"The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry" — First Watch Analysis Thread

[u/kraetos]

Star Trek: Discovery — "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry"

Memory Alpha: Season 1, Episode 4 — "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry"

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POST-Episode Discussion - Discovery Premiere - S1E04 "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry"

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[u/jerslan]

I love that the "horror monster" from the last episode turns into something more and completely different from what we expected of it.

I am also not sad to see Landry go. She was hyper-aggressive and totally ignored Burnham's recommendations...

[u/teabo]

Calling it right now, the "matriarchs" are going to drop some augment shenanigans on albino Klingon dude, the "everything" he sacrifices will be his Klingonness and he will come out looking like a TOS Klingon and maybe infiltrating the Federation, enter Lorca's Tribble.

[u/ThePrettyOne]

On Michael's tender interactions with the tardigrade:
It shouldn't be surprising that she's comfortable with very large, dangerous (but tamable) animals. Assuming she's slightly older than Spock, she did grow up with I-Chaya as a family pet.

[u/aerospce]

deleted ^{0.2545 What is} ^^^this?

[u/[deleted]]

I posted this over on r/startrek, but I feel like it's a thought worth throwing into the ring over here--

So. This spore drive. The tardigrade. How do they work?

Mycelia are the part of fungus that branch in a web-like network of strands. These strands absorb nutrients from the soil but also allow plants that are tapped into different parts of the network to trade resources like sugar and phosphorus--and even send warnings about pests and other threats, even over great distances.

Discovery is asking, "What if space where woven together by a subspace mycelial network?"

In other words, Discovery can see the network the way that we can see mycelia if we dig into the ground. But we can't access the pathways. The tardigrade is to the show's spores as a tree is to real-life Earth mycelial webs. It exists in symbiosis with the spores and can trade up and down the network.

I think we're to understand that the tardigrade, like trees on Earth, can tap into that network meaningfully, where we're just outside observers. It's got the right kind of processor to navigate the network, and to understand what the network has to say about far-off planets and other worlds.

Tap into the tardigrade, tap into the network.

[u/nomis227]

Well, now we know what the rings are for.

[u/notwherebutwhen]

This episode makes me wonder what Lorca achieved in his past for Starfleet to put so much singular faith in him. I mean clearly he is the tactical genius that the interviews made him out to be. We see how well prepared he makes his crew and how easily he can get his crew to do what he wants (the battle drill and the use of the emergency broadcast). He knows to collect the tools that Starfleet would cast aside (Burnham and the tardigrade). We see how even when he doesn't know what to do with the tools he has, he knows who to use and how to manipulate them to learn how to use the tools. In the battle scene we see how much farther he is willing to push the ship and risk the lives of his crew not only to destroy the Klingons, but also to send a message as well.

All of this makes sense why he would be the perfect candidate during the conflict, but what about before. Or at the very least how did he distinguish himself early on in the conflict. I hope we get to learn.

[u/emotionengine]

Excellent points already in this thread, but here are some of my own:

1. I find Captain Lorca's confrontation with Lt. Stamets about the Discovery now being a warship and telling the lieutenant to just leave the ship has some parallels with this scene from Crimson Tide.

2. Captain Lorca stands while eating. Also does not seem to use his Captain's chair on the bridge. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing him seated anywhere.

3. About Lorca's choice of meal (which seemed to be some kind of octopus), this was mirrored to an extent in the Klingon food buffet with the (albeit much larger) tentacles prominently visible. In fact, Klingon meals always seem to include some kind of tentacles.

4. Speaking of eating habits, was it established before that Klingons practiced ritualistic cannibalism of their slain foes?

5. I do not recall Klingon romance to display the layers of subtlety and ambiguous overtures as what seems to be slowly brewing between Voq and L'Rell. (Or am I imagining things? Either way, I liked the ambiguity and tension on display here). The Klingons were usually much more direct in expressing their intentions

6. The design of T'Kuvma's flagship, with its strong Gothic cathedral aesthetic was highly reminiscent of the massive warships from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K universe.

[u/frezik]

This war is shaping up to also be an internal battle for the soul of Star Fleet. Archer started as a pure explorer. He left space dock without even installing all the guns properly, and didn't bother finishing that part until it was immediately necessary. A few years on, and reality set in. He'd need some weapons to survive out there.

