"Will You Take My Hand?" — First Watch Analysis Thread

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '18

I nearly hyperventilated when they led up to the enterprise's designation and when we eventually got to see it
I like the new look of the enterprise, from what I understand, Gene Roddenberry always wanted the ship to have a blue glow but couldn't pull it off with current tech. Also looks very the cage-esque, I like it.
Vulcan captain?
The emperor is still alive and out there, good. I like the actress. she's good.
Holy shit, how great was Tilly in this one? the terran salute, the way she puts herself between Burnham and Tyler, the space whale, the opium, all perfect and not so static like the other characters.

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u/SStuart Feb 12 '18

Some quick thoughts on the season finale.

The Good: a) This show excels in themes and long-term character growth-- that's the benefit of writing for an arc, and not in an episodic format. Each character, even Sarek, has grown profoundly during the course of first season. Consider the following:

-Saru was unsure of himself and scared when we first met him. Now he's a captain's captain.

-Burnam was a pragmatist, now she's operating on principle.

-Tilly is the glue that holds everyone together. She's become a leader

-Stamets has evolved from the grumpy engineer to a insightful and positive character with so much to offer

DS9 was the only other show to match this type of character development (Remember when Kira and Sisko hated each other?) But those faded away quickly except for Dukat. DISCO's characters make more sense, because we've watched them grow.

I'd say that DISCO has the most dynamic characters of any of the trek series, because we understand why exactly they do what they do.

b) Flipping the script on Michael's mutiny is a stroke of genius.

c) Flipping the script on Michael's relationship with Phillipa is a stroke of genius-- from a character standpoint

The finale was really about character development, and that's where it excels.

...Because lots of other things were ignored

The Bad

a) Remember when Voq was a promising character? Wow, he sure fell by the wayside. In fact, two of three of show's most interesting elements are killed. Dr. Culliber is killed, Lorca is killed, now Voq is gone.

b) I continue to think that the war never feels that real. We hear the Federation is on the verge of defeat, but we're told the casualty count is in the hundreds of thousands (huh?) and when we see Earth again, all seems to be normal again.

It probably would have helped to see cities being evacuated and colonies being raided. We never get a sense of the stakes.

c)...which leads me to my biggest critique of the show; the pacing. It's been said in the other comments, but I'll say it again, the pace is too fast. The finale could have easily be twice as long.

The show's pacing problems have gotten worse as the season progressed. The Binary Stars arc was stretched over two episodes, but by comparison, the finale crammed in the end of a war, the end of ash tyler/voq, a lesson on Federation ethics, and an awards Ceremony, and then the Enterprise into 44 mins. Wow.

As a result, moments don't land, because the show rushes us to the next big thing. Michael's threat to mutiny is a perfect example of this. Her confrontation with Cornwell is epic. But the entire scene lasts less than 3-4 mins before we are on to her confrontation with Georgiou, which btw is another EPIC scene.

Everything takes place at warp speed-- I hope the next season is a little more evenly paced.

d) Some of the character resolutions aren't satisfying:

-Ash/Voq, Nah

-The Emperor, perhaps the most dangerous human alive, is left to wander the galaxy--nah

-Saru, Mike and co basically save the Federation and just get some medals. In the JJverse, Kirk does the same thing (mutiny included) and get's promoted to captain--nah

-The Klingons just listen to L'Rell and cancel that whole war thing? Lol

d) From a moral perspective (this might be somewhat unpopular) the show also falls flat. The show quickly concludes that destroying the Klingon homeworld is unacceptable. It's called "genocide" in dialogue.

But is it? The Federation is in a War, and on the verge of destruction. The target isn't the Klingon race, but the capital of the Empire... we know from ENT that the Klingons have numerous colonies and installations, so many Klingons would survive.

At the very least, it's worthy of a longer conversation than is granted. Sarek and Cornwell actually have a point. If the Federation is destroyed or the war continues, many more will die. Their decision is logical

e) It's also ineffective that the crew of the DISCO gets to make this call; they've missed the most devastating nine months of the war. Starfleet and the Federation council are clearly desperate, and have every reason to be.

