Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

Yeeeah, but it's not the first time we've seen that from Georgiou (or however the fuck you spell it), and I just don't find it credible. I hate to reference Enterprise, but whoever choreographed the MACOs at least bothered with the pretense of practical combat instead of theatrical combat. I keep expecting them to put Michelle Yeoh on one of those counter-weighted wire pulleys so she can leap off walls and run along tree branches.

No more silly than the Klingons being so supposedly strong, and yet regular humans can usually kick their asses with ease. Or Kirk (well, or a blatantly obvious stunt double) inexplicably flipping a full 360 in the air fighting Kruge.

I will grant you the plot armor there, but "usually" overstates that. It depends on who the script needs to win. But I still say it's not asking too much that the win be more credible. And while Shatner vs Lloyd on a cheap soundstage isn't exactly a high bar physically, those two chewing scenery makes up for it in a way that the Disco Trek cast hasn't glimpsed on a good day.

Also, against my initial instincts, Linus is growing on me.

not too mention Bruce Lee wasn't exactly towering over anybody... a whole inch taller than Michelle Yeoh...

Bruce Lee was a brick shithouse, capable of delivering serious power at great speed. Not just performing movements that look good.

I'm more concerned that Space Hitler is getting Big Damn Hero scenes. For all the complaints about this show's wokeness, they literally have Hitler saving the heroes. It's a little disgusting.

Yeah. This is one of the real huge faults of the show. Again, why the fuck isn't she in the brig?!

Counterpoint: Star Trek is at it's best when the moral and ethical challenges the heroes face are actual challenges. Not that "always do the right thing because everything always works out in the end anyway" bullshit from Voyager and TNG, but the "everything will be so much easier when we let amoral fascist Garak do whatever he wants" reality of DS9. So yeah, Space Hitler should be cool and fun and witty and helpful in a crisis, and she should save the day now and then, and it should always be tempting to let her call the shots. Evil wouldn't exist if it wasn't so tempting.

Also, what has Georgiou done wrong that wasn't either forgiven or outright endorsed by Starfleet? Seems premature to lock her up at this point, if you're going by the rules.

The lengths people will go to defend this show are a little extreme.

Not nearly as extreme as those Georgiou will go to in order to defend the Federation.

I don't mind her being used as a tool, so long as they don't give her any authority.

Could the villain this week be any more mustache twirling? Talk about a western in space.

The swinging saloon doors were kind of a dead giveaway.

So we have Spectre of the Gun, A Fist Full of Datas, North Star, Far From Home, what else?

Firefly! The saloon stuff felt like an episode of Firefly. Serenity falls through an anomaly and has a rough landing on some mysterious moon. Acting captain Wash and Kaylee walk into town looking for replacement parts. YoSafBridge sneaks off the ship, follows them, and saves the day with violence. Mal shows up at the end to save the ship with his mysterious new buddy.

we should note that the bad guy used the same pigin corruption of "Federation" that Craft used in that Short Trek episode.

And the cowboy boots with jingling spur sound.

Why didn’t the bad guy confiscate their phasers?

Overconfidence makes people sloppy, and he'd been successfully intimidating the miners into submission for years.

I completely agree. But Georgiou is such a cartoonish extreme villain that I have a hard time accepting this as a real moral dilemma. You're right that Starfleet's behaviour makes it hard to just put her in the brig, but it is Starfleet's behaviour that I find inexplicable.

So you admit that you have committed uncountable crimes against whole sentient populations?

Yes, and I enjoyed it!

Do you have anything to say in your own defence?

I love crushing the skulls of innocent babies!

I see. Well, we should lock you away for life, but I have a petition here from Section 31 -- you probably don't know who that is --

No, I'm fine. Everyone knows who Section 31 is.

Oh. Right. Anyway, they suggest you can be rehabilitated if you swear allegiance to the protection of the Federation. Are you willing to do that?

I will betray your values, your interests and your future at every opportunity! Muahahaha!

Good enough for me. Jury?

There is no jury anymore. I have ate them. See their blood dripping from my hands? See the gleam in my mad, mad eyes?

We better put you in a command position over your parole officers, I suppose.

She’s the Jurati of this series.

It's almost as though it were a wagon train to the stars.

It’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?

Yeah, what's next? An episode about racism where characters are black on one side and white on the other?

point of order... she's more like space Hirohito.

would the UFP have jurisdiction to charge her with crimes committed in an alternate universe?

If the federation really believed in the prime directive, they should have been bending over backwards to apologize for unintentionally aiding the coup that ended her reign.

But yeah, I can't see any legal justification for charging her for anything she did in the MU. Not only were all of her actions likely legal by Terran standards, but Michael can attest that everyone in the empire is in danger of being assassinated at the first sign of weakness. Even the Emperor can't escape that pressure.

Hey, remember when Sisko raped MU Jadzia while pretending to be the Sisko from her universe, and somehow he didn't spend the rest of the series in prison?

If, however, Attila the Hun suddenly appeared in the 21st Century, I don’t think a developed nation like the US would tap him to be a military advisor, even if he offered them effective strategies for dealing with a hostile threat. At most, they might pick his brains on what he would do as the enemy, but I can’t see them handing him command of military forces.

How many monsters has the US armed and supported in order to use against it's enemies over the last century? Giving temporary command of one ship to Georgiou in order to destroy the Klingon homeworld (when you know most Starfleet captains wouldn't go through with it) is a lot less crazy than arming Saddam or Bin Laden or ISIS.

Not really. Because at most, you’re dealing with small-scale genocide, and in the case of the ex-Nazis that the US brought over after WWII, they weren’t given command of large military forces.

Additionally, the Federation is supposed to be far better than 21st Century governments.