Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

I just watched "Red Directive."

I tend to like Star Trek when it's a little more on the "talky" side and a little less on the action-adventure side, so my reaction to the first 80% of the episode was "OK, this is fun, it's a perfectly fine piece of entertainment, but it feels a little empty." I also think there was a lot of potential in the whole "putting the Federation back together after the Burn" concept that hasn't been fully explored — certainly not in the same way that, for instance, DS9 explored the arc of Bajor's recovery from the Cardassian occupation.

However, picking up on the thread of

is fucking awesome.

Has an on-screen explanation ever been given for how Discovery knows there's nothing currently in the space they're spore-jumping to? Not big things like planets, because presumably the computer can calculate the position of known astronomical objects at any given time, but things like other ships. This occurred to me when Discovery jumped in right next to Federation HQ ... whose location is presumably also predictable, but the same can't be said of other ships. Are they able to essentially "scan" their destination through the mycelial network before jumping?

I agree, the talky bits of Star Trek is what I like. DSC just doesn’t have that. I have more thoughts on that, but I don’t have time right now.

The person in the cubicle gets a Spidey-sense.
The spore network kind of works like The Force.

if I really wanted to bitch about this show (apart from stupid technical gripes like the vast empty spaces the trubolift moved through in Season One) it's that they had basically the perfect premise when they got past the "Burn" story. One unique ship jumping around the quadrant trying to pull the Federation back together. And they just...didn't do it.

Again, you don’t really care about this subject, you just want to be a jerk to people who do.

Holy shit Tilly is even more annoying than I remember. Are they seriously building a new Starfleet Academy series around her?

Random thoughts:

Absolutely bonkers action pieces for one episode of Trek, but they were fun.

Definitely agree with @tafkats that it's pretty cool they picked up on an old TNG story.

On the fence about Captain Raynor and the two bandits. I did like Fred, though. Shame that was it for him.

Still hate the detached nacelles.

"Let's fly" is horrific and forced and needs to be expunged from the Trek lexicon.

Still don't like the direction this series has taken and think they've wasted a unique opportunity, but I'm curious as to how they're going to pursue the old TNG story

I'd say the reverse. There is no real reason why with futuristic capacities they couldn't make a gazillion spore-drive operated ships within the world they set up, so it would have been unrealistic for them to have not churned out as many spore drives as they could. They would have changed things so that the future was a lot more desperate or imposed some other reason, ethical or otherwise, to explain why at least a couple more ships weren't equipped with spore drives.

I agree that Tilly was super annoying.
I too liked Fred. I have a feeling he might not be dead.

I also predict that at the end they end up back in the 23rd century.

They literally just shut it down in the first episode. The hitch was always not having proper navigators until that dude last season came up with the one for Book's ship. But for a time it was established that there was a problem with only having one navigator (Stammets) and that's all the story crutch they need to set up the "magical ship" concept I was referring to.

Not bad at all. The first few episodes each season are usually pretty good, IMHO. Let’s hope that they can avoid the mid season lull this show has suffered each time.
As much as I want to, I have to admit that I just don’t care too much for any of the characters on this show. It amazes me that when this show started, I thought Staments was a huge asshole and way too pretentious to be likeable but now he’s one of the better characters.
I’m also pretty sure that at some point this season, they will power up Fred to get some info out of him.

No way… they’d have to pull some sort of “Section 31” crap to explain how and why Disco evaded history.

Well, we still don’t know who Kovich is. I think he is Section 31 and he seems to outrank Admiral Vance so….

I'll bet there are going to be a lot of unanswered questions once this series finishes.

Well, enough for Starfleet Academy to play with. anyway.

meh-just claim they were on a deep space mission or zap'em back to roughly whenever they left the 23rd with the red angel mission being considered "successful". The only person who'd really need to stay behind in the future to keep the story (and canon) clear is Burnham.

Yes I think Mikey will stay with Book.

I stand by my post that this is by far the best way to end the series:

Nope, the whole point was to take Discovery past the point where Control could get the sphere data (which is now integrated into the ship). You'd have to zap them back without the ship to avoid that, but the fiction was intended to stop any remnants of Control ever knowing that Disco survived and where it went. Once it knows there are survivors, it could do the totally not-Borg Assimilation thing to extract that info from them.

Then it's a question of whether it can replicate the Red Angel tech (Stamets and Reno know the schematics) or otherwise time-travel to Disco's new time period.

honestly, the only series that no longer fits canon is TOS

hopefully to be rectified after SNW runs out of 'in universe' time.

I mean, Paul Wesley would be about 45, thus relieving us of the JTK is a wunderkind and therefore captain of the flagship conceit.

And frankly, I'd enjoy seeing Space Seed reimagined after T&T&T.

La'an knew not to kill her ancestor in the past, but how does she react to him in the "present"?

A lot of TOS eps could do with a do-over with the groundwork being laid down in SNW.

hmmm... yeah, the whole thing is kinda fucked because 23rd or 32nd century, if they're stable in time, Control should be able to catch up.
They kinda muffed the whole "staying 15 minutes into the future" thing.

Completely disagree.

The amount of times Trek has fucked with the space-time continuum gives the franchise a pretty easy pass on continuity errors. ("Oh, that happened differently because of that time we went back to 1986 to save some whales. Or that time we went back and hitched a ride on the very first human warp vessel.")

Hell, some of the best Trek films took place in an alternate timeline.

I don't have much time for nerds who get hung up on "canon" or "continuity", especially when my own Trek head canon completely ignores the events of Enterprise.

The chunk that cuts out of the timeline reads "a long road, getting from there to here..".

Films would be a somewhat separate thing, especially after 1987, when worrying about the "grand canon". Fixed events and all that...

What I wanna see is some of the relevant 45% of good(ish) TOS episodes align with our current continuity. Better everything from visuals to dialogue wouldn't hurt.

Just to connect and close the gaps, like Pelia being from the same people as Flint or La'an feeling an obligation to Kahn at the end of a new Space seed.

A big "hell no" to all of the above. TOS already got its upgrade in 2008 with the remasters. Doesn't need to be tinkered with any more. This ain't George Lucas' Star Wars.

it looks prettier... well, less community theatre sets, at least. But the dialogue, acting techniques, and inconsistent plotting? I'm willing to give revisitings a thought based on the alternative Balance of Terror.

I'm still going with my head-canon that if the log tapes fall into enemy hands, AI slaps a crappy-tech skin on everything to hide their true capabilities.
Thus, TOS really looks like SNW.

IOW, you're saying the entire Star Trek franchise needs to be remade?

My understanding was that without access to the sphere data and no idea where and when it was taken, Control is absolutely completely 100% eliminated without a trace by the 32nd century in every possible timeline, so Discovery travelled that far ahead in order to run out the clock, and the people left behind covered up the truth about when they went so Control wouldn't try to wait them out.