Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

oh and by the way, Wilson Cruz absolutely killed it in this episode IMO

Define what’s at Trek’s core and I think there might be a m a meaningful discussion there. I know what I think it is and there’s an argument to be made that NuTrek doesn’t address what’s at Trek’s core. Though I will concede that this latest episode captured Trek’s core quite well.

S3 has been excellent so far. That last one gets a thumbs down, unfortunately. While I did like the themes of stress and trauma on the crew, I really loathed two things:

- showing the Trill as yet another mysticistic and backwards culture. Dax and other Trill never stroke me like they came from such a backwards, intolerant people and as such, this was IMHO just wasted time.
- I disliked how they forcefully dragged those two LBGTQ characters into the spotlight. YES we get it, the actors/actress (how in the hell do you solve that pronoun thing in English?!) are trans (something I understand and accept) and non-binary (something I think of as being very, very self important and nothing else but I'm probably wrong). Yes they were sweet but just too much and on the nose.

Let me explain before you start hating on me. It is a trend to put LBGTQ characters in many films and almost every new series there is. I'm extremely pleased with that because it's real social progress and a huge boost for acceptance. However, it does not work when it's elevated, put on a pedestal with blinking lights on it and red markings LOOK HERE! GAY!!11!! Makes it feel very forced and tacked on.

It does work when it's just the most normal thing in the world; because it is. STD does it perfectly with Stamets and Very Hot Doctor Whose Name I Keep Forgetting. So, they are lovers. Big whoop now gimme the next space battle. Pretty sure even conservative viewers see it in a similar manner because I have not read any complaints. That's how it should be. Normal.

Unfortunately I feel that last episode was in the didn't work category. For me, that is. Likely that LBGTQ folks have a very different opinion.

I think isolationism is going to be a recurring theme... a couple hundred years without visiting even the people on your street will turn any man into a Castle, let alone a (mono)culture.

Any insertion of characters past LGB is more about language than visiblity at this point. What's called gender fluid now is simply more specific than "androgynous" 30 years ago, but for all practical external perceptions, might as well be the same thing. That they've chosen the Trill as the vehicle for this kind of makes sense given the symbionts experience multiple existences... (also, pretty sure simply "actor" is appropriate unless individually specified. de facto feminine forms seem to be on the way out.)

A. I think it is fairly safe to say that Dax was unusual for a Trill.

B. From what I remember, the few glances we got of Trill culture in the time of DS9, it was pretty backwards and intolerant. We saw that they had the taboo against Trills reassociating with their former lovers/people in their former lives. (Granted, the episode didn't bother to address why it was OK for Kurzon and Jadzia to hang with Sisko, or why Ezri could return to DS9 and reassociate with everyone Jadzia did). We saw that the Trill government was foisting a major lie about who could host symbionts.

C. It is 800 years in the future from when we last saw Trill, and it went through a major loss with the Burn. Assuming for discussion's sake that Trill had been a forward and tolerant culture, it's perfectly understandable that undergoing a widespread trauma could have reversed the culture's course. Earth has gone from being the place that was the heart of the Federation and a place that explores and embraces just about everyone in the galaxy in the hopes of peace to a milatristic, isolationist society that isn't even willing to dialogue with people in their own solar system. Trill could have similarly devolved.

Eh, that's unfair. We only saw a few members of modern Trill society, and I got the impression they were all high ranking members of the symbiosis commission, who were already weird secretive creeps back in the 24th century.

We shouldn't just Trill society soley on them any more than we should judge Vulcan society as a whole after watching Amok Time.

Lately, from what I'm seeing, they are kind of retiring the -ess suffix and they are all actors (or Comedians or whatever) without the gendered modifier.

The people in the Discovery forum generally believe the show is beyond criticism. I thought it was a decent episode. Great effects and a compelling A plot. The B plot, meh. Stamets is a douchebag. I did like Detmer's freakout at the dinner.

Episodes with the big tragic emotional cores tend to be considered the best of Trek. Kirk letting Edith Keeler die to save humanity, Picard having a mental breakdown in front of his brother, Picard living an entire lifetime and raising a family in half an hour, an elderly Jake Sisko committing suicide to save his father, or the Doctor having to watch his holographic daughter die, those are generally regarded as high points for their respective series.

(Trip and T'pol watching their child die because medical science says Vulcan/human hybrids are "impossible" might be on the list too, I don't think about Enterprise that much.)

Hey, yeah, how did they not know Vulcan/humans hybrids were possible if they met Lorian?
'Member that?
Their descendant from the future?
Phlox even scanned his DNA.

Yeah, season 3 has been great... so far. A lot of momentum until the fourth episode, which felt like the equivalent of slamming on the brakes to watch a fender bender in the opposite lane.

"Forget Me Not" just didn't work for me. It was like those filler episodes TNG would throw in every now and then to save on the SFX budget.

I give this episode three out of four yawns.

The only upside was seeing the split-second shot of David Cronenberg in the preview for the next episode!

Those episodes work because because you're invested in the characters.

Not so with the latest episode of Discovery. We just met these two boring assholes.

lol-ironically, they shot a pretty good wad on SFX this ep I'd imagine.
between the hard set for the spawning/joining pools and the CGI subconscious dive, set builders et al had some stuff to do.

but yeah... they could've dragged the remnant persona reveal out over a few episodes instead and given us a more engaging B story

9 episodes to go.
They'll crack your veneer, and make you cry too.
They've got enough shots in the clip to pull it off.
You're gonna rust, Tinman.

