Star Trek: Keeping Up With the Cardassians

[Werthead]

11 minutes ago, RumHam said:

There was a USS Nog also, apparently. I didn't see it. 

Here. It's an Eisenberg-class vessel (sobs).

The distortion effect around the Federation HQ is also apparently based on the static warp bubble effect from ST:TNG's Remember Me, which is a real deep dive.

[Poobah]

Overall another good episode. It does seem like the show is finally finding its feet.

Spoiler

The magical music melody thing is pretty eyeroll though. Seems like this is our "arc words" for this season, presumably everyone's hearing an orchestral version of All Along The Watchtower and they'll all turn out to be Cylons.

[DaveSumm]

I pictured Discovery bumbling about by itself this season, so it’s cool that we have a proper Starfleet set-up, getting sent on proper missions and what not. Everyone seemed a little nonchalant about Discovery turning up, space travel being a huge concern and this miracle ship that can go anywhere instantly ... you’d think they’d be more impressed? Also, an episode where we get to find out about one of the crew! Yay! Can’t wait to see more ooohhhhh wait she’s gone. They Airiamed us again.

Also why was it completely out the question to beam the guys family aboard and take them back? Don’t they have better medical capabilities?

[Denvek]

10 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Also why was it completely out the question to beam the guys family aboard and take them back? Don’t they have better medical capabilities?

They were already dead and he just hadn't accepted it yet.

[Ran]

Liked this episode somewhat better than the previous. The nerd in me does want to learn a bit about the areas where Starfleet ships are more advanced than Discovery -- there really ought to be some massive changes.

I have only a vague recollection of this from Voyager, but how does the whole timetravel / Temporal Treaty thing work with the episodes featuring Captin Braxton and his timeship(s) from the 29th century? Or does it not work at all? I didn't really watch Enterprise long enough to make sense of how the Temporal Cold War and the timetravel stuff mentioned there fit with those Voyager episodes.

[DaveSumm]

16 minutes ago, Denvek said:

They were already dead and he just hadn't accepted it yet.

But from his point of view I mean, wouldn’t he have wanted that? To go with them and not be left alone to come up with a cure? 

The whole premise just seemed a little odd, Michael seemed entirely confident that this ship would still exist and the admiral is all “oh yea, that, it’s five months away parked in this exact spot”. Really? After 930 years? They didn’t move them aboard a better equipped ship? Duplicate them? Store their replication patterns?

1 minute ago, Ran said:

I have only a vague recollection of this from Voyager, but how does the whole timetravel / Temporal Treaty thing work with the episodes featuring Captin Braxton and his timeship(s) from the 29th century? Or does it not work at all? I didn't really watch Enterprise long enough to make sense of how the Temporal Cold War and the timetravel stuff mentioned there fit with those Voyager episodes.

I think it goes time ships - Cold War - ban. So Braxton was from a time where they had time ships and just casually fixed stuff, then it got out of hand and there was the temporal Cold War, then when that ended they banned time travel. Seems a bit much to accuse some 22nd century travel as being a ‘crime’, but still.

[RumHam]

3 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Also, an episode where we get to find out about one of the crew! Yay! Can’t wait to see more ooohhhhh wait she’s gone. They Airiamed us again.

I think she'll be back. They promoted her to a regular this season and we got the "I hope our paths cross again" line. But yeah it was annoying to lose one of the better defined and likeable characters who isn't Burnham or Saru. 

Adria's been around for like three episodes and I already feel like I have a better grasp on who the character is than any of the other bridge officers. (I get that Dentmer has PTSD but who was she before that? no idea.)

[felice]

4 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

But from his point of view I mean, wouldn’t he have wanted that? To go with them and not be left alone to come up with a cure? 

I think he wanted to be left to die with them at the end, because family is super-important to his people.

4 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

The whole premise just seemed a little odd, Michael seemed entirely confident that this ship would still exist and the admiral is all “oh yea, that, it’s five months away parked in this exact spot”. Really? After 930 years? They didn’t move them aboard a better equipped ship? Duplicate them? Store their replication patterns?

