Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

Please stop it with the goddamn spoiler tags. They're fucking annoying.

It says [SPOILERS] right there in the actual thread title.

If my theory is right, I don't want it spoiled ahead of time.
The spoiler in the title is for past spoilers, not future ones.

It's better that Burnham is not Number One. It gives her more freedom to do what she needs to do without being tied down too tightly with the command structure. She can go off on "science" missions to investigate the Burn.

I'm just curious as hell to see who will take over as Number One.

What's dumb to me is that the Federation hasn't replicated the fuck out of the spore drive by the time of this episode. They have the specs, they have Stamets, and they have even more advanced tech than we are used to plus presumably equally brilliant scientists and engineers. Anything that is needed to create or make it is (presumably) either already in their possession or accessible through Discovery and their other ships, and spreading/perfecting that tech would give the Federation a major advantage.

The black box will turn out to be important because plot. The writers can dictate that the box will in fact be a key clue to solving the Burn. But there was every chance from the perspective of the characters that 1. the black box couldn't be found, or if found, it couldn't be brought back 2. the black box was unreadable or unremarkable for the purposes of determining the cause of the Burn. But more importantly, the notion that the scheme succeeded probably shouldn't justify that Burnham disobeyed direct orders. Yes there's a long tradition of Trek people disobeying orders and not really getting punished for it. But demoted to merely science officer is technically better than Burnham deserves. Anyway, I think it is an interesting exploration, of the battle in Burnham's ethics between the ends-justify-the-means morality of Space Hitler mommy and the Starfleet-protocol-says mindset of Captain daddy.

go ya one further that it's the Burn-ham... i.e.: her mom or her that caused it in the near future by going to that past.

When Saru had the little heart to heart with Tilley, I thought she was about to get promoted to Lt.
And this may bite them in the ass as nobody else has been shown ad capable or important enough to the story to be XO yet. WHoever gets the job might as well be chosen at random.

A bit so-so. Too much filler, as someone said.

The next one is Unificiation Part III. And that's followed closely by "Terra Firma", a 2-parter. Going by the name and what's been happening to Georgiou, I'd speculate that that's about the Mirror universe (also something something Section 31) and probably where she makes her exit.

Oh cool, Space Hitler gets a whole two parter! At least DS9 still called out Dukat on his bullshit when he was a freedom fighter. She's practically a good guy at this point.

And can you ever imagine the DSC writers spitting out something like "Yeah, what kind of people, Damar?" That's still a gutpunch scene 20 years later.

Discovery is all flash, no substance. I'm about ready to give up on it entirely. But I'm afraid it might make Burnham cry.

!!!
Combine it!
Burnham's mom ended up in a dark future nightmare world where Section 31-Federation has conquered the galaxy.
She goes back, and causes the burn to slow them down.
Then Michael's job is to finish the job, and make the Federation good again, and restore FTL with spore drive.

....or, it'll be something completely out of left field, like the May Ahearn clone in the mycelial plane missed Tilly so much, she had a cosmic tantrum, or something.

It's crazy. TNG had Picard saving humanity on a cosmic scale, and it didn't feel half as ridiculous as the 'Burnham saves the Federation/all life in the universe/the future' Discovery season plots. Maybe because the whole point was Picard never did it alone. That he would have failed in AGT without all the iterations of his crew. Or maybe it's because PS can actually act, and SMG cannot. I don't know. But I have no doubt Burnham will be the savior once again in S3, and S4, etc. Rinse and repeat. Blah.

Yep, Burnham built the spore drive all by herself.
Oh, wait, that was Stamets.
No, wait, even he had help from Tilly, and that dead friend of his.
Well, she built the time suit by herself though.
No, that was her parents, and the power source for the second one was built by princess whatsherface, and Pike got the time crystal.
And Spock and the Talosians helped solve the Red Angel thing so that she even knew it was a time suit.
And Saru helped figure out Spock was framed by holograms so they could even get that far along.
Huh.
Guess the whole crew helps Burnham.
How about that.

Oh, good Lord. Burnham has enough defenders from the show writers and the characters. The fans don't need to jump in.

Granted, Saru, Pike, Tyler, and of course the super cool and glorious Space Hitler got some character development and some relevance to the plot. But the main plots always hinge on one character and one character only--"acted" by a person who very clearly cannot carry the load.