Dilithium blowing up could have killed a lot of them if they were on ships at warp, maybe.

Yeah, it's definitely relying on our knowledge of how Trill hosts should be. In this case I think barely knowing the protagonist works, since she barely knows herself at that point.

It's best not to think about the whole dilithium going boom thing, or think too much about it.

Most, but not all of the dilithium went boom. But this would be dilithium in active warp cores, this was established with on screen dialogue. So any dilithium that was not being used in an active warp core would still be around. Then Booker, when he saw the dilithium stored aboard Discovery said that it was enough for a dozen sectors. So unless all or most of the dilithium had been mined by 3189, there should be enough to allow for remaing hips to have enough dilithium to power their warp sores. And if Discovery has enough for a dozen sectors, then warp engines would use less dilithium as warp technology continues to advance.

Not only that, but Daniels from Enterprise was able to travel where ever and when ever he needed. It was stated that time travel tech was outlawed, but instead of traveling back in times years or decades, or even forward. hey should be able to travel forward in time a few seconds, or maybe less than a second, but not only a few seconds or less, but any where they want.

But even completely and totally banning time travel tech, the Romulans use artificial quantum singularities to power their warp drive. And it's been said that Romulan ships don't use anti-matter for their power source. So that would make the dilithium problem not an issue. Plus the Federation would have had almost 800 years to improve and refine the tech that the Borg assimilated from the Skarians, the spatial trajector has a range of 40,000 light years, more than enough to travel almost anywhere in the galaxy within 2 jumps.

But enough nitpicking for now.

Random thought.

What century is Calypso set in?

If the last working shuttle is a thousand years old are we talking since date of manufacture or actual physical age? Because the latter makes a fuck of a lot more sense.

It was never said on screen when Calypso takes place. It could take place in the 3180 - 3190's, or a thousand years later. We don't know when Discowey was abandoned or set adrift.

that's my point... I'm wondering if it's closer to the 4180s?

We just got the first hints of Zora asserting herself in this last episode.

Okay with all the discussion about the tardigrades and the mycelium network that we've been having lately (not to mention a few other things that have shown up in Trek over the years), something started rumbling around in the back of my head. It wasn't that there was an exact similarity to what's been happening in the series, but it was pretty close.

So, I hied myself over to a FB group I'm in that has a large number of former bookstore employees and described the book that I was thinking of that I had read all of this in it (or something similar to it). Turns out that the book I was thinking of is Home From the Shore by Gordon R. Dickson. For those of you unfamiliar with the novel (I haven't read the sequel, so no idea if it's any good or not. Anyways, the premise is that society on Earth (this is some time in the not too distant future, sorta) has basically split into two groups: the Landed and the Sea-Born. Basically, co-equal societies in terms of technology, but not in terms of culture. The Landed has a space program that is slightly farther along than our current one. They can fairly easily travel around our inner solar system, but interstellar travel is right out.

In the book, some of the Sea-Born join the space academy (to kind of act as bridges between the two cultures), and while on a mission near Mars, they encounter a space bat. These are giant creatures that are able to travel interstellar space, but no one knows how. Turns out that the Sea-Born have special abilities that come from living in the water for much of their lives that enables them to figure out how the space bats get around. Turns out that there's an "interstellar highway" that the space bats and the Sea-Born can see. If you hop on the highway, it shoots you around the universe really fast. How fast? The guy who does it the first time manages to make the roundtrip to another solar system and back, wearing only a spacesuit. The novel basically concludes with humanity gearing up to reach for the stars.

So, all you fuckers saying that they've been ripping off people, ya missed on.

to steal one idea is plagiarism
to steal many is research

Mostly satisfying episode today.
Shit load of fan servicing "connections" to the past. Most are fun and irrelevant, but the name of the medical hologram is going to be a hint of things to come, I'm sure.
A little irritated by what they leave behind at the end or at least how they leave it.

WTF is up with Phillipa? She just spent most of the episode locked up with David Cronenberg (talk about your 6 degrees of separation). Thinking they haven't quite killed CONTROL yet

My heart!

And yes, it's an

As it happens, I have read both Home From the Shore and The Space Swimmers and they're both excellent books. Then again Dickson is an exceptional author and I've never read anything by him that has disappointed.

Still rocking the trowel shape:

Speculation that makes sense to me is that they are setting up her exit from Discovery, and it's gonna turn out that she can't live in this universe in this time period for *reasons*.

Isn't she supposed to be in the Section 31 series? Maybe a way to get her from DSC to that series?

I have no interest in it if Clem Fandango is the lede, but I might check it out if Philippa is the main character.

Yeah, that makes sense actually.

Also, I can't quite remember the detail, but the bit about the music is a little close to what happened in BSG, is it not?

Pretty cool to see Oded Fehr in Star Trek. Been a fan of his since The Mummy.

It's amazing how much a little characterization can get you really invested in a the show. Commander Naan (sp?) has been a faceless member of the crew since she joined the show. Her statements about how much she missed her homeworld and her reactions to hearing her native language really touched me. As I'm watching it, I'm thinking "FINALLY!! A reason to care about someone other than the main characters!"


... and then they go and write her off the show.