sifth Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 (edited) On 7/25/2023 at 11:14 AM, Corvinus85 said: I don't know if it ever happened in that order, but last season of SNW we got the light-hearted, but emotional episode where the ship got turned into a magical kingdom and M'Benga's daughter joined an entity. Hemmer got to shine in that episode then in the following week we get an Alien-like episode and Hemmer died. Fortunately the season's finale was also suitably serious. Right, I nearly forgot about Hemmer's final two episodes. Man I really miss him. Edited July 26, 2023 by sifth Ser Scot A Ellison 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaxom 1974 Posted July 26, 2023 Share Posted July 26, 2023 How did I miss the Easter egg of the Jerry O'Connell cameo at the end as Ransom, declaring Una, "Numero Una, hottest first officer in Star Fleet"... Ser Scot A Ellison 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 If anyone needed a comparison between the SNW live action vs animated opening credits sequence: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 Well that was an extremely heavy episode coming on the back of the amusing crossover. Felt a lot like some of the Dominion War DS9 episodes. I'm not really looking forward to the musical episode next week because I don't like musicals, but as @sifth put it, ST is good when they alternate dark & serious with funny & lighthearted. sifth and Ser Scot A Ellison 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaxom 1974 Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 Somehow I didn't expect a new episode to drop today after the early release of the crossover episode... be back in a while... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted July 27, 2023 Author Share Posted July 27, 2023 Babs Olusanmokun is so good. He just has an amazing gravitas and sense of pathos. Nothing is overplayed… until it’s necessary. M’Benga is an amazing character. This whole season has been character exploration aftet character exploration. Spoiler Did M’Benga kill the Ambassador or did the Ambassador kill himself while M’Benga tried to stop him. I love that we don’t know and that M’Benga knows he’s broken. Corvinus85 and Spockydog 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 48 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: Babs Olusanmokun is so good. He just has an amazing gravitas and sense of pathos. Nothing is overplayed… until it’s necessary. M’Benga is an amazing character. This whole season has been character exploration aftet character exploration. Hide contents Did M’Benga kill the Ambassador or did the Ambassador kill himself while M’Benga tried to stop him. I love that we don’t know and that M’Benga knows he’s broken. Spoiler M'Benga for sure killed him. The ambiguous part is who initiated the fight, since that would exhonerate him or not. It is possible that Rah wanted to die and initiated a suicide by proxy, but nothing in the dialogue really suggested to me he wanted to die. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 Giving M'Benga Olusnamokun's real-world martial arts expertise (he's a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who competed and won a number of tournaments back in the day) was a cool move. The ending was great, with the Biobed immediately glitching. Robert Wisdom (Bunny Colvin!) as Dak'rah was good. Scot, Spoiler Rewatching it, I feel like there's a cut that shows M'Benga turning to reach for the blade. He probably meant to use it to force Rah to unhand him, but in the struggle Rah fell onto it. I don't believe Rah was intentionally committing suicide. Making M'Benga among the deadliest of the Federation's soldiers before he turned to medicine and healing definitely adds some deep conflict and layers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 Thinking more about this episode, there was some real world comparisons to be made here. And I liked the ambiguity of the answers it leaves us with by the end. Spoiler M'Benga's speech to the young soldier who then decides to fight again and ends up dying strikes home in our times with what's going in Ukraine. The ideals of the Federation are strongly and vividly challenged in this episode. Which is why I compared it to DS9 in my previous episode. The pain of wartime PTSD is well shown across the three different characters who experience it, with M'Benga being the main focus. And I loved the twist of the climax, revealing that M'Benga is the one the Klingons really called the Butcher of J'Gal. But did Pike and Chin-Riley not fight in the Klingon War? Do they not have experiences to share? Ser Scot A Ellison 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 4 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said: But did Pike and Chin-Riley not fight in the Klingon War? Do they not have experiences to share? They did not. Discovery established that the Enterprise was told to continue its exploration mission and was kept out of the fighting. Corvinus85 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 1 hour ago, Ran said: They did not. Discovery established that the Enterprise was told to continue its exploration mission and was kept out of the fighting. Thanks. To my defense, I pretty much blanched on season 2 of Discovery. Wouter 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted July 27, 2023 Author Share Posted July 27, 2023 33 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said: Thanks. To my defense, I pretty much blanched on season 2 of Discovery. It’s better than Season 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 19 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: It’s better than Season 1 Only because of the Enterprise characters. Everything else is bad or even worse. That finale was terrible, with the silver lining of moving Discovery storyline in another time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted July 27, 2023 Author Share Posted July 27, 2023 23 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said: Only because of the Enterprise characters. Everything else is bad or even worse. That finale was terrible, with the silver lining of moving Discovery storyline in another time. I enjoyed it… and Season 3. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaxom 1974 Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 4 hours ago, Ran said: Giving M'Benga Olusnamokun's real-world martial arts expertise (he's a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who competed and won a number of tournaments back in the day) was a cool move. The ending was great, with the Biobed immediately glitching. Robert Wisdom (Bunny Colvin!) as Dak'rah was good. Scot, Hide contents Rewatching it, I feel like there's a cut that shows M'Benga turning to reach for the blade. He probably meant to use it to force Rah to unhand him, but in the struggle Rah fell onto it. I don't believe Rah was intentionally committing suicide. Making M'Benga among the deadliest of the Federation's soldiers before he turned to medicine and healing definitely adds some deep conflict and layers. Spoiler Honestly, incase expecting some sort of reveal that M'Benga wasn't actually a doctor...silly, I know, but they never call him, "Doctor", only Joseph as he's revealed to Chapel. And with his apparent Black Ops experience...I almost expected a Section 31 call out... Honestly, this also put his storyline with his daughter last season into a new light... 3 hours ago, Ran said: They did not. Discovery established that the Enterprise was told to continue its exploration mission and was kept out of the fighting. As someone who could never warmed to Discovery, thus not seen more than the first fifteen minutes or so of the first episode, what is the timeline here? How long prior to SNW are we talking with regards to the Klingon War? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 31 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said: Reveal hidden contents Honestly, incase expecting some sort of reveal that M'Benga wasn't actually a doctor...silly, I know, but they never call him, "Doctor", only Joseph as he's revealed to Chapel. And with his apparent Black Ops experience...I almost expected a Section 31 call out... Honestly, this also put his storyline with his daughter last season into a new light... As someone who could never warmed to Discovery, thus not seen more than the first fifteen minutes or so of the first episode, what is the timeline here? How long prior to SNW are we talking with regards to the Klingon War? The Federation-Klingon War takes place from 2256 to 2257. The first season of SNW is 2259, and this season is 2260. Jaxom 1974 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaxom 1974 Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 It's also ridiculous, as it was during the Dominion War, that the Enterprise, supposedly the Flagship of the Fleet, isn't part of the war... Wouter 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted July 27, 2023 Share Posted July 27, 2023 37 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said: It's also ridiculous, as it was during the Dominion War, that the Enterprise, supposedly the Flagship of the Fleet, isn't part of the war... The reasoning explained in the Discovery episode was that the ship was very far away at the edges of explored space and would have taken too long to get back to get involved in the fighting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rippounet Posted July 28, 2023 Share Posted July 28, 2023 Fantastic crossover episode. I didn't want to have unreasonable expectations, but they really delivered, from beginning (opening sequence) to end (animated sequence). Also loved that they pointed out that they speak much faster in Lower Decks. By contrast, the latest episode was... hum, not exactly bad, but a bit troubling imho. Exploring war trauma and forgiveness was certainly interesting, and Olusnamokun's acting was fantastic. I just can't get on board with the way the war and Klingons are depicted, and even less so with the framing of the moral aspects here. Spoiler - From the beginning, the idea of a Klingon defector turned Federation ambassador felt odd (too soon in the chronology imho), and his personality even more so. We've seen many types of Klingons before, but this special mix of cowardness and vanity feels very... human. Even the Duras sisters had something slightly bestial/alien about them. - For some reason I can't quite buy that the Federation would have these kind of primitive battles "on the ground" so to speak. I mean, I can get that they happen here and there, but a protracted battle in some place just doesn't compute for me given the technology both sides have. Or perhaps it's the laser bombardments that just looked silly... - M'Benga is just way too good a warrior for a human. He's basically ST Jason Bourne at this point... And of course, most importantly... - Putting M'Benga's revenge and Pike's morality on equal footing isn't what I expect from Star Trek. While I can accept that some people may "deserve" to die in our imperfect world, I expect better from my utopian science-fiction future. Dak'Rah may have been a bastard, but he was correct to point out he was working to atone, and Pike was correct to point out that personal revenge is not justice. M'Benga may have extenuating circumstances, but he still committed murder, or at the very least, manslaughter. Given Dak'Rah's diplomatic importance there's just no way M'Benga should get away with this. Either he was in control and he is responsible for Dak'Rah's death, or if you believe PTSD was truly "responsible," he's not reliable enough to remain Enterprise's CMO. I assume M'Benga will get arrested in the finale, and the crew will have to find a way to get him back at the beginning of the next season... But it's going to require one hell of a redemption arc to go back to utopian morality here. Also - How in hell would the Klingons negotiate anything through a defector? I understand why Dak'Rah defected: he was a coward and couldn't face the consequences of running away at J'Gal. And perhaps claiming he'd killed his own men was enough to earn some trust from the Federation. But from the Klingons? No way. The Klingons I know would rather negotiate with humans than with a dishonored defector. No way he should be able to present himself as "son of Ra'Ul" or everything Worf went through in TNG makes no sense. In the end, while the episode was well-made, the writing was mediocre imho. It would have been much much better if someone (either Christine or La'an) had stopped M'Benga from killing Dak'Rah. M'Benga would have been in a tough spot, but redeemable, while the truth about the "butcher" would have pushed the Federation to reconsider its positions on war crimes (Dak'Rah's, but also possibly M'Benga's). We'd have been left with a reflection on the horrors of war and how difficult it is to move on from them ; instead, I feel the episode condones personal revenge and/or vigilante/superhero justice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sifth Posted July 28, 2023 Share Posted July 28, 2023 The episode had Robert Wisdom playing a Klingon; easily one of my favorite Wire actors. This very possibly makes it my favorite episode of the season, granted there are still two more episodes. Just one question. I don't understand the very last scene with M'Benga fixing the sick bed, only for it to glitch and basically break again. Ser Scot A Ellison 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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