To me, the whole show can be encapsulated by Tilly gushing over how wonderful Burnham is in "Scavengers" even as Burnham fucks Saru six ways from Sunday--and then condescendingly gives him her approval for demoting her! Get over yourself, Michael.

All flash, no substance. Even ENT wasn't this bad.

You've got a point here. Season two was full of awesome, but the fourth episode of this season went completely sideways and I have a real problem with this latest episode and how it depicted the crew's actions and motivations.

I still have high hopes for season three, but I'm starting to see a lot of problems on the horizon.

Bite your tongue.

Um...I thought I was defending the other characters.


Funny how you have to trample them to get to Burnham, and think you're doing a good thing.

Fair enough. Sorry if I'm a little hostile. But I'm more sorry for even remotely praising ENT.

I lost a cat to the cancer this week, I'm entitled.

Of all the souls I've encountered in my travels, hers was the most likely to pee on my stuff.

Fuck cancer even when it takes humans, it needs to leave our furballs alone. Friend posted on FB today that she lost her terrier Magnus (aka MagWags) a few weeks back to it.


Am giving my pets extra cuddles tonight.

They’re clearly trying to be like DS9, but unlike DS9, they don’t have the writing chops, they won’t make “the burn” plot line a multiple season arc like they did with the Dominion war and they clearly don’t put much thought or world building and character development into it beyond unearned emotional beats and action sequences. They are more focused on wokeness which flys in the face of the diversity of actors that they have assembled and when given something to actually do, they I.e. the actors pull of some really amazing acting. Furthermore, when they aren’t focused on Burnham, the show comes of as genuine and feels more in the spirit of Star Trek that has potential to be equal to TOS, TNG and DS9. Unfortunately, the writers or the producers don’t seem to realize any of that or don’t care.

Yes I hated that scene,”you’re doing the right thing Suru.” Thank you Michael for giving me permission to punish you with the lightest of punishments when you should be in the brig for thirty days.

Posted by a friend on FB after she watched this episode

that was actually one of the better character moments... Tilley saying she would've done the same and Saru telling her that no, he didn't believe she would have. Congratualtions, the protege has surpassed the mentor....

My prediction:
They somehow get back to nearly their own time, but it's the JJverse:TNG
I haven't thoroughly thought it out but Laurence Fishbourne for Sisko and Jim Parsons as DATA

The fuck does that even mean?

Yeah, it struck me this morning that Burnham is more like a depowered Seven of Nine than anything else. She's better off outside the chain of command. (Book is a Neelix you don't want to strangle.)

Not-Ariam seems like the obvious contender.

I liked the reflection shots of Georgiou.

A little on the nose, but I'm sucker for that kind of stuff.

FFS... they were trying to show her taking responsiblity and accepting consequences.

You REALLY have a problem with women...

My bet is the Ivanova looking chick from the future... err... now. After all these shenanigans the admiral is going to want someone he trusts in the chain of command.

Klantube means it as "women and blacks aren't being subservient enough, and I'm getting scared".
FF can't see through the dog-whistles, so I can only imagine what he thinks it means.

I'm honestly surprised Discovery didn't get another new captain this year. From the previews I was totally expecting it to be Book.

Saru is a good guy and all, but he'd only been Lorca's first officer for a few months, and Starfleet didn't consider him captain material at the end of the first season. I'm not really sure that serving under Pike for a few weeks(?) changes that.

To clarify, I disagree with the 'taking responsibility and accepting consequences' part. I don't know if TGOCH has any issues with women. I hope not. I don't think I really do. I just think Burnham is a terribly written, terribly acted character and that scene came off as incredibly condescending. It really undermined Saru's captaincy.

IMHO, the scene would have been absolutely saved if he had said, "Thank you, Michael, but I don't need your approval," and walked away. That would have been the best way to chasten Burnham in the eyes of the viewers.

But the show doesn't really want to do that.

I guess that was the problem... once they jumped, he was the most senior officer other than Burnham. It had to be one of them and even she was quick to point out that it was better that he remained in command.
Still, not unreasonable to have the future SF assign a new captain. Just it may be hard to write believable conflicts that'd cause with the crew and still tell the story they intend.