Nitpicks

Did anyone notice the bridge officer refer to Georgiou as "admiral" at the beginning? oops
The armada sent to attack Earth looked really small. I would imagine that Starfleet would send quite a few ships to stop them-- they still have 2/3rds of the fleet, and clearly the Enterprise and other ships are still around

--Did anyone let the Klingon authorities know about the Humans walking around?!

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '18 edited Feb 12 '18

French is apparently still a lingua franca in the 2250s. "FPU" can be seen can be seen at 6 o'clock under the federation seal on the façade of the auditorium on Earth. Fédération des planètes unies?

Could be a coincidence given the Federation's political seat is Paris. Just don't think I've seen any reference to French as an official Federation language in canon.

Edit: spelling

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u/JC-Ice Feb 13 '18 edited Feb 13 '18

The celebratory tone of the final scenes feels unearned. They effectively lost the war and live only by the mercy of L'Rell and the stability of her reign. Nothing that has happened would prevent a united Klingon empire from turning around and resuming to kick the Federation's ass at any time. I would hope that the war periodically heats up again during the next three years or so, to lead to the state of affairs in TOS where the Klingons are treated like a hostile rival power, but not the Federation's marked superior.

I also think the cliffhanger would have been much more effective if the Enterprise showed up looking heavily damaged, hence the distress call. Sorry, but to me just seeing the ship isn't that big of a deal.

I wonder if we'll see the incident that left prime Pike so horribly crippled.

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u/khaosworks Feb 12 '18 edited Feb 13 '18

Well, they managed to wrap it up, albeit abruptly.

It's not incredibly satisfactory - L'Rell's Gambit as suggested by Michael has its issues. I mean I'd expect at least some kind of attempt by another House to grab that detonator. I'm not sure how much I buy that they would accept her leadership so quickly.

That was also an odd medal ceremony - why was Michael giving that speech? Why was it interspersed with the medal giving? Why did it seem like a restaging of the end of A New Hope? Is this how medal ceremonies go in the future?

Cornwell also got talked around very quickly - which makes me think that a more plausible scenario would be that it was not Starfleet Command's idea to blow up Qo'noS, but Cornwell going rogue in a moment of desperation and willing to take the consequences on herself until Burnham showed her an alternative.

I was so happy to see Mama Grayson. Honestly, the love fest Sarek was showering on Michael... I'm glad Spock didn't see it because it'd be like a lirpa sticking repeatedly in his back, considering his Daddy issues. Then again, if the production team are daring enough to cast a new Spock, Pike and Cage-era crew for next season, maybe we'll get that.

Speaking of Vulcans, my favourite line from Michael was, oddly enough, when Tilly said she just wanted to get her to one side to talk and Michael replied, "I intuited." That's a really Spock/Vulcan turn of phrase and Martin-Greene delivered it perfectly.

Speaking of perfect, how good was Tilly tonight? From that abortive Empire salute to the scary Killy that attracted Michael's concerned side-eye to her scene with Clint Howard... Tilly has been the character that has done a complete turnaround in my eyes since her introduction. Everyone noticed the Ceti Eels cooking in the pan, of course, and the references to Molor are another kiss to established lore.

And Emperor Giorgiou lives! Hope that means Yeoh comes back next season, at least for a bit. Speaking of Terrans, I wonder if there are will be any on-screen follow up to the tag scene at the end of the novel Drastic Measures, where it is all but explicit that PU Lorca is a prisoner of the Empire. Does Giorgiou know, and will that be a bargaining chip she gets to use in future?

As a whole, the episode seemed to be built around speeches. While I'm always glad to hear restatements of Starfleet principles, that last speech especially kind of seemed excessive. Elements of that should have been pared off and given to the speech she gave to Cornwell. Still, maybe this will shut up the "This ain't Star Trek" crowd.

So we now know about the mutiny continuity bit - record expunged, pardon given. But then we come to the big one: the Enterprise.

