Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

I mean what it comes down to for me, however framed, is that if you present it as a problem that can/will be fixed, Weisman HAS to get into shape in a reasonable time frame - and if she can/intends to, great. But if you don't know that can happen and you write it into the script, you're introducing a problem that doesn't get solved which you'd think they wouldn't want to do.

I hope we're past the worst of the Rick Berman era where they tried making Geneviève Bujold wear a padded bra... but I wonder how much choice in the matter the producers would give an actor or actress in a series these days. It's certainly be on-brand for Discovery to have a plus sized (or just larger sized, I'm not an expert) main character running around kicking ass, especially now that Adira is filling the role of the easily flustered new kid working under Stamets.

If Thor can do the whole "I let myself go a little but I'm still worthy" thing, I don't see why Tilly can't as well.

Good news, Europeans! You're getting Discovery one week after us, not next year like before!
You still have to buy Paramount+ though.

https://www.darkhorizons.com/star-trek-discovery-global-release-moves-up/

Europe has already had two World Wars, haven't they suffered enough?

Or y'all could move to Canada and get it for free on our Sci-Fi channel.

BONUS: You also get free health care if you live in Canada.

My notes:
Whispers. Mikey's always whispering, nobody actually talks like that.

"What's this anomaly?" "Why did no-one see it coming?"

It's an anomaly.

Book is just allowed to do whatever on the ship and just walk into briefings. I get it, he's a guest of the captain, but is there no protocol on the ship?

No Tilly Saru didn't get get taller, you got bigger though.

Aaaaand the crying is back.

Is everyone a commander now? The only people who have pips are Turnham and Saru who are both ranks of Captain, but Saru is the first officer as well. Sure Spock was Captain while serving with Kirk, but that was a one off special mission. Everyone seems to have three stripes on their collar even Adira who's an ensign. And Mikey Spock is so special that Saru practically begs to be her first officer.

Picard reference.

Transitioning reference.

Holodeck.

This ship seriously needs a ship's counselor.

Have these people ever suffered any kind of loss or death or anything, ever?

I mostly like the "science" in this show except of course last week like Mikey surviving the vaccum of space without a helmet. Sorry, that just doesn't happen. I know The Exspanse did that too, but at least it was a little bit more believable and scientifically accurate.

I'm sorry, I've know a lot of people who have died, including my parents, you don't hallucinate people who have died. Yes, sometimes who think you see them in a crowd, but you don't straight up hallucinate them.
Private channel, but isn't Burnham on the bridge and isn't Staments on the ship with Book?

I like the idea of a binary black hole causing this, but it looks like this might be a life form which again makes me turn to V'Ger. Imagine V'Ger growing and expanding 1,000 years later, it would be huge.

I think Culber is the best character on the show.

I think they really are incorporating Tilly's weight gain into the plot. "Something feels off." Yeah Tilly, it's your weight gain.

I call bullshit on the whole Trill reincorperating their body thing. Why didn't they do that before? Androids have been around for a long time now. Kurzon could have done it prior to the events of DS9.

Everyone has to have an awkward/emotional conversation, nobody can be professional and they can barely hold back tears all of the time.

We've barely known Book's family yet we're supposed to be emotionally invested.

Those shuttle bay doors are still bloody open. Shut them already.

Collect your no-prize, @14thDoctor !!

C'mon man, I'm not off work for another hour

I was checking my phone for... business reasons.

My god Dicky, you really do take this shit too seriously, don't you? I can't imagine if you were a real writer, any amount of criticism would just destroy your fragile ego.

Stop rep whining.

Book can operate Discovery's spore drive, he's probably got higher clearance than half of Starfleet.

Are you trying to be WAB? Is that who you want to be?

Scotty was "captain of engineering" aboard the Excelsior, I'm pretty sure Kirk's entire senior staff was at least at commander level by TUC.

No disagreement there.

The universe cconsists of more than just your personal experiences. Could be something more meaningful, though.

He should absolutely be first officer.

Adira is human, a properly raised Trill would consider something like that blasphemy. We saw Jadzia temporarily transferring previous hosts into willing volunteers, and Ezri summoning one as a force ghost to help catch a serial killer, but other than that the symbionts are supposed to be sacred repositories of knowledge and history and hosts are supposed to be ensuring they receive a wide range of experiences. That's why joined Trill aren't supposed to get back together with their previous hosts romantic partners. (I'm guessing the symbiosis commission wasn't too thrilled about Dax's new host also being in Starfleet and almost immediately moving to DS9, but there wasn't much they could do about it.)

EDIT: If the symbiosis commission ever finds out about this, they're either going to be elated or out for Adira's blood. Probably both.

We saw more of Books family than we did of Picard's brother and nephew, whose death cast a massive shadow over an entire movie.

