior as illogical, father.

Sarek: Why is that so?

Spock: You say I am a failure and yet my siblings are an emotional cult leader who mind melds with everything that has legs, as well as an actual human jerkass with no impulse control. So how exactly am I too human?

[sifth]

53 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

The time travel aspects, and some of the more recent revelations bring the question as to whether this is even the same universe. It could be a different timeline.

Wait, so this is a third timeline we have here? I'm so confused with Trek these days.