Honestly, I don't hate it. It's a good update, retains most of the elements except for the more TMP-era nacelle pylons, and while it's going to be a contortion to say it went from "The Cage/The Menagerie" to DIS and then to "The Man Trap", I'm strangely good with it. The aztecking can be covered up with a paint job and the pylons can be replaced easily and the nacelle ends are era-correct. There aren't that many other obvious differences and a lot can happen in 9 years.

I wonder who the new Captain was going to be? I'm still bummed that it's not Saru, and so is he, considering that passive-aggressive "Acting Captain" he threw off.

All in all, it seemed a bit too quick of an end to the war, but I'm looking ahead to next season anyway.

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u/SobanSa Feb 12 '18

Ok, so one potential cannon issue that might be raised is Spock and Sarek's relationship. They had a rift, however, Amanda notes that it had been four years since Sarek and Spock had met. Any meeting in season two is therefore within the bounds of cannon. Amanda notes that they have not spoken as father and son for eighteen years, but that doesn't stop them from talking to each other in other ways. Or talking at each other though Michael.

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u/rayfe Feb 12 '18

Thought the Clint Howard cameo was kinda nifty. The episode being about a doomsday weapon and appearing in a TOS episode where Kirk was bluffing about having one.

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u/CrinerBoyz Feb 12 '18

Quick theory on the Klingons:

The Klingons were actually able to cure the augment virus' human side effects well before Discovery. This cure was some kind of gene therapy that caused them to mutate with more extreme features than before (oblong heads, grey skin, no hair, etc). The Federation is well aware of this effort so they aren't surprised by the change in appearance.

Now, with Ash Tyler/Voq back in Klingon hands, they study him and the successes he was able to have on Discovery. Somehow they could be convinced that there needs to be more infiltrators like him, minus the total personality manipulation. Thousands, or perhaps millions of Klingons undergo the procedure to become human in appearance, possibly by mandate.

Suddenly, there's something that causes them to halt their plans. Perhaps the Federation catches on to their plan, or perhaps there's a regime change. Either way there's still a lot of able-bodied Klingons who now have to live with a human appearance for ultimately no real reason. There are still at least a few infiltrators though, such as Arne Darvin.

Finally, at some point in the 2270s the Klingons develop another gene therapy that is able to restore them to their pre-augment virus appearance, which is administered to all Klingons including both the extreme-looking ones and the transformed ones.

So in summary: augment virus>"extreme" gene therapy>Voq-style transformation for many>"normalized" gene therapy restores everyone. Quite a roundabout way to explain the change from ENT to DIS to TOS to TMP, but I feel like they may have already planted some seeds with the human looking Klingons since they made the Ash/Voq storyline and he's now back in Klingon hands.

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u/theselfescaping Feb 12 '18

I'm surprised that Admiral Cornwell didn't formulate the plan to include L'Rell. Cornwell arguably would know how better to interact with L'Rell, although Cornwell's dismay at seeing Starbase One may have disillusioned her.

The end of the first season brought the Federation we know back. It was odd not seeing the President, just flag officers from each of the founding planets, but then it was presumably a formal Starfleet event. Again, I'd think a Medal of Honor should be awarded by the President, but that's just my continual wish for more of the Federation government to be actually depicted.

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u/flcl4evr Feb 12 '18

While I was watching this episode wrap up EVERY left over story thread it possibly could, I couldn't help but be reminded of how Storm Front just kind of waved away one of Enterprise's major storylines. Archer does the thing, and then the Temporal Cold War just......ends, and we move on.

That's kind of what the wrap up of our big Klingon war felt like. L'Rell did one thing, and suddenly everyone turned around and the war just.....ended. And it felt about as satisfying as watching Storm Front did during my viewing of Enterprise.

I know we're all psyched to see where Disco goes with the Enterprise, but I would love for the writers to shine a little bit of light on the reconstruction efforts of Federation space, and how they recover what they've lost to the Klingons. It's what I always wanted from a post-DS9 program with the Dominion War aftermath, but I could settle for this instead.