Okay, after actually watching it...

-It'd make sense if nearly everyone on the bridge was a commander or lieutenant commander. If Tilly got promoted at the end of last season, why couldn't everyone else?

-Called it, Tilly's not okay.

-Book was probably invited to that meeting as a representative of the planet that was just destroyed. (I'm not going to bother learning the spelling now that it's gone.) Honestly it's weirder that seemingly random starship captains were at a meeting with the Federation president and leaders of other semi-allied worlds. Isn't this something that Vance should be attending by himself as the primary Starfleet representative since Discovery is presenting it's findings right to the very top of the chain of command?

-Between Books hallucinations of his nephew and the anomaly having a creepy eye motif at the end, I'm willing to be whatever's in the middle of the anomaly is sentient, and it ends up speaking in the form of the kid. Or maybe it's some cosmic Katamari that absorbs souls, and the kid is a part of it now.

-Saru coming back as XO partially feels like the show not wanting to lose Doug Jones, but it also makes sense on a couple levels. First, if Saru does accept command of a different ship, he's going to want to take some of Discovery's crew with him, at the very least drag Tilly along to be his first officer again. His hanging out lets him evaluate the possible candidates and plant those seeds in their minds. But more importantly, I believe he's there to try to mentor and coach Michael from a less intimidating position. Try to give Michael orders when you're her actual boss, she's going to ignore you. Tell her what to do while phrasing it as a helpful suggestion from an underling, suddenly her shields are down and she's open to it. Kelpians were a prey species for the longest time, after spending some more time with them Saru surely understands the value of playing dead or pretending to be non-threatening.

-I don't mind the whispering. It's a power move in some instances, and a nice alternative to FORCEFUL SHAKESPEAREAN MONOLOGUING in others.

-Cone of silence! 32nd century Starfleet finally caught up to CONTROL!

-I hope the writers have thought through the likely fallout of shoving Gray into a synth body. Assuming the process means the "real" Gray gets pulled out of symbiont and into the android, that means Adira loses access to Grays memories and influence, and Gray loses access all of the memories and influence from all of Tal's previous hosts. When Jadzia had Dax briefly taken from her, it was mentally and emotionally devastating. Even losing access to Curzon's memories and influence temporarily threw her off.

-Okay, so Gray is/was/will be transgender in-universe as well. Fair enough. One one hand it'd be nice if minority actors were cast more often in roles that don't reference their minority status (I Think You Should Leave does this beautifully, IMHO), but on the other hand it's nice that Star Trek is ballsy enough to say "HEY, THIS DUDE IS TRANS, WE'RE NOT MAKING UP A CUTESY ALIEN METAPHOR FOR IT THIS TIME, DEAL WITH IT." Imagine DS9's Rejoined if the story had just been "Dax and some lady desperately want to make out, but tragically she's from the planet of the cranky homophobes."

-Ugh, that mole.

-So Discovery's bridge has a little science nook just off to the side now? Doesn't seem super necessary, but whatever.

-First officer Saru is already better than Captain Saru. Making sure to give Bryce credit for coming up with the mission-saving plan was a great bit of morale building and team boosting, as well as showing sticking it to the "Michael always saves everything all by herself with zero help" complainers.

-Picard references seemed a little heavy-handed, Culber doesn't usually offer up random trivia like that. At least they threw in an explanation for the process not being widespread for the benefit of folks with no imagination.

-Saru and the Vulcan president need to just bang already.

"Is everyone a commander now? The only people who have pips are Turnham and Saru who are both ranks of Captain, but Saru is the first officer as well. Sure Spock was Captain while serving with Kirk, but that was a one off special mission."

Lt. Commanders are routinely addressed as "Commander"

One presumes that there's probably not a full Commander among anyone we've seen other than Burnham and Saru.

NX-01 had a science nook, I liked it. I feel like DISCO always had that, but I’m not sure.

When TNG was on the air, Roddenberry said that things would be so complicated that everyone on the bridge would have a college degree and thus be an officer.

Not seeing the issue here.

What’s the point of the stripes on the collar then?

No issue, trying to figure out the ranking system, it seems inconsistent.

You’re just now noticing that? It’s been that way since TOS. And by “that way,” I mean inconsistent.

Look up the use of commodore in the US navy and compare it to TOS and you’ll start to get an idea.

I’m not just now noticing that, but you’d think that after fifty years they’d finally get it right.

I cheated and checked Memory Alpha. Detmer, Stamets, Culber, Owo, and Rhys were all lieutenant commanders as of the premiere. Bryce and Nilsson are still listed as lieutenants, which is weird since Nilsson was supposed to be second officer last time I checked. The only full commander on board appears to be Reno.

And then he let a child pilot the ship.