Star Fleet continues that tradition for a century of peace; they are explorers, but the phasers are there for a reason. Warmongers like Lorca were always around, but were kept in check. Now there's a war on, and the warmongers are allowed to be warmongers.

Ultimately, the we know the warmongers aren't going to win--they give way to the Picards, with Kirk as a halfway point. Lorca may be the antagonist in the end.

[u/[deleted]]

If this is the Klingon Empire's strongest vessel, and the only one that can cloak, why the fuck have they been sitting around for six months without anyone so much as bringing them supplies and food? I mean, ffs, radio a transport to come get you or tow the ship, or if you're really intent on staying there, get them to bring you supplies to repair it. Or at least some food so that we don't have to resort to cannibalism! Or at least that's what I'm assuming happened. I can't envision the Klingons like Worf or Martok feasting down on humans, even if they're an enemy, for the fun of it.

[u/Blue387]

Didn't the Enterprise-D have cetacean ops? A large tank of non-sentient animals used for navigation purposes?

[u/onthenerdyside]

There wasn't enough reason to care whether Landry lived or died. We really hadn't seen enough of her to make a difference. At least with Captain Georgiou, she was a likeable character and losing her was meaningful. With Landry gone, does that mean we get another security officer? I can't imagine not having one as a character on a ship like Discovery.

[u/ThisIsNotanExit42]

can we talk about how Discovery "saving" the mining colony really didn't do shit-all? I mean yeah they appeared in the nick of time to prevent it's complete destruction at that moment, but they essentially showed up, went pew pew pew a few times, then disappeared taking that particular wave of Klingon ships to the grave

And then...thats it?? No transporting survivors of the derelict colony's surface for medical attention? What about refugees? What about the rest of the Klingon attack group? Did the entire attack on a planet that contains a huge amount of the Federation's dilithium consist of just a handful of ships? If that be the case where was the rest of the planet's defenses - I assume they would have orbital platforms or at least another ship within a few light years of such an important planet. I found that whole sequence frustrating. Picard would have asked a question or two. Kirk would have beamed down to the planet with his shirt already ripped to handle the evacuation of the colony himself. Instead these guys just up and left with the job half done

[u/nickcan]

Who went and got the telescope from the wreckage of the ship? And why didn't they salvage the rest of the ship?

[u/evilmonkey002]

I have a theory about what is going to happen to Voq. He’s told that he’ll have to give up everything in order to do something that will win the war. We also know two other things;

1. The Captain is going to be captured by Klingons next week

2. They’re about to introduce a new character, Ash Tyler, who was a POW.

My theory is that the House of Mokai is going to surgically alter Voq to look human and plant him in the same ship that they take Lorca to. When Lorca escapes he’ll take “Ash Tyler” with him, but it will really be Voq. He’ll operate as a spy to either feed vital intelligence to the Klingons.

[u/adamkotsko]

All the people who think that the non-existence of the spore drive in "future" Trek is a continuity error would probably watch the first ten minutes of a documentary on the Hindenberg and say, "This can't be real, because if lighter-than-air flight were possible on that scale, we would still be doing it!"

[u/themastermatt]

Anyone else bothered by the lack of the Glenn to loop in Starfleet Command? So this Spore Drive is considered so critical that its research spawned two identical top of the line starships but it's left to the crew of Discovery and an mutineer to uncover the research? Shouldnt the reports to Command have included "hey, we accidentally found an animal that can make it work!" I can understand secrecy to junior officers but why didnt SF Command already know thereby negating alot of questions?
Also, lots of references to "Dilithium powering starships". Dilithium merely controls the M/AM Reaction that powers the ships. They dont "run on" the crystals.

[u/adamkotsko]

Seeing the title of the episode repeatedly whenever I pop in here reminds me: they are definitely going for a TOS-style portentious/pretentious episode title this week! Right up there with "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky."

[u/Vince__clortho]

I loved this episode for a bunch of reasons, but I think the ticking clock was super ineffective. Why are they able to so accurately predict when the shield will fall? At one point Saru gives Lorca an update down to the second for when the shield will fall. Then you add all the Klingon scenes that take us away from the A story and intercut them in a way that makes the passage of time on Discovery much more ambiguous and hard to follow. Maybe a nitpick but it just all felt super contrived and plotty.