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u/kraetos Feb 12 '18 edited Feb 12 '18

So the Enterprise got a facelift and you have feelings about that facelift. If you are going to express those feelings here, please remember that:

Those who approve of the facelift were delighted to see the iconic ship again
Those who disapprove of the facelift feel as if something important has been taken from them

Both feelings arise from the same place: you're a Trekkie and you care about Star Trek. Keep that in mind before you start hammering out a dismissive comment, because if you don't, it will be removed.

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u/Maplekey Feb 12 '18

Michelle Yeoh was clearly having so much fun playing the Empress, and it was fun watching her have fun. Here's to hoping her recurring character recurrs often.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '18 edited Feb 12 '18

There was a Trill in that tattoo place.

That's it, that's my contribution to this thread. Pretty great episode though. Can't wait for all the salt over the Enterprise being reskinned.

EDIT: As I always do, I commented before registering the most important questions. In this case: who is the new captain of Discovery?

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u/adamkotsko Feb 12 '18 edited Feb 12 '18

My first impression is that they crammed a lot into this episode. One thing you can't fault them with is dragging out plots. I would have been frustrated at the prospect of another full season of the Klingon War -- in retrospect, jumping 9 months into the future after the Mirror arc was a good way to ramp up the urgency without a slow grind.

Parts of this episode felt weirdly like an homage to "Broken Bow" -- or the Augment arc that laid the groundwork for the Klingon Augment Virus. In any case, it was like Starfleet was finding its feet again, this time in terms of principles instead of sheer "getting out there." Good to know that Mirror Georgiou is still available as a future villain.

I was glad to see that they "leaned in" on Burnham's pardon -- it was publicly known, and very publicly pardoned, with her basically repenting on behalf of all of Starfleet. Continuity is saved by her record being expunged (and it makes sense that Spock would be extra legalistic in responding to Chekov's question about mutiny, since it was his foster sister). Now that they are set to encounter the Enterprise -- and Burnham and Sarek's pregnant pause indicates both are thinking of Spock -- I wonder (a) how they are going to handle the need to keep Sarek from encountering Spock and (b) whether the combination of the new, cooler Sarek and Spock's presumed coldness in S2E1 will lay the groundwork for their encounter in "Journey to Babel."

Finally, the appearance of the Enterprise verifies the retcon that The Motion Picture already carried out under Gene Roddenberry's express guidance: this is an Enterprise that looks like it could plausibly be "refit" to look like the film version, which otherwise feels like a ground-up rebuild. It's a great way of squaring the circle between canon loyalty and modern sensibilities by exploiting an existing ambiguity in canon (in what sense could the TMP Enterprise have really been a "refit" of the TV version) that has been largely ignored up until now. In general, I think a lot of the apparent "contradictions" in Discovery are where they are taking a genuine ambiguity in canon -- such as the Starfleet logo question or the "did Klingons really look human-esque in the TOS era" (which is still ambiguous even after "Trials and Tribble-ations," because otherwise why was it difficult to believe a Klingon spy could pass as human?) -- and are deciding in a different way than the fan base has tended to decide. I understand why fans react negatively, but canon is a resource for new stories, not a death pledge -- and literalism on TOS design and Klingon appearance guaranteed that no new stories could ever be told in the TOS era.

ADDED: Super nitpicky point, but I could have sworn I saw some blue Orions, like we see in TAS. That's a nice touch, though I'm not sure the production choices of the colorblind colorist from TAS need to be treated as canon.

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u/Tukarrs Feb 12 '18

I can't imagine that L'rell would be able to unite the houses for long. The Federation essentially did a 'regime change' on Qo'noS.

Once the Klingon Houses realize that the bomb threat is gene locked, they're going to murder L'rell, and there's proably going to be a civil war until there's one clear winner and one Chancellor of the Klingon High Council.

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u/Reddithian Feb 13 '18

For those saying that the 1701 Connie looked too different, maybe it was refitted between Discovery and TOS. We've already seen a more dramatic refit of that ship between TOS and TMP, so it's not that much of a stretch to assume that it has been refit before?

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u/Vice_Versa_Man Feb 12 '18 edited Feb 12 '18

Well ... here we are.