My one-word review of the second episode: Meh.

Did not live up to the promise of the first episode.

And it turned out one person could basically run the ship by giving the computer voice commands if they wanted to.

Random comments ...

1) In the scene between Burnham and Rillak at the end of "Kobayashi Maru," there were times when I almost felt like I was watching one of those classic Kirk-and-Bones conversations about the burdens of command.

2) Initially, I thought Vance came around to trusting Burnham a little too quickly. While he's far from being a TNG-style Asshole Admiral, he also doesn't seem like somebody who would trust other very easily, especially given the situation of the Federation he grew up in and served under. But it's been several months in-universe, so I don't mind assuming that most of that just happened offscreen between seasons.

3) Is Adira still the only 32nd-century native serving on Discovery? (Not counting Booker since he's not part of the crew.) Seems like it would be useful to have a bunch on board, both for "local knowledge" and for comfort level with modern tech. Plus, did Discovery jump into the future with a full crew complement? But maybe there are more and we just haven't seen them yet. Might be some interesting stories there.

4) Are there some technobabble reasons why having the ability to export Gray's consciousness into a brand-new android body doesn't make everyone in the universe functionally immortal? Not that Trek has never handwaved this kind of thing away before. (*cough* Pulaski in the transporter *cough*)

5) Gray's new corporeal existence is interesting. With Gray being the former host of the Tal symbiont, isn't Gray and Adira having a relationship sort of like ... each of them dating themselves? The Trill taboo against reassociation is really gonna take a beating with this one.

Pros:
* We finally get to see what happens when the grav plates stop working.
* The theme of loss, grief, and catharsis resonates with me right now.
* Mr. Saru

Cons:
* Wrestling ring flamethrower jets on the bridge still easily noticeable in the worst way.
* Galaxy destroying anomaly. Again.
* Too many emotional shortcuts, IMO, like Michael's speech before they went to black alert. Didn't like it.
* Too much reliance on holo this, and synth that. There comes a point where I can no longer connect to events because my brain tells me it will be solved by magic. Now, Star Trek has always been a mixture of fantasy and technology, but they've leaped so far ahead into the future that my brain finds dissonance between capability and ability when it comes to problem recognition and resolution. VOY had a bit of this trouble when it was on, DSC is doing it, too, but with a 600+ year technology jump. I'm having difficulty making those connections in the drama, and the story itself.

This one gets a 5/10 from me.

Lt. Christopher (the other black guy filling in for Bryce in the premiere) was never seen before that episode, so there's a decent chance he's new to the ship.

They mentioned that the consciousness transfers failed often enough that people just stopped trying. But who knows, that could easily be a cover story put out to avoid the long term consequences of no one ever dying again.

Permanently removing the consciousness of a previous host from a symbiont goes against the entire purpose of the joining process. I'm surprised Tal is so relaxed about it.

I like it, it's Power Rangers level silly.

This isn't destroying the galaxy, it's just destroying random planets and fucking up space stations. Like Galactus, or the Crystalline Entity, or even the Nexus that one time, or presumably plenty of other planet destroying doodads. But people will still panic...

Oh fuck, the anomaly is probably Covid 5948530548539 or something.

Yes, I think this could get problematic.

Gray's consciousness got downloaded into a brand-new android body, so why can't all the crew just back themselves up into a positronic matrix once a week so that if they die on an away mission, they can be recreated next time Discovery stops at a starbase? (Assuming the backups aren't in the 32nd-century version of the cloud, and the android body can just be created and populated with memories before Discovery even gets back? Tilly can back up her brain on Monday, it goes into the overnight transmission to HQ, she gets killed on Wednesday, and two weeks later there's a perfect copy of her sitting in spacedock ready to rejoin the crew, minus two days of memories?)

If Stamets can carry out a mission on Booker's ship as a hologram, why can't everyone do that 99% of the time? TNG started down this road with Geordi, but it was late in Season 7 so they didn't really have to deal with the implications, and there was also some handwaving about how Geordi's uniqueness made him better suited for it -- but couldn't any person, sighted or not, get VISOR implants if they wanted to?

Well, they could, but remember Geordi had essentially grown up with the VISOR and learnt to interpret its signals. As he told Picard when the latter was viewing a transmission of what the VISOR was seeing, he had to learn how to "filter out" a lot of the input. A developing brain likely took to that better than sticking it into an adult.

And let's also not forget Geordi had never had ANY form of vision prior to getting the VISOR. A sighted person getting one would have their normal sight gone and replaced with a visual frenzy they have to slowly pick up on how to interpret. You'd essentially be crippling yourself for a few weeks or months. And if the VISOR ever got knocked off, you'd flip back to normal vision and screw the whole process up. And Geordi used to HAVE to remove the VISOR for sleep...