Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

I'd pay cash money for someone to say "Shut up, Bird" to Saru.

Who would have such a a wild conversation though? Probably Saru since he’s overall worthless. You could burn his character to the ground and lose nothing.

Saru: hello Lieutenant Tilly. I notice you’ve gotten a bit large. Why are you so fat now?

Tilly: wow that’s rude and not very whole of you. First of all it was a transporter accident. And I’m fine with it. They’re trying to figure out why it happened but I accept myself for who I am so I’m not in a hurry to reverse it. This is the 31at century after all. Medical science has absolved us of the need to diet or exercise. Now we can all be fat without the horrible horrible consequences of our ancestors.

Saru: but no one will want to fuck you.

Tilly: true but we have sexdroids now who usually don’t care about body size.

Saru: but if your species so unattractive how will it reproduce and continue on?

Tilly: It won't, but we can always crossbreed with Pakleds or dumb Gorn to ensure the survival of at least some of genetic material. Diversity is good! Embrace diversity?

Saru: Or you could just eat less...

Tilly always seemed jealous that Stamets had some of the Tardigrade DNA in him, She wanted to be able to pilot Discovery using the Spore Drive. So she snuck into one of the labs where the Tardigrade DNA was stored. But she was in a hurry, worried that she would get caught. She accidentally grabbed the sample labeled Tribble DNA, went into sickbay, grabbed a hypospray, and injected herself. Now she can't stop eating, and is gaining mass, eventually she'll pop out a dozen or so little Tilly's and the process will repeat itself.

And they haven’t found a way to reverse it but it doesn’t matter since she’s body positive and being a space whale doesn’t matter in the 31st century.

I once chatted up a girl that mentioned she preferred the old classic Doctor Who... y'know, with Rose and the 9th Doctor.

I know this pain. My niece likes to listen to "classic rock." She let me tune in, and it was Creed.

Nothing about the way she looks now is incompatible with jogging and good nutrition.

So… that Federation President. Is she like half Cardassian or is this another revamp like they did the Klingons in S1 &2?

If this is a revamp, I can live with it. Not too radical where it makes no sense

Somebody said upthread that she has Bajoran, Cardassian and Human ancestry. Not sure if that's been confirmed by anyone on the production yet, but it makes sense.

If so, I think she would be the first character to have a mix of human ancestry with either of those species.

the scene with the cadets (and several others)... it's interesting to see how they worked around covid protocols when blocking.

I mean... WAB posted pictures showing the difference between the first season and the fourth season premiere. That weight fluctuation isn't generally the sort of body change you'd see from someone who's paying attention to their fitness and nutrition without something else happening. A female friend of mine that got really into weightlifting did gain a bunch of weight temporarily during a bulking/cutting cycle. but she was also very visibly muscular as hell.

Again, I recognize that the actress just had a baby and I'm not begrudging her that, but in-universe it's either something with an explanation or something the audience is just supposed to pretend they don't notice like Matthew Perry's weight gain (which we were supposed to ignore) or Portia de Rossi obviously getting work done between seasons of Arrested Development (which was unmentioned but still very much in character). Normal people in the 21st century that are concerned about their fitness don't gain that much weight for absolutely no reason, I can't imagine how someone in the 32nd century would do so, especially considering how advanced replicators must be. Zero calorie chocolate sundaes and negative calorie french fries must be a thing by then.

Imagine thinking chubby chasers are not a thing in the future.

Just because YOU don't find it attractive doesn't mean those dudes aren't out there everywhere.

You COULD write in an explination for it in the script, but you either have to say "yeah, because X you are fat now and there's nothing our science can do about it" or say "we have this shot we can give you and in six weeks it will all be fine"

The former publicly shames the actor, the latter puts pressure on her to get in shape NOW before we film those episodes.

Neither seems real-world practical, so that leaves just not discussing it and counting on the audience to recognize why you're not discussing it.

Yes. Paradise herself said so.

I was just going to politely ignore it like we were supposed to ignore Q and Data and The Doctor visibly aging until they added a line about Data having an aging subroutine, but that exchange on the space station makes me think it's being written into the show as a clue to some difficulty she's having finding her footing in the 32nd century.


*I'm a Doctor Who fan, when Patrick Troughton shows up decades older than he was in his last appearance and they tell us he's supposed to be slightly younger than the last time we saw him, we just roll with it.

I don’t follow.

I do remember a scene from an early TNG novel where Picard muses to himself that no one needs to be fat in the future thanks to replicators having adjustable calorie settings, but that some of the more vain Admirals intentionally gain weight because they think it projects maturity and authority.

Plus, people's bodies react in different ways to stress, and they've all spent a year living in a Crapsack World that's 900 years removed from where they're supposed to be.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/star-trek-discovery-importance-cardassian-160000503.html

Star Trek: Discovery | The Importance Of A Cardassian-Bajoran Starfleet President | Paramount+

Video not available in my region.

Do they clarify if the Cardassian/Bajoran ancestry is a result of occupation-era rape or a post-occupation consensual relationship? Not that it should matter too much to a descendant 800 years later, but still.

The video is a fairly rote recap of Bajoran-Cardassian relations in the 24th century, narrated by somebody who may or may not have ever actually watched Ds9.

Given that heredity and genetics in Star Trek boil down to "every interspecies child is an average of the parents' prosthetics," there's nothing in her appearance that says she has to have human ancestry ... she would be equally plausible as a Bajoran with one Cardassian great-grandparent. But it looks like Bajoran/Cardassian/Human is Word of God.

I'm not sure if her ancestry involving the rape of a Bajoran woman by a Cardassian soldier during the occupation would make sense. Bajoran/Cardassian hybrids from the occupation seem to be surprisingly rare; Ziyal never so much as mentions the existence of any others, and you'd think she would seek them out. Maybe forced abortions were standard practice for women in labor camps, and Dukat's rank was the only reason Naprem was able to carry to term? And then -- in the following 800 years, Rillak's ancestors would have to have bred in a way that preserved the facial characteristics of both races for several dozen generations ...

Seska's Kazon/Cardassian baby came out looking Human/Cardassian to the point that Seska was shocked when the Doctor mentioned it's actual genetic makeup.

People can make up whatever excuses they want for body image positivity, but being overweight is unhealthy. Period. The science on it is irrefutable.

So... basically the elephant in the room.

What does addressing it in the show add to the story?

Tell me more about the 32nd century science you're citing here.

If you haven't read the rest of the thread, I think they are addressing it by incorporating it into the plot, even if it's not directly commented on. I've also said I don't really care either way as a Doctor Who fan is used to overlooking fairly drastic physical changes in actors.