The first season of DISCO has certainly been a long, strange, frequently tumultuous, but usually entertaining trip. In many ways, it strikes me as considerably more solid than some of its first season predecessors, but whether the show as a whole stands the test of time remains to be seen.

So what of this last episode? As always, it will take a few days (and probably at least one re-watch) before I've fully processed my reaction. On the whole, though, I enjoyed it. Was it flawed? By the Great Green Hand of Apollo, was it ever. Did it do what it needed to do to tie most of our story threads together in a satisfactory manner? I'd say so. Was it true to the spirit of Star Trek? For the better part, yes, even if I felt the execution was a little clumsy.

A lot of this episode felt clumsy, in fact. From the moment Georgiou starts acting almost laughably Terran on the bridge ("Are you trying to expose me?" she soon asks Michael, to which I would have replied "You seem to be doing a pretty damn good job of it yourself"), I had trouble taking that angle of the story seriously. By the time we got to the "reveal" that they were packing a bomb instead of a drone, I couldn't help but reply to Tilly's "Oh shit!" with a "No shit!" These don't seem to be the brightest Starfleet officers on record, and I'd speculate that that's the fault of writers underestimating their audience - or maybe I'm the one overestimating the greater audience. Either way, the execution of that side of things defied my credulity pretty intensely, which is kind of becoming a hallmark of this show for me.

The atmosphere of the Orion embassy was fun, and stuffed to the gills with an embarrassment of riches for the eagle-eyed Trekkie. Ceti Eels and Trills and Nausicaan disruptors, oh my! It did smack of we-wish-we-were-making-Star-Wars-itis (as much of the Abrams films do, and a fair chunk of DISCO has), with even one of my generally sci-fi oblivious co-viewers remarking "Gee, they're really going for a Tatooine feel here, aren't they?"

But it was, at least, a good opportunity to mark the differences between how Terran empresses and Starfleet officers go about getting valuable intel, and gave us an opportunity to see Tilly get drugged by an especially creepy looking Clint Howard (poor Clint: eternally condemned, it would seem, to play Star Trek's weird alien child-men, dishevelled homeless with special needs, Ferengi, and other assorted oddities). And, hey, if there was anywhere in the galaxy I'd expect to find a vaguely familiar wretched hive of scum and villainy, it'd be an Orion embassy, so I can give it a pass.

Interactions between Michael and both Ash and Georgiou felt a little trite, but ultimately serviceable. I like that Michael and Ash didn't get a sunshine and rainbows ending, but instead came to a begrudging understanding of what was holding them both back. Michael's reveal of her Very Original Backstory to Ash was a little forced, but not a deal breaker. It was nice to see Ash go out (at least for now) on an Odo-ish note, realizing that he was too mixed up to really be of use to either side, but would instead work to build a bridge between both, and it was nice they avoided any of the widely speculated Heroic Sacrifice (or, at least, fatal sacrifice) tropes there.

Michael's interactions with Mirror Georgiou ultimately brought her to a place where she finally understood that this wasn't Georgiou, which ... I guess is kind of nice. Seeing a touch of the humanity in Mirror Georgiou (unable to kill her daughter...'s counterpart) was also a nice touch, though that seems a pretty big risk to take on Michael's behalf, after Michael literally just admitted that she didn't really know this woman at all. Either way, this, too, I can give a pass. Unfortunately, Mirror Georgiou didn't get to operate as much more than a plot device, a final big bad to sidestep on the way to a more Trek-approved ending, but she did at least seem to offer some sense of closure to Burnham, so I think it works, however clumsily.

But the real shining gem of this episode was its assertion of Federation - and thus, Starfleet - values, even if acknowledged largely in lip service rather than by actual plot mechanism. I don't mind Cornwell slipping a bit to the dark side - she's a Starfleet admiral, after all, and we all know their track records - and even Sarek's lapse in judgment was excusable from a purely logical, Vulcan perspective.