I doubt it's the same physical ship, just the same name and function. Memory Alpha says it's the NCC-1067-M, and presumably the one Michael knew was the plain old NCC-1067. It's inherently a long-term project, so not unreasonable for her to hope it's still around. I don't think replicators can manage viable life forms, even in the 32nd century.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

I think she'll be back. They promoted her to a regular this season and we got the "I hope our paths cross again" line. But yeah it was annoying to lose one of the better defined and likeable characters who isn't Burnham or Saru. 

Adria's been around for like three episodes and I already feel like I have a better grasp on who the character is than any of the other bridge officers. (I get that Dentmer has PTSD but who was she before that? no idea.)

It did occur to me that this is casualty of the shorter seasons. In the old days you have 26 episodes a season and maybe 7 regulars, so each character could have between 2 and 3 episodes almost dedicated to them each year and they'd get plenty of development, but when you only have 13-15 episodes plus a much more serialised storyline, you have to choose your focus much more carefully.

I think it just falls back to this idea that we've been programmed to expect the bridge crew to be critically important and all of them having tons of backstory and set up and focus, and in Discovery's case it's not really true (or in Lower Decks for that matter).

[RumHam]

7 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

The whole premise just seemed a little odd, Michael seemed entirely confident that this ship would still exist and the admiral is all “oh yea, that, it’s five months away parked in this exact spot”. Really? After 930 years? They didn’t move them aboard a better equipped ship? Duplicate them? Store their replication patterns?

This is such a good point. Like why not have Adria or one of the non-discovery people mention "if only we could get to that seed vault but it's too far away." I like Michael but they need to stop using her as the solution to everything. 

And yeah given all the dangers of space you'd think they'd have the seeds on a planet or not all in one place. 

[sifth]

Wait, so I was reading online that they made blinking fast an easy way to turn off holograms in Star Trek this week on Discovery. If that's the case this is easily the dumbest thing the show has done and that's saying something. Someone really should have told that to Picard when Moriarty was causing trouble, let alone whenever the holodeck was going nuts for the other crews we've followed over the years, lol

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, sifth said:

Wait, so I was reading online that they made blinking fast an easy way to turn off holograms in Star Trek this week on Discovery. If that's the case this is easily the dumbest thing the show as done and that says something. Someone really should have told that to Picard when Moriarty was causing trouble, let alone whenever the holodeck was going nuts for the other crews we've followed over the years, lol

I totally forgot about that, indeed, it was dumb as fuck. I almost thought it was a nod to Kirk era logic, ‘confuse the computer to make it explode’. 

[sifth]

24 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

I totally forgot about that, indeed, it was dumb as fuck. I almost thought it was a nod to Kirk era logic, ‘confuse the computer to make it explode’. 

I'm just picturing in my head the Doc from Voyager trying to treat someone having a seizure and constantly getting turned off now, lol

[Ran]

Yeah, the blinking thing was idiotic. If she had said it was some sort of backdoor Section 31 code that she guessed was still hidden away in 31st century programming, it would have worked better.

They really do some super cheesy stuff. Not good-cheesy, lazy-cheesy.

[DaveSumm]

It comes under the general complaint of “I don’t think you quite realise what an obscenely long time 930 years is”. They have to give Georgiou that air of superiority regardless of the company she’s in, so she has to outsmart them. It would’ve been a bizarre flaw for a hologram to have in their own era, let alone now. 

By rights, the only response any of the crew should have is that they have no clue at all what’s going on and are totally at the mercy of people and technology from the era. But then that’s always been a thing with Star Trek, we’ve probably seen more technological development in real life in the last 100 years than the Star Trek universe sees between Enterprise and Discovery Season 3. Ultimately the ships just get better, but they’re still based on the same principles.

[Red Tiger]

They could have simply said "Technology developed differently in the Mirror universe. Our holograms were more advanced and there were bugs we couldn't get out. I gambled that yours had the same issue."

[Lightning Lord]

I think I'm in the camp of "mostly enjoyed these episodes." There was a crew, doing crew things, which makes me happy. There was exploration and new(ish) worlds. Not everything made sense, blink-blink, but most of it was good.

Positivity:

Spoiler

 

I thought the admiral was acting very reasonably. They were, admittedly, still in triage. So he shouldn't trust them implicitly. There should be concerns and debriefing and a need to establish boundaries. Furthermore, they are acting like a cowboy crew - they're been allowed to sort of call their own shots for the entire run (a bit less with Pike than Lorca, but still). That was a good dynamic to explore.