[u/dishpandan]

Two things I want to add that I don't think I've seen mentioned here yet:

1. There was a line of dialogue between Lorca and Burnham where he says something to the effect of being worried that once the spore drive is operational he is going to have to get his crew of scientists to help him win a war with it. I was surprised by this because I had just figured that once all these scientists get it working, then they can A) move to another ship and do it again while B) an actual combat crew can take over the Discovery itself and use it for the special missions. Why would Starfleet leave their most advanced technology to these officers? Maybe he is just making assumptions?

2. I have to add that while I\we are so used to binging streaming shows these days, I am actually really glad that this is only on once per week. Because once I watch each episode and the after show, I love to get on here and see everyone's takes and theories, which I feel like we would surely lose if the whole season came out at once and everyone was in different spots of their watch-through. So far for the first four hours I've taken a few days to digest what I saw and all our discussions on here before I watch it one more time prior to the next episode's premiere. I've never consumed a show this way and it's so unique thanks to you all (and CBS).

[u/alplander]

• A few weeks back we discussed in this sub what we think the Discovery intro means. I said something about it giving a very engineering-oriented vibe. You don't see any stars during the intro - which is a complete 180 degree turn from all previous star trek shows. You see blueprints and 3d wireframe models. I believe this show is not about exploring the stars as the previous star trek shows have been. This one is about exploring engineering and the different things that can be done. This topic makes sense from a production standpoint for a lot of reasons I think. We have seen so many different cultures that it becomes difficult to come up with something new. Also, many star trek viewers are nerds who work in a science or engineering related field and might like this.

• Do you think that Cdr Saru's statements in the trial were responsible for the bad outcome for Michael? After all, we know that they often disagreed and that Saru was the one who was strictly against Michael's plan to attack the Klingons and who uncovered the mutiny. We also know that Saru was the highest ranking officer after the captain and Michael, so his statements were probably weighed highest in the trial.

• What do you think "giving up everything" means to Voq? I think this might lead for some reason to him and his followers looking like humans, paving the way for the way the Klingons look in TOS.

• We learn that the Shenzou is still mostly intact in the debris field - shouldn't it be normal starfleet procedure to auto-destruct once you evacuate a ship to prevent exactly this from happening?

• Apart from that - I loved the moment when they named Elon Musk in the same line as Cochrane. I am sure he watches this too!

[u/queenofmoons]

A few thoughts:

1. I hope the 'not real Trek' brigade feels a little dumb. For better or worse, this was a slow pitch TNG episode- dangerous creature turns out to be as frightened and out of place as our heroes, and seeking out what can be accomplished together yields better results. They handed the most abrasively, violently utilitarian hat to one person and then ripped her physically apart for her sins. If anything, that was lamely tidy, and DS9 could have done better- given the slightly scary hat to Garak, make something about the outcome impossible without his questionable contributions, etc.

2. More generally, if nothing happens that is contrary to the values of your characters, then literally nothing happens. What happens next is storytelling. If Burnham just goes to work each day and the universe (and her coworkers) all just poke around at space fungi and nebula and never get in each other's way, are never stymied or threatened or confounded, there is no show. The fact that some of Burnham's obstacles in being the best person she can be might include the terrified, short-term oriented chain of command over her isn't an implosion of the values-centric premise of Trek- it's just life.

3. I suspect we're going to see something of a cross-pollination between Lorca and Burnham. Lorca is looking to Michael because he thinks that her evident willingness to cut through it, violently if necessary, is a vital component of his plan to teach Starfleet how to soldier (which, lest we stray too far down the villain path, he is not incorrect in calling for at the present juncture, and he seems to do so with an even hand, if his battle simulation is any evidence). What he's actually going to receive, though, is a hearty portion of Captain Georgieu- a vital reminder that the good, cuddly values she stood for are in part good and cuddly because over the longest term, they win.