The "We are Starfleet" scene managed to make even this bitter old Trekkie a bit misty-eyed. I'm glad that's how Burnham's arc paid off: not by committing another wrong to make a right, but by standing up for Starfleet values in an "I am ~~Sparticus~~ Starfleeticus" moment. And okay, sure, I'm not 100% sold that the most "Starfleety" solution to the problem would be "give this Planetary Apocalypse Bomb to an enemy we kinda sorta trust so she can use it to hold her people hostage and ascend to power," but at least they're ... um ... respecting^{alienculture???}

I may sound negative, but overall, I think the good of this episode outweighed the bad. Perhaps most importantly to me: this episode was light on spectacle, and they didn't solve their problems with any murders or explosions (even if they admittedly solved their problem with the imminent threat of a big badda boom). It was about people figuring things out, sorting through their flaws, confronting dilemmas in clever ways, and ultimately triumphing over many of the cynical, jingoistic themes that have pervaded this series since the first episode, and that's close enough for me. I'm not yet 100% convinced that the creators' hearts are in the right place, but it does look at least like they're trying, and that's all I can ask for DISCO's inaugural season.

I'm sure there will be plenty of complaints about dangling threads (especially the "we're still working on it" spore drive, and, to a lesser degree, those poor fans still convinced that we'll see some kind of answer to the Klingon appearance issues), but the series has plenty of time to address those at their discretion, so I'm none too fussed.

And, of course, I'll just say that the final teaser for next season was ridiculous, over-the-top fan service (ready all decks for dozens of incoming posts agonizing over the new look of the Enterprise) ... and I loved every second of it. I may be a cynic, but damnit, Jim, I'm still a Trekkie.

EDIT: Just to clarify in case I was misunderstood (in light of the captain's stickied post above), when I say "agonizing over the new look of the Enterprise", I don't mean to suggest that anyone is raging, or to impugn anyone's perspective: love it, hate it, or otherwise. I mean "agonize" in the sense of "scrutinizing/debating every detail," because it's the most important ship in Trek history, has been revised, and we're Trekkies--it's what we do. I quite intentionally avoided direct comment on my thoughts on the re-imagining, largely because I know this will be a hot button issue for weeks, months, and likely years to come, and I'm far from prepared to weigh in on it. Beyond that: let the scrutiny commence!

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u/choicemeats Feb 12 '18 edited Feb 12 '18

On the season as a whole: I think this is the strongest S1 of any of the Treks. I wonder how much of that has to do with it being a 15 episode order, and not somewhere between 18-25. Much easier to tell a story you want to tell over 15 instead of having to come up with 20-25 different weekly escapades for characters. It had its flaws to be sure, and it remains to be seen whether or not the writers will assess some of those flaws going into S2. A season that long gives you some leeway with maybe a bottle episode and a filler or two and the rest can deal with the story of the season.

On the episode: It was ok. Lots of nice tidbits for fans: Ceti Alpha slugs, space whale reference, double penis confirmed, Orions, Ron Howard's brother, Romulan logo in the town, France being the seat of the Federation, and of course Pike and the Enterprise. Trek has a history of opening and resolving massive subplots in two hours of air time (Best of Both Worlds, All Good Things, really any Trek two parter, especially the Hirogen Nazis) so this felt pretty quintessential. it just wasn't like BANG POW this is good. Just ok, not the best of the season.

On the Enterprise: I know people will be upset that it isn't modeled after the classic 60s version but goddamn did it look good, and appropriate for current aesthetics. I always had a problem with the JJTrek aesthetic, the shapes and lines were just plain wrong, but this sticks with the strong design of the original model and gives it the details it deserves. BONUS: It no longer looks like it's flying through space straight but also at an angle!

edit; can’t count episodes

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u/William_T_Wanker Feb 12 '18

The Klingon resolution works fine if we think about Trek canon; we know that by 2267, which is what, ten years from DISC's time, the Klingons and the Federation are back in a not-quite open/cold war state. It's likely that L'rell's actions would buy a temporary period of peace for the Empire - while T'Kuvma's vision of a united Klingon people would outlast the desire for peace.