Georgiou felt a bit more like the menacing character in this last episode. I am not certain why, but she had been feeling a little too much like the ship's token badass, but very much of the crew. I find her more entertaining and engaging when she's more aloof and threateningly different.

Reckon they'll outfit the Discovery with a bit of new tech? That could be really cool. Even hint at some things that exist, but weren't compatible for 930 year difference? There's a lot to explore there.

Stamets being a jackass deserved that telling-off. Glad you had to face the music. That whole dinner scene was enjoyable. I loved the random haikuing - reminded me of the off-the-cuff blather that close-knit groups get onto from time to time. It made a lot of sense to sort of let that all explode, though.

 

Negativity:

Spoiler

Minus a billion stars for: Michael being the solution to the Trill issue for no reason. Just "whelp, the solution is Michael, of course." Which was followed by a different crewmember having some development, only for two characters pointing out that Michael hadn't been the most important being in the universe and answer to all problems yet this episode. Enter Michael being more effective at reaching out to Attis (sp?) than one of his own people AND for Nhan to turn to Michael and tell her that her words were so important and powerful. I kept telling myself to let it go, let it go.... but it's hard. Again: it's not the actor, who is doing really good work.

I am also trying to reflect and determine if this was so often the case on DS9 or TNG. I don't want to rose-tint my Trekking. Thoughts? Is this just captains/commanders being capmanders and I am being too cynical?

Are we going to get a new crew member, to bridge the gap between then and now? That would be fun.

[Werthead]

49 minutes ago, Lightning Lord said:

I am also trying to reflect and determine if this was so often the case on DS9 or TNG. I don't want to rose-tint my Trekking. Thoughts? Is this just captains/commanders being capmanders and I am being too cynical?

To a certain degree. There were multitudes of episodes where an alien race was doing some kind of culturally-ingrained bullshit for thousands of years and then Kirk/Picard/Janeway (Sisko and Archer a fair bit less) show up and give the aliens a stern talking to in a firm voice and everything is then fine forever. Picard is much more obviously "perfect" in TNG (apart from a vanishingly few occasions) than any of the new characters.

It'd be a bit like if an alien spaceship showed up in orbit tomorrow, spent three days here and the commanding officer told the UN how to fix Earth's problems in a British accent and then flew off, never to be seen again, and then magically it would have just happened with no argument or disagreements ever.

DS9 - as usual - was a lot better with that and showed via Bajor how a Starfleet officer, even one given religious significance by their priests, could come up with solutions to problems and they would just find a way of ignoring him or ended up in a hard-fought, negotiated settlement taking weeks or months to sort out.

[sifth]

12 minutes ago, Werthead said:

To a certain degree. There were multitudes of episodes where an alien race was doing some kind of culturally-ingrained bullshit for thousands of years and then Kirk/Picard/Janeway (Sisko and Archer a fair bit less) show up and give the aliens a stern talking to in a firm voice and everything is then fine forever. Picard is much more obviously "perfect" in TNG (apart from a vanishingly few occasions) than any of the new characters.

Yea, TOS had an episode where Kirk read the deceleration of independence to an alien people, one time. Picard too, like Who Watches the Watchers, where he had to convince an entire race of people that he and the people of the Federation weren't gods.

To be honest, I much prefer the latter story, to the former.

I think there was a B'Elanna episode of Voyager as well, where she convinces a primitive alien race that war is wrong, by helping a man making a play about the crew of Voyager using diplomacy to solve a problem, in place of violence. I really liked this episode as well.

[Poobah]

1 hour ago, Lightning Lord said:

I am also trying to reflect and determine if this was so often the case on DS9 or TNG. I don't want to rose-tint my Trekking. Thoughts? Is this just captains/commanders being capmanders and I am being too cynical?

In my recollection it was pretty common, especially with Picard, but it feels a lot more... on the nose? with Michael, and the smaller number of episodes only increases the density. I think it's part of a wider issue that others have been discussing in this thread where it really doesn't feel like a crew/ensemble, it's the Michael and friends show, I mean they pretty much hit the nail on the head in the second episode when Saru

Spoiler

offered Michael the captaincy, he might as well have said "You're clearly the protagonist, it seems like it'd make more sense for you to be captain."