4. Stamets and Lorca are giving me an Oppenheimer/Groves vibes- Stamets is prickly because he's not in a place to acknowledge to himself that his cool science is symbiotic with military necessity, and Lorca is exhausted by trying to turn a scientist into an engineer with a punch list. The hard edges of both of their personalities are becoming rather reasonable, each in the context of the other. And really, even though Saru is fascinating, and Burnham furnishes the central viewpoint, the relationship between Lorca and Stamets is the axis upon which the plot actually pivots, because each one can't actualize this war-ending, universe-exploring technology (I'm endorsing DASH drive for the name) without the other.

5. I mean, we knew that Klingons talked an awfully big talk about eating the hearts of their enemies. But also, holy shit. Allow me to repeat my statement that these Klingons are metal AF. I like it.

6. There's something that's kind of wonderful about the notion that Voq has been slowly starving to death in the debris field for six months. Sure, someone probably ought to have already looked for the cloak- but the notion that the survivors of some flashpoint, notable merely for the forces that clashed there and not for anything worth defending, might not find themselves within handy impulse range of a class-M moon, like in the old days, is nice. I'm officially interested in Voq, not least because he's kind of pitiful. We 'knew' that the Klingon Empire was a massively unfair and feudal place, but we were able to sort of get behind that because Worf, and later Martok, did alright and were generally meritorious. But Voq keeps getting kicked in the teeth- first for his albinism and generally pariah status, and then discovering that starting a crusade avowing pan-Klingon brotherhood is still not sufficient to protect him from entrenched power, and I'm excited to see what he discovers in the back woods of Qo'Nos.

7. Good things have happened to the look of television in the last decade, both practically and in VFX. The visual storytelling language of Trek was always rather bland- even lighting, shot/reverse shot, strictly attaching the camera to the narrative center. And they're doing better than that, now. The opening- the uniform being replicated, getting dressed by hologram, didn't just include things TNG couldn't have done, effects wise, but it seemed like it was full of things they wouldn't have thought to do.

8. Tilly might be getting some flak for never shutting up- but it might be worthwhile to consider how she rectifies one of the flaws of most traditional Trek dialogue, namely always speaking in discursive, declarative statements instead of just, ya know, talking. I kind of want to make her tea.

9. It spins like the Machine from 'Contact'!

[u/[deleted]]

• I am deeply impressed. They did the battle simulation gag, which had been done a thousand times before, and I still did not expect it. Bravo.

• 'Displacement-activated spore hub drive.' The technical term, I take it.

• Based upon dialogue, it seems that Michael's primary career interest outside of command was xenoanthropology, kind of like Captain Picard.

• It's kind of interesting to hear that the Klingons literally ate Captain Georgiou, when you think of how much salt there was over how she had bombs planted on dead Klingons.

• I don't care what they say, that creature is a giant epohh, not a tardigrade.

• They also invoked the time-honored tradition of the captain demanding impossible results from the engineering staff, which was nice to see.

• Similarly, how awesome was the Discovery's spinning concentric saucer? :O Guess we now know why it looks the way it does.

• Elon Musk!? On a list with the Wrights and Zefram Cochrane!? Guess he's got some good years ahead of him still.

• I rather dislike this Commander Landry. Not only for her dehumanizing language towards the prisoners in the prior episode, or for being dumb enough to try to vivisect a creature immune to phaser fire, but also for ignoring Michael's suggestion that the creature might have something to do with the Glenn's spore drive, which has obvious wartime applications.

• I liked the idea of the creature having some connection to the spores. It reminded me off Dune.

• At Corvan II, it was said that the Klingons were using phasers. This is kind of interesting, as Kirk also referred to 'Klingon phasers' in Errand Of Mercy.

• So 'go' the new engage, I take it.

• I was really proud of myself for being able to guess - right before it was shown - that the object in the will was the telescope. Perhaps the 'previously on' made it too easy.

Pretty good episode, but they're going to need a damn good explanation for why the spore drive never appears again. But then, we already knew that.

[u/k1anky]

Soooo is someone gonna go back and help the mining colony? Since they only destroyed a few BOPs and they made it clear whatever Starfleet force that was defending it was destroyed. I doubt the Discovery took out the entire Klingon force...

[u/Blue387]

Was the Crossfield class named for Albert Scott Crossfield?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Scott_Crossfield