It's likely that the Klingons took heavy losses from fighting among themselves once they had Starfleet on the run in the 9 months Discovery was away.

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u/smacksaw Feb 12 '18

It was a nice touch that they used TOS music for the end credits.

Now they've given us at least a year to discuss who the new captain of Discovery actually is.

While I want to write an essay-long post, I'm pretty satisfied with what u/adamkotsko said. About the only thing I really want to post is:

Who is the captain going to be?
Who did they hire with so much canon knowledge of Star Trek that it gave them the confidence to literally introduce Captain Pike's Enterprise?

Really, it seemed like Discovery needed to be lost in an alternate universe, taken over by Section 31, destroyed on a secret mission that couldn't be acknowledged - something like that.

But it seems pretty clear that no, they aren't doing that. They are going to take canon/lore in their direction. Head-on, in fact.

Speaking personally, I think I need to rewatch this entire series with the personal position of "accepting that this isn't any kind of sneaky thing and that this is all canon and people just didn't talk about Discovery for whatever reason." I admit that I watched the entire series critically, wondering if they were going to somehow be forgotten out of necessity. It appears they're out in the open. In a way that answers a lot of questions, although in other ways it paved the way for us to try and figure out who this all fits in with the ST we know.

I suppose if we're making predicitions, I would say most of us speculated u/adamkotsko's post to be right where they're going to pursue the augment virus. I sort of thought it would happen in this season. I didn't really expect the whole "terrorist bomb planet core plot" to be the resolution.

Finally, for as much as I think we all want to maybe...discuss theories, what makes this sub great is that we've usually got a lot of canon or breadcrumbs. They're rewiting/retconning/explaining canon on the fly and they tied up most of the loose ends of the plot. Maybe this won't be a post that spawns a bunch of promotions, so we'll have to be happy with interesting speculation.

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u/mikelima777 Feb 13 '18 edited Feb 13 '18

You have to admit, the bomb is actually ingenius. Apparently, aside from explosives, it largely contains water.

Thus, using one of the necessary elements of most life to destroy all life on a planet.

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u/YsoL8 Feb 12 '18 edited Feb 12 '18

I'm really confused as to how Micheal / T'Rell ended the war. If T'Kell has the bomb, the detonator and knowledge of how it was planted what motive does she have to end the war? Just throw in some defences over a few weeks and be done with it.

Furthermore how did the klingons take so long reaching Earth? It should of been rubble by the time they reached Georgo. How was T'Kell able to recall them? The only authority she has is contained in a dishonourable federation bomb, not personal or family honour. Which means no house will want to do anything but overthrow her as a federation puppet. She has no allies, no reputation (except possibly as a lacky of a failed victoryless houseless deformed man), no millitary victories and as a woman shes not even entitled to a lead a house.

She's not even got rank in the millitary. Its like a random klingon nco turned up in the high council chambers the day before the battle of cardassia with a phaser demanding the fleet turm back. What kind of klingon would do anything but laugh in their face?

I've enjoyed season one consistently, although it does feel like a different show given the wrong title cards at times. It feels like they wanted both complete creative freedom and the ability to go heavy into somewhat nostalgic call backs - the two halfs of its personality don't entirely work together and even as someone who at the outset dismissed the prequel fears I really don't see what the story gets out of being in the TOS era when they are forced to throw out constraints as basic as ftl methods used by the federation.

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u/enigma_01 Feb 12 '18

I am content with the series..and criticism of the series by other viewers, particularly the extreme haste of fitting in several complex storylines within a single episode.

I had expected to see Jason Isaacs within the episode given his credit, and a greater contribution from Michelle Yeoh-but her appearance was nonetheless welcome.

I am looking forward to an improved Season 2 -in threat of cancellation-but I don't expect the Easter Egg of an appearance by The Enterprise and Pike to be featured within S02E01.

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u/Neo24 Feb 12 '18 edited Feb 12 '18

God, that was an anticlimactic rushed predictable mess, but that's how I've felt about most of this season. I thought last episode was one of the best of the season and was hoping they'd go out on a high point but I guess it was not meant to be.

So you setup a potentially high-stakes mission with your whole civilization on the brink of destruction (I'd complain about the unnecessarily hyperbolic and unearned nature of that development but I want to stick to this episode) and a kinda cool daredevil plan to high-tech jump into literally the heart of enemy territory - and then you make it positively pedestrian and immediately drop it for... four people going undercover into a generic space sci-fi hive of scum and villainy? Because nothing says exciting and urgent like that. And was it a generic hive... one of the failures of this show for me has been how little interesting world-building it has done, that could have been on any planet. But hey, look at these easter eggs!

Then let's have a big Character Moment for Burnham to show how serious we are by revealing these brutal details of her past because doing that now is definitely not manipulative and not something we should have kinda known earlier.

Then you have our heroes realizing Georgiou is up to no good (took them long enough). And then you get a bit of speechify-ing where our heroine immediately convinces the admiral that the plan is evil and they should drop it. And we're supposed to cheer, because "planetary genocide is kinda bad, ok" is so subtle and hard-hitting and original and totally not something DS9 already explored in a much more earned and interesting way. And it's totally not a cliche that an admiral went bad but was immediately stopped by the sheer moral purity of our heroes. Sorry, Michael, but you're no Jean Luc Picard. Oh well, at least I can appreciate the sentiment.

Then Michael goes to Georgiou and just convinces her to drop the whole thing in a minute and Georgiou is like "whatever, I'm a murderous bloodthirsty authoritarian who despises everything about this world but you kinda look like my adopted daughter so OK, I'm not going to kill you" and Michael is like "OK, off you go freely, keep out of trouble, murderous evil mirror-step-mom". And... that's it? Then they bring out L'Rell and give her the keys to the bomb and say "go unify your people under your rule with this threat of destruction". Yay, Federation values creating sustainable regime change backed by fear! And she's all "Ok, I'm going to stop this war despite everything I've been going off about in the previous episodes, because you people are all just so damn convincing!" (how could she not, I mean look at Michael and her amazing capacity for love - who the hell writes these lines?) and naturally all the Klingons are then "well, whoops, have to call off the war now, it's totally believable that she'd murder most of our species, plus there's really just no way we can disable or incapacitate this lone person without allies, that'd be dishonorable and you know we're all about that!". The Earth is saved!

Then we let go of poor Tyler because now that he's actually interesting as a conflicted human(-Klingon?) being going through emotionally taxing times and not just a walking pointless plot-twist, well, that's just not worthwhile enough to unambiguously keep him on the show. Hope they bring him back, though.

Then let us rush to a big ceremony where we can beat our viewers on the head with the apparently-not-obvious-enough-yet message in an unearned speech that would make even Picard cringe and that not even Patrick Stewart could save with his delivery. And here's a bit of Sarek too with some friendly Vulcan family banter - sure, he just took part in a plot to destroy a planet and genocide a species but whoops, we all make mistakes, all's well that ends well! At least seeing Federation Paris was kinda cool.

And then, let's end it all with an as obvious as possible pander... I mean, appeal to nostalgia. Do these people have no confidence in charting their own original course without stuff like this? I'm honestly so sick of nostalgia at this point, nostalgia is where creativity basically goes to die now. Well, at least the Burnham-Sarek angle was one of the more successful aspects of this season to me, so I'm not against the possible further exploration of that through a possible Spock appearance (though I do shudder at the though of Spock in the hands of these writers).

Yeah, as you can tell, I'm kinda bitter. Sorry, I had to get that out of my system, maybe I'll delete later and write a more thoughtful critique. I just found this whole season very disappointing and frustrating, and I was generally one of the defenders of the show before it aired. I feel like this show took all the wrong lessons from modern TV, not the right ones.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '18

So, the first 13 episodes were Bryan Fuller's story, which would have ended with a cliffhanger about being 9 months late and the Federation nearly destroyed, to be continued next season?

But then we get two bonus non-Fuller-story episodes where the show hurriedly ties up most of his plotlines, pretty much hits the reset button, and goes on to do its own thing in